Really? Soldiers are admirable for fighting stupid, senseless wars because without them the politicians would just fill the ranks with draftees?

Maybe it’s fortunate, given US politicans’ and voters’ enthusiasm for senseless campaigns of aggression, that there are lots of people who are stupid enough to buy the recruiters’ promises (and evil enough to be willing to invade/blow up/slaughter other folks’ homes and families for college money), or really really believe with all their heart that Uncle Sam is morally worthy of their enforcement services, or just want to kill them some sandniggers – in other words, lots of people who are stupid and/or evil enough to be willing soldiers for the US government – but that doesn’t mean that it’s an admirable profession.

It’s also really fortunate that, sometimes, some murderer targets a cop or child molester or similar monster. But they’re not admirable just because they perform an act with a fortunate consequence, and likely do it for all the wrong reasons anyway.

The late Richard Feynman, Ph.D., was a skeptic. In his first biography he wrote about talking physics with Niels Bohr when Feynman was still working on his master’s, if I remember correctly. When Feynman protested that Dr. Bohr should be talking to the other physicists in Los Alamos, the discussion took place during the Manhattan Project, Bohr said something like, “when I talk to them, all I get is Yes Dr. Bohr, excellent point Dr. Bohr, when I talk to you I get no, no, no, you’ve got the physics completely wrong!” His biography is “Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman” is a great read by the way.

And last I checked, Feynmann did produce some major scientific discoveries. In short, I’ll take Feynman’s skepticism over Chopra’s snake oil every time.

I followed up on that last post with a new one today, explaining the difference between denial and skepticism, as well as pointing out that global warming is now the established paradigm, so it’s up to others to falsify at this point. That’s different than a belief system.

That said, you may watch it here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7i5FlC1MpkE

“Bottom line? Yawn. Get back to me when you have equally overwhelming evidence that global warming is not happening, or if it is it’s not anthropogenic.”

From his blog 2 days ago.

So Chopra will continue to believe in God until someone proves God doesn’t exist and Plait will continue to believe in AGW until someone proves AGW doesn’t exist. Pot Plait, meet Kettle Chopra. Usually, when someone is asking you to prove a negative, they’re not the skeptic.

A Dentist sure does relieve a lot of pain, but they are very well paid and can get by with a very comfortable work schedule. The personal reward seems to balance the benefit to society nicely.

Nurse seems a whole lot more admirable than dentist. Still I can’t really fault Huckabee’s choice at least with soldier. They get paid dirt, and are sent to places where people will shoot at them. Certainly I don’t think we should be sending them (which is an unrelated issue), but if they hadn’t volunteered, We’d be getting drafted right now to fill those jobs.

For my two, I’d probably be leaning perhaps Public Defender (assuming they took the job intentionally instead of just getting stuck with it because they chose to goto law school and couldn’t get a real job), and a nurse at St. Jude’s Children’s hospital because there is no way I could ever do that job and stay sane.

Did I miss understand, or did the bad guy just get released from Washington State jail/prison – cause child rapists are someone they want on the streets.

It seems to me that Governor: Christine Gregoire is personally responsible for the deaths of the officers.

Her state –
Didn’t they check his history?
Why did she let him out?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091201/ap_on_re_us/us_officers_shot
“On Sunday, six days after posting bail in Washington on charges of raping a child, Clemmons walked into the coffee shop in suburban Tacoma and killed four uniformed Lakewood police officers as they caught up on paperwork on their laptops, police said.
…
“A psychological evaluation in October found he was a risk to public safety”

She has some posts on the raid:

http://iheartejade.blogspot.com/search/label/Raid

Radley’s post after the raid:

http://www.theagitator.com/2009/07/29/tough-call-5/

“The two professions I value most in our society are soldiers and police officers…”

Ya, way to kill any support you might have had from me.

It didn’t hurt your chances.

The Huckster’s action at the time was justified (IMHO), but I’m glad this will probably ruin his career.

“The reasons were straightforward — a unanimous recommendation from the board, support from a trial judge and no objections from officials in a case that involved a 16 year old sentenced to a term that was exponentially longer than similar cases and certainly longer than had he been white, upper middle class, and represented by effective counsel who would have clearly objected to the sentencing”