Mastodawn

People, the draft is NOT back (yet). Males have had to register for the SSS for a long time now and the change is that instead of them doing it themselves, the government is automatically registering them. That's all (again, for now).

Now, I think that is itself a bad thing, but saying that the draft is back is not at all accurate.

We have enough scary shit out there, don't make it worse.

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Steve Bellovin 1d ago

@LeslieBurns @mattblaze Back when the world was young and the Vietnam War was raging, there was a lottery based on birthday during some year, assigning each person a number. There was a cut-off number for the year, and if you were eligible for the draft even one day during the year but your number was too high, you were effectively exempt. I lucked out with a high number, and so on December 31 of the appropriate year, I was on line at the main post office in Manhattan to send a certified letter to my draft board surrendering my student deferment. The clerk asked me why so many people were sending certified letters to their draft boards that day…

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Karl Auerbach

@SteveBellovin @LeslieBurns @mattblaze I had a low draft number - and mine came up. I had a minor transient, but grounds for exemption, medical condition - so I went to the UCLA medical library and learned how to make it worse, much much worse. I had the full Alice's Restaurant draft physical experience - my ears still are ringing from when the goons screamed into my face that I was lying when I could not read the lines on the eye chart. But my medical "learning" paid off when I got inspected by a doctor who did not want to be there and knew that I did not want to be there.

On the way out some guy in a uniform gave me condolences saying "now you'll never be able to join the military".

I think I went to Pinks Hot Dogs in Hollywood to celebrate.