Hummm.... how would this read and what would the outcome be if you changed the "Department of Education and NEA" to "The Office of the President & the Executive branch" - and "pray" to "participate in politics."
One of the problems I see in this whole thing is that Posada, and perhaps Miéville, make what I'll call the "Human God Creation Mistake." Which is that, being human, they are most comfy with "gods" that are much like them. I mean who wants a God that is DIFFERENT and that would require/demand that we change to be like them? Too much work. Too hard. So we create Gods/Aliens that are like us - right down to their political orientation.
WHAT is it about the word ALIEN that they do not understand???
Aliens, as in any REAL gods, will no doubt be so DIFFERENT from us that they would be beyond our accurate comprehension. If this is expressed in a single word, that word would be - ALIEN.
As for Socialism "from above" or "from below" - has there ever in history been a successful revolution without the support of some element of the current elite? Do not revolutions eat the peasants for the elevation of the new elite? (Or the preservation of the old.) As Heresiarch said in #30 above - government is not an option. So we come down to Natural Man wherein in all societies, as Orwell put it, "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." So even if there WERE such a truly bottom-up revolution, about 5 seconds after the end of the shooting, there would be an elite clawing its way to dominance.
And finally, perhaps space exploration's real appeal is that, in space, nearly everyone either gets to be Emperor, or at least part of the Imperial Court.
# 76 PJ Evans:
'If you don't have it on paper, you don't have it.' - Mom, speaking about genealogical data (before CD-ROMs)
Listen to Mom! A CDs expected life is only about 15 years. Any scratches on either side (and the label side is more fragile than the other side) and this term can decrease RADICALLY! (The silver stuff oxidizes.) Having it on CD is a convenience, not a reliable method of long term storage.
# 57 Lawrence Evans:
And what amazed me about the stuff from 1969-1994 is how much of it is simple lists of facts I thought I might someday want, and therefore typed up or photocopied or wrote down, and filed away. Because nowadays I'd just google for it, I don't feel any need to keep a hardcopy record.
Google has changed the way I think and the way I live -- but obviously, not everyone's caught on yet.
Ummm a cautionary note here. One of my long term projects is a book set in the first half of the 1800s in New Orleans. I thought, as you say above, that I didn't really need to print off most of this stuff, but I DID print off some of the more valuable (to me) information - which turned out to be a good thing as ALL of the information has vanished from the internet, and probably from the world. Katrina ate it.
# 40 Kevin:
Can we say "vocabulary"? I think a lot of the inability to Google comes from stuntified vocabularies. People just don't know what to CALL things any more. It gets especially tricky sometimes because the people who are supposed to know, don't know the proper names of things either. And just FYI - the word "thingie" nets you 1,740,000 hits. Happy hunting!
Darwin may be right as rain
but entropy trumps him just the same.
#7 Dave Weingart
An ax in the hands of a man
would not bother me
as I'm not a tree.
A blockhead I've been called
but the caller hadn't the courtesy
to specify concrete or wood.
Should I quail at the sight
of sledge, then? Or wedge?
I am confused.
#234 JDM:
Personally, I always what kind of twit poor Charlie married - that she didn't hand him a nickel along WITH or instead of the danged sandwich. And wouldn't she have to pay a dime just to get on the platform? I liked the song - even if I've never been in Boston and am not likely to ever go there.
#220 Greg London:
I looked for a title for this legend, but can't find one. Perhaps this will do for your purpose?
http://www.crystalinks.com/greekeducation.html
"Legend has it that a young Sparta boy once stole a live fox, planning to kill it and eat it. He noticed some Spartan soldiers approaching, and hid the fox beneath his shirt. When confronted, to avoid the punishment he would receive if caught stealing, he allowed the fox to chew into his stomach rather than confess he had stolen a fox, and did not allow his face or body to express his pain."
#214 : Peter Irwin said:
"...Jerusalem. The latter is the third holiest city in Islam, for all Muslims,..."
Except the Wahabbi, I believe? Who I believe rever NO place or artifact.
#173 James D Macdonald:
Thank you VERY much for the link. I stand corrected in my belief that the cause of the Airbus shootdown was due to anything but a loose canon on the Vincennes.
This is the first time I have seen this information. What can I say but "Wow!" I have seen rats peering out from behind protective cover before, but this Rogers is good. This guy seems to me to be the kind of person that you wouldn't want to share a driveway with.
In the Counter battery segment, I note that he keeps referring to the initial investigation, yet avoids flat out denying that events as described by others (many others) were false, and in his remarks, he attempts to marginalize the vital importance of Link 11 in determining what happened.
To me, the final evidence of the probable truth in this matter is that Rogers retired as an O6. Had events transpired as presented in the original investigation, he'd have probably worn stars. Even some common incompetents and run-of-the-mill screw-ups get stars on condition of retirement to the fleet reserve. Rogers didn't.
The above is just my opinion, for what it may or may not be worth, but again - Thanks!
#162 Aconite:
I have a great deal of respect and admiration for members and former members of the SOC, as I do for any other career military folks. I come from a military family. Although not "impressive" as such things go I did my time, went where I was told to go, did what I was told to do in both the surface Navy and the Seabees.
In my family my father is a retired Seabee, a distant uncle was a Full Bird in the AF (I even met him once! ;-D), a brother is retired Army, a brother-in-law is a retired USCG CDR, and I have a son and a daughter on active duty. [The son is currently enroute to the AO under discussion, the daughter just returned from a deployment last summer and will probably be going back next year. If you're a praying person, prayers on their behalf are solicited and appreciated.]
BUT - my family history, my personal history, the military past of these folks, or the stars on someone's shoulders, none of these provide error insurance. We can all make mistakes. We can all be sincerely WRONG, which is one of the principle reasons I like to discuss things.
When it is an issue that is and could cost lives, any and every thought and viewpoint should be examined.
Well... here's the version that I read. They were there, I wasn't.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/longterm/flight801/stories/july88crash.htm
Hint: Desert One.
THAT is considered an "INVASION"??? ROTFLMBO!!! They didn't even make contact with the enemy! Intent doesn't count. To say nothing of the fact that it was a direct response to the Iranian INVASION and CAPTURE of US military, civilian, and diplomatic personnel, and classified materials at the US Embassy (sovereign US territory). Have to do better than that if you're going to say we invaded Iran. IF you want to classify it as a military response, it should be considered a "counter-attack" - not an "invasion."
148 ajay:
Iran has no nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, nor does it have any links to al-Qaeda. WMDs and links to al-Qaeda were the reasons for invading Iraq
Iran is working on nukes (the UN inspectors found weapons grade residue in their refining equipment. Our "intelligence" services are notoriously inaccurate about these things.) To answer a later statement about controlling access to nuke material - Iran has their own uranium mines. And I believe it was IRAN who gassed the village during the Iran/Iraq war, not Saddam. (But they couldn't have if "they don't have...)
No terrorists? Iran has Hezbollah. Created, financed, and trained by Iran. (Al Queda is just one group. There are many. Just because a terrorist sponsoring State has no known links to THAT PARTICULAR group, doesn't mean they aren't a terrorist sponsoring State.)
Iran and the US have committed acts of war against each other. The difference is that the US has actually attacked Iranian soil, and Iran hasn't attacked US soil. Both sides have killed each other's soldiers and civilians - the US directly, Iran generally indirectly.
And what country was responsible for the taking of the US Embassy and hostages in Tehran, (embassy grounds are sovereign Territory of the nation that operates the embassy - thus US Territory)?
In the last 30 years, the US has a) invaded Iran b) shot down Iranian airliners c) attacked Iranian warships. Iran, meanwhile, has confined itself to supporting other groups such as Hizbollah, who, very occasionally, kill an American or two.
I missed the US invasion of Iran. When did that happen? It was a Hezbollah suicide bomber that blew up that MARINE barracks and killed 220 Marines, 18 Navy personnel and 3 Army soldiers. Iranian gunboats and frigates have attacked US Navy ships on the high seas.
At the time THE (singular, not plural) Iranian airliner was shot down, US Naval forces were being engaged by Iranian Navy surface units in international waters. The primary blame for the shootdown incident rests squarely on the shoulders of the airline pilot or those who ordered him to do what he did. The airliner was not flying in established civil aviation corridors, took off from the airport and set a DIRECT COURSE for the Vincennes (CG 49), failed to answer or ID on both military and civilian emergency radio channels, had its IFF squawk turned off, and was duplicating the behavior of the Iranian air force a week earlier just before they fired anti-ship missiles at US vessels. There is a lot of information about the naval engagements that didn't make it into the newspapers, either.
Perhaps one of the things we could do with the expanded army would be to enforce our Southern border with troops. Currently the hapless National Guard is not allowed to even defend themselves, but have to run away when gun toting people come across the border from Mexico shooting at them. They have to RUN and leave the border open. Or maybe some of them could have gone to Iraq and helped to establish security after the opening phase of the war? Some of them could be sent to Central and South America to help build market roads for the people and dig wells? There is a lot of work in the world to be done. Soldiers don't have to be fighting all the time.
The surest way to avoid war is to be ready for it. The most certain way to end up at war is to appear weak and defenseless to those who would rule the world.
In #138 Fragano Ledgister wrote: "grndexter #132: What, exactly, are you suggesting that the US do re Iran?"
I'm not making suggestions. As I said, that is the question.
All the boogermen, the specters of evil that Bush raised to justify attacking Iraq are REALLY THERE in Iran. In addition, they have been, and continue to attack US Forces, kill US Citizens, and commit egregious acts of war. And they have have done so for nearly 30 years without a response from the US. Such lack of response is exactly what led Ossama to believe that we are weak and therefore an easy target, and that led DIRECTLY to the WTC's destruction.
If we consider the terrain in Iran, it's an ugly place to have to fight a war. Were we to send ground troops in there, we'd have two enemies - the Iranian fighters and the land. So should we bomb them back to the stone age to avoid the necessity of sending in troops? A country without electricity or potable water has a hard time maintaining the infrastructure to pursue war. (Yeah, yeah. Gas prices would go up. So what!)
Or is there currently REAL progress being made in Iran, politically? Were the recent elections that eliminated most of their Whack-Job Fearless Leader's support, and almost guaranteed that he'll soon be gone, enough to withhold the military card?
NK has, or says they have, nukes. But they can't deliver them reliably. Iran could deliver a nuke to anywhere in Europe, and is actively working on their missile program. Iran and the NK have a missile development agreement. What other treaties do they have between them? Perhaps a mutual defense treaty? If the US attacks Iran, does the PDRK fire a thousand (plus) artillery guns at Seoul and open a second front? (NK would get their head handed to them by the ROK army.)
DO we pre-emptively attack? DO we wait? WILL Bush wait? Or is he sending the 2nd carrier to the Persian Gulf as a goad, to provoke the Iranians into attacking it with Sunburn missiles and maybe sink it to give him the justification for a draft and to start WW IV?
And I realize that this will get me boiled in oil here - but the ONE thing I suggest at this time is that we DO reinstate the draft. Our nation's defense is too important to let politics destroy it, and the army is currently too depleted in manpower terms and equipment terms to fight a major war, or even another minor war. Both men and machines have been squandered in Iraq.
Iran is the puzzle. Will we solve it successfully? Don't know. My main hope now is that nothing happens until PERHAPS wiser, cooler heads take over in DC. Then we'll see just how intransigent Iran as a nation is, or if they and we can work something out that will save our children and their's.
Stefan Jones:
In Re the Clown - Photography lesson #8. When using a flash, be thou aware of reflective surfaces behindeth the subject that will bounceth the flash back into the lens and make thee sore angry after the film cometh back from the processor.
:-D
Have we shifted from wingnut spam and illegal immigration to Iraq? Okay.
All the talk of flowers and WMDs aside, SOME of us supported the idea of going into Iraq for other reasons. That we've historically ignored, and sometimes even supported other inhuman monsters who murder their own people by the bushel basket goes without saying, so that's wasn't really a justification either. That Saddam was a charismatic leader [by Arab lights] and had designs on the future would come closer, but it still fails the crucial test of a vital US interest imposed by the Weinberger Doctrine.
One of the MAIN reasons I was in favor of going in was to establish a strategic and tactical base of operations to stage a build-up in order to take on Iran. After all... we've been at war with them and their proxy "terror" armies for nearly 30 years now. They have been doing most of the shooting, but we've got in our licks too - such as nearly totally destroying the Iranian Navy at one point.
But before the initiation of hostilities in Iraq, or perhaps I should say, the continuation of hostilities, I had NO idea that the leadership in Washington DC was so totally inept and lacking in either the sense to listen to professional war-fighters, or the base knowledge required to realize what Albatross said, that they lacked "real understanding of what occupation and nation building would mean." (I believe that plans existed to provide for the establishment of control over civil affairs after the shooting stopped, but were ignored by the "leadership.")
It is my view that at the present time, there remain only two options. 1. Leave. NOW. or 2. Fight a holding action while the draft is re-established to build up and train US ground forces, and then PROPERLY occupy the nation and supply the currently lacking security that is needed for the establishment of civil order and self defense capabilities. (A five to ten year undertaking.)
I don't think that I could find any takers to bet that #2 will happen - especially with the near total lack of leadership now in DC in both the Congress and the Executive. Which leaves only option #1.
Then the question becomes - Iran.
Oh. My. Goodness!
I believe that out of State long distance is actually cheaper than in-state?
When we were really poor, we NEVER had pizza "delivered." We bought the cheap frozen stuff at the store.
FYI - Illegals are now using valid IDs (see "Identity Theft"). They get jobs under these IDs and work, and pay SS & medicare taxes. (Google "ICE identity theft")
And there actually IS a problem with Social Security, but it's NOT that the system is "going broke." If you're interested, I did a blog entry on the subject some time ago. go here:
http://grndexter.livejournal.com/?skip=80
and read the entry titled, "Is Social Security "Going Broke"???"
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