Also

Hot on the heels of my adventure with 80- to 100% accuracy: the alphabet, phonetic or not, does not include numbers.

Welp...

There's a number of online "training" things I need to do before I ship out to basic training at the end of January*, which - since it is both in my mind to do so and I have not yet lost *this* slip of paper with the password written on it - I have started today. Lesson one has taught me several things:
1) Apparently the 24-hour clock is complex enough to warrant a dozen plus slides explaining the concept of "add twelve, or a zero."
2) One of the problems with having both text displayed on the screen (say, your objectives and goals for this lesson) and a recording of someone reciting those goals is that they might not match up.
2a) A voice telling me that I need to pass the lesson exam with 100% accuracy while the text on the page tells me I need to pass it with 80% accuracy will, perhaps, not *entirely* convince me of the utmost importance of total accuracy.


*Speaking of which, I've had the following conversation probably half a dozen times: "So when do you leave?" "Last day of January." "Where are you going for training?" "Fort Leonard Wood, in Missouri." "Oh, boy, I hope you're ready for some cold weather." *Every* person who is familiar with that base has had the same reaction. So, uh, apparently I might freeze to death. And then die of heat stroke when I move on to my further training in San Antonio in early April, where the average high that time of year is in the low 80's.

This is just weird and creepy and kind of gross

I've decided that I'm not going to see "The Social Network" despite the fact that it was written by Aaron Sorkin. This is because it's a film about Mark Zuckerberg, who A) is still quite alive and running the company featured in "The Social Network" and B) had nothing to do with the making of the movie. Making a film adaptation of a still-living guy's autobiography, with his blessing? Sure, go for it ("Catch Me If You Can" is kind of awesome, actually). A historical film in which still-living people are portrayed, but aren't really about the people so much as what they were doing? Sure. Making a movie about someone who's dead, without the blessing of their surviving family? A little weird, but at least the dude's not going to be seeing someone else disguised as him on movie posters. Maybe it's because I'm kind of a crazy privacy person, but the idea of it just skeeves me out.

So there's that - creepy, in my opinion, so I won't see the movie. I'm not outraged over it or anything.

Then there's this:

"Channel 4 is to show a drama-documentary based on what would happen if Prince Harry were taken prisoner while serving in Afghanistan.

The 90-minute film, called The Taking of Prince Harry, features contributions from former hostages and intelligence experts.

It includes scenes showing the prince, played by actor Sebastian Reid, being held behind enemy lines while negotiations are carried out to free him."

...

So, uh, some people sat around in a conference room somewhere in London and said, "Hey, let's make a movie depicting some guy who's grandmother is famous getting captured and tortured by terrorists," and...other people agreed that that was a good idea? This is like Saw franchise style torture porn meets mindless celebrity nonsense meets pure, astonishingly poor taste.

I mean, it's one part just bizarre ("What would happen if the youngest son of a man who's mother holds a position of ceremonial importance gets kidnapped?" is not, as far as I'm aware, one of the burning questions of the day), one part just weirdly invasive (again, the "Hey, uh, we're gonna make a movie about you, just fyi" thing), and two parts grossly insensitive ("Hey, let's depict our soldiers getting taken as hostages, just for kicks!" is kind of morally dubious, IMO, and "Hey, marginally-famous-guy! Look at what could have happened when you were in Afghanistan!" is just...creepy).

I mean, for god's sake: have some dignity. Hire some hack to whip up a script in which a prince goes off and serves in the Overseas Conflict du Jour and gets captured and there can be a heroic rescue or escape or tragic death or whatever. Do not give said character the same name as an actual living prince who has served in the Overseas Conflict du Jour, and do not hire an actor who looks like said actual living prince. Ta-Da! You've got your cheaply-made generic made-for-TV movie, and now you're only vaguely tasteless, not Incredibly Fucking Creepy.

Seriously. There are people who get paid significant amounts of money who think this is a good idea. At least creepy, invasive movies aren't just American!

A man worth listening to

I would love to have the opportunity to shake this man's hand.

So I'm joining the Coast Guard

(no, for real, I am.)

Apparently, when you take the ASVAB - the test you need to take to join any service - you can't wear earrings. Not even little tiny stud earrings.

For the sake of sanity I'm assuming the guy who made me remove them was joking when he said it was a safety issue, because I cannot for the life of me imagine a way that earrings could be a safety hazard while taking a computerized test.

A budget-cutting measure we can believe in

From a (slightly dated) WaPo article:

Want to trim the federal budget and improve the military at the same time? Shut down West Point, Annapolis and the Air Force Academy, and use some of the savings to expand ROTC scholarships.

Let's do it, says I.

I really can't speak at all on the caliber of officers produced by ROTC vs academies vs any other route, so I'll withhold judgement there. I know two guys who are enlisted members of the Army and are both extremely nice, intelligent people. I know two officers, one Air Force via the academy, and one Army via going straight to OCS. Both are extremely nice, intelligent people.

I probably shouldn't speak about Ricks's criticism that most West Point professors don't have doctorates, if only because a not-insignificant number of instructors at my school of choice do not hold doctorates. But at my school something is extremely problematic if your instructor is lecturing, because lecturing has no place on the Program. I don't believe that they use the same approach at any of the service academies, and since the entire approach is much more 'traditional' there than at St. John's, then I don't think it's unreasonable to want your educator to have reached the highest level of education in that field.

Proponents of the academies, in my opinion, claim that the students get a top-notch education at no cost, and you want your future military commanders to be well-educated. I absolutely agree that we want them to have solid educational backgrounds, and I think that if we had higher standards for the military overall we'd have far fewer problems with the military doing stupid things. From the little I know about the academies, the education provided is excellent, if not terribly well rounded*. I also think that someone enrolled in an ROTC program - or, for that matter, simply enrolled - at a respectable college or university will also recieve an excellent education.

Proponents of the academies say that the institutions are excellent training programs and instill honor. Is the implication of this that enlisted soldiers and officers via OCS and ROTC aren't well-trained and honorable? If so, perhaps we ought to fix that post-haste. If not, then that argument falls apart. Also, there may be some debate about the honor bit.

Here's the way I see it, as someone who has admittedly a minimal amount of knowledge from a complete outsider's viewpoint: There are three ways to become an officer in the military - academy, OCS, or ROTC. All of them require a 4-year degree. One of those routes incurs no excessive cost: someone joins the military, applies to OCS, goes and gets trained up as an officer. One of them includes the cost of college tuition - ROTC scholarships, if I'm not mistaken, generally pay near the full cost of even a private-school tuition. And the third option costs the equivilant of an expensive four-year education, and an active-duty paycheck. It also needs to be considered that, unlike ROTC scholarships, the DoD isn't just paying for tuition for students; they're shouldering the entire cost associated with running three full-on colleges**.

So we've got three possible options to become an officer in the military, one of which is cheap, one is kinda expensive, and one is mad pricey. There is not, as far as I'm aware, any conclusive evidence that academy grads are somehow more prepared to serve than other officers nor better at their jobs. And we're the only country which has a program remotely like this, where the military will in fact pay you to go and get a four year degree in exchange for a few years of pushing paperwork around a desk. That in and of itself, I think, ought to be a clue.

I don't expect that the system will significantly change anytime soon - even Obama is content to keep letting the DoD take however the hell much money it wants, regardless of what it's used for (hello, our extremely expensive fleet of fighter jets which are awesome for shooting down those damn red soviets. hello, not including WAR in the DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE budget.), but it is nice to at least see someone in a mainstream publication pointing out that there may be some ways to cut some costs very significantly.

Also, I find the idea of enmeshing higher education with military indoctrination to be fairly reprehensible. I really don't like the idea of the same organization which says "well, I guess it's okay to be not-heterosexual, if you have to, but we'd prefer you not mention it. ever, to anyone you work with. and if anyone asks you about your personal life, lie I guess. and don't, you know, have sex or kiss or hold hands or anything gross like that. because if you do and we find out about it we'll fire you because gay people are really kinda gross" also saying, "Yes! We will give you a fine, honorable higher-level education and train you to be one of the best leaders in the world!" absolutely, repulsively hypocritcal. You want to talk about honor? Stop making it illegal to be queer, stop torturing people, stop having your recruiters lie, and stop shooting brown people because they like their boomy skyvoice more than your boomy skyvoice, you jackasses.

*Granted, sometime in the past five years I've developed the horrible mindset of seeing any sort of remotely sepecialized education as not well-rounded, so make what you will of that.
**Maybe four? I admit that I don't have a clue who exactly pays for the Coast Guard academy, as they're a military academy but the Coast Guard is recently run by DHS since we decided boats aren't transportation anymore, but I think that a lot of their money comes from the defense budget, so I'm not even going to try to understand. Also the Coast Guard apparently doesn't do ROTC, but really I think that there's like six hundred people in the entire Coast Guard and all they do is change lightbulbs on buoys, so I'm really content to ignore on. I have no grudge with the Coast Guard.

NYC sees plane, freaks out

It took me forever to get through to the NYTimes website, because today EVERYONE IS INCREDIBLY STUPID.

The Department of Defense decided - I guess because they're being threatened with actually being required to stick to a remotely reasonable budget - decides they need some neat new photographs of their people doing their thing. They do so by taking a 747 and a fighter jet (or two?) out gallivanting above Manhattan. And by 'gallivanting above' I mean '150 feet above the ground'.

Okay, questionable use of government resources but not to stupid. But, um.

Local authorities were told not to disclose information about this morning's flyover, the New York City Police Department said in a statement.

"The flight of a VC-25 aircraft (the military version of the 747) and F-16 fighters this morning was authorized by the FAA for the vicinity of the Statue of Liberty with directives to local authorities not to disclose information about it but to direct any inquiries to the FAA Air Traffic Security Coordinator," police said.

...Brilliant idea! Way to prevent panic, because there's no conceivable way that a low-flying plane in New York City could possibly bring up some unpleasant memories of some other low-flying planes.

And so naturally, the population of the metro NY area decided that instead of watching and determining that the plane was not flying into buildings - intentionally or not - and going about their business, they evacuated buildings and, as far as I can gather, freaked the hell out.

Now, I'm not saying that a bit of freaking out was not justified. Low-flying planes in the region have a history of, at best, landing in the middle of a river, and at worst killing a very large number of people. Particularly if I'd been in Manhattan on September 11, 2001, and then I saw a similar plane flying similarly low in the same place, I'd be kind of startled.

I'd say that a more appropriate reaction would have been to call the police, preferably the non-emergency number, and ask what's up with that plane - if you see fighter jets next to it there's a chance someone knows what's going on - but on the other hand, the police apparently were instructed not to say anything, because...well, I'm sure that at some point there was some vaguely rational-seeming reason in someone's mind, but damned if I can find it.

Seriously, this is one of the stupidest damn things I've seen in a long while.

Also, upon reading some commentary about whether the debate may or may not happen - what the hell do people mean when they say the 'surge' in Iraq has been a success?

Seriously. I apparently need someone to sit down with me and explain what, exactly, success is in this context. (Because I've heard some theories about what's "working" and it's not really something we want to encourage. I assume.)

I grant it's ridiculous to begin with, since we're in a war against terror, and it's pretty hard to eradicate an emotion and I'm sure it's a lot harder to eradicate fear by shooting at people. But what do I know.

Shocking.

Apparently Pakistan is getting a little pissed off at the US.

Hmm. Can't imagine why that might be.

Happy "Patriot's Day", you idiots!

Now to celebrate, let's invade Pakistan!

WASHINGTON — President Bush secretly approved orders in July that for the first time allow American Special Operations forces to carry out ground assaults inside Pakistan without the prior approval of the Pakistani government, according to senior American officials.

I'm no military nor political expert, but isn't sending troops into a country to do raids and stuff, without the permission of that country's government, generally referred to as an invasion? I mean, say Egyptian or Syrian forces decided to go into Jerusalem or one of the Israeli occupied territories and conduct some raids - both Israel and the US would be pretty pissed off, right? Is that just me who sees that?

American officials say that they will notify Pakistan when they conduct limited ground attacks like the Special Operations raid last Wednesday in a Pakistani village near the Afghanistan border, but that they will not ask for its permission.

Hey, remember a couple years ago when some people hijacked a couple planes and killed whole lot of people? And there was all sorts of wailing and hand-wringing and crying about "why do they hate us?"

Hmm.

Fighting terrorism with comfort!

I swear, I really don't want to hate America's armed forces.  I try very hard not to.  I know a couple people in the military.  They're all great people.  And I'm sure that the majority of soldiers think that they're doing something good, and for many of them it's not an easy job, and that's great.  I disagree, but I know I really shouldn't try to judge others for doing what I think is wrong if they think it's right.

But when it's such a massive program run by such self-important dicks, I really can't help it.

The Air Force's top leadership sought for three years to spend counterterrorism funds on "comfort capsules" to be installed on military planes that ferry senior officers and civilian leaders around the world, with at least four top generals involved in design details such as the color of the capsules' carpet and leather chairs, according to internal e-mails and budget documents.

Seriously: please stop spending obscene amounts of money on absolutely useless bullshit.

"There's no such thing as an atheist in a foxhole"

Here's an interesting story about a soldier who was sent back to a base in the US from Iraq, because the Army couldn't protect him...from other soldiers who were harassing him for being an atheist.

Before saying anything else, I will say that I'm sure there's a hell of a lot to this story than we're given. One wire-service piece isn't exactly conclusive evidence of anything, even of there being an actual issue.

That said, I think that if this lawsuit goes anywhere, it'll set a interesting precedent. I know that at least certain branches of the military have had some religious tolerance issues in the past (I'm thinking of the Air Force Academy here, but I'm sure there have been other incidents), but so often it's broken down into a "Christian vs Jewish/Muslim/Other Not Christian Religions" viewpoint. If nothing else, it's intriguing to see an atheist take it on.

If his complaints have any solid grounding, then it's truly shameful. Isn't our military supposed to be fighting for freedom and liberty and equality and all that stuff? Shouldn't that start within the military itself, because it's awfully hard to show another country who already doesn't like you how to have a just and free society if the 'liberators' are being harassed by their peers for their religious views.

Yay America

Five videos.  One of many reasons why the "Support our Troops!!1" idiocy is just that.

I admit I only watched the second and third, because I'm pretty sure the rest of them involve killing or torturing dogs, and I can't watch that.  The first video, I believe, is one I heard about in which a puppy is tortured.  I'm not going to watch it to find out.  

Our military seems to be composed primarily of assholes.  Go us.

Team America's Corporate Sponsors

It's kind of awesome that the Department of Defense increasingly doesn't even bother to have our military commit war atrocities. Instead we spend more money for private companies to do that - but at least the private companies can be brought up on criminal charges.

Hey, maybe if this trend continues, then our actual military can just be done away with entirely! Why pay for both parties, right? (Which is probably the primary reason it'll never happen - 'well, we could rip off tax payers with just the military or just private contractors, or we could do both!')

The few, the not-so-proud?

So here's an interesting story. It's been on the front page of the New Mexican lately as it involves a guy from NM, but I haven't really paid much attention to it (as I generally disregard everything in that paper - it's either local human interest stories or wire pieces). It finally caught my interest today.

This guy Adam Kokesh joins the Marines. He goes and serves in Iraq, then gets to come home with an honorable discharge. He's not, however, entirely free of the military; he's in the "individual reserves", which means keeping Big Brother Sam informed as to where you are, and they can summon you back to active duty essentially whenever they see fit.

Kokesh has, at some point, decided he's not OK with America's actions in Iraq. He takes to protesting. He, on at least once occasion, does so wearing his military-issue camo, but he's stripped it of all military insignia as far as possible. There's a Marines emblem embroidered into the fabric, but other than that there's nothing identifying him as a (former) Marine.

Then someone from the Marines sees a picture of Kokesh at said protest. It is technically against regulations for a member of the US armed services to protest while in uniform. They decide that A) Kokesh is still a member of the Marines, despite not being anywhere near on active duty, and B) he needs to be disciplined.

So in order to do so, they had a trial and retroactively 'downgraded' his discharge, from honorable to general. I'm not certain if this has any true significance - it apparently isn't expected to effect his benefits - but regardless, it's kind of a sleazy thing to do. My objections can pretty much be divided into three categories:

1. Why the hell are the people who are allegedly fighting for our "freedom" and in support of democracy and such not given, y'know, basic American freedoms? By this point I know it's hopelessly idealistic but I can't quite rid myself of the hope that, someday, our military (which is composed entirely of people who've sworn or affirmed to "support and uphold the Constitution" will in fact have to follow the rules set down in the Constitution.
2. This reeks of the military trying to cover itself up so that, a hundred and fifty years down the line once society is rebuilding itself from the disaster we're racing towards, people don't look at this incident and say, "Dear god those people were jerks." He didn't do anything wrong or offensive; he did something extremely "patriotic" and is being unjustly punished for it because his higher-ups disagree with him. And if anyone would argue that protesting against things your government does that you think are wrong, I'd like to direct you here.
3. Sweet bleeding Jesus, between Iraq and Afghanistan do the Marines not have anything truly important to do?

Gay voodoo limbo tango and wango!

If you're within a certain age bracket in America, and especially if you go/went to public high school, you already know that military recruiters are annoying pricks more often than they're not. But this is just weird:

YOU GO BACK TO AFRICA AND DO YOUR GAY VOODOO LIMBO TANGO AND WANGO DANCE AND JUMP AROUND AND PRANCE AND RUN ALL OVER THE PLACE HALF NAKED THERE AND PRACTICE YOUR GAY MORALS OVER THERE THAT'S WHERE YOU BELONG....I AM REPORTING YOU AS SPAM AND ADDING YOU TO MY BLOCK SENDER LIST SO I DO NOT HAVE TO HEAR FROM YOU AGAIN....

An army recruiter pulled a guy's email off a job board. He replied saying he's gay, can he still serve? She immediately switched to all-caps and briskly said no. It descended into a most fantastic display of idiotic bigotry, mostly but not entirely on the part of the recruiter.

Ladies and gentlemen, the US Army.

On the upside, it now gives me an excuse to use the phrase "gay limbo tango and wango", which honest to god, is probably the most poetic thing I've read in a while.

Oh god....

My second reaction to this was a rush of horrid guilt at my initial reaction.

But my first reaction was: Oh god yes the Uprising has come! Our Robot Masters are rising up!

Robot attack kills two British soldiers in Afghanistan.

Oh, Britain...

Britain is like that relative that so many people have, who you by and large adore, and they're cool and cultured and sophisticated and different enough from your immediate family to totally rock - but every so often they go ahead and do something that makes you go "Britain - dude, what?"

Or (very possibly) that's just me.

Anyway - Blair's announced that they're going to start pulling British troops out of Iraq, hoping to have them all back home by October. Apparently, Denmark is also withdrawing their troops (Denmark has, uh, soldiers? Huh.) at the same time. This is good. Blair's finally admitting that maybe he sort of screwed this one up and it wasn't the best idea. Great. Better to show up late to the party than not at all, right? I'm pretty excited about this.

Then, what should greet me on the BBC News homepage this morning but this? "Entirely unimportant rich white boy to go to Iraq".

I'm very curious about the timing of this announcement. "Yes, we're going to withdraw our troops because this war is stupid and pointless and an astonishingly bad idea that's just not working for us. But - wait! America! Look! We're sending some of our favorite gossip fodder! So even if you guys screw up and bomb us again and end up killing him, we'll still benefit because by god our newspapers love that type of thing!"

Or, if I want to be optimistic about it, maybe it's part of Blair's Cunning Plan to do away with such a stupidly archaic system as monarchy. I can dream, can't I?

Britain to withdraw troops from Iraq

Details will be announced soon by a certain Mr. Blair.

Finally.

Note to Congressional Democrats:

Please read this before we proceed any further. I've added a bit of emphasis. It's from a rather important document known as the American Constitution. This bit of paper very clearly and explicitly describes what you may and may not do.

To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;

To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;

To provide and maintain a Navy;

To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces

See, here's the thing. You and you alone can declare war. You and you alone can give the military money that they don't by any definition need. You can say "Yes, we'll cheerfully spend some godawful amount of taxpayers money on two years of war."

Then, after those two years, the theory is you stop, you take a look around, and you say, "Should we really keep spending our money on this?"

If the answer to that question is "no", or even "I'm not quite certain", know what you should do? STOP FUNDING SOME IDIOTIC WAR. If they run out of money (which, for some inexplicably reason they can't get of the normal DoD budget), our Army is going to give up and come home. That is a good thing.

The solution is not to sit around with your thumbs inserted into certain bodily orifices and say, "Hmmm, I'm not so sure I approve of this. Let's pass a bill saying so." Because guess what? The president knows that. The DoD knows that. EVERYONE knows that!

Really, it's a lovely gesture the same way that those free Live Aid concerts were. You're making your stance very clear on the off-chance it wasn't before (ie, poverty is bad, war is bad, our soldiers are a bunch of ignorant monkeys and maybe we should stop paying for them to shoot innocent children). But it's not doing anything. Know how much of a "difference" a bunch of concerts led by Bono did? Nothing, really. Raised awareness, maybe, so now we've got a bunch more armchair protesters clucking their tongues in disgust at the G8 countries. And now we've got a bunch of Democrats saying, "Yep. Iraq war is bad." Which they were already saying.

Can we try a new tactic? That is, don't just vote to say you don't support the war, but stop supporting the war?