Deleterioius effects of gays in the military?

Deleterious effects of gays in the military – nothing to do with homophobia?

Human males (gay and straight) instinctively think in the third person – the only way to bring home the bacon when we depended on co-operative hunting for day-to-day survival. Fangs all gone (roots left above and below eye teeth – ask dentist :-]) – no claw vestige at all – two feet. Sharp sticks and clubs could not make up all these deficits. Taking home a decent carcass took cooperation on the inbred level of a newly hatched chick taking the first thing it sees for its mother.

Such cooperation can require an -- inbred, midbrain based, innate -- kind of identification with fellow pack members that cannot sit side-by-side with your fellow being more interested in cooperating in an act a Greenwich Village fellow once beckoned to me from a doorway as “physiologically constructive and esthetically pleasing.” How much so-called camaraderie would a gay trooper likely feel sharing a foxhole with a “creepy” female who burned to “make pain” with him more than anything else? This is about human males – not just heterosexual males.

Oddly enough – instinct which I have no control over – if I knew a fellow trooper was gay I could totally ignore it as long as he stayed in deep in the closet. But, once he came out everything would feel too much like a date (not to everybody but to many or most – to the most sensitive; not the other way around?).

Most gays in the military understand this without the sociobiology (like Kansas in reverse) and would not come out if legally allowed to. Around 1997 an article in the now defunct San Francisco magazine “City Lights” reported only one gay firefighter had come out in the San Francisco Fire Department. What is truly deleterious to gays in uniform is forcing outed gays out of uniform. There is room somewhere in our giant military where the outed wont detract from performance or (third person thinking) morale .

Gay marriage? Under constitutional equal protection civil unions represent separate but equal status. Once courts make this little insight there is only one way equal protection can go in 2010. Denial of normal marriage status is what most gays consider the most deleterious to them. Just don’t kick out the outed from the armed services.

Latest thoughts on the sociobiology of school corporal punishment

http://nospank.net/n-u88.htm

Latest thoughts on the sociobiology of school corporal punishment (made from emotional equivalents, not direct definition -- what I do):

Can anyone imagine a school principal demonstrating paddling using an adult volunteer and hitting for maximum pain over and over? Forget the crazily unlikely circumstance; the point is it would INARGUABLY be too terrible an act to carry out (might be a crime -- even with a volunteer) -- ipso facto a terrible act to carry out on any person...

...which should make it inarguably a terrible act to carry out on a child. That is what all the antis are protesting about.

Especially when a child did not do anything terribly wrong: the 16 year old boy in the famous truTV video had a silly day losing track of time escorting a young girl to her class before trying to make it on time across a large campus to his class -- showing up a tiny bit late five times.

But something (sociobiology) coverts the vicious beating into everyday punishment in the mind of the school administer (only comparison I can come up with so far: enemy soldier) -- while on the other side of his midbrain (not forebrain) repeated lateness seems terribly important. To recap: the terribly important seems terribly unimportant and the terribly unimportant seems terribly important to the administrator of the beating -- not to the recipient who may terribly resent the administrator for the rest of his life (at least once he acquires grown up perspective).

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More strange sociobiology (only way I can explain it) to do with paddling students:

If everyone else in my school chose (objectively terrible) paddling over (objectively unterrible) detention so would I -- too. Even though I couldn't eat or sleep for the week leading up to it -- even though I could put up with (in my actual case yet another hour :-]) of detention -- although I would never dream of choosing paddling left only to myself -- if everybody else choose paddling so would I too. And I am not talking anything to do with proving yourself tough; that would not inform me at 66 years old.

Is this some dumb form of dumb instinct to share whatever hardship the group suffers -- whatever -- no complaining? ???

How to painlessly eliminate butter and salt from breakfast

How to painlessly eliminate salt from your eggs and butter from your breakfast bread: just mix a bite of each in your mouth and the bread will give flavor to your flavorless eggs and the egg will add moisture for swallowing to your dry bread (an occasional sip of water may help out).

Got to check out that patent law.

How to remove new Goggle sidebar -- automatically

How to remove new Google sidebar -- automatically:

http://www.seotools.com/hide-google-options/

Just download and -- no more sidebar -- you don't even have to do anything! :-)

I was mugged in NYC and I turned out all right. (corporal punishment school paddling)

http://nospank.net/n-u88.htm

I was mugged in NYC and I turned out all right. If I met him again I wouldn't even want to break his arm.

BUT IF I MET MY 7TH GRADE TEACHER WHO BEAT ME I would want to break his 90+ year old arm -- AND HE WAS A CHRISTIAN BROTHER WHO GAVE UP HIS LIFE (POVERTY, CHASTITY AND OBEDIENCE) TO TEACH ME.

If I met my 5th grade brother who was only going to paddle me in the 5th grade (same: he dedicated his life to work for me for free thing) I would refuse to speak to him because he was going to beat me. I was so terrified I wore six pairs of underpants to school that day and I guess that amused him so I didn't get beaten so badly I could still remember it like it happened yesterday.

What happens when you become an adult is that you realize the you were violently beaten (almost always the MOST PHYSICALLY PAINFUL EXPERIENCE OF A PERSONS LIFE) for NO REASON AT ALL.

NO REASON -- THAT IS THE KEY TO THE WHOLE ISSUE. Repeat: NO REASON.

The thing to try to get people to understand is not the more than occasional light psychological damage or the occasional severe harm -- or how it affects 12 years of childhood development knowing you can be beaten for normal imperfect behavior -- not for breaking school windows...

...It is not even the IMMEDIATE violence itself which is all you need to be charged with a crime if you deliberately inflict hellacious pain (the thing about a paddle is the broad area of the instrument and the broad fleshy area of the target free the adult to swing for absolute maximum pain) on an adult...

...If you can just get people to understand that the violence is for no reason -- not doing your work never gets an adult a painful as possible beating, then, you can automatically win the issue because that is the way we are wired automatically to think. Being late is just not a beating offense.

NO REASON -- THAT IS THE KEY TO THE WHOLE ISSUE. Repeat: NO REASON. If I had done something really wrong like breaking windows or spray painting lockers I would not resent these two brothers today (though beating could have been a big mistake if the behavior were linked to serious pathology -- no more rare than alcoholism or delinquency itself)..

PS. For all the shocking stories about priests molesting children (the active ingredient is "failed adults" who cannot make it with their own age -- read the book "Scout's Honor" by Patrick Boyle -- not celibacy or homosexuality) you never hear of priests paddling students. Why? The priests at my high school heard confessions. They knew the REALLY bad things we were doing (on a weekly basis?). They could not possibly take playing hooky or not doing homework -- or simply forgetting to bring it -- the slightest bit seriously -- as something that is seriously ethically wrong -- which of course is what every paddle swinger (who is not a pervert) is positively convinced it is.

Holocaust; Shmolocaust? Would Israel be willing to threaten...

Holocaust; Shmolocaust? In the coming nuclear armed Middle East would Israel be willing to threaten...

...all human life on earth to protect its purloined olive groves and overextended, over crowded residential housing developments -- if it had the thermonuclear technology to build a Dr. Strangelove style doomsday machine? The way Israel lives today, half its population might take a quick exit -- quickly followed by other half -- should the Arabs or the Persians leave behind to be discoverd an unexploded nuke in some back alley in Tel Aviv.

Back in the 60's I read that a weapon of total destruction (WTD) could be constructed by putting a shell of cobalt around a thermonuclear bomb (everyday reading fare back when I could watch a B-52 shoot 600 mph at 500 feet over my apartment house in the Bronx in that year's Operation Skyshield).

Eighth grade math can show that half of today's Israel's conventional military could shrug off any Arab conventional invasion (ex., 3000 NATO quality tanks can hold off three times as many equal quality on defense and maybe twenty times as many Arab tanks! -- the Arabs possess 5000). Then there's those hundreds of nukes.

If half of the same billions invested by Israel (and the US!) in Israel's wildly overbuilt military (no partner for peace?; more like no opponent for war) in profit making industries, then, a few million Israelis could by now have bought as much semi-desirable West Bank and Gaza real estate (from a few million delighted Palestinians) -- without the extra cost being the biggest instigator of a clash between Christian and Islamic billions -- and without the extra cost of condemning future generations of Jews in Israel and around the world (about half live each in Israel and the US) to join German children living down the sins of their ancestors...

...and without the danger of making the phrase "smart Jew" -- in the case of the Israeli half anyway -- become an oxymoron.

Maybe Israel could build a pretend doomsday machine; it needn't have the thermonuclear technology; it could just bluff. No; the US would be forced to bomb any such construction. Better Israel sheds the delusions of a self-important teenage street gang and matures into a grownup entity.

Karl Marx too smart to support socialism -- once he saw it not work

A funny idea came to me the other day. Karl Marx would not have supported socialism from the moment he saw it not working. He was too intelligent. Socialism from him was sort of a "Jules Verne" attempt to guess the economic future -- or his economic "Brave New World."

He did a pretty good job figuring out what what wrong with the LABOR MARKET (I use all capitals hoping the word will be even noticed because it seems hard to get the concept even thought about for more than three seconds in intellectual circles) already (haven't read "Das" yet, but will now that this makes him seem potentially credible). He was just not very good at guessing the future.

He was not an ideologue like many later followers who take his "predictions" of common ownership of production for "revealed" religion. He had noticed (according to one comment on Economists View) that America did not need socialism because it had labor unions. I guess he lived in a world that was so totally different from today's (dominated for millenia by royal families -- only recently replacing muscle power with carbon fuel) that he just couldn't see the eventuality of labor organized democracies (today that can only be accomplished via legislated sector-wide labor agreements).

Marx would was too intelligent to have been a Marxist ideologue. He would instantly have recognized what even below average intelligences could easily diagnose was wrong with Communism in 1917.

Re-form the labor market: the best stimulus -- and antipoverty program -- for American (and Japan!)

The best stimulus -- and best anti-poverty program -- for America with its unique dearth of checks and balances labor market would be to begin paying people what they are worth to work, again. The minimum wage (the minimum part of the job) was raised in 2007 by the Dems to all of 75 cents an hour short of what it was in the Eisenhower administration in 1956 -- 2 1/2 X the average income later! Labor unions have virtually disappeared from the private employment landscape -- and now pressure IS BUILDING on public employee unions to give up deals that the majority (working private) no longer enjoy: the ultimate race to the bottom.

The ultimate and only answer to labor union disappearance is of course the answer that serves all the better paid, less over worked OECD world (other "miserables" exception Japan): sector-wide labor agreements.

Leaving what to do aside for the moment, what will it cost. Answer: a lot of inflation. To move the 15% of income SHARE that has shifted from the bottom 90% of earners to the top 3% (overwhelmingly to the top 1/10% and the top 1/100%) over the last 37+ years (1973 being the dividing line) back where it came from must necessitate much inflation as prices rise and rerise: as much as 30% over a few years being my amateur economic guess.

A time of potential deflation like now with a definitely UNDER heated economy would seem the ideal moment. Myself reading the beginning of Nipperdey's "Germany from Napoleon to Bismark" saw there were back then potential economic upsets from freeing the formerly unpaid serfs. BUT AT SOME POINT YOU JUST HAVE TO FREE THE SERFS -- come Hell or high water.

Come to think of deflation racked Japan needs exactly the same thing: in Japan's case the institution of labor bargaining power in the market place as a completely new experience -- that is exactly what Japan needs.

America's war in Vietnam -- or "Uncle Ho's" 15 million killed and wounded (going by WWII casualty ratios) out of 35 million Vietnamese.

America's war in Vietnam -- or "Uncle Ho's" 15 million killed and wounded (going by WWII casualty ratios) out of 35 million Vietnamese.

In 1965 -- the decision year -- the free world was still shaking over two little countries almost taking over the world for ironically because they lacked natural resources. Now the two biggest countries in the world were coming after us with leaders only slightly more sensible then "Uncle Ho" and with bombs that could leave a half mile deep crater where Hiroshima used to be.

In 1965, Russia was graduating twice as many scientists and engineers as us and its economy was growing 7% a year to our 3%. Communism was at high tide and its leaders were upfront about "burying" us.

The big lesson of WWII was supposed to be Munich: if the democracies had not allowed Hitler to take Chezoslovakia unopposed there supposedly would have been no WWII. This was so deeply ingrained at the time I only recently realized that if Hitler was willing to invade Russia he was going to war period. (If Hitler had given back France and apologized saying he really did not want any more territory in Europe -- beyond a portion of Poland -- the democracies might have ended up sending him tanks to defeat Godless Russia.)

Have your read Bernard B. Fall's "The Two Vietnams"? Ho executed 50,000 peasants and sent 100,000 more to concentration camps for being capitalist exploiters -- even though 98% of the peasants in the north owned the land they tilled. But Communists must have their land reform. In the year of the Hungarian revolution Ho's home province revolted and an army division was sent to quell it killing 6,000 farmers (and wounding 24,000 more?).

This is why the south actually put up a fight -- for all the corruption and inefficiency. Had Ho been allowed to win in 1966-67 he would have undoubtedly wheeled right and gone on taking whatever was in his hyper, hyper path building strength along the way -- possibly (and this was the biggest worry) followed by every less fanatic Communist beginning to (by invasion or revolution or both) in whatever direction they thought the democracies might not put up a fight.

In the end Ho's carnage may have been mostly for nothing in his terms: the south was probably too war weary to try imposing collective farming. For our part, by 1975 we had won globally so we (not South Vietnam) could afford to lose locally.

Oh; and in the end we withdrew our financial and air support just as the south took over all the bloody ground fighting -- just when there was no longer any fundamental pressure on us to do so -- talk about all for nothing. 

ADDENDUM
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 I date Vietnam War years as After Westmoreland: A,W.  (numbers are approximate)

After Westmoreland the US gave up on his truly murderous strategy for our young men as well as being certainly unwinnable: attrition, against a Ho Chi Minh who would have been willing to see everybody in Vietnam croak as long as the last breath was taken by a communist (not much of an exaggeration).  We had stretches of bringing home 3,000 body bags a month -- the goal being, in Westmoreland's own words, to reach the "cross-over" point at which the North could not replace soldiers faster than we could kill them (his own words!).

3 A.W.  The US ambassador to Vietnam could now drive anywhere in the countryside without a military escort.  The Viet Cong guerrilla army having been reduced to totally non-Southerners, consequently leaving NVA main force units (those guys you see in We Were Soldier Once and Young) eating grass and without ammunition.

It was easily practicable to "win the hearts and minds of the people" simply because the Viet Cong were so hated.  The movie Full Metal Jacket portrays the Viet Cong during the battle of Hue calling in police and teachers and government office workers, etc., for "re-education" and shooting them in mass graves (depicted under white powder).  The movie says the body count was twenty,  Wikipedia call the civilian and POW count possibly as high as 6800!

Starting from his struggle to take over the North (more below) Ho and friends only approach to recruitment was to kill and kill and kill anybody who didn't see things their way.

NVA main force units -- hiding most of the time as guerrillas -- needed to have supplies of food and ammunition hidden in place before the troops would arrive to attack.  Once the countryside was wrested from VC control it was no longer practicable to cache supplies or maintain cave systems. 

A.W. 4 1/2  The North tried an out and out Korea style conventional invasion -- beaten off with 50% casualties.

A.W. 5  The US Congress cuts off the money and supplies the South needed to continue the war along with US air support -- all reduced to a trickle.  The South begins rationing bullets and artillery rounds.

A.W. 7 1/2  The North -- having harvested a few more crops of eighteen years olds -- finally sent them to overrun the US Congress-disarmed South in six weeks.
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In the 1950s, Ho Chi Minh's life long approach to winning supporters began typically by sending terror squads into villages, lining up some boys who joined a government program (e.g., education) and shooting them.  When that village was rendered sufficiently docile a maintenance team would come in and the terror squad would move on the next village (ink blot style).

(N.B.  Vietnam was no longer a colony in 1949.)

After Ho won the election in the North -- population 13 million; 98% of the peasants owned the land they tilled (70% in the South) -- Ho shot 50,000 peasants as capitalist exploiters and sent 100,000 to re-education camps.  Had some formula according to how many pigs farmers owned, etc.  (Communists have to have their land reform -- even they admitted they may have gone too far.)  A year after Ho took over his own home province rebelled -- the army crushed this, killing 6,000 peasants.  For the early Ho, see: The Two Vietnams by Bernard Fall -- a French political scientist who was allowed free rein to move about the North while the fighting was still going on there.  Killed when his jeep hit a mine in 1967.  I found his book too dry and scholarly to read when I was in my 20s.

Ronald's McDonald's "Obesity House"?

Ronald's McDonald's "Obesity House"?

This morning my McDonalds on Western Avenue asked me to pay $1 for a cup of water with its Big Breakfast. When I balked and walked the manager caught me and claimed the rule was just for customers 17 to 25 years old (I wonder if they card) because teens fill the cup with soda pop when no one is looking.

In this era when excessive sugar (especially from soft drinks) is blamed for the epidemic of obesity (especially teen) and diabetes (personally diagnosed with Type II) should restaurants be legally permitted to twist customer arms to imbibe more than they want to of the most unhealthy foods.

Last year the same McDonalds tried issuing only tiny 4 ounce glasses if you requested water. They gave that up -- perhaps because we customers simply brought our own 8 ounce store glasses (which we saved whenever we could get them). I no longer patronize a McDonalds up on Howard since they only give you a 4 ounce glass of water at the counter and you cannot even refill it at the open machine.

Recently at a McDonalds over on Clark I thought I could get around their 4 ounce at the counter policy by drinking the whole 4 ounces at the counter (did not take long :-]) and asking for more. For some reason the employee took it personally and filled my glass so completely with ice that there was next to no water inside it. That makes three out of three around my way waging war on plain water.

Aren't there rules that restaurants which serve X number of people must have comfort facilities, etc.? Isn't it more important to protect the health of people who may already suffering from a medical condition that can be worsened by intake of sugar or even caffeine (e.g., caffeine and food together raise blood sugar more than food alone)? Aren't there rules against cooking with harmful ingredients like trans fats -- and against selling cigarettes to teenagers? Isn't it just as important to protect Chicago restaurant patrons from being tugged into intaking food groups which are lately recognized as proliferating -- and exacerbating -- major diseases?

Say taxi meter rip-off?

Say taxi meter rip-off?

In 1974, after the last successful unionized taxi strike in New York City, the taxi meter was raised to $2.65/mile (in today's money * -- nominally $.60) -- said union being subsequently disbanded via a switch to leasing to so called "private contractors." By early 2004 the New York meter had sunk to $1.75/mile (in 2010 dollars -- nominally $1.50) -- for cabbies who serve the only place on earth (or in history) where wealth is a plateau not a pinnacle, lower Manhattan.

Later on in 2004 the New York meter was raised to a tad more than $2.25/mile (nominally $2.00) -- after average income in America had grown 166% since the last successful strike. Today inflation has shaved the meter back to $2.00/mile -- 65 cents short of 1974's rate. Oh, and under the lease system -- unlike the previous 60/40 (or was it 50/50? -- it's been so long) commission system -- the shortfall comes all out of the driver's pocket...

...effectively cutting his income in half? Did someone say New York Taxi meter rip-off?

* http://www.minneapolisfed.org/index.cfm

Winning the intergalactic air force trophy?

Naval Open Source Intelligence reports:

http://nosint.blogspot.com/2010/01/pentagon-underscores-commitment-to-f-35.html

"Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn on Thursday underscored the Pentagon's commitment to Lockheed Martin Corp's $300 billion F-35 fighter jet, saying the U.S. government and its allies still planned to buy 3,000 of the new fighters over time."

I'm not sure I have the numbers after so long but: I think that in today's dollars we spent something like $400 billion dollars on modern jets during the height of the Cold War -- replacing flying brick mostly F-4s Phantoms (all services) with super maneuverable, mission designed, fly-by-wire planes ("not a pound for air to ground" -- Opps!).

Bought something like 5,000. Didn't bother to have more than 7 fighter pairs -- more than 14 of them -- on guard on 9/11: why we couldn't defend the second tower and the Pentagon even though we knew they were coming (the White House could have gone down too).

Meanwhile we are no longer facing an adversary across an Iron Curtain (I support the Vietnam War, BTW) with 10,000 fighters (or was it 20,000?) and 180 tank divisions (50,000 tanks they could actually man with reserve call up -- don't forget 10 parachute divisions). Just who are we going to fight with all this muscle? Are we going to fly to another solar system to fight for the intergalactic air force championship?

Nuclear powered JET to explore Mars?

I just thought of a new twist on the nuclear powered rocket concept. That is an engine that uses nuclear reactor heat to blast indigenous gases out the back for thrust. Indigenous gases being acquired from wherever in the Solar System a vehicle happens to be -- up until now presumably stored in advance of flight.

But, when I saw a Wired magazine article on line about a computer simulated flight around Mars derived from overhead satellite maps (I think; did not get around to reading the article yet), it occurred to me that the nuclear powered vehicle could conceivably scoop in enough gas in Mars atmosphere -- 1% the density of Earth's -- to act like a jet; would not have to store indigenous gas in advance -- cutting weight and making range virtually infinite.

The lower the atmospheric density the less would be the trade off in performance for a larger scoop so it could be very doable. Mar's atmosphere requiring a hovering type design -- too thin for a winged version -- could make for further compatibility with a giant scoop design.

Israel's future: no future at all -- or -- long overdue return to reality? [Israeli Palestinian conflict]

David Brooks marveled in a recent NY Times column on the predominance of Jews among Nobel laureates, philanthropists, etc., and wondered without venturing any genetically based explanations where so much ability came from. Myself reading Fritz Stern’s “The Five Germany’s I Have Known” of his family's narrow escape from extermination had to think that the family of a prominent medical doctor was more likely to get out than the family of a Jewish elevator operator.

If Jewish DNA has been undergoing similar (if less extreme versions of) brain “straining” episodes for a couple of millennia that could plausibly raise the racial IQ -- sort of paralleling what would might follow one of those Hollywood plots where the human elite is to be ensconced in caves for the duration of persistent nuclear fall out or prolonged comet-winter.

In an unintended to be a funny last note Brooks states many high tech Israelis maintain second homes in American technology havens (note: almost all Knesset member web pages list English as a language) – just in case. Should “just in case” ever happen, it will be the first time in history Jews migrate to new high IQ nesting ground -- from Israel!
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I have speculated elsewhere on what a super-sized industrial plant could have been constructed (Hong Kong; where's that?) with resources Israel invested in NATO scale military forces, the better to absorb “Greater Israel” (IOW to steal olive groves and real estate Samuel Clemens reported "definitely needs paint") – also explained elsewhere why that overspending soon may not be enough to save residents of even “Israel Proper” from taking flight. (US-Japan type defense arrangement ONLY possible deterrence -- ONLY possible after West Bank "squatters" make alyia, again -- American public no longer buying that ole "Palestinians as native Indians" tale.)

Today's Israel cannot escape too legitimate comparison with a severely abused child who in turn severely abuses others. This whole nation pathological parallel can only be explained by the holocaust – what else – bad DNA? :-)

What is with attempting to bomb Lebanon back to the stone age – killing 1000 adults and 400 children in the effort – over the more or less legitimate taking of a couple of uniformed soldiers prisoners? Israel is in de factor war condition with Lebanon’s next-door Islamic brethren (if Israel doesn't admit, why do they have to admit?). Never have so many been harmed for so few: Israel's darkest hour (two US Iraq POWs tortured to death the same week)?

Would Israelis have done if no holocaust? Would any another ethnic group have done if they were Hitler's victims instead? Most likely: no and yes (some without a holocaust). Would 18 million untraumatized Jews have been naively wrong to behave proportionately in Lebanon and 12 million madly traumatized Jews be right to act with fascist ruthlessness (not all think right)?

The psychological profession does not normally recommend suppressing traumatic experiences. But studies show Nazi concentration camp survivors who suppressed their experiences functioned better in later life.

Time may truly be running out for Israel – not to “forget” -- but to no longer permit the monstrousness of the holocaust to permanently blind it's people's moral outlook -- lest Israel’s multiplying misdeeds provide the monster his only consolation in Hell.