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Really?

Hummm

Lincoln suspends Habius Corpus - never mind the whole argument RE States Rights Vs Federalism

WWII - Asian Americans on the west coast are locked up in internment camps. Public works are guarded by the military with Orders to shoot. Blackout wardens walking around making sure no light could be seen. Rationing. Travel Restrictions. Heck, my Dad (WWII vet with the OSS OG) remembers one training mission where the blithely STOLE someone's car, and dropped drove it into the C&O barge canal outside DC (Yes, a simulated car bomb in WWII). And remember, you could NOT just go get another one - he said the Govt had to do LOTS of paperwork to get the guy a new car (RARE during the war years). Tossing a rock through a recruiting station window (like was done in on college town this weekend) would have gotten you arrested for sabotage - and convicted. Speaking in support of it would have gotten you arrested for supporting the Enemy - or blackballed from your job (Enjoy being homeless).

I think you don't realize how much more tolerant of decent we are in this country since the 1960s. Even into the 1950s, if the local beat cop didn't like that you were hanging out on the street corner, he would tell you to move - and you DID, if not, you expect at least a gentle whack on the ass with a nightstick (if you were a kid) to get you moving. Heck - want to see what the Government could get away with in the 1st half of the 1900s? Do a web search on the "Bonus Riot" ( http://www.thehistorynet.com/ahi/bl_bonus_march/ is a good start)

"In May 1940, Henry Ford stated: "If it became necessary, the Ford Motor Company could, with the counsel of men like [Charles] Lindbergh and [Eddie] Rickenbacker, under our own supervision and without meddling by government agencies, swing into the production of a thousand airplanes of standard design a day."

It was the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that inspired Ford to begin a tremendous, all-out manufacturing effort. To the west of Dearborn, the giant Willow Run plant was built to produce B-24 Liberator bombers on an assembly line that was a mile long. The first bomber rolled off the line in May 1942, beginning the effective production of several hundred aircraft a month. Bombers were produced at the rate of one plane per hour, thereby confounding Ford's critics, who had called the plant undertaking "Willit Run." By the end of the war, Ford had built 86,865 complete aircraft, plus 57,851 airplane engines, thousands of engine superchargers and generators, and 4,291 military gliders."

  We'll stop there, without counting the Tanks, APCs, and Jeeps. Boldface highlighting is by my choice. Here's a link to the rest of the story.
  http://www.thehistorynet.com/wwii/blhenryford/inde x1.html

You see Ford had some redeeming qualities that are organizationally absent in NASA:

- he was a pragmatist
- he could work on a budget and stay in it
- he could work on a schedule and stay in it
- he set obtainable and worthwhile goals
- he achieved the goals he set out to obtain

(In fact, either his first claim was a bit of a rhetorical exaggeration, or he had the shortcoming of setting his goals a little high and not always achieving them. 86,000 planes in a little over 3 years is not a thousand a day, it's just enough to damn well win a major war.).

Hey NASA - Last I looked Dick Rutan doesn't have a single one of the reputed major shortcomings of either Henry Ford or Howard Hughes, and seems to have several of their best features.

The US military has a set of special pay grades, ranging from Brigader General to full General (or Admirals in naval rank terms), for newly comissioned officers with 0 to less than 2 total years in service. Those are there in case of a general war, to offer men like Henry Ford's ablest assistants and ask them to accept if it's useful in expediting production.

Dick Rutan may not be the productive equal of Ford or Hughes, but I'm willing to bet he's at least up to the level of their production managers. You don't start someone like that at the bottom and make him work up through 20 layers of supervision. If you're confident enough, you hand him your most screwed up department, and give him enough authority to get the results you want. If you think he might not be up to the worst, you plug him in somewhere that's not so screwed up for a year to season him and hope like hell he matures enough to handle it, because you don't have any better alternatives. You start him off as the equivalent of a General, in other words.
          If NASA won't take this approach, they must still think they have a better alternative. I'm not hearing it.

While there is undoubtedly a concensus that global warming is a real issue, there still remains considerable doubt as too how serious a concern it is.

As for Scientific American's continued bashing of anti-missile defense - I have yet to see a scientific reason as to why the system "can not work". Keep in mind, this is the same magazine that scoffed at accounts of the Wright brothers first flight. I am inherently skeptical of any analysis of the capabilities of a military program where the current technical capabilities are classified.

Traian Vuia (August 17, 1872 - September 3, 1950) was a Romanian inventor, designed and built the world's first self-propelling heavier-than-air aircraft.

Hermann Oberth
"considered the foremost authority on rocketry outside the United States."
and
" one of the founding fathers of rocketry and astronautics."

Henri Coanda
"In 1910 ... he designed, built and piloted the first jet-aircraft"

Aurel Vlaicu
Romanian engineer and aviation pioneer.
"...his first airplane, the Vlaicu I ... extremely well built, stable, and maneuverable. It won him several prizes in international competitions against other aviation pioneers like Roland Garros. "

Gogu Constantinescu
"Gogu Constantinescu founded the theory of the sonicity and made the sonic engine. Using an invention of Gogu Constantinescu on a sonicity application, the British military aviation held supremacy during World War First."

"Buzu" Cantacuzeno ... ww2 air war ace
"Romania's leading ace, "Buzu" Cantacuzeno, added three German He-111s to the more than 50 Soviet and American aircraft he had shot down."

good luck to the romanian team ... and to all other teams

Not True in the case of the Warsaw Ghetto [or American Revolution - grin] ... all arms were STOLEN from the Nazis. Too bad law-abiding Germans [especially Jews] could not LEGALLY own "assault" weapons before Hitler came to power. Of course, this is the problem ... "law-abiding" citizens will do what their good government tells them to do. Then when a bad government takes control (e.g. Hitler, Algerian Islamic Facists, Allende/Shining Path & Chile, Stalin, Castro, Cambodia, ...) it is too late. Off to the gas chambers, gulags, reeducation camps, killing fields you go ... happy happy joy joy.

First, we know that the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto, when they finally turned to armed resistance, succeeded in holding off the Nazi war machine for nearly a month. These were civilians running an urban guerilla resistance -- using a relatively small number of guns and ammo smuggled in or taken from killed Nazis. In this case, the Warsaw Ghetto defenders damaged the Nazi effort -- and if that had been multiplied over the countryside, it would have meant more damage to the Nazis, and possibly a change in Nazi policy. (See Jon Guttman's article, "Genocide Delayed", in March 2000 issue of World War II magazine, available on line at: HERE [thehistorynet.com] and HERE [jpfo.org]

Second, Stephen Halbrook has written a book recently showing that the Nazis did not invade Switzerland in large measure because the Swiss citizens were all armed with military weapons, were trained, and enjoyed a hilly terrain that would benefit the defenders. In this case, the threat of armed resistance deterred the Nazis. (Target Switzerland: Swiss Armed Neutrality in World War II, Sarpedon Publishers, 2000)

The above copied and pasted from Ask The Rabbi: Should they have fought back? [jpfo.org]

BTW, I can neither confirm nor deny whether or not I own an "assault" rifle (aka NOT a shotgun). Perhaps you too should have the option/choice of making such a statement. What if ALL your neighbors could say the same thing? What if every Jew in the Warsaw Ghetto could and DID own an "assault rifle"?

Second, Stephen Halbrook has written a book recently showing that the Nazis did not invade Switzerland in large measure because the Swiss citizens were all armed with military weapons, were trained, and enjoyed a hilly terrain that would benefit the defenders. In this case, the threat of armed resistance deterred the Nazis. (Target Switzerland: Swiss Armed Neutrality in World War II, Sarpedon Publishers, 2000)

The above copied and pasted from Ask The Rabbi: Should they have fought back?

BTW, I can neither confirm nor deny whether or not I own an "assault" rifle (aka NOT a shotgun). Perhaps you too should have the option/choice of making such a statement. What if ALL your neighbors could say the same thing? What if every Jew in the Warsaw Ghetto could and DID own an "assault rifle"?

Uncle Sam wants you to help fight the war on terrorism. They demonize you and criminalize you and then ask for your help. What's a hacker to do?

Japanese Americans were poorly treated during WWII. They could have complained, and whined, but they volunteered for the military. A famous Army unit was most made up of Japanese Americans. They fought well and heroically on the European front. Their sacrifice and committment helped change American opinion of Japanese Americans.

Uh... where is the proof for these allegations? Sounds to me like another one of those "all-powerful-world-controlling-law-evading-whinin g-parasitic-Jews" theories.

The wreck is located here. Yep, there were several Monitor class ships built including larger versions with two turrets. The ship was a formidable shore-defense platform, but had no open sea sailing capability. The coolest stat of the Monitor was that with the exception of the gunners/captain, all crewmen were located below the waterline. You could call it a semi-submersible.

I was reading a book on the battle and my favorite line (paraphrased) was that the armies of Europe sat back and watched as their entire military become obsolete in the span of an afternoon.

• WWI: The Sinking of the Lusitania This got the US into WWI, which the US had previously been avoiding. The historical judgement is that the Lusitania was a legitimate military target.
• WWII: The Pearl Harbor Message The Japanese declaration of war reached the U.S. Department of State after the attack on Pearl Harbor. It was supposed to reach it an hour or two before, but the Japanese Embassy in Washington had trouble getting it typed fast enough. Roosevelt made a big deal out of this.
• Vietnam War: The Gulf of Tonkin Incident This started the Vietnam War. The historical judgement is that the US set things up so there would be an incident to justify a war.
• Gulf War: The Kuwait Baby Incubator Incident This was the excuse for the Gulf War, which passed Congress by a very slim majority. The whole story about baby incubators being stolen from Kuwait hospitals by invading Iraqui troops was put together and packaged by Hill and Knowlton Public Relations under contract to the Kuwaiti government. The 15-year old girl who testified before the U.S. Congress turned out to be the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador.

There are also reports that some of the atrocities in the recent troubles in Bosnia were faked, but it's too early for a firm conclusion on that.

Keep this history in mind when you hear news about justifications for war in future.

OTOH, this says nothing about actual relationships between ability and gender... In fact, IIRC, average IQ is the same for each gender, but the standard deviation is higher in males... I wouldn't be surprised if the same holds true for a lot of other tendencies/ablities.

<UNFOUNDED_SPECULATIONS>
After all, males are (evolutionarily) expendable, and thus they are a good place for nature to...'test' the extreme effects of mutations. And before someone points out that "Man is quasi-monogomous. Two parents provide better for offspring, and males aren't interchangable in our society!", I'd reply "That's a recent trend, on the evolutionary scale. Call it legacy code from the pre-hominid era..."
</UNFOUNDED_SPECULATIONS>

Anyways, returning to the original thought, it's just an interesting observation on social dynamics. Another interesting one would be the performance of the 442nd in WWII... The gov. put their parents in internment camps, and they go on to become the most decorated unit for its size and length of service in American military history? Huh?

In conclusion, Humans can be wonderful, wicked, wool-brained, and wizardly, defying all general descriptions but one: Weird. I'll never understand them....