You had fingers? Back in my day we had our sticks of TNT and no fingers -- we'd already blown them off -- so we just kept on blowing off more and more of our wrist stumps.
I know I shouldn't feed the trolls, but this is one of those moral/philosophical things that's been pissing me off for some time.
You, AC, a prude. You think the morals and customs by which you live are natural laws, and that there is something defective with anyone who does not follow them. While you and I do agree that certain behaviours are despicable (or, if not despicable -- who are we to judge?), that they are atleast not behaviour we ourselves would engage in, I am willing to accept that fact that what I and the culture I was brought up in consider 'right' are not universals.
For example, I break the law all the time, many times a day. When I'm not breaking the law, it's not because I 'fear the law,' or 'agree with the law.' It's because I wouldn't act in an 'illegal' manner to begin with, because it's against my personal morals.
And similiarly, if I find a law inconvenient or wrong, I have no qualms breaking it.
And anyone who would swear to me, on their own stack of bibles, that something being illegal was the only reason they didn't commit such an act (as opposed to fear of punishment), why, I'm quite positive they're insane, so delusional that they truely believe it.
In closing, you're a prude.
And I have no idea what I originally intended to say.
Oh, wait. Here it is.
Pedophiles may, in fact, be "victims" of Humanity's own preference towards young women. Let's face it: Men who picked Young Women had a better chance of having more offspring, and if that preference for Young Women was genetic, then pretty soon everyone would be a decendant of men who liked young women.
And any woman who could look younger than she was would have a better chance of getting a better mate.
So, in short, you get a runaway Fisher effect -- women keep on retaining their young longer and longer, or stay immature older and older, and men constantly prefer younger and younger women. So it's no wonder there are some males who find children sexually attractive.
Goto any pre-civlization hunter-gatherer group and ask the men there what age they prefer in a mate. They'll say "Between Puberty and First Child." That's rather young, you know.
And considering the fact that those people live pretty much the same way all of humanity did for a damn long time, well. Nevermind.
I should probably point it out, at this point, that I think Pedophilia is a rather disgusting condition.
Also, the only NAMBLA is the National Association of Marlin Brando Look Alikes.
Nope. Death. Rapists* should be killed. I have no trouble putting down a Mad Dog, whether that Mad Dog be Canine or Human.
Same for most murderers, too.
*I do not refer to most statutory rape, such as the "I didn't say no at the time but I was drunk and now I regret it so he raped me" kind of rape, or the 16 year old male on 16 year old female kind. Or the 19 year old on 17 year old kind.
It's a very good movie. Some people complained that it wasn't graphic enough (due to the fact it was about the Siege of Stalingrad), but it is still a very, very good movie.
There were over 100,000 US Casualties in the Pacific Theatre by the time the first Bomb was dropped. There were not OVER 200,000, but I can't find the exact statistic at the moment. So I probably shouldn't be spitting the number out.
And there was no choice to have conditional surrender. It had already been rejected. The Japanese had to know that they had been defeated, utterly and completely.
They knew about it a few short hours after it happened. They sent a plane with officers there, and the officers made a full report about it. Considering the fact that the Mushroom Cloud was still visible, and the city was still burning (what was left of it) when they got there, I'd say they knew the scorecard. The most probable reason they did not surrender after the first bomb is, as others have said, the Japanese Military did not believe the United States possessed another such weapon.
Which is exactly what they did. On one side of the scales they put the lives that would be taken by dropping the bombs (about 200,000). On the other side they put the lives that would be lost in invading ( 400,000 to 800,000 fatalities out of 1.7 to 4 million total casualties, and that's just the US Military Casualties) and found that the lesser evil was to drop the bombs.
That about them not knowing what happened at Hiroshima until after Nagasaki was bombed is a bold faced lie.
Many people noticed that suddenly virtually all telephone and telegraph lines leading to and from the city were cut, and that the city was no longer broadcasting Radio. The Japanese Military dispatched two Officers in a plane to go and see what had happened. Within 4 hours they had gotten there and had made report as to the damage. Keep in mind that by the time they got 100 miles away from the city, they could still see the mushroom cloud and could see the city burning. Still.
Are you a fan of Star Trek? Remember in the second movie where Spock said, "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few?" The persons in charge at the time weighed 200,000 human lives against the 1/+ (more life 4) million that would have been lost in invading. And those were just the projected casualties on the American side.
So yes, it saved lives. If I was forced to choose between having 2 people killed or having killing 10, I would choose the 2, since that would be the least ammount of bloodshed.
Every life is precious. Every life is sacred. But one must accept that there are times when people will die, when they will be killed. And that is when you try to make sure as few die as possible.
1) Who said they *had* to invade Japan to get a surrender? At this point of the war the Japanese had almost no reserve stocks or transport capability needed to keep the economy going (and the population fed).
They had to. Japan was already amassing forces in expectation of an invasion, forces that outnumbered American ones. Women and Children were being trained to fight. And all were expected to fight to the death and not surrender. A ground invasion would have led to the total annihilation of the Japanese people, or a large majority of them.
2) Who said the *US* had to invade? On August 8th the Soviet Union declared war on the Japanese. Sure that might have meant a communist Japan, but that's a whole different argument than millions of dead. And besides the Japanese Army had quit a healthy respect for the Red Army. Perhaps they would have surrendered anyway.
I refer you to the fact that the Japanese did not surrender after the first bomb, but the second. The fact that they did not surrender after such an awesome display of raw power would point to the fact that they had never intended to surrender, but, as afore mentioned, fight to the last man, woman, and child.
3) Why did they drop the bombs on a heavily populated civilian area? They could have at least started by bombing some small, unpopulated island. One of the reasons the Manhattan project was so expensive is that they didn't just build a bomb, they build the entire infrastructure to mass-produce bombs.
Both of the cities were also military targets, and the civilian populations were mobilized to give resistance, i.e., fight to the death. Hiroshima had Army Headquarters and the HQ for Southern Japan's defense. Nagasaki was a strategically vital seaport and ordinance factory.
4) Why did they need *unconditional* surrender? It's clear that Japan was quite aware of its unwinnable position quite early on. By the end of the war a serious offer to negotiate might have worked a lot better than clinging to the unconditional line, which in the end wasn't even achieved (the armed forces surrendered unconditionally, the Japanese nation didn't.
It's partly cultural. During the Second World War, there were still a vast majority of persons in Japan, pretty much the whole population, that believe in "Death Before Dishonor." Surrender was shameful, and they would have died first. Many of them did on outlying islands, after they had been routed to caves and, when soldiers called for their surrender, they generally fired back, and when they didn't they just stayed in there.
Unconditional Surrender was needed to force the concept fully across into Japanese Society that they had been defeated. And as to them being willing to surrender before the bombs, they didn't surrender after the first one, as I have said afore. That's why we dropped two.
Bless you. Someone with a mind and capable of using it. I have no idea what people's knee-jerk reaction to common sense is when it proves that common sense says that killing people is the best way to stop people from being killed.
Bless you, sir/madam, for having the open-mindedness to look at the facts, and the courage to speak the truth.
It may be sick, but it's life. Them's the breaks, as they say. It's how things work. Sometimes it doesn't work, but in the case of Japan it did, and it did more good than harm.
Thank you. You are a sane individual. For some reason, people don't get anywhere near as outraged if you do it with tens of hundreds of tons of convential explosive, but as soon as you're doing it with one bomb, or, heaven forbid, something with 'nucular' infront of it, they go into a tizzy.
I had to goto the ER last year because I had a siezure, and I made a point of it (after I regained my senses) to call it an NMRI. The doctors and nurses there did, too.
The biggest problem is, people are frightened of what they do not understand, and people react violently to what frightens them. Most lay people don't understand 'nuclear' anything, hence the reaction to reactors, weapons, medical techniques.
Sigh. I must say. Bless you, Illserve. May your Code never SEGFAULT.
The fact that we even skipped over certain targets that were ahead of the two, such as Kyoto, the 'city of temples' shows that we were going for what would get the Japanese to surrender, not what would outrage and incense them into fighting longer.
And yes, most sane people, as you apparently are, all the Gods and Goddesses Bless You, would realise that if we dropped one bomb, and they didn't surrender, that they weren't going to surrender before we dropped the bomb.
Bless you, sir/madam. Bless you.
You, afew other sane posters, and some intelligent people in real life, along with the duct tape wrapped around my head, are all that keep it from 'sploding at all the stupidity in the world.
Irony is the most difficult concept I have found in my linguistic studies. I only know one actual, in bona fide, pro certe example of Irony:
"Two very proud countries had been involved in a long and drawn out war, neither side able to win. When at last the war ended, they both declared themselves the victors."
When I was working at the local Humane Society, I saved a Apple Mac II/ci from the dumpster. It had been donated to the thrift store and was thrown away because it was 'too old' to interest anyone.
I like playing certain old games, mainly because if a game is done right, it doesn't matter how outdated the graphics get -- Classics never change.
There's just something you get out of playing the Zork Trilogy on the old hardware that you don't get on the new stuff.
The Point is, no matter what concessions we were going to make, we wanted unconditional surrender to get the point fully across that they had been defeated.
No. I am not saying the Geneva convention is worthless. I am saying that War is Waged by Humans, and Humans are Imperfect, and therefore they make Mistakes, and shit happens. And when 'shit happens' around 'weapons' and 'soft squishy things,' it's generally not 'fun for the whole family.'
Re:Private and public are not mutually exclusive
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Open Source Molecules
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It's quite alright. That's the problem with language. Language is a pale imitation of thought. It is, at best, an imperfect medium. However, it's the best we've got.
Thank you for correcting my error. I was going off of memory, and well, time makes fools of us al- Oh, hey, my hand just started blinking red! Hey, guys, look at this, it's cool, my hand is bli$235^@#%$Y@W$%^UY236h54@#^%$NO CARRIER
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You had fingers? Back in my day we had our sticks of TNT and no fingers -- we'd already blown them off -- so we just kept on blowing off more and more of our wrist stumps.
Not to be picky, but since he's one of your Heros, you might want to spell Mr. Feynman's last name right.
Just a thought.
I know I shouldn't feed the trolls, but this is one of those moral/philosophical things that's been pissing me off for some time.
You, AC, a prude. You think the morals and customs by which you live are natural laws, and that there is something defective with anyone who does not follow them. While you and I do agree that certain behaviours are despicable (or, if not despicable -- who are we to judge?), that they are atleast not behaviour we ourselves would engage in, I am willing to accept that fact that what I and the culture I was brought up in consider 'right' are not universals.
For example, I break the law all the time, many times a day. When I'm not breaking the law, it's not because I 'fear the law,' or 'agree with the law.' It's because I wouldn't act in an 'illegal' manner to begin with, because it's against my personal morals.
And similiarly, if I find a law inconvenient or wrong, I have no qualms breaking it.
And anyone who would swear to me, on their own stack of bibles, that something being illegal was the only reason they didn't commit such an act (as opposed to fear of punishment), why, I'm quite positive they're insane, so delusional that they truely believe it.
In closing, you're a prude.
And I have no idea what I originally intended to say.
Oh, wait. Here it is.
Pedophiles may, in fact, be "victims" of Humanity's own preference towards young women. Let's face it: Men who picked Young Women had a better chance of having more offspring, and if that preference for Young Women was genetic, then pretty soon everyone would be a decendant of men who liked young women.
And any woman who could look younger than she was would have a better chance of getting a better mate.
So, in short, you get a runaway Fisher effect -- women keep on retaining their young longer and longer, or stay immature older and older, and men constantly prefer younger and younger women. So it's no wonder there are some males who find children sexually attractive.
Goto any pre-civlization hunter-gatherer group and ask the men there what age they prefer in a mate. They'll say "Between Puberty and First Child." That's rather young, you know.
And considering the fact that those people live pretty much the same way all of humanity did for a damn long time, well. Nevermind.
I should probably point it out, at this point, that I think Pedophilia is a rather disgusting condition.
Also, the only NAMBLA is the National Association of Marlin Brando Look Alikes.
Nope. Death. Rapists* should be killed. I have no trouble putting down a Mad Dog, whether that Mad Dog be Canine or Human.
Same for most murderers, too.
*I do not refer to most statutory rape, such as the "I didn't say no at the time but I was drunk and now I regret it so he raped me" kind of rape, or the 16 year old male on 16 year old female kind. Or the 19 year old on 17 year old kind.
Nope. Historian.
We have a very... well, how shall I put this?
We have a good perspective of time.
Personally, I'd rather just keep popping my brain into clones of Utada Hikaru every few decades.
Of course, I'd spend all my time looking in the mirror.
It's a very good movie. Some people complained that it wasn't graphic enough (due to the fact it was about the Siege of Stalingrad), but it is still a very, very good movie.
Titanic's ending was happy, wasn't it?
I mean, Leo died... That's a happy time, right?
There were over 100,000 US Casualties in the Pacific Theatre by the time the first Bomb was dropped. There were not OVER 200,000, but I can't find the exact statistic at the moment. So I probably shouldn't be spitting the number out.
And there was no choice to have conditional surrender. It had already been rejected. The Japanese had to know that they had been defeated, utterly and completely.
They knew about it a few short hours after it happened. They sent a plane with officers there, and the officers made a full report about it. Considering the fact that the Mushroom Cloud was still visible, and the city was still burning (what was left of it) when they got there, I'd say they knew the scorecard. The most probable reason they did not surrender after the first bomb is, as others have said, the Japanese Military did not believe the United States possessed another such weapon.
Which is exactly what they did. On one side of the scales they put the lives that would be taken by dropping the bombs (about 200,000). On the other side they put the lives that would be lost in invading ( 400,000 to 800,000 fatalities out of 1.7 to 4 million total casualties, and that's just the US Military Casualties) and found that the lesser evil was to drop the bombs.
I'd say they did the best thing they could.
That about them not knowing what happened at Hiroshima until after Nagasaki was bombed is a bold faced lie.
Many people noticed that suddenly virtually all telephone and telegraph lines leading to and from the city were cut, and that the city was no longer broadcasting Radio. The Japanese Military dispatched two Officers in a plane to go and see what had happened. Within 4 hours they had gotten there and had made report as to the damage. Keep in mind that by the time they got 100 miles away from the city, they could still see the mushroom cloud and could see the city burning. Still.
For information: The Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Hiroshima: The Bombing.
War is terrorism.
Are you a fan of Star Trek? Remember in the second movie where Spock said, "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few?" The persons in charge at the time weighed 200,000 human lives against the 1/+ (more life 4) million that would have been lost in invading. And those were just the projected casualties on the American side.
So yes, it saved lives. If I was forced to choose between having 2 people killed or having killing 10, I would choose the 2, since that would be the least ammount of bloodshed.
Every life is precious. Every life is sacred. But one must accept that there are times when people will die, when they will be killed. And that is when you try to make sure as few die as possible.
They had to. Japan was already amassing forces in expectation of an invasion, forces that outnumbered American ones. Women and Children were being trained to fight. And all were expected to fight to the death and not surrender. A ground invasion would have led to the total annihilation of the Japanese people, or a large majority of them.
I refer you to the fact that the Japanese did not surrender after the first bomb, but the second. The fact that they did not surrender after such an awesome display of raw power would point to the fact that they had never intended to surrender, but, as afore mentioned, fight to the last man, woman, and child.
Both of the cities were also military targets, and the civilian populations were mobilized to give resistance, i.e., fight to the death. Hiroshima had Army Headquarters and the HQ for Southern Japan's defense. Nagasaki was a strategically vital seaport and ordinance factory.
It's partly cultural. During the Second World War, there were still a vast majority of persons in Japan, pretty much the whole population, that believe in "Death Before Dishonor." Surrender was shameful, and they would have died first. Many of them did on outlying islands, after they had been routed to caves and, when soldiers called for their surrender, they generally fired back, and when they didn't they just stayed in there.
Unconditional Surrender was needed to force the concept fully across into Japanese Society that they had been defeated. And as to them being willing to surrender before the bombs, they didn't surrender after the first one, as I have said afore. That's why we dropped two.
Bless you. Someone with a mind and capable of using it. I have no idea what people's knee-jerk reaction to common sense is when it proves that common sense says that killing people is the best way to stop people from being killed.
Bless you, sir/madam, for having the open-mindedness to look at the facts, and the courage to speak the truth.
May your Code never SEGFAULT.
It may be sick, but it's life. Them's the breaks, as they say. It's how things work. Sometimes it doesn't work, but in the case of Japan it did, and it did more good than harm.
Thank you. You are a sane individual. For some reason, people don't get anywhere near as outraged if you do it with tens of hundreds of tons of convential explosive, but as soon as you're doing it with one bomb, or, heaven forbid, something with 'nucular' infront of it, they go into a tizzy.
I had to goto the ER last year because I had a siezure, and I made a point of it (after I regained my senses) to call it an NMRI. The doctors and nurses there did, too.
The biggest problem is, people are frightened of what they do not understand, and people react violently to what frightens them. Most lay people don't understand 'nuclear' anything, hence the reaction to reactors, weapons, medical techniques.
Sigh. I must say. Bless you, Illserve. May your Code never SEGFAULT.
Thank you. By all the Gods, thank you. It is so damn refreshing to find someone who understands the way the world works.
I'm sick of all these whiny people talking about how we bombed 'cities' that were 'full of civilians' when both of the cities in question were also military targets, Hiroshima being 'the headquarters of the Fifth Division and Field Marshal Hata's 2nd General Army Headquarters, which commanded the defense of all of southern Japan', 'mobilized for "all-out" war, with thousands of conscripted women, children and Koreans working in military offices, military factories and building demolition and with women and children training to resist any invading force', and Nagasaki 'one of the largest sea ports in southern Japan and was of great wartime importance because of its wide-ranging industrial activity, including the production of ordnance, ships, military equipment, and other war materials.'
The fact that we even skipped over certain targets that were ahead of the two, such as Kyoto, the 'city of temples' shows that we were going for what would get the Japanese to surrender, not what would outrage and incense them into fighting longer.
And yes, most sane people, as you apparently are, all the Gods and Goddesses Bless You, would realise that if we dropped one bomb, and they didn't surrender, that they weren't going to surrender before we dropped the bomb.
Bless you, sir/madam. Bless you.
You, afew other sane posters, and some intelligent people in real life, along with the duct tape wrapped around my head, are all that keep it from 'sploding at all the stupidity in the world.
May your code never SEGFAULT.
Irony is the most difficult concept I have found in my linguistic studies. I only know one actual, in bona fide, pro certe example of Irony:
"Two very proud countries had been involved in a long and drawn out war, neither side able to win. When at last the war ended, they both declared themselves the victors."
When I was working at the local Humane Society, I saved a Apple Mac II/ci from the dumpster. It had been donated to the thrift store and was thrown away because it was 'too old' to interest anyone.
I like playing certain old games, mainly because if a game is done right, it doesn't matter how outdated the graphics get -- Classics never change.
There's just something you get out of playing the Zork Trilogy on the old hardware that you don't get on the new stuff.
The Point is, no matter what concessions we were going to make, we wanted unconditional surrender to get the point fully across that they had been defeated.
Part of war is psychology, you know.
No. I am not saying the Geneva convention is worthless. I am saying that War is Waged by Humans, and Humans are Imperfect, and therefore they make Mistakes, and shit happens. And when 'shit happens' around 'weapons' and 'soft squishy things,' it's generally not 'fun for the whole family.'
It's quite alright. That's the problem with language. Language is a pale imitation of thought. It is, at best, an imperfect medium. However, it's the best we've got.
Thank you for correcting my error. I was going off of memory, and well, time makes fools of us al- Oh, hey, my hand just started blinking red! Hey, guys, look at this, it's cool, my hand is bli$235^@#%$Y@W$%^UY236h54@#^%$NO CARRIER
there are rather strong arguments for the assumption that Japane would have surrendered without an invasion and without the use of atomic bombs.
And there was a hell of alot more evidence, a great deal of it cultural, that said they wouldn't.