Happy As Kings

Alleged Benghazigate

I’ve been watching the Benghazi-attack rumor mill ramp itself up into a political cyclone of hysteria. Most of us of a certain age have probably seen the “surgical strike” imagery from Desert Storm.  Jet pilots were able, twenty years ago, to send smart bombs into buildings to destroy the enemy.  The military could put a metaphorical “man on the moon” then (a bomb through a window), so why couldn’t we do it in Benghazi?

A couple differences will set the stage:  The Desert Storm pilots were prepped.  The Desert Storm pilots were there.

 

To me, this political cyclone looks like a version of the “CSI effect” that plagues jury trial:  people think that “the military” can routinely work TV magic by arriving someplace moments after an inciting incident.  That’s fiction.  “The military” does not keep units on permanent alert supported by aircraft revving their engines on the flight line with Harrier/Cobra/Concorde capabilities, and equipped with bad-guy profiling software-guided smart bullets.  An effective response takes planning and that’s probably what was going on.

Another peeve-y caveat:  There is no “the military.”  “The military” is composed of branches of the service, with specific duties and particular units.  One unit must talk to another unit, whether the “unit” I the Department of State, the Pentagon, or a special response unit.  Details have to be confirmed and evaluated to avoid the pitfalls of the childhood game of “Telephone” in which the sentence the first person speaks isn’t the sentence the last person hears.  We need the information to be timely, accurate and specific.  Rushing into a situation, if you’re close enough to actually rush in, usually winds up with more mistakes than solutions.  Ask any mother who tries to intervene in a sibling argument.

Some of the questions I’ve seen floating loose on teh Intertoobz are answered by a reporter in this article I read in this morning’s Kansas City Star:  Questions and some answers about attack on U.S. consulate in Libya

An article I found while researching information for this blog post is also informative:  Pentagon on Benghazi Troop Movements: ‘Swift Action’ on Night of Attack 

From my own perspective of a lifetime in and around military installations, other clarifications are:

• The closest American military installation to Benghazi, Libya is at Sigonella in Italy. Sigonella has no suited and booted instant response team with an airplane waiting on the runway with its engines running. 
• Units on standby alert need something to be standing by for.  It can be argued that “’they’ should have known,” but threats are continual. Someone, somewhere is always pissed off at the U.S. Just as cortisol in a living body damages that body, keeping units on permanent standby alert “just in case” brings on a feeling similar to that caused by the “little boy who cried wolf.”
• The American public isn’t too fond of “fraud, waste and abuse” (to quote ubiquitous signs around the military installations where I spent most of my life).  With reason, bloated DoD funding is a favorite target for cutting expenses so having “just in case” troops twiddling their thumbs waiting for something to come of worldwide threats would be sure to be an effective use of taxpayer money. 
• Troops don’t magically materialize from a place of perpetual readiness to the place that needs defending. It takes time for responders to get from Point A to Point B, to include travel time from where the individuals are to a collection point, travel time from the collection point to an airport, flight time to the area of operations, and travel time from the receiving airport to the target destination.  No, they don’t have to deal with the TSA, but it all still takes time.
• Four hundred miles straight distance flying time from Sigonella to Benghazi doesn’t include the time for a response team to get from Rota, Spain to Sigonella. Special response teams are wonderful, but they aren’t supermen and they don’t have capes.
• We don’t want hair-trigger responses in an international situation.  Libya did not attack the embassy and we should be very careful in retaliating against … whom?  The city of Benghazi?  A mob in the streets? Al Quaeda?  A responding unit needs to know against whom they are fighting and figuring out who this is takes time.
• Fighter jets “popping a sonic boom” over a city of over 600,000 people (a suggestion I saw from a publication I subscribed to before the Republican party went off the rails) would probably result in damage greater than any assistance and would affect those already under attack. The much-maligned “collateral damage” of previous conflicts would have drawn censure for whoever ordered the strike.
• For those advocating a heavily-armed response, haven’t you noticed a problem with invading other countries?  Have you really not noticed?

 

In conclusion, my condolences to the families of the slain Americans.  Chris Stevens. Sean Smith. Tyrone Woods. Glen Doherty.  I’m so sorry the attackers took your family members from you.

Italian geophysicists convicted of not having a reliable crystal ball

And I thought some states and school boards in the U.S. had the lock on scientific illiteracy.  This decision makes it appear that these Italian jurists are stuck in the 1600s.

Earthquake predictions and a triumph of scientific illiteracy in an Italian court

 In March of 2009, an Italian national commission met to evaluate the threat of earthquake swarms.  The commission said that an earthquake as severe as one that happened in 1703 was unlikely, but the possibility couldn't be excluded.  Six days later, the feared earthquake struck.  Three years later, the scientists who made the evaluation have been sentenced to prison -- for six years each.

Given the difficulty of making any prediction about an impending shift in earthquake-prone ground -- it's about probability, not certainty -- what would the action have been if the commission had said that an earthquake was possible in the next ... the next what?  Twenty-four hours? Week?  Month?  Year?  Would the almost-80,000 residents have been forcibly relocated until after any quake?  Where would they go?  How long would they wait for a quake before returning to their homes?  If the quake were tardier than expected, would the scientists have been held responsible for lost business, wages, cost of the evacuation, etc.?

Natural processes are complex and our data collection abilities are limited, although improving all the time.  Criminally prosecuting a geophysical commission for an earthquake almost amounts to throwing virgins into volcanoes to appease the gods.

St. Louis City Museum

Last week we took the grandkids on a trip to St. Louis.  My sister and niece, who live within half-an-hour or so of the city, served as our tour guides.  Their destination of choice was the City Museum.  From their description, I expected a 'museum'-museum, with fascinating displays, but with the displays still being look-but-don't-touch.  

I couldn't have been more wrong.  

The museum is a wild and crazy urban fantasy fun park.  In Disneyland, the rides do all the playing and the people are relatively static.  In the City Museum, the displays are static and the people move, and run, and jump, and swing, and slide, slide, slide. The grandkids were having so much fun that we didn't bother going to another museum, but stayed there for hours.

If you have children and are near St. Louis, or stopping there, go.  Have fun.  Don't expect to leave soon.

  Sign out front

 

  Entryway sculptures

 

  The Puking Pig

 

  Kids in a whale

 

  3-photo vertical panorama of the 10-story slide

 

  Mesh climbing-tower on the 11th-story roof.

 

  Ferris wheel, also atop the roof

 

  Climbing cage with its slide underneath

 

  Inside the school bus
  

  The school bus -- on the corner of the roof

 

  The world's largest pair of underpants

 

   Hole-in-the-floor slide

 

   Aerial planes

 

  The parking lot barrier

 

We're going back.







  

Tropes vs. Women in Video Games

Anita Sarkeesian, creator of the Feminist Frequency vlog and pop culture critic, has started a project called "Tropes vs. Women in Video Games."  I'm probably the last person to be commenting on gaming culture as the extent of my gaming experience is Wii bowling with my grandkids (I've broken 200).  Despite that weak-to-nonexistent credential, I'm peripherally aware of the culture and I try to pay attention to the ways culture-in-general affects the way we think and our relationships.  Because of that, I'm interested in Ms. Sarkeesian's project.

[time passes]

Okay, I've lost a half-hour scanning background on Anita, gaming, and opinions on Anita's proposed opinions.  As with nearly everything, it would take a complete turnaround from what I usually research, and a shift to focusing on video gaming, for me to gather enough information in order to have even an elementary understanding of gaming culture.  If I want to make any progress of my own, I'll have to leave this as just another link to boost rankings and get back to my own work.

Good luck to Anita and I look forward to seeing the Google alert announcing the debut of the series.

Honk if this is the scenery you'd like to see on your vacation

I-70 between St. Louis and Kansas City is a forest of billboards.  The reason given (that I've seen) for permitting this blight is that business owners will lose customers if billboards don't let travelers know about the companies.  So, how many of you look for fireworks and pole dancers while you're on vacation with your families?  How many of you buy cars on holiday?  Does having kiddies in the car stop you from buying "adult toys" -- presumably for use in your motel room with your kids in the next bed?  Or maybe, the kind of customers the billboards are meant to attract aren't friendly family vacationers.  Way to develop tourism, Missouri.

I took the pictures that make up these images three days ago when returning home from an almost two-week trip.  No other state's stretch of I-70 was this ugly.  

(full disclosure, I wasn't thinking of this blog post while taking photos elsewhere, so the photos are not representative of all the highways BUT we never saw billboards like we saw on Missouri's stretch of I-70)

  Maryland

  West Virginia

 

  Virginia

  Ohio

  Indiana

  Illinois

 

I like coming home to Missouri, but I don't like driving on I-70 to get there.

By the way, this selection is perhaps 3/4s of the images I took, and these are, by no means, all the billboards on the east to west stretch of the road.

The US Army is Doomed

This weekend, all I seem to be thinking about is sex.  It's enough to make the children blush.

In my online travels, I ran across this blog post (with the same subject line) concerning the use by the Army of empathy bellies for soldiers learning how to run PT for pregnant soldiers and soldiers who are new mothers.  The writer is truly gobsmacked.

I left a reply, but don't see it.  Either it is being held for moderation or the blog ate it.  I don't like to waste thinking or typing, so here is my reply:   

From the blog:  I know this sounds harsh, but if a woman is pregnant, why wouldn't they be honorably discharged, given some form of severance and sent on their way, or given the ability to transfer to a non combat role, but only if there are spots open for them.

She wouldn't be discharged because it's against the law to fire women for pregnancy, which is a temporary condition despite its long-term effect. Mothers aren't the only ones to experience this effect (parenthood) as many fathers stay with their children until the kids grow up.

Aside from that, DoD made the decision to allow pregnant women and mothers to remain on active duty when the draft ended in the 1970s and the Army shifted to all volunteers. 

• The Women's Army Corps, 1945 - 1978, p. 264: "A week later, however, Secretary Froehlke, faced with reports projecting that the elimination of the draft would leave the Army unable to maintain a minimum of thirteen active duty divisions after FY 1974, called upon the Army staff for a plan that would achieve the speediest and largest supportable increase in the WAC."
• The U.S. Army's Transition to the All-Volunteer Force, 1968-1974, p. 192: "[LTC Jack] Butler believed that an expansion of the WAC in order to substitute enlisted women for men required no justification; the need was self-evident." 

As for the empathy bellies, it is a cost-effective measure to have instructors understand the limits of what a troop with a physical condition can tolerate.  These women have received expensive training and may be very good at their jobs.  To flush them from the system for pregnancy is a waste of your tax dollars and would leave their co-workers playing catch-up.  For the women to be injured from unsuitable physical training and possibly be medically discharged would result in a similar financial loss for the Army.  For a woman to be injured and lose a baby would be a tragedy.

The argument for women in the military not to bear children until they complete whatever term it is that they intend to complete is also a form of discrimination given that older mothers tend to have more complications with pregnancy.  Enlisting at 20, waiting twenty years to retire, and then start a family has a woman waiting until 40 to become pregnant. Also, no one asks men to refrain from becoming fathers because they are in the military. The services do not discharge single fathers although they, like single mothers, must have a plan for care of the child/ren in case of an emergency. In fact, it would seem that the military encourages parenthood/family life by providing family quarters and dependent travel, among other family support mechanisms.

To correct a misperception at the blog, no woman, with or without a 1-year old, would be sent "into combat," much less any pregnant woman.  During pregnancy a woman who is a soldier would have what is called a "profile" limiting the kind of work she can do, just as any soldier who is unable to complete his or her duties because of a temporary condition. Yes, women have been killed in combat situations but only because the battlefield can be anywhere. These women were not "in combat" although combat came to them.

Recreational sex

I rarely watch television news, but during this evening's exercise, I did.  When I watch television programs, they're usually DVRed and I skip the commercials. I guess I'm remembering the long-ago assertion that by using cable you'd be paying for your broadcasts and not have to put up with commercial messages, but I digress. 

Tonight, I was able to watch a Cialis commercial and I noticed that the people in the commercial either look as if they're the parents of older teens or college-age students, or at least at the upper end of childbearing years.  Given that, I'm assuming that the uses to which Cialis is intended to be put is for recreational reasons, not so that the couple shown can have more children (if any, since none are ever shown).

Given the outcry from some people [low-end example] about insurance-covered birth control pills meant for women, which allows the women to have sex without the consequence of pregnancy (whether or not that is what the treatment is meant to affect), why is there no similar complaint about insurance coverage for the recreational sex pills for men?

Liberals, Don’t Homeschool Your Kids

The subject line is the title of a Slate article.  I'd take apart the article, but most of it is of the 'old news' variety that has been dealt with many times. 

Effective research would have revealed information about the objections, as research would also have shown that Robert Reich (former Labor secretary) and Rob Reich (Stanford professor) are two different people, another bit of information fairly well-known in the (older?) homeschooling community.

 

Robert Reich http://robertreich.org/ 
 
Rob Reich 
http://humanexperience.stanford.edu/reich

 

A resonable reply to the article is in the comments section: search -- Ctrl. F for PC-users -- for Patrick Farenga.

Gotye

If I put the link here, it won't go down the memory hole as quickly as in other places.

Gotye

Finding a blog subject in the era of direct social networking

I used to use this blog to share jokes, pictures I like, and interesting websites, as well as letting off steam.  Now, with Facebook (and potentially with Google+) I can 'talk' directly with people who are more likely to reply.  That kind of communication is more satisfying than random blogging.  Now I find blogging more suited to sharing impersonal information, which is at odds with my blog's name as those are things I'm seldom "happy" about.

I don't want to turn off my blog, but I'm having difficulty finding a use for it that is compatible with why I started it.

I could use it to give Snopes one more link.  (today's 'new knowledge' is how egg whites aren't miracle cures for burns)

Or I could use it for social awareness articles.  (unsafe abortions are on the rise because of cuts in funding for contraceptives)

Those uses make it a kind of inefficient Twitter.

Or I could put up more pictures.  I like that use.

Shadows at the zoo.  My daughter, my grandson and me.  I'm the one who looks like the fairy Merriweather in Disney's Sleeping Beauty.