Chicago Boyz – Page 2 – Some Chicago Boyz know each other from student days at the University of Chicago. Others are Chicago boys in spirit. The blog name is also intended as a good-humored gesture of admiration for distinguished Chicago School economists and fellow travelers.

About That New York Times Article…

April 1, 2025April 1, 2025 by Mike

There is a lot of hubub on the nets concerning the NY Times article outlining the three-year history of the relationship between the US and Ukraine militaries during the Russian invasion. It’s fascinating, and while the larger strategic issues of the war are pushed into the background in favor of tactical and operational considerations, it fills in important details. Given the length (13,000 words) and the research involved, I’m sure there is a book in the works somewhere.

Given that, there’s something strange going on.

There is little in the article that should be shocking to anyone who has been paying attention for the past three years. It doesn’t take a proverbial “leaked Signal chat” to know that we have been providing the Ukrainians not only with supply, training, and planning support but also with ISR plugged right into the kill chain. We were everything but (officially) boots on the ground.

Problems in paradise between American and Ukrainian military planners? A staple of coalition warfare. The details are interesting, but the overall tenor is not surprising

That there were opportunities on the battlefield lost through miscommunication and political meddling? These dangers are present (and realized) in every war, and it’s the mark of a general’s ability to navigate those shoals at the highest levels of policy that gives them their place in history. George Marshall was a grandmaster at it. Mark Milley, not so much.

Retrotech: Sending Photographs Under the Ocean, in 1925

March 30, 2025 by David Foster

In my post Technology in 1925, I mentioned the Bartlane process for transmitting news photographs via undersea cable. The way that this process works is so..so…the words ‘elegant’ and ‘baroque’ both come to mind..that I thought it deserved its own post.

Transatlantic cables had been around since the 1860s, originally handling transmissions in Morse Code or its cable variant. By 1925, teleprinter transmission thru the cables was increasingly common. Bandwidths had increased but were still quite limited–a maximum of 25 to 40 characters per second, usually multiplexed into multiple slower subchannels. These cables were strictly for telegraphy: voice telephony under the Atlantic was still many years away. News stories could be transmitted under the ocean almost instantaneously, but the accompanying photos would take a week or more: obviously there would be commercial value if the photos could be transmitted by cable as well.

So how was telegraphy married with photography?

The Bartlane process (Bartlane comes from the names of co-inventors Maynard McFarlane and Harry Bartholomew) starts with analog-to-digital conversion of the filmed image (although neither ‘analog’ nor ‘digital’ were terms in common use at the time)..varying shades of gray at particular points in the negative (‘pixels’, in our terminology) are captured as combinations of holes punched into a paper tape. The completed tape is sent to the cable office where it is transmitted using standard cable transmission equipment..simultaneously punching a duplicate tape at the other end of the cable. The received tape is then run through a device which recreates the original picture…with quality limited by the density of pixels and the number of shades of gray that the equipment can handle.

In its original 1924 released form, the Bartlane system contained no electronic components at all–it was strictly mechanical, electrical, and optical. How did that work?

Like this…

The Tesla Takedown

March 30, 2025 by Mike

So general thoughts:

The first is that our public discourse is media-driven.

The second is that we do not value empiricism as a public good.

Yesterday was supposed to be the “Tesla Takedown” with mass protests at hundreds of Tesla locations across the country. Were there protests? Sure. Were the size of the protests commensurate with the hype and months of build-up that Elon was some sort of crypto-Nazi helping Trump end democracy? Please. The Tesla Takedown is the “Snow White” of political action.

Now in fairness this may be the start of something bigger in the future, but they have been building this for weeks now. You have to ask, this is all they got?

We have been here before. Leading up to the 2024 election, the Left was quite vocal in stating that Trump was a modern-day Hitler (or at least Caesar) who would end democracy. Given the displays of power the Left showed in 2020, I expected something along the lines of a post-Election color revolution with massive civil unrest; swarms of green-haired librarians and school teachers with a dash of AOC and Anttifa. Nothing happened.

So that leads to the second thought from above, why did nothing happen? Why didn’t the dog bark?

The ability to reflect is a key civic virtue. The use of reason in the form of empiricism, to use experience in order to modify our mental models and understanding of the world us is not just a life tool but a necessity for any functioning society.

Voices from a Wall

March 29, 2025March 29, 2025 by Mike

Today is National Vietnam War Veterans Day.

I have developed a ritual that when I am in DC I try to go down to the National Mall to do two things.

The first is a visit to the Lincoln Memorial. I will stop in front of Old Abe and say my thank to him personally. I will then turn to his right where the Gettysburg Address is etched onto the north wall. I read it, reflect, but pay special attention to the final lines:

“…that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

The second is to visit the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

Part 2 – The Secret Journey of the Kofuku Maru

March 29, 2025March 29, 2025 by Sgt. Mom

(This is going to be a three-part story: I had other projects today and could only finish this second part.)

The newly-rechristened Krait, with the old unreliable engine now replaced, had a full crew at last for Operation Jaywick. A chief engineer, Leading Stoker Paddy McDowell, a WWI Navy veteran, and an assistant engineer, another experienced sailor, Leading Seaman “Cobber” Cain. They also had recruited a radio operator, Leading Telegraphist “Horrie” Young, and a cook: Corporal Andy Crilley, a soldier who was about to be discharged on medical grounds but wanted to stay in the war. Meanwhile Donald Davidson had also selected five men from a pool of naval volunteers that he had personally trained for months in mission-essential skills: the art of silently maneuvering the Folboat canoes in all kinds of water, rappelling, navigation, stalking an enemy, the use of weapons, both bullet and bladed, as well as care of and use of explosives. The five chosen were not just skilled in those deadly arts, but also mature, steady and temperamentally suited for a grueling mission in which teamwork would be essential.

By early August, 1943, the Krait was ready to depart Cairns for Exmouth, on Australia’s western coast, carrying a mixed and eccentric crew of soldiers and sailors … but to where after that, exactly? Only Lyon, Davidson, Page and Carse knew their eventual destination: Lyon because he was overall in charge, and Carse because he was now commander of the deceptively ordinary Krait. The Krait’s four holds were packed jam-full of supplies: basic food and water, including rations sealed into tins which could be cached for the raiding party somewhere on land. Lt. Page had been a third-year medical student before the war, and as such, would be their doctor in a medical emergency. (The medical supplies also included rum, whiskey and gin – for celebrating if the mission was successful, and cyanide tablets in the dire event of failure and capture by the Japanese.)