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Henry Ford kept cutting the cost of making the model T (the famous line about "customers can have any color they want, as long as it is black" illustrated that point - it was least expensive to paint the cars black) - so then they could sell it cheaper, but still made a profit

the other "Henry Ford" story often told is how they offered a $5 daily wage (a version of the story here) - but once again, the underlying intent was to increase worker productivity and decrease employee turn-over (people hated working on the assembly line, but if you paid them enough ...)

if you could solve the "scarcity" problem (the "Star Trek" vision of the future) - then you might be able to get rid of "money", but that would also require changing basic elements of human nature

The Day Skylab Crashed to Earth: Facts About the First U.S. Space Station’s Re-Entry
July 11, 2012 By Elizabeth Hanes

On July 11, 1979, the world watched as Skylab, America’s first manned space station, hurtled toward Earth. With the massive orbiter nearing re-entry, reactions on the ground ranged from fear to celebration to commercial opportunism. On the 33rd anniversary of Skylab’s fiery return to terra firma, find out more about the causes and fallout of the crash, as well as how NASA scrambled to cope with it.

1. Skylab was made to go up but not to come back down.
The space station known as Skylab was designed as an orbiting workshop for research on scientific matters, such as the effects of prolonged weightlessness on the human body. Because the project represented the next step toward wider space exploration, NASA threw itself into successfully putting Skylab in orbit. Unfortunately, the agency spent far less time and energy planning how to gracefully bring the space station back to Earth at the end of its mission. Even though Skylab was devised for just a nine-year lifespan, NASA failed to build in any control or navigation mechanisms to return the orbiter to terra firma. Doing so would have “cost too much,” administrator Robert Frosch said at the time. This lack of preparation presented a problem in late 1978, when NASA engineers discovered the station’s orbit was decaying rapidly. Skylab had become a 77-ton loose cannon. As word spread of the impending uncontrolled crash of the space station, Congress and the public demanded to know how NASA intended to avoid human casualties from the potential disaster. NASA responded with a plan to rehabilitate the laboratory-in-the-sky. The agency would use a new tool in development—the space shuttle—to boost Skylab into a higher orbit, thereby extending the lab’s operational life by about five years. After that, the station would simply continue to orbit as a shell, like the millions of tons of floating detritus now known as space junk. Funding and other snafus delayed the shuttle project, however, so NASA had to come up with a new plan. On July 11, 1979, with Skylab rapidly descending from orbit, engineers fired the station’s booster rockets, sending it into a tumble they hoped would bring it down in the Indian Ocean. They were close. While large chunks did go into the ocean, parts of the space station also littered populated areas of western Australia. Fortunately, no one was injured.

2. In June 1979, as the crash approached, Skylab-inspired parties and products were all the rage in the United States.
The imminent crash of Skylab midway through 1979 coincided with Americans’ declining confidence in their government. The stagnant economy and a second oil crisis dropped Congress’ approval rating to just 19 percent that year. Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that many people took an irreverent view of the demise of Skylab, a government project. The Associated Press reported several instances of “Skylab parties” occurring across the United States. In St. Louis, Missouri, the “Skylab Watchers and Gourmet Diners Society” announced plans to view Skylab’s last orbit during a garden gathering at which “hard hats or similar protective headgear” were required. The Charlotte, North Carolina, News-Observer reported that a local hotel designated itself an “official Skylab crash zone (complete with painted target)” and was holding a poolside disco party. Mocking NASA’s inability to say precisely where Skylab would land, entrepreneurs across the country sold T-shirts emblazoned with large bullseyes. Another enterprising individual took a different tack and sold cans of “Skylab repellent.”

3. In Europe and Asia, fear of Skylab’s re-entry prompted unusual safety measures.
While

Oh, you know, people had their techie projects a partial list here of a few: http://www.history.com/news/hi... Even crows use technology so while it may appear I only meant apps, some of the cool stuff on just on random list of the Roman tech industry's accomplishments. Though my original post tried to cover a few areas, I guess it wasn't clear that I didn't just mean apps. You can't really actually build aqueducts though, you know, maybe some day.

Any reference to Ghandi is going to be censored on Israeli Facebook?

http://www.history.com/this-da...

That's nonsense. Immigrants have always been subject to inspections and requirements to fit societal standards. Storekeepers and others also freely practiced discrimination (Jews, Irish, Germans, Asians, etc.).

http://www.history.com/news/9-...
http://www.vox.com/policy-and-...
http://www.museumoffamilyhisto...
http://journalofethics.ama-ass...
http://cis.org/HistoryIdeologi...

I'm not saying I agree or disagree with either side on this debate. I'm saying that the setting of standards and rejecting immigrants who fail to meet those standards is well established in American history (sometimes with tragic consequences).

Looking at how everyone seems to smoke back then, I expect more solders died of smoking that any radiation issues.

In reality, smoking was not nearly as unhealthy as it is today. Big Tobacco optimized addition by poisoning smokers. Previously, smoking natural tobacco was not nearly as lethal as smoking what is in national cigarettes today, which is no longer natural tobacco.

From the US Surgeon General Report "Smoking and Health" (big pdf)

(No. 1103, page 112)
 

Death rates for current pipe smokers were little if at all higher than for non-smokers, even with men smoking 10 pipefuls per day and with men who had smoked pipes for more than 30 years.

(No. 1103, page 92)
 

Among the pipe smokers.... The US mortality ratios are 0.8 for non-inhalers and 1.0 for inhalers.

...which means pipe smokers who inhale live as long as nonsmokers, and pipe smokers that don’t inhale live longer than non-smokers.

To understand how the Big Tobacco industry started killing people, you have to understand what it is that they're selling... it isn't tobacco.
This Modern Marvels episode dispassionately makes it clear cigarettes contain no tobacco, but instead a tobacco-based paper product infused with nicotine and 300 some other chemicals in order to keep smokers addicted:
Modern Marvels 12x46
(requires registration)

here's a free clip:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBAuM1fLKRk

Regular, ordinary, honest to goodness tobacco doesn't do that. Its still not good for you, but natural tobacco is no where near as lethal as whatever the heck is in cigarettes.

George Lucas created a universe out of themes from various genres he probaby enjoyed as a child. He wanted to create a universe full of awe and spectacle. The story was the framework for presenting it. George was more artistic and wanted people to leave the theater thinking, "wow, that was cool".

I can understand why you might think that, but the answer is quite different.

The Real History That Inspired “Star Wars”

“I love history, so while the psychological basis of ‘Star Wars’ is mythological, the political and social bases are historical,” Lucas told the Boston Globe in a 2005 interview. ...

There’s nothing subtle about this historical allusion in “Star Wars.” After all, the elite assault forces fanatically devoted to the Galactic Empire share a common name with the paramilitary fighters who defended the Nazi Party—stormtroopers. The Imperial officers’ uniforms and even Darth Vader’s helmet resemble those worn by German Army members in World War II, and the gradual rise of Palpatine from chancellor to emperor mirrored Adolf Hitler’s similar political ascent from chancellor to dictator. ... The final scene of the original 1977 “Star Wars” ... echoed the massive Nazi rallies in Nuremberg captured in Leni Riefenstahl’s 1935 propaganda film “Triumph of the Will.”

Although there are parallels between Emperor Palpatine and dictators such as Hitler and Napoleon Bonaparte, the direct inspiration for the saga’s evil antagonist was actually an American president. ... when asked if Emperor Palpatine was a Jedi during a 1981 story conference, Lucas responded, “No, he was a politician. Richard M. Nixon was his name. He subverted the senate and finally took over and became an imperial guy and he was really evil. But he pretended to be a really nice guy.” In a 2005 interview published in the Chicago Tribune, Lucas said he originally conceived “Star Wars” as a reaction to Nixon’s presidency. “It was really about the Vietnam War, and that was the period where Nixon was trying to run for a [second] term, which got me to thinking historically about how do democracies get turned into dictatorships? Because the democracies aren’t overthrown; they’re given away.”

The guerilla war waged by the Rebel Alliance against the Galactic Empire mirrored the battle between an insurgent force and a global superpower that was playing out in Vietnam as Lucas wrote “Star Wars”. . . .

While the elite Jedi—who guard peace and justice in the Galactic Republic—bear similarities to Japanese samurai and Shaolin monks, they also echo the medieval monastic military order of the Knights Templar. The Templars ... “were esteemed above other knights for their austerity, devotion, and moral purity. Like the Jedi, they practiced individual poverty within a military-monastic order that commanded great material resources.” A 12-member council of elders headed by a grand master governed both the Jedi and the Templars, and Jedi clothing even resembled the hooded white robes worn by the Christian warrior-monks who took vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. Much like the Great Jedi Purge ordered by Chancellor Palpatine in “Revenge of the Sith,” France’s King Philip IV annihilated the Knights Templar after arresting hundreds of them on October 13, 1307, and subsequently torturing and executing them for heresy.

Not all hills are moraines. Some are caused by things like uplift and volcanism. (You should have been taught that in Switzerland; that's where the Alps come from!)

Anyway, one of the best things I've ever seen teaching the "why" of geography (instead of just the "what") is How the States Got Their Shapes on the History Channel. I wish there was something similar for world history.

The Pentagon has people movers inside it.

http://www.history.com/news/9-...

They are scooters that can move someone at 3 mph if they aren't physically fit enough to walk the distances needed.

Now now, be honest - the KKK was a Democratic organization that regularly lynched Republicans.

Man, you're complaining about people dead for decades, and trying to tar a party of today? Why not just rant and rave about Strom Thurmond, the radical!

Oh wait, no, folks like you only talk about Byrd, not Thurmond. Thurmond you've never heard about. Odd that.

And even if we do talk about the 18th century, that's still 300 years ago. Yet stoning gays, tossing them off buildings, burning alive women who refuse to be raped is relatively common in many Muslim nations. I guess if you want to say they are only 300 years behind, instead of 600 - OK, you got me.

Don't worry, you can find the same thing in the in US and UK, 1800s with official executions for homosexuality in the UK, and even decriminalization didn't come until the 1960s. Which hardly lead to endorsement. And abuse of women? Yeah, I guess you could say it's better than nothing that that guy in California got six months.

Man, you're so obsessed with attacking Islam that you can't see how messy your own house really is. Start showing your intention to fix things at home, rather than just trying to condemn a bunch of people who do things to others that you don't give a shit about anyway.

Seriously, you don't. You don't care a bit. If the Muslims tolerated and embraced homosexuals, you'd be ranting about them doing that.

Now now, be honest - the KKK was a Democratic organization that regularly lynched Republicans. And even if we do talk about the 18th century, that's still 300 years ago. Yet stoning gays, tossing them off buildings, burning alive women who refuse to be raped is relatively common in many Muslim nations. I guess if you want to say they are only 300 years behind, instead of 600 - OK, you got me.

In the 1930s, chemical warfare was looked on the same way. It was just assumed that the next war would be chemical. Remember all the gas masks that were issued during the London Blitz?

I don't know why this belief seems "bizarre" at all.

Given the widespread use of chemical weapons during WWI (despite the fact that the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 prohibited them and made their use a war crime), I think it was pretty reasonable for people to make preparations that assumed they might be used in a future war.

It looks bizarre to modern eyes as chemical weapons were not used during WWII but everyone certainly expected it.

Huh? The Japanese made widespread use of them in WWII, just not against Western troops (for fear of retaliation). But in their invasions of Asian countries (particularly China), they used them on a number of occasions... so much so that FDR threatened that America would use chemical weapons against Japan if they kept doing it. Note that the U.S. also had NOT ratified the Geneva Protocol prohibiting use of chemical weapons. (Just the number of unused abandoned chemical weapons shells the Japanese left behind in China probably number in the millions. Australia was so concerned that they'd be used in a Japanese invasion that they secretly imported and stockpiled nearly a million chemical munitions, since the Australians knew the only reason Japan targeted China with them was because the Chinese had none and couldn't retaliate with them.)

And both the Germans and the Allies seriously considered deploying them -- but unlike in WWI (where a gradual escalation of their use against treaties by both sides eventually led to open warfare -- at first the Germans merely opened up gas canisters when the wind was favorable, arguing that the international law only prohibited chemical shells) in WWII neither side was willing to be "the first." Instead they took up firebombing and other new methods to intimidate the enemy.

Terrorism isn't in the eyes of the beholder, it's in the act of the beheader .... Who slaughter villages full of people for being insufficiently the right way about some particular twist or turn of believing in magic and some specific flavor of fantasy mythology.

My Lai Massacre http://www.history.com/topics/...

"Good, we need to find those Communists."

The red scare - http://www.history.com/topics/...

http://www.history.com/topics/...

And Ronald Regan closed all the insane asylums,
https://www.aclu.org/aclu-hist...

... the last time they searched for the 9th planet the economy tanked!

One of the things that brought the Roman empire down was all the poor barbarians who wanted in on her wealth. So, they flooded over the boarders and sucked them dry.

It might be closer to the truth to say that they were invited in. Not to mention that at this point, the greater part of the wealth and power of the Empire had shifted to the East, to Constantinople. Where the Greek and Christianized Empire would survive in more or less recognizable form for another 1,000 years.

For most of its history, Rome's military was the envy of the ancient world. But during the decline, the makeup of the once mighty legions began to change. Unable to recruit enough soldiers from the Roman citizenry, emperors like Diocletian and Constantine began hiring foreign mercenaries to prop up their armies. The ranks of the legions eventually swelled with Germanic Goths and other barbarians, so much so that Romans began using the Latin word "barbarous" in place of "soldier." While these Germanic soldiers of fortune proved to be fierce warriors, they also had little or no loyalty to the empire, and their power-hungry officers often turned against their Roman employers. In fact, many of the barbarians who sacked the city of Rome and brought down the Western Empire had earned their military stripes while serving in the Roman legions.

8 Reasons Why Rome Fell

Err, where did they test the first atomic bombs? Hint : It wasn't Japan.

http://www.history.com/this-da...

In 2003 and 1965

Any ship embarking on interstellar travel in the near future using any of the first two methods (a generation ship using conventional propulsion or a hyper speed ship using fuel, thrust or time improvements) is likely to be beaten to the destination by a explorers leaving earth hundreds of years later using superior interstellar travel technology.

Although a generation ship carrying massive amounts of fuel and a gigantic solar sail could boost up to speeds of hundreds of km/s, it could still be thousands of years before such a ship reached even the nearest star system... and then it would have to expend vast amounts of stored fuel to slow down, slip into a suitable orbit around the local sun and commence a search for potentially habitable planetary bodies, with no hope of ever being able to generate sufficient thrust to move on to a further star system, should the first prove to have no suitable planets to settle on.

Consider the rate of communications, propulsion, etc. advancement that would have taken place in the intervening 5000- odd years between the departure of interstellar explorers leaving earth over the next 100 years and those leaving earth, say, 2-3000 years from today. How would our present day explorers even communicate with earth using 5000 year old communication technology - heck, it would be tough to communicate with just 100 year old technology, let alone 5000 year old relics. And suppose the mission was successful... later and technologically more advanced departures travelling in the same direction would have to make first contact decisions not too dissimilar to the ones we make today about isolated peoples such as isolated tribes in the Amazon rain forest - only it would be more similar to travelling back 5000 years to the bronze age - round about the time when Stonehenge was built and Papyrus invented.

Future propulsion technologies, would not fare much better. The more efficient the propulsion technology, the faster the rate of travel. This might appear to be the answer, except that special relativity would mean that while time slowed down for the travelling explorers, hundreds or even thousands of years could pass here on Earth for a few years of time for our hyper-speed interstellar travellers. So, while interstellar travellers travelling at hyper-speed could reach their destination in a single life time, they too could be beaten to the punch by a later departure hundreds of years later (or just a months days later in time passed aboard the interstellar ship).

That special relativistic time dilation thingamajig can be a bitch!

Just my thoughts and observation

I believe the US rejected the comprehensive treaty: the president signed it in 1996 but the Senate rejected it in 1999. Therefore, rejected?

http://www.history.com/topics/...

Get us commoners to eat insects while the ruling class gets steak.

You know, lobster was once poor people food..
http://www.history.com/news/a-...

... after all there are less than 100k H1Bs and on other hand there are 121M citizens 25 years and over with no college degree...

There are many more than 100k H1B visa holders. I looked online and found an article on how both the bad number of ~65k came to be as well as more accurate numbers:

http://cis.org/estimating-h1b-population-2-11

... These issues are caused by moving almost all manufacturing offshore. ...

"Free trade", which today means move all jobs overseas while not letting us buy cheap drugs overseas and with little to no tariffs on the imports from regions with lower environmental or worker standards, is definitely the nail in the middle class coffin. Remember that only 3 candidates are against this - vote Sanders or Trump or Paul (if Paul can actually stay in and get that far). The other Republican candidates are all for free trade and the Clinton's gave us a huge middle class reduction via NAFTA and giving China MFN status.

Citations: http://www.history.com/this-da...

http://tech.mit.edu/V114/N27/c...

The Crusades were a long delayed defensive reaction by Christian nations to the invasion and conquest by invading Muslim armies. Their intent was to restore the Holy Lands to Christian control.

Crusades

The first of the Crusades began in 1095, when armies of Christians from Western Europe responded to Pope Urban II’s plea to go to war against Muslim forces in the Holy Land. After the First Crusade achieved its goal with the capture of Jerusalem in 1099, the invading Christians set up several Latin Christian states, even as Muslims in the region vowed to wage holy war (jihad) to regain control over the region.

Up next, was the 1944 D-Day invasion about land expansions abroad and power grabs at home?

"So are you sayiong that a Black American citizen can just show up in some all white village in rural Mississippi, and everyone will shower him or her with gifts? Invite them into their home for a nice dinner? Ignore them?"

Hate to burst your stereotypical statement, but I've seen multiple Black (& other ethnic) folks "just show up" here in MS. They didn't get showered with gifts, but were treated very politely (yep, invited to, and attend local churches)--much better than how I've seen the same color folks treated in other "more enlightened" places. Maybe you better get your news from someone w/o an ax to grind...

Oh sorry, THere is no racism in Mississippi, and everyone is a kind person, accomodating to all other races and religions. A true REniassance state of the new south, where all men and women are created equal, and all creeds colors and sexual preferences ar etreated with the utmost respoect.

whereas those northeren states blacks and other minoritiys are merely kept around so we have someone to hang when we get out th bedsheets foro our Klan meetings.

These folks at ol Miss must have been celebrating Obama's 2012 win, no doubt.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Oh wait. Hey, maybe it was a 50th Anniversary celebration of their riots when theyy were very happy that the first black student, James Meredith was enrolled in Ol Miss. Hopefully they invited him to church.

A former serviceman, y'all really wanted to thank him for serving his country I guess:

http://www.history.com/this-da...

Even your Governor welcomed him with open arms by a personal escort making certain he got to class. Oh wait, your governor was blocking the doorway to not allow him in the building. I guess your Governor wanted to be certain this man who risked his life for our country, got a lot of that fine Mississippi air.

Y'all liked him so much, one of ya gave him his very own personal bullet for his very own in 1966. Damn - southerners sure do know how to treat people who are different than you/

At Brandon High School, which is apparentlly a proud school that trains young men and women to invite African-Americans to come to church, in 2012, 19 year old Deryl Dedmon got two life sentences for killing a black man by running over him with his pickup truck:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

The official story is that he and some friends were partying, when they decised they were going to go look for some black guy to harass.

You and I both know it was an accident that happened when Dedmon, was trying to invite the dead guy James Craig Anderson to come to church with him and his friends.

This year was a minor thing with another Brandon Student tweeting stupid racist comments on school time. Not a huge thing, but between us chachalacas, I don't think tshe cares for people based on their skin color.

And in the spirit of being ahead of the curve, Mississippi did not outla slavery until february 7, 2013. Or maybe 1995. If you believe in States Rights, you could legally own a person in Mississippi. until 2013. http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/he... See you in church.

It's so unlike the Germans to blame all their problems on a small minority within their own ranks and then throw them under the bus.

Given the historic origins of VW, this is a bit more close to home than many might want to admit...

The History Channel has a lock on "OMG!!! the Nazis almost won the war, what if their super secret had been built, we would all be speaking GERMAN and eating sauerkraut, OMG!!!"

The Nazi Bell & UFOs.

That is all.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

http://www.history.com/shows/a...

This is NOT their first electric car by a long shot
http://www.history.com/news/fe...

One of the biggest changes in focus between the old plan and the new one is the de-emphasis on "NASA does all". As the online version of the Plan evolves, this will continue to change. I can't say when the commercial space budget will exceed NASA's, but it will be happen if all goes well. This may be a terrible example, but it kinda fits - Thomas Jefferson sent Lewis and Clark to explore and map the Louisiana Purchase, and continue on to the Pacific Ocean, to learn what might be learned.
Per this article, Jefferson originally asked for $2500 from Congress, but ultimately the cost was closer to $50,000, a 20 to 1 cost overrun that outdoes any modern overrun.

Lewis and Clark took two years and were actually given up for dead. But today, I can drive approximately the same route in three days. The point is that IMHO we are on the cusp of the transition from pure government financed exploration to the first 'trappers and hunters' going out to see what they could make of an opportunity. So either NASA will become less and less important and cease exploring, or more likely, will continue to transition their activities in support of the next phase.

NASA has been doing some very cool things to support commercial space entities and save money in the process - despite the less-than-sane meanderings of congressional politics. A case in point - the President's Commercial Crew Program 2017 budget, presently in negotiations in Washington, is being cut by $300 million, necessitating that NASA spend $600 additional million to buy launch services from Russia and delaying a return to US manned launches by four years.

(According to this inflation calculator, that $50,000 was equivalent to $1,027,500 today.)

Surely you mean Presidents Truman and Eisenhower, right? I mean, after all, it was the CIA during their administrations that overthrew the democratically elected government in Iran that is more responsible for the situation in the Middle East then anything else. See CIA-assisted coup overthrows government of Iran.

Or perhaps you mean the European leaders who, after WWI, created countries that never existed in the Middle East?

I think putting blame on President Carter is a bit misplaced. While President Carter called on the Shah to stop torturing people and to release political prisoners, the US continued to strongly supported the Shah. Social changes in Iran were too large and too rapid, though, to quell without even more horrendous human rights violations than the Shah was already committing. In reality, there was not way to keep the status quo in Iran. We supported the Shah far too long, against our own stated human rights beliefs and against our own best foreign policy judgements. President Nixon, though, believed that Iran, ruled by the Shah, was vital to American interests in the area, so, that's what we got.

Perhaps you weren't alive during that time period, but Iraq invaded Iran at the behest of their sponsor.... uncle Ronnie... who then made mint selling weapons to both side, AND supplying Iraq with the chemical weapons it would use against Iran.

The CIA ousted the pro-western, democratically elected government of Iran in 1953, and put in place a sadistic dictator who used secret police squads to round up and jail/murder opposition. The Iranian Revolution finally through out that sociopath, and the US's response to that was.... install another sadistic murderous dictator in Iraq, and have him start a war with Iran. Then while trying to save their own cities from capture, his military used chemical weapons repeatedly to kill tens's of thousands. Of course, given the USA supplied them with the weapons, the USA was then nice enough to block any condemnation from the UN about their use.

After all that crap, do you actually not understand why the Iranian government generally has a bad taste in their mouth when it comes to the US?

http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/19/...

http://www.history.com/topics/...

Is there any way for any country to earn the respect of others

Well, you start by not meddling in their politics and overthrowing their leaders, as the US did to Iran.

http://www.history.com/this-da...

the constitution is not sacred

It is not "sacred" because it was not handed down to us by a Deity. It is sacred in that every four years the incoming President repeats the same solemn oath to defend it.

Whatever "sacred" means to you, it is the law of the land. But it can be amended. For example, when we still believed in limited government, one that could not just order people around willy-nilly for The Greater Good, the prohibition of alcohol was done as a constitutional amendment (the 18th — less than 100 years ago!).

However, only a few decades later the same same government banned marijuana with a simple law — without obtaining the national consent by ratification of an amendment. The 10th Amendment was thus nullified.

a brilliant collection of people, but they weren't prophets

Well, they were. For example, the prediction of the growth of Statism was scary:

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yeild, and government to gain ground.

— Thomas Jefferson

and the point about it concentrating in large cities — especially accurate:

When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe.

— Thomas Jefferson

you do know where the Internet came from, don't you?

Yes, it came out of a military research project. I also know, where electricity, telegraph, telephone, radio, TV and rail-roads came from. We didn't need the benevolent guidance of government's omniscient bureaucrats for any of those, we didn't need it for the Internet.

Lincoln also wanted to send the slaves back to africa, didn't believe that whites and blacks should have equal rights either.

http://www.history.com/news/5-...

From the article post:

being surveilled by one of the country's closest allies

and then we have you:

before it fucks up their relationship with their oldest and closest ally who helped you wriggle out from under the iron heel of British tyranny and whose soldiers shed their blood to secure the independence of the USA as a nation at the battle of Yorktown?

LMAO.. you're so naive it's damned near enduring, except it's not. Next time try something from the last 100 years.

Okay, how about the fact that they can't make up their mind on NATO.

They've got Frenchelon! Yay! I'm sure the U.S. is a major target...

Then there's this little nugget. What was that, froggy? What was that about the US stirring up shit in Iraq 03? Well, YOU went it alone and managed to get the fucking Russkies (and by extension the USSR) riled up a bit: "Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev (1894-1971) railed against the invasion and threatened to rain down nuclear missiles on Western Europe if the Israeli-French-British force did not withdraw."

I always find it increasingly rich when either the French (or the Brits for that matter) get indignant.

I could go on all afternoon.. French government monitoring US business interests (as we do with them).. illegal subsidies to their aerospace firms.. supplying weapons to entities with whom might have a beef (the Brits sure did love taking a couple of those Exocent missiles in the ass, now didn't they! countermeasures were a day late and a franc short, just ask the sailors on the Sheffield)..

Look, De Gaulle himself said it: "France has no friends, only interests".. and he's correct. The one 'friend' we *might* have had (the UK) is likely reassessing their 'special relationship' status, because in almost every case sans one they get fucked at our behest. (That *one* time was when we supposedly allowed them to task our latest and greatest spy sats during the Falklands so they could gather information; it is highly unlikely that any other nation on the planet could make that request and be granted that kind of access).

The French (and the EU) are trading partners with the U.S., really, and not a lot else. The UN has no teeth, NATO, well, get back to me when they hold up their end on manpower and weaponry across the pond. We're the one putting the Raptors and a tank brigade in Poland to reassure them Vlad won't make a move.. what are the other NATO members FROM THAT FUCKING CONTINENT DOING AGAIN?

Oh and you mocked unions again, even though they're the only reason for child labor laws, the 40hr work week, the weekend, holidays off, overtime pay, and a host of other worker rights. But again, your stupidity is nothing new. Leave it to a moron like you to act as though these are bad things.

Actually no, the 8 hour day 5 hour week thing started with Henry Ford:

http://www.history.com/this-da...

Prior to that, it was common to work 48 hours 6 days a week. Ford did this because he wanted to attract permanent employees rather than people who would leave on a whim.

Holidays long predate unions, so no, that's not a union thing.

Overtime wasn't established to reward employees for working longer hours, rather it was established by Congress in 1938 because they believed that if they punished employers for having you work more hours, then they'd not only have you work fewer hours, but hire more people instead. The goal was to reduce the unemployment rate, and had nothing to do with worker abuse.

Anyways don't let me get in the way of you enamoring unions and rewriting history in their favor.

Child labor laws were not brought about singularly by unions:

Child labor began to decline as the labor and reform movements grew and labor standards in general began improving, increasing the political power of working people and other social reformers to demand legislation regulating child labor. Union organizing and child labor reform were often intertwined. . .

. . .and that's a generous assessment of union involvement with child labor laws in the US. Child labor had been on the decline, but the National Consumer League had been lobbying the US congress for some time, and finally made progress when sentiment changed largely due to the scarcity of jobs.

This success arose not only from popular hostility to child labor, generated in no small measure by the long-term work of the child labor committees and the climate of reform in the New Deal period, but also from the desire of Americans in a period of high unemployment to open jobs held by children to adults.

This is not to say that unions weren't important, but they were as much a part of a larger social movement as they were a cause.

Those people who view one side as better than the other, because they are "less evil" are simply delusional.

There are more than two sides. Rand Paul — currently from the "Libertarian wing" of the Republican Party — may as well become a bona-fide Libertarian. At least, that would assure a Presidential nomination for him.

Whatever he does, his attempts to block the extensions of this "most unpatriotic law" gained him support from both sides of the traditional isle (as his other actions did before).

Libertarianism has been rising over the last few decades — one can see it from Slashdot's own poll as well as feel it in the increasingly shrill reaction Libertarian ideas get from Slashdot's resident Statists. Maybe, we'll have three major parties once again soon.

So let me get this straight:
FDR caused a world-wide depression two years before he took office. He never had economic control over most of the world, but he nonetheless made the global depression worse. He was a commie in the 30s and early 40s, despite the fact he never sent anyone to the Gulag (kinda the defining aspect of Communism in the 30s and early 40s), the business community fought him tooth and nail the whole way (at one point forcing him to seize Montgomery Ward's entire company because the Chairman preferred forcing a strike and ending his war production to dealing with his unions) but he enriched his friends in business, etc.

That makes almost as much sense as claiming ObamaCare hasn't kept costs in line. It has. Of course you did preface it by saying "cheaper," so you will probably weasel your way into a claim that it was supposed to reduce cost-growth not keep cost-growth within inflation; but then it was never sold as a way to reduce overall costs. If that had been the sales pitch there would have been no need for new money to fund it. It was sold as a way to cut costs for individuals, and (thanks to the subsidies) it's mathematically impossible for it to fail at that task.

No, I disagree. If Ford could have built his cars to the level of quality he desired with a cheaper workforce, he would have done so.

Sure, Ford had a strange concern for the morality of his workforce to the extent that he created a sort of "secret police" who monitored off the job employee behavior. But he also obsessed with reducing the costs of his cars and wages are an obvious cost. For example, it took decades for the labor unions to get into Ford plants.

As to the "five dollar day", it was definitely used as propaganda by Ford both for marketing and hiring. Propaganda doesn't mean falsehood. It means distributing information and stories with a particular bias in order to promote a particular viewpoint.

Actually it was. Learn a little history. The Boston Tea Party was a protest about taxation without representation and specifically taxation on tea.

How do you justify burning down a senior citizen's complex?

genocide: the deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular ethnic group or nation.

The force re-population of Eastern tribes of people that resulted in horrendous losses. It is commonly called the Trail of Tears.

As to the "Christian justifications for the genocide against American Indians" I have to ask, what genocide are you referring to? There wasn't one.

Never was there a good Christian justification for the genocide of the Americas. The "Indian" Genocide was all about money, particularly real estate.

For the White Folk it was called 'Solving the Indian Problem.' The problem being that certain brown-skinned people had all the good farmland because they practiced effective land management. Mostly pale skinned Europeans settlers had continued poor farming practices that are in-effective in a non-European environment. These same pale skinned people found it cheaper to steal land from these other brown skinned people than fix their bad practices.

Reject the Lie of White "Genocide" Against Native Americans [townhall.com]
Were American Indians the Victims of Genocide? [historynewsnetwork.org]

Your first reference is mostly based on the premise that we don't know well how many people lived in the Americas before colonization by White Europeans. Both that and the second focus on the disease angle, the second being just a fluff apologist opinion piece. Only in the South Americas is the effect of disease clearly documented. That is the complete and rapid destruction of the cities along the Amazon in a pattern consistent with sudden plague.

Both references gloss over the reparation events of the 1800s. On the Trail of Tears, a winter forced march, the 5,000 deaths from the Cherokee Nation alone would have put the Andrew Jackson uncomfortably close to Adolf Hitler in proportional killings of a people within his own borders.

If you killed one in twenty of the all people in a State's county today you would be hailed as evil incarnate. Unless if you did that while showing a profit for the investors, of course. But by forcing a group to move on foot from their homes during the hardest time of the year to a distant trash quality land the US military saved a fortune on bullets. The developers and farmers that took over the land certainly make a "killing" with new and less distressed property to work on. Regardless of the victors trying to rewrite history to wipe out White Guilt, the killing was both systematic and targeted at a particular race.

The intent to genocide was also well documented by Andrew Jaskon's own proclamations. The Oklahoma Territory was considered "trash" land unfit for human use. These people were to be sent there to die. Except that once the tribes that moved there they improved the quality enough to make it good farmland. So again there was another grab made a few generations later.

The scales of older genocides do pale compared to modern industrialized killing machines. We don't have a good census of who lived in the North Americas before European colonization. The United States had just got a good theory of gas laws which is quite far from the skills to build large gas chambers. Muskets and pistols are slow and awkward compared with a repeat-action rifled gun or well-crafted handguns on today's market. Plus the USA let the environment kill most the relocated people instead of something as direct as shooting them all in the head.

But when it comes to bashing in one's neighbors' heads, it is not the human that has changed, just the hammer.

Compare our invasion of Korea with that of Vietnam only a few years later. Before you say "Korea was UN-approved" — no, that's a lame excuse. Stalin boycotted UN at the time action on Korea was decided, but by the time of Vietnam USSR has changed its approach. That's all.

So what? You're talking about the public perception of the war, UN approval forms part of that public perception.

In both cases American military was sent to fight in remote lands against people, who didn't threaten America directly in any way — for fear of the domino effect of Communism. In both cases the fighting was heavy and numerous war-crimes have taken place.

And yet, there was no domestic opposition to the Korean war — virtually none. No protests against the draft, no accusations of returning soldiers being "baby-killers". John Kerry, for example, has gained more political capital for opposing the war (and returning his medals), than for fighting in it (for an entire 4 months).

Vietnam was widely considered a national shame long before the war was lost. Meanwhile the only source of any negativity about the Korean war in mass culture was the M*A*S*H series.

Why was the domestic reaction to the two wars so drastically different? The theory of propagandists controlled and funded (with or without their own knowledge) by the USSR would explain the known facts.

It's possible, but a far more likely factor is the fact they were very different wars at very different times.

The Korean war was over in 3 years. In Vietnam the US stepped into a long running conflict which ran a lot longer.

The US was also coming straight out of WWII, so the idea that you should deal with belligerent countries pro-actively sounded like a really good idea and provided a great narrative, the communist threat would have also seemed less intractable since you didn't have to deal with Nuclear arms race.

You've also got media actually showing the home front what the battlefield actually looks like, that's a pretty profound change from previously where media pieces were basically clips from war movies.

Finally you had a completely different culture in the 60's that was largely based on a rejection of authority, do you think that was going to mix well with the military?

You don't need Soviet propaganda to explain the Vietnam peace movement, the known facts are explained by the known facts.

Compare our invasion of Korea with that of Vietnam only a few years later. Before you say "Korea was UN-approved" — no, that's a lame excuse. Stalin boycotted UN at the time action on Korea was decided, but by the time of Vietnam USSR has changed its approach. That's all.

In both cases American military was sent to fight in remote lands against people, who didn't threaten America directly in any way — for fear of the domino effect of Communism. In both cases the fighting was heavy and numerous war-crimes have taken place.

And yet, there was no domestic opposition to the Korean war — virtually none. No protests against the draft, no accusations of returning soldiers being "baby-killers". John Kerry, for example, has gained more political capital for opposing the war (and returning his medals), than for fighting in it (for an entire 4 months).

Vietnam was widely considered a national shame long before the war was lost. Meanwhile the only source of any negativity about the Korean war in mass culture was the M*A*S*H series.

Why was the domestic reaction to the two wars so drastically different? The theory of propagandists controlled and funded (with or without their own knowledge) by the USSR would explain the known facts.

The speeches Repubs are giving today are Calhoun with 'slavery' replaced by 'gay marriage' or 'abortion' or 'climate change'. Calhoun would win the Republican nomination.

Lincoln learned, unlike the conservatives of today.

In a speech delivered on April 11, while referring to plans for Reconstruction in Louisiana, Lincoln proposed that some blacks-including free blacks and those who had enlisted in the military-deserved the right to vote. He was assassinated three days later, however, and it would fall to his successor to put plans for Reconstruction in place.

http://www.history.com/topics/...

an hour earlier

An hour earlier than what?

Humans have been phase-locked to the mean solar day for just over 200 out of the last 6 million years.

1883: Railroads create the first time zones

Not even the sun is phase-locked to mean solar time. There's this little detail called the Equation of time whose discovery dates back to the Babylonians, which governs annual variation in apparent solar time. Apparent solar time just happens to be the primary zeitgeber on circadian rhythmicity in all mammals (that I've heard of) and a great deal more.

The majority of people feel that DST is a bad idea and want it to stop.

Majority of what population? People living north of the 49th? I doubt it.

Majority of people who wish pi was equal to 3 and that the earth's orbit were circular? Almost certainly, even though I don't think these two simplicity boners are conceptually compatible.

For the answer on why we don't reveal this information read up on the 1929 bank failures. For the tl;dr crowd: There's a very good reason that we don't say which banks are having problems because they get ran out of business quickly (often within hours) and everyone that didn't make it in time looses their money. It happened in 1929 in the U.S. and it destroyed our economy for a decade.

Are you saying people would actually lose money if their bank went under? That there's no FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation) or other safeguards? Are you saying that the federal reserve wouldn't overnight a truckload of cash if there was a run on the bank?

Are you saying that banks can do a slip-shod job, have no repercussions, and this is a *good* thing?

Just as GM can lose business by making a faulty ignition switch, banks should lose business when they lose the public trust.

Banks SHOULD lose business if they screw up.

For the answer on why we don't reveal this information read up on the 1929 bank failures. For the tl;dr crowd: There's a very good reason that we don't say which banks are having problems because they get ran out of business quickly (often within hours) and everyone that didn't make it in time looses their money. It happened in 1929 in the U.S. and it destroyed our economy for a decade.

the american revolution wasn't actually a revolution, it was a war of independence

independence movements always existed, and always will

many factors go into whether or not they succeed

the most important factor is the cohesive quality of the idea a group is fighting for

some may go nowhere

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...

even with interesting backing

http://www.washingtontimes.com...

other movements may ignite convulsive earthquakes of power balances into orgies of death and destruction

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...

http://www.history.com/topics/...

and there are many such ideas. they range from the noble ideas of the founding fathers, to degenerate violence loving "revolts"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...

the point is, terrorism, in the name of vile efforts, is real, and should be opposed, and is a separate concept than genuine reasons for revolution or independence

and no, whoever wins does not decide it's legitimacy, the *concept behind the effort* is what matters

just fighting society is not noble in and of itself, the question is: what exactly are you fucking fighting for?

and if your ideas suck (even if you mean well, your ideas may not be intended with malevolence, you just might be a fucking moron), and actually represent more injustice and suffering, like fundamentalist religion, or racist twattery, or whatever, then yeah: you're a fucking loser terrorist and fuck you

just fucking with society isn't noble. for many reasons it just means you're a pathetic socially retarded douchebag

It's called a black swan event: it has never happened, so it seems unthinkable that it would happen. That said, although it's unlikely to occur in any given year, the chance is not zero – and in the case of nuclear war, it only has to happen once. What risk of extinction would be acceptable to you? 1% per year? 0.1%? There has been a disturbing number of close calls during the last half century. We are only still alive, according to the last commander of the Strategic Air Command, Gen. Lee Butler, "by some combination of skill, luck and divine intervention, and I suspect the latter in greatest proportion."

By the way, here's the actual article from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Not sure why it wasn't in the summary.