May 19, 2010

Military Brownies: Made with / by Mind-Numbing Nuts

Reason's got an item today on How to Make Brownies, Pentagon-Style and it's chock full of the usual jibes at the gobbledy-gook that gets cooked into all these specs.

What's really numbing though is to actually bring up the 26-page PDF behind this item and reflect that somewhere there are people actually paid to sit around and write this garbage up year in and year out.

Those people are the part of the PERMANENT GOVERNMENT. They are the methadone of public service. They don't get you high. They don't get you pissed off. They just come in to their highly paid jobs with posh benefits for decades and grunt out the bullshit:

Shelled walnut pieces shall be of the small piece size classification, shall be of a light color, and shall be U.S. No. 1 of the U.S. Standards for Shelled English Walnuts. A minimum of 90 percent, by weight, of the pieces shall pass through a 4/16-inch diameter round hole screen and not more than 1 percent, by weight, shall pass through a 2/16-inch diameter round hole screen. the shelled walnuts shall be coated with an approved food grade antioxidant and shall be of the latest season's crop.

Little wonder that government sucks so badly. When you waste your life pushing that sort of crap through "a 2/16-inch diameter round hole screen" you'd want everybody to share the suck.

Posted by Vanderleun at May 19, 2010 3:00 PM
Bookmark and Share

Comments:

HOME

"It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood." -- Karl Popper N.B.: Comments are moderated and may not appear immediately. Comments that exceed the obscenity or stupidity limits will be either edited or expunged.

Not to be disagreeable, but perhaps the 26-page PDF came about because suppliers once, or several times, screwed the Pentagon (and by extension, the troops)?

Yeah, it's brownies. But think "bullets".

Overkill? Likely. Then again, U.S.Defense also has 200-plus years experience of getting f*cked over on supplies (and let's not even talk of the mother-country, Jolly Olde Englande...).

Posted by: Pappy at May 19, 2010 6:18 PM

I am with pappy - nobody in their right mind interrupts a good career of napping in the Quartermasters to start giving each supplier a detailed description of what is to be supplied. Detailing each tee-shirt down to the number of fibers per thread and the number of threads per square inch of fabric, and so on.

If you do enough digging I bet you will find a report from the legate of Legion XII bitterly complaining about the quality of sandles that were just delivered - and do not get him going about the tunics!

Posted by: Mikey NTH at May 19, 2010 6:36 PM

Only they would make 1/8" complicated.

Posted by: dr kill at May 20, 2010 4:03 AM

Sorry, but I don't agree. Don't have detailed specs for anything supplied? Then sooner or later, you are going to get ripped off. This has been going on ever since formal militaries existed. The difference is that if anyone supplied substandard goods to the Roman army they would probably be introduced in rather short order to a gladius.

It doesn't just happen to the military, either. Substandard concrete supplied to building projects has a long and dishonourable history.

Posted by: Fletcher Christian at May 20, 2010 4:09 AM

Naah, I've actually seen complaints about supplies from the Romans (they dug up a bunch of papryii in Egypt, and some wooden shingle-like things in some bog near what was a fort on Hadrians wall.)

Nothing has changed. The specifications are so precise exactly because the military has got ripped off so many times. The DOD just announced this week it was recalling 44,000 helmets because they were substandard. 44,000.

Now, Gerard is correct that spreading the suck around becomes a hobby for them that has to do this stuff, but it has a point.

Posted by: Eric Blair at May 20, 2010 4:40 AM

4/16 of an inch???

What planet do they live on?

Posted by: Bruce Wayne at May 20, 2010 5:35 AM

My wife served in the Navy, and she's siding with the PDF writers. You have to have the standards, else suppliers will rip you off.

In the Civil War, shoe suppliers would put cardboard into the boots issued to troops. In the Royal Navy, shipbuilders would save on iron by driving half-spikes into the hulls. Only when you're out to sea do you find you could pull them out by hand. (All right, I got this bit from a Patrick O'Brian novel).

Posted by: Bill Peschel at May 20, 2010 7:48 AM

Now, the real question is: do they go back and check these standards? The major problem in this country is that we have a plethora of laws that nobody is taking the trouble to enforce. There's magical thinking involved that if we pass more laws, whatever the problem is will go away.

Sort of like whoever decided to let BP build their platform in the gulf without regulatory oversight. Or Congress letting the housing market bubble without restraint.

Posted by: Bill Peschel at May 20, 2010 7:50 AM

"Now, the real question is: do they go back and check these standards?"

All the DoD specifications and standards are supposed to be reviewed, updated as necessary and validated every five years. Otherwise you start to require obsolete or unobtainable items.

Posted by: Ray at May 20, 2010 12:32 PM
Post a comment:

"It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood." -- Karl Popper N.B.: Comments are moderated to combat spam and may not appear immediately. Comments that exceed the obscenity or stupidity limits will be either edited or expunged.










Remember personal info?