FROM JENNY SAULS AT FEMINIST PHILOSOPHERS: Appalling feminist reaction to harassment claims.
Archive for 2018
August 20, 2018
HIGHER EDUCATION:
IT’S A BEAUTIFUL THING, WINSTON, THE DESTRUCTION OF WORDS: Healthline says, using the medical term ‘vagina’ is not gender-inclusive language, uses ‘front hole’ instead.
I’m looking forward to the next presentation of The Front Hole Monologues.
UPDATE: James Woods tweets, “The good news is that ‘asshole’ will still be used for the idiot who came up with this…”
ON THIS DAY IN 1940: “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.” Yes, he gave that speech.
OPEN THREAD: I don’t like Mondays.
THIS SHOULD BE MAJOR NATIONAL NEWS: U.S. charges two men with serving as agents of Iran, monitoring Americans and a Jewish center. It’s currently buried in the Local section of the Washington Post under “Public Safety,” and not in the New York Times at all. Is it really not especially newsworthy that a hostile foreign power is scoping out terrorist targets in the U.S.?
I CERTAINLY HOPE SO: Will We Ever Stop Using Rockets to Get to Space? Though, technically, laser launch is just a rocket where the heat energy comes from outside.
TODAY’S STRUGGLE: The Untouchables vs. The Deplorables.
SO, WHAT’S SARAH JEONG UP TO LATELY? (Hint: It’s ‘the funniest thing happening right now.’)
YOUR DAILY TREACHER: When It Comes to Canceling Netflix Shows, I’m Pro-Choice. “And honestly, calling The Break a ‘show’ isn’t scientifically accurate. It hadn’t even developed to that level yet. It was just an undifferentiated clump of jokes.”
Ouch. Read the whole thing.
DUELING POLITICAL CORRECTNESS: Don’t Ask College Applicants About Their Criminal Records Versus Colleges Are Cesspools of Rape.
TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE! (CONT’D): Middle School Teacher Charged with Improper Sexual Relationship with Foster Child.
PUNCHING BACK TWICE AS HARD: Jihad Watch’s Robert Spencer Announces Forthcoming Lawsuit Over Patreon Account Removal.
BUFFY, DEAR, THEY’RE JUST NOT OUR KIND: Trump and the question of Character, Politics, and the Coastal Clerisy
WHAT HAS THE UNIVERSE GOT TO DO WITH IT? YOU’RE HERE, IN BROOKLYN. BROOKLYN IS NOT EXPANDING! The Universe Is Disappearing, And There’s Nothing We Can Do To Stop It.
Classical reference in headline:
RECRUITING PROBLEM: The services are facing a dwindling pool of largely obese, uneducated delinquents. Why?
Senior military officers, and particularly Army Chief of Staff Mark Milley, celebrated the increase. Since becoming his service’s senior officer, Milley has argued that to meet its obligations, the Army will need 540,000 soldiers in its ranks by 2022, an increase of some 70,000 soldiers over four years. “It is not some arbitrary number,” Milley told a gathering of Army veterans back in August. “We have done the analysis. We need to be bigger, and we need to be stronger and more capable.”
Milley’s goal meant that the Army not only needed to find 17,500 new soldiers every year, it needed to find replacements for those who retire or leave the service every year—about 20 percent of the force. So it is that the Army set its 2018 recruiting goal at 80,000 soldiers. Initially, at least, Milley’s target seemed modest, reachable. It wasn’t. . . .
Here’s the arithmetic: one in three potential recruits are disqualified from service because they’re overweight, one in four cannot meet minimal educational standards (a high school diploma or GED equivalent), and one in 10 have a criminal history. In plain terms, about 71 percent of 18-to-24-year-olds (the military’s target pool of potential recruits) are disqualified from the minute they enter a recruiting station: that’s 24 million out of 34 million Americans. The good news is that while the military takes pride in attracting those who are fit, educated, law abiding, and drug-free, they’re having difficulty finding them—manifestly because fewer of them actually exist.
Then too, of the pool of remaining potential recruits, only one in eight actually want to join the military, and of that number, fully 30 percent of those who have the requisite high school diploma or GED equivalent fail to pass the Armed Forces Qualification Test (the AFQT), which is used to determine math and reading skills. Tutoring companies produce sample tests and there’s an “AFQT for Dummies” on the shelves. Here’s a sample question: “Five workers earn $135/day. What is the total amount earned by the five workers?” Put more simply, the purpose of the AFQT isn’t to identify the most qualified, but to winnow out the illiterate, the 30 percent who can’t read, write, or count, despite their high school diplomas.
That’s why the numbers are grim: “There are 30 some million 17 to 24 year-olds out there, but by the time you get all the way down to those that are qualified, you’re down to less than a million young Americans,” Marine Corps Major General Mark Brilakis says.
This is just sad.
TAMARA KEEL: “There’s a gentleman who sets up in the Pioneer Village at the State Fair every year and demonstrates flint knapping. Every year I tell myself I’m going to buy one of his pieces just for the cool factor, but I never got around to it until this year. This is some lovely rainbow obsidian from northern California that’s been knapped into a broad blade about 3.75″ long and affixed to an antler handle. What caught my eye was the fat, asymmetrical antler handle that fills the fist nicely, the right hand in a forward grip and the left in a reverse. It feels kinda like a clinch pick.”
THE ME ME ME ME ME SHOW: Leaked Transcript Sheds Light on Obama Netflix Series.
WHY ARE LEFTIST-MONOPOLY CITIES SUCH CESSPITS? I Left My S— in San Francisco.
The Guardian may notice that San Francisco is a dystopia these days, but it doesn’t connect the dots to how the city is governed. The Los Angeles Daily News, however, is not so timid, wondering whether the spectacle of San Francisco’s failed progressive governance might have an effect on the 2020 presidential race.
Read the whole thing.