As IF Times

link Casey Heynes | Bully Video | SportsGrid.

Anyone who has ever successfully trained a dog will appreciate that in order to shape behaviour, it is important to associate reward or punishment immediately after the response.  There is no point in smacking the dog with a rolled up newspaper two days after he has bitten someone or pooped on the oriental rug.  People who don’t immediately reward or punish their dog after an incident will continue to be puzzled as to why their dog doesn’t behave properly.

This dynamic is now accepted and encouraged  in our modern civilized society.  We have been conditioned to let the “authorities” mete out the appropriate punishment rather than responding directly to the transgressions ourselves.  Often, the punishment, if any, is inadequate and the time gap from the original crime is lengthy.   Is this the hallmark of a civilized society?  That’s certainly debatable.  If you asked the aggrieved party, they may say no.  If you are an academic living in a theoretical world, maybe.   If you extrapolate the direction in which ‘civilized’ society is being steered, it doesn’t bode well for those who generally follow society’s basic codes of behaviour.  It means that they will generally suffer at the hands of those goons unwilling to follow society’s rules, written and unwritten.  Pretty soon, we’ll be overrun by bullies and jerks as if they were weeds on a lawn.  With the perverse bloat of the legal system, all manner of anti-social behaviour are excused by specious claims and rulings.  This emboldens even more undesirable behaviour which encourages more goofy rulings and the cycle continues.

In fact, not immediately applying retributive action to miscreants is contrary to the rules of nature.  In the natural animal world, boundaries are clearly established by virtue of the fact that  dire consequences will result  if they are breached.  In the best case, the intruding animal may get into a fight, in the worst case it gets eaten.  It’s a rare sight to see Wildebeest frolicking among lions for example.  There are no written laws of conduct in the natural world.  Be stupid and become exhibit A in Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection.  In the case of the punk harassing Casey Heynes in the video, the kid is clearly in the Wildebeest mode.  He’s lucky he didn’t have his head cracked open.  That this little darling got smacked will go a lot further than  any ‘strong scolding’ by the authorities after the fact.  Just ask Cesar Milan, The Dog Whisperer.  His standard technique for dog discipline and training is to associate positive rewards for good behavior and immediate negative consequences for unwanted behaviour.  But the key theme in his training is the behavior of the humans.  His premise is that how humans respond to their dogs’ behaviour will determine if they respond acceptably or not.  Control rests with the humans.  Maybe Casey should have eaten the little punk.  That’ll learn him.

link Report: Too many whites, men leading military – Navy News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq – Navy Times.

Readers of the link will notice that the report was written by an “independent” group.  Presumably, this was compiled without any bias or implication.   I’m hardly an expert on the military, but I do know that to attain the rank of officer, you generally have to go through military school to learn about warfare strategy and leadership as well has having  combat experience.   When you have the lives of so many men as your responsibility, the process of assigning leadership roles should not be based on some kind of racial quota.   Do equal numbers of minorities go to military school?  The military is one of the last places where quotas should be at play.  It has to be a meritocracy. 

We hear about the notion of over-representation in other areas of society as well.  Notably, those in prison seem to overwhelmingly be comprised of specific demographic groups.  This may be of consternation to some, but what if they actually committed most of the crimes?  Should the prison population reflect the constituency of the population at large in order to be a fair society?  Of more significance perhaps is the over-representation of progressive liberals in the education and college system. Now there’s an area which needs some diversification.

I wonder if there’s such a survey which records the eating preferences of patrons at restaurants.  Do most people disproportionately order chicken over beef?  Should people be coerced or mandated to eat some equal representation of meats or veggies?  What if one just happens to taste better.  What about goats?  They are vastly underrepresented in restaurants.  According the website www.makeicecream.com, the most popular flavour of ice cream is….vanilla, by over a 3 to 1 margin over chocolate.   So what.

What about basketball players?  Most players are well over 6 feet in height.  Do we then say that too many tall people are playing basketball?   Clearly, short people are under-represented in their ranks.   As most liberals and progressives try to frame any discussions involving race or sex issues as ones of unjust bias,  they can never be taken seriously.  It doesn’t register with them that to assign arbitrary race qoutas to any endeavour of skill or talent is in itself racist.  When you buy a package of M & M’s, they’re all basically the same, but some people will choose red over blue.  So what?   On the other hand, in a jar of mixed nuts, some will pick out the pecans over all others.  So what?  Why do people choose any particular dog breed over another? Presumably, there is some trait that’s desired in that breed.

People who push the quota nonsense on the public usually have some agenda and that usually involves inhibiting free choice and market forces.  It’s useful to invoke that famous quote by Deng Xiao Ping here.  ” It doesn’t matter if the cat is black or white, only that it catches mice”.