Special Types of Entitled – Kate Paulk

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Special Types of Entitled – Kate Paulk

Apparently kicking back at the idiocy of the Social Justice Warriors brings the really special entitled ones crawling out from under whichever rock they were hiding under. That or there’s just something in the air at the moment. Or maybe the water.

 

The first round of really special entitlement came from According to Hoyt on Saturday’s post, where a truly charming specimen seemed to think that a combination of foul language and chastising Sarah for an incidental comment – without, of course – ever addressing any of the real content of the post. Naturally, said (to use the specimen’s own language) special entitled cunt was promptly informed by a number of the Huns that she had no grounds to be claiming poor reasoning when she’d shown nothing but the standard troll playbook arguing and hadn’t even managed to do that well.

 

Of course, since this particular kind of special holds as a matter of religious faith that the portion of anatomy in question makes one special beyond questioning and at the same so terribly fragile that a shirt with classic 50s style gals with rayguns is something they have to be protected from, it’s clear the equally special belief that logic is a tool of the patriarchy and so is fact is also a core belief.

 

The only thing that matters for this sort of special is the feels. If it gives them bad feels it must be evil.

 

If that wasn’t stupidity enough, Sarah’s Facebook feed acquired some equally special entitled cunts. The use of a male handle – and frankly, male anatomy – doesn’t make a difference given that the alleged arguments are right out of the SJW shake that Hoo-Haa till the glitter covers everything playbook.

 

For a bit of context, Sarah shared a comment about a Massachusetts town trying to ban all tobacco products within the town borders, with the observation that tar and feathers were appropriate in this situation. This quickly attracted special trolls. Troll #1 seemed to be of the opinion that because he has a severe allergy to all forms of cigarette smoke, smoking should be banned everywhere – but he’s not entitled, oh no. He even tried to argue that he wasn’t claiming his rights to clean air trumped everyone else’s rights to whatever forms of enjoyment they chose to use.

 

Which was when Troll #2 joined the fray with a scatological analogy that completely failed to work and just left me wondering what crawled into his fundamental orifice and died there. And accused those who snarked his efforts of ad hominem.

 

Troll #3 started with a fishing question designed to reel people in then prove his point, and quickly descended to the scatological.

 

Honestly. Apparently the moment you scratch a statist you bring out an obsession with genitalia and/or the end product of the digestive system. I can think of no other reason for the coprophilic turn of Troll #2’s commentary, the speed with which Troll #3 sped to flatulence analogies, and of course the blog’s special one’s choice of ‘cunt’ as the appropriate terminology for ‘a woman with whom I disagree’. Troll #1 at least had the decency to avoid that kind of vulgarity (for those wondering – I try not to initiate it, although, being Australian, I tend not to be all that successful, but if someone else does, I have no qualms about responding in kind).

 

So. My only sensible theory at this point is that there’s a massive wave of cognitive dissonance running through the special entitled ones. After years of the rest of us being polite and not calling them out on either their stupidity or their assumption that the rest of the world should conform to their idea of how things should be, we’ve had enough and we’re telling them to stop. Worse, we’re telling them where they can put their entitled belief (Slice. Sideways, and without lube).

 

They, who have been taught that all that matters is the feels and that logic and facts are the tools of the patriarchy – and as a result lack the ability to realize that without those “tools of the patriarchy” most of their world simply goes away. The computers: they run on logic. All the technology we take for granted: built on observation, logic and experiment – have no way to handle being smacked in the face with anything that doesn’t support their worldview.

 

To some extent I pity them. This has to be hellishly traumatizing for them. But at the same time, their nonsensical beliefs are destroying everything I value, so I can’t be merciful. That’s my choice, and my penance. I just hope I won’t have to go to the blood in the streets level to defeat them.

470 thoughts on “Special Types of Entitled – Kate Paulk”

  1. I’m sure the seal we had in question yesterday returned to their hallowed halls, bearing their verbal bruises and the bleeding cuts they inflicted on themselves, claiming our sharp tongues were so vicious that we cut them IRL, to be further aglittered by their ‘bravery’ in coming to the benighted pits where we lurk.

    If that’s what passes for bravery amongst them I don’t want them anywhere NEAR me if they find themselves in an actual crisis.

    Hubby speculated by the way, that the reason that SJWs can’t do those very minimally effort-inducing poses is because they’re terrified of dropping something, or something falling out, that they are keeping do dearly clenched inside (prompting the constipation of the mind and the diarrhea of their mouths, I’d hazard). After all, they have to have something shoved somewhere very painfully, for them to be such hideous, festering wankers to any and sundry they have the misfortune to inflict themselves on.

    3. First, she was speaking troof to pow-ah, don’cha know.

      Second, their concern is that their brains could fall out.

    4. It’s a good thing those creatures are so anal-retentive, I guess. Things would get really messy otherwise.

  2. My only concern is that if it is in the water the rest of us might catch it. Is there a vaccine? Something to help prevent us from becoming one of the sparkly pod people? Does making water into coffee counteract any effects the glitter might have? Please, tell me coffee is the magic elixir that will protect us. (Runs off to make another mug of that glorious, protective liquid)

    1. There are several vaccines. One of the best is HOW TO LIE WITH STATISTICS by Darrell Huff. I have also found that exposure to the writings of Rudyard Kipling and H. L. Mencken has a notable prophyactic effect.

        1. And Ayn Rand. And your blog, along with those of Oleg Volk, Joe Huffman, and Robert Avrech. Joe in particular has a long running series demonstrating very clearly that this sort of abuse is endemic to socialists, and a great way to bring it to the surface is to discuss the human right of self defense (as protected by, among others, the 2nd Amendment).

        2. Heyer, as in Georgette? Or somebody I don’t know?

          While EAT THE RICH is good, ALL THE TROUBLE IN THE WORLD is better. And, simply for the Humor angle, it’s hard to beat the book that hooked me HOLIDAYS IN HELL.

                1. It’s weird. So many people don’t. Hell, the British have never done themselves the honor of filming one of her books. They did turn THE RELUCTANT WIDOW into a play, and I think I remember reading that somebody in the Scandinavia filmed that. Reviews were so-so. Apparently they missed the humor.

                  And people give me the WEIRDEST looks when I recommend her

                  Male, middle aged, cropped hair, beard, peaky eyebrows. Grumbly-gruff. Not only do I read Georgette Heyer, but I collect romances that remember that a good romance is a comedy (a bad romance is often a tragedy, and all to frequently a horror).

                  EMILY AND THE DARK ANGEL

                  THE DEVIL’S DELILAH

                  life is too godsdamned SHORT to read melodramatic romance bodice rippers (exception; the occasional heroine who tells the hero to “rip it” because the ties are wet).

                    1. I suppose they’d rather do another Jane film. Not that I ahve anything against Jane, but i’d love to see THE UNEXPECTED AJAX filmed. Or THE GRAND SOPHY.

                    2. There are no movies because Heyer wrote it into her book contracts.

                      She wrote it into her contracts because her hit book, THE RELUCTANT WIDOW, was made into one of the world’s worst movies. The sets were okay, and the guy who played leading man was okay, but the protagonist was played by a sex comedienne bombshell, and her part was written to be all wink-nod-cleavage. Pretty much totally unlike the book, but smashed into the rest of the screenplay that stuck to the book.

                      I stuck it out on YouTube for about 10 minutes. Heyer watched it in the theater at the premiere. Can you make it through all ten parts without losing your cookies? A challenge!

                    3. In part 3, they added a scene where a guy is drummed out of his regiment, and there’s this entirely new subplot with Army Intel guys. WHAT? (I mean, it’s well done, but it’s sure not in the book!)

                    4. Suburbanbanshee, could you document that information? It certainly sounds plausable. I know that, as a parallel example, the film of PORGY AND BESS has not been released onto video because the author despised the movie, and his heirs have respected that. (You can get video of quite decent productions, just not the film). But Ms. Heyer died in 1974, and I was under the impression that the film made of THE RELUCTANT WIDOW was later…

                    5. I understand Agatha Christie was of the opinion that good plays do not come from good books, but must be written as plays to begin with; and vice versa.

                    6. Medium affects the story.

                      To take the most blatant example, if you read Order of the Stick and Rusty and Co., they would not make good RPGs. NPCs have too much to do, and even long sequences when no player character appears. Within the party, the PCs are not treated equally, with the central one getting a lot more focus.

                      Which makes for a good webcomic.

                    7. Or the novelizations of Girl Genius. The first one didn’t do much with the medium except make it clear that Omar was a corrupting influence on Moloch. The second one started to do more with the possibilities.

      2. How to Lie With Statistics is one of the most important books I ever read, for it showed me how easy it is to statistically “prove” something objectively false by failing to mention the biases in the sample or presentation of the results. Given the lack of understanding of statistical presentation by most of the media, it’s really indispensable to separate truth from lies in much reporting, let alone political assertions. One can generally trust scientific interpretations of statistics better (as scientists take statistics courses and hence know how to tease out information from the data), but even there one should be aware of the basic methods.

        1. Hear hear! I was fortunate as an undergrad to have that assigned as a supplementary text to an advanced stats class.

        2. I’m less than totally convinced that the media lack the understanding. They seem quite ready to bring up statistical fallacies when they don’t like the conclusions being drawn.

          Which isn’t to say that I’m going off on a rant about Bias in the Media. Of COURSE the media is biased. The media is staffed (almost) exclusively by humans. The trick is to educate our fellow sufferers to the point that they can SEE bias, and come to their own damn bias.

          1. They are biased and always were, and always will be.
            However, what is different from the behavior of, say, newspapers around the time of the Revolution, is that those newspapers were honest about being partisan, while the current ones pretend to be impartial. Whether they are delusional or simply lying is not clear, but it’s certain that impartial they are not.

            1. I think that some of them used to believe it. The nonsense about unbiased reporting started just about the time that the Hearst papers were descending into madness. The Hearst papers, from what I’ve read, were an odd combination of Right Wing and Receiving Interstellar Signals on Their Bridgework. Sort of the love child of the John Birchers and the Area 51 kooks. It would have been east for the then mildly left-wing press to convince themselves that they were “balanced”.

              I don’t really see who they can think that anymore. They probably think of themselves as serving a Higher Truth, or some other idiocy that requires thinking in capitol letters.

              But their bias isn’t really a problem. It wouldn’t be difficult to put out a competing bias that was, if nothing else, better written. By pretending to be unbiased (badly) the Modern Journalists have gutted their own writing. The problem with the New York Times isn’t bias. I could read bias and glean useful information. The problem is that the writing is so goddamned awful.

              1. I wonder how much of that was actually the Hearst papers going off the deep end and how much was the Progressives driving the narrative. I haven’t seen anything from the Hearst papers form the thirties and such and have seen a LOT of stuff like the stuff Orson Welles was doing. Given what we see and experience now and how the Progressive media goes to great lengths to shut down alternative viewpoints I often wonder about the seeming absence of Conservative voices for 1929 to the 1960’s and National Review.

                  1. Hearst was the Conrad Black, the Rupert Murdoch of his day. Which is to say, he evoked strong reactions by not playing the game the way the good old boys (who thought they had the pie divvied up neatly) thought it should be played. This included adding color sections to the papers (thus giving rise to “Yellow Journalism”) invented the comic strip (see: the Yellow Kid) and otherwise making the newspaper market much livelier and stealing market share from the established organs.

                    It is nearly impossible for people today to comprehend how competitive the American newspaper market once was. Watch movies from the Thirties like His Girl Friday, Mr. Deeds Goes To Town, Nothing Sacred and Meet John Doe to gather just a hint of the environment. Hearst’s papers shook things up and that was his greatest sin in the eyes of editors and publishers confronted by his challenge. Why, the man actually bid for top reporters, offering higher salaries!!!!! It was quite unseemly.

            2. Impartiality requires an intellectual modesty that encourages one to ask “am I doing a good job of trying to be objective, here?” I don’t see much modesty of any kind in the media.

          2. You have to feel sorry for them, a little. After all, no one goes into a career in journolism because they’re good in math and science. So when they have to deal with math and science, and they are so utterly ignorant of it … well, it’s … awkward …

            1. Wouldn’t have happened with my dad when he was a journalist back during the Marcos era days. He was a reader, and didn’t want to be seen as an idiot by the person he was interviewing, so he learned the knack of quickly reading enough to have at least a general idea of what he’s supposed to ask questions about before going to interview someone.

              It didn’t come up often, since he was a police beat reporter for a long while, but… that was the age when there was some integrity in journalism left.

              1. I don’t doubt your dad’s integrity. But kids these days become journos because they “want to change the world.” Which is not so conducive to doing the hard work to know what is what. Especially in math.

    2. I’m sorry, I was scanning quickly and my brain…

      Anyroad. I read “sparkly rod people.”

      And now we have a matched set: Glittery Hoo-Has and Sparkly Rods. They’re all kinds of speshul.

                  1. Well, it’s a matter of perspective. In some cases, you might have the correct amount of cream, but not enough of the other ingredients surrounding it.

                  2. Only because in this case, it washes out the rest of the flavor. I tasted it before adding the cream and it was wonderfully savory, but after adding the cream, it was much more bland.

                    If the base before cream had more acid, I think it would work better, but I’m not sure what would serve best to increase the acid level.

      3. The question is what happens when a Glittery Hoo Haa meets a Sparkly Rod. Do both explode in a shower of glitter? Do sparks fly? (side thought: ow).

        1. Hm. Interesting query.

          I’d posit a sparkly rod confronted with a glittery hoo-haa is likely to become a sparkly rope.

          But I might be projecting.

        2. No, you see since a normal rod and hoo haw are attracted to one another, their sparkly counterparts feel a strong repulsion. Thus they can never actually meet, but under the right circumstances can be brought together to form that most dangerously useless of things: the liberal arts faculty.

          3. The sparkly counterparts aren’t really there to do what they’re supposed to, remember? They’re supposed to be put on display and worshiped as magical. Rather useless otherwise. They’re mere idols that are genuflected towards…

            Actually that is all they’re good for. Symbols. I mean, look at G.A.S.H ‘s …hairy…glittery… rods….

            I’m not making this one up. Really I’m not.

            1. I can’t believe you just posted that logo!

              Well, actually I can believe it, I just don’t want to.

                1. That thing still makes me chortle. It’s obnoxious, ridiculous and hilarious.

                  And you hung it all out there. 😀

                    1. Chuckle Chuckle

                      Worse than “Man of Steel, Woman of Tissue” by Larry Niven. [Wink]

                    3. It’s available online. Not sure about the copyright issues associated with it *being* available online, but it’s easy to find.

          4. Please help me out on this if a normal rod and hoo haw attract and a Glittery Hoo Haa repels a Sparkly Rod or if a Sparkly Rod is confronted with a glittery hoo-haa then the results are a sparkly rope. OK. Now does a normal rod repel a Sparkly Rod or do they met and mutually annihilate? And the same question applies to the Glittery Hoo Haa and the normal hoo haw. And what about the normal rod and Glittery Hoo Haw do they attract, repel, or annihilate? But I get the liberal arts faculty part of it.

          1. I wonder if it would be possible, sometimes, for enough friction to happen that all that glittery and sparkly stuff will fall off, all of it, and there would be a truly happy ending…

            Well, I like happy endings. So I can dream, yes?

    3. I think we’re safe. Whatever is in the water is counteracted by all the many things listed upthread – and this place is a potent vaccine.

      1. FYI, I reblogged this at my site and your dear friend Clamps paid a visit. You’d think he would realize that he is in eternal moderation there. 😉

  3. As an extremely socially awkward introvert I have given up on trying to get my point across out the internet( Cedar there is an apology in your fb message box. That is why this site and a few others are like a drug for me. It is nice to know that there are many people out there that can get the point across with precision and flair.

    In normal life I just look at them and paraphrase Mr Stein and tell them that is the dumbest thing I have ever heard. Nice to see them start mouth gaping like a fish out of water.

    1. And I replied… and don’t worry about it. Trust me, you come across far more ept than the trolls. We all have bad days, and around here, forgiveness is possible if there was an error.

      1. *looks mournfully at her coffee cup* It’s nearly noon, and I still spent a minute going “E P T. What’s that stand for….”

        It wasn’t even capitalized.

          1. Hey now, I’m not usually violent.

            Probably because being violent when you’re head and shoulders shorter than “average height” is stupid, but still.

                2. And that’s why I would be careful to only induce the Glare of Doom (I do like to live dangerously), with instant apology ready should it look like it was going to escalate to Flying Fists of Death. 🙂

                1. As I understand it, a big judoka, unless ridden hard by a superior Master, will tend to depend on size and strength. A small one needs to concentrate on technique and mental dominance from the first.

                  1. There’s definitely that.
                    However, a small judoka, even if very well trained, will have a hard time with leg sweeping or shoulder throwing a big one.
                    A hip throw, though…scary. Especially the amount of air they can put in.

                    1. I’m hard to throw, because I don’t do things right. For example,I step with the wrong foot. I was a pitcher in baseball. The Martial Arts I’ve seen teaches one to step with the same foot as the hand one is striking with. A pitcher steps with the opposite foot, to get more body twist, and use that to increase ball speed. When one of my friends tried to show me this new throw he had learned, I crashed into his back and would have knocked him down had we been moving faster than a slow motion film.

                    2. I managed to get a little basic training in jujutsu before my problems with benign positional vertigo forced me to give it up (bad enough an incident that I walked like drunk for a week, caused by a forward rolling ukemi. It was unpleasant enough that I didn’t dare to keep training after that). Once a guy who was well over a head taller than I was tried to throw me, but didn’t do it quite right, he lifted me first. Maybe because of the height difference. Now he was in a pretty good shape, but I have always been overweight, and at that time I also had quite a lot of muscle underneath the fat so I guess I was even heavier than he had expected. Ended badly for him. Not that I could use that moment to my advantage, I was laughing too hard. 😀

                      But yep, hip throwing the taller guys was always easy for me. Somebody my own height, especially another woman, much, much harder, but the tall guys always just seemed to flip over like nothing.

                      *Sigh* I very much doubt I could do that throw now. I didn’t get to practice for so long that the necessary moves would have become a real muscle memory.

        2. Exothermic Potential Transfer.

          AKA “how much heat do I get back when I set one on fire”.

        4. Don’t feel bad, I couldn’t figure out what it stood for this morning either, nor at lunch. It is only as I read it this evening that it dawned on me.

          1. Incidentally, you both do realize that the way Foxfier wrote it, it is the name of a pregnancy test kit, right? (the name of the test kit simply stands for “Early Pregnancy Test”)

            2. I’m really glad you noticed that, because I couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t recognizing the word that was used correctly and in context.

    2. Some of these critters manage to make ME look socially well-adjusted, and I ain’t. I can fake it to some extent, but I’m not really any good at dealing with people.

  4. On the computer/logic analogy: it’s actually even better than you think. Before I took up writing (and even since) I worked on a lot of computers, and the first step in diagnosing and solving a problem is recreating it – that is, figuring out under what conditions the error occurs.

    When you get a problem that is clearly occurring but /can’t/ be regularly recreated, you’re usually looking at a problem with either the hard drive or memory – the error is just a symptom of a fundamental hardware problem with the machine.

    I’ve come to believe the same thing applies here.

    1. Yep. I live with a guy who fixes computers (hardware and software problems) for a living, and a guy who fixes things including guns for a living. The first thing they always want to know is ‘how did this break, what the hell did you do and don’t waste my time with a lie because I *will* find out what you’re doing in the course of my examination of the thing.”

      *slight smile* Most common problems we get include computers being punched, or being swamped with malware from surfing online. There was one very impressive job ticket though, where the housemate walked in and said “I’ve a laptop to fix,” and showed me a box of disassembled parts, screen snapped right off. The laptop had accidentally been knocked off a table by a kid, and dropped on the kitchen floor, and an abortive attempt to try fix it ended up in the box of parts.

      Between his skills and my hubby’s, they fixed that thing, but we weren’t sure the laptop could be closed as it had to be glued into place. About thirty minutes later, we got a phone call. The owner of the laptop happily told us that not only did the laptop survive another fall from the kitchen table, their youngest child had closed the lid on the ‘top, and it opened and closed just fine after that.

      So, while there are fundamental issues with hardware… unlike people… they can sometimes be fixed.

      In the case of the hysterical mob though, it has to do with inherently flawed code firing off conflicting commands at the same time. A computer crashes or aborts the program. A human being tries to fulfill the impossible.

      This isn’t to say that human beings cannot change; clearly there are plenty of examples out there – David Horowitz springs to mind, as does Thomas Sowell -but it takes a very resilient, flexible mind, and a strong personality to overcome the breaking or eroding of one’s internal programming and replace it with something better. For most, this is too terrifying a thing to do as it means a reversal of nearly everything that a person has believed as ‘is’ for a long time, that most cannot make that adjustment. This is why we are witnessing the inevitable excuse making and indeed, the proverbial raising of fortress walls / maddened attacks, the metaphorical putting on of their social burkas, the joining of the screaming horde with knives.

      However, there is a positive in all this, but the latest of the ideological toss-ups of late. I’m seeing many people, who found themselves not wearing those social masks, waking up. More are quietly taking off those masks and blinkers and veils and reassessing how they viewed the world. Some might put on the covering again, but there will be many who will look at what is being done, and what they’ve been doing, and slowly recognize the conflicting code.

        1. Percussive maintenance is rarely a permanent fix, but it can be a very satisfying one-time fix …

            1. “Computeeeer? If you don’t open this hatch pronto, I shall take a late axe down to your major databanks and give you a programming you’ll never forget.”

              “I can see this relationship is something we’ll all have to work on.”

              1. Don’t scoff… when I was an Army lab tech, there was one instrument I would have to threaten to take apart, while brandishing a screwdriver (the tool, not the drink, unfortunately).

                I would leave the screwdriver on top of it, tell it to calibrate and run QC, and when I came back it was sufficiently cowed and working perfectly.

                1. I recently had a computer stop objecting to running chkdsk because the technical guy was trying to look at the error message it produced. . . .

                  (all right, he had logged in and made some minor changes. But nothing that should have affected it.)

                  1. This reminds me of the allegedly true tale of the tech support team that put a picture of everyone on the team on the inside of the case because the system would NEVER misbehave when a tech was watching it. Supposedly that machine never misbehaved again.

                2. The older I get, the more the Shinto belief (which as a Westerner I may well be misunderstanding) that many supposedly inanimate objects are inhabited by spirit, which must be respected (or at least, taken into account) just makes sense.

                  1. Leslie Fish’s theory (in Gremlins) is very plausible:

                    Little sprites of the ancient woods used to come to the door
                    Get paid off with a bowl of milk—but not any more.
                    Watching humans make machines and treat the wild with scorn
                    Little sprites swore a great revenge—thus were gremlins born.

                    Then there’s MosheZ’s followup, Gremlins 2.0:

                    Machines are few, and far between, what should gremlins do?
                    They all turned to digital, seeking pastures new

                    1. That’s why I always talk nicely to them.

                      Maybe it works. With one exception none of my cars have ever left me on the side of the road. So far. They always break down only after I get back home.

                      And that one exception: it refused to start, but I got some advice from my father (through a phone conversation, only this was before cell phones so I had to get home first, then took a bus back to where the car was a few hours later). The problem was in the ignition keyhole (whatever the proper English term for that part is, my English is rather holey when it comes to car parts). I could get the power on (lights came on), but it didn’t start by turning the key. But it did once I turned the key, then lifted the hood and connected the battery and the starter with a piece of wire.

                    2. We do have accidents at work, and some of the aircraft under construction do seem to have personalities, usually cuss’ed ones. One of the worst was an aircraft being towed along the taxiways at Paine Field, when someone got a little too close to the landing gear while it was moving and got trapped under the wheels. He lost both legs below the knee.

                      Apparently on the flightline that particular plane was given the nickname “Cujo”, and although I’ve never officially heard which plane that was by number, it is rumored that the same plane is one of the ones that had a battery fire.

                    10. I guess the idea is more “This plane bit someone’s legs off. (If you recall, the battery problems didn’t show up until after the planes were in service – and yes, they’re completely fixed now.).

                    11. That’s probably especially true of computers

                      “The magic of myth and legend has come true in our time. One types the correct incantation on the keyboard, and a display screen comes to life, showing things that never were nor could be.” Brooks, Mythical Man-Month, location 253, Kindle.

                      Everyone knows that items used in ritual become animate faster…..

                    12. Certain airplanes have spirits and personalities, others don’t. No, don’t ask me why, or how you can tell, you just know. Some you can work with, some you enjoying working with, and some you just try to reach a modus vivendi.

              1. At $JOB – 2 we had a disk shredder in the building. Took everything.

                I was way in the back of one of the store rooms. Loud as a very loud thing.

                1. A little used motor oil, delivered in a small stream, along with the exhaust from a shop vac, gives a nice hot fire. In a properly insulated bucket, plenty hot enough to melt AL. (sounds like a jet engine, though) Then all you have to do is pound sand. (for molds)

                  1. I was wondering WHY you would melt them to be used for ballistics testing. Now I see that you were deliberately misinterpreting the intent, and I was too slow to see it. :-p

                    1. Ballistics testing is all good fun, but we can’t let good aluminum go waste. (the stuff in hard drives is pretty good.)

        3. I had a few entertaining stories recounted to me about angry soldiers, their laptops dying on them – midcall to family at times – and leftover explosives… from when Rhys came back from Afghanistan in 2012. That, or target practice.

          The ‘blow laptop up’ story was the same day they discovered one of those Tuff type point and shoot cameras were revealed to be… not so tough. GoPros though…

          OT: Speaking of awesome and GoPros, this is AWESOME.

          Features the guy from District 9.

          Also… Kinda hammers in the point that if people have a plan, and a will, and really, really wanna do something, they’ll find ways and means to do it.

              2. Awesome. I thought it might have been a live action recreation of an in game tutorial. I don’t follow games like I used to 🙂

                I kept wondering how they did the big drops.

                I’m not sure I could watch a lot of it, but it sure was fun!

                zuk

          3. Soldiers were ever so. I knew a Marine who, in Vietnam, solved field electronics failures that didn’t get fixed in the field repair depot (“no fault found” returns) with a .45. Could then claim ‘enemy action’, send it to the big repair depot, get it repaired/replaced properly.

      2. ” The first thing they always want to know is ‘how did this break, what the hell did you do and don’t waste my time with a lie because I *will* find out what you’re doing in the course of my examination of the thing.” ”

        My roommate just after college repaired electronics on the side. I was there the day he had to explain to a guy that the fix for a squeaking VCR never involves WD-40…. let alone half a can sprayed in the tape slot…..

        1. Here’s one of the stories to a yet un-drawn FML strip.

          Customer: I’d like to customize my PC.

          Aff: There’s many ways to do that – hardware, or software, or desktop appearance…

          *spends half hour explaining options*

          Customer: Okay, I’d like to customize my hardware.

          Aff: So you’d like me to build you a new PC and have it shipped to you?

          Customer: No, I want you to remote into my PC and change the color of my case.

          Aff: *types into chatbox* We’re out of bourbon colas, right, Shadow?

                1. Don’t worry.

                  —-

                  Customer: Why can’t I use my fingernail on my iPhone? I get zapped!

                  Aff: Your body has electricity in it, which is what the touchscreen on your smartphone reacts to.

                  Customer *panicked* WHAT ARE YOU DOING, PUTTING ELECTRICITY IN ME?! THAT’S DANGEROUS!!!!!!!!!

                  Aff: ….

          3. You guys should have just used the feature that zaps the user into the digital world where he has to fight in the Games to survive.

            What, that’s still not standard on PC’s? :O

                1. Mass Effect 3 MP, London battlemap. Center hack. Silver or higher difficulty. They can have weapons. It won’t help.

          4. Thank you, by the way. I just used that “Remote in and change the color” in the Customer Service training I am enduring today, just to make it a little more bearable.

          1. This explains why the support people seem so delighted when my mother calls with a problem – she listens, watches, and can give a detailed account of “what it was/is doing” and “I did that and here’s what it says now.” Without panicking or crying.

            1. Woodstock seems to be the thing of choice, due to affordability and taste. (Jack Daniels, when there’s a bit more cash.) There are some that are in bottles, and cost A$7. The other drink the guys like is Maker’s Mark. (I just like the bottle itself.)

              I believe the current drink on top of the fridge is a Scotch but I can’t see what it is or reach the top to see.

            2. They still make that stuff? Of course I don’t drink any more, but I hadn’t seen Jack Cola in probably fifteen years.

          3. When I was in the Navy, I was an electronics tech. More than one midnight to four AM I would get woke up. “The Radio Unit is out of service” Reply question. “Is it plugged in?” “Of course, I was in communications with () and it just quit.” Out of the rack, trudge up to the comm shack, plug it in and check the time to see if it was worth it to go back to bed or not.

            1. That’s why the line now is “Please try unplugging it and plugging it back in.” Gives the user an “out” so they don’t have to admit it was unplugged, but also ensures that now it’s really plugged in.

              1. Also “alright, this sometimes works, we don’t know why– have you tried unplugging both ends of the powercord, then plug in the one that’s at the back of the computer, and then the outlet? Reseating sometimes fixes these symptoms.”

                Beats having to open the case and reseat the motherboard so you don’t embarrass anyone.

                1. I felt so sorry for the little old lady who I talked to. She was so frustrated. The guys at the Best Buy had put her computer together, set it up, and showed that it worked. They then boxed it up and she took it home, hooked it up just like they had, but it wouldn’t work.

                  It was plugged in, and all the cables were connected. They had not told her they were turning off the switch on the power supply in the back of the computer.

          4. Sometimes I regret never getting into drinking alcoholic beverages (never found one that didn’t taste horrible) but then it’s probably a good thing: I might not stop after awhile. ^_^;;

            1. I can’t handle pure hard liquors. I like to drink only enough to get buzzed. A champagne called Asti Cinzano (Or is it the other way around?), is quite nice; certain vodka cruisers, kahlua milk mixers, a mixer drink that involves vodka, sprite and lemon which is 5% alcohol, and this fruity wine made by the local Brown Brothers winery – that’s pretty much the stuff I like to drink. 5% to 7.5% alcohol content, is alright for me. More than that I don’t like.

              http://www.brownbrothers.com.au

              They have some sweet, mild, and sparkling wines that I enjoy, and can drink on occasion even while pregnant. (A good steak meal with a small shot glass worth of Cienna fruity wine, sipped for taste through the meal? Perfection.) In fact I have a small bottle in the fridge, one of the ones they sell in packs of four. One little bottle is 275ml, good for a couple of glasses, or one big one.

            2. A screwdriver made a little light on the vodka, (sorry, never quantified it) has a sweet spot where the acid and the alcohol compliment one another. Goes down smoother than water. After the third one, you’re left wondering why standing is so challenging.

              1. Vodka and seven up went down that way. Of course I had a high tolerance so could drink quite a bit, but substitute Everclear for vodka, and yes when you stand up to go get a third or fourth, all of a sudden it is a real challenge.

                If you are a bourbon or whiskey fan, my favorite mixers with them was either boilermakers (beer with a shot of whiskey dropped in) or root beer and bourbon/whiskey.

              2. Yeah, screwdrivers can do it to ya. I’m not a drinker; was in the field to do engineering support, the salesmen had the only car, they wanted go ’round the bars after dinner… After the first few screwdrivers, THEY started buying my drinks just to watch me put ’em down ever so casually. Funny thing, the next morning I was the only one without a hangover, and the only one who could remember the conversations from after we got back to the motel.

        3. Ah, yes… been there. Unfortunately my “tech support” is usually to my family – you haven’t lived until you’ve tried to explain how to do something in a different operating system to someone who is tech-illiterate and lives on the other side of the planet.

          1. Could you send me your phone number? I only live on the other side of the country, but otherwise I fit that description to a T.

          2. BTDT

            One reason I moved my spouse to a mac was that I told her “it just works and if it doesn’t I probably can’t help you fix it”.

            Actually I lied, it doesn’t just work, but it nearly does and having to do it herself means she only asks me when it’s really broken

    2. When you get a problem that is clearly occurring but /can’t/ be regularly recreated, you’re usually looking at a problem with either the hard drive or memory – the error is just a symptom of a fundamental hardware problem with the machine.

      When you’re dealing with *a* machine, the most obvious source of random faults is a loose nut at the keyboard.

      When you’ve got a network of several hundred machines from NY to San Francisco, and Seattle to South Florida, the most obvious source of random problems is the netwrecking team. The second is management.

      1. I wish I only had to blame a single netwrecking team. We have about half a dozen — and five of them are outside contractors. There’s also disintegration services, corporate information insecurity, two different R&D teams, and 2500 locations staffed by high schoolers and retirees.

        Then there’s the odd occurrence of some of our remote sensors just disappearing…

      2. The codes I’ve heard for the loose nut at the keyboard are the ID-10-T error and the PEBCAK error (Problem Exists Between Chair And Keyboard).

        1. It was embarrassing for me when I realized that the power cord wasn’t correctly in place at the back of my new computer. It was plugged into the power strip correctly but not correctly into the back of the computer. [Embarrassed Grin]

          1. After you’ve done that ONCE, you remember to check it every time. (Yes, I’ve done that. Once.)

            Of course, I’ve also gone the “why won’t my peripherals work” tracing the power cords from the power board to the device and making sure they were all plugged in correctly. Then I realized the extension lead to the power board had been unplugged at the socket…

            Head, meet desk.

            1. There is a trend in modern building to connect some outlets to wall switches. I must assume this works for some people, because the other way madness lies, but it mixes poorly with people who reflexivelynturn switches off. And for some reason taping the switch on doesn’t seem to get people to KEEP THEIR FRIGGIN’ PAWS OFF.

              1. Which is why I make sure my Computer isn’t plugged into an outlet that can be “shut off” by a wall switch.

                Floor lamps are fine but Computers no way.

                1. Oh, you’d LOVE the wiring job the previous owner did on our house…

                  Until I spent $600 getting the entire garage rewired, there were 2 on off switches in series that controlled power to the outlet Verizon had to use to power their router.

    3. I test software for a living, so yes. I’m with you. Recreating the problem – and being able to do so *consistently* – is key.

  5. ” SJW shake that Hoo-Haa till the glitter covers everything playbook.”

    I’m pretty sure that’s illegal in some states.

        1. But if the state is one of sufficient Inebriation, how sanitary it is may not be a concern.

    2. D’ya think that might be part of what they’re clenching their limbs so tightly together for, that they don’t drop or lose any glitter, as well as whatever has been shoved into places where the sun don’t shine? That might explain why we have had a seal and a disease complain about the “impossibility” of perfectly normal poses in illustration.

      =3

      1. That’s highly likely. And let’s face it, all that glitter up there can’t possibly be comfortable.

      1. Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeew. No. We don’t want to see those things flapping about any more than watching guys dance naked and limp is ‘erotic’.

        (and, really, for the guys, just the thought of the danglies bouncing and flopping about makes me wince in sympathy.)

        1. There’s your problem. Just like Techno, Disco is for moving your hindquarters. Never try to listen to that crap.

  6. I find that I’m not really good at polite lately. I’m really just not interested in it. This is especially true when the chew toys aren’t really cut out for their chosen line of work.

        1. funny how defending oneself is considered an attack by these fools, no?
          then again, the same crowd likes to arrest and convict anyone who defends themselves physically (What? You shot and killed a mass murderer trying to kill you? To jail with you bub!)

          2. Challenging their presumed moral, intellectual and yadda-yadda superiority is an existential threat to them.

            You’re s’posed to doff your hat, tug your forelock and say “Please, ma’am, may I have another.”

        2. It’s impossible to believe your racist, fascist, misogynistic, terrorist denialism when you are just parroting the script for stooges deployed by the vast well-funded sinister Big Popcorn astroturf conspiracy machine to try to create an artificial controversy about the consensus on racist fascist misogynist terrorists.

              2. Wait a minute… people are being given free money? Where do I sign up?

                [sigh] Behind the times, as usual.

                    2. That’s the problem! I signed up with the HVRWC. No wonder the check didn’t come through.

                    5. No no, this the the Vast Wing Conspiracy of the Right. The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy is just down the hall. Mind you don’t get tangled up with the Right Wing Conspiracy of Vastness – they are real nutjobs.

                2. You sign up with any one of several activist groups. Check the Tides Foundation website for an organization that you might want to suck money from.

                  1. I confess that I have contemplated joining a Leftist advocacy group such as ACORN and advocating on its behalf in a manner so rude, insulting and moronic that it is counter-productive.

                    Then I realized I can’t do that half so well as the people they already have on staff.

                    So I settled by getting an Obama/Biden sticker for my car and driving badly — cutting people off, driving slowly when people are behind me and tail-gating when they are ahead — and flipping off anybody who expresses any objection.

                    1. So, RES, you’re the idiot in the big black SUV that drove wrong way on a one way street into the oncoming Independence Day Parade and got stopped by the bicycle cop?
                      Everyone was laughing, you know.

      2. The few times some poor twit has tried that with me my reply has been “I am being civil. You want UNcivil, we cango with that too….”

        They generally don’t reply, for some reason.

  7. I’m about fed to the teeth myself – the shirt that rocked science was about the last straw on my anger with regard to the professional crybaby so-called feminists that’s been building for a long time.

                1. I bought a sewing machine to add holsters to tee shirts or other concealment and to make sheaths for flags that go on the motorcycle for ceremonies. Then, someone, the wife or I put it up because company was coming. Can’t find it. Oh well, in the meantime, Oklahoma went to open carry and I found a place that sells flags cheap.

    2. I’m 53. I got fed to the teeth with them quite some time ago. One aspect of it that I’ve been watching for YEARS now is the way they’ve been fighting to get women into every single part of the armed forces.

      Why?

      Ok, if they women in question can meet the same standards, that would be equality. But they can’t, and everybody knows they can’t. Granted, some of the standards are unrealistic.

      But what REALLY annoys me is that the Selective Service requirement is still in place, and still only applies to men. Two points;

      1) Until they GHHs start demanding that the selective service requirement apply to women, they are pleading for special privilege not equality.

      2) They aren’t ever discussing it. Which means that the day will come when they get to explain to their young proteges just how they ended up having to register for the draft.

      I have to admit, I’m looking forward to the latter.

      2. I agree wholeheartedly. I’m 65 and my draft number was 36, so it’s more than a theoretical issue for me. My understanding is that unless an 18 year old “gets” that “A man’s got to do what a man’s got to do,” as the Post Office poster so kindly explained, and registers for military service, he can’t vote, he can’t apply for a student loan, he can’t apply for a government job, and in some states he can’t even get a driver’s license.

        1. And on those few occasions when the question has been raised in public, the reaction has been a truncated while of “but, but. but that’s not FAIR!” and then a quiet hush up by the GHHs accomplices in the Media.

          Someday, please God, they will have to face the issue in the broad light of day. They aren’t prepared for it. They don’t appear to be even TRYING to prepare for it.

          This should be epic.

          1. Of course not: doesn’t fit the narrative. Also, they don’t actually want to be the women in the combat units. They just want to force the boys’ club of the military to kowtow to their … um, their delightful personalities. Once again, as always, it’s about power and not principle.

            1. They don’t want to serve their country (well, except to other countries, on a platter) they want other women to serve in combat … “For the honor of the gender.”

              They are willing to sacrifice as many other women as necessary.

              1. Additionally, there is an every year or four bill to force women to sign up for the draft.

                It’s always voted down.

                Depending on who you ask, it’s either about fairness or it will end all wars, forever.

                Excuse me if I can’t respect those who are yelling for the blood of young women in the hopes that this time, giving the crazies what they want will make them choke; as you point out, the crazies demanding the “right” to do a bone-headed thing like draft the half of your population whose long term presence is required for there to be a future population ARE NOT THE ONES WHO WOULD BE DYING. And they are more than willing to sacrifice as many other women as needed.

                1. Foxfier, I think the theory is that it won’t change the mind of the evil people who are willing to sacrifice as many other women as needed; the theory is that it will change the mind of all the twits who mindlessly back them to “support their gender” while going on about their lives. Without the backing of all the unthinking twits, they wouldn’t HAVE any power. At least that is half the theory.

                  The other half is simple, If you want fair and equal, then it better be fair and equal. No worries about good, bad, right, or wrong; but simply if you are advocating that you want equality, then you better have equality.

                  1. The other half is simple, If you want fair and equal, then it better be fair and equal. No worries about good, bad, right, or wrong; but simply if you are advocating that you want equality, then you better have equality.

                    So you accept the false notion that “equality” means “identical”– the crazy fem theory– and, for bonus, you are supporting the crazies who claim to want irrationally identical treatment. Not me, not a generic “you”– that means you are choosing to side, explicitly against good and right, with the crazies. While blaming it on those folks whose grand total fault is that some crazy claims to represent them, a claim which is supported by… those who choose to believe the crazy.
                    Like you just have argued for.

                    Quite frequently, I find that when you actually talk to folks who don’t care and are going about their lives, they do not support the crazies. They just won’t initially say so because 1) the crazies attack them, and 2) they’re going to get blamed for supporting the crazies no matter what they do if they seek out those who oppose the crazies, just because the crazies claim they’ve got this massive support.

                    Kind of like how Obama claims he’s heard the voice of all of those who didn’t vote…and some idiots are believing him.

                2. In general, amending our Constitution is a bad idea. But if it were to be done, the simplest change that would be mostly for the better would be to require military service as a pre-requisite for any elected federal office. Doesn’t always work (viz. John Kerry), but for the most part the military culture sanitizes young people’s minds of a lot of nonsense.

                  2. Argh, serve in elected office.

                    Trust me, we’ve got LOTS of Kerrys in the Navy, and I’ve got reports of them in the other services as well– we do not need even more encouragement for the guys you don’t want in congress being inflicted on the military.

                  3. Do that and we’d no doubt quickly see the development of “special” branches of the service to fast-stream the well-connected — rather like the OSS without the requirement of competence.

              2. Other women, and other men. Always other. A quote I saw a while ago put it nicely:
                “A politician is a fellow who will lay down your life for his country.” — Texas Guinan. 19th century American businessman

      3. In fairness, there are reasons not to draft women even so. If you need the draft, there are generally circumstances likely to cause a lot of deaths. Minds can change, but a dead womb does not help build enough of the next generation for that cohort’s wars.

        Plus, as long as women are exempt, there are reasons to reverse some of this stuff.

        2. Not many good ways to reconcile the laughably low wages paid to draftees with the usual we-are-not-crude-sexists feminist self-image, though. And not just in the dormant US conscription machinery, either: in places like Korea or Taiwan or Russia other sex differences in laws or in outcomes are on the radar of US feminists, so hearing crickets on this sex difference is significant.

        3. This is a valid reason to exempt women from the draft.

          Let’s make sure the feminists know this is the reason.

          😈

        4. The government may decide that all female draftees work elsewhere, that’s up to the State. But if young men must register for the draft, the Feminists must prepare young women to do the same … or get the most epic loss-of-moral-suoeriority beatdown in recorded history.

          Make them face that EITHER there are fundamental differences betweeen men and women that wishing will not eliminate, OR what’s sauce for the gander must also be sauce for the goose.

          Beat. It. Into. Their. Pointy. Little. Heads.

          Prefferably with a tire iron.

          1. They are quite prepared to send other women to die horribly doing jobs they are not suited for, and getting fellow soldiers killed in the process.

            Even our officers are willing to do that, just to improve their promotability.

        5. And, after all, having babies does sometimes kill the woman involved, so it’s only fair that the men take on some of the life-threatening stuff.

          Of course, this concedes that having children is not a hobby some women indulge in.

          1. Men, pretty exclusively, fought the Revolution, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, both World Wars, Korea,and Vietnam.

            To be “fair”, women should be subject to draft for the next half dozen. But I’ll settle for abolishing registration.

            1. Nah, keep registration, make it voluntary, open it up to both sexes, and make it a requirement for exercising the franchise. Not willing to put your body between your country and the war’s desolation? Fine, no vote for you!:-)

            2. And throughout all those times AND the peace between them, women did 100% of the dying in childbirth. Without which men would not have fought in any of those wars, on account of they would never have been born.

              1. That whole “women die in childbirth” argument carried a lot more weight before the advent of antiseptics, antibiotics, and the rest of modern medicine. Not to mention reliable contraceptives and surgical sterilization.

                Just sayin’.

                1. That whole “women die in childbirth” argument carried a lot more weight before the advent of antiseptics, antibiotics, and the rest of modern medicine.

                  That applies equally to military deaths.

                  Each year between six and seven hundred women die because of directly attributed to pregnancy — this does not include suicide, murder, accident, or other causes. (CDC)

                  From ’04-’07, the number of hostility related deaths in active duty military met or exceeded that level, and once almost managed to go one-and-a-half times the low end.

                  At no other point from ’80-’08 did they come close, and in only two years did they break 50% of the low pregnancy-related-deaths number.

                  Click to access RL32492.pdf

              2. I have a great deal of respect for what women endure in childbirth, and the horrors that could attend prior to modern times.

                But it is not an equivalency. Sorry.

                Particularly when there have been women who sought pregnancy to avoid deployment in non-combat roles.

                1. Why is there not an equivalency? Both are life-threatening, and both are necessary for the country to continue.

                  1. Because the possibility of dying (let’s leave aside the tiny differences between the manners of death) is not the sole conflict to be found in combat. And the reward of combat is not the joy of raising a new life, a legacy and the biological continuation of your genetic line.

                    You are entirely intelligent enough to extrapolate some of the realities of combat from first hand accounts. Since my fingers are tingling and my brain is feeling a little cold, I think I’ll let this suffice for now.

                    2. No. I am not painting parenthood in rosy colors.

                      I’ve just seen childbirth and combat with some intimacy.

                      You want to be argumentative, go bug somebody who hasn’t cleaned up the blood from both. Go argue with somebody who didn’t do part of the redeployment counseling for young infantrymen. Tell it to somebody who didn’t literally pick up the fucking pieces and put them in the bag. Okay?

                    3. I’m trying to figure out why death in childbirth gets measured in terms of the long term result, but combat deaths only get measured immediately.

                      War is hell, yeah, but it’s needful because of what it produces.

                      Kind of like childbirth.

                      There’s also the issue of comparing raw numbers of combat deaths, rather than the death rate of draftees, but the somewhat voluntary nature of most pregnancies does alright for explaining that.

                    4. The primary distinction, it seems to me, is that parenthood is an obligation undertaken for private benefit — the joy of children (however mistaken expectations might be), somebody to care for you in your dotage, many more. Serving in the military is the opposite: a task undertaken for public, general benefit which may offer some personal, private rewards.

                    5. A reasonable distinction, for my part.

                      I certainly do not intend to disparage childbirth, or parenthood. I am in awe of parents in general.

                      I merely object to an equivalency drawn in a thread about selective service. One does not stand in place of the other.

                      I might also be a bit irritated at the intimation that absent the draft and combat men weren’t taking on any of the life-threatening stuff for civilization.

                    6. “parenthood is an obligation undertaken for private benefit ”

                      The Gods of the Copybook Headings are speaking on that topic even as we speak.

                    8. That’d be a pithy quip if I could find anywhere in the thread where authoritative data were being discussed.

                      How about we drop it?

                    10. Wrong. Each anecdote is a datapoint; once you have figured out the sample size, demographics, and bias in the collection, it’s at least as much data as any other survey.

                      Same logic as “Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, third time it’s enemy action.”

                    11. Sarah, I was replying to e-mailed comments and didn’t see your request to drop it until I posted. Sorry.

                    12. Let me state straight up that regardless of the “fairness” arguments, I don’t think women should be drafted.

                      On the other hand you gals arguments on the equivalency of childbirth and combat are stinking ridiculous. They are on the level of Clamps logic. And by that logic we should be drafting women and forcing them to bear children in equal numbers whenever we feel the need to draft men for war. And no I don’t think that would be a good idea.

                      You have both been around here long enough I know that you are too intelligent to actually believe what you are arguing. You may just be being argumentative, but you are starting to punch some real hot buttons.

        6. Every modern war that doesn’t go nuclear (nuclear war isn’t going to last long enough for there to be a draft) is going to have a tooth-to-tail ratio well above unity, right now the US military is somewhere in the neighborhood of 6 box-chuckers and wrench – turners for every trigger-puller. Every support role filled by a woman is one more man that can be put onto the line, and if you’re drafting people you need every swinging Dick. While some support roles aren’t perfectly safe, they’re not much more dangerous than any other industrial work. We would hardly be endangering the race by using women.

          There is simply no moral justification for excluding women from the draft.

          1. Very likely a true estimation – the tail ratio is very long, and can be easily filled by women. I was one of those, myself for twenty years. If there was a more in-the-rear-with-the-gear AFSC than mine, I would have liked to hear about it. A consideration, though – the last war and likely the next one are liable to be where there is no real in-the-rear-with-the-gear space.
            What then, oh wolves?
            My daughter served as a Marine, in a comm outfit in Kuwait and Iraq, in early 2003. Honestly, I would have to admit that she was far more prepared, in training, gear and mental attitude, than I would have been.

            1. There are always stateside depots, MSC, and MAC. Regional HQ’s are also going to be reasonably safe.

          2. Did you see the readiness report about three of our silos having so bollixed their tool kits for servicing the weapons that they only had one wrench between them for securing the warheads atop the missiles? We clearly need more wrench-turners!!!!

            Pentagon Studies Reveal Major Nuclear Problems
            WASHINGTON — The Pentagon will have to spend billions of dollars over the next five years to make emergency fixes to its nuclear weapons infrastructure, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel will announce on Friday, after two separate Pentagon studies concluded that there are “systemic problems across the nuclear enterprise,” according to senior defense officials.

            The reports are a searing indictment of how the Air Force’s and Navy’s aging nuclear weapons facilities, silos and submarine fleet have been allowed to decay since the end of the Cold War. A broad review was begun after academic cheating scandals and the dismissal of top officers for misbehavior, but it uncovered far more serious problems.

            For example, while inspectors obsessed over whether every checklist and review of individual medical records was completed, they ignored huge problems, including aging blast doors over 60-year-old silos that would not seal shut and, in one case, the discovery that the crews that maintain the nation’s 450 intercontinental ballistic missiles had only a single wrench that could attach the nuclear warheads.

            “They started FedExing the one tool” to three bases spread across the country, one official familiar with the contents of the reports said Thursday. No one had checked in years “to see if new tools were being made,” the official said. This was one of many maintenance problems that had “been around so long that no one reported them anymore.”
            [You don’t really want to read the whole thing.]

            1. I don’t have to read the whole thing. I’ve lived it. Still am to some extent. They say that “Don’t live with deficiencies” is a core tenent on the Naval Nuclear Power Program, what they fail to mention is the apparent footnote “unless it’s really annoying to fix or bringg it up makes management look bad.” Let’s just say I found it rather ironic that the head of Naval Reactors was tapped to look into the problems with the Air Force nuclear weapons program.

          3. What if it turns out that, on deeper examination, we can’t really get net use out of women draftees without gender segregated units?

            Especially if we suppose that PC is screwing things up to some degree, leaving women draft exempt might be easier then restarting the WAVES et al.

            2. If we draft substantial numbers of women and keep them from combat the units will essentially segregate themselves. Stateside non-training units would be overwhelmingly female, while the line units would be almost exclusively male. We have more than enough women currently serving to supply leadership Cadre. There would be no need to stand up an entirely separate parallel organization.

          4. Problem being that it doesn’t matter if she’s likely to die in combat or not, a woman that’s been drafted at the age range we draft men is unlikely to be producing the next generation.

            That drop is already well documented with things like college; the “most of the military is support” argument would be better applied to drafting older people who already know the job they’ll be doing, and keeping as high a percent of those who might bear and raise children at home as possible.

            I believe there have already been several books, and probably entire series, about the “draft the old people” application of war not being about raw strength in battle.

            1. Used Vietnam as a sample.

              Used the total deaths. Just to stack the deck.

              Compared it to the estimated 1965 total US population, divided by two.

              About one in six hundred of the 18-45 male population, slightly more, died.

              (figuring out the rate of drafted vs volunteered is effectively impossible, since most of my uncles signed up on the theory that they’d rather pick what job they got)

            2. Yeah. Population growth/shrinkage is heavily driven by the age of the mother at first pregnancy. I expect that young women anticipating a period of forced service might delay that first child some crucial years.

              Minimal government intervention would be to leave women out of the draft.

              An intermediate level might be to attach legislation to draft activation that makes things more difficult for young women not bearing children or contributing to defense. Perhaps shutting down a lot of tertiary education, and limiting female access to same excepting only veterans and needs of defense.

              Maximum well, I’ve been thinking today about certain stories about modern German experiments in welfare and conscription, along with some history. I kinda feel saying it is pointless as a) all of us Christians would not permit it b) I don’t care to risk what ammunition the feminists could make of speaking it out loud.

              1. Minimal government intervention would be to leave women out of the draft.

                Yep. Which is why that was standard for ages– and isn’t there some kind of an exemption for guys who have small children at home, too, along with other “primary support” folks?

                Makes me angry to see people letting the nutjobs set the standards, and annouce how willing they are to send women to die and probably make the country commit suicide in the process in hopes that this time, the crazies will notice their theories don’t match reality.

                Seriously, they’ve been tearing down families since the 60s; has the results of that gotten through their skulls?

                Exactly how many people are folks willing to send off to die rather than fight people who have cruddy ideas?

                1. send women to die and probably make the country commit suicide

                  The former might not necessarily cause the latter.

                  LeBlanc’s Constant Battles suggests that barbarian societies can be quite successful losing 20-30% of the men. This is spread out, not concentrated among military age males during a single short war. I don’t recall ever seeing numbers for males dead losing badly, but not so badly that it couldn’t be recovered from.

                  Societies are significantly more sensitive to losses of women.

                  Our hypothetical more lethal world war probably needs to have the significant losses be among overseas expeditionary forces. Because it being the nuking of US cities would make the choice less significant.

                  The rest of the world probably does not come out too well either, presuming it isn’t simply Obama writ larger. Rationally, there’d need to be some reason to send enough of our young people, and losing them would make us more excitable.

                  So, they come back home, and are weakened by the opportunity cost in women and children. Except, that there are other populations. Some of whom may have made better choices to protect their female demographics. So there may well be women and children who don’t have much left for them in their original population.

                  Anyway, maybe it is plausible, without warping the US to the point it is no longer the US. I dunno.

            3. In a largely monogamous society like ours they aren’t producing the next generation while Daddy’s “over there.” I don’t see why you’re assuming that we would draft everyone, even in WWII we only had around one man in five in the armed forces. I would certainly hope that 90% of the population is capable of maintaining a replacement birth rate. And that’s again assuming that nobody gets knocked up while drafted – you and I both know that a uniform isn’t exactly foolproof contraception.

              In any case, the point is rather moot. Morally and politically the only time a draft would be acceptable is if we were facing an existential crisis, in which case we would use nuclear weapons first. Requiring women to register for the draft is a purely symbolic gesture that puts lie to the claims that feminists are interested in equality.

              1. In a largely monogamous society like ours they aren’t producing the next generation while Daddy’s “over there.”

                That’s why it’s an argument to draft the bare minimum of young guys, have exemptions for those who are married, etc.

                I didn’t count the, ahem, combat pregnancies because I know that raw numbers of births doesn’t make for a good future.

                Requiring women to register for the draft is a purely symbolic gesture that puts lie to the claims that feminists are interested in equality.

                That’s proven false by the many feminists who push it, because they are quite willing to risk the lives of other women– you see a lot of 50+ year old women being drafted? even just 35+? — to “make a statement.”
                Same way that they push for current military members to be treated interchangeably, even when that makes no sense and negatively effects the mission, and few to none of the women who actually have their lives on the line want it.
                They were totally willing to ally with female officers for that goal, figuring that dead women will keep us from making war.

                1. Off Topic (slightly) but there was a male Democrat who kept submitting a bill to restart the draft on the grounds that if the children of those “rich” Republicans were drafted, the Republicans wouldn’t be willing to go to war.

                  Normally, the bill went never came up for a vote (nobody else was willing to support it).

                  However, during the George W Bush administration the Republicans made sure his latest bill came up for a vote.

                  Obviously, it was voted down strongly by both parties but IIRC even he voted no on his own idea. [Grin]

                  1. Typical Progressive, didn’t bother to do even anecdotal research. A lot higher percentage of those “rich” Republicans children joined the military voluntarily than did the children of those Democrats, rich or otherwise.

                2. “That’s why it’s an argument to draft the bare minimum of young guys, have exemptions for those who are married, etc”

                  Those are mutually incompatible. The more exemptions you have, the higher proportion of the eligible population you need to draft to meet the desired end strength. That’s a major reason why I support expanding the draft to include women.

                  I don’t particularly care that some feminazis support drafting women. Even a painted clock is right twice a day.

                  to be clear, I’m not advocating drafting women to die, I’m fine restricting women to non-combat support roles that are no more dangerous than the industrial jobs our grandmothers took up in WWII.

                  1. Those are mutually incompatible. The more exemptions you have, the higher proportion of the eligible population you need to draft to meet the desired end strength.

                    You know a lot of 60 year old guys with teenagers?

                    Unmarried 40 year olds with dependents?

                    The entire basis is expanding the “eligible population”– not by sex, but by age and physical ability.

                    1. Why not both? Women are physically capable of driving a forklift or pushing a pallet jack, do you really think their reproductive capacity is going to be seriously impacted if they’re pushing supplies in a uniform at a military depot rather than in civvies at a factory? I remind you that our grandmothers did the latter and wound up bearing the largest population boom in our history.

                    2. Women are physically capable of driving a forklift or pushing a pallet jack, do you really think their reproductive capacity is going to be seriously impacted if they’re pushing supplies in a uniform at a military depot rather than in civvies at a factory?

                      And I remind you that there’s a difference between doing such in your support structure– which is needed for a good probability of having children– and doing so when away from whatever your “home” is, such as when you leave for college or join the military.

    1. He may have understood it very well. The people who control his employment future on the project, not so much.

      1. I don’t think he has had to deal with them much in his work and outside life groups (He hangs with the “Alternate” model and her hubby who are the ones who made his shirt, and gave him those tattoos.) so he was blind sided. He is familiar with conflict, (was part of the arguments about where to land and that got a bit tense) but our particular breed of SJW was a bit outside his experience.

        1. He probably hadn’t really gotten his mind around the strength of his bargaining position, and also there is also a human tendency to take “I have been victimized” rhetoric more seriously than it deserves, especially when it’s presented with a certain amount of ceremonial consensus theater. Thus in the heat of the moment he may have sincerely felt terrible about all the womanly minds that people like him were poisoning. (Hence e.g. literal witch hunts — they are generally conducted by coalitions who have the power that they could just directly say “this person is a hated political threat or rival, hence we will kill him/her” but there is a strong tendency to dress it up in a narrative of being victimized by someone wicked, even if that claim is so goofy that it can only be backed by bizarre dream logic and Kafkaesque procedure.)

          I say he has a strong bargaining position because technical success at that level is probably at least at the edge of “write your own ticket” territory. It is better to be able to say, as suggested in https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.os.linux.misc/ryNrugS9gF8 (Steve Dunham in a Usenet posting from 10/23/95, quoting Russell Nelson) “”Hello, my name is Linus Torvalds, and I’m here for my job” at any shop in the industry. But being able to say “I’m Matt Taylor, and of course I’m too much of a literal-minded what’s-right-is-right engineer for 80+% of the places that would normally hire someone with my abilities, but I have it on good authority that you are solidly in the 10%, so I am here for my job” is not so bad.

          Taylor might not have felt much appetite for going that route, but I think if the timing had given him more time to react, he would have had a much better chance of discovering an appetite for it. (Also I suspect that if he had had time to think it through, he might have realized that the route that he was hurried into taking mightn’t be all that appetizing.)

          1. Yes. I mentioned the other day (someone was saying his career was done for), the guy’s got “landed on a comet” on his resume.

            There are smart people who understand STEM types who’d be happy to snatch him up. They’d be happy to hire a PR tag-along to keep him out of the furor. Because they can’t grab some random schlub to stick in a ‘Dr. Matt Taylor’ shaped hole in the org chart.

            1. “Yes. I mentioned the other day (someone was saying his career was done for), the guy’s got “landed on a comet” on his resume.

              There are smart people who understand STEM types who’d be happy to snatch him up. They’d be happy to hire a PR tag-along to keep him out of the furor. Because they can’t grab some random schlub to stick in a ‘Dr. Matt Taylor’ shaped hole in the org chart.

              And the lawyers for their liability insurance will say “Don’t call us when your next EEOC complaint / harassment lawsuit shows up, because even if he doesn’t do anything his employment is an instant pattern of behavior / hostile work environment Exhibit A, sending the message you tolerate violence / misogyny / what-bloody-ever.”

              1. I disagree. Unless there is a pattern of incidents, it doesn’t show any such thing. Since this is just a shirt, I’m inclined to say that there wouldn’t be any issue.

          2. “Hello. my name is Brandon Eich, and I’m here for my job.”

            Anyone who hasn’t grasped that we are in a whole ‘nother universe from 1995….

            1. I haven’t kept up, is Mr. Eich fruitlessly looking for work? Destitute? Seems unlikely.

              Listen, I get what you’re saying. I can’t be cavalier about my own prospects because I’m not in those rarified precincts. Most people can’t, I know.

              But this sort of target is exactly the kind we should be pushing back on. His value can be demonstrated to trump the whine.

              Mozilla caved. It may mark the beginning of their end. Eich received a great deal of public support, including from people who disagreed with him. It is not an unstoppable tide.

              If nothing else, the money men can be shown that the cost of caving can be made far greater than the cost of standing fast. Look to gamergate.

  9. Pingback: Nocturnal Lives » Special Types of Entitled by Kate Paulk (reposted from ATH)

  10. While I do admit that the whiney gits are highly annoying at times they have apparently been placed on this Earth to serve as our chew toys so we must make the best of it, suck it up, and whip their sorry butts at every opportunity.
    Kate? No lube? Now that’s just cruel.
    Sarah, you forgot to mention RAH my own personal mentor and the same for most here I suspect.

    2. They’re perverse. If you give them lube they’ll enjoy it too much. Although I must admit to finding the Tabasco suggestion appealing.

  11. Interesting. You aren’t happy when someone else concentrates on Sarah’s choice of words, because that is A Bad Thing, but then concentrate on the person you call Troll 2’s choice of words, because using them was A Bad Thing. Seems to me that someone who offers an opinion you don’t agree with is going to be trashed by you no matter what heshe says and does.

    1. Construct a logical argument and we’ll be only too happy to debate. Swearing and attacking the arguer for being something instead of criticizing the case made is different.

      Go watch this, undertsand the point and come back and try again

    2. Here’s the thing, this is Sarah’s blog and we’re her friends. You invite yourself in to snipe, and we fire back. That’s how we roll.
      Oh, and we generally tend towards science and logic, so suffer fools poorly.
      Present a cogent argument and you’ll get a legitimate discussion. Whine and moan about feelings of fairness and privilege and you’ll most likely get told to piss off.

    3. Someone concentrated on Sarah’s word choice and nothing else despite an entire post of actual discussion. Sounds like Troll 2 did nothing but use profanity.

      If you’re too stupid to see the difference, then perhaps you should walk around with a helmet on to help prevent you from hurting yourself.

    4. Oh. You again. And still speshull. It’s never appropriate to come into someone’s house calling names, mkay?
      Also we.mostly concentrated on words becausevshe stated NO opinion. Insults are’t an opinion.
      I called the despicable Eveleth a fluffer because she carried Leckie’s self- aggrandizing nonsense either without checking or with complicity in the lie. Ie, she whored out her professionI could have called her a meretricious and contemptible collaborator in the creation of a false narrative, but fluffer is shorter.

      1. I had to look up “fluffer” to see what you were talking about. Does that reveal the depths of my ignorance?

        And where can one buy or rent one of these things?

          1. Errrr… no. Should I?

            Confession: I seldom follow any links, on any blog. As far as I’m concerned, links on an opinion post are the equivalent of a footnote in an academic work, i.e. substantiation or foundation. No opinion, no readee. (An example: when a blogger writes: “See this article here”, posted without comment, I don’t. Life is too short to follow all tributaries of thought and/or discussion.)

            1. I almost always read the comments when I can. They are a real window into what the public is really thinking. Sometimes “thinking” is way too strong a word – emoting and regurgitating would be closer. Other times, it is comforting. Challenging less frequently.

            2. I have taken to following links Sarah posts a little more lately, but yes my opinion jives almost exactly with yours Kim. Links are equivalent to footnotes or listed references. Unless I want to see proof or an expansion on what you are talking about, I don’t follow links, and if you don’t say anything about the link, I don’t follow it.

          2. I can kinda cross both of those topics… the story I started this year that crashed and burned involved sex robots (one of Glenn’s latest obsessions it seems) and they were referred to as “Fluffers”.

            1. Don’t know why on earth I suddenly visualized a room full of Dahlek type robots with er… other appendages all chanting in that annoying machine voice of theirs “inseminate!”

              1. Putting this in a wrong place — I was on tablet and couldn’t comment easily before — I wasn’t blaming you for the occasional male name slipping in. You warned me, so I went over it. It’s just I was doing it before travel and my mouse is weird right now. NOT your fault.

                1. Sweetie, it was a rush job, and I take full responsibility. Keep in mind I used to write crew procedures for astronauts, bless their feeble tiny brains. So, I’m somewhat embarrassed when I put out something less than perfect. Looking back I wish I’d cleaned things up a bit more, but mostly it’s just that a tiny flaw gave the SJW folks something to pick at instead of the glaring fact that their entire premise was bovine excrement.

        2. Yes, Kim, you’ve obviously led a very sheltered and quiet life…. even Mrs Du Toit is invisible….. 😉

    5. Hm.

      Pop into a writer’s blog, with a guest post by another writer, commented on by a bunch of writers.

      Wonder at their propensity to analyze words and phrases for their actual — um — meaning.

      Be surprised that they denigrate those things found absent of meaning.

      Somebody needs to call QC at the troll factory, they fell asleep on the job, again.

    6. Try looking at from our point of view. A man, Matt Taylor, is part of a team that managed send a robotic probe to rendezvous with a comet, and match velocities so precisely that even when the anchor mechanism failed, the probe was able to remain on the comet. Note that all this had to be preprogrammed, because lightspeed lag made human control impossible. This is a feat that makes Iron Dome look like a carnival game. The only thing about any of this that you lot deem worthy of your notice is the shirt the fellow happened to be wearing, and then you expect us to take you seriously?

      1. While in school, I was once counseled in a drafting class that I was going to have to improve my lettering skills. The reason? The guy writing the checks would have NO IDEA what the drawing meant, but he could certainly read the lettering and would base his opinion on that.

        So we have this ‘person’ who has no idea what a fantastically hard thing just happened, ’cause you know, it’s ‘science stuff’, but this ‘person’ can see the SHIRT. So she reacts to the shirt.

        There is a line in Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon about where a lawyer makes the sign of a little dog yapping…and that is what we should do whenever we are faced with these people. Hold up your hand and make the sign of a little dog yapping.

        zuk

      2. Indeed, Matt Taylor was part of a remarkable scientific achievement, and part of the problem may be the profound scientific ignorance of 98% of the population and virtually 100% of SJWs and their orbiters in the media.

    7. I’m sorry, but do you have an actual point to make or are you just accusing everybody here of Bad Faith for not uncritically accepting contrary arguments?

      When we are not given any argument to trash, what choice is there but to trash the person who couldn’t make or defend an argument for their position.

    8. Somebody failed reading comprehension and is projecting into the bargain.

      It is a bad thing to come stampeding into a discussion about an actual serious topic with a bitch about choice of words while using foul language oneself. This is, of course, not what you seem to think I said.

      As for Troll #2, the use of a coprophilic analogy (presumably for the shock value) was the fail, not the language used in making said analogy. It was a fail because smoking and defecation aren’t comparable in the way Troll #2 was suggesting.

      Since you’re not capable of paragraphs, I’ll point out that I’ve disagreed respectfully with many people – but all of them have drawn conclusions from facts, and didn’t start the conversation with incompetent snark.

  13. Re: the whole “offensive shirt” thing — I find it ironic that the kind of people who would find cartoons of shapely women offensive are the same people who would have no problem with Che Guevara t-shirts (which I do.find genuinely offensive).

          2. There are so many stories like – an adolescent boy is scheduled among the executions performed in front of the cell windows. Che, as usual, wanted to do all the killing himself. He ordered the boy to kneel, and the boy snarled that he would not kneel before the likes of you. Che sincerely complemented the boy on his courage, and shot him in the face. The prisoners screamed from their cells, and a guard fired a burst from a submachinegun at the windows, wounding several of the prisoners.

            1. You want to be just like Che? Okay, stand here facing this ditch. The rest of you form a single file line, starting over there. Now no pushing or shoving, you’ll all get your chance.

        1. Younger son who is “male clone” and also my revenge upon the world, made a kid at his elementary turn his che shirt inside out by complaining LOUDLY to teacher/administrators that he felt someone wearing a picture of a mass murderer was a threat, much worse than forbidden gang colors.
          Have I mentioned I love that kid? He’ll go far, if they don’t hang him first.

        2. Same kid who in third grade informed the teacher that he wasn’t participating in the play about the nobel piece prize winners because any prize given to Arafat was tainted. 😛 I didn’t even know he was paying attention.
          Attn world, 15 more years before he can run for president. You HAVE been warned.

            1. Oooh, the White House is big enough that you could live there, too, and have a room set aside just for writing … !

      2. Why don’t you? I’m serious. It could lead to some actual productive conversations, because I’m sure at least one of them will say, “Wait, he did what now?”

    3. Now, now, what’s a little mass murder between friends? Implied sexism is *much* worse, donchaknow?

    5. Greatest irony of all time: Che’s image becoming a capitalist marketing success story.

      2. I suppose there may be a few people here and there who wear that shirt because of that idea. Especially if Che was a true believer the irony would be at least mildly delicious (maybe, but maybe he was just somebody who found the ideology as a nice way to aggrandize himself – in which case he might have liked those shirts and posters well enough. Since we don’t really know I wouldn’t wear them. Well, maybe that skull version).

        1. The end of the revolution is always ugly, because those who supported violence for the sake of change have to deal with those who supported change for the sake of violence.

      3. I do admit, I chuckled when I saw someone wearing a Planet of the Apes parody of the Che shirt.

  14. After years of the rest of us being polite and not calling them out on either their stupidity or their assumption that the rest of the world should conform to their idea of how things should be, we’ve had enough and we’re telling them to stop.

    It’s always worked before– those who resisted, they shrieked at louder, and the “sensible” folks had a quiet word with the resistors about not making a scene.

    It’s addictive– for heaven’s sake, my mostly sensible sister does it when she’s stressed out. It really messed things up when she tried it on me and found out that the Navy had changed me a bit in that area. (ie, she didn’t get her way, so she kept doing the “make a scene” stuff, and that I was causing her to “make a scene”– and I didn’t give a damn, instead informing people to go talk to her if they didn’t like it)

    Guess what? After two or three tries, she doesn’t do that anymore. Even when she’s stressed out, which was the real trigger.

    You hurt, you lash out.

    These poor folks aren’t getting a constant response, though, so it’ll take a lot longer before they realize that it mostly doesn’t work.

    #Shirtstorm is partly a response to #GamerGate — they tried to target an “easy” group like nerds, and found out that advertisers listen to customers more than media.
    So they targeted one nerd whose advertiser-equivalent is a government, which is much more likely to listen to noise-makers in the media.

    Relatively isolated and vulnerable.

          1. Hey, have you taken a look at that Indiegogo project for a show of support to Matt Taylor? 19 days to go and they have already collected 463 % of the original goal. 🙂

    2. They’re learning he wasn’t as isolated as they thought. It might be dawning on them that many of us will tolerate outrage thrown our way, but we don’t like them attacking our people. Especially our brilliant and enthusiastic people.

      Roused to the defense of others…

      Well, you guys know. And they’ll learn.

    3. There was a video recently of a bunch of women shrieking insults and making fun of a guy for the clothes he wore, on a subway. Confident that they wouldn’t be attacked, or chastized or anything. Just some random guy on a train wearing a jacket they didn’t like.

      When they went too far, the man they were insulting punched him in the face.

      I cheered.

      Because goddamnit, there’s a point that too much is too much. And fuck it. If women and men are goddamned ‘equal’ and ‘interchangeable’ now, then the words a man would punch another man for, a woman can be punched for.

      The nice thing is it sounds like all the people involved were charged, but the women in question were charged with disturbing the peace and harassment. The man wasn’t – I recall, with some surprise, might be wrong – not charged with assault.

      1. Good. Either the cops had a brain and recognized it as standard whip-up-the-mob that can come before a physical assault, or nobody would admit who he was.

        Being equal or interchangeable has nothing to do with it– being members of a civilized society does. At the absolute least, it is entirely possible for a group of women to beat even a very strong man to death.

      2. NY Post:

        Subway slapper: She attacked me like a man, and my jacket rocks

        [SNIP]

        Jorge Peña, 25, hailed the news that he’s been cleared criminally. He also insisted that he was in the right from a fashion perspective.

        He told The Post that the jacket is actually highly fashionable right now and was worn by the rapper TI in a recent music video.

        “I love this jacket,” Peña said. “But I don’t think I can wear it anymore.

        “People will just know me because of it and what happened.”

        Peña — a former pro baseball prospect — was riding the train home from work Friday night when a pack of wild women started mocking his clothes and then one pulled off her stiletto boot and hit him in the head.

        “I never slapped anyone before. Especially a girl,” said the 6-foot-6 Peña.

        “But when I saw that blood, I couldn’t take it. She attacked me like a man.”

        Video at link.
        http://nypost.com/2014/11/13/man-whose-epic-slap-went-viral-ive-never-slapped-anyone-before/

        2. I hope he wins his case, and whatever suit he brings against the woman who attacked him.

          Imagine what those females had previously done, that they thought they could get away with assaulting someone enough to draw blood. There’s a long line of people with a lot to answer for, there.

  15. Back in Spacelab days I was Payload Data Team Lead on several international missions operating out of the Huntsville Operations Support Center. Our main control room had several cameras configured to observe any activity. We knew that at any time we could be going out live to a national or international news feed. I always sat console in shirt and tie.
    by ISS ties became optional and increasingly rare. These days you hardly ever see one. In general the attitude is clean and casual. You’re on console for 8-12 hours straight with small windows of com blockage every orbit when you can hit the loo or grab a sandwich and drink to bring back to your station so comfortable is key.
    Were I still a console jockey today I think I would have to get me one of them there shirts and wear it to work just out of respect to Dr. Taylor.
    Now I was working TV Ops support on the mission where Ulf Merbold dropped his pants on downlink camera. Answered the burning question of boxers vs briefs. Next mission someone (can’t for the life of me remember who, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it) picked up a silly doll that dropped its pants when you squeezed a bulb on a tube. It got stuck in the observation window behind the TV Ops position. Stayed there for about 4 hours before the PTB realized what it was and made us take it down. No sense of humor whatsoever.

  16. Man, if we’re getting this many trolls after the Republicans win the midterms, just imagine what it’s going to be like when they win the presidency!

    1. Small price to pay IMHO.
      Although I must admit a steady diet of squishy feelie butthurt troll is sadly lacking in substance. Nothing a good rare steak and a trip to a tittie bar wouldn’t set to rights though.

    2. I’m actually kind of relieved. They’ve been too quiet – it’s reassuring to have them back and squealing.

  17. The spectacular failure of the “War on Women” meme in the 2014 elections, especially with such glittery-gifted ones as Sandra Fluke (rhymes with muck) and Wendy “Red Shoes” Davis (who managed to win about one more percentage point above the Democrats’ Texas base vote) has them disturbed.

    If by “disturbed” you mean more than their ordinary state of stark raving bonkers.

    1. They thought they had it in the bag, and now they’re seeing it slip. Worse, they’re actually being talked back to! They’ve been told how precious and wonderful they are all their lives and now they don’t know what to do.

  19. So sorry I missed out on all the fun today. I attended the local chapter meeting of the Sons of the American Revolution. There were no SJWs present. But there were a few very nice Daughters of the American Revolution there. We had a prayer, the pledge of allegiance, lunch, and a good speaker. No one complained about what anyone else was wearing. The speech was ‘Medicine’ of the 18th Century. The scare quotes around medicine is because, it was not anything like modern medicine. While I know childbirth can be hazardous, a family member has been hospitalized for 7 weeks now, as she has diabetes and is carrying twins. Believe me, modern childbirth is nothing like it was back then. All they did was balance your ‘humors’.
    Instapundit suggest to stop calling them SJW and call them SJ Bullies instead. I kind of like B&B bully and bossy. Per 18th century medicine, these people have way too much bile, and need to be given laxatives 24/7.

    1. I think my husband is qualified to join. his father went to college on a scholarship from the Daughters of the American Revolution. Which makes my sons very American. They’re second generation off the boat (well, plane) AND descended from a veteran of the war of independence.

        1. I could be in the DAR, too – by virtue of one of the Pennsylvania Smedley ancestors (maternal grandmother) who was a militia colonel. I ought to pursue it – I’ve given talks to Sons of the Confederacy, to Daughters of Union Veterans, and Daughters of the Republic of Texas, and been faintly embarrassed because I’m not qualified for any of them. Three of the four grandparents came from England in the 20th century, ‘kay? But the Smedleys came from Wales in 16-something, on a William Penn land grant, so I should be golden, that way.

      2. My mom’s side of the family is classic American mutt, documented back to waving at the Mayflower. (Still English, though; we’re not quite sure but that ancestor may have traveled across with the hated Dutch.) My dad’s side is very recent, so recent that if you track my maiden name, just about everyone with that last name is related to me within two degrees of cousinship. (He was full Pole but his parents were the immigrants; does that make me second or third generation?)

        1. Although it cannot (for reasons which will become apparent) clearly proven, it is my impression that both sides of my family tree are in the Witness Protection program.

          1. Hmmph. There was supposed to be a “be” somewhere in there, one side or t’other of the parentheses. I shall have to have words with my fingers on the importance of verbs, even in subordinate clauses.

        2. I have the same in my family. Mom once chastised me saying “we’re not hillbillies, we’re DAR” and EVERYONE in the US with my last name (outside my immediate family) is a cousin or the child of a cousin.

          Dad was born here. So was I, so I guess second generation?

          zuk

        3. Yeah, most of my father’s family can regard the Mayflower as johnny-come-latelies — and up the Acadian branch there’s a few women who appeared out of nowhere, as far as the records went, on their wedding days, so it may be even farther back. (Oddly enough although I can trace back my family 13 generations on this continent in the Quebec branch, that appears solid white.)

      3. Interesting! One quarter of my lineage goes back to 1630 and had three officers in the revolutionary war and one officer who was killed at the battle of Tippecanoe, but I have never joined anything.

    2. Re: SJW – Insty’s got a point about what they wannabe, ‘tho not all achieve effective bullyishness. (OTOH, “Social Justice Whiner” fits all of ’em pretty well.)
      Do you think laxatives 24/7 would actually make a change in their being full of it?

  20. On the town wanting to ban tobacco products within its borders (I couldn’t find the discussion in the previous thread — several Ctrl-F attempts with suitable search terms turned up something — so I’m talking about it here)… I have to admit, my first reaction was “Well, a person would have a perfect right to say “No cigarettes on my property”, so why can’t a town do the same?”. Then my Second Thoughts kicked in and said, “Waitaminute… and just what, exactly, is the town’s property? Certainly not the homes and stores in the town! You’ve got a nasty statist assumption in your head that you need to get rid of.”

    So… yeah. The town would have the right to say “No tobacco products in City Hall,” because that building is the town’s property. But in my home, or my store? I get to decide that, not you. (And yes, if someone pulled out a cigarette in my house, I’d ask them to go smoke it outside, because I don’t want the smell of cigarette smoke in my house — it’s nigh-impossible to get rid of, and smells nasty. But that’s my choice, not one imposed on me by my “betters” (spit)).

      1. … And this mass rebellion against governmental overreach happened in Taxachusetts? Well, well, well. Gives me some hope for the future of the Republic, that does. (Yes, small town, so a lot lower concentration of the statist mind-virus among the general public than in, say, Boston… but still.)

          1. Maybe the people living up close to MIT are getting fed up with the incestuous policy crafting and selling of policy:
            http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/special-report-bret-baier/videos#p/86927/v/3896016182001

            The wheels are falling off, the man behind the curtain is exposing himself and the feedback loop is squealing.

            The MSM is burying this, with the nightly newscasts ignoring it and such bastions of journalistic integrity burying the story on Saturday on page 12 under a headline about the Republicans getting upset.

    2. Not just that, but you let them establish the principle of being allowed to ban a thing and next thing you know they’ve banned free speech, free assembly and guns.

    3. ‘…I’d ask them to go smoke it outside…” – Agreed, as long as they can control the drift so it doesn’t come onto my property, because my wife is sickened by 2nd hand smoke. I’m libertarian enough to want minimal laws, willing for laws to protect the commons (e.g. the air I have to breathe) without having to resort to confrontation in every case, engineer enough to want a technical solution to be available (ecigs w/exhalation filters?) for those who want to smoke outside within what little law is needed.

  21. Moved down because it hit the wall.

    On the other hand you gals arguments on the equivalency of childbirth and combat are stinking ridiculous. They are on the level of Clamps logic. And by that logic we should be drafting women and forcing them to bear children in equal numbers whenever we feel the need to draft men for war.

    Hardly. That’s just applying the same irrational notion that “equal” means “identical” or “interchangeable,” rather than “same value.”

    A nation that is not producing good quality members will not survive. A nation that cannot defend itself will not survive. That does not mean that the means to produce them are interchangeable, or that showing they are not is an argument against them.

    If you’re going to insist that one aspect that has been primarily male should be extended to include females for a false notion of “fairness,” then it is relevant to point out that an aspect that is exclusively female is left unbalanced.

    They are both risking one’s life for the continuation of the culture. One is a fairly consistent risk, one spikes and drops to zero depending on demand, looking across the death rates for the culture.

    I was going to go into more depth, but frankly? Insults/name calling and claims that others are irrational really doesn’t fill me with expectations that you’ll do more than keep emoting and insisting your opinion is correct, and all those who disagree are irrational.

        1. This really feels like dropping it to you? Cheap shots on a closed topic?

          Inconsiderate and pathetic.

            1. Uh-huh. I left it yesterday. Didn’t return without provocation.

              But I’ll own taking a low pleasure in striking back.

              1. So you “left it” until you felt offended– oh, until someone didn’t. Not that they continued the conversation topic in any way, but because they responded to someone else and agreed that it being dropped was a wise choice.

                Great job illustrating the point Mary was agreeing with, and why Sarah had to smash it. I’m saving her the trouble on this one.

                2. Big of you. But then it always is, isn’t it? As is your wont you’ll take your jab then declare yourself above the discussion.

                  As you wish.

                  Oh, and I have no problem calling it offended. I was. I’d been trying to drop it when Sarah stepped in. I certainly wasn’t looking for a poke in the eye about emoting today.

                  But that’s okay, I was out of line, I’ll try and stay out of the way, henceforth. Let the big folks talk.

  22. In the meantime, while the feminists are being utterly useless, simpering douchebags spewing whimpering and wailing on the Internet while accomplishing zip but annoying people, oh-so-sexist, ‘misogynistic’ Japan creates a car that not only uses garbage as fuel, it can power your freaking house.

    http://www.news.com.au/technology/innovation/toyota-mirai-hydrogen-car-uses-garbage-as-fuel-powers-house-water/story-fnjwubd2-1227127198970

    SCIENCE, WHINY BITCHES!

    2. I’m super duper offended. You describe what are presumably heavily female as douchebags. Douchebag is a term generally applied to males. Appropriation!

      Wait, I’m too delicate to use here the alternative I would’ve suggested, so I’ll STFU. Carry on.

      🙂

        1. There’s a product the Japanese sell…

          Kleenex is a different term, less inappropriate for polite company. As in Pa Kennedy raised his boys to treat women like Kleenex.

          I’ve spent years with my eyes open for a zombie plague with ‘flesh’ in its name, because of Prototype, and that I have a terrible weakness for puns.

    3. Let’s not fall off the other side of the horse, here, in our efforts to call out the SJWs for their utter cluelessness and jerkery.
      The Japanese do really good science, but their attitudes towards sex and sexuality can make an MRA look like a radfem. And their nationalism…

      1. My point is, are we going to completely disregard people based off of only the negative aspects, as the SJWs do, and write them off as a whole, or are we going to look at the good AND the bad? What’s with that ‘but’…? I’m not going to pretend the Japanese are perfect – or paint anyone as perfect. I’m not going to dismiss the good because of the bad. I acknowledge both.

        And the feminists didn’t accomplish anything except hog the spotlight – which is why we’ve been criticizing them. And given the choice of working with the Japanese or a feminist, give me work with a Japanese. At least I know the public face I get is giri.

        1. This. I’ve worked with some people whose social beliefs I strongly disagreed with, but we needed to get jobs done and we were grown-up enough to set our dislike aside at least long enough to get things done. In one case I know that he thought I was stealing a job from a man, and he knows that I thought he was a bigot, but we needed to get things done and we did. And looking back, I think we both appreciated dealing with known less-than-friends, rather than thinking we had an ally and being unpleasantly surprised.

          1. I know, right?! I mean, are we supposed to behave like freaking children, and put feels first, or are we supposed to be like adults and set aside those superficial dislikes and get the job done?

            Younger brother worked with two different Japanese companies while he was with Ernst and Young. He and I have rather similar work ethics and attitudes, and he found the sheer efficiency of working with the Japanese FAR better than trying to work with clients based in Africa or in the Middle East. The latter, he’d come home and rant for an hour straight about how they kept wasting his time with superficial, petty bullshit meetings, expected him to get the work done, but never gave him the data he needed to work with. Then bitched at him if there was no work done. “How the FUUUUUCK was I supposed to get the job done? Magic?!” The other auditors and accountants on his team were reduced to tears. They were also paid very badly and often had to work through breaks, lunches and overtime. For nothing but meetings that seemed to be just for show.

            The Japanese? Gave him one day of orientation that laid out what was expected of him, gave him a signature stamp, and what they allowed him access to, and who he should ask questions from if he had issues or a query or needed anything. Then they let him get to work. They also made sure he was regularly fed and took regular breaks, and seemed very pleasantly surprised that he would not waste his time and get the job done earlier than ‘on time’. He was SURE that they kept an eye on him, but if they did, it was discreet and they didn’t pester him. Because of his efficiency, they gave him a very high evaluation feedback and a bonus when his contract with them ended. He said they were polite, ‘very precise’, and if they didn’t like him because racism, he never saw it.

            So, yeah.

            1. If I remember the crash-course in cultural junk right, with the ME and African guys he was supposed to do something that indicated that he considered them highly superior– pay a bribe, beg for the information, prostrate, depends on their culture.

              With the Japanese, their honor in the job comes from getting it done very well, not from the person who does it making the right noises.

              There’s breaking points in both– the right noises to get the data but do something else “wrong,” stepping on some taboos for Japan like being too familiar (I think that’s the most common one?), but it was a VERY crash course.

              ********
              I think there’s some way that folks came up with to organize cultures, shame and sin. One a bad thing only matters if others know of it, the other it matters if they know or not. I think some aspect of that may be in play?

              Or maybe they just have funky dominance games, like folks who whip up mobs because they don’t like someone’s shirt.

              1. *snort-laugh* Bit hard for the ME one. They had specifically hired the team in the Philippines and then moved them all to night shift, then refused to give them the info they needed to get the job. Which they, as the client, had to do.

                It’s kinda stupid to have to bribe the client to get the client’s job done. My brother absolutely HATES dealing with Arabs and Africans now. Thinks they’re a special kind of stupid, after dealing with them for a solid several months in the professional field.

                It was during this period I gave him the first Monster Hunter book, and he particularly enjoyed the line about throwing his overbearing, idiotic boss out the window, because the direct supervisor above him was a glory-hounding, irrational, inefficient bitch. Yep, a woman.

                When he finally had enough, right after the project with ME/Africa was done, he applied for a job with Hewlett Packard. Which he, y’know, could do. They snapped him right up… and his crazy bitch boss made a point of calling up HP’s HR and accusing them of ‘stealing’ him. (My brother’s one of the ones the company could assign to the more difficult and high-standard-setting clients, because he wasn’t rattled with having to talk to foreigners, or intimidated by them, or tongue-tied. Coca-Cola, Proctor and Gamble, etc). Frankly, her behaviour was outright atrocious and the guy who found out and told my brother said she was insanely jealous, because HP is a really well paying employer, but she didn’t have the client resume that my brother did to even try to get hired. Turned out she’d been trying to sabotage him with the ME/Africa assignment WHILE giving him another high-demand client at the same time, and was absolutely white with fury that my brother, being the obsessive compulsive hard worker, managed to get BOTH insanely impossible jobs done at the same time. While sleeping maybe 3 hours a day for months.

                Funky dominance games? Yeah, his immediate boss tried that and didn’t win. *jerks thumb at paragraph above.*

                He looooooves working with HP. So happy there now. They had an anniversary party recently, and booked the local amusement park. Brother won the latest printer-scanner thing in a raffle prize.

                1. It’s kinda stupid to have to bribe the client to get the client’s job done.

                  Only kind of? *grin*

                  Their culture is insane. It’s that crazy boss on a culture wide level.

                  I honestly don’t know how it SURVIVES. I just… don’t get it.

              2. Oh and, the amusing thing is, for a lot of Filipinos, my brother and I are waaaaaaaay too formal and straight-laced in the office atmosphere. We’re also otaku and I kept getting amused stories about how little bits and pieces that my brother was familiar with through anime were showing up while he worked with the Japanese companies. That clock tone you get in Japanese high schools? Apparently they use them in offices too. He’d find himself bowing, and yes, had to append sempai to the guy handling him. Apparently, his pronunciation of the word was correct and surprised the man. Also, they were surprised that he’d return the habitual bow without batting an eyelash. Filipinos don’t bow unless you come from rather strict Filipino-Chinese families.

                The pleasure of working with him went both ways for those jobs.

          2. I’ve worked for any number of people that I disagreed with their social or political beliefs. As long as those beliefs don’t a)interfere with me doing the job or b)interfere with them paying me for doing the job; not that big a problem. I even work off and on with a woman who I strongly disagree with on any number of subjects. And she is about as subtle and nonconfrontational as I am. So yes we have some uh, interesting conversations while working. But we both ARE working and concentrating on getting the job done right, so no problem there. She isn’t strictly a capital F feminist, but she shares a fair number of beliefs with them, while at the same time being a crazy hodgepodge of pro big government and Ron Paul libertarian, with some pure tinfoil hat* thrown in.
            She is a big fan of getting the government to pay for lots of things, while at the same time not wanting the government to stick it’s nose into her business or collect taxes from her to pay for all these things the government should pay for. Still we argue back and forth while we get the work done, and she is a fairly decent worker (good quality, not so good production, but at least it is done right, and since she is usually the one doing the bidding /shrug/). I admit to losing my temper and blowing up on her when she was haranguing her college age daughter to get married, so that the government would pay for her college (not sure quite how this works, but I haven’t checked into sending a nineteen year old girl to college, either) telling her to just pick a friend and get married, it is just a piece of paper, it doesn’t mean anything. and when her daughter informed her she wasn’t going to get married just to get the government to pay for her college, she suggested her daughter at least get pregnant, and then practically everything would be paid for. Still there might have been a few bruised feelings, but it didn’t affect or work performance. And she called me back the next time she needed some help on a job, we may not ever be friends, but we are on ‘amicable’ terms and knowing it won’t affect your coworkers performance makes for a surprisingly low stress work environment.

            *I have to share this conspiracy theory of hers, because it is one I hadn’t ever heard from anyone else. The reason that college tuition is so high, and the government won’t pay for most young people’s college is because they want to force them to either join ROTC or enlist is the military. She insists the federal government is blackmailing (her words, not mine) young people into the military by refusing to pay for their college unless they commit to the military first.

            1. The reason that college tuition is so high, and the government won’t pay for most young people’s college is because they want to force them to either join ROTC or enlist is the military. She insists the federal government is blackmailing (her words, not mine) young people into the military by refusing to pay for their college unless they commit to the military first.

              Face –> palm

                1. She is what we always called ‘book smart’ but if it doesn’t involve angles and distances her contact with the real world is…. tenuous.

              2. Uh-huh, absolutively, she’s right as right can be. That is why the Feds passed the Solomon Amendment* in 1996, requiring that schools receiving Federal funds permit ROTC chapters on the campuses. Prior to that the military had to sneak in on Careers Day and sign students to secret contracts for military service.

                Fortunately for your coworker, with the abolition of Don’t Show Your Ask And We Can’t Tell” (or whatever that rule was) policies it is no longer necessary to arrange a tragic accident for her to preserve secrecy.

                *It was finally found Constitutional by a unanimous SCOTUS decision in 2006, proving how much force the military brought to bear on several otherwise enlightened Justices.

            2. Wow, that’s… well, the closest I’ve ever heard is the “military targets poor people by offering them college if they sign up” one, and that one is at least vaguely rational, if not in touch with the statistics.

      2. Japanese Nationalism is better than their or anyone else’s leftism/communism.

        I am limited in my knowledge of their sexual practices by not being a direct observer. I haven’t studied so much about my own society’s relationships and affairs that I could draw much fine distinctions with theirs. What I do know suggests that they aren’t any worse than the feminists or the social leftists.

    4. I’m waiting for the car that runs off body fat. Then I won’t have to fight my body’s insistence on hoarding every last calorie like gold.

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