Regimes like Saddam's breed the despair that breed terror. The Taliban were financed and essentially controlled by al-Qaeda. The Taliban supported and provided a host country for al-Qaeda. Given the option of expelling al-Qaeda, the Taliban failed to respond. If you open your home to murderers, take their money, do their bidding, and refuse to expel them when families of their victims demand that, why should you not also be considered a murdererer?
This isn't about getting people to like us, no more than WW2 was about getting Nazis and fascists to like us. It is a matter of eliminating terrorists and the regimes that breed them. If that means making use of ugly regimes until it suits our larger purposes to turn elsewhere, so be it. Those regimes can withdraw their ammbassadors from Washington anytime they wish.
My point is not that democracy is the best government. It is that people have an absolute right to choose their own government and that, therefore, any government that is not chosen by the people it governs is illegitimate.
If a people democratically choose to put in power a regime that quashes their demoractic rights, that is a mistake but it remains their right. It also remains ther right to change their minds and remove that regime.
I neither know nor am I concerned with whether or nor everyone on the planet would be "best off" with democracy. I do not know how to determine "best off". My lack of omnipotence does not prevent me from making judgments. To repeat, I am simply stating that any government not chosen by the people it governs is illegitimate.
>> I think it's clear that the level of response to the rather ill defined "terror threat" is well above the relative response to the risk of me being killed in a car accident.
No, it isn't clear. Even acknowledging that it is government's responsibility to make it safe for you to drive (not a given we all accept), a considerable amount of tax revenue has been spent in the last century to improve the quality of our highways and streets and to improve and enforce safety regulations. Your essential argument is that we should not spend billions to fight terror because we are not spending an equal amount to keep ourselves from killing each other on the roads. That's probably an acceptable argument in some sophomore debate class, where expectations are already rather low, but it is also patently absurd.
In point of fact, there is a threat posed by an indeterminant number of terrorists who intend to kill as many Americans as they can. Debating the scale of that threat is one thing, but dismissing it altogther nonsense.
>> Much of the world wants us dead because of our past actions.
Much of the world believes the lies fed to them by their controlled unfree media. It is not the fault of the U.S. that Arabs are governed by corrupt, incompentent despots. Or that most of Africa is, as well. It is not an attempt to whitewash history to argue that these people, and you, are blaming their own failures on the U.S.
If someone wants to target us because they believe those lies, then so be it: We will target them.
Good luck with your dreams of riches. Learning to spell and write might be something to consider.
I feel no reason to refrain from preaching to a European, since that s all they do to us.
In any case, if Europeans want to describe statements of reality as "preaching" then they've got even more problems that I thought. They cannot respond correctly to today's issues if they fail to understand their own responsibility for their creation.
I haven't stated the degree of threat I think terror represents. I've merely stated that the threat is real.
>> I mean cars are a much larger danger to my health and safety than "terror" but I still drive a car every day.
Your car is no threat. Your car does not want to kill you. You become the threat when you drive inappropriately. Without you, your car is immobile.
>> At this point we can kill every man woman a child in the Middle East inside of an hour. That's a threat.
We are not threatening the people of the Middle East. Possession of weaponry is not a threat. But, yes, if someone attacks us with any kind of weapons, we are obligated to fight back.
That was then, this is now. The USSR was the threat, then. We sided with Arab despots for the same reason we sided with Stalin against the Nazis. Once the Nazis were defeated, the Soviets grew into an equal threat. Now that the Soviets are gone, a new threat has been bred in those Arab despotisms. Would you have us forego defending ourselves today because the attacker was our ally in the past? There is no moral requirement for the kind of consistency you are suggesting.
The freedom of the people counts for everything; the freedom of the state counts for nothing. Sovereignity cannot be used as a shield for tyranny. It is immoral to allow dictatorships and totalitarian regimes to exist simply because they control sovereign states. It is immoral to excuse the tyranny of your own state simply because that state is free and soverign. Nazi Germany was sovereign. So were fascist Italy and Japan. So was the USSR. Would you have excused their crimes? Africa and the Middle East are afflicted with peope who, justifiably, take pride in the soverignity of their nations. But they have also been suckered into trading their personal freedom for the freedom of the state. Of what value is my state's soverignty if my state oppresses me?
I'm asserting that many Europeans and European governments argue that understanding and accommodating the radical demands of terrorists and placating the regimes that produce and nourish them is the way to go. In other words, be nice to them so we can maintain our lifestyle. Unfortunately, being nice to people who want you dead doesn't work. Ask the Dutch.
It seems that you, at least, would prefer that Saddam eould have been let to oppress and kill Iraqis so long as your country could by his oil. Precisely my point. (BTW, no one has consfiscated any Iraqi oilfields and no one has slain "half" their people.)
I presume you weren't attacked on 9/11 because, frankly, no one cares. If a Croatian city was the center of world commerce with giant symbolic buildings, perhaps you would have been attacked.
But, if you can't understand that the 9/11 attacks were an attack on the Western way of life, not just on a single country, then you are guilty of the same medieval provincialism that fuels European bigotry and division.
Did I say all Arabs are terrorists? Far from it. Terror is a form of behavior. The IRA are terrorists, but that doesn't make all the Irish terrorists. ETA are terrorists, but not all Basques are terrorists.
I don't recall that the U.S. is friendly to Belarus and the DPRK. Are you suggesting that if the U.S. failed to invade every undemocratic nation it should have stayed out of Iraq? No logical connection exists there.
Communism allowed no freedom to vote the regime out of power. Sounds like you are willing to trade creature comforts for your own freedom. Exactly what's wrong with Europe.
Europe's mess: Imperialism and exploited colonies across the globe; World War One; World War Two; fascism; Nazism; the Holecaust; Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Milosevich; Soviet tyranny, death camps, and the Cold War. Or, don't they teach those things in European schools anymore?
Israel, a European creation in a region ruined by European imperialism, is democratic. It deserves support. The Arab regimes that attack it are tyrannies that deserve no support. Simple as that.
The current maps of the Middle East and Africa exist because they were drawn by ignorant, racist, European colonialists. Those borders and those nations have little or no relatioship with the demographic realities of the continent. Europe deliberately refused to prepare is Arab and African dependencies for democracy. After WW2, when Europe could no longer get away with, or afford, to exploit and repress these regions, it simply packed up and left. This meant that corrupt and incompetent European rulers were replaced by corrupt and incompetent local rulers. (I lived in southern Africa for a few years prior to Mandela's release. The South Africans who opposed apartheid, rather logically, said they were still colonized, but their masters lived in Pretoria and Cape Town.)
>>"..most natives still live in their tribes..."
Nice bit of ignorant racism.
Russia, last I looked, is European. I know that bothers the rest of Europe, bt, then, they still can't admit that Turkey is also part of the continent. (All those Muslims probably hs something to do with it, eh?)
Yes, Communism did replace the czars. Pity. Look what it got us.
Don't I remember a little something about ethnic cleansing in your part of the world a few years ago?
Your anecdote about your uncle in Syria is irrelevant. I've lived -- not visited -- the Arab Middle East, more than a decade ago. I was greeted with warmth and hospitality everywhere. Yet, terror existed. Movie theaters were bombed for showing Bollywood films. Westerners and Westernized locals were frequent targets of attack in the central business areas of cities. Fathers murdered their daughters for speaking with the wrong boys.
Note, too, that no one has said Syria is ""full of radicalized Islamists". Syria has been governed for decades by regimes that support finance and direct terror. Its citizens could all be pacifist monks and Syria would still be on the wrong side.
It's been my experience that statements like yours are really disguised condemnations of democracy. Like many mistaken Arabs, you won't be satisfied until the U.S. stops supporting democracy and the spread of democracy and joins with fat and happy Europeans who happily suck up to tyrants and miscreants for oil. It seems many of you would trade the misery of the Arab world for your own warm beds.
The U.S. was attacked on 9/11 because there are people in the world who believe that the Western way of life, including yours, is evil. They believe they have a duty to kill all Westerners. They must be eliminated. No, almost all Arabs are nothing like that. Yes, placating existing Arab regimes (all illegitimate because they are undemocratic) will do nothing to eliminate them. The terrorists exist because those Arab regimes exists, not because the U.S. exists.
Frankly, having survived living under the yoke of Communist thugs, I'd think a Croatian would know better. Sadly, your remarks are just further evidence of the cynical and corrupted world view typical of so many Europeans these days. Remember, we're still cleaning up the mess Europe created in the 20th century. All those corrupt Arab regimes nurturing death, repression, ignorance and terror? Your fault. All those bogus illogically bordered African countries wallowing in misery and death? Your fault. All those billions who slaved, and still suffer, under Communism? Your fault.
I have no way of knowing what he's saying except by reading his words.
A government's cynical use of a real threat doesn't remove that threat from reality. The poster and others like him would have us believe that terror simply does not exist.
No one ever expected to find Osama in Iraq. Regimes like Saddam's -- which are immune to internal overthrow -- are precisely the kind of environment that fosters and nourishes radical fundamentalist terror. As much as I disagree with Bush on almost everything, he did argue that his intent was to bring democracy to the Arab Middle East in order to eliminate the cultures that breed terrorism. He's right about that. Other than Iraq, no current Arab regime is democratic; therefore, no current Arab regime is legitimate. I'd rather have seen the UN given the authority and the troops to eliminate Saddam, but there you go.
Finally, pay more attention: Car bombs Iraq typically target Iraqis. Not "other Iraqis" because most of the people doing the killing are non-Iraqis who have entered that country for the express purpose of spreading terror.
Are you asserting that there are no people who wish to kill Americans and other Westerners simply because they are not radicalized Islamists? If not, then you are merely arguing, ineptly, about the scale of the threat, not its reality.
I fear, like the people you claim are nonexistent, you have allowed your own irrational and unsupportable beliefs to cloud your rational mind.
1. The orginal submission demonstrates the problem with relying on unvetted reader submissions. First, this is yesterday's story. Second, the CEV is not a Shuttle replacement. The Shuttle will be cancelled and grounded as soon as the CEV flies to ISS, but it is only one component of an entirely new program.
2. Orbital rendevous, of Earth, the Moon, or Mars, makes these destinations possible. The likelihood of that a booster capable of sending even a minimal mission to Mars (on the order of 500-800 tons) from a single Earth launch is ludicrous. All real space travel should begin in Earth orbit.
3. The Lockheed proposal is a lifting body, not an airframe with wings like the Shuttle. It does not not use tiles. Lockheed argues that a lifting body will increase safety by providing greater crossrange capability than is available in a capsule.
3. Boeing's proposal will almost certainly involve a capsule.
4. The CEV shown in Lockheed's proposal is a vehicle intended for relatively short trips to LEO and the Moon. Travel to Mars and asteroids will obviously require considerably more hardware.
5. Apollo was a crash program funded at levels that have been politically untenable since the 1970's. If NASA is going to go to the Moon and Mars, it is going to do so without major increases n its annual budget. Therefore, it is trading time for money.
6. We missed almost everything on the Moon. We made only six very short trips there. If we can't pull off repeated Lunar visits in conjunction with sustained human presence there, we have no business being confident that we can successfully pull off multi-year missions to Mars. If we can't keep people alive on a body that is 3 days away, how can we keep them alive on a body this is almost a year away?
7. What's going on here is that this proposal is only the first piece of an extensive effort to extend humanity's presence into the inner Solar System.
It isn't an analogy. Google is completely dependent on others for the content it displays. My point is that many people argue that they can forsake news producers like the NYT and turn to "free" sites like Google, forgetting that Google would have no content for its news site unless someone was willing to actually pay for products like the NYT.
Yes, direct readers of both news and advertising is exactly what I mean. Don't forget, without those direct readers, Google would have nothing, either.
In other words, Google is dependent on people who buy newspapers, news magazines, and who subscribe to the wires.
Be honest, when was the last time you really wanted to read last week's NYT?
No business has an obligation to give away its product. The Times is already giving you free access to its online edition. Before you have an attack of self-righteousness about the Times charging for access to old online editions, maybe you ought to ask if they've really been giving away copies of old print editions for all these years?
And, before someone whines that the get all the news they need for free from Google, please remember that Google is, effectively, a parasite that feeds on others. Google creates no content, no news, of its own. Part of the reason papers like the NYT need to consider charging for access is that operations like Google distribute their product without paying them.
I doubt you have evidence the writers were contractually obligated to portray characters as unflawed and unconflicted. Roddenberry, a writer himself, imbued the TOS characters with a significant amount of personal flaws and conflict, from which grew the best stories.
I am certain that Paramount constrains the Trek creative staff from making major and surprising changes to established characters. That makes sense because viewers and readers expect the characters to behave in a familiar way.
Ultimately, Trek is an ensemble drama, just like shows like LA Law, Law and Order, or Desparate Housewives. We watch those shows because the characters are interesting and we care about them. A show has only one chance -- one episode -- to convince people that the characters are interesting and worth caring about. Enterprise, in particular, failed to do that. None of the S-F trappings, none of the multi-episode arcs, none of the references to Trek's legacy make any difference when you're watching you don't care about doing uninteresting things.
Since the writers develop the characters, it is facile to argue the characters gave them "nothing to work with". Quite the opposite: the writers could have changed those characters anytime they wished. The fact that they didn't points to bad writing and bad story telling.
The Kirk in TOS was a one-dimensional hormone-driven cowboy, and Spock was an immature Vulcan fixating on repressing his emotions. As the actors aged and played the roles in the movies, the writers did add depth to their characters, e.g., Kirk became very aware of his own mortality and Spock became one of the more emotional figures in Trek.
The quality of TOS is often greatly overrated. Many of its shows were among the cheesiest of teh franchise.
In truth, I think the factors Berman and Braga, et al, have mentioned as reasons for the cancellation of Enterprise did have an impact. But, the primary reason people stopped watching (and a lot of people stopped watching long before Enterprise aired) is that the stories were inspidid and repetitive.
Putting aside all the usual reasons cited for Trek's success, it is, fundamentally, a character-driven drama: Take compelling, believable characters and place them in compelling, believable conflicts and you're halfway home. Mix in good story telling and you're home. Those alone won't guarantee success, as TV proves every year. But success is impossible without those elements.
As I see it, every Trek series has had good characters. Every Trek series has often burdened those characters with silly plots, unbelievable conflict, and insipid dialogue. (E.g., any monster of the week episode on any series.) Enterprise suffered more than the other series. (I think, for the most part, because they avoided the conflict surrounding the formation of the Federation for three years.)
>>...I liked Star Trek: TNG for the ethical dilemmas, the hints at mankind's potential, goodness, discovery, and the general sense of something bigger than our own petty modern squabbles...
To each their own, but conflict and combat have aways been key components of Star Trek, and every other drama. Shows depicting a bunch of ethically mature humans displaying their wholesome goodness while they unobtrusively research the galaxy would be thundersously boring.
When one of the Trek series, like TNG, had the budget we'd see conflict and war as grand battles between starships. This has the effect of depersonalizing the conflict. On series with smaller budgets, like TNG and Enterprise, conflict and combat were often depicted as phaser and disruptor fights between a few actors on a set. Or, worse yet, between Trek heroes and a Monster of the Week.
I'm not sure what "payback" you've seen as a theme in Enterprise. The Zindi arc was the most combative and it was about preventing an attack on Earth, not payback. The long Dominion War dominated DS9; Klingon culture made its debut in TOS; and the Borg wreaked havoc in TNG.
In the end, Enterprise and the last few movies were brought down because they weren't telling good stories. Tell a good story and people will watch.
It is the responsibility of the editors to edit the posts before they publish them. If they can't even be bothered to verify the accuaracy of reader submissions, why are they being paid?
Yes. I suppose/. would run a story about the Tooth Fairy if some other idiot sent it in.
About all this Titan had in common with the original Titan ICBM was the name.
If the/. staff can't be bothered to have a clue, maybe they can actually pay attention to the news so they stop running this kind of stuff days after it happened.
Slashdot Mirror
Regimes like Saddam's breed the despair that breed terror. The Taliban were financed and essentially controlled by al-Qaeda. The Taliban supported and provided a host country for al-Qaeda. Given the option of expelling al-Qaeda, the Taliban failed to respond. If you open your home to murderers, take their money, do their bidding, and refuse to expel them when families of their victims demand that, why should you not also be considered a murdererer?
This isn't about getting people to like us, no more than WW2 was about getting Nazis and fascists to like us. It is a matter of eliminating terrorists and the regimes that breed them. If that means making use of ugly regimes until it suits our larger purposes to turn elsewhere, so be it. Those regimes can withdraw their ammbassadors from Washington anytime they wish.
My point is not that democracy is the best government. It is that people have an absolute right to choose their own government and that, therefore, any government that is not chosen by the people it governs is illegitimate.
If a people democratically choose to put in power a regime that quashes their demoractic rights, that is a mistake but it remains their right. It also remains ther right to change their minds and remove that regime.
I neither know nor am I concerned with whether or nor everyone on the planet would be "best off" with democracy. I do not know how to determine "best off". My lack of omnipotence does not prevent me from making judgments. To repeat, I am simply stating that any government not chosen by the people it governs is illegitimate.
Your post lacks sense because it is merely a stream of unsubsantiated and biased assertions.
>> I think it's clear that the level of response to the rather ill defined "terror threat" is well above the relative response to the risk of me being killed in a car accident.
No, it isn't clear. Even acknowledging that it is government's responsibility to make it safe for you to drive (not a given we all accept), a considerable amount of tax revenue has been spent in the last century to improve the quality of our highways and streets and to improve and enforce safety regulations. Your essential argument is that we should not spend billions to fight terror because we are not spending an equal amount to keep ourselves from killing each other on the roads. That's probably an acceptable argument in some sophomore debate class, where expectations are already rather low, but it is also patently absurd.
In point of fact, there is a threat posed by an indeterminant number of terrorists who intend to kill as many Americans as they can. Debating the scale of that threat is one thing, but dismissing it altogther nonsense.
>> Much of the world wants us dead because of our past actions.
Much of the world believes the lies fed to them by their controlled unfree media. It is not the fault of the U.S. that Arabs are governed by corrupt, incompentent despots. Or that most of Africa is, as well. It is not an attempt to whitewash history to argue that these people, and you, are blaming their own failures on the U.S.
If someone wants to target us because they believe those lies, then so be it: We will target them.
Good luck with your dreams of riches. Learning to spell and write might be something to consider.
And, you, apparently, are on the side of those who have not yet learned to make sense.
Yes, the only way any government can be legitimate is to be elected by the people it governs.
Any government or leader in power as a result of anything else is not legitimate.
It is impossible to believe in democracy and not believe otherwise. People have an absolute right to govern themselves.
I feel no reason to refrain from preaching to a European, since that s all they do to us.
In any case, if Europeans want to describe statements of reality as "preaching" then they've got even more problems that I thought. They cannot respond correctly to today's issues if they fail to understand their own responsibility for their creation.
>> ...people think of them a "major" threat.
...let's deal with real problems...
I haven't stated the degree of threat I think terror represents. I've merely stated that the threat is real.
>> I mean cars are a much larger danger to my health and safety than "terror" but I still drive a car every day.
Your car is no threat. Your car does not want to kill you. You become the threat when you drive inappropriately. Without you, your car is immobile.
>> At this point we can kill every man woman a child in the Middle East inside of an hour. That's a threat.
We are not threatening the people of the Middle East. Possession of weaponry is not a threat. But, yes, if someone attacks us with any kind of weapons, we are obligated to fight back.
>>
Fine, but the U.S. is not the problem.
That was then, this is now. The USSR was the threat, then. We sided with Arab despots for the same reason we sided with Stalin against the Nazis. Once the Nazis were defeated, the Soviets grew into an equal threat. Now that the Soviets are gone, a new threat has been bred in those Arab despotisms. Would you have us forego defending ourselves today because the attacker was our ally in the past? There is no moral requirement for the kind of consistency you are suggesting.
The freedom of the people counts for everything; the freedom of the state counts for nothing. Sovereignity cannot be used as a shield for tyranny. It is immoral to allow dictatorships and totalitarian regimes to exist simply because they control sovereign states. It is immoral to excuse the tyranny of your own state simply because that state is free and soverign. Nazi Germany was sovereign. So were fascist Italy and Japan. So was the USSR. Would you have excused their crimes? Africa and the Middle East are afflicted with peope who, justifiably, take pride in the soverignity of their nations. But they have also been suckered into trading their personal freedom for the freedom of the state. Of what value is my state's soverignty if my state oppresses me?
I'm asserting that many Europeans and European governments argue that understanding and accommodating the radical demands of terrorists and placating the regimes that produce and nourish them is the way to go. In other words, be nice to them so we can maintain our lifestyle. Unfortunately, being nice to people who want you dead doesn't work. Ask the Dutch.
It seems that you, at least, would prefer that Saddam eould have been let to oppress and kill Iraqis so long as your country could by his oil. Precisely my point. (BTW, no one has consfiscated any Iraqi oilfields and no one has slain "half" their people.)
I presume you weren't attacked on 9/11 because, frankly, no one cares. If a Croatian city was the center of world commerce with giant symbolic buildings, perhaps you would have been attacked.
But, if you can't understand that the 9/11 attacks were an attack on the Western way of life, not just on a single country, then you are guilty of the same medieval provincialism that fuels European bigotry and division.
Did I say all Arabs are terrorists? Far from it. Terror is a form of behavior. The IRA are terrorists, but that doesn't make all the Irish terrorists. ETA are terrorists, but not all Basques are terrorists.
I don't recall that the U.S. is friendly to Belarus and the DPRK. Are you suggesting that if the U.S. failed to invade every undemocratic nation it should have stayed out of Iraq? No logical connection exists there.
Communism allowed no freedom to vote the regime out of power. Sounds like you are willing to trade creature comforts for your own freedom. Exactly what's wrong with Europe.
Europe's mess: Imperialism and exploited colonies across the globe; World War One; World War Two; fascism; Nazism; the Holecaust; Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Milosevich; Soviet tyranny, death camps, and the Cold War. Or, don't they teach those things in European schools anymore?
Israel, a European creation in a region ruined by European imperialism, is democratic. It deserves support. The Arab regimes that attack it are tyrannies that deserve no support. Simple as that.
The current maps of the Middle East and Africa exist because they were drawn by ignorant, racist, European colonialists. Those borders and those nations have little or no relatioship with the demographic realities of the continent. Europe deliberately refused to prepare is Arab and African dependencies for democracy. After WW2, when Europe could no longer get away with, or afford, to exploit and repress these regions, it simply packed up and left. This meant that corrupt and incompetent European rulers were replaced by corrupt and incompetent local rulers. (I lived in southern Africa for a few years prior to Mandela's release. The South Africans who opposed apartheid, rather logically, said they were still colonized, but their masters lived in Pretoria and Cape Town.)
>>"..most natives still live in their tribes..."
Nice bit of ignorant racism.
Russia, last I looked, is European. I know that bothers the rest of Europe, bt, then, they still can't admit that Turkey is also part of the continent. (All those Muslims probably hs something to do with it, eh?)
Yes, Communism did replace the czars. Pity. Look what it got us.
Who cares what "the media" say about anything? What's that got to do with this?
Are you proposing that we should not seek to eliminate people who want to kill us simply because we also have auto accidents?
Come back when you've learned to make sense.
Don't I remember a little something about ethnic cleansing in your part of the world a few years ago?
Your anecdote about your uncle in Syria is irrelevant. I've lived -- not visited -- the Arab Middle East, more than a decade ago. I was greeted with warmth and hospitality everywhere. Yet, terror existed. Movie theaters were bombed for showing Bollywood films. Westerners and Westernized locals were frequent targets of attack in the central business areas of cities. Fathers murdered their daughters for speaking with the wrong boys.
Note, too, that no one has said Syria is ""full of radicalized Islamists". Syria has been governed for decades by regimes that support finance and direct terror. Its citizens could all be pacifist monks and Syria would still be on the wrong side.
It's been my experience that statements like yours are really disguised condemnations of democracy. Like many mistaken Arabs, you won't be satisfied until the U.S. stops supporting democracy and the spread of democracy and joins with fat and happy Europeans who happily suck up to tyrants and miscreants for oil. It seems many of you would trade the misery of the Arab world for your own warm beds.
The U.S. was attacked on 9/11 because there are people in the world who believe that the Western way of life, including yours, is evil. They believe they have a duty to kill all Westerners. They must be eliminated. No, almost all Arabs are nothing like that. Yes, placating existing Arab regimes (all illegitimate because they are undemocratic) will do nothing to eliminate them. The terrorists exist because those Arab regimes exists, not because the U.S. exists.
Frankly, having survived living under the yoke of Communist thugs, I'd think a Croatian would know better. Sadly, your remarks are just further evidence of the cynical and corrupted world view typical of so many Europeans these days. Remember, we're still cleaning up the mess Europe created in the 20th century. All those corrupt Arab regimes nurturing death, repression, ignorance and terror? Your fault. All those bogus illogically bordered African countries wallowing in misery and death? Your fault. All those billions who slaved, and still suffer, under Communism? Your fault.
I have no way of knowing what he's saying except by reading his words.
A government's cynical use of a real threat doesn't remove that threat from reality. The poster and others like him would have us believe that terror simply does not exist.
No one ever expected to find Osama in Iraq. Regimes like Saddam's -- which are immune to internal overthrow -- are precisely the kind of environment that fosters and nourishes radical fundamentalist terror. As much as I disagree with Bush on almost everything, he did argue that his intent was to bring democracy to the Arab Middle East in order to eliminate the cultures that breed terrorism. He's right about that. Other than Iraq, no current Arab regime is democratic; therefore, no current Arab regime is legitimate. I'd rather have seen the UN given the authority and the troops to eliminate Saddam, but there you go.
Finally, pay more attention: Car bombs Iraq typically target Iraqis. Not "other Iraqis" because most of the people doing the killing are non-Iraqis who have entered that country for the express purpose of spreading terror.
What the hell nonsense are you spouting?
Are you asserting that there are no people who wish to kill Americans and other Westerners simply because they are not radicalized Islamists? If not, then you are merely arguing, ineptly, about the scale of the threat, not its reality.
I fear, like the people you claim are nonexistent, you have allowed your own irrational and unsupportable beliefs to cloud your rational mind.
>> ...All this new terrorist crap may well threaten us more than the USSR ever did...
Not until they have 10,000 or so nuclear warheads aimed at us.
The terror threat is real, but it doesn't threaten to wipe out the species.
1. The orginal submission demonstrates the problem with relying on unvetted reader submissions. First, this is yesterday's story. Second, the CEV is not a Shuttle replacement. The Shuttle will be cancelled and grounded as soon as the CEV flies to ISS, but it is only one component of an entirely new program.
2. Orbital rendevous, of Earth, the Moon, or Mars, makes these destinations possible. The likelihood of that a booster capable of sending even a minimal mission to Mars (on the order of 500-800 tons) from a single Earth launch is ludicrous. All real space travel should begin in Earth orbit.
3. The Lockheed proposal is a lifting body, not an airframe with wings like the Shuttle. It does not not use tiles. Lockheed argues that a lifting body will increase safety by providing greater crossrange capability than is available in a capsule.
3. Boeing's proposal will almost certainly involve a capsule.
4. The CEV shown in Lockheed's proposal is a vehicle intended for relatively short trips to LEO and the Moon. Travel to Mars and asteroids will obviously require considerably more hardware.
5. Apollo was a crash program funded at levels that have been politically untenable since the 1970's. If NASA is going to go to the Moon and Mars, it is going to do so without major increases n its annual budget. Therefore, it is trading time for money.
6. We missed almost everything on the Moon. We made only six very short trips there. If we can't pull off repeated Lunar visits in conjunction with sustained human presence there, we have no business being confident that we can successfully pull off multi-year missions to Mars. If we can't keep people alive on a body that is 3 days away, how can we keep them alive on a body this is almost a year away?
7. What's going on here is that this proposal is only the first piece of an extensive effort to extend humanity's presence into the inner Solar System.
It isn't an analogy. Google is completely dependent on others for the content it displays. My point is that many people argue that they can forsake news producers like the NYT and turn to "free" sites like Google, forgetting that Google would have no content for its news site unless someone was willing to actually pay for products like the NYT.
Yes, direct readers of both news and advertising is exactly what I mean. Don't forget, without those direct readers, Google would have nothing, either.
In other words, Google is dependent on people who buy newspapers, news magazines, and who subscribe to the wires.
Be honest, when was the last time you really wanted to read last week's NYT?
No business has an obligation to give away its product. The Times is already giving you free access to its online edition. Before you have an attack of self-righteousness about the Times charging for access to old online editions, maybe you ought to ask if they've really been giving away copies of old print editions for all these years?
And, before someone whines that the get all the news they need for free from Google, please remember that Google is, effectively, a parasite that feeds on others. Google creates no content, no news, of its own. Part of the reason papers like the NYT need to consider charging for access is that operations like Google distribute their product without paying them.
I doubt you have evidence the writers were contractually obligated to portray characters as unflawed and unconflicted. Roddenberry, a writer himself, imbued the TOS characters with a significant amount of personal flaws and conflict, from which grew the best stories.
I am certain that Paramount constrains the Trek creative staff from making major and surprising changes to established characters. That makes sense because viewers and readers expect the characters to behave in a familiar way.
Ultimately, Trek is an ensemble drama, just like shows like LA Law, Law and Order, or Desparate Housewives. We watch those shows because the characters are interesting and we care about them. A show has only one chance -- one episode -- to convince people that the characters are interesting and worth caring about. Enterprise, in particular, failed to do that. None of the S-F trappings, none of the multi-episode arcs, none of the references to Trek's legacy make any difference when you're watching you don't care about doing uninteresting things.
It's a bulletin board, not a community.
Slashdot, etc., are essentially the same as even a BBS running 20 years ago under DOS and DesqView.
So get over it. Calling a bulltetin board a "community" trivializes real communities.
And if someone wants to charge people for using a website, let them. No one has an inherent right to post comments on any website.
Since the writers develop the characters, it is facile to argue the characters gave them "nothing to work with". Quite the opposite: the writers could have changed those characters anytime they wished. The fact that they didn't points to bad writing and bad story telling.
The Kirk in TOS was a one-dimensional hormone-driven cowboy, and Spock was an immature Vulcan fixating on repressing his emotions. As the actors aged and played the roles in the movies, the writers did add depth to their characters, e.g., Kirk became very aware of his own mortality and Spock became one of the more emotional figures in Trek.
The quality of TOS is often greatly overrated. Many of its shows were among the cheesiest of teh franchise.
In truth, I think the factors Berman and Braga, et al, have mentioned as reasons for the cancellation of Enterprise did have an impact. But, the primary reason people stopped watching (and a lot of people stopped watching long before Enterprise aired) is that the stories were inspidid and repetitive.
Putting aside all the usual reasons cited for Trek's success, it is, fundamentally, a character-driven drama: Take compelling, believable characters and place them in compelling, believable conflicts and you're halfway home. Mix in good story telling and you're home. Those alone won't guarantee success, as TV proves every year. But success is impossible without those elements.
As I see it, every Trek series has had good characters. Every Trek series has often burdened those characters with silly plots, unbelievable conflict, and insipid dialogue. (E.g., any monster of the week episode on any series.) Enterprise suffered more than the other series. (I think, for the most part, because they avoided the conflict surrounding the formation of the Federation for three years.)
>> ...I liked Star Trek: TNG for the ethical dilemmas, the hints at mankind's potential, goodness, discovery, and the general sense of something bigger than our own petty modern squabbles...
To each their own, but conflict and combat have aways been key components of Star Trek, and every other drama. Shows depicting a bunch of ethically mature humans displaying their wholesome goodness while they unobtrusively research the galaxy would be thundersously boring.
When one of the Trek series, like TNG, had the budget we'd see conflict and war as grand battles between starships. This has the effect of depersonalizing the conflict. On series with smaller budgets, like TNG and Enterprise, conflict and combat were often depicted as phaser and disruptor fights between a few actors on a set. Or, worse yet, between Trek heroes and a Monster of the Week.
I'm not sure what "payback" you've seen as a theme in Enterprise. The Zindi arc was the most combative and it was about preventing an attack on Earth, not payback. The long Dominion War dominated DS9; Klingon culture made its debut in TOS; and the Borg wreaked havoc in TNG.
In the end, Enterprise and the last few movies were brought down because they weren't telling good stories. Tell a good story and people will watch.
It is the responsibility of the editors to edit the posts before they publish them. If they can't even be bothered to verify the accuaracy of reader submissions, why are they being paid?
Yes. I suppose /. would run a story about the Tooth Fairy if some other idiot sent it in.
/. staff can't be bothered to have a clue, maybe they can actually pay attention to the news so they stop running this kind of stuff days after it happened.
About all this Titan had in common with the original Titan ICBM was the name.
If the