I have to say that World War One did in fact involve actual fighting in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and the Pacific. WW2 was more intense in some places and less in others--on the whole, "bigger". But the difference was one of degree, not kind or location.
the so-called liberal media would've either declined to cover it at all or wantonly twisted it for their own entertainment.
This speech for instance, would have been boiled down to the "simultaneously" statement and parsed as "Gore lies about history!" This would be even more likely if Gore didn't actually say it but instead it was a transcription error. I think...Majikthise? recently did a good argument on why Maureen Dowd get more flak for what she wropte about Gore 6 years ago than anything she writes about dating now.
I missed ajay's comment at first:
Midway could have won the Japanese the war if, as Pearl Harbor had failed to do, it had shaken the US enough to bring a negotiated settlement - but in strictly military terms, no, it couldn't. Would it even have lengthened the war very much? I don't know. Say it works, and the US loses all three carriers and Midway Island as well - so what? It's not as though Hawaii is going to be laid open to another Pearl Harbor attack.
What did the carriers do for the rest of the year? How long was it before more were launched?
If Midway falls, Hawaii has a serious problem, at least-- but what's missing here are the implications for Australia. If the USN can't effectively sortie into the western Pacific, I would think that the defence/recapture of New Guinea and the solomons--and from there, Australia--during 1942 becomes very problematic. Yes, Australians are tough and Australia is big, but so was China--Australia may not fall entirely, but instead of a bloody slog in New Guinea and the Solomons in 1942, you have one in Australia during 1943 and possibly 44, while vitally-needed ANZAC forces are diverted from places like Africa and Italy.
Damn, now I'm curious how this would play out in a wargame campaign.
Cryptonomicon's chapter on Pearl Harbour itself is also kind of brilliant, in that you don't realize that's what you're reading until it's well underway.
I really recommend the Wikipedia piece--I'm a military history buff and there's stuff in there that's new to me. Scholarship has been on the move since I last looked at the attack...
People don't mention [your favorite comics here] only because they haven't encountered them yet--I find I'm always discovering Webcomics that are new to me that have been around forever -- it's all good.
A wonderful piece on the Artristic History of Webcomics is new and engaging and will be of great interest to many of you, I'm sure.
But who was the genius organizer that thought putting Harlan Ellison on a stage with Gabe and Tycho was a smart idea in the first place? I can't wrap my head around that bit of preposterousness to begin with. Analogies fail me. It's like seeing Samuel Beckett getting into an argument with Ren and Stimpy over a parking space at Legoland. Not something which should exist in a sane universe.
Yes, that's true, Jakob...though now that Jim has put it in context, I can see that the real reasons may have had more to do with, say, the friggin' torture. Thank you, Jim.
I've heard rumors of the same about Canadians. I'll see if there's a link about...
The Canadians can probably get food faster to New Orleans than our government could.
not faster than your government could, but possibily faster than your goivernment will, at the rate things are going.
Anyway, our navy is on the way, and Canadian S&R crews are already on-scene. Not that this will stop the "nobody ever helps the US" idea that always gets trotted out. There's an old Vietnam era article that gets re-circulated from time to time by a [in reality long since dead] Canadian journalist wondering why Canada never helps the states...watch for it.
I wonder if they just believe their own propaganda and can't concieve of Americans who don't own a car? Certainly no one virtuous could not own a car, they would think...
...bomb the Olympics, that sort of stuff...
You know, the Olympics were around at the time of the Old Testament, so you could almost imagine a prohibition on nekkid discus slipping in there...
Although some people now have the idea that Lucas created Space Opera--a friend of mine objected to Titan A.E. on those grounds. I had to repress the urge to drop the Collected E.E. "Doc" Smith on his head.
And the slavery in Episode 1 exemplifies why it's a crummy first chapter: great trouble is taken to set it up, plot points naturally flow from it, and it's then pretty much forgotten in the following movies. It's possible to imagine a much more coherent Episode 2 that actually dealt with it head on...
sigh. It needed Han, indeed.
But Ebert loved The Phantom Menace...
Well, in all fairness, there was a lot to love. It was a gorgeous travelogue set in the Star Wars Universe. It didn't really introduce the characters or conflicts that needed to be introduced, had next to nothing to do with the next two chapters (As one review I read pointed out, it stubbornly refuses to do the things that a first chapter of anything needs to do), and was spectacularly ill concieved in the larger sense (one does not set up the creation of one of the greatest movie villains ever with what's thematically an update of the Ewok Adventure) but as a self-contained children's movie, there's a lot to like. It's a deeply flawed and frustrating movie, not an irredemably bad one. A *lot* of people chose to saw the glass as half full, so Ebert's not exactly out to lunch there, and (as best I recall) he wasn't exactly blind to the problems, either--he just enjoyed the visuals. Which is fine, for a travelogue.
I lived in Japan for three years, and while the frozen pipes and lack of a shinkansen station didn't break my spirit, the yard full of mint certainly came very close to doing so. At least I learned why Japanese gardeners use a freaking rotating saw blade on their weed-whackers...
And on the Canada front, via Canadian Cynic:
"The price of airline tickets between Canadian cities could go up if the United States implements an anti-terrorist strategy that would force domestic airlines to fly new routes far north of the American border, Transport Minister Jean Lapierre said Wednesday.
The minister said he is fighting hard to keep Washington from getting its hands on Canadian passenger lists for domestic flights that stray into U.S. airspace.
But if he fails, added Lapierre, Canadian carriers might have to take pains to avoid conventional routes that cross over northern U.S. states.
Calling it a "very hot issue," Lapierre said Washington hasn't finalized its proposed new rules but he's already lobbying to protect Canadians' privacy.
"I'm very worried about it," Lapierre said outside the Commons.
"We don't think it's a good idea that Canadians travelling from one [Canadian] city to another [Canadian city] would have to be checked under the American no-fly list."
Washington warned recently that, as an added security measure against terrorism, it intended to require that all foreign airlines passing over the U.S. check the names of passengers against American government watch lists."
...
This is, let's note, the equivalent of applying Canadian law to US flights between the lower 48 and Alaska. Madness.
And I would suggest that we seem to be seeing a lot of locking doors inside the house to boot...
It is and it isn't about surface appearance and superficialities, though. I mean, what we're really describing are the cumulative effects of innumerable tiny annoyances, inconveniences, individual stories of travellers humiliated or prevented from entering--it adds up to turning away from the world and turning the world away, a person at a time.
The US is shortly going to be requiring passports from Canadians who want to duck across the border to buy cheap groceries, see a concert in Detroit or Seattle, or whatever. Sounds trivial, right? But that represents a $75 expense to millions of people who live in the US' largest trading partner who previously only had to show everyday ID. Not that Canada-US relations are lacking for bigger irritants, but I think the point is; it's hard to reverse this kind of individual-level hostility to the traveller. It makes things personal, you know?
Well, considering how we librarians like to count Cassanova and Mao as members of the profession, I'm not sure we can disavow Laura Bush so easily. Librarianship does attract some very conservative types, even now.
Anyway, it seems clear to me why a bag of hammers would be dumb.
(Though I've heard it as "dumber than a bag of broken hammer handles", myself)
But the point is; one hammer is useful and a good thing. But a bagful? That's dumb. Overkill, heavy, full of pointy buts, impossible to carry, all of that. And two bags? Ludicrous. The metaphor works with other tools, too. Think of it: "dumb as a sack of saws" or "stupid as a jar of power drills".
So the question is, is this guy a bag of hammers? Or just a single, very nasty one?
Is the hypnagogic myoclonus also known as the "topple reflex" that Carl Sagan wrote about?
*sigh* I miss Carl.
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