Army Officers Lie All the Time, Study Shows

WP

"A new study by Army War College professors found that not only is lying common in the military, the armed forces themselves may be inadvertently encouraging it.

...

The new study found that many Army officers have become “ethically numb” in the face of overwhelming demands and the need to put their reputations on the line to verify that all required standards and training requirements have been met.

The issue affects the whole military, but the professors focused their effort on the Army because they are the most familiar with it, they wrote. They interviewed scores of officers, from captains to colonels, at several bases on the East Coast, many of whom bristled initially at the notion they colored the truth, the report said.

“When pressed for specifics on how they managed, officers tended to dodge the issue with statements such as, ‘You gotta make priorities, we met the intent, or we got creative,’ ” the report said. “Eventually words and phrases such as ‘hand waving, fudging, massaging, or checking the box’ would surface to sugarcoat the hard reality that, in order to satisfy compliance with the surfeit of directed requirements from above, officers resort to evasion and deception.”

“In other words, in the routine performance of their duties as leaders and commanders, U.S. Army officers lie,” the paper concludes."

The Anthropic Universe

Discover Magazine (2008)

"A sublime cosmic mystery unfolds on a mild summer afternoon in Palo Alto, California, where I’ve come to talk with the visionary physicist Andrei Linde. The day seems ordinary enough. Cyclists maneuver through traffic, and orange poppies bloom on dry brown hills near Linde’s office on the Stanford University campus. But everything here, right down to the photons lighting the scene after an eight-minute jaunt from the sun, bears witness to an extraordinary fact about the universe: Its basic properties are uncannily suited for life. Tweak the laws of physics in just about any way and—in this universe, anyway—life as we know it would not exist.

Consider just two possible changes. Atoms consist of protons, neutrons, and electrons. If those protons were just 0.2 percent more massive than they actually are, they would be unstable and would decay into simpler particles. Atoms wouldn’t exist; neither would we. If gravity were slightly more powerful, the consequences would be nearly as grave. A beefed-up gravitational force would compress stars more tightly, making them smaller, hotter, and denser. Rather than surviving for billions of years, stars would burn through their fuel in a few million years, sputtering out long before life had a chance to evolve. There are many such examples of the universe’s life-friendly properties—so many, in fact, that physicists can’t dismiss them all as mere accidents.

“We have a lot of really, really strange coincidences, and all of these coincidences are such that they make life possible,” Linde says.

Physicists don’t like coincidences. They like even less the notion that life is somehow central to the universe, and yet recent discoveries are forcing them to confront that very idea. Life, it seems, is not an incidental component of the universe, burped up out of a random chemical brew on a lonely planet to endure for a few fleeting ticks of the cosmic clock. In some strange sense, it appears that we are not adapted to the universe; the universe is adapted to us."

The article goes on to discuss the (rather ridiculous, it seems to me) multiverse theory. There's a simpler explanation, probably.

Gubbinal -- Wallace Stevens

That strange flower, the sun,
Is just what you say.
Have it your way.

The world is ugly,
And the people are sad.

That tuft of jungle feathers,
That animal eye,
Is just what you say.

That savage of fire,
That seed,
Have it your way.

The world is ugly,
And the people are sad.




*According to Stevens, one's perspective "creates" reality -- a dullard (gubbin) might think that the world is ugly and the people are sad, but that makes it so only to him ("Have it your way"). 

I Wanna Be Around -- Dinah Washington (1963)

I wanna be around to pick up the pieces
When somebody breaks your heart
Some somebody twice as smart as I

A somebody who will swear to be true
As you used to do with me
Who'll leave you to learn
That mis'ry loves company, wait and see

I mean, I wanna be around to see how he does it
When he breaks your heart to bits
Let's see if the puzzle fits so fine

And that's when I'll discover that revenge is sweet
As I sit there applaudin' from a front-row seat
When somebody breaks your heart
Like you, like you broke mine

A psychopathic serial killer, Dennis Rader (BTK)

Just in case you want to have nightmares tonight, here's a link to Dennis Rader's BTK courtroom confession.

The following excerpt is from a pretty good piece on Dennis Rader, the BTK serial murderer. It appeared in The Independent (UK). Rader is one of the few people that I could cover in my Forensic Psychology course but I choose not to, because I don't like thinking about him.

"Think of psychopathy as a personality disorder defined by a cluster of traits centred around three different factors which, over time, have become ingrained as beliefs and behaviours.   

First, is their inter-personal style, which allows the psychopath to be glib, grandiose, dishonest and manipulative; they are always arrogant and deceitful in their day-to-day dealings.  Second, as far as their behaviour is concerned, psychopaths will be sensation seeking, impulsive, reckless to the point of stupidity - seemingly having no thought for their own safety.  Finally, psychopaths will have defective emotional responses so that they lack remorse for their manipulative, reckless behaviours and find it impossible to truly understand why it is that you might actually find their behaviour wrong.  In short, they just don’t get it; they operate in a totally different moral universe.

Rader could often be reckless in how he went about his murders – despite planning them with care; manipulative of his immediate family and of his community; arrogant in his demand for attention; and grandiose in his belief that he would not be caught and that he had somehow befriended the police officer assigned to catch him.  He gave a jaw-droppingly insensitive performance in front of the judge and the families of his victims.  He was at last publicly living the life less ordinary that he had always craved, and could only previously achieve in private when he killed."

Was Jack D. Ripper right about fluoridation?

"Fluoridation is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous communist plot we have ever had to face."

Probably not. But underactive thyroid can cause depression.

Telegraph (UK)

"Fluoride could be causing depression and weight gain and councils should stop adding it to drinking water to prevent tooth decay, scientists have warned.

A study of 98 per cent of GP practices in England found that high rates of underactive thyroid were 30 per cent more likely in areas of the greatest fluoridation.

It could mean that up to 15,000 people are suffering needlessly from thyroid problems which can cause depression, weight gain, fatigue and aching muscles.

...

Fluoride is a naturally occurring mineral found in water in varying amounts, depending on the region and it is also found in certain foods and drinks, including tea and fish. It helps combat tooth decay by making enamel more resistant to bacteria.

But previous studies have found that it inhibits the production of iodine, which is essential for a healthy thyroid.

The thyroid gland, which is found in the neck, regulates the metabolism as well as many other systems in the body.

An underactive thyroid can lead to depression, weight gain, fatigue and aching muscles and affects 15 times more women than men, around 15 in 1,000 women.

The researchers say councils must rethink public health policy to fluoridate the water supply in a bid to protect the nation’s tooth health.

However Public Health England said that previous evidence overwhelmingly showed that fluoride in water was safe.

Dr Sandra White, Director of Dental Public Health at Public Health England, said: “Public Health England regularly reviews the evidence base for water fluoridation.

“The totality of evidence, accumulated over decades of research, tells us that water fluoridation is a safe and effective public health measure, and shows no association with reduced thyroid function.”

Other experts also warned that the study may have been skewed by population bias, a claim denied by the authors.

Prof David Coggon, Professor of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, University of Southampton, said: “It is quite possible that the observed association is a consequence of other ways in which the areas with higher fluoride differ from the rest of the country.

“There are substantially more rigorous epidemiological methods by which the research team could have tested their idea”"

General Jack D. Ripper: Mandrake, do you realize that in addition to fluoridating water, why, there are studies underway to fluoridate salt, flour, fruit juices, soup, sugar, milk... ice cream. Ice cream, Mandrake, children's ice cream.
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: [very nervous] Lord, Jack.
General Jack D. Ripper: You know when fluoridation first began?
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: I... no, no. I don't, Jack.
General Jack D. Ripper: Nineteen hundred and forty-six. 1946, Mandrake. How does that coincide with your post-war Commie conspiracy, huh? It's incredibly obvious, isn't it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual. Certainly without any choice. That's the way your hard-core Commie works.
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: Uh, Jack, Jack, listen... tell me, tell me, Jack. When did you first... become... well, develop this theory?
General Jack D. Ripper: [somewhat embarassed] Well, I, uh... I... I... first became aware of it, Mandrake, during the physical act of love.
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: Hmm.
General Jack D. Ripper: Yes, a uh, a profound sense of fatigue... a feeling of emptiness followed. Luckily I... I was able to interpret these feelings correctly. Loss of essence.
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: Hmm.
General Jack D. Ripper: I can assure you it has not recurred, Mandrake. Women uh... women sense my power and they seek the life essence. I, uh... I do not avoid women, Mandrake.
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: No.
General Jack D. Ripper: But I... I do deny them my essence. 

COL Anthony B. Herbert, Ph.D. in clinical psychology, RIP

 

NYT

"During World War II, he ran away to join the Marines, but was sent home the next day because he was just 14. He enlisted in the Army three years later and, bemedaled with four Silver Stars, four Bronze Stars and four Purple Hearts, became the most decorated enlisted man during the Korean War. He volunteered for service in Vietnam, where, as a lieutenant colonel, he earned a Silver Star, two Bronze Stars, an Air Medal and an Army Commendation Medal in only 58 days of combat.

And then, on April 4, 1969, Anthony B. Herbert, the Army poster boy from the Pennsylvania coalfields, was abruptly relieved of his command.

Colonel Herbert said he had been sacked for exposing brutality against civilians by American troops —

...

[During the Korean War, he was s]elected by the Army for a delegation of distinguished soldiers representing the United Nations, he met President Harry S. Truman and the former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who urged him to get a college degree.

After marrying Marygrace Natale, who survives him along with his daughter, Toni, and two grandchildren, he graduated from the University of Pittsburgh with a degree in English, re-enlisted again, became commander of an Army Ranger unit and served as an R.O.T.C. instructor at the University of Georgia, where he earned a master’s in psychology.

In August 1968, he joined the 173rd Airborne Brigade stationed in the central highlands of South Vietnam. It was there as commander of the Second Battalion of the 503rd Infantry, he said, that he witnessed what he described as eight war crimes, including serial executions of detainees and water torture of a prisoner.

He reported the offenses to the commanding general of the 173rd Airborne and his deputy. The next day, Colonel Herbert was relieved of his command and dealt a devastating efficiency report.

He then turned around and filed charges against the officers and challenged the efficiency report, and it was eventually withdrawn. He was later promoted, and, after being wounded 14 times, he retired early from the Army in 1972.

But on Feb. 4, 1973, in a segment produced for “60 Minutes” by Barry Lando, the reporter Mike Wallace portrayed Colonel Herbert as a liar who had revealed war crimes only after the My Lai massacre became public late in 1969 and who was guilty of brutality himself.

He sued for $44 million in a case that would inch forward for 12 years.

...

While the case unfolded, Colonel Herbert, in retirement from the military, earned a doctorate in psychology from the University of Georgia in 1975. He later practiced privately in Colorado, served as an efficiency consultant to state legislatures and wrote several other books.

Books, indeed, had become dear to him. Not long before he resigned from the Army, he was stuck in a humdrum recruiting job, where, he said at the time, at least “I get to do a lot of reading.”

“Books I never had time for before,” he said. “Books like ‘Catch 22.’ ”"

The Washington Post obit is even better:

"His 1973 book “Soldier” was reportedly used as inspiration by actor Robert Duvall, who played an air cavalry lieutenant colonel — the one who says, “I love the smell of napalm in the morning” — in the 1979 film “Apocalypse Now.”

“People tell me I should see ‘Apocalypse Now’ because the Duvall character is modeled after me, and others tell me the Brando character, Kurtz, is modeled after me,” Dr. Herbert told The Post in 1979. “I’m not Brando; Brando’s not me . . .

“And I don’t want to see any [expletive] war movies. If I want to see a movie, I go to ‘The Sound of Music.’ I’ve seen it 31 times.”"

Here's an interesting article on Dr. Herbert's involvement in a missing person's case (when he was 80 years old).