As IF Times

link Its not the end of the world when doomsday prophets get it wrong | World news | The Guardian.

There was no point in putting in the effort to comment about this until the fateful moment had passed.  So whew, here we are. Preacher Harold Camping was wrong.  Again. Good news for us.  Bad news for those who stopped bathing, brushing their teeth and who recently took out big loans.   It’s easy to dismiss this recent call for the apocalypse as just another quack job by some fringe nuts.  Until you read about how much money had been spent spreading the fear and the amount of people involved in the doomsday publicity.  From some accounts, over a hundred million dollars was spent to publicize the end of the world, not to mention the untold numbers of followers, new and old.

To most rational people, the level of interest in the campaign must have been a mystery.  Really?  One person was endowed  with the ability to foresee the future, or at least the end of the present?  As preposterous as this seems, how is it any different than any other religion?  Notwithstanding Stephen Hawking’s ruminations, whether  there’s a heaven or a hell may be up for debate, but it may be prudent to hedge your bets.  In the case of some faiths which promise a fixed number of virgins upon death, that claim may be iffier.  Certainly it would be discouraging for the women of that faith.

Still, even more preposterous is the idea that killing certain groups of people in real life will ingratiate you to the supreme poo bah in the next.  But in matters of faith, it’s hard to belittle anything that may give people structure and comfort.  Faith happens to be one of the good traits of human nature.

On the other hand, it’s hard to explain willful stupidity.  In matters of faith, proof is elusive.  In matters of ideology, the evidence is easier to discern.  At the moment, the ideological battle going on for the hearts and minds of the  U.S. voter being waged in the media  has never been more laughable.  Infinitely more stupid than the Rapture claims are the utterances from some media personalities who mysteriously still have jobs.  One of the more recent doozies is from Bill Maher, whose tenuous grip on sanity is slim indeed.  According to Maher, the GOP want a “misogynist, racist and homophobic presidential candidate”.   Hmm.  According to Democratic ads in support of the despised Obamacare program, Republicans want to dump grandma off her wheelchair over a cliff.  And how can we forget the articulate Alan Grayson who stated that the Republican solution to the health crisis is for people to die.  MSNBC talking head Dylan Ratigan says that Republican rhetoric is “based on abandonment of arithmetic and fact”.   According to an AFL-CIO union stooge named Damon Silvers, “republicans literally deny clothing to foster kids to give rich people tax cuts”.  We’re on watch now to see which GOP candidate will be accused of eating babies and small dogs. These are only some of the well known  loons that cater to the contingent of idiots who believe their pearls of wisdom…despite all evidence to the contrary.

Like the Rapture preacher, people are free to say whatever they want in a free society.  And like the Rapture congregation, people can believe what or whom they like when it comes to the media.  However, the sheer scale of naivete at best or stupidity at worst is frightening.  Even more frightening, they all get to vote.  Oy.

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”.