When I just started out, I made few of those typoes. The more I write, the more frequently I see them.
My most common is inserting "eyes" instead of "eye". I honestly cannot get rid of it. At least I'm not the only one - for awhile there the misspelling of idiot as didot was so common, didot actually became a slang word among OWW writers :)
I really, really hate this law. And I hate the one that limits purchase of cold medication. It's very simple: four people are sick, two adults, two children. Meaning, I need to buy 2 packs Advil cold pills, 1 bottle of purple kid medicine, 1 bottle of Nyquil. I can buy any two but not all four or three. I am basically forced to either choose between medicine for kids or adults, or between being able to work and being able to sleep. Or, :gasp: I can go through the check out the second time and get all of my crap.
It's a stupid law. It doesn't prevent people from getting Sudafed. It just forces the bulk purchasers to spread their buys all over town and it causes mothers no end of frustration.
I really, really hate this law. And I hate the one that limits purchase of cold medication. It's very simple: four people are sick, two adults, two children. Meaning, I need to buy 2 packs Advil cold pills, 1 bottle of purple kid medicine, 1 bottle of Nyquil. I can buy any two but not all four or three. I am basically forced to either choose between medicine for kids or adults, or between being able to work and being able to sleep. Or, :gasp: I can go through the check out the second time and get all of my crap.
It's a stupid law. It doesn't prevent people from getting Sudafed. It just forces the bulk purchases to spread their buys all over town and it causes mothers no end of frustration.
It's PublishAmerica. I can't decide if they are simply dumb or what my father used to call "aggressively ignorant", that is, subscribing to philosophy of "I don't know, I don't need to know, and no matter what you do, you won't make me find out." All criticism is viewed by them as a personal attack; all suggestions, all attempts to correct the horribly erroneous dreck they splatter all over their website lead to an immediate flame war. They are the publishing world's equivalent of a snake oil salesman, armed with a sawed-off shotgun loaded with crap.
Greg said: "dismissing him as a moron does not trump the frame he is pushing. a fact like "moron" or "campaign crap" will bounce off that frame. Bush will still see him. The frame of language he's speaking will continue unless it is trumped by another value."
Oh, no, I don't think he is a moron. He is dangerous. Not as dangerous as a true believer ( although he might be one, but I doubt it, simply because few politicians are true believers) but still very dangerous because people with power to make things happen are listening to him. He is slowly but surely worming his way into the system, trying to establish that lawmaker-bureacracy relationship that will enable him to sponsor havoc. And he can't lose, because if the measure he is proposing gets defeated, he can always head to his constituents and proclaim that he had fought a good fight and if they reelect him, he will continue to fight it, etc. No, that wasn't my point. My point is that there will always be opportunistic politicians. The danger factor here lies in the fact that policy makers are listening to him. If suddenly some dirty secret was pulled out of his closet, would the administration drop him in a blink? Absolutely. But if they really want the measure, if they see some sort of sense in what he is rambling, the measure will come back a year, maybe two later. That's where the real problem lies. In the fact that the policy-making body of people who are suppose to lead the country are focusing on banning classic literature. That's a very bad sign. But then it doesn't surprise me. After all, we live in the age when a publisher has to apply for a license to publish the work of a foreign dissident.
I think a few of the posters are giving Allen too much credit. He's been elected since 1994, and while he is an incumbent and hard to purge, he's most likely worried about his seat, as most incumbents do. Unless I am mistaken, he's a House member, which means he has less than year before he has to start worrying about reelection. The issue of gay marriage and other connected issues happen to be a hot topic, and he simply jumped on a bandwagon while it was passing him by. If he had a military base in his state about to close, he would start screaming about how much he loves GIs.
In a conservative state such as Alabama (or Oklahoma, where I am stuck for now), a politician has two alternatives: Conservative (Democrat) or Really Conservative (Republican). Having Kerry as Presidential Candidate severely hurt Democrats in such states, because he made them look liberal. A kind of reverse coattails phenomenon. So in that climate of conservatism, for a House member to distinguish himself, he has to really twist his panties in a bunch about something. He has to prove that he is indeed all about "values" and "morals," which is what Allen is doing. Does it make him a worm? Yes. A whore? Absolutely! A true believer? That might need further research. I wouldn't worry about Allen as much as I would worry about people who actually listen to him and take his drivel under consideration. Those bastards are scary.
"so is six years with incompetent instructors the equivalent of three years with competent ones?"
Zing! Good point :)
But still, getting away with plagiarizing for three years points to negligence on the college's part. If I had gone to school with this idiot and took the same courses, I would be livid. The fact that they let him slide for so long cheapens the perceived value of the education the rest of the students received. I'm sure that most students worked hard for their diploma. The next time they pull it out to apply for a job or post-graduate education, Gunn's slippery shadow will pop up. Can you imagine, being asked every time if you were Gunn's classmate and if you, too, plagiarized your papers? That would automatically put a person on the defensive at a job interview.
"Gunn is still in the wrong. But if his practices were as as he describes—that is, if he’s been a casual and habitual plagiarist—he should have been caught long ago, and it shouldn’t have taken a computer program to catch him."
It's ridiculously easy to catch a plagiarist. At one point I was asked to help a few soldiers from my husband's unit with some college papers. A lot of the papers were near incoherent, and since most of those guys barely had time to sketch a rough draft, I taught them all the same 3-paragraph model most people learn or should learn in college. You know, intro ending in a thesis, 3 body paragraphs supporting the thesis, and a conclusion. No big. I'd take the rough draft, dig for a thesis, underline it, show how to restructure the body, and how write a conclusion.
Anyhow, most of the papers were for social studies, a couple for an English course, and then somebody got one for a History course. A few days later this fellow showed up at our door, paper in hand, and holding a note, which read "Dear Mrs. Gordon. So nice to see you branching out. If you get a minute, stop by my office so we can chat. Oh, and in this particular case you might want to expand on your explanation of an essay organization."
I look at the paper and this knucklehead instead of listening to my explanation went and inserted the tags I made above the lines into the text. As in "Machiavelli this is the thesis was a dangerous guy."
I did stop by the office. Apparently the professors got together and figured out why there was a sudden increase in 3-part papers all equipped with a conclusion that opened with "To reiterate..."
Funny thing is, I gave different examples of the opening and closing tags, but for some reason "to reiterate" was the one that stuck.
It took only 6 papers before the professors zeroed in on me. It wasn't plagiarism and they had no problem with the tutoring, except obviously in the last case. But the fact remains - only 6 papers! How in the world did the people in Kent missed the plagiarism is beyond me. He should get those 3 years of education back - he obviously had incompetent instructors.
>
Ugh. I wouldn't be caught dead in a Ukranian peasant blouse, and I actually have the "heritage" to wear one. And I've never seen a Ukranian in a traditional blouse, unless she was folk-dancing for the glory of the Socialist State or for the tips from the foreign tourists. Where do people get this idea that wearing an antique garment reinforces their heritage, real or pretended?
Make it "I deserve to have my vowels taken out." What a gargantuan post. I looked for a way to edit it after I posted it and couldn't find it. I'm really sorry. I'll just go and hide now.
Eric, the civilian SUVs are the least of the problems. A lot of troops sent to Iraq were issued flak jackets without armor plates. Halliburton's subsidiary, Kellogg, Brown, and Root has a huge unpaid tab, somewhere around 90 million, for the meals it had served since November, which means that unless the bill is paid, there will be no more hot meals for the troops at the dining facilities in Iraq. Sometimes a hot meal is all these guys have to look forward to. (They may have paid it by now, I don't know. I know as of last month they still were in debt.)
White House keeps trying to quash the pay raises for next year. Would you like to know how much a sergeant makes with three dependents? About $2,000 a month. And that's with prior service additions. Yes, military does get benefits. If the servicemember dies, his spouse typically will get $250,000 in life insurance. I haven't yet met a spouse that would trade the money for her husband or wife. Yes, there is medical care available, but Tricare is pretty much an HMO. I've known soldiers that passed out in the waiting rooms with high temperature and were given a bottle of Motrin and told to report to work next day. That's a standing joke, btw, "and a bottle of Motrin" - what you typically get now when you go in the hospital on post. Bills add up. Just the drycleaning for the uniforms alone (and if you draw a post with one of the schools, like we did, you had to have perfectly starched BDUs for all the time) runs at about $50 a month.
Add to that the fact that a military spouse typically can't get hired, short of being a nurse, because we relocate continuosly, frequently to places that do not offer good employment opportunities. (I can pack a house in three days, drive the Ryder, get there, unpack, and have the household back up in three days. No reflection on my abilities - I had to do it often enough and learned.) Not only that but a military spouse is basically a single parent. My kids saw flashes of my husband's face for the four years he was in. Would you like to know what childcare costs here typically, for one child, in a military town? Between $75 and $100 a week. Why so high? Because they know military families have no choice. And the White House wants to quash the pay raises! Please! Most soldiers are not in it for the money, but they have to have enough to live on.
So how much does a typical soldier work for that money? Let's put aside the battle, the war, all of those terrible things. Let's talk a normal, peaceful situation.
A typical soldier "at peace" gets up at 04:30, 05:00 if on base, so they can be at PT by 06:00. They will train, take showers, change, so they can be at work by anywhere from 08:00 to 09:00, depending on MOS. They will work till 11:30, break for lunch, come back by 13:00 and then work "on paper" till 17:00. In reality? The Wheel shop with the battallion my husband was stationed with worked till 21:00 with a break for dinner. My husband would go off to the field to drive the colonel because they needed a commo guy and be gone till 19:00 no problem. Not counting times he went to the field for a week and we didn't see him at all. And that is a very cushy post. We had lucked out.
A soldier is technically on 24/7. Especially an NCO. Because young soldiers do very stupid things sometimes. Sometimes they call at 01:00 and say with slurred voice into the phone, "Saaageant. I'm drunk. Come get me."
"Where are you, son?"
"At a Circle K." Click.
There are seventeen Circle Ks in town.
And for all of that, soldiers get bashed and called monsters, pelted with stones, shot in the head while getting a soda. They get little money - and their pay raises are under a constant threat from their own government. They don't even get proper recognition. They get GWOT. Global War on Terrorism medal. I know it seems like a small thing, but to servicemen it isn't. Sometimes that's all they have, and how hard would it be to create separate medals for campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq? Not very hard. And it would mean so very much to the people who serve.
As you can see, I'm absurdly passionate about this. I apologize for rambling. Hopefully I won't get my vowels taken out.
I'm thrilled she has so many supporters. It sounds like some of you are carrying email conversations with her. Perhaps she could tell you her unit? Here is what's in Iraq and Kuwait, or what was there in mid March. (It's not secret knowledge - I've found a March 22 issue of Army Times :) Also a few soldiers have come back since then, because we're seeing the Daddy is Home cars around town. Much better than yellow ribbons, trust me.)
So let's see. We've got
4th Infantry Division
101st Airborne Division
173rd Airborne Brigade
V Corps
3rd Armored Division
1st Infantry Division
25th Infantry Division
82nd Airborne Division
10th Mountain Division
2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment
3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division (SBCT)
If she could tell you guys what she is attached to or if she mentions that she is stationed next to one of these divisions, it would settle some questions. The troops movements are fuzzy, but usually if they are scheduled to come home, it's announced. Like when South Carolina National Guard (122nd) was slated to come home.
I would email her myself, but I don't wish to make it seem like I'm overly aggressive. If any of you wish to pass on my email address to her, I'd love to carry on a conversation. I'm sure that I would very quickly become convinced one way or another and would tell you why.
I had poked around her posts some more yesterday, and everyone who says it's a mundane blog and typical of Iraq soldier in some respects - I agree with you there. It's her combat sequences that are kind of fuzzy. There has to be a reason why a lot of military and non-military but famliiar with it people are getting a funny feel when reading them. I've described the situation to Sgt. Alan, whose MOS is more combat-oriented. His experience with it was that intelligence guys (such as interrogators, translators, etc) sat back. After they train them for ungodly amount of years and money, they don't want them shot at.
(Here is a link to what Army considers military intelligence. I simply did a word search, and it kicked some mighty odd jobs at me, like Cavalry Scout, who obviously wouldn't sit back. The site is designed with civilians in mind, so it takes wide view of MI. http://www.goarmy.com/jobs/mos/search.asp?keywords=military+intelligence&fulltime=Y&browseCats=mos%2Fcat10.asp
Also here is http://www.armystudyguide.com/resources/mos_descriptions.htm
which might be a bit clearer, but I don't know how old the info is. )
So perhaps, and I'm not trying to offend anyone, perhaps there might be a possibility that she is adding a little bit of action to her posts? Because that would explain the odd conversation she shouldn't have heard, the dramatic enemy will run over us at dawn declarations, the characteristic fuzziness of language, and the enemy announcing that it will destroy them at first light. (It still doesn't make sense to me, btw. Hey, we'll kill you all, but we're going to wait till the light comes so we'd make better targets. Oh, and we'll also tell you that we're coming, so you will be ready for us. Because we wouldn't want to have an element of surprise on our side.)
The fact that people are sending her care packages is in itself proof of nothing, unfortunately, unless she is actually getting the items. If a care package arrives to the sorting facility and they can't find the soldier, they hold it. Wagner, frex, didn't get any of his until he got to Kuwait, and his tour was close to a year.
Guys that have been in Iraq will tell you that Kuwait is nice. It's a beautiful base all around. There was a big bruhaha within the Army awhile back, because combat troops would come back from Iraq to the Kuwait base(I think it even has tennis courts.) They are filthy, exhausted, they haven't gotten a Care package in months, because those things typically don't come through to the front lines. So these guys would stagger back and quickly figure out that personell at the Kuwait base is getting the same combat pay as they do.
To reiterate, there are very simple ways to ascertain whether or not this woman is who she seems. Here are the questions to ask: where did she go to basic, where did she go to AIT, what's her unit, what's her MOS? When did she deploy?
If she would give you her unit, I could call down to Fort Sill and bug J on Monday, and he might be able to tell us if the unit is in Kuwait, in Iraq, or whereever. As a reenlistment NCO he's got some access to that kind of thing. But might is the operative word here. He also could tell my civilian behind to bugger off :) Even if we do share a Corona with lime once in a while.
Claude and Paula, you're absolutely right on the spelling. Thank you so much for correcting me. When I get excited, and this issue excited me, my spelling goes out the window. (I also slide into my native language, but that's beside the point.) I guess after thinking about it for a few hours, I decided I no longer care if it's genuine. If it is, wonderful. I hope it is. If so, my apologies to her for doubting. If it's not, well, it's on her head.
What I think is really awesome, is that although people are passionate on the issue, nobody has broken into insults. And that's really pretty cool.
MI is military intelligence. If she is an interrogator, she'd be L97. Translator is E97 (or 97L and 97E.) Unfortunately, you can't be a reservist and a military interrogator. They phased out the reserve military MOS awhile ago. See, the language school alone, the AIT, which you can't skip, is a year long. If you're lucky enough to jump into one of those highly coveted MOS, you go to school for a total of two years. And you sign up for six years. And... if she is MI, why is she posting this? Shouldn't the security concerns be of outmost importance to her?
Look, I don't want to give a wrong impression. I hope that she is who she says she is. If so, more power to her. I would hate to find out that she isn't a soldier because it would hurt me personally. The time when the deployment to Iraq had hung over my husband's head was the worst time of my life. Neither he nor I ever supported or felt right about this war and it hurt many people we know. It's an issue of great importance to us. If she is a fraud, well, I would feel a little betrayed.
Dave,
"“Our ammo situation is red. Over.”
“Oh.”
“Come morning, we will be over-run, with high casualties. The enemy has stated they will eliminate everyone in the compound. Over. Have you relayed my last transmission to Higher?”
“Roger that, over.”
And then nothing. “What was their response?”
There was none. "
Does this read okay to you? And I still don't know how she is hearing this, unless it's a Vietnam movie and the commo is sitting there with a telephone. It's not like that at all, the units in Iraq all have Singars. In fact, Singars, I think, are pretty much standard now - my husband left for his Biology exam, so I can't ask him. And why would the enemy attack at dawn? So our forces would have better targets?
Yes, of course, the jargon varies. And of course, there are reservists. But there are so many small things that a bit fuzzy here.
Jill, great point. Reservists do go through regular bootcamp and once they are active, they act as a unit. If anything, they are typically worse with the jargon. :) Even if they weren't, it grows on you. Once in company of regular Army units, it would come back very quickly. And some of the problems in that account, like the commo exchange, can't be explained by being in Reserve.
But suppose she is a reservist, who hasn't been in Iraq for that long. What is she doing at NEO? People who perform this sort of operations are hardcore, professional active duty. Especially if they are acting together with Brits, who are basically highspeed units. During mixed force operations, Army would want its best troops there. And I hate to say it, but Army does discriminate. If they can send a man instead of a woman, they will. For her to be in NEO, she must be absolutely vital and as highspeed as she can be. For her to be a woman and a reservist and be in this situation, she would have incinerate enemy forces with a mere stare or do something equally incredible. So what is she doing that is so vital and must be done only by her?
Forgive me for being skeptical. It's just I would hate to think that while people are fighting over there, some of whom we've had over for a barbeque and a beer not so long ago, someone posts something like this. What would be a motive? Attention? Trying to raise people's awareness of the conflict? Surely there are better ways than pretending to be a soldier.
I'm sorry, I wrote Air Force in that post. I meant to write Airborne. In my defense my husband was fussing about Singars in my ear at the time.
I'm an ex-Army spouse. My husband just got out. He was an E5, prior to that he did a four-year in the Navy. We both scrutinized the post in question and we both have a funny feeling. The problem is that real soldiers talk in certain jargon, and no, that's not something that she would've deleted due to security concerns. It's automatic; it rolls off the tongue and most soldiers and spouses don't even know they are doing it.
The jargon is off. Example "helmet." It's never a helmet. Football player wear helmets. It's a kevlar. And it's always a kevlar. "My captain" is another dead give-away. The Captain, the XO, the Commander. Our CO. But not "my captain". With three or four guys, you'd have a First Sergeant, maybe even an E5. (She is confused about expats too, but I'll leave it alone.) It seems unlikely that a Captain would be put in charge of three or four soldiers, and British are not going to have an American Captain leading them. A Captain wouldn't be wasted on a force of that size anyway. They are valuable.
The time varies too much. It's not 3 am. It's zero three hundred. O-three hundred. Tank/hybrid? Is that a Bradley? Bradley isn't a tank; it's a gun. (And Lord, if you call any of these tank-looking things tanks while in a Wheel or Track shop, about a dozen mechanics are going to stop dead in their tracks and very carefully explain to you that it's a gun.) Is it MLRS, which is a missile shooter on tracks (multiple launch rocket system. Very expensive, you practically never see them shot in practice.). Is it a Hymar, which is MLRS on wheels? (The US Army, with the exception of very few Air Force cross-over installations doesn't use Hymars. They are basically a Marine weapon.) My husband pretty much crawled over every track vehicle the Army has - he was in charge of a commo shop, so it's must be some odd coalition thingie, but we both found it odd that she didn't compare it to anything. A soldier would say, it was like a Hymar.
Couple of other things: never says her MOS. Security has nothing to do with it - there are several thousand soldiers in any given MOS, so it's absurd to delete it out of security concerns. My husband was 31U, frex.
Which leads to another question. Why is a woman there with hardened Brits, who btw, are basically as tough as you can get. Is she a medic? She doesn't talk like a medic. There is no mention of her equipment.
Other little things that are just not quite there. Part of it is her language. It's too smooth. She might be taking extraordinary pains at writing for civilians, but I've heard several people fresh from Iraq. Here is E4 Clint Wagner's account given at his son's birthday party that was held upon Clint's return from Iraq, "And goddamn, the fucking mortar hit fucking two feet from us, and shit, I thought that was it."
The radio comminucation reads like something out of a movie. Without it, I would've actually wavered. With it, I'm pretty sure, it's a false account.
First, I'm unsure how she is overhearing this conversation? What were they using? If they had manpacks, the only person hearing the stuff would be the person with his ear to the phone. You just don't hook up speakers to the manpack. If it's inside the vehicle, the commo guy would have headphones on. Now please recall that it was my husband's job to actually do commo. He taught commo to PLDC, he taught it to Officers. It's hard to hear commo when you're right there. Several feet away - practically impossible. It's just common sense at this point. They don't want soldiers to hear communications - only the commo and NCOIC or OIC would know what went on.
“Our ammo situation is red. Over.”
“Oh.”
Oh? And Roger? Pilots say roger. Infantry says Check. Understood. If she had said Over and Out anywhere, it would be a complete give-away, because nobody ever does it. And no person is going to be blabbing that they will be run-over by dawn. The protocol of the commo is very tight. It's almost code-like and it's drilled and drilled and drilled, until it's completely automatic.
I don't want to say that it's 100% a fake, because I'm simply not willing to put this sort of claim out there. I'm very careful with "never" and "absolutely sure", unless I am absolutely sure. I do feel that it is a false account. I also feel that it is an insult to people serving over there. Clint's wife Tiffany, whom I did my best to support while her husband was over there for a year, went to a funeral of one of the soldiers in his squad. (Oh, btw, "team" is odd too. It's squad or unit. Special Forces have teams. ) It was the hardest thing she had ever done, harder than seeing Clint off to the plane. They called out the man's name three times, and of course he didn't answer, and it was terrible. His parents were there and it was just absolutely terrible. She came back a wreck. My husband served on funeral detail too, and it was no picnic. To put something like this out there, if it's not genuine, is simply wrong.
""“No Child Left Behind” supports education like the U.S. has supported the reconstruction of Afghanistan.""
I've got a solution that can solve the child education financial crisis and Bush's war problems in one shot. To get the tuition for those private schools, the kids just need to do a tour in the National Guard. You know, do six months in Iraq, get school fees paid by the government. We just need to get some tiny flak jackets made. And think, a nine year old drinks and drinks a lot less water than a full-grown soldier, but on paper he's the same, so Haliburton will make even more money. And you can put two of them in one body bag. Everybody wins!
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| 2004 | 17 |
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