Wednesday, March 9, 2011

HOT5 Daily 3/9/2011

1. "Peter King Faces the Same Media Buzz Saw That Tore into Ground Zero Mosque Critics" The same playbook.

Representative Sample: The successful efforts of groups like CAIR to convince the mainstream media that American Muslims were facing an unprecedented wave of prejudice reduced the discussion to one of whether Americans were in favor of discrimination against adherents of Islam. The fact that this premise was utterly false made no difference to the way the media covered the story, since they had already swallowed the false assertion that Muslims were under siege.

2. "Is the military leadership “too white and too male?” Diversity gone wild …" A good response to an attempt to judge the military by the politically-correct standards.

Representative Sample: We sort of have to stop and talk about some basic things when we see a report like this. And the first is “what is the purpose of the military – diversity or victory”? Playing this sort of numbers game is stupid in an all volunteer force which has the job of defending the country. We’re not talking the university campus or some corporate board.

3. "Against schools" Do we even need them anymore?

Representative Sample: It’s perfectly possible now for children to be educated without being assembled in classrooms. The internet is the ideal resource. A child needs a safe room, a computer, and at least until mid-adolescence, adequate supervision. Given those, the chances are he’ll get a far better education than he’d get at school.

4. "Somali Pirates: Danes Suggest Sinking Pirate "Mother Ships"" At least one country is tired enough of pirates to actually think about doing something useful to counter it.

Representative Sample: Denmark's ruling party, the Liberal Party, on Tuesday proposed that the Danish navy should be able to sink mother ships to disrupt piracy

5. "Passive news reports may lead readers to feel they can’t find the truth" Interesting.

Representative Sample: The study found that people are more likely to doubt their own ability to determine the truth in politics after reading an article that simply lists competing claims without offering any idea of which side is right.

To submit a blog post for HOT5 Daily, please e-mail me at unrright@NOSPAMgmail.com. Put HOT5 in the subject.

2 comments:

  1. @2: That is actually a perfectly valid question to ask. In a world without gender or race barriers, military leadership would be fairly representative of the population as a whole. If it isn't, the obvious conclusion is that some factor is at work that makes the military less appealing to those that aren't white males. Finding out what those factors are and seeing if they can be removed without destroying the military as a fighting force should not be a controversial thing.

    ReplyDelete
  2. "Finding out what those factors are and seeing if they can be removed"

    Should we find out what factors cause Hispanics to be overrepresented in major league baseball and see if they can be removed?

    "should not be a controversial thing. "

    It's controversial because it's both stupid and unnecessary. We already have laws on the books against discrimination. If someone is being blocked from advancement in the military because of their race, legal action can and should be taken. Women are obviously under-represented because the military has been male-dominated for a long time, and women are still barred from some combat arms.

    Certain people gravitate toward particular professions, and some professions tend to be more oriented toward one gender for various reasons. Pretending that all occupations have to reflect some artificial standard of diversity is just idiocy.

    ReplyDelete