• About the website
  • So what's this website about, anyway?
    This website is about my avocations.

    I'm a naval analyst and wargame designer by profession. Along the way, I've learned an awful lot about how militaries -- and especially navies -- operate. My hobbies consist taking that information and applying it to fictional settings. In my off hours, I'm a naval analyst who analyzes navies that don't really exist. I hope this website will be the conduit whereby some of those thoughts move from my head to yours.
  • Graphics?! We don't need no stinkin' graphics?
    Simplicity is a virtue. I decided early on that I would avoid graphics unless (1) they were necessary to illustrate the point I was trying to make, or (2) they made the site easier to navigate.

    This is not to say that graphics don't have a place -- they do. And with the most recent redesign, I am certainly making the site more complicated. I'd hate to have to load it on dial-up -- but that's true for any website.

    If graphics are appropriate for your site, then by all means, go for it. There's a lot of stuff out there on the Net, though, and I don't think I should be wasting your download time when the information I am trying to present is essentially text-based. My goal is for my web page to be a place to disseminate ideas.

    I must admit, though, I find it ironic that when I first put this site together, websites were more and more graphically loaded. Then came weblogs, and all of a sudden, text was cool again.
  • About me
  • The man behind the curtain -- Naval analyst, wargame designer, Macintosh zealot, book evangelist, and science fiction geek.
    I'm Christopher Weuve, a native of Des Moines, Iowa. I graduated from Dowling High School (where I was president of the debate team) in 1983, and from the University of Iowa in 1988 with a BA in Political Science and History. I came to the Washington area to attend graduate school at the University of Maryland's School of Public Affairs, specializing in National Security Studies. After getting screwed by the university's Financial "Aid" Office one time too many, I vowed that I would not return to finish my degree until I could afford to do it without their "help." By the time that happened, the Soviet Union was gone, the Gulf War had played havoc with the defense budget, and I found myself working as a computer geek. It just didn't seem to be worth going back.

    So I spent most of the 1990s as a computer geek, first at the U.S. subsidiary of an Italian pharmaceutical company (Executive coups! Breaking the unions! Secret Swiss bank accounts! Ah, Italy!), then at a company doing document management solutions (right after the Venture Capitalists had taken over -- think Budapest after the Iron Curtain went up). Finally, I came to InterCon Systems Corporation, a great little Mac software shop in Herndon, VA.

    After missing my fortune in the dot.com world (it could happen even in the glory days, if you hitched your cart to the wrong horse), I found myself unemployed just in time to land a job at the Center for Naval Analyses, the defense analysis organization I had wanted to work at ten years previously. The mothership had called me home.

    After six fun years there, it was time to go, so I accepted a position in at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, where I am currently an Assistant Research Professor in the War Gaming Department. Doing the faculty by day/student by night thing, I graduated (with distinction) from the NWC with a masters degree in National Security and Strategic Studies. Note that my employer will disavow all knowledge of my actions. (Seriously -- on this website, my opinions are my own.)

    I am a Life Member of both the United States Naval Institute and the Navy League of the United States. I am also a current or former member of Institute of Electronic and Electrical Engineers, the World Wildlife Fund, Habitat for Humanity, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Space Society, the U.S. Naval Memorial, the Naval Submarine League, and the Jaycees. I am also the (accidental) founder of the Society for the Conservation of Angular Momentum. My other interests should be pretty obvious from the contents of the web page.
  • "Accidental founder of the Society for Conservation of Angular Momentum?"
    Ironically, although I am the "founder" of SCAM, I had little to do with it.

    I starting using the .sig "Founder, Society for the Conservation of Angular Momentum" because I liked the play on words. I thought it really funny that some tree-hugger might join an organization abbreviated SCAM because they didn't understand what conservation of angular momentum was, but if it was "conservation" they were for it.

    Next thing I know some of the members of SFConsim-L took it as a rally cry for space combat games with realistic physics which, while I'm generally in favor of, was the farthest thing from my mind at the time. One of them even went so far as to ask if I would bless the logo idea he had come up with. Sure!

    THEN Ken Burnside of Ad Astra Games started selling shirts with the SCAM logo. Cool!

    So, someday, when SCAM is a multi-billion dollar gaming empire, remember that its founder got not one red cent. (I even bought my own shirt.)
  • So how do you pronounce that?
    "Weuve" = "weave" or "weeve". (Not "wee-ov" or "wuuv" or "wee-uv". ) Just ignore the "u" and no one will get hurt...
  • Science fiction and Game convention appearances (future)
    Confirmed

    Planned
    2009 (Jan): Arisia (Boston MA)
    2009 (Feb): Boskone (Boston MA)

    Pondering
    2009 (Jun): ORIGINS (Columbus OH)
    2009 (July): Readercon (Burlington MA)
  • Science fiction convention appearances (past)
    2008 (Dec): PhilCon (Philadelphia PA)
    2008 (Jun): ORIGINS (Columbus OH)
    2008 (Feb): Boskone (Boston MA)
    2008 (Jan): Arisia (Boston MA)
    2007 (Dec): PhilCon (Philadelphia PA)
    2006 (Nov): PhilCon (Philadelphia PA)
    2005 (Dec): PhilCon (Philadelphia PA)