Charm School

It was nice to get back to the science (https://luysii.wordpress.com/2024/04/17/cholesin/) after several long detours through current events but reality continues to intrude.  The firing of 30 Google staffers who protested Google’s choice of clients and the mass arrests and academic suspension of the Columbia University students who set up a protest encampment on campus is worth a post about a bit of history.

Just shy of 56 years ago I entered the service under the Berry Plan as an Air Force doctor.

After serving as an army doc for two years in ’68 – ’70, a time when we had 500,000 troops in Vietnam, I left with little respect for its leadership. I was stateside at Fitzsimons General Hospital, one of the Army’s premier hospitals, which was a plum assignment (because the army was very short of neurologists). This meant that 2 year docs who’d served their first year in Vietnam got their choice of assignment when returning stateside. So I saw plenty of them and  NOT ONE thought we were winning over there, despite what the top brass said to the press and the president.

So who would have thought that 33 years later I’d be friendly with and respect a retired Major General, George Baker. Never say never. He was a very intelligent man, an orthopedic surgeon, who’d been chief at Walter Reed and found retirement boring, so he practiced at my hospital. He told me about something he called charm school. It was where officers newly promoted to  General  rank were sent for training. They were told to toe the straight and narrow sexually and in other matters, and that if a planeload of them went down, the army would have no trouble at all filling their shoes.

Why should future protestors hear about this? Because, according to the net, Columbia accepts under one in 25 applicants and Google accepts around one in five hundred (look it up).  They are not so wonderful that they can’t be easily replaced with people of comparable quality.

Efforts to Disqualify Trump Uphold Democracy

No, the Onion hasn’t taken over the opinion page of the New York Times.   Nor was this written by the ghost of George Orwell, or Ali Khamenei the current  ‘supreme leader’ of Iran who chooses who may run for office and who may not.  It was written by Mark A. Graber, a constitutional scholar and university professor in Maryland, proving yet again that only someone of high intelligence could defend something so stupid.  But as Marshall McLuhan said ‘the medium is the message’, and the fact that the Times chose to publish it is significant. Nothing published by the Times happens by chance.  It is the American Pravda after all — https://luysii.wordpress.com/2023/11/21/reading-americas-pravda/

On to how deal with the students harassing others at Harvard, Penn, MIT etc., the answer goes back over 30 years ago to something called charm school.

After serving as an army doc for two years in ’68 – ’70, a time when we had 500,000 men in Vietnam, I left with little respect for its leadership. I was stateside at one of the Army’s premier hospitals, which was a plum assignment (because the army was very short of neurologists). This meant that 2 year docs who’d served their first year in Vietnam got their choice of assignment when returning stateside. So I saw plenty of them. NOT ONE thought we were winning over there, despite what the top brass said to the press and the president.

So who would have thought that 33 years later I’d be friendly with a retired Major General, George Baker. Never say never. He was a very intelligent man, an orthopedic surgeon, who’d been chief at Walter Reed and found retirement boring, so he practiced at my hospital. He told me about something he called charm school. It was where officers newly promoted to  General  rank were sent for training. They were told to toe the straight and narrow sexually and in other matters, and that if a planeload of them went down, the army would have no trouble at all filling their shoes.

So it is with the harassers, defacers, threateners etc. at the above schools.   Their shoes can easily be filled.  Throw them out.  There are innumerable similarly qualified candidates for admission who did not get in, who would doubtless love to transfer in with no loss to Harvard, Penn and MIT and a general improvement in comity.

Reality has intruded.  I had intended to write a post showing how closely our study of cellular physiology resembles the blind men and the elephant.  Hopefully tomorrow.  Stay tuned.  It’s fascinating.

From Banned in Boston to Banned in Berkeley in 55 years

When I arrived in Cambridge for grad school 55 years ago, there were a lot of sore shoulders in people who’d been patting themselves on the back for the blows struck for freedom of expression. Boston was still banning books, and the year before Grove Press had won a suit permitting them to publish Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Hilariously, the same self congratulatory and self-righteous lot is now banning speech in a campus near you. The impetus is always the same, thought control by someone more moral (and now smarter) than you, and always for the noblest and purest of reasons. What happened to irony? Where is George Orwell when you really need him? Well he’s right here

“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”

Which brings me to some recent campus disturbances.

Smith, where only members of the media agreeing with the demonstrators were allowed in — http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2015/11/your_comments_readers_respond_19.html#incart_river_index

U. Mass — protesting for free tuition — https://news.vice.com/article/million-student-march-wants-free-college-education-and-debt-forgiveness

Princeton — wanting Woodrow Wilson out because of his opinions — http://www.nj.com/mercer/index.ssf/2015/11/after_protests_students_still_have_work_to_do_to_s.html

Which brings me to ‘charm school”.

After serving as an army doc for two years in ’68 – ’70, a time when we had 500,000 men in Vietnam, I left with little respect for its leadership. I was stateside at one of the Army’s premier hospitals, which was a plum assignment (because the army was very short of neurologists). This meant that 2 year docs who’d served their first year in Vietnam got their choice of assignment when returning stateside. So I saw plenty of them. NOT ONE thought we were winning over there, despite what the top brass said to the press and the president.

So who would have thought that 25 years later I’d be friendly with a retired Major General, George Baker. Never say never. He was a very intelligent man, an orthopedic surgeon, who’d been chief at Walter Reed and found retirement boring, so he practiced at my hospital. He told me about something he called charm school. It was where newly promoted Generals were sent for training. They were told to toe the straight and narrow sexually and in other matters, and that if a planeload of them went down, the army would have no trouble at all filling their shoes.

I’ve done some alumni interviews for some excellent candidates for Princeton, none of whom were accepted. It would be no problem at all to expel the protestors if physically disruptive or destructive, and replace them. They certainly should NOT be expelled for what they say or think, just how they act. The Princeton acceptance rate is under 10%.

Now that everyone is neatly characterized by racial status, it would be interesting to see the breakdown by race of the occupants of Nassau Hall, also their majors. I seriously doubt that the group most discriminated against in admissions (the Asians) took much part. I doubt that many science majors were involved.