Sunday, January 06, 2013

The lottery draft at New Ruskin College

Lecture Notes  :   01-04-2013


Counselor:  Were you in the military, in Vietnam?         

No I was out of that.


Counselor:  But you must have thought about it, being drafted?         

No I had a college deferment and then when that was dropped I got a high number in the lottery.


Counselor:  So you could have been drafted?
        

No I had a high number, and the war was winding down, I thought I was safe . . . but later someone told me that they didn’t call you in for your Pre Induction Medical unless they were about to induct you.


Counselor:  So you were called in for your Pre Induction Medical.
        

But I didn't know at the time that I was close to being drafted.


Counselor:  But you must have had some thoughts about the War.
         

Well I remember being shocked about one news report.


Counselor:  (Leaning forward expecting some grisly war footage.) Oh?         

It was shot at some training camp here in the US.  It showed recruits going to the bathroom in the morning.  They were all lined up and there were just three commodes.


Counselor :  (Looking disappointed.)  Yes.
        

Well there was no privacy.  You had to go right in front of the Sargent and everyone else.  Maybe if I passed the test for officer training I would have had the officers latrine.  But still . . . I didn’t realize how close I was to being drafted.

 
Counselor:  So there were privacy issues.  
         

Oh, yeah privacy issues big time.  There were no partitions or anything.   I was lucky they stopped the war just in time.  For me.  That is why I was a VISTA Volunteer for two years, . . .  because I lucked out in the draft.  It was a way to serve and . . 


Counselor:  And still have a private bathroom.
         

Yeah, exactly. After the two years I wrote a long letter to Senator S. I. Hayakawa in 1979.  The VISTA program was politicized and under control of Liberal Democrats.   Shortly after the VISTA program was defunded.

 
Counselor:  You think there is a connection?
         

Well yes, it is similar to the time I wrote to Senator Bradley pointing out that the bureaucrat in the Department of Education he had contacted regarding the use of laser disks in self paced  computer assisted education, the bureaucrat had claimed that he did not need to respond because I was not one of Senator Bradley’s constituents.  In other words Senator Bradley could only inquire on behalf of  New Jersey residents. 

 
Counselor:  So what happened?
         

The Senate instructed the bureaucracy that they are required to respond regardless of whether the correspondent is a constituent of the Senator making the inquiry or not.  


Counselor:  So you have been contacting the Senate for a long time. 

I had a little success.  They also serve who stand and wait.

PS  And I think the Iranian nuclear program should be destroyed and the regime must be overthrown.


New Ruskin College Style Manual: Many careful writers insist that the words data and media are Latin plurals and must, therefore, be used as plural words. The singular Latin forms of these words, however, are seldom used: datum as a single bit of information or medium as a single means of communication. Many authorities nowadays approve sentences like My data is lost. and The media is out to get the President. Even textbooks in computer science are beginning to use "data" as a singular. (For additional discussion contacthttp://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/plurals.htm)

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