inkbluesky

perpetual beta a tip of the hat to all those applications, web based and otherwise that go from one year to the next and never seem to get rid of the buggy behavior they’ve had from day one.

Here’s a great idea. Let’s taxpayers pool our money and take some high school drop outs, or those that got out by the skin of their teeth, many with behavioral problems and train them in military tactics, get them in good physical condition and train then how to use sophisticated military weapons and explosives Dumb and Dumber
The U.S. Army lowers recruitment standards … again.

Today’s Army, of course, is much more high-tech, from top to bottom. The problem is that when tasks get more technical, aptitude makes an even bigger difference. In one Army study cited by the RAND report, three-man teams from the Army’s active-duty signal battalions were told to make a communications system operational. Teams consisting of Category IIIA personnel had a 67 percent chance of succeeding. Teams with Category IIIB soldiers (who had ranked in the 31st to 49th percentile) had a 47 percent chance. Those with Category IVs had only a 29 percent chance. The study also showed that adding a high-scoring soldier to a three-man team increased its chance of success by 8 percent. (This also means that adding a low-scoring soldier to a team reduces its chance by a similar margin.)

Though some of these low scoring recruits might use this opportunity to turn their lives around rather then be future mall mass murderers for the here and now they’re lowering the chances of mission success and survival of their fellow soldiers. All for a war that had nearly nothing to do with making America more secure.

water on clover wallpaper 

Dmitri’s Choice - Nabokov wanted his final, unfinished work destroyed. Should his son get out the matches?

Here is your chance to weigh in on one of the most troubling dilemmas in contemporary literary culture. I know I’m hopelessly conflicted about it. It’s the question of whether the last unpublished work of Vladimir Nabokov, which is now reposing unread in a Swiss bank vault, should be destroyed—as Nabokov explicitly requested before he died.

It’s a decision that has fallen to his sole surviving heir (and translator), Dmitri Nabokov, now 73. Dmitri has been torn for years between his father’s unequivocal request and the demands of the literary world to view the final fragment of his father’s genius, a manuscript known as The Original of Laura. Should Dmitri defy his father’s wishes for the sake of “posterity”?

Both Nabokov’s wife and son have had years to decide and since the notes (and possibly enough material to constitute a partial novel) haven’t been burned yet obviously their is some leaning on the part of the family to preserve them for history despite Nabokov’s wishes. If these were purely personal notes I would tend to agree that they be burned, but as they’re relics of history, like Rosenbaum I’m conflicted, but lean toward keeping them even continuing to keep them locked away. Once they are destroyed there is no oops, made a mistake can we get a redo.