Not just that things will change, but that the Internet will change, and that anybody anxious to preserve it in its current form, or fearful of possible evolutionary steps it might take, are just as doomed and misguided as the telcos of the 1970s who worried about preserving their precious telco infrastructure in its 1970 form.
The prediction is secondary; the primary point of my post was the question: Given that things will change, and that the Internet will change radically, so what if the Internet changes in exactly the way the article describes?
After all, there's nothing about the Internet that suggests to me that its current form should be preserved, or even that the Internet is critical to the success of the species that invented it. Therefore, again, so what if it changes?
I take it that you are intimidated by the question I'm asking, so rather than try to answer it, and rather than just keeping silent, you've decided to bring to the debate all the wit and wisdom of an 8 year-old frat boy.
But there I go with the obvious again. Maybe I should be a psychologist!
Look how much the telco infrastructure has changed since 1970. Look at how the usage of that infrastructure has changed. Look at how the organization and administration of that infrastructure has changed.
The telco companies of the 1970s fought desperately to prevent these changes from occurring. "What will happen, they asked," if the telco system changes! "It will be a Bad Thing!"
But in reality, the nature of the telco infrastructure in 1970 is totally irrelevant to the nature of the telco infrastructure today, except for history students interested in tracing its evolution.
All I'm saying is that people who are anxious to preserve the Internet in its current form are probably just as doomed, and just as misguided, as the telcos of the 1970s who were anxious to preserve their telco infrastructure in its 1970 form.
In other words, so what if it changes in exactly the way the article describes? It's bound to change anyway, and chances are we'll find enough value in the changes as to make the current form of the Internet seem stupid, lame, and totally irrelevant.
Actually, there are probably many people like me, who don't bother with p2p filesharing because it already strikes us as a pain in the ass. Then we hear about things like this, and it only confirms it: If I truly care to watch Rome, I'll just Netflix it when it comes out on DVD. In the mean time, I've got plenty of other things to do with my copious free time besides wrangling files out of bittorrent.
In fact, to the extent that p2p networks cater to impatient and lazy people, any shenanigans that cause more work and more delays for users will have exactly the deterrent effect that HBO is hoping for.
Now, whether the technology is robust enough to shrug off HBO's attack, or the attack actually makes the cost of waiting and paying for the show less than the cost of p2p-ing it, for a worthwhile number of people...that remains to be seen.
It's not like the Internet is the key to everything, or to anything, really. It's certainly not the ne plus ultra of human achievement, or the One True Path to the Future.
I predict that for most of its existence, which will probably go on for hundreds or thousands of years, the "Internet" will look shockingly unlike anything this one small fraction of one single human generation has become accustomed to imagining.
I see it as "the mind and awareness of humankind has extended itself to that planet".
The whole point of the concept of telemetry is exactly that: to extend our awareness and senses beyond the reach of our individual physical bodies.
Until we encounter a race so advanced and aware as to make our own achievements look feeble in comparison, I'm perfectly content to consider our probes "us", in certain contexts (such as this one).
So yes, to the best of our ability, and with no small success, "we" went there.
It seems to me that any space elevator implementation is going to require a significant amount of orbital construction and assembly activity before it's ready for use.
So developing a new, cheaper, more reliable orbital excursion system is going to be a prerequisite anyway.
Besides, the current NASA project is a Mercury/Gemini/Apollo-style "chunking" of a larger project: First, master the new orbital excursion technology. Then, master extended usage of the new technology. Finally, put it to the ultimate test: manned Mars missions.
For manned translunar missions, the Space Elevator is a dead end technology (in that it gets people into orbit, but doesn't improve our experience with or understanding of spacecraft technology). Meanwhile, the new orbital excursion technology will be useful for both elevator construction and long-distance travel.
The sequence I'd promote would be:
0. Ongoing robotic probe missions along as many interesting paths as possible. 1. Better orbital work vehicles. 2. Long-term space habitation rehearsal and Mars base rehearsal (using the Moon as practice site). 3. Space elevator construction and long-range manned missions. 4. Mars base following lessons learned from Moon base (which would be nothing more than a Mars base rehearsal anyway). 5. Martian space elevator construction. 6. ??? 7. Profit!
You're implying that the people with a lot of dollars like those dollars as such, in the way of Scrooge McDuck. I think that except for maybe one or two very unique individuals, anybody who's wired to prefer the dollars themselves over the lifestyle those dollars can buy is probably not wired to get very many dollars in the first place (on account of them being too crazy to do much useful work for anybody).
The evacuation buses never made it which, had the city been full of Republican voters, would never have happened.... It's not a conspiracy theory, it's an observation of the available information.
I can't find anything in the available information to support your observation. What data am I missing?
The evacuation buses never made it which, had the city been full of Republican voters, would never have happened.
Surely you're not suggesting that Republican voters would've voted themselves some competent and responsible Mayors and Governors, and saved their own damn selves through foresight and planning?
Oh. Wait. It's a conspiracy theory. You go, Mulder.
First you make some assumptions about the contents of the document. Then you say you can't judge the document until you've read it. Then you say that you must conclude that it is worthless.
None of that makes sense. You haven't seen the document, so why should we accept your assumptions about its contents? You say that you can't judge it until you've seen it, but then you judge it anyway. You say it must be worthless, but the only basis for this is the contents, which you say you have not seen.
Wouldn't it make more sense to judge this mystery document based on the performance of past documents written by the same organization?
Has this organization screwed you on the CAT standards? Were interested parties justified in buying a copy of previous standard specifications by this organization, and complying with those standards?
If you're going to reject this standard, shouldn't you at least reject it on the basis of what you know, instead of rejecting it on the basis of things you admit you have no clue about?
Isn't it kind of embarassing to say, "I know nothing about this document, and until I do, I can't judge it, but in the meantime, I'll go ahead and judge it anyway?"
Fair enough. But to be fair, the Nazis did a pretty good job of making sure that everybody remembers them for their fascism, not for their religion. The current crop of Islamic terrorists seem to be shooting for the opposite effect.
You're right. I had no idea how extensively and openly the Nazi party co-opted Christianity. It was not, as I originally implied, an explicitly atheistic ideology. I was wrong to list it alongside Marxism and its offshoots, in response to the parent post which asked, "When was the last time you heard of 'blind militant' atheists blowing up people who didn't agree with them?" Thank you for explaining my mistake to me.
==========
I admit, I got sidetracked by the vehemence and extremity of your response. I lost the focus of my original post, and dragged this out much longer than necessary, in order to dispute your claim that "Nazi Germany was explicitly and militantly Christian".
I still think your supporting evidence describes a fascism that is explicitly and militantly National Socialist, but that just as explicitly recognizes the usefulness of co-opting the local religion to serve the purposes of National Socialism.
There's little or nothing in the writings of Mussolini or Hitler that suggests a Christian ideal that would be served by fascism. Rather, they talk about a fascist ideal that would be served by Christianity.
You seemed to be arguing, from these sources, that Fascism was/is a Christian or religious phenomenon, and that Hitler's anti-semitism was the result of Christian traditions, rather than the result of traditional European anti-semitism.
Certainly some pious soldiers of the Wehrmacht might have been misled into thinking that their war was a holy Christian war, and with that possibility in mind I agree I should have left Nazis out of my original reply. But certainly as far as Hitler and Mussolini were concerned, the Fascist leadership recognized no higher power but themselves as heads of state, and "blew people up" not out of religious disagreements, but out of political disagreements. As Mussolini makes clear in your source, religion may have been a tool for manipulating the masses, but regard for the Christian god (or any god) was not a fundamental priniciple of fascism.
As adopted by millions of religious Germans, Nazism may well have had a strong religious component. As conceived and founded by men like Hitler and Mussolini, it seems to have been a brilliant piece of atheistic cynicism.
==========
And what's this about being a dick?
I claimed that Nazism was a "blind atheist" ideology. You contradicted that claim, and as evidence you produced some bizarre and poorly-developed conspiracy theory that Hitler engineered Kristalnacht to coincide with Martin Luther's birthday, because Luther was an anti-semite (just like Hitler!) and that therefore Nazism was Christian (just like Martin Luther!).
So yeah, I called you on it.
It turns out that the real support for your argument was provided in the next link you sent, after I pointed out how worthless your original link was. Of course, you couldn't just settle down and give a strong argument, you had to complain that I hadn't found your supporting sources for you.
You want to call me a dick? Fine. No accounting for taste, they say.
Someone who contradicts me, without support, and then complains that I didn't research their contradiction, when it was so easy they should have done it themselves in the first place, and supported their own damn contradiction to begin with?
Um... neat, I guess. If it's so easy to Google some kind of solid support for your arguments, why not do that to begin with, insted of starting with the most inconclusive and unsupported link in your "bookmarks" folder?
Anyway, so what? This article goes a long way towards showing that the Nazis co-opted the Church in Germany. It also lists the parallels between Luther's Anti-Semitism.
But the article also admits that it's very difficult to know what fascist leaders truly believe, and what they claim to believe to pander to their audience.
And the article describes fascism being devised first, as a reaction to Marxism, and then co-opting the Church afterwards, in order to increase public acceptance of the party.
There's little in the article to support the claim that Christianity produced Nazism. Rather, we have a clear picture of fascism producing a perversion of Christianity.
Finally, at first reading, there doesn't seem to be anything in the article to support a meaningful connection between Kristalnacht and Martin Luther's birthday. If I missed it, please let me know.
And what's this about Kristalnacht happening on Luther's birthday?
Are you seriously trying to tell me that Adolph Hitler had such a hardon for medieval anti-semitic Christian scholars that he engineered all the vicissitudes of his political career, the personalities and ambitions of his closest associates, and the attitudes and apprehensions of the German military leadership; simply so that he would have an excuse to carry out a violent purge of his party on Martin Luther's birthday?
What if his opponents within the party had strengthened their power base earlier in the year? What if they'd been prepared to make their move in an earlier season? Would Hitler have postponed his purge, for the explicitly Christian symbolism of the coincidence?
Give me a break. The X-Files has more plausible conspiracy theories than you do.
In fact, the more I think about it, the more your argument fails.
You don't show that Hitler got his anti-semitic ideas from Luther. You don't show that Luther got his anti-semitic ideas from Christianity, rather than from the rampant anti-semitism that pervaded his culture. You don't show that Hitler didn't get his anti-semitism from the same anti-semitic traditions.
You don't show that Hitler ever couched his bigotry and murderousness in religious terms. In his own masterpiece on the subject, he presents his arguments in socio-political and socio-economic terms, not religious terms.
You say Nazism was explicitly Christian, but they took the pagan swastika rather than the Christian crucifix as their symbol. You say it was explicitly Christian, but they idolized the Fuhrer, not the Christ. You say they were explicitly Christian, but did not actually present any evidence to support this. You say they were explicitly Christian. I say you don't know what "explicit" actually means.
You say that Nazi Germany was explicitly Christian, and provide no evidence to support this.
You say that Hitler's genocidal policies were inspired and guided by Martin Luther's anti-semitic writings. The evidence you present is a single short essay by a guy who's bottom line is "I don't think it was an accident" that Hitler's genocide followed the pattern proposed by Lutehr. This guy says "we have evidence that Hitler read Luther", but does not give any of that evidence.
He goes on to describe a purging process so obviously practical that there's no reason to believe that anybody whose mind was set on such a thing would go about it any other way. He portrays a remarkable coincidence, but nothing in his argument, nor in his evidence gives any reason to believe it's anything more than a coincidence.
While the Nazi regime did co-opt the German Church (which they had to, as part of co-opting the German people), I don't recall that they did much in the name of Christianity, or its God. Last time I checked, the Fuhrer himself was the supreme being, and everything was done in his name, or the name of the party. I think that when the Nazis replaced the crucifixes and icons with swastika banners and portraits of the Fuhrer, it became pretty clear that Christianity was neither a mitigating nor a motivating factor in the Nazi regime's activities.
It's possible that I'm underestimating the Church's role in Nazism. If you have anything more convincing and conclusive to share, I'd be interested to see it.
Meanwhile, I take it you have no problems with my characterization of Marx-derived socialism?
That's where you're wrong. I enjoy the strip clubs, and frequent them... frequently.
The fact that I can find some women who are willing to cater to my barbaric tendencies has had little impact on my overall impression that women in general have a civilizing effect on the men they work and live with.
To me, it sounds like someone's never had a mother, or a wife...
It's my theory that women have a "civilizing" effect on men--mitigating our more barbaric impulses and channeling our animal energies into productive and intelligent activities. That is, that women make better managers (in some contexts) for the same reason they make better mothers and wives. (And just as men make better managers, in some contexts, for the same reason they make better husbands and fathers).
Kind of like we carry all that deadweight heat shielding into orbit with us, right now?
The reason the entire belly of the shuttle is covered with heat shielding is because the entire belly of the shuttle is used to slow the vehicle down very quickly over a very short period of time.
With the "anchor" method, only the anchor would need that much shielding; the rest of the vehicle could likely get by with little or none.
Depending on how big the anchor is, how much shielding it requires (since it's not a structural component of your vehicle, it may not actually need a lot of shielding), and the overall mass of your winch-and-cable-assembly, using such a tethered anchor might represent a significant improvement in your overall mass/volume budget for the vehicle.
And assuming the anchor solution works, it's no more dead weight than the "heat shielding on the ass of the capsule" solution.
Nazi Germany. Soviet Russia. In fact, the socialist implementations derived from Marxist theory were (are) explicitly atheist, and perpetrated horrible crimes against millions of dissenters (still do, in places like China and Cuba).
There's a theory making the rounds that the Catholic Church didn't really care one way or the other about heliocentrism, and the Church officials presiding over the trial were actually sympathetic to Galileo. That Galileo's enemies were actually rival scientists committed to the heliocentric theory and co-opting the Church's authority to silence a dissenting voice.
Slashdot Mirror
Not just that things will change, but that the Internet will change, and that anybody anxious to preserve it in its current form, or fearful of possible evolutionary steps it might take, are just as doomed and misguided as the telcos of the 1970s who worried about preserving their precious telco infrastructure in its 1970 form.
The prediction is secondary; the primary point of my post was the question: Given that things will change, and that the Internet will change radically, so what if the Internet changes in exactly the way the article describes?
After all, there's nothing about the Internet that suggests to me that its current form should be preserved, or even that the Internet is critical to the success of the species that invented it. Therefore, again, so what if it changes?
I take it that you are intimidated by the question I'm asking, so rather than try to answer it, and rather than just keeping silent, you've decided to bring to the debate all the wit and wisdom of an 8 year-old frat boy.
But there I go with the obvious again. Maybe I should be a psychologist!
Exactly!
Look how much the telco infrastructure has changed since 1970. Look at how the usage of that infrastructure has changed. Look at how the organization and administration of that infrastructure has changed.
The telco companies of the 1970s fought desperately to prevent these changes from occurring. "What will happen, they asked," if the telco system changes! "It will be a Bad Thing!"
But in reality, the nature of the telco infrastructure in 1970 is totally irrelevant to the nature of the telco infrastructure today, except for history students interested in tracing its evolution.
All I'm saying is that people who are anxious to preserve the Internet in its current form are probably just as doomed, and just as misguided, as the telcos of the 1970s who were anxious to preserve their telco infrastructure in its 1970 form.
In other words, so what if it changes in exactly the way the article describes? It's bound to change anyway, and chances are we'll find enough value in the changes as to make the current form of the Internet seem stupid, lame, and totally irrelevant.
Actually, there are probably many people like me, who don't bother with p2p filesharing because it already strikes us as a pain in the ass. Then we hear about things like this, and it only confirms it: If I truly care to watch Rome, I'll just Netflix it when it comes out on DVD. In the mean time, I've got plenty of other things to do with my copious free time besides wrangling files out of bittorrent.
In fact, to the extent that p2p networks cater to impatient and lazy people, any shenanigans that cause more work and more delays for users will have exactly the deterrent effect that HBO is hoping for.
Now, whether the technology is robust enough to shrug off HBO's attack, or the attack actually makes the cost of waiting and paying for the show less than the cost of p2p-ing it, for a worthwhile number of people...that remains to be seen.
Alternatively, so what if it is possible?
It's not like the Internet is the key to everything, or to anything, really. It's certainly not the ne plus ultra of human achievement, or the One True Path to the Future.
I predict that for most of its existence, which will probably go on for hundreds or thousands of years, the "Internet" will look shockingly unlike anything this one small fraction of one single human generation has become accustomed to imagining.
I see it as "the mind and awareness of humankind has extended itself to that planet".
The whole point of the concept of telemetry is exactly that: to extend our awareness and senses beyond the reach of our individual physical bodies.
Until we encounter a race so advanced and aware as to make our own achievements look feeble in comparison, I'm perfectly content to consider our probes "us", in certain contexts (such as this one).
So yes, to the best of our ability, and with no small success, "we" went there.
It seems to me that any space elevator implementation is going to require a significant amount of orbital construction and assembly activity before it's ready for use.
So developing a new, cheaper, more reliable orbital excursion system is going to be a prerequisite anyway.
Besides, the current NASA project is a Mercury/Gemini/Apollo-style "chunking" of a larger project: First, master the new orbital excursion technology. Then, master extended usage of the new technology. Finally, put it to the ultimate test: manned Mars missions.
For manned translunar missions, the Space Elevator is a dead end technology (in that it gets people into orbit, but doesn't improve our experience with or understanding of spacecraft technology). Meanwhile, the new orbital excursion technology will be useful for both elevator construction and long-distance travel.
The sequence I'd promote would be:
0. Ongoing robotic probe missions along as many interesting paths as possible.
1. Better orbital work vehicles.
2. Long-term space habitation rehearsal and Mars base rehearsal (using the Moon as practice site).
3. Space elevator construction and long-range manned missions.
4. Mars base following lessons learned from Moon base (which would be nothing more than a Mars base rehearsal anyway).
5. Martian space elevator construction.
6. ???
7. Profit!
Assuming there was an audience for it, would you like to do your job live on television every day?
Would you like to do your job live on television eveery day if the audience was made up of argumentative, nitpicky, overzealous nerds?
But to say that all this Hurricane activity is the result of Global Warming isn't science, it's speculation.
For extremely stupid values of speculation.
You're implying that the people with a lot of dollars like those dollars as such, in the way of Scrooge McDuck. I think that except for maybe one or two very unique individuals, anybody who's wired to prefer the dollars themselves over the lifestyle those dollars can buy is probably not wired to get very many dollars in the first place (on account of them being too crazy to do much useful work for anybody).
The evacuation buses never made it which, had the city been full of Republican voters, would never have happened.... It's not a conspiracy theory, it's an observation of the available information.
I can't find anything in the available information to support your observation. What data am I missing?
The evacuation buses never made it which, had the city been full of Republican voters, would never have happened.
Surely you're not suggesting that Republican voters would've voted themselves some competent and responsible Mayors and Governors, and saved their own damn selves through foresight and planning?
Oh. Wait. It's a conspiracy theory. You go, Mulder.
How weird...
First you make some assumptions about the contents of the document. Then you say you can't judge the document until you've read it. Then you say that you must conclude that it is worthless.
None of that makes sense. You haven't seen the document, so why should we accept your assumptions about its contents? You say that you can't judge it until you've seen it, but then you judge it anyway. You say it must be worthless, but the only basis for this is the contents, which you say you have not seen.
Wouldn't it make more sense to judge this mystery document based on the performance of past documents written by the same organization?
Has this organization screwed you on the CAT standards? Were interested parties justified in buying a copy of previous standard specifications by this organization, and complying with those standards?
If you're going to reject this standard, shouldn't you at least reject it on the basis of what you know, instead of rejecting it on the basis of things you admit you have no clue about?
Isn't it kind of embarassing to say, "I know nothing about this document, and until I do, I can't judge it, but in the meantime, I'll go ahead and judge it anyway?"
Fair enough. But to be fair, the Nazis did a pretty good job of making sure that everybody remembers them for their fascism, not for their religion. The current crop of Islamic terrorists seem to be shooting for the opposite effect.
You're right. I had no idea how extensively and openly the Nazi party co-opted Christianity. It was not, as I originally implied, an explicitly atheistic ideology. I was wrong to list it alongside Marxism and its offshoots, in response to the parent post which asked, "When was the last time you heard of 'blind militant' atheists blowing up people who didn't agree with them?" Thank you for explaining my mistake to me.
==========
I admit, I got sidetracked by the vehemence and extremity of your response. I lost the focus of my original post, and dragged this out much longer than necessary, in order to dispute your claim that "Nazi Germany was explicitly and militantly Christian".
I still think your supporting evidence describes a fascism that is explicitly and militantly National Socialist, but that just as explicitly recognizes the usefulness of co-opting the local religion to serve the purposes of National Socialism.
There's little or nothing in the writings of Mussolini or Hitler that suggests a Christian ideal that would be served by fascism. Rather, they talk about a fascist ideal that would be served by Christianity.
You seemed to be arguing, from these sources, that Fascism was/is a Christian or religious phenomenon, and that Hitler's anti-semitism was the result of Christian traditions, rather than the result of traditional European anti-semitism.
Certainly some pious soldiers of the Wehrmacht might have been misled into thinking that their war was a holy Christian war, and with that possibility in mind I agree I should have left Nazis out of my original reply. But certainly as far as Hitler and Mussolini were concerned, the Fascist leadership recognized no higher power but themselves as heads of state, and "blew people up" not out of religious disagreements, but out of political disagreements. As Mussolini makes clear in your source, religion may have been a tool for manipulating the masses, but regard for the Christian god (or any god) was not a fundamental priniciple of fascism.
As adopted by millions of religious Germans, Nazism may well have had a strong religious component. As conceived and founded by men like Hitler and Mussolini, it seems to have been a brilliant piece of atheistic cynicism.
==========
And what's this about being a dick?
I claimed that Nazism was a "blind atheist" ideology. You contradicted that claim, and as evidence you produced some bizarre and poorly-developed conspiracy theory that Hitler engineered Kristalnacht to coincide with Martin Luther's birthday, because Luther was an anti-semite (just like Hitler!) and that therefore Nazism was Christian (just like Martin Luther!).
So yeah, I called you on it.
It turns out that the real support for your argument was provided in the next link you sent, after I pointed out how worthless your original link was. Of course, you couldn't just settle down and give a strong argument, you had to complain that I hadn't found your supporting sources for you.
You want to call me a dick? Fine. No accounting for taste, they say.
Someone who contradicts me, without support, and then complains that I didn't research their contradiction, when it was so easy they should have done it themselves in the first place, and supported their own damn contradiction to begin with?
Now that's what I call a dick.
Um... neat, I guess. If it's so easy to Google some kind of solid support for your arguments, why not do that to begin with, insted of starting with the most inconclusive and unsupported link in your "bookmarks" folder?
Anyway, so what? This article goes a long way towards showing that the Nazis co-opted the Church in Germany. It also lists the parallels between Luther's Anti-Semitism.
But the article also admits that it's very difficult to know what fascist leaders truly believe, and what they claim to believe to pander to their audience.
And the article describes fascism being devised first, as a reaction to Marxism, and then co-opting the Church afterwards, in order to increase public acceptance of the party.
There's little in the article to support the claim that Christianity produced Nazism. Rather, we have a clear picture of fascism producing a perversion of Christianity.
Finally, at first reading, there doesn't seem to be anything in the article to support a meaningful connection between Kristalnacht and Martin Luther's birthday. If I missed it, please let me know.
And what's this about Kristalnacht happening on Luther's birthday?
Are you seriously trying to tell me that Adolph Hitler had such a hardon for medieval anti-semitic Christian scholars that he engineered all the vicissitudes of his political career, the personalities and ambitions of his closest associates, and the attitudes and apprehensions of the German military leadership; simply so that he would have an excuse to carry out a violent purge of his party on Martin Luther's birthday?
What if his opponents within the party had strengthened their power base earlier in the year? What if they'd been prepared to make their move in an earlier season? Would Hitler have postponed his purge, for the explicitly Christian symbolism of the coincidence?
Give me a break. The X-Files has more plausible conspiracy theories than you do.
In fact, the more I think about it, the more your argument fails.
You don't show that Hitler got his anti-semitic ideas from Luther. You don't show that Luther got his anti-semitic ideas from Christianity, rather than from the rampant anti-semitism that pervaded his culture. You don't show that Hitler didn't get his anti-semitism from the same anti-semitic traditions.
You don't show that Hitler ever couched his bigotry and murderousness in religious terms. In his own masterpiece on the subject, he presents his arguments in socio-political and socio-economic terms, not religious terms.
You say Nazism was explicitly Christian, but they took the pagan swastika rather than the Christian crucifix as their symbol. You say it was explicitly Christian, but they idolized the Fuhrer, not the Christ. You say they were explicitly Christian, but did not actually present any evidence to support this. You say they were explicitly Christian. I say you don't know what "explicit" actually means.
You say that Nazi Germany was explicitly Christian, and provide no evidence to support this.
You say that Hitler's genocidal policies were inspired and guided by Martin Luther's anti-semitic writings. The evidence you present is a single short essay by a guy who's bottom line is "I don't think it was an accident" that Hitler's genocide followed the pattern proposed by Lutehr. This guy says "we have evidence that Hitler read Luther", but does not give any of that evidence.
He goes on to describe a purging process so obviously practical that there's no reason to believe that anybody whose mind was set on such a thing would go about it any other way. He portrays a remarkable coincidence, but nothing in his argument, nor in his evidence gives any reason to believe it's anything more than a coincidence.
While the Nazi regime did co-opt the German Church (which they had to, as part of co-opting the German people), I don't recall that they did much in the name of Christianity, or its God. Last time I checked, the Fuhrer himself was the supreme being, and everything was done in his name, or the name of the party. I think that when the Nazis replaced the crucifixes and icons with swastika banners and portraits of the Fuhrer, it became pretty clear that Christianity was neither a mitigating nor a motivating factor in the Nazi regime's activities.
It's possible that I'm underestimating the Church's role in Nazism. If you have anything more convincing and conclusive to share, I'd be interested to see it.
Meanwhile, I take it you have no problems with my characterization of Marx-derived socialism?
I'm not shocked that a barbarian would see civilization as pussification, but that doesn't make him any less of a subhuman beast.
At least you can spell, though. Let me guess: one of your grade school teachers was a woman, and her good influence never quite wore off.
There may be hope for you yet, beast.
(political correctness be damned)
Glad to see I'm not the only one...
Sounds like someone's never been to a strip club.
That's where you're wrong. I enjoy the strip clubs, and frequent them... frequently.
The fact that I can find some women who are willing to cater to my barbaric tendencies has had little impact on my overall impression that women in general have a civilizing effect on the men they work and live with.
To me, it sounds like someone's never had a mother, or a wife...
It's my theory that women have a "civilizing" effect on men--mitigating our more barbaric impulses and channeling our animal energies into productive and intelligent activities. That is, that women make better managers (in some contexts) for the same reason they make better mothers and wives. (And just as men make better managers, in some contexts, for the same reason they make better husbands and fathers).
And now, let the flaming begin.
Kind of like we carry all that deadweight heat shielding into orbit with us, right now?
The reason the entire belly of the shuttle is covered with heat shielding is because the entire belly of the shuttle is used to slow the vehicle down very quickly over a very short period of time.
With the "anchor" method, only the anchor would need that much shielding; the rest of the vehicle could likely get by with little or none.
Depending on how big the anchor is, how much shielding it requires (since it's not a structural component of your vehicle, it may not actually need a lot of shielding), and the overall mass of your winch-and-cable-assembly, using such a tethered anchor might represent a significant improvement in your overall mass/volume budget for the vehicle.
And assuming the anchor solution works, it's no more dead weight than the "heat shielding on the ass of the capsule" solution.
Nazi Germany. Soviet Russia. In fact, the socialist implementations derived from Marxist theory were (are) explicitly atheist, and perpetrated horrible crimes against millions of dissenters (still do, in places like China and Cuba).
There's a theory making the rounds that the Catholic Church didn't really care one way or the other about heliocentrism, and the Church officials presiding over the trial were actually sympathetic to Galileo. That Galileo's enemies were actually rival scientists committed to the heliocentric theory and co-opting the Church's authority to silence a dissenting voice.