Guard Dog

Yes he did he won the Lott-er-ry! The rest of his friends were not so lucky!

I seriously doubt it's real. They wouldn't be allowed anywhere near him without weapons, back up, and an officer to supervise.

LOL a few weeks ago I was looking for the web site for the BBC America cable channel. I couldn't remember what it was so I did a google search for BBC America. Yeah..... don't do that.

I am 100% opposed to MANDATORY voting. But I'm 100% opposed to mandatory anything coming form the government. My automatic reaction is f--k you don't tell me what to do.

Note to self: Never play Trivial Pursuit for money against Amentep

When you love Scooby Doo but shop at Aldi's

The trans example I used was just an example. The lowering of military standards so more women could pass was an entirely different example of a similar mindset. But hardly surprising. To answer your question endurance trumps speed every day of the week and twice on Sundays. But endurance without physical strength is useless. In my own experience every Marine rifleman is carrying their own gear which includes their pack, rifle, several days worth of MRE, six 30 round magazines for their rifle, extra boots and socks and likely one spare set of utilities, shelter half, rubber bitch, poncho and poncho liner. In addition if the Marine is in a rifle squad they will be carrying a spare battery for the radio and a spare drum for the SAW. If they are in a weapons platoon they are carrying 200 rds for the M-60 or two 60 mm mortar rounds of one 81 mm mortar round. That is a hard ask for the average female Marine. And the average female Marine is already in excellent physical condition. The regular PFT (physical fitness test) is already gender normed. Men and women are held to different standards. The combat PFT was not but until combat roles were opened to women they were not required to take it. Now they are and they are failing it at a rate to 10X their male counterparts. Rather than accept that the average female service member cannot perform at the same physical level as the average male service member the WSJWPC mindset says the test is flawed. It's not. If a male soldier or Marine is wounded in the face of an advancing enemy and the only soldier nearby that can render aid is a female, if she cannot pick that man up and fireman's carry him to safety (a part of the combat PFT) he dies. If she had not been there and a male soldier or Marine had been then he lives. I have no problem with women serving in combat roles in general. The idea that they were somehow emotionally ill equipped was as antiquated as it was false. They can be trained to focus on executing their jobs under pressure as well as any man can (incidentally that is the exact purpose of by-the-numbers-drill). If a female soldier or Marine can pass the combat PFT and want to serve in the infantry then welcome aboard. If they can't they have no business being there. But that is not the direction they are going which is sadly no surprise. We've already chased two specific examples too far down the rabbit hole here. The point I was trying to make with all this is that Woke/SJW/PC is not entirely bad until it is. Like Aristotle said this vice is excessive in feeling or in actions. We need to find the mean but Woke/SJW/PC insists its never wrong.

Case in point. Military women can perform just as well as men in combat roles. That is mostly true. Women can serve equally well in armor, artillery, aviation, motor transport, etc. Then they go too far and think military women can serve in ANY role as well as a man. That is patently false. In 2015 the Marines conducted a study that found all male units greatly out perform integrated units. Women in infantry were six time more likely to be injured during training and failed the Combat PFT at 10X the rate of men without "gender norming". That is a nice way to say allowing women lower standards just so they pass. Which is what the Army is doing now. The Marines have, so far, resisted lowering infantry fitness standards but women are failing at such a rate that it is inevitable. This is just one example of woke/SJW/PC taking a good thing too far. I can easily provide others

Now reading

This is purely my own opinion here so take it for that. Woke/SJW/PC is all fine and good where it compels us to be more polite to our fellow humans. In that instance it is a positive force. Case in point, a trans man who is obviously male but presents themselves as female. It is perfectly ok even polite to address them as such. Use female pronouns and treat them with the same dignity and respect you'd treat someone who was born female. Or the other way around. But Woke/SJW/PC goes too far when it demands the world acknowledge something true to be false or something false to be true purely because someone "wants" it to be that way. For example that there are no biological differences beyond male and female humans other than their reproductive organs. This is simple false and stubbornly refusing to acknowledge that is obstinance that undermines the whole position of the philosophy, even the positive aspects of it.

Wow, what an impressive body of work he had!

The funny thing is this would actually work. Not for a big room. Maybe like a guest bedroom in a single wide

I just finished reading two Zane Grey novels The Last Plainsman and Riders of the Purple Sage. They were both the literary equivalent of eating a bag of M&Ms. Enjoyable but probably not good for you. They had only a passing nod towards historical authenticity and were nowhere in the same vicinity as historical accuracy. But they were as entertaining as an old John Wayne movie. Can anyone recommend a western genre fiction that is historically authentic? Gone To Texas by Forrest Carter and Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy come to mind.

That sucks. Its also sort of ironic as long as you are OK.

Talking with B today after she finished up some work for me. BTW hiring her to take care over data entry from me was one of the smartest things I've ever done. She hasn't made a single mistake that I've seen. Anyway she was asking about the engineering profession and how many women were in it. That gave me pause for a moment. You know, I've never met one. Not a single female EE. I've heard of a few but never interacted professionally with one. In my graduating class in college there were 23 of us. One was a woman and IIRC she was from China and was going back there. What are the odds? Other disciplines have plenty of female practitioners. I wonder why not us?

It was in a Zane Grey novel I'm reading. Not exactly high literature by any means and I know the quote it rips off is hedgehog not porcupine. I guess he changed it because there are no hedgehogs in west Texas in the 1880's so the quote wouldn't make sense in the context. I like it better that way actually. Porcupines are cool.

Quote of the day: "The fox knows many tricks. The porcupine knows only one. But it's a really good one."

The juxtaposition of homosexuality & pedophilia is one of the worst things to have been done to the LBGT folks. Children CAN be "groomed" by pedophiles because they don't know it's happening and can't fight back against it. I don't think it possible to "groom" someone to be gay. The reason being is by the time a kid has reached their teenage years and is actually able to be sexual they have developed to a point of knowing what they like and don't like. Don't get me wrong, teenagers are in no way emotionally mature enough to cope with adult life decisions and consequences. But they do have enough agency to decide who they are attracted to and likely enough savvy to avoid perverts assuming they had not been victimized earlier. The damage pedophiles and other abusers do to children is horrifying and often life long. I'm against the death penalty but I'd almost make an exception in that case. I'd even make them dig their own hole and stand in front of it. But treating homosexuality and child sex abuse as the same thing is a gross injustice. Doing so for the purely cynical reason of scaring people to vote a certain way is equally so.

The truth is I am not going to to have an informed opinion on how best to educate kids. And I can see the value of crosslinks between hard science and soft sciences. Particularly when it comes to things like economics and demographics. Heck the entire discipline of statistics and data analysis cannot even exit in a vacuum. You have to define what the data sets are and the variables that affect them. But we are discussing pre-high school basic math here. Multiplication, division, basic logical problem solving process (algebra). IMHO the only way to master the basics IS to focus on just those without the distraction of cross study. There is time enough for that later. A students ability to master advanced math begins in elementary school. You likely only get one shot at them. If they don't grasp the basics you'll lose them in Algebra and Geometry and without those they will never understand Trig or Calculus and without that STEM is closed to them. We (the US) are already lagging behind much of the rest of the world on that count. I'm not saying it's a terrible idea later on. But, early in the education path I think it is.

That would make things soooo much easier!