Chapter 16Military work can be tedious.Yes, wedo have bone-chilling and stomach-churning episodes when we put ournecks on the line. We kill the enemy, gut the alien and blow uprandom equipment and, occasionally, a bit of planetary scenery. Theadrenaline flows as you balance on the edge of eternity. I guess wehit more emotional highs and dive into more emotional lows thanotherhuman beings.
To many people, that would be anexciting life. While I enjoy it, I can get excited lining up a12-foot putt for a birdie too, so blowing up stuff doesn’t have anyspecial thrill for me.
But it is also tedious. In boot camp,there can be a hundred or hundreds of repetitions to train asoldierhow to act in combat, how to shoot, how not to lose control of hisemotions. There are also hundreds of computer simula
