Offensive Senior Quotes

He’s that senior offensive lineman I told you about who’s coming off the injured reserve list. Anyway, Coach is concerned that he won’t be ready to play at full--” Mimi drops her head on the bar and starts to snore out loud. Very loud. So loud that a couple of patrons stop and stare at us. “Mimi,” I say in a low voice, “what the hell?” She pops her head back up and rubs her eyes as if she just woke up from a catnap. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry, Katy. I was just so bored I fell right to sleep while you were talking about sports. Again. For like the millionth time.

As I was editing this chapter, a survey of more than thirty-five hundred Australian surgeons revealed a culture rife with bullying, discrimination, and sexual harassment, against women especially (although men weren’t untouched either). To give you a flavor of professional life as a woman in this field, female trainees and junior surgeons “reported feeling obliged to give their supervisors sexual favours to keep their jobs”; endured flagrantly illegal hostility toward the notion of combining career with motherhood; contended with “boys’ clubs”; and experienced entrenched sexism at all levels and “a culture of fear and reprisal, with known bullies in senior positions seen as untouchable.”68 I came back to this chapter on the very day that news broke in the state of Victoria, Australia, where I live, of a Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission report revealing that sexual discrimination and harassment is also shockingly prevalent in the Victorian Police, which unlawfully failed to provide an equal and safe working environment.69 I understand that attempts to identify the psychological factors that underlie sex inequalities in the workplace are well-meaning. And, of course, we shouldn’t shy away from naming (supposedly) politically unpalatable causes of those inequalities. But when you consider the women who enter and persist in highly competitive and risky occupations like surgery and policing—despite the odds stacked against them by largely unfettered sex discrimination and harassment—casual scholarly suggestions that women are relatively few in number, particularly in the higher echelons, because they’re less geared to compete in the workplace, start to seem almost offensive. Testosterone

What Hurts the People There are five things that hurt the people: There are local officials who use public office for personal benefit, taking improper advantage of their authority, holding weapons in one hand and people’s livelihood in the other, corrupting their offices, and bleeding the people. There are cases where serious offenses are given light penalties; there is inequality before the law, and the innocent are subjected to punishment, even execution. Sometimes serious crimes are pardoned, the strong are supported, and the weak are oppressed. Harsh penalties are applied, unjustly torturing people to get at facts. Sometimes there are officials who condone crime and vice, punishing those who protest against this, cutting off the avenues of appeal and hiding the truth, plundering and ruining lives, unjust and arbitrary. Sometimes there are senior officials who repeatedly change department heads so as to monopolize the government administration, favoring their friends and relatives while treating those they dislike with unjust harshness, oppressive in their actions, prejudiced and unruly. They also use taxation to reap profit, enriching themselves and their families by exactions and fraud. Sometimes local officials extensively tailor awards and fines, welfare projects, and general expenditures, arbitrarily determining prices and measures, with the result that people lose their jobs. These five things are harmful to the people, and anyone who does any of these should be dismissed from office.

The Finnish government never deluded itself that the nation could inflict absolute defeat on the Russians: it aspired only to make the price of fulfilling Stalin’s ambitions unacceptably high. This strategy was doomed, however, against an enemy indifferent to human sacrifice. Stalin’s response to the setbacks, indeed humiliations, of the December offensive was to replace failed senior officers—one divisional commander was shot and another spent the rest of the war in the gulag—and to commit massive reinforcements.

Because the drug war has been waged almost exclusively in poor communities of color, when drug offenders are released, they are generally returned to racially segregated ghetto communities--the places they call home. In many cities, the re-entry phenomenon is highly concentrated in a small number of neighborhoods. According to one study, during a twelve-year period, the number of prisoners returning home to "core counties"--those counties that contain the inner city of a metropolitan area--tripled. The effects are felt throughout the United States. In interviews with one hundred residents of two Tallahassee, Florida communities, researchers found that nearly every one of them had experienced or expected to experience the return of a family member from prison. Similarly, a survey of families living in the Robert Taylor Homes in Chicago found that the majority of residents either had a family member in prison or expected one to return from prison within the next two years. Fully 70 percent of men between the ages of eighteen and forty-five in the impoverished and overwhelmingly black North Lawndale neighborhood on Chicago's West Side are ex-offenders, saddled for life with a criminal record. The majority (60 percent) were incarcerated for drug offenses. These neighborhoods are a minefield for parolees, for a standard condition of parole is a promise not to associate with felons. As Paula Wolff, a senior executive at Chicago Metropolis 2020 observes, in these ghetto neighborhoods, "It is hard for a parolee to walk to the corner store to get a carton of milk without being subject to a parole violation.

Bomber Command was very well served by its aircrew, and with a few exceptions very badly served by its senior officers, in the Second World War.The gulf between the realities in the sky and the rural routine of headquarters was too great for most of the staff to bridge...senior officers were unwilling to face unacceptable realities...Surviving aircrew often feel deeply betrayed by criticism of the strategic air offensive.It is disgraceful that they were never awarded a Campaign Medal after surviving the extraordinary battle that they fought for so long against such odds,and in which so many of them died.One night after I visited a much-decorated pilot in the north of England in the course of writing this book, he rove me to the station...A teacher by profession, he thought nothing of the war for years afterwards.Then a younger generation of his colleagues began to ask with repetitive, inquisitive distaste:'...How could you have flown over Germany night after night to bomb women and children?'...more than thirty years after, his memories of war haunt him.It is wrong that it should be so.He was a brave man who achieved an outstanding record in the RAF.The aircrew...went out to do what they were told had to be done for the survival of Britain and for Allied victory.Historic judgements on the bomber offensive can do nothing to mar the honor of such an epitaph.

Fully 70 percent of men between the ages of eighteen and forty-five in the impoverished and overwhelmingly black North Lawndale neighborhood on Chicago’s West Side are saddled for life with a criminal record.45 The majority (60 percent) were incarcerated for drug offenses.46 These neighborhoods are a minefield for people on parole, for a standard condition of parole is a promise not to associate with anyone who has a felony conviction. As Paula Wolff, a senior executive at Chicago Metropolis 2020 observes, in these ghetto neighborhoods, “It is hard for a parolee to walk to the corner store to get a carton of milk without being subject to a parole violation.”47

sandy-haired, friendly, smiling, small-town attorney of Pennington, had been born in 1950 in a roach-infested Newark slum. His father had been a construction worker fully employed through World War II and Korea creating new factories, dockyards and government offices along the Jersey Shore. But with the ending of the Korean War, work had dried up. Cal was five when his mother walked out of the loveless union and left the boy to be raised by his father. The latter was a hard man, quick with his fists, the only law on many blue-collar jobs. But he was not a bad man and tried to live by the straight and narrow, and to raise his toddler son to love Old Glory, the Constitution and Joe DiMaggio. Within two years, Dexter Senior had acquired a trailer home so that he could move where the work was available. And that was how the boy was raised, moving from construction site to site, attending whichever school would take him, and then moving on. It was the age of Elvis Presley, Del Shannon, Roy Orbison and the Beatles, over from a country Cal had never heard of. It was also the age of Kennedy, the Cold War and Vietnam. His formal education was fractured to the point of near nonexistence, but he became wise in other ways: streetwise, fight-wise. Like his departed mother, he did not grow tall, topping out at five feet eight inches. Nor was he heavy and muscular like his father, but his lean frame packed fearsome stamina and his fists a killer punch. By seventeen, it looked as if his life would follow that of his father, shoveling dirt or driving a dump truck on building sites. Unless . . . In January 1968 he turned eighteen, and the Vietcong launched the Têt Offensive. He was watching TV in a bar in Camden. There was a documentary telling him about recruitment. It mentioned that if you shaped up, the Army would give you an education. The next day, he walked into the U.S. Army office in Camden and signed on. The master sergeant was bored. He spent his life listening to youths doing everything in their power to get out of going to Vietnam. “I want to volunteer,” said the youth in front of him. The master sergeant drew a form toward him, keeping eye contact like a ferret that does not want the rabbit to get away. Trying to be kindly, he suggested

It was over 50 years ago that I had the privilege of being the Class Advisor to the class of 1969 at what was then called Henry Abbott Regional Vocational Technical School. It was another era and a time when we as a nation stood tall. It was the year when Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong and Michael Collins lifted off from Cape Kennedy, for the first manned landing on the Moon. “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” It was a time when we felt proud to be Americans! Fifty years ago the 4 Beatles got together in a recording studio for the last time, where they cut “Abbey Road.” In 1969 alone they published 13 songs including “Yellow Submarine.” John Lennon claimed that the best song he ever did was “Come Together” and that was in 1969. Although it wasn’t possible for me to attend the class reunion I did however connect with them by telephone and a speaker system. I had the opportunity to wish them well and share some thoughts with my former students who are now looking forward to their senior years that I always thought of as “The Youth of Old Age.” Having just celebrated my 85th birthday, 69 years old does seem quite youthful in comparison. Earlier in the week Dave Coelho, the class Vice President read to me the list of graduates that are no longer with us. I was stunned by the number, but at the time the United States was at war, regardless of what it was called. In 1968, the year before the class graduated, our country had a peak of 549,000 of our young people serving in Viet Nam. During the year of the Tet Offensive alone, 543 were killed and 2547 were wounded, and that is what the class of 1969 faced upon their graduation! It was a war in which 57,939 of our young people were killed or went missing! It was nice to talk to the class president LaBarbera and I enjoyed the feeling of guilt when one former student told me that he still has a problem with addition. To this I gladly accepted the blame but reminded him that this would not be of much help, if he had to face the IRS when his taxes didn’t compute. Look for part 2, the conclusion

But for every student who fought back there were several more who lived in loneliness or fear. Said one student from the era, “I can remember my first day at RVA, scared, intimidated…being put into the ‘hatchery’ with twenty-four other girls in bunk beds, never accepted but trying to get attention. It was all a bad scene and never got better. No one tried to help me”. Yet it was not the emotional stress or lack of sufficient adult mentors that inspired the greatest vitriol from parents. What triggered the most urgent letters was the appearance of worldy rebellion…ven in the darkest hour, when perhaps one-fourth of the senior class was experimenting with drugs, the vast majority of the school’s students were not using drugs or having sex, let alone dancing or indulging in any of the cosmetic misdemeanors that were so offensive to some within the missionary community. p159

In an age of dynamic malware obfuscation through operations such as mutating hash, a hyper-evolving threat landscape, and technologically next generation adversaries, offensive campaigns have an overwhelming advantage over defensive strategies.

What had happened was that the German army had deep misgivings about the western offensive, afraid that success would go to Hitler’s head, as indeed it did, and the failed British offensive had made them nervous. Hitler in particular was worried about whether his tanks would manage to get through the marshy ground to the west of Dunkirk. He was also nervous at the prospect of Gamelin’s inevitable counterattack from the south east. But his senior military advisers were divided about what to do. There were angry meetings at Hitler’s military OKH headquarters, the operational command of the army.  There is some evidence to suggest that Hitler was reluctant to destroy the British, believing that the British empire – like the Roman Catholic church – was one of the pillars which held up the world (his favourite film was Lives of a Bengal Lancer). The controversial stop order was to have enormous implications, preventing Guderian from winning the war that week – it could be said to have been Hitler’s fatal strategic error.

The inmates of Colditz might have lost their freedom but they knew their legal rights, and so did the Germans. The paramilitary SS operated the concentration camps with an inhuman disregard for international law, but in the army-run POW camps most senior German officers saw it as a matter of soldierly pride to uphold the Convention, and took offense at any suggestion they were failing to do so.

Now I sit me down in school Where praying is against the rule For this great nation under God Finds mention of Him very odd. If Scripture now the class recites, It violates the Bill of Rights. And anytime my head I bow Becomes a federal matter now. Our hair can be purple, orange, or green, That’s no offense; it’s a freedom scene. The law is specific, the law is precise. Prayers spoken aloud are a serious vice. For praying in a public hall Might offend someone with no faith at all. In silence alone we must meditate, God’s name is prohibited by the state. We’re allowed to cuss and dress like freaks, And pierce our noses, tongues, and cheeks. They’ve outlawed guns, but FIRST the Bible. To quote the Good Book makes me liable. We can elect a pregnant Senior Queen, And the unwed daddy, our Senior King. It’s “inappropriate” to teach right from wrong, We’re taught that such “judgments” do not belong. We can get our condoms and birth controls, Study witchcraft, vampires, and totem poles. But the Ten Commandments are not allowed, No Word of God must reach this crowd. It’s scary here I must confess, When chaos reigns the school’s a mess. So, Lord, this silent plea I make: Should I be shot; my soul please take! Amen