The Art of War, Week #11 [Period 3, Monday]

[atreideslioness]

As the students entered this week, they would see a passage on the board:

Sun Tzu said: We may distinguish six kinds of terrain, to wit:
(1) Accessible ground
(2) entangling ground
(3) temporizing ground
(4) narrow passes
(5) precipitous heights
(6) positions at a great distance from the enemy.

"Terrain. Which I am sure you are all dreadfully sick of hearing me talk about," Ghanima announced as soon as the last student was seated. "However, if you do not know where or how you stand, in any battle, you will lose. I cannot stress this enough. It doesn't matter if you're facing a troop of Sardaukar on Salusa Secundus, or trying to make dinner plans with a cranky significant other. If you cannot understand the terrain under your feet, you will find yourself on the wrong end of a metaphorical or physical blade."

"This all goes back to what we discussed that first week of class, "'Hence the saying: If you know the enemy and know yourself, your victory will not stand in doubt.' To know your soldiers, you must know yourself. You must be able to assess both the capabilities of your fighting force, and your own ability to command them in terrain before you. If you cannot give the soldiers what they need, even the most elite squad in the Empire can fall against a small handful of women and children." Not that Ghanima would know. At all.

"First, however, I want to hear how you did over the last week."

[OOC: Ya'll know the drill - the OCD is up, so go play!]

Comments

Re: Lecture II & Assignment

[solo_sword]

"All right," Jaina said, thinking it over, "neither or you work the same days, at least, so if we just follow you there we should be able to get this done. And it means we have time, so if we start wanting to tear our hair out at each other we can take a day off and make it up later." You know, 48 hours didn't seem like a lot of time till you tried to think of it this way.

Re: Lecture II & Assignment

[intraspective]

"I also vote the sleepover route," she admitted. "Though, really, I think that sort of subverts the whole... getting along with each other. 'Cause, seriously, if all three of us just bunked in the same room for the week we'd easily hit forty-eight hours of sleep."

But Ino was pretty sure that was cheating a bit.

"Visiting people at work seems good to me."

Re: Lecture II & Assignment

[blackmagic-eve.livejournal.com]

"We could always do the sleepover route to get part of it done," Eve said thoughtfully. "If we can come up with the right night for it, anyway."

Again, see "easier said than done".