G-strings and G-men
Last
night when I was flipping through the channels, I came upon an episode
of what must have been the 20/20 newsmagazine, hosted by John Stossel.
He was reporting about swingers
(must have been a sweeps week or something) and even though I only
watched for a couple of minutes before moving on, it was pretty obvious
what a softball (hehe) handjob the whole segment was going to be. As a
narrator, Stossel kept emphasizing over and over how normal all these
"lifestylers" are as he listed their prestigious jobs such as a doctor.
I chuckled a little when I noticed that none of the people shown in the
segment were obese or exhibited otherwise stereotypically underclass
mannerisms, contrary to some other occasions that I have seen the
swinging subculture documented on television.
You know, I would actually be curious to hear how the real-life swingers' organizations manage to navigate the hazardous and ever-present issue of the vast differences in the sexual market value between participants. On one hand you have to be, like, inclusive and open-minded and all that crap, but on the other hand, if some swingers' club lets pretty much any well-behaved couple join, they will rapidly lose their more desirable members to more exclusive and selective clubs. Of course you can always say no to anything and I am sure that it is respected, but I don't think that some attractive couple would really enjoy that much being among a crowd of ugly and obese people that they would never associate with in their normal lives. (The advice normally given to startups that you should only hire A-level people, because if you start hiring B-level people, they will in turn hire and fill the organization with C-level people and that will ruin everything, seems oddly appropriate here.)
At one point, Stossel asked a group of swingers sitting front of him if the women are really into it, and they convinced him all together that they really are. Of course, this question was necessary because otherwise most of the audience would reasonably assume that these men are dragging their unwilling wives into swinging. But I wouldn't go as far as to infer from this that men and women in general are equally enthusiastic to participate in swinging. Because women who are not interested in swinging can just tell their lecherous husbands to sock it, of course when you interview people who are active swingers and even self-selected spokesmen of swinging, they will tell you that they are enthusiastic about it. Duh. I wouldn't know if Stossel later asked them in this segment whether single men and single women are equally welcome to participate, and if not, what could possibly be the reason for this asymmetry.
With all these new shows starting every day, I'll give any show a chance to win me over with its pilot episode. The new Fox show "Standoff" stars that guy from "Office Space" and "Sex and the City" and some unknown chick as the pair of FBI hostage negotiators who are romantically involved with each other, and try to balance love and professionalism in their work duties under their sassy black female boss. You know, I simply didn't fully realize how stupid the whole premise was until I actually wrote it down as that sentence.
In the first episode, a young white man sporting Islamic headwear walks into a coffeeshop with a suicide vest and takes the whole shop hostage. Instead of blowing himself up outright, he wants a television crew so that he could send a message to the American people. I fully expected this message to be that when the camera crew comes up, he would voluntarily take off his vest (which would turn out to be fake) and say that the true Islam is the religion of peace and that he wanted to send a message to people that they shouldn't think so stereotypically but have an open mind instead, which would make the FBI agents hang their heads in shame and teach them an important lesson. Either that, or that this man would really turn out to be an evil Christian fundamentalist who is willing to die so that he could wake the people up against the Muslim menace. Fortunately, neither of my predictions turned out to be true, but the character was a bipolar and suicidal son of a politician, and he wanted to get revenge against his parents who didn't care about him. Fortunately, the female half of the negotiator duo realized this and saved the young man's life just in time and prevented the macho and bloodthirsty HRT assault force from killing him.
This show, by the way, seems seriously confused about the role and purpose of HRT. I kind of doubt that HRT is called in each time some divorced father who has kidnapped his children whose custody he has previously lost is now holding back traffic, no matter how central the main intersection that he is blocking with his car. Talk about shooting a fly with a cannon.
As an amusing aside, the Wikipedia page about HRT tells us that "The members of the HRT are among the most highly-trained and best-equipped tactical personnel in the world", which I am sure is not totally untrue, but I get the impression that every single special forces unit out there is "considered to be one of the best in the world" or something equivalent. Now, I am not a military expert, but I just can't believe that all these units can be above average and considered to be "among the best in the world" at the same time. This whole problem kind of reminds me of a book about various cat breeds that I once leafed through, in which every breed was described as "very intelligent" and "friendly". As much as I kept searching, I couldn't find even one breed that was described to be as much as "average" in cat intelligence. So all you war nerds out there, which special forces units are considered and described as the weakest and least professional such units in the world, evoking the mental image of a little boy in a Norman Rockwell painting, smiling wide as he wears a bucket as a helmet with his toy rifle slung over his shoulder? I am certain that the steely operators of special forces, when they are on a break from all their hard special forces action, like to kick back and joke and swap stories about these "very special forces", in a manly spirit of war buddy camaraderie. Even the very hardest of men like to laugh!
But coming back to the original topic, I don't think this show was as bad as I may have depicted it as being, but I do have to wonder how they are going to write 22 episodes from the basic premise. You'd think that the show would get slightly repetitive after five or six episodes. CSI handily avoids this pitfall by having its main characters basically be general-purpose detectives who not only collect the evidence but also arrest and interrogate suspects, and this will probably be the route that will be also taken in this show.
And you know, more generally I am kind of mystified about the role of FBI in the American justice system and law enforcement, based on what I have seen and learned on television shows. Perhaps my readers could help me out here. For starters, so the United States is a federal republic so that the individual states and the federal government are separate entities with their own legal systems. The FBI is the law enforcement arm of this federal government, and it has jurisdiction only over certain federal and interstate crimes. Or at least, that's the way I thought it was supposed to be.
However, from the shows such as "Bones", this "Standoff", or especially the classic "X-Files" I have come to learn that the FBI agents basically get to investigate pretty much any criminal case or corpse whatsoever, especially so if it would in some way be personally interesting for them. For example, if they were the one who originally discovered the body. Within the FBI itself, the special agents pretty much get to pick and choose what case they feel like investigating today and which particular criminal they would like to play a handgun serenade in the key of G. No matter how "special" these agents are, such lax organization sounds rather inefficient and even silly to me, so I can't help but wonder if I have now totally misunderstood something.
You know, I would actually be curious to hear how the real-life swingers' organizations manage to navigate the hazardous and ever-present issue of the vast differences in the sexual market value between participants. On one hand you have to be, like, inclusive and open-minded and all that crap, but on the other hand, if some swingers' club lets pretty much any well-behaved couple join, they will rapidly lose their more desirable members to more exclusive and selective clubs. Of course you can always say no to anything and I am sure that it is respected, but I don't think that some attractive couple would really enjoy that much being among a crowd of ugly and obese people that they would never associate with in their normal lives. (The advice normally given to startups that you should only hire A-level people, because if you start hiring B-level people, they will in turn hire and fill the organization with C-level people and that will ruin everything, seems oddly appropriate here.)
At one point, Stossel asked a group of swingers sitting front of him if the women are really into it, and they convinced him all together that they really are. Of course, this question was necessary because otherwise most of the audience would reasonably assume that these men are dragging their unwilling wives into swinging. But I wouldn't go as far as to infer from this that men and women in general are equally enthusiastic to participate in swinging. Because women who are not interested in swinging can just tell their lecherous husbands to sock it, of course when you interview people who are active swingers and even self-selected spokesmen of swinging, they will tell you that they are enthusiastic about it. Duh. I wouldn't know if Stossel later asked them in this segment whether single men and single women are equally welcome to participate, and if not, what could possibly be the reason for this asymmetry.
With all these new shows starting every day, I'll give any show a chance to win me over with its pilot episode. The new Fox show "Standoff" stars that guy from "Office Space" and "Sex and the City" and some unknown chick as the pair of FBI hostage negotiators who are romantically involved with each other, and try to balance love and professionalism in their work duties under their sassy black female boss. You know, I simply didn't fully realize how stupid the whole premise was until I actually wrote it down as that sentence.
In the first episode, a young white man sporting Islamic headwear walks into a coffeeshop with a suicide vest and takes the whole shop hostage. Instead of blowing himself up outright, he wants a television crew so that he could send a message to the American people. I fully expected this message to be that when the camera crew comes up, he would voluntarily take off his vest (which would turn out to be fake) and say that the true Islam is the religion of peace and that he wanted to send a message to people that they shouldn't think so stereotypically but have an open mind instead, which would make the FBI agents hang their heads in shame and teach them an important lesson. Either that, or that this man would really turn out to be an evil Christian fundamentalist who is willing to die so that he could wake the people up against the Muslim menace. Fortunately, neither of my predictions turned out to be true, but the character was a bipolar and suicidal son of a politician, and he wanted to get revenge against his parents who didn't care about him. Fortunately, the female half of the negotiator duo realized this and saved the young man's life just in time and prevented the macho and bloodthirsty HRT assault force from killing him.
This show, by the way, seems seriously confused about the role and purpose of HRT. I kind of doubt that HRT is called in each time some divorced father who has kidnapped his children whose custody he has previously lost is now holding back traffic, no matter how central the main intersection that he is blocking with his car. Talk about shooting a fly with a cannon.
As an amusing aside, the Wikipedia page about HRT tells us that "The members of the HRT are among the most highly-trained and best-equipped tactical personnel in the world", which I am sure is not totally untrue, but I get the impression that every single special forces unit out there is "considered to be one of the best in the world" or something equivalent. Now, I am not a military expert, but I just can't believe that all these units can be above average and considered to be "among the best in the world" at the same time. This whole problem kind of reminds me of a book about various cat breeds that I once leafed through, in which every breed was described as "very intelligent" and "friendly". As much as I kept searching, I couldn't find even one breed that was described to be as much as "average" in cat intelligence. So all you war nerds out there, which special forces units are considered and described as the weakest and least professional such units in the world, evoking the mental image of a little boy in a Norman Rockwell painting, smiling wide as he wears a bucket as a helmet with his toy rifle slung over his shoulder? I am certain that the steely operators of special forces, when they are on a break from all their hard special forces action, like to kick back and joke and swap stories about these "very special forces", in a manly spirit of war buddy camaraderie. Even the very hardest of men like to laugh!
But coming back to the original topic, I don't think this show was as bad as I may have depicted it as being, but I do have to wonder how they are going to write 22 episodes from the basic premise. You'd think that the show would get slightly repetitive after five or six episodes. CSI handily avoids this pitfall by having its main characters basically be general-purpose detectives who not only collect the evidence but also arrest and interrogate suspects, and this will probably be the route that will be also taken in this show.
And you know, more generally I am kind of mystified about the role of FBI in the American justice system and law enforcement, based on what I have seen and learned on television shows. Perhaps my readers could help me out here. For starters, so the United States is a federal republic so that the individual states and the federal government are separate entities with their own legal systems. The FBI is the law enforcement arm of this federal government, and it has jurisdiction only over certain federal and interstate crimes. Or at least, that's the way I thought it was supposed to be.
However, from the shows such as "Bones", this "Standoff", or especially the classic "X-Files" I have come to learn that the FBI agents basically get to investigate pretty much any criminal case or corpse whatsoever, especially so if it would in some way be personally interesting for them. For example, if they were the one who originally discovered the body. Within the FBI itself, the special agents pretty much get to pick and choose what case they feel like investigating today and which particular criminal they would like to play a handgun serenade in the key of G. No matter how "special" these agents are, such lax organization sounds rather inefficient and even silly to me, so I can't help but wonder if I have now totally misunderstood something.
Your observation about breed books and every breed being more intelligent than average matches exactly an experience that the author of the book "The Intelligence of Dogs" had...and that experience led him to write that (excellent) book.
Regarding special forces: I've never heard the Russian Spetsnaz referred to in glowing terms.
Posted by TJIC | 8:51 PM
I OTOH have heard of the Spetsnaz referred to in glowing terms, so we arnt any further forward there.
Often Ive heard disruptive (minority) children described as bright, above average. Theyre disruptive because theyre bright. Kind of implies that all the other non-disruptive kids are below average. Hmmm...
Posted by Anonymous | 9:24 PM
I think the SAS of the UK are considered to be the foremost special force in the world. I can't think of a more celebrated coup than the recpature of the Iranian Embassy in London in 1980.
The Spetsnaz are probably near the bottom. They seem to suffer from the general Russian tendency to prize mass and aggressiveness over finesse and thoughtfulness.
Posted by Fred S. | 10:48 PM
All your questions about swingers are answered by The Lifestyle, by Terry Gould, who is not one.
Posted by Anonymous | 11:49 PM
I think you are now confusing things.
Obviously it is hard to compare HRT to Spetsaz or SAS because they have different objectives. Plus SAS and Spetsnaz include variety of different branches, for example FSB, GRU and MVD have their own Spetsnaz troops (see wikipedia for more info).
For example I doubt that HRT trains sabotage and recoinnasse missions against NATO-forces ;)
You should compare HRT to other HRT's around the world.
- Syltty
Posted by Anonymous | 6:24 AM
I think it might be that all the special forces that one tends to hear about are the ones that are way above average, and the bad ones are just never talked about.
Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_special_forces_units.
Most of them you have probably never heard about. The world's worst special forces, whatever they are, are probably among them.
Posted by Vera | 6:42 AM
There isn't some sort of annual global special forces awards night dinner/dance whose website could be checked out? I thought I saw something like that on Get Smart once.
The point about the cats reminds me of how 100% of children killed in random U.S. inner-city gun violence are said to have been on the "honor roll" at school. It seems that the non-honor roll students must possess a form of "emotional intelligence" that has greater survival value in that environment than the high IQs of their unfortunate egghead friends.
Posted by andy | 8:28 AM
Let's get patriotic about this Special Forces issue
http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=haaste
That's what you have to accomplish before any special training. Low key and nothing glorious, but certainly something You have to miss in places like Toronto, so sunny and relaxed.
Posted by Huckleberry Finn | 9:52 AM
In purely physcial terms the Spetsnaz must be the best-trained special forces anywhere. I read not long ago that one of their physical qualifications tests involves doing 28 pullups from a dead hang in quick succession while wearing a 20-kg. backpack. Those 28 dead hang pullups are about, oh, 28 more than probably 90% of adult males could manage, and that's not even considering the extra weight.
Peter
Iron Rails & Iron Weights
Posted by Anonymous | 10:48 AM
The breed thing, I like Keeshonden. They are sweet and adorable, but dim.
My last one could not understand going "around" an obstacle. He just barked. But every dog book says they're smart.
Must be emotional intelligence.
Posted by Anonymous | 5:08 PM