THE CONDE NAST BUILDING, NEW YORK, NY — So today was my first day of school at the Wired Military Academy. I’m still learning where all the classes are located and how the grounds are laid out, so to get a determined but measured start, I wrote this post about the potentially neurotoxicological character of the sand in Afghanistan and this post about some new contractor oversight steps taken by the military command there. It’s the latter one I want to discuss.

Lots of us defense/security journalists have feared the fallout of the Hastings/McChrystal piece. A friend of Andrew Exum’s in the defense press worries that Hastings was basically a buddy-fucker, meaning that it’s going to be the rest of us scribes who pay the price for the fact that his Rolling Stone piece ended the career of the commander in Afghanistan.

Who knows what will happen. But I’m happy to observe that so far the sky hasn’t fallen. Today’s David Ignatius column relays a series of statements from Adm. Mullen that the military still needs a positive working relationship with the media. I’ve gotten very positive unsolicited responses from military officers, including some in significant public-affairs posts, to this post about the disservice that McChrystal’s team did their boss by going after Hastings. And yesterday, for my first Danger Room post, a two-star admiral with whom I haven’t previously interacted gave me almost an hour of her time to discuss her new command and her new mission. And we scheduled our interview after the Rolling Stone story broke.

All of this is preliminary and fragmentary. But they’re positive signs. Now to just get Carol Rosenberg, Michelle Shephard, Carol Rosenberg, Steve Edwards and Paul Koring back to Guantanamo Bay.

Update, 5:05 p.m.: On the other hand…