To help celebrate your Dependence Day, this exciting news from our boys—and girls!—and its!—in blue: “The new Air Force fitness test will feature walking instead of running and modified push-ups“.
Wait. Don’t laugh yet. For this new program has a name:
“The service is experimenting with a ‘choose your own adventure’ physical fitness test.”
Choose your own adventure! Weeeeeee!
And for the final portion of the test airmen would be allowed to choose between push-ups and raised-hand push-ups.
Instead of going up and down like a traditional push-up, the raised hand push-ups allow airmen to alternate lifting their hands up while in the push-up ready position, said Lt. Gen. Brian Kelly, the deputy chief of staff for manpower, personnel and services at Air Force headquarters…
When I was in, back in the 80s, the girls—there were at that time no its—were allowed to do push-ups from their knees. Appropriate enough, I suppose. This was called “Equality.”
Now nobody need to anything but walk and raise a hand. Don’t diss the walk! Because “some airmen made the interesting observation that the walking test may be more tricky than it sounds.” Indeed. Knowing just where to place your feet while moving forward is not always obvious.
Anyway—AHEM:
The problem was that the females were still failing the new lowered standards. As of this date, the Army has not announced what they will do about it, but we can make a prediction.
The new lowered standards won’t be lowered again. They’ll be eliminated. Besides having the ability to breathe, possessing a majority of their limbs, and not being too old, there will soon be no bar to entering the armed forces. Consider they have already eliminated the sanity requirement.
It will be announced that, with today’s advancements in ability to kill foreigners remotely by drones, physical fitness isn’t that important.
The AF’s new standard doesn’t quite count as pure elimination, but I’m awarding myself the win anyway.
Now from Kip Hansen comes this new novel: Harrison Bergeron—In Space!
Or “New NASA radiation standards for astronauts seen as leveling field for women”.
A blue-ribbon panel has endorsed NASA’s plans to revise its standard for exposing astronauts to radiation in a way that would allow women to spend more time in space.
A report by the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine released on 24 June encourages NASA to proceed with its plans to adopt a new standard that limits all astronauts to 600 millisieverts of radiation over their career. The current limit is the amount of radiation that correlates with a 3% increase in the risk of dying from a cancer caused by radiation exposure—a standard that favored men and older astronauts whose cancer risk from radiation was lower. The proposed standard would limit all astronauts to the allowable dosage for a 35-year-old woman.
The changes are in line with current data and puts women on an equal footing, says Hedvig Hricak, a radiologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and chair of the committee that wrote the report. “There’s no evidence for significant gender difference in the radiation exposure, and associated risk of cancer,” she says.
The new standard comes as NASA gears up for renewed exploration of the Moon and, eventually, a mission to Mars. The change should remove gender from the list of factors used to decide who gets chosen for those missions, says Paul Locke, an environmental health expert at Johns Hopkins University who was not on the committee. “Women will not be penalized because they are, under the old model, at higher risk,” he says.
Equality is the mind killer. Women, being smaller, are at more risk of radiation-induced cancer than men. Yet this cannot be, because Equality demands women are the same as men.
Therefore, Reality is exorcised, and men are made the equal of women. It’s Science!
I’ve repeated the Equity mantra so many times we’re sick of hearing it, but for posterity, here it is once more.
A “disparity” is noted in some outcome produced by some standard. The standard is then eliminated, with those eliminating it saying they aren’t doing it. Then they say it was never really needed. Then a new “disparity” is discovered, and we continue the long slide into Hell.
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[Using a lot of sarcasm] — That is very fine, when the Chinese and others kill your drone programs remotely with an EMP or a computer-virus (hopefully not a corona virus made in Seattle) and then it is up to your armed forces filled with young ladies and obese men to fight battle-fit and -hardened PLA, Navy, Air Force and Special Forces and what not. I am sure the Green Berets and the Seals are all looking forward to a time when they can welcome such unfit companions that will get them KIA. Good luck! In the meantime, if you don’t mind, could you send us the old-fashioned personell plus equipment you don’t want anymore to us in Europe, we may have to use them very soon…
The Ukrainians had women marching in uniform in high heels. We shall not die alone in this……
Anyone remember what “militias” are? No? We are sooo dead.
Just to be contrary, I mean, it’s the Air Force, it’s mostly technical skills for most specialties at this point isn’t it? There are battlefield airmen who will have to take a fittingly more strenuous test, but I mean NASA puts people in air and space with no fitness testing except for the astronauts; putting war planes in the air, how different is it?
Again, the airmen at the pointy end of the spear will still have real fitness, the primary concern is are you strong enough to handle the stress of your job under pressure. If you can make the avionics software work, what do push ups have to do with anything? Why one size fits all?
Or to take it another direction, if air base defense is your concern (and in this day and age if you’ve already lost air superiority and if they’ve already blown through the army and security forces, well) why not at least go back to some of the old pre 1980 fitness tests that were based on battlefield tasks, like short sprints and grenade throwing? Why is the USAF wedded to a 1.5 mile run and sit ups anyway?
What’s a fitness test for? What problem are we trying to solve? I think the answer has got to be based on the mission. Air Force isn’t infantry-like mostly (CCs, PJs, SFs, etc. aside) and “toughness” is all well and good, but it’s meaningless without the actual skills and organization. If toughness was all it took, the Zulus would have beaten back the British and the Roman Empire would have never conquered Gaul.
No doubt Cheetos, Cheese-Whizz, Twinkies and Mountain Dew will become standard combat rations.
Just to be contrary, I mean, it’s the Air Force, it’s mostly technical skills for most specialties at this point isn’t it?
No. The Air Force still involves a lot of heavy, dangerous, complicated equipment. A female friend joined the AF and became a flight line mechanic. She had to take early medical discharge because lifting and moving all the heavy equipment involved ruined her shoulders and knees.
Men compete with men to win.
Women should try to excel as women within their own sphere, not merely as watered-down men.
Competition to beat men at their own game creates conflict.
In marriage, it often leads to keeping score & divorce.
In the military, how can this possibly build unit cohesion?
Lowering standards to accommodate failure is…failure.
@GreenHoyos
I am not quite sure how an obese female with heart resting rate of 85 is going to pull 9g in a fighter jet maneuver…
The Air Force isn’t ours — it’s theirs, they conquered it, along with the other military branches. They consider us non-revolutionists to be their main enemy. The mission of their armed forces is to foment unjust wars and to crush us. So when they work to debilitate their own armed forces all I can say is; never interrupt your enemy when he’s making a mistake. Non-revolutionary Americans need to get the hell out of the Satanic Armed Farces of Woke America.
Cloudy,
The Air Force still involves a lot of heavy, dangerous, complicated equipment. A female friend joined the AF and became a flight line mechanic
Then there should be fitness tests specific to those tasks. How physically fit does a drone pilot or satellite flight controller need to be?
BTW heavy I can see but what does dangerous and complicated have anything to do with physical fitness?
Sheri, guessing you never saw Kill Bill I & II or Catwoman 🙂
Kenan Meyer,
not quite sure how an obese female with heart resting rate of 85 is going to pull 9g in a fighter jet maneuver
The same way men do it — with a g-suit. The real issue with high G is your extremities get heavier and blood tends to flow from your head. Heavy extremities aren’t much of a problem when operating a stick or throttle. I’ve been in 6g aerobatics and I don’t consider myself particularly fit — just feels weird.
Most of the physical requirements for fighter pilots are to whittle down the otherwise large number of applicants. Similar in purpose to the initial NASA requirements for mission specialists: PhD and 5000 hours of jet time which had little bearing on the task.
It’s nice to know that the radiation in space, like the covid virus, will obey all the arbitrary parameters set by our leaders.
Space Force had a good run.
DAV
What do three movies attempting to demonstrate unreality have to do with reality?
Weak, unfit people attempting to replace losses or to serve as augmentations during emergencies are still weak and unfit. The weak and unfit also compete for increasingly fewer spots heading up the promotion ladder, inevitably with some sort of quota system to ensure even the weak and unfit get promoted: equity! And the weak and unfit need more medical care in a military medical system increasingly under-funded to save money.
Nah. The military needs 100% strong and fit if it is to compete and win against strong and fit foes.
They’ve never come up with a good solution for the space radiation issue, and this is just wallpapering over the cracks. Interplanetary space is a hotter than cislunar space which, itself, is hotter than ISS altitudes. The real danger of this rationalization is that it could pressure reductions in industrial standards to unsafe levels, especially for women of childbearing age.
SideOfRight,
What do three movies attempting to demonstrate unreality have to do with reality?
Absolutely nothing. Why do you ask?
@SideOfRight not to speak for DAV but the three movies was a joke, hence the smiley face.
And yeah, if we’re talking augmentees to a ground combat unit, sure. But if you’re using the same people who keep your F-15s and drones flying as grunts you’re either making a huge mistake or you’ve lost air superiority and you are in a huge, huge mess.
The question is strong enough for what and fit enough for what? No one is saying it’s not important, just that where it sits in the list of priorities might benefit from a better solution than one size fits all.
Interestingly enough even the Russians and their dedovschina system (notoriously cruel, resulting in countless needless deaths), know better than to do that to people with skills. Whether it’s computer skills, language skills, etc., that’s how smart young men in Russia avoid the brutality, by being useful in ways other men are not. Now this is an extreme example but there’s kind of a principle here that might be useful.
I mean I understand where this is coming from, it looks like another attempt to lower standards to justify pumping numbers, but somebody can accidentally do something right, a broken clock situation.
Even so, nobody is saying get rid of fitness, just prioritize and tailor it based on the mission requirements. Shoot even in jobs where fitness is required, if I’m going to get rescued by a PJ I care a lot more about his ability to find me, fix me, and get me to safety than his push up numbers (perhaps a test involving a fireman’s carry over distance, etc.). Now if I’ve got a cryptoanalyst who can provide key intelligence, I really don’t care what his run time is.
GreenHoyos,
Yes the movie references were meant as a joke.
Agree with what you said but there is a case for fighter pilot fitness. They might get shot down and need to fight their way back. Even there cunning is more important than physical strength.
As spaceranger said – space is a very dangerous and shitty place, because as God said, only the Earth was made to support life, the rest of the universe is there to serve it.
NASA etc. all know this. Going to Mars is a pipe dream that is not worth the investment until its cheap enough to afford as a publicity stunt.
There is never going to be an actual Mars mission, because the chances are high that the crew might go insane cooped up on a spaceship travelling through radiated darkness before they even get there, if they are lucky to get there at all. Most people can’t stand being on a commercial airplane longer than 14 hours. Mars isn’t going to be a moon mission.
Also as the radiation issue bring up, there are reason we didn’t bothet going back to the moon, whuch some argue we never went there at all, and it has to do with our technology surviving in space. Fireing off well shielded probes and satellites here and there is all fine and dandy. But we may have outengineered ourselves from improving our comfort of space travel outside of the Earth’s atmosphere. Your microchips and intricate electronics you enjoy here are vulnerable in space. And keeping the radiation from frying them requires quite literally a lot on concrete. So those old school rotary phones and tube computers have a better chance in deep space than your Apple phone or iPad. What we manufacture here on Earth isn’t viable in space. This serves an interesting dilemma in that we’d probably have to regress technologically to survive out there. At least that’s how I’ve heard it. So if that isn’t solved then nobody’s going anywhere that isn’t at best a robot.
So this is all theater. Because there isn’t going to be any actual serious Mars mission, at least not optimistically for another 50 years when they might consider it again, there’s currently no reason for keeping around any serious candidates except as an ongoing PR exercise. The ‘Mars Mission Crew’ will be a Reality Television game show with a rotating cast of colourful candidates where people can cheer the first openly transgender non binary astronaut who at best will only get as far as the ISS. No , not the one up there, the training replica modules they keep down here, maybe with VR goggles.
Just like any good corp virtue signalling I suspect that behind the scenes nothing actually changes. The unfit will get their own spevial unit for propaganda purposes. They will serve no other actual purpose. So much like many other woke positions at companies these roles are largely ceremonial.
When I was in kindergarten 40 years ago there was a girl wearing a t-shirt that said “whatever boys can do, girls can do better.” It was an obvious untruth and I complained to the teacher. I could run faster than the girls, I was better at catching a ball then the girls, and I didn’t cry when I got hurt. How were the girls better than I am? I even complained that it was a lie and lying was wrong (back then).
It appears that the answer is the same now as it was back then: ignore anyone that complains and change the logic by which reality is judged.
Funny enough, I was such a precocious young boy that the kindergarten teacher used me in a paper for her masters studies. Why? Was Colleen maybe NOT better than me, a boy? lolz.
Johnno,
I assume you mean human life, as there are numerous planets in our own solar system that could support microbial life, hence our having to sterilize space probes. If you did, then it’s almost certain that there are planets out there which are more hospitable to human life than the Earth is. After all, 70% of the Earth is covered in salt water oceans which we can’t live in (or drink), so an Earthlike planet with only 10% less ocean would already be better suited to human life. If you add in all the other places on Earth we can’t live without verying degrees of technological support, such as high mountains, deserts, swamps, the poles, lakes, and so on, and all the places inhabited by dangerous wild animals and disease-carrying insects, there must be many planets which are better suited. We can’t even survive the Earth’s average temperature (around 15 degrees C) without clothes, so I don’t call that “made to support us”.
A mission to Mars would take about six months, and there have already been many astronauts on the ISS longer than that, without anyone going insane. Also, maybe you were being poetic, but it wouldn’t be dark on route – there’d be more daylight than we get here on Earth (it being dark half the time is another suboptimal thing about the Earth I could have mentioned above!).
I like to think those training in our military are more physically fit than I am at 65 years of age. It appears my thought isn’t shared by those that lead the military. I’m guessing they think their gizmos will work in the future, like they never did in the past. Considering this post, the Air Force special forces will have little to choose from recruits.
The second article is a masterful work of contradiction. We are told that this is to allow women to stay in space longer. Yet nothing in the new policy allows women to stay in space longer, it only prohibits men from staying in space longer. It is said that the policy of basing duration on individual risk was unfair to women because men had lower risks, and then says that there is no difference in risks between men and women. It is said that the change will remove “gender” as a consideration for who is placed on missions, since everyone now has the same restrictions. But then it says that we need to consider all factors for each individual before determining who can go on missions.
It’s like the article writer is desperately trying to include some background information even though he knows that what he must write is “Women are in no way different from men, except perhaps in being superior to them.”
No swordfish, I meant life, period. Yes it’s very nice that you can find creatures here – on Earth – that can live in certain limited environments and conditions inhospitable to human beings. Like, oh… the bottom of the ocean. But likewise those same things wouldn’t last on the surface either. And there are certain things on Earth, areas of intense heat or poisonous gas leaking from the ground that would destroy anything, and even the insects know to get the heck out of there when a human would drop dead before even realizing something is wrong.
But your main point is that you’re hoping somewhere out there there is something. But neither you nor I can emperically demonstrate that. But the observable evidence is thus far not in your favor.
So if you manage to discover life elsewhere that spontaneously sprang up that isn’t here, do let me know. But we’re here, the Earth is supporting us, and I’m pretty sure you agree that we certainly didn’t build it, and we also happen to have sufficient intelligence to even make useful things out of it. I’m sure to you that’s all a big coincidence, but you’re not impressing anyone by declaring that because a certain % of the area presents an obstacle and there aren’t even any government signs warning us to beware of salt water, that therefore Earth is just as uninhabitable as Mars or the moon where we may one day set up an astronaut tent and a water filter on 0.0000…….1% of area and consider it just as good as Earth, therefore Earth is nothing special.
Also the ISS is very close by, relatively, and has a very nice view and almost real time contact, food supply, has operated normally gor decades and has a stronger possibility of aid if something should go wrong, which is far more psychologically reassurring, and it also helps that they are staffed by those we consider ‘the best of the best’ who didn’t get a pass thanks to lowered standards.
Much like sailors who spent many months at sea, and looking back at the past, even there out in our oceans, people did go mad, and mutinies did happen. Of course there were convenient solutions to that too, such as throwing them overboard. That sort of danger tends to present itself in uncharted waters versus navigating established routes. Which occurs due to the uncertainty of it all.
All these are factors. So if you do want to go to Mars, that alone is a good reason not to lower standards and to want to weed out the potentially unhinged people, the sort that’d go bonkers the minute something small goes wrong. That is certainly not most people. And is a a quality usually found in greater capacity in men, who’ve been at it throughout history. And even then, not all men.
Nobody 100s of years ago would trust expensive expeditions and vessels to complete quacks to discover any new worlds. Whatever woke history professors are teaching about these men of those times who accomplished these things, they were the best standards of their days. The likes of which are in increasingly short supply.
Loved the Kindergarten story!!! Seventy plus years ago, I was in first grade.
Also, the word “gender” has been appropriated for incorrect usage by the “woke” people, as they like to call themselves.
The word “gender” is a grammatical term for language, which identifies nouns as either masculine or feminine.
Biological sex is the actual term description for differentiating male and female of the human species, though one can use the terms masculine and feminine as adjectives so as to qualify attributes of one’s biological sex.
God bless, C-Marie
C-Marie, you are a beacon of clarity.
It is a pleasure to find something of Mr. Swordfish Trombone’s with which I can agree — his optimism for space exploration. At this time the difficulties seem overwhelming, but who knows what new possibilities in overcoming the seemingly vast distances may arise? Isn’t it possible God made this vast universe for us to explore? He made this earth for us to explore, and we had little idea of its full extant until developing the means to discover it. We tend to get overwhelmed with the dramas of our age. Who would have thought, in 1349 with the Black Covid ravaging Europe, that there was a New World waiting for us just over the storm-tossed horizon? Of course, wherever we go, there we are. But who’s to say we might not throttle this snake at our our throats, and, for a while, find ourselves enjoying a — dare I say, a Renaissance — in space? Why did God make this vast universe? And why did he make us? We should explore that. Beam me out, Scottie.
Okay, as a Vietnam veteran usmc 68-69, I will say that when in the 60s us volunteers were wanting war and to kill the enemy, not so much for draftees. I really never saw a bam, look it up, once. The level of daily beatings and humiliations for boots was through the roof, by the time boot camp was over all you wanted to do was kill someone. Its’ like a different universe existed then compared to today. Physical training was through the roof, never ending. Many washed out or could not take the pressure. Today the military is a jobs program and social experiment. When in the Roman Empire the military lost its discipline and cohesion that was the eventual end of the empire, the old ways were lost and could not return.
I do not know why God made the Universe, but I do know that He made us to know Him so that we could have full confidence in Him, to receive His Love so that we could love Him and each other, and to receive His gifts so that we could serve Him, and so that we could be His forever in Eternity with Him.
Choice time for many ……
God bless, C-Marie
Johnno,
No, my main point was that there’s no evidence that (only) the Earth was designed for life, as you claimed, as it’s almost certain (especially if you meant *any* life) that there are planets better suited to support life. But I agree that there’s no evidence that life exists anywhere other than the Earth, nor do I expect any to be discovered during my lifetime, as if it exists at all, it’s probably too distant for us to detect it.
I agree, but the Earth wasn’t designed for us. We, like all life, have evolved to suit the Earth, not the other way round.
I Worked fo the air force for a while.
Fast jet pilots require only to be of the right stature and of a basic standard of fitness.
It is their reaction time which is key.
Instead of mountain…………….tree…………lake, it’s moutainVillageLake, and they have to take all the information in. Those good at computer games often do well. Excellent vision is essential. I notice when skiing and now, when walking, that I have to slow down as the information’s not coming in quick enough to process.
Helicopter pilots boast that they have to be cleverer but they are invariably quite tall. Therefore no good in a fast jet for the reasons Dav said. The height distance from their feet to their head means they cannot withstand the forces. So there’s a competition between the two groups.
It is entirely possible that women being shorter might make the grade.
Where I worked there were none but loads of women in logistics, accounts other admin, areas of supporting air crew, medical staff of course.
It is the loaders who need to be stronger, and those moving around in the back of the craft.
Loads of neck injuries. I expect the head gear’s a lot lighter in the last few years solving most of the problems.
Basic fitness standards are set for air crew and for others as separate.
Not unreachable and nothing like the fitness required for even the basic army.
Younger men and women are inherently fit, however.
I’m think of the woman who died in the day out at the Washington building. Very sad. She looked lovely, not the type to be messed up in that kind of shinannigans.