You know, this really pisses me off for a ton of reasons.

I went to the Army School of Advanced Military Studies (SAMS) in 2009-2010. 84 Army officers per year get to go to this elite institution. Hundreds if not thousands of Majors apply to attend this school. It is, without much hyperbole, where the intellectual elite of the Army (generally, there are some very smart officers in the Army believe it or not) get vectored towards by our mentors. It's difficult to just test in - a three part test including an essay, the test alone is over four hours long. You also have to get interviewed for a half an hour with one of the school faculty leadership after the test.

The writing standards are intense. Every paper, from the one to two page summaries to the 40-50 page monograph, are expected to be at the PhD level of writing, with proper footnoting and the like. It is completely original work, and for an example, my monograph was on an obscure topic that was critical for the generation of forces for overseas combat missions, and involved complexity science, queuing software, and an assload of research on senior leader (general officers and DoD civilian leadership) comments on this subject. Literally days of data mining to find a single quote within the proper context of the paper. Painful stuff.

But I was PROUD as fuck to have this paper written, approved and defended in front of a board of PhDs and full Colonels. It has been used by the Army to alter how they generate units for overseas deployment after it was published. It was critically examined on multiple occasions during the process, and there were a few revisions during the process.

Now, why does that matter? It matters because the War College is for Colonels. The school I went to was for Majors. The SAMS standards were unforgiving, we had multiple officers who failed papers, failed the oral comprehensive exam at the end of the course (five hours of hell), and were generally beaten around the head and shoulders for failure to meet the intellectual expectations of the course. And now we see the War College standards are shit - if this clown was able to graduate, how many other assholes were able to skate through with a combination of plagiarism and weak intellectual standards. And most troubling, Colonels become Generals, and if this is the intellectual expectation for our Colonels and Generals, there is no reason to wonder why we've been so unsuccessful in the last 13 years of conflict.

And my bosses wonder why I want to go to a civilian university fellowship for my War College instead of hanging out at Carlisle for a year chugging Yeungling and taken a year long highly paid sabbatical.

drsmooth wrote:Senator John Walsh (D-MT) gives new meaning to the expression "military intelligence"

Sorry General LG, but I mean ye gods

thanks for breaking this down some, LG. Sounds like while there's a lot of academic rigor to be found in military higher ed, this guy happened to take the gut course (see what I etc etc)

jerseyhoya jacks his bad dick off

Having a hard time keeping my laptop level, if you know what I mean. Because I really like Ted Cruz and Michele Bachmann. Sexually.

jerseyhoya wrote:Having a hard time keeping my laptop level

lemme guess - it's listing right

This probably goes more in the economics thread, but I'm kind of surprised no politician is plumping for a shorter official workweek.

Time's a pie you can divvy up without spending anything. It's practically the ideal unfunded mandate. It's easy to champion, slow to be adopted (it took between 50-100 years in the US for the 40-hour week to be regarded as "normal"), has less "real" than psychic impact, and may help re-set economic normal in our Pickettian future.

Youseff wrote:

jerseyhoya jacks his bad dick off

Worst cover of Bohemian Rhapsody ever.

drsmooth wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:Having a hard time keeping my laptop level

lemme guess - it's listing right

This probably goes more in the economics thread, but I'm kind of surprised no politician is plumping for a shorter official workweek.

Time's a pie you can divvy up without spending anything. It's practically the ideal unfunded mandate. It's easy to champion, slow to be adopted (it took between 50-100 years in the US for the 40-hour week to be regarded as "normal"), has less "real" than psychic impact, and may help re-set economic normal in our Pickettian future.

Really? You're surprised that no politicians are out there championing the right of "lazy" American workers to be even lazier? Sounds like anathema to anyone on the right and and a death wish for anyone on the left. Cutting hours is what corporations do to increase shareholder value. I see about zero support anywhere for a new normal in which workers are compensated at current levels for shorter hours, whatever sense it might make.

I was just joking.

I wasn't. That's the insane genius of my plan. The same work, spread over more people, who spend what little they earn because, well, the spending can't go that far to begin with. The fraction showing more ambition (desperation, whatever) work two of those jobs, but they all look like singles in the stats, in a situation where singles are as good as doubles. And since no one wants those jobs anyway, make them less - significant, individually.

Wall St types love that kind of thing - stock splits look like action, when there's usually plenty less there than meets the eye. When the pie's dwindling, cut smaller slices & serve it on smaller plates with littler forks. Make that candy bar smaller & fatter. Move the fences in a few feet. Etc.

It's the New Cynicism, and it's time.

drsmooth wrote:I wasn't. That's the insane genius of my plan. The same work, spread over more people, who spend what little they earn because, well, the spending can't go that far to begin with. The fraction showing more ambition (desperation, whatever) work two of those jobs, but they all look like singles in the stats, in a situation where singles are as good as doubles. And since no one wants those jobs anyway, make them less - significant, individually.

Wall St types love that kind of thing - stock splits look like action, when there's usually plenty less there than meets the eye. When the pie's dwindling, cut smaller slices & serve it on smaller plates with littler forks. Make that candy bar smaller & fatter. Move the fences in a few feet. Etc.

It's the New Cynicism, and it's time.

Is this your own idea?

Wow, Boehner's lawsuit is completely laughable. He literally has a completely debunked falsehood about welfare work requirements in it as one of the reasons he's suing.

TomatoPie wrote:

drsmooth wrote:I wasn't. That's the insane genius of my plan. The same work, spread over more people, who spend what little they earn because, well, the spending can't go that far to begin with. The fraction showing more ambition (desperation, whatever) work two of those jobs, but they all look like singles in the stats, in a situation where singles are as good as doubles. And since no one wants those jobs anyway, make them less - significant, individually.

Wall St types love that kind of thing - stock splits look like action, when there's usually plenty less there than meets the eye. When the pie's dwindling, cut smaller slices & serve it on smaller plates with littler forks. Make that candy bar smaller & fatter. Move the fences in a few feet. Etc.

It's the New Cynicism, and it's time.

Is this your own idea?

You do have some familiarity with the history of how the 40-hr week came to be regarded as "normal", yes?

If not, then definitely

drsmooth wrote:

TomatoPie wrote:

drsmooth wrote:I wasn't. That's the insane genius of my plan. The same work, spread over more people, who spend what little they earn because, well, the spending can't go that far to begin with. The fraction showing more ambition (desperation, whatever) work two of those jobs, but they all look like singles in the stats, in a situation where singles are as good as doubles. And since no one wants those jobs anyway, make them less - significant, individually.

Wall St types love that kind of thing - stock splits look like action, when there's usually plenty less there than meets the eye. When the pie's dwindling, cut smaller slices & serve it on smaller plates with littler forks. Make that candy bar smaller & fatter. Move the fences in a few feet. Etc.

It's the New Cynicism, and it's time.

Is this your own idea?

You do have some familiarity with the history of how the 40-hr week came to be regarded as "normal", yes?

If not, then definitely

I just wanna make sure I give proper credit when I forward this to Hannity

nice

Gaza's only power plant was hit by the IDF. In addition to the loss in electricity, it will affect water.

Deputy PM In Turkey suggests women shouldn't be laughing:

Women should not laugh in public. So said Turkey's Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc in a speech on Monday about "moral corruption" in Turkey. "Chastity is so important," he said. "She will not laugh in public."

He also said that they should not be 'inviting their attitudes', meaning giving their opinions.

ay yi yi, this did not go over well. the right wing government apparently doesn't realize they didn't get 100% of the vote

bill o'reilly may seriously be going senile or something

The case for child labor as the lesser evil:

In 1993 Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) introduced the Child Labor Deterrence Act, which would have banned imports from countries employing children. In response, that fall Bangladeshi garment companies let go approximately 50,000 children. ... But did the children go back to school? Did they return to happy homes? Not according to Oxfam, which found that the displaced child workers ended up in even worse jobs, or on the streets—and that a significant number were forced into prostitution.” Based on the information they have, families tend to choose the best available job for their children. Taking that option away does not eliminate the necessity of work; it forces them to take a less-desirable job. As repulsive as a child working in a sweatshop may be, it is not nearly as repulsive as a child forced into prostitution through the actions of unthinking Western activists.

We frequently make the mistake of expecting the world to adopt our standards. Impoverished places often cannot afford our standards, be it child labor or love for the environment. Our standards are largely a first-world luxury.

Our good intentions do not guarantee good results.

http://www.cato.org/publications/economic-development-bulletin/case-against-child-labor-prohibitions

ThinkProgress finds some common ground with Paul Ryan.

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/0 ... erty-plan/

Of all the things we do wrong in America, jailing people for victimless crimes has to be near the top of the list.