Idle Hands...

So with my many many hours of free time, I have not raided the many gear stores in the greater Fort Bragg area. I have visited.
I almost bought a pair of boots. But, common sense prevailed. Also, the company that makes the boots I was eyeballing apparently forgot to make them. Really. The guy at the store told me that the manufacturer's rep called him at home on a Sunday night--this store was to be the exclusive retailer--in order to tell him that somehow the boot had never been put in to production at the factory. Oops.

In the mean time, my wife made fun of me for having more pairs of footwear than she does. I had to explain that a mountaineering boot is not the same as a hiking boot. Running shoes are not meant to be everyday shoes. And just because I got issued a whole bunch of desert boots, it doesn't mean that any of them work for my specific needs.
So I'm trying to sell four pairs of desert boots to clear room. I'm holding off on hiking boots because I won't need them during this trip and am trying to discover funds for my unit to issue us all hiking boots.

I may still end up buying a pair of desert boots here. Garmont, a very reputable maker of hiking boots, appears to have made the holy grail of desert boots. Lightweight. Very breathable. Excellent ankle support. And a wide toe box. Cheap too. A buddy of mine who I'll hopefully but seeing one of the next few nights wore them through the last phase of the Special Forces Qualification Course, a tour in Afghanistan, and is planning on wearing that same pair through Ranger School. Just don't tell my wife...

I also finished two books I've been working on for a while. It's taken me since 2003, but I finally finished T.E. Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom. The last 100-150 pages were actually pretty exciting as all the pieces came together for the capture of Damascus from the Ottomans during WWI. I also learned that as a whole the Arab tribes in the early Twentieth Century were unruly, opportunistic, constantly bickering, obsessed with the appearance of honor, and contained many closeted homosexuals. They could be temporarily united against a Muslim stranger by a Western power with a mix of shared interest and bribery. What comes next has potential for progress but drunk Europeans with pens and a map can really make a mess of it.
There are some lessons in there, even if it seems the Arab Revolt was more of a side show than a major strategic factor in WWI. Fortunately, or unfortunately, those random lines that resulted from imperial hubris are now randomly sacred and we have no interest in redrawing them or physically ruling over any of it.

I also finished Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. It is really more nuanced than it is usually given credit for. Not very math intensive so I guess modern Economists claiming to be scientists would scoff at it. I thought his scathing critique of Mercantilism was pretty gutsy given the political climate the existed at the time of publication. Sadly, people still don't get it and think it's a good idea.
His last sections on taxation and public debt were also amazingly and frighteningly relevant. I'm not going to spoil it for you but he was actually a fan of progressive tax systems (to a point). However, he favored taxing consumption and users as opposed to income. He also noted that public debt is too often a tool for parliaments to avoid difficult decisions.
I'm also a sucker for dry Scottish wit. The man was funny. He made fun of the politicians, lawyers, the Irish, the British, the French, etc. and all of the jokes still made sense.