Ummm.... like reservations? No, but it's a related concept. Reservations are, at their core, land. Native Villages are more like tribes in that they're the officially recognized points interface between the US Federal Govt and the Native populations.
We're talking about the established tribal "village," which is a legal entity representing a group of natives for purposes of interacting with the Regional Corporations, not the traditional meaning of the word. The easiest comparison would be if you took recognized Native American tribes from the lower 48 and segmented them up into "villages" of roughly the size of a rural town.
What's really odd is that the article from NW says "a highly charged 2006 government-snooping dispute that ensnared the search giant." This is misleading at best.
The 2006 case was an attempt by the DoJ to subpoena all search records from all major search engines in order to bolster support for government regulation of pornography. Everyone else but Google complied and turned over records. Google did not.
The quote in the article makes it sound like Google was caught abusing their users' privacy when quite the opposite was true. If I ever trusted Network World, I think that trust would have just ended.
It's wrong both morally and legally. Can you point me to where you're getting that?
People donated to his campaign. He dropped out. That's par for the course.
What you're suggesting is that either by dropping out or by not doing what no other politician has ever done, he did something wrong. I'm just looking for a LITTLE precedent, here....
This really makes me smile, I'm not in the US, but I follow the news on these kinds of cases (mostly on Slashdot), if only this would get more mainstream coverage. Not going to happen.
The only angle under which this is "news" is that file sharing just became a lot more reasonable, and that's not something that IP-based conglomerates (aka the mainstream media) are going to be pushing. It just sounds dirty to them, and I don't think it's even a conscious decision. There's just no reason that a modern news reporter would think this was of general interest.
I'm sorry, can you please provide the list of the previous candidates whose campaigns have returned funds when they decided to drop out of the race?
I've never heard of that happening before, and while I think it would be rather slimy to simply take the funds for his own personal gain, there's nothing wrong with donating them to the cause he was running to support.
The last message they sent her, "Everybody in O'Fallon knows how you are. You are a bad person and everybody hates you. Have a shitty rest of your life. The world would be a better place without you.", is something I seriously hope people wouldn't send to an emotionally unstable girl who had just been ditched by her boyfriend. Also, there was every intent to cause harm. At least emotional harm. Why else would you, an adult, do your very best to gain an 13-year emotionally unstable old girl's trust and then send her a message like that? Here's the problem: that kind of thing is said all the time, all of the country and the world. Breakups are messy. They're emotional and harsh. How do you legislate the hoax without legislating the reality? If my son or daughter was arrested for breaking up with their girl- or boyfriend, I'd be seriously upset with the system, and I think rightly so? Do you try to narrow the focus to particular age differences? If a teacher is just a little too harsh in a reprimand, do they go to jail?
There's an excellent case, here, for a civil suit. The parents of the dead girl could easily make a case for their emotional distress as caused by deliberately hurtful actions.
That's really all I think you can do in this case without severely overstepping the bounds of what a government should attempt to protect its citizens from.
You fail to offer any standing reason why you should trust Google more than Microsoft. I only need one reason: Google isn't required by their fiduciary obligation to their stockholders to violate the bounds of ethical behavior like every other publicly traded company I know of.
Why not? You know that silly buzz-phrase that people keep pointing out, "don't be evil?" Do you know where that appears? In their S-1. It's not a buzz-phrase, but a legal defense. It (along with the short paragraph of disclaimer that accompanies it, explaining exactly what they mean in a financial context) means that when stockholders want to sue them for losing money, Google (unlike every other public company) can say, "we lost money because our ethical standards required that we not pursue otherwise lucrative business opportunities."
Does this mean that Google will never mis-use or accidentally release your medical data? Of course not. The same, of course, is true for your Health Insurance company. However, I'm somewhat assured by the fact that Google, unlike the Health Insurance company, doesn't HAVE to do so.
Since there is no crime that the bitch of a woman can be charged with Here's what I don't get. Let me quote ABC News here:
Megan Meier's parents say she committed suicide after a hoax by a couple who lived down the street posed online as a "cute boy." When "cute boy" apparently turned on Megan, saying he heard she was "cruel" to her friends, she hanged herself. So, someone pulled a prank. I'm sure pranks like this happen thousands of times a day all across the country. One statistical outlier killed herself as a result of someone saying they didn't like her. Let's take the prank out of this. She met a boy online who essentially dumped her online. Ignore that it wasn't real because she didn't know that it wasn't. Her response to being dumped was to KILL HERSELF. I assure you that the boy was not to blame. She behaved in a seriously illogical manner to what is going to be a typical situation for just about everyone at some point in their lives (a messy breakup). Now, given that it was a hoax, I can see saying that the people perpetrating it should certainly feel badly. After all, they didn't have to put her in that situation. However, there's no way for them to have known that putting her in a situation that's all too common would have resulted in this tragic outcome. There's no intent to cause harm. There's no felony murder (the crime of an accidental death occurring as a result of the commission of a felony). There's no crime, and frankly I don't see why there should be.
You call these people some pretty harsh names here on Slashdot. If they killed themselves as a result, what do you think we should do to you...?
You only have a defensive alliance when there is a common threat, and there isn't one. So, the USA wanted NATO to be an offensive alliance, first in Kosovo and then in Iraq. Oh well, the Europeans don't. Its nothing to hate them for, but at the same, we can't say they are allies, because, there's no need for a defensive alliance and there's no agreement on an offensive one. I think this is drastically short-sighted. Just because NATO wasn't willing to back a particular operation that one of its members felt was important doesn't mean that NATO is without value. With China flexing its muscles in space, Russia and its satellite nations slipping further and further from stability, India and Pakistan upping each other's antes, countries like Turkey and Pakistan showing signs of possible armed unrest or outright civil war... the world is not a terribly safe place right now, and NATO could well have its hands full at any time dealing with containing the spread of violence throughout Europe (e.g. should Turkey or Russia engage in a full-on war) or with coping with a world-threatening power struggle (e.g. an active cold-war with China).
But, here's my nightmare scenario: Iran's leadership gets just a bit more aggressive and attempts to annex southeastern Iraq and Kuwait. Saudi Arabia and the U.S. oppose them. That drags on for a little bit until Turkey gets into the mix, backing the U.S. This drives the radicals in Pakistan over the edge who overthrow the government with military support, and immediately annex Afghanistan, creating a war on two fronts for the U.S. In response, India takes the opportunity to attack a distracted Pakistan and claim Kashmir and a chunk of southeastern Pakistan. This leads to outright war between Pakistan and India, which China decides to capitalize on by expanding westward into northeaster India.
And from there you can see any number of ripples taking out the stability of just about any part of the world... if you thought that World War III was no longer a threat, perhaps you want to think again.
There was a compromise made at the last minute, which was to call evolution a 'scientific theory', rather than a fact. LOL! I can't believe that an actual state school board resolution has basically the same wording as when I troll. (Er, I mean, my *friend* trolls.) "Hey guys, now, let's face it, evolution is pretty much just a theory at this point. You know, THEORY? Theory as in... NOT FACT?" What I find interesting is that this is a tempest in a teacup. The new wording is actually more accurate. Evolution is *not* a fact. Facts are not as important to the scientific method as theories. "The sky is blue" is a fact. The theories of refractive optics and electromagnetism that explain that fact are actually quite a bit more important and demonstrate how unexpectedly misleading the single fact is. Evolution is a scientific theory, not a fact. As a long-standing and widely substantiated theory, it has far more weight than any single fact ever could.
PS: If you would like to argue this point, I direct you to the witness for the ACLU who originally made the point on the stand in Federal Court when the state of Kansas was trying to push Intelligent Design through. He was asked if evolution was a "fact" and he said "no", proceeding to point out essentially what I said above.
Again, good points, but they don't bear on the fundamental point I was responding to: that there's something wrong with treating Europe as an ally, a point which is often coupled with the term "appeasement" as if to indicate that having allies makes one weak (typically the sort of thinking that declining powers engage in). Treating Europe as an ally and with respect doesn't weaken the US, and in fact, has worked to our benefit for the past 50 years.
The real question is why we need so many ground troops there. And I don't think there's a good answer for that. I think if our leaders answered that question honestly, they would admit that it's a matter of integrating economies at this point, far more than it is defense. Germany is not in danger of being invaded any longer. However, they are in need of our troops buying supplies, services and recreation while employing thousands of Germans. We, in turn, benefit from constant economic contact with Germany and the access that our relationship gives us to a key EU nation. Our bases in Germany constitute a very large carrot that we can dangle whenever we want Germany to do something for us either on their own or as a member of the EU. That's really why we have bases with so many troops there, now.
Define "appeasing". Is it "appeasing" to treat other nations with the respect we would expect to be treated with?
The USA buys more from Europe than the other way around. If that's not respect, then I do not know what is. That's supply and demand. Respect involves listening to your allies when they tell you with the authority of thousands of years of experience that marching into the middle east with a "we'll bring civilization to these barbarians" attitude ends in loss of life and nothing gained. That kind of respect involves getting your anger and ego in check and paying attention to someone who's been there before. But no... the mistakes of the past must be repeated. If I were a European, I'd be well past the stage that "I told you so" gave me any solace, and I'd be rapidly re-assessing my warmth toward US.
If the dumbest thing you can think of is to appease the largest economic power outside of North America, then you clearly haven't watched American politics for the last 50 years.
Again, if Europe is so powerful, why does the USA need to have bases in Germany? You're joking, right? 1) Their military has limits placed on them by us after WWII, though they have a "defense force" which is roughly a standard military, if small 2) We depend on our bases in Germany far more than they do. For them, the bases are an economic boon. For us, they are key to our global reach.
Side point: you quoted me saying that appeasing Europe isn't, by far, the dumbest thing the US can (and does) do. You responded with what seems to be a non sequitur about the strength of Europe. You do understand that you didn't actually respond to my point, right? Do you think that "appeasing Europe" (whatever that means) is a worse idea than Viet Nam or relaxing banking regulation? Seriously?
Europeans ARE fighting with Americans in Iraq.
America has roughly 150,000 men in Iraq, the UK has what, 3,000? Maybe we should have 3,000 soldiers to defend Europe and call it a day? You can do that, but again, it's strategic suicide for our foreign interests. We're in danger of losing our support in Pakistan and a regime change in Saudi Arabia would remove us from that country, which is likely. And you're suggesting that we just decide to eliminate our European beachhead?! Are you insane?!
That said, Germany is a staunch US ally, host to US bases that are key in moving troops and equipment around the world, and a key member of NATO that helped us during the cold war. Discount such an ally at your own peril....
My question is, why is the USA so bent on moving troops all over the world. I don't want this job for America any more. America was better off as a trading superpower that it was before it became a military superpower. Well, that's fair enough. I don't argue with you at all, here (I might, but it's off-topic). *IF*, however, we're to extend our influence to other nations such as Afghanistan and Iraq then we must be able to stage and supply that operation. That means we need Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey (FWIW) and Germany quite a lot. If you're saying that we should just pull out of the Middle East, then that's a separate debate, but saying that Europe isn't supporting us in Iraq because of the number of bodies they've placed there is naive at best.
Of course, the milky way is not a solid, but if we drew a bounding box around it the whole thing would be obvious. You're missing the fact that the Milky Way is not bounded. It thins. You have to decide at what density of stars you consider the Galaxy to "end" and where the "halo" of stars that surround it begin. Our own solar system, for example, is now known to have an orbital path around the center of the galaxy that takes it outside of the bulk of our spiral arm, but I think we would still consider ourselves to be part of the Milky Way.
Any measurement, therefore, must come with careful definitions of what it is that we're measuring and from what data. Are we talking about the thickness at the core in visible light? Infrared? Radio? Estimates based on gravitational influence? Infrared is quite interesting, actually, since we've just recently obtained new data in that part of the spectrum about the core from Spitzer.
Appeasing Europe is the dumbest thing any American President can do. Europeans are not American allies, or they would be fighting with Americans in Iraq. 1. Define "appeasing". Is it "appeasing" to treat other nations with the respect we would expect to be treated with? 2. If the dumbest thing you can think of is to appease the largest economic power outside of North America, then you clearly haven't watched American politics for the last 50 years. 3. Europeans ARE fighting with Americans in Iraq. United Kingdom, Poland, Romania, Denmark, Bulgaria, Latvia, Albania, Czech Republic, Lithuania, Armenia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, and Estonia (in decreasing number of troops) all have troops in Iraq. Not all of these are EU members, but some are, and all are part of Europe. Europe is not France and Germany, no matter what France and Germany may say about that. That said, Germany is a staunch US ally, host to US bases that are key in moving troops and equipment around the world, and a key member of NATO that helped us during the cold war. Discount such an ally at your own peril.... 4. All of the above nations are quite concerned that they've done quite the opposite of what they intended (bring instability to the region rather than stability).
Unless you are inclined to breed, in the modern world, you are better off single. Sounds like the words of someone who has never been in a quality relationship. It's OK, those of us who HAVE or ARE used to feel the same way.
How do you self-actualize? Do you like investing time in the cultivation of that powerful geek brain of yours? What about the cultivation of physical skills? Such things bring great fulfillment, make you a better person, and require time.
If you spend that time prioritizing someone else's desires over your own, just so you can get laid now and then, are you not cheating yourself? Why choose? If you've simply found no one that shares your interests, then that's too bad, but if you do, you don't need to compromise (though surely you will in some areas, and in many of those, compromise is probably a good thing).
My spouse games with me (board, video, tabletop), hikes with me, cooks with me, watches TV and movies with me... we're not the same, but we share enough that we can both do things that we enjoy and which enrich us.
In my experience, not many relationships are like that. Most relationships, it seems, are a matter of doing what you have to do to manipulate the other person into fulfilling your desires. If your relationship goals are about sex, then you should find a mate whose primary interest in a relationship is sex. That will work out for a while, though you may find that you've self-limited. If your relationship goals are about sharing your entire life with someone, then the quality time that you spend doing the things that you both enjoy doesn't constitute manipulation.
3.5 has been out a few years, and nobody is forcing anyone to change. There's a plethora of material out for 3.5, so if you don't want to change your rules... don't. But, you know that the line is dead. No one will be publishing 3.5 stats for any of the new things that are published from now on. None of the back-story for 3.5 campaign worlds will be updated with 3.5-relevant crunch.
Sure, if you want to run a stand-alone game, you can run any game ever published. But, if you want to play something that all of your players likely already have, or can easily get in good condition, then the list diminishes quickly over time (about 5 years is as far back as you can go and reliably be able to get OOP gaming books in good condition, though if you're patient and willing to pay you can get just about anything).
I'd prefer to play a GURPS: Black Ops game where, yes, the world book is OOP, but the stats can easily be converted via a published conversion guide from the vendor and then everything is based on the newest rules. Same is true for Hero System. I just singled GURPS 3-4e out because it's the only game that I know of that had as many published books as D&D 3-4e.
there's a rather large amount of compatibility between [GURPS] 3rd and 4th (most recent) editions, allowing those who invested in 3rd edition's many supplements to maintain the value of their investments. While I do realize that material things (books, computer, cars) have value, the term "investment" as applied to D&D is a joke. Not at all. You're focusing on the value of an investment only in terms of its retail re-sale value, not its overall ROI. The only useful metric for measuring all investments is ROI (Return On Investment), and that metric includes all forms of return. The "value" returned by gaming books is play-time. That value is radically degraded if they cannot be used with the current edition (not to zero, of course, but reduced non-the-less).
GURPS, BTW, has published their most recent edition. They *do* keep to such long periods between publications Maybe you're a new comer to GURPS, or you just have a short memory. I've been playing GURPS since the 80s, and yes, they had too many editions in the early years, but their incremental and fairly compatible growth from 3rd to 3rd revised to 4th has been slow, steady and in drastic contrast to WotC over the same 20 year period.
You have to go back past 20 years to contradict that, and I'm OK with a 20-year track record of stability.
The reason geeks haven't been able to get girls No, lack of social skills would be the reason, there. D&D is actually the only reason geeks tend to have *any* social skills (no, learning to type "pwnd!" with one hand while strafing is not a social skill).
WotC likes to tout the 8 to 10 years number for the longevity of a release of D&D. They do some interesting accounting to get there.
What they do is ignore the period of time that Wizards of the Coast has owned the D&D brand. *TSR* was certainly capable of producing a radical revision to the rules only every 8 to 10 years. Thus far, Wizards of the Coast (Hasbro) has NEVER managed to meet that standard.
GURPS, BTW, has published their most recent edition. They *do* keep to such long periods between publications, and there's a rather large amount of compatibility between their 3rd and 4th (most recent) editions, allowing those who invested in 3rd edition's many supplements to maintain the value of their investments....
The book you linked to, I haven't read it but have read a lot of reviews about it. It seems the most common thing amongst the reviewers is that the author attempts to discard parts of history to supplant it with the idea that it is written by the victor but in doing so attempts to redefine what history is so his point would have validity. Whether this is true or not, it seems that it should be taken with a grain of salt. My head is spinning. I honestly don't know where you were trying to go there... you didn't read the book. Some reviews you've read are negative.... then... I get lost. How does one "redefine what history is?" Read the book. I don't agree with the sweeping nature of his conclusions, but his data is reasonably well substantiated.
Did I forget my disclaimer, I'm not a practicing Christian? I have been thinking about becoming an Atheist Christian Atheist - One who is without religious beliefs or directly opposes them. Christian - A member of one of the many religious sects that follow the teachings of Jesus.
You can't be both.
You could, perhaps, follow Jesus's doctrine of non-violence and understanding and call yourself... I don't know, a Jesuit? No, taken. But Christian is just too solidly a religious term in any case.
just like the Atheist Jews "Jew" is a difficult term, though. It refers to an ethnic, cultural and religious group. One can be ethnically Jewish and an atheist, but one cannot be ethnically Christian.
I realize that Jesus is only a prophet in th jewish and islam religions. Ah... no. In the Jewish faith, Jesus is just this guy who claimed to be the messiah, but clearly was not because he did not meet the requirements. Only Islam and Christianity given any special status to Jesus.
So I'm interested in finding out if Christmas was selected as the 25th specifically for the conception... Ok, just stop. Please, find any reference at all that says there are serious biblical scholars in the world that believe Christmas has anything to do with Jesus's conception. I'm really, really eager to read about that, because you're the only person in the world that I've ever heard say this.
You brought up Genesis and how every other religion has something similar. I said no such thing.
I said that there were specific elements of Genesis that were very nearly lifted word-for-word from regional religions of the fertile crescent. Guns, Germs and Steel for its various flaws, does make a fair point of exploring this one, if I recall correctly.
I find this interesting because I saw some stuff on Hawaii's native religions having similar points to genesis and Noah and the floods and several other things. Well, in broad strokes, a flood myth is common to just about any culture that developed near ocean (and there's strong reason to suspect that they've all, at one point or another, been subject to tsunami which would have been unlike anything that primitive cultures could explain.
As you probably know, the main differences between the jewish, christian and muslum religions are the different emphasis placed on different people. All of them recognize jesus, they give different weight to his significance and then there is mohomed who is treated better then a messiah in some respects but it still only considered a prophet. "Only a prophet," is a dangerous phrase for a Christian to use when talking about Islam, since Jesus is "only a prophet" according to the Koran. Mohamed is not really any more than a prophet, but as the last prophet, and the one entrusted with presenting the Koran, he certainly holds a special place in Islam.
Well, while it might have been a convenience of other festivals happening at the time, the first recorded Christmas in history was around 336 A.D. or so. And that makes sense seeing how Rome didn't allow Christianity until 311 A.D. I have never heard of the dec 25th as the exact conception date, just that the real birth was was in september around the 22nd or the 28th. Which would place the conception back in late december. And yes, people have an idea about gestation periods back then, they knew how long it would take for some animals to have babies just by casual observances, Human gestation is something any with the idea of a calender could figure out. I might be confusing time-periods, but certainly as you reach the latter part of the first millennium in Europe, that information was the province of midwives, and was simply not for men to discuss. It was part of the mystery of childbirth, and was closely associated with the shame of women's original sin. Now that part of Christian dogma may or may not have been established by the 4th century, but certainly there's no evidence I've ever seen to suggest that gestation periods had anything to do with the selection of a December holiday. Contrast that with the fact that Dec. 25 was the date of the feast of Sol Invictus, the other monotheistic religion with which Christianity vied for control of Rome's theology, and you have a fairly firm footing for understanding the selection of that date. Rome had this nearly neurotic hangup with tradition. You didn't do anything unless it was the way it had been done since the founding of the Republic. If you wanted to do something new, you had to explain how it, "had always been thus." This was the culture of Rome. In such a setting, to see a new religion absorb the festive holiday of the old was par for the course.
Seems so unlikely to ever be allowed by the regulators, yet they're willing to throw billions at it anyway. They must feel confident for some reason. If I were MS, I'd do this now. If there's a democratic President in January, then this would be much less likely to be allowed to go through, but Bush might have the SEC fast-track it. After all, keep in mind that one of his first acts in office was to soften the DoJ's pursuit of MS. Democrats are much more in favor of anti-trust regulation than Republicans, simply as a platform, and I think specifically, MS has got to think long and hard about how progressive Obama is likely to be. McCain or Clinton might throw them a bone, but they can't bank on either of them being in office at this point, even if it's too early for any conclusions to be drawn.
Slashdot Mirror
The term might mislead some Slashdot readers. Please see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Native_Claims_Settlement_Act
which established:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Native_Regional_Corporations
We're talking about the established tribal "village," which is a legal entity representing a group of natives for purposes of interacting with the Regional Corporations, not the traditional meaning of the word. The easiest comparison would be if you took recognized Native American tribes from the lower 48 and segmented them up into "villages" of roughly the size of a rural town.
What's really odd is that the article from NW says "a highly charged 2006 government-snooping dispute that ensnared the search giant." This is misleading at best.
The 2006 case was an attempt by the DoJ to subpoena all search records from all major search engines in order to bolster support for government regulation of pornography. Everyone else but Google complied and turned over records. Google did not.
The quote in the article makes it sound like Google was caught abusing their users' privacy when quite the opposite was true. If I ever trusted Network World, I think that trust would have just ended.
People donated to his campaign. He dropped out. That's par for the course.
What you're suggesting is that either by dropping out or by not doing what no other politician has ever done, he did something wrong. I'm just looking for a LITTLE precedent, here....
The only angle under which this is "news" is that file sharing just became a lot more reasonable, and that's not something that IP-based conglomerates (aka the mainstream media) are going to be pushing. It just sounds dirty to them, and I don't think it's even a conscious decision. There's just no reason that a modern news reporter would think this was of general interest.
I'm sorry, can you please provide the list of the previous candidates whose campaigns have returned funds when they decided to drop out of the race?
I've never heard of that happening before, and while I think it would be rather slimy to simply take the funds for his own personal gain, there's nothing wrong with donating them to the cause he was running to support.
There's an excellent case, here, for a civil suit. The parents of the dead girl could easily make a case for their emotional distress as caused by deliberately hurtful actions.
That's really all I think you can do in this case without severely overstepping the bounds of what a government should attempt to protect its citizens from.
Why not? You know that silly buzz-phrase that people keep pointing out, "don't be evil?" Do you know where that appears? In their S-1. It's not a buzz-phrase, but a legal defense. It (along with the short paragraph of disclaimer that accompanies it, explaining exactly what they mean in a financial context) means that when stockholders want to sue them for losing money, Google (unlike every other public company) can say, "we lost money because our ethical standards required that we not pursue otherwise lucrative business opportunities."
Does this mean that Google will never mis-use or accidentally release your medical data? Of course not. The same, of course, is true for your Health Insurance company. However, I'm somewhat assured by the fact that Google, unlike the Health Insurance company, doesn't HAVE to do so.
You call these people some pretty harsh names here on Slashdot. If they killed themselves as a result, what do you think we should do to you...?
But, here's my nightmare scenario: Iran's leadership gets just a bit more aggressive and attempts to annex southeastern Iraq and Kuwait. Saudi Arabia and the U.S. oppose them. That drags on for a little bit until Turkey gets into the mix, backing the U.S. This drives the radicals in Pakistan over the edge who overthrow the government with military support, and immediately annex Afghanistan, creating a war on two fronts for the U.S. In response, India takes the opportunity to attack a distracted Pakistan and claim Kashmir and a chunk of southeastern Pakistan. This leads to outright war between Pakistan and India, which China decides to capitalize on by expanding westward into northeaster India.
And from there you can see any number of ripples taking out the stability of just about any part of the world... if you thought that World War III was no longer a threat, perhaps you want to think again.
PS: If you would like to argue this point, I direct you to the witness for the ACLU who originally made the point on the stand in Federal Court when the state of Kansas was trying to push Intelligent Design through. He was asked if evolution was a "fact" and he said "no", proceeding to point out essentially what I said above.
Again, good points, but they don't bear on the fundamental point I was responding to: that there's something wrong with treating Europe as an ally, a point which is often coupled with the term "appeasement" as if to indicate that having allies makes one weak (typically the sort of thinking that declining powers engage in). Treating Europe as an ally and with respect doesn't weaken the US, and in fact, has worked to our benefit for the past 50 years.
The USA buys more from Europe than the other way around. If that's not respect, then I do not know what is. That's supply and demand. Respect involves listening to your allies when they tell you with the authority of thousands of years of experience that marching into the middle east with a "we'll bring civilization to these barbarians" attitude ends in loss of life and nothing gained. That kind of respect involves getting your anger and ego in check and paying attention to someone who's been there before. But no... the mistakes of the past must be repeated. If I were a European, I'd be well past the stage that "I told you so" gave me any solace, and I'd be rapidly re-assessing my warmth toward US. If the dumbest thing you can think of is to appease the largest economic power outside of North America, then you clearly haven't watched American politics for the last 50 years.
Again, if Europe is so powerful, why does the USA need to have bases in Germany? You're joking, right? 1) Their military has limits placed on them by us after WWII, though they have a "defense force" which is roughly a standard military, if small 2) We depend on our bases in Germany far more than they do. For them, the bases are an economic boon. For us, they are key to our global reach.
Side point: you quoted me saying that appeasing Europe isn't, by far, the dumbest thing the US can (and does) do. You responded with what seems to be a non sequitur about the strength of Europe. You do understand that you didn't actually respond to my point, right? Do you think that "appeasing Europe" (whatever that means) is a worse idea than Viet Nam or relaxing banking regulation? Seriously? Europeans ARE fighting with Americans in Iraq.
America has roughly 150,000 men in Iraq, the UK has what, 3,000? Maybe we should have 3,000 soldiers to defend Europe and call it a day? You can do that, but again, it's strategic suicide for our foreign interests. We're in danger of losing our support in Pakistan and a regime change in Saudi Arabia would remove us from that country, which is likely. And you're suggesting that we just decide to eliminate our European beachhead?! Are you insane?! That said, Germany is a staunch US ally, host to US bases that are key in moving troops and equipment around the world, and a key member of NATO that helped us during the cold war. Discount such an ally at your own peril....
My question is, why is the USA so bent on moving troops all over the world. I don't want this job for America any more. America was better off as a trading superpower that it was before it became a military superpower. Well, that's fair enough. I don't argue with you at all, here (I might, but it's off-topic). *IF*, however, we're to extend our influence to other nations such as Afghanistan and Iraq then we must be able to stage and supply that operation. That means we need Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey (FWIW) and Germany quite a lot. If you're saying that we should just pull out of the Middle East, then that's a separate debate, but saying that Europe isn't supporting us in Iraq because of the number of bodies they've placed there is naive at best.
Any measurement, therefore, must come with careful definitions of what it is that we're measuring and from what data. Are we talking about the thickness at the core in visible light? Infrared? Radio? Estimates based on gravitational influence? Infrared is quite interesting, actually, since we've just recently obtained new data in that part of the spectrum about the core from Spitzer.
2. If the dumbest thing you can think of is to appease the largest economic power outside of North America, then you clearly haven't watched American politics for the last 50 years.
3. Europeans ARE fighting with Americans in Iraq. United Kingdom, Poland, Romania, Denmark, Bulgaria, Latvia, Albania, Czech Republic, Lithuania, Armenia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, and Estonia (in decreasing number of troops) all have troops in Iraq. Not all of these are EU members, but some are, and all are part of Europe. Europe is not France and Germany, no matter what France and Germany may say about that. That said, Germany is a staunch US ally, host to US bases that are key in moving troops and equipment around the world, and a key member of NATO that helped us during the cold war. Discount such an ally at your own peril....
4. All of the above nations are quite concerned that they've done quite the opposite of what they intended (bring instability to the region rather than stability).
If you spend that time prioritizing someone else's desires over your own, just so you can get laid now and then, are you not cheating yourself? Why choose? If you've simply found no one that shares your interests, then that's too bad, but if you do, you don't need to compromise (though surely you will in some areas, and in many of those, compromise is probably a good thing).
My spouse games with me (board, video, tabletop), hikes with me, cooks with me, watches TV and movies with me... we're not the same, but we share enough that we can both do things that we enjoy and which enrich us. In my experience, not many relationships are like that. Most relationships, it seems, are a matter of doing what you have to do to manipulate the other person into fulfilling your desires. If your relationship goals are about sex, then you should find a mate whose primary interest in a relationship is sex. That will work out for a while, though you may find that you've self-limited. If your relationship goals are about sharing your entire life with someone, then the quality time that you spend doing the things that you both enjoy doesn't constitute manipulation.
Sure, if you want to run a stand-alone game, you can run any game ever published. But, if you want to play something that all of your players likely already have, or can easily get in good condition, then the list diminishes quickly over time (about 5 years is as far back as you can go and reliably be able to get OOP gaming books in good condition, though if you're patient and willing to pay you can get just about anything).
I'd prefer to play a GURPS: Black Ops game where, yes, the world book is OOP, but the stats can easily be converted via a published conversion guide from the vendor and then everything is based on the newest rules. Same is true for Hero System. I just singled GURPS 3-4e out because it's the only game that I know of that had as many published books as D&D 3-4e.
You have to go back past 20 years to contradict that, and I'm OK with a 20-year track record of stability.
WotC likes to tout the 8 to 10 years number for the longevity of a release of D&D. They do some interesting accounting to get there.
What they do is ignore the period of time that Wizards of the Coast has owned the D&D brand. *TSR* was certainly capable of producing a radical revision to the rules only every 8 to 10 years. Thus far, Wizards of the Coast (Hasbro) has NEVER managed to meet that standard.
GURPS, BTW, has published their most recent edition. They *do* keep to such long periods between publications, and there's a rather large amount of compatibility between their 3rd and 4th (most recent) editions, allowing those who invested in 3rd edition's many supplements to maintain the value of their investments....
Christian - A member of one of the many religious sects that follow the teachings of Jesus.
You can't be both.
You could, perhaps, follow Jesus's doctrine of non-violence and understanding and call yourself
I said that there were specific elements of Genesis that were very nearly lifted word-for-word from regional religions of the fertile crescent. Guns, Germs and Steel for its various flaws, does make a fair point of exploring this one, if I recall correctly. I find this interesting because I saw some stuff on Hawaii's native religions having similar points to genesis and Noah and the floods and several other things. Well, in broad strokes, a flood myth is common to just about any culture that developed near ocean (and there's strong reason to suspect that they've all, at one point or another, been subject to tsunami which would have been unlike anything that primitive cultures could explain. As you probably know, the main differences between the jewish, christian and muslum religions are the different emphasis placed on different people. All of them recognize jesus, they give different weight to his significance and then there is mohomed who is treated better then a messiah in some respects but it still only considered a prophet. "Only a prophet," is a dangerous phrase for a Christian to use when talking about Islam, since Jesus is "only a prophet" according to the Koran. Mohamed is not really any more than a prophet, but as the last prophet, and the one entrusted with presenting the Koran, he certainly holds a special place in Islam. Well, while it might have been a convenience of other festivals happening at the time, the first recorded Christmas in history was around 336 A.D. or so. And that makes sense seeing how Rome didn't allow Christianity until 311 A.D. I have never heard of the dec 25th as the exact conception date, just that the real birth was was in september around the 22nd or the 28th. Which would place the conception back in late december. And yes, people have an idea about gestation periods back then, they knew how long it would take for some animals to have babies just by casual observances, Human gestation is something any with the idea of a calender could figure out. I might be confusing time-periods, but certainly as you reach the latter part of the first millennium in Europe, that information was the province of midwives, and was simply not for men to discuss. It was part of the mystery of childbirth, and was closely associated with the shame of women's original sin. Now that part of Christian dogma may or may not have been established by the 4th century, but certainly there's no evidence I've ever seen to suggest that gestation periods had anything to do with the selection of a December holiday. Contrast that with the fact that Dec. 25 was the date of the feast of Sol Invictus, the other monotheistic religion with which Christianity vied for control of Rome's theology, and you have a fairly firm footing for understanding the selection of that date. Rome had this nearly neurotic hangup with tradition. You didn't do anything unless it was the way it had been done since the founding of the Republic. If you wanted to do something new, you had to explain how it, "had always been thus." This was the culture of Rome. In such a setting, to see a new religion absorb the festive holiday of the old was par for the course.