We both know that it was silly to use "subsonic" with respect to an airplane to mean anything other than not-supersonic. Just because you can find a dictionary somewhere that says someone has used the word to mean something else sometime doesn't make your usage here less silly.
I asked you a question, but instead of answering it, you dodged it and went on a rant. And you're the one calling names. Methinks thou dost protest too much.
Of course they had an option. What I've read suggests the option was between dropping the bombs and having a protracted invasion which would have resulted in far more deaths. Do you think such an invasion wouldn't have resulted in as many deaths? Or do you think the Japanese government would have surrendered quickly after an invasion began? Aren't those also speculative?
Why not use more nukes and other WMDs? There hasn't been a war on anywhere near the scale of WW2 since then, nor for anywhere near the same reasons. I don't think that's a fair comparison. And your comment about raping is rather silly.
It seems to me that you are rationalising, because the idea of the US having done inexcusable acts of barbarity doesn't fit with self-image of being a righteous nation under God (or whatever you want to call it).
Nope, you're projecting onto me. The USA has done plenty of wrong things.
I just find it a bit rich that you accuse the USA of "having done inexcusable acts of barbarity" by dropping the two bombs when the inexcusable acts of barbarity committed by both Germany and Japan are well documented, and they were trying to take over the world.
In the end, it was a judgment call. We have no alternate universe with which to compare history. And you haven't posited any alternatives other than inaction.
I admit I don't have the patience to dig through papers as you seem to have done, so I won't claim to refute all of your arguments.
However, one important claim you make is that the sea level is continuing to rise. A few minutes of googling reveals significant reasons to doubt this conclusion, mostly because of inaccuracies in the measurements, both satellite- and land-based. NASA itself has pointed out the problems with existing satellite measurements, and even land-based measurements have a margin of error larger than the measured increase. It also seems that some of the measurements have had arbitrary adjustment factors applied because of unmeasurable phenomena like the ocean's capacity increasing.
So perhaps not all of these climatological changes "we are seeing" are actually happening. If so, perhaps our conclusions about climate change are not valid either.
Ok, the alternative I left out is that you knowingly used the term "subsonic" in the context of aeronautics to refer to something other than the most blatantly obvious, commonly accepted meaning of the term. And, well, that still sounds to me like trying to make a joke.
Instead of calling me stupid you could just explain why you said it.
So either you weren't aware that subsonic has a technical meaning in aeronautics--which dwarfs any other usage of the term in other fields, anyway--or you were trying to make a joke. Were you ignorant or unfunny?:p
1. It is not a fact that human beings evolved from primordial goo. That would be an unsubstantiated assertion based on an extreme extrapolation of limited evidence of small-scale phenomena.
Whoa... whoa. whoawhoawhoa. I think you're starting this whole thing with a mistake. Because, uh... yeah, that is a fact.
Uh, nope. Do you know what a fact is? Apparently you don't--that or you built a time machine and have some evidence you've yet to share with the rest of humanity.
1) Why don't you think that human being evolved from primordial goo?
Talk about low odds! Have you even tried to fathom the extreme length and complexity of the chain required for a random collection of proteins to result in the enormously complex body we call human, not to mention the phenomenon of consciousness? Believing in that requires more faith than the idea that an intelligent being created us.
2) Do you think there's any compelling evidence to suggest any other alternative than human beings evolving from earlier primates?
Oops, you jumped from "evolving from goo" to "evolving from earlier primates." These are wholly different questions.
3) This "extreme extrapolation" does seem like a leap when going from single-celled organisms to humans, but since each of the smallest steps appear to make perfect sense in a long unbroken chain tracing our origins back. And it fits very nicely into the observed tree of life from which everything evolved.
Oops, more assertions and presuppositions: "make perfect sense," "from which everything evolved."
4) "Limited Evidence"!? are you kidding me? I just... I've got to step back and tackle some basics first. 4a) Are you questioning all of evolution or just human evolution? 4a1) [You're questioning human evolution] We've got an awful lot of bones showing a pretty damn gradual change from earlier primates into homo sapiens. I mean, have you googled "human skull evolution"? 4a2) [You're questioning all of evolution] ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?
Again, you're glossing over the difference between humans evolving all the way from random goo, and humans evolving from earlier primates. Neither of those is a given, even though many people claim so. I'm not even saying that we didn't--I'm simply pointing out that neither has been proven.
People are willing to make enormous leaps of faith without "missing links" or actual evidence from billions of years ago--but it's not ok to make a leap of faith that God exists.
5) "small-scale phenomena". Yeah, you know, other than lenki's 50 year experiment showing e-coli fundamentally evolving new traits. Panda's growing a new digit. Horses and donkeys showing evidence of being on the tail end of splitting into two different species. And land-walking mammals turning into something that looks a lot like a fish (whales and dolphins). You can say that's all too small of a change that doesn't count and you can say that's too big of a change and you can't believe it happened, but you just end up looking like a fool.
Oops, appeal to ridicule. And you call me unreasonable.
And this here is one of the big reasons that "faith" and "reason" seem to be at incompatible. I'm just like you, I don't think they're incompatible, but boy oh boy are you doing your damned best to make it look that way.
Nope, you're reading far too much into the actual words I wrote; I left the ball on the ground and you've run out of bounds, out of the stadium, and down the street.
Simply put, we DID evolve from goo. A lot like that skuzzy stuff you find on your food when it goes bad. That's established fact. It's the fact of evolution. The theory of evolution details how it happened. To believe otherwise is foolishness. To convince me otherwise would require a DAMN goo
This suggests that you thought subsonic meant inaudible. Because, obviously, an aircraft being subsonic in no way means that it does not produce an audible sound. (Either that, or you were making a poor attempt at humor.)
No, the only thing that may be confirmed by my comment is that I didn't post a link to an article. A few seconds of googling "mass shooting suicide note" confirms that they do exist.
You, however, have confirmed that you are either a liar or irrational--and perhaps lazy.
While I appreciate the irony of your us-vs-them stance, I don't know why you dragged suicide bombers into this. Most people know the difference between them and christian fundamentalists. The term itself is still not incorrectly applied, I notice that you avoid that point.
I guess you missed my point. The media is powerful today, and labels are used in powerful ways that often go unnoticed. This is an excellent example. A paper or show or web site might run one story about "Islamic fundamentalists" who blow people up, and then a story about "Christian fundamentalists" who want a certain ideology--which is ridiculed--to be taught in public schools. "Most people know the difference between them and christian fundamentalists," you say. No doubt. But most people may not notice the subtle manipulation of feeling effected by use of a strong label which is also associated with another group which all hearers recognize as evil. And that leads to the association of such feelings not only with the "Christian fundamentalists" but also with the "Christians."
It's a subtle but powerful way to manipulate public opinion.
And if this discussion is so uninteresting to you, why did you bother? Methinks thou dost protest too much.
The odds being infinity to one against the existence of the Christian god we feel quite confident and are justified in our presupposition, though honestly admit the universe could make no sense and is the plaything of a creator deity.
There are no such odds, nor could they be quantified if there were. That's just a silly red herring.
You've also posed a false dichotomy of the universe either a) making sense and God not existing; or b) not making sense and God existing. Show me logically why the universe, being governed by its natural laws, could not have been created by an omnipotent being.
WE are not making extraordinary claims, we need no extraordinary evidence.
That's entirely dependent on your presuppositions. For most of human history, most people would have considered your claims quite extraordinary. In fact, many anti-theistic claims do require extraordinary evidence that would require a time machine to present, such as human beings having evolved all the way back through to primordial amino-acid goo, and the universe having originated spontaneously from a Big Bang.
Prima facie evidence is quite sufficient to deny a benevolent all-powerful being.
No, that's simply not true. This idea is common among atheists but is based on the presupposition that an omnipotent being who was also benevolent must necessarily force the universe to behave in a benevolent way. It also presupposes that such a being would follow our preconceptions of benevolence. And it presupposes that we, as finite human beings, would know what it is like to be an omnipotent being, and therefore know what such a being would do. But that idea is contrary to our nature and the posited nature of the omnipotent being. They are mutually exclusive. This often boils down to a person's anger at the unjust nature of this world and our lives in it: "Surely if God is real and benevolent, he would not allow such suffering!" But that simply creates criteria of what we think God should be and how life should be, and since reality doesn't fit the criteria, people conclude that God isn't real. That is illogical: if God is real, he is real regardless of whether we believe in him or understand him. It would be like saying, "Trees and grass are green, so the sun should be green as well. But the sun is not green, so the sun is not real." Obviously it's a very imperfect analogy, because we can plainly see the sun--but the principle is the same: creating artificial criteria and rejecting anything which doesn't fit them. (On the other hand, many people would say that we can plainly see evidence of God's handiwork--it's simply a matter of interpretation.)
Because there are facts in the Bible does not mean it isn't more mythological than historical. There are facts and true events in Red Storm Rising but it is still fiction.
The Bible is not a mathematical equation; it is not a ratio of truth:fiction nor historical:mythological, as if a >0.50 ratio would imply its legitimacy. The Bible is a complex collection of books; even within one book there may be found a variety of genres and purposes. It's disingenuous to lump it all together.
And it's just plain silly to compare it to a modern work of known fiction. That shows you're either trying to mislead or aren't taking this seriously.
You can mock it all you want, but that doesn't change whether it's true. And if its claims are true, then it's the most important work in human history.
That's interesting. I hope you aren't relying on it to prove anything, though. Appeal to popularity is a notorious fallacy.
Whatever. I equally want to point out that to me an "invisible guy" walking down the street is no more ridiculous than any eternal, personal, caring, omniscent, omnipotent, self-sacrifying entity you could derive from any old book (and is at least internally consistent: if you are omniscent and omnipotent you don't self-sacrify yourself, that would be just crazy).
Oops, that's an appeal to ridicule there, another common fallacy. You aren't helping your position by being illogical. It would be better to question the nature of sin, the nature of God, and why sin must be atoned for.
Dude, it couldn't be written in a more obvious way: it wasn't the tree of sin, or the tree of disobedience, it was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. What's the point of such a tree if you already distinguish between good and evil? You need to eat from it to gain free will, and in fact as soon as they did they didn't die, as told by God, but "their eyes were opened", as predicted by the snake. So honestly who gave us such wisdom? God opposed and lied to them, but Satan helped, 'cause he's actually a nice guy. If you really want to base your life on fairy tales at least read them properly.
Friend, your reasoning is simply faulty. You're conflating free will with the knowledge of the distinction between good and evil. Free will is the ability to choose one's actions. God instructed them not to eat from the tree; he did not prevent them from doing so, rather he allowed them to. He allowed them to act contrary to his instructions, therefore they had free will before they ate from the tree.
Do you not understand the metaphor? In the story, Adam and Eve had yet to sin, nor had they even witnessed sin, therefore they did not know what evil was. By eating from the tree, they disobeyed God, and having committed sin, became aware of it, and the difference between right and wrong.
God did not lie to them. He told them that they would surely die, and die they did--he did not say that they would instantly die. God did not oppose them; God wanted them to remain guiltless and live, and he gave them instructions which, if obeyed, would have protected them from dying. Satan, on the other hand, wanted them to suffer and die, and so he convinced them to disobey God--and suffer and die they did. Satan is not a "nice guy": he comes to steal and kill and destroy.
I don't know why you think you're reading the story of the Fall "properly": even atheists would recognize your interpretation as illogical.
Answers.com? Really? Dude, at least look it up on Wikipedia, where you'll find that a more accurate term is "infrasound." Other terms that might work could be "inaudible" or "subaudible." Using subsonic to refer to anything but less-than-supersonic speeds is...archaic, at best.
The question is which would have been more atrocious: dropping the nuclear bombs, or the "conventional" warfare of invading the mainland?
Here's another consideration: nuclear weapons were going to exist whether they were used then or not. Without a graphic demonstration of their power, it might have been more likely that they would have been used later in history. Now I'm not saying that new weapons should be demonstrated on people simply for the sake of discouraging their future use; but in this particular circumstance, it seems likely that more people would have died had they not been used to end the war quickly, so that plus this consideration...
Anyway, what do you think they should have done instead?
If the Axis had won, they'd have executed all sorts of members of the Allied militaries under all sorts of pretenses and accusations.
It's so easy to sit here 68 years later and pass judgment on them. Neither of us were alive then. Neither of us can truly fathom what life was like then, what with the atrocities all over the world. If the bombs had not been dropped, just as many, if not more, civilians would have died, along with many more non-civilians.
Because, you know, it would have been a shame to fly all the way out there without dropping a bomb on someone.
An interesting example of projecting contemporary anti-American rhetoric backwards in time 68 years into the middle of a world war which had been going on for years.
You toss around the word "stupid" an awful lot, usually attached to strong intensifiers--but that doesn't make you right about any of your assertions.
You're merely speculating that more people would have died--it's 100% pure speculation. And I don't think it's even logical speculation.
Compared to an average civilian, an average soldier is highly trained and qualified in firearms safety and use, even those soldiers in non-combat MOSes.
Slashdot Mirror
Again, nope.
We both know that it was silly to use "subsonic" with respect to an airplane to mean anything other than not-supersonic. Just because you can find a dictionary somewhere that says someone has used the word to mean something else sometime doesn't make your usage here less silly.
I asked you a question, but instead of answering it, you dodged it and went on a rant. And you're the one calling names. Methinks thou dost protest too much.
Of course they had an option. What I've read suggests the option was between dropping the bombs and having a protracted invasion which would have resulted in far more deaths. Do you think such an invasion wouldn't have resulted in as many deaths? Or do you think the Japanese government would have surrendered quickly after an invasion began? Aren't those also speculative?
Why not use more nukes and other WMDs? There hasn't been a war on anywhere near the scale of WW2 since then, nor for anywhere near the same reasons. I don't think that's a fair comparison. And your comment about raping is rather silly.
It seems to me that you are rationalising, because the idea of the US having done inexcusable acts of barbarity doesn't fit with self-image of being a righteous nation under God (or whatever you want to call it).
Nope, you're projecting onto me. The USA has done plenty of wrong things.
I just find it a bit rich that you accuse the USA of "having done inexcusable acts of barbarity" by dropping the two bombs when the inexcusable acts of barbarity committed by both Germany and Japan are well documented, and they were trying to take over the world.
In the end, it was a judgment call. We have no alternate universe with which to compare history. And you haven't posited any alternatives other than inaction.
I admit I don't have the patience to dig through papers as you seem to have done, so I won't claim to refute all of your arguments.
However, one important claim you make is that the sea level is continuing to rise. A few minutes of googling reveals significant reasons to doubt this conclusion, mostly because of inaccuracies in the measurements, both satellite- and land-based. NASA itself has pointed out the problems with existing satellite measurements, and even land-based measurements have a margin of error larger than the measured increase. It also seems that some of the measurements have had arbitrary adjustment factors applied because of unmeasurable phenomena like the ocean's capacity increasing.
So perhaps not all of these climatological changes "we are seeing" are actually happening. If so, perhaps our conclusions about climate change are not valid either.
Ok, the alternative I left out is that you knowingly used the term "subsonic" in the context of aeronautics to refer to something other than the most blatantly obvious, commonly accepted meaning of the term. And, well, that still sounds to me like trying to make a joke.
Instead of calling me stupid you could just explain why you said it.
So either you weren't aware that subsonic has a technical meaning in aeronautics--which dwarfs any other usage of the term in other fields, anyway--or you were trying to make a joke. Were you ignorant or unfunny? :p
Btrfs has some special issues with df and subvolumes.
You changed your assertion from the environment being destroyed to humanity depending on the environment. No one would argue with the latter.
1. It is not a fact that human beings evolved from primordial goo. That would be an unsubstantiated assertion based on an extreme extrapolation of limited evidence of small-scale phenomena.
Whoa... whoa. whoawhoawhoa. I think you're starting this whole thing with a mistake. Because, uh... yeah, that is a fact.
Uh, nope. Do you know what a fact is? Apparently you don't--that or you built a time machine and have some evidence you've yet to share with the rest of humanity.
1) Why don't you think that human being evolved from primordial goo?
Talk about low odds! Have you even tried to fathom the extreme length and complexity of the chain required for a random collection of proteins to result in the enormously complex body we call human, not to mention the phenomenon of consciousness? Believing in that requires more faith than the idea that an intelligent being created us.
2) Do you think there's any compelling evidence to suggest any other alternative than human beings evolving from earlier primates?
Oops, you jumped from "evolving from goo" to "evolving from earlier primates." These are wholly different questions.
3) This "extreme extrapolation" does seem like a leap when going from single-celled organisms to humans, but since each of the smallest steps appear to make perfect sense in a long unbroken chain tracing our origins back. And it fits very nicely into the observed tree of life from which everything evolved.
Oops, more assertions and presuppositions: "make perfect sense," "from which everything evolved."
4) "Limited Evidence"!? are you kidding me? I just... I've got to step back and tackle some basics first.
4a) Are you questioning all of evolution or just human evolution?
4a1) [You're questioning human evolution] We've got an awful lot of bones showing a pretty damn gradual change from earlier primates into homo sapiens. I mean, have you googled "human skull evolution"?
4a2) [You're questioning all of evolution] ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?
Again, you're glossing over the difference between humans evolving all the way from random goo, and humans evolving from earlier primates. Neither of those is a given, even though many people claim so. I'm not even saying that we didn't--I'm simply pointing out that neither has been proven.
People are willing to make enormous leaps of faith without "missing links" or actual evidence from billions of years ago--but it's not ok to make a leap of faith that God exists.
5) "small-scale phenomena". Yeah, you know, other than lenki's 50 year experiment showing e-coli fundamentally evolving new traits. Panda's growing a new digit. Horses and donkeys showing evidence of being on the tail end of splitting into two different species. And land-walking mammals turning into something that looks a lot like a fish (whales and dolphins). You can say that's all too small of a change that doesn't count and you can say that's too big of a change and you can't believe it happened, but you just end up looking like a fool.
Oops, appeal to ridicule. And you call me unreasonable.
And this here is one of the big reasons that "faith" and "reason" seem to be at incompatible. I'm just like you, I don't think they're incompatible, but boy oh boy are you doing your damned best to make it look that way.
Nope, you're reading far too much into the actual words I wrote; I left the ball on the ground and you've run out of bounds, out of the stadium, and down the street.
Simply put, we DID evolve from goo. A lot like that skuzzy stuff you find on your food when it goes bad. That's established fact. It's the fact of evolution. The theory of evolution details how it happened. To believe otherwise is foolishness. To convince me otherwise would require a DAMN goo
OP: "The B-52s were (and are) subsonic."
You: "How did you hear them then?"
This suggests that you thought subsonic meant inaudible. Because, obviously, an aircraft being subsonic in no way means that it does not produce an audible sound. (Either that, or you were making a poor attempt at humor.)
Are you not following the conversation here?
No, the only thing that may be confirmed by my comment is that I didn't post a link to an article. A few seconds of googling "mass shooting suicide note" confirms that they do exist.
You, however, have confirmed that you are either a liar or irrational--and perhaps lazy.
While I appreciate the irony of your us-vs-them stance, I don't know why you dragged suicide bombers into this. Most people know the difference between them and christian fundamentalists. The term itself is still not incorrectly applied, I notice that you avoid that point.
I guess you missed my point. The media is powerful today, and labels are used in powerful ways that often go unnoticed. This is an excellent example. A paper or show or web site might run one story about "Islamic fundamentalists" who blow people up, and then a story about "Christian fundamentalists" who want a certain ideology--which is ridiculed--to be taught in public schools. "Most people know the difference between them and christian fundamentalists," you say. No doubt. But most people may not notice the subtle manipulation of feeling effected by use of a strong label which is also associated with another group which all hearers recognize as evil. And that leads to the association of such feelings not only with the "Christian fundamentalists" but also with the "Christians."
It's a subtle but powerful way to manipulate public opinion.
And if this discussion is so uninteresting to you, why did you bother? Methinks thou dost protest too much.
The odds being infinity to one against the existence of the Christian god we feel quite confident and are justified in our presupposition, though honestly admit the universe could make no sense and is the plaything of a creator deity.
There are no such odds, nor could they be quantified if there were. That's just a silly red herring.
You've also posed a false dichotomy of the universe either a) making sense and God not existing; or b) not making sense and God existing. Show me logically why the universe, being governed by its natural laws, could not have been created by an omnipotent being.
WE are not making extraordinary claims, we need no extraordinary evidence.
That's entirely dependent on your presuppositions. For most of human history, most people would have considered your claims quite extraordinary. In fact, many anti-theistic claims do require extraordinary evidence that would require a time machine to present, such as human beings having evolved all the way back through to primordial amino-acid goo, and the universe having originated spontaneously from a Big Bang.
Prima facie evidence is quite sufficient to deny a benevolent all-powerful being.
No, that's simply not true. This idea is common among atheists but is based on the presupposition that an omnipotent being who was also benevolent must necessarily force the universe to behave in a benevolent way. It also presupposes that such a being would follow our preconceptions of benevolence. And it presupposes that we, as finite human beings, would know what it is like to be an omnipotent being, and therefore know what such a being would do. But that idea is contrary to our nature and the posited nature of the omnipotent being. They are mutually exclusive. This often boils down to a person's anger at the unjust nature of this world and our lives in it: "Surely if God is real and benevolent, he would not allow such suffering!" But that simply creates criteria of what we think God should be and how life should be, and since reality doesn't fit the criteria, people conclude that God isn't real. That is illogical: if God is real, he is real regardless of whether we believe in him or understand him. It would be like saying, "Trees and grass are green, so the sun should be green as well. But the sun is not green, so the sun is not real." Obviously it's a very imperfect analogy, because we can plainly see the sun--but the principle is the same: creating artificial criteria and rejecting anything which doesn't fit them. (On the other hand, many people would say that we can plainly see evidence of God's handiwork--it's simply a matter of interpretation.)
Because there are facts in the Bible does not mean it isn't more mythological than historical. There are facts and true events in Red Storm Rising but it is still fiction.
The Bible is not a mathematical equation; it is not a ratio of truth:fiction nor historical:mythological, as if a >0.50 ratio would imply its legitimacy. The Bible is a complex collection of books; even within one book there may be found a variety of genres and purposes. It's disingenuous to lump it all together.
And it's just plain silly to compare it to a modern work of known fiction. That shows you're either trying to mislead or aren't taking this seriously.
You can mock it all you want, but that doesn't change whether it's true. And if its claims are true, then it's the most important work in human history.
That's interesting. I hope you aren't relying on it to prove anything, though. Appeal to popularity is a notorious fallacy.
Whatever. I equally want to point out that to me an "invisible guy" walking down the street is no more ridiculous than any eternal, personal, caring, omniscent, omnipotent, self-sacrifying entity you could derive from any old book (and is at least internally consistent: if you are omniscent and omnipotent you don't self-sacrify yourself, that would be just crazy).
Oops, that's an appeal to ridicule there, another common fallacy. You aren't helping your position by being illogical. It would be better to question the nature of sin, the nature of God, and why sin must be atoned for.
Dude, it couldn't be written in a more obvious way: it wasn't the tree of sin, or the tree of disobedience, it was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. What's the point of such a tree if you already distinguish between good and evil? You need to eat from it to gain free will, and in fact as soon as they did they didn't die, as told by God, but "their eyes were opened", as predicted by the snake. So honestly who gave us such wisdom? God opposed and lied to them, but Satan helped, 'cause he's actually a nice guy. If you really want to base your life on fairy tales at least read them properly.
Friend, your reasoning is simply faulty. You're conflating free will with the knowledge of the distinction between good and evil. Free will is the ability to choose one's actions. God instructed them not to eat from the tree; he did not prevent them from doing so, rather he allowed them to. He allowed them to act contrary to his instructions, therefore they had free will before they ate from the tree.
Do you not understand the metaphor? In the story, Adam and Eve had yet to sin, nor had they even witnessed sin, therefore they did not know what evil was. By eating from the tree, they disobeyed God, and having committed sin, became aware of it, and the difference between right and wrong.
God did not lie to them. He told them that they would surely die, and die they did--he did not say that they would instantly die. God did not oppose them; God wanted them to remain guiltless and live, and he gave them instructions which, if obeyed, would have protected them from dying. Satan, on the other hand, wanted them to suffer and die, and so he convinced them to disobey God--and suffer and die they did. Satan is not a "nice guy": he comes to steal and kill and destroy.
I don't know why you think you're reading the story of the Fall "properly": even atheists would recognize your interpretation as illogical.
Answers.com? Really? Dude, at least look it up on Wikipedia, where you'll find that a more accurate term is "infrasound." Other terms that might work could be "inaudible" or "subaudible." Using subsonic to refer to anything but less-than-supersonic speeds is...archaic, at best.
The question is which would have been more atrocious: dropping the nuclear bombs, or the "conventional" warfare of invading the mainland?
Here's another consideration: nuclear weapons were going to exist whether they were used then or not. Without a graphic demonstration of their power, it might have been more likely that they would have been used later in history. Now I'm not saying that new weapons should be demonstrated on people simply for the sake of discouraging their future use; but in this particular circumstance, it seems likely that more people would have died had they not been used to end the war quickly, so that plus this consideration...
Anyway, what do you think they should have done instead?
If the bomb failed to detonate, why would a wireless signal be able to make it detonate?
Out with it: What do you think they should have done then? Established a no-fly zone and called it quits?
The war itself was an atrocity. So what?
If the Axis had won, they'd have executed all sorts of members of the Allied militaries under all sorts of pretenses and accusations.
It's so easy to sit here 68 years later and pass judgment on them. Neither of us were alive then. Neither of us can truly fathom what life was like then, what with the atrocities all over the world. If the bombs had not been dropped, just as many, if not more, civilians would have died, along with many more non-civilians.
But oh, those evil Americans!
Because, you know, it would have been a shame to fly all the way out there without dropping a bomb on someone.
An interesting example of projecting contemporary anti-American rhetoric backwards in time 68 years into the middle of a world war which had been going on for years.
Suggest you look up the definition of the word "subsonic."
the ongoing destruction of the natural environment that sustains all life on this planet.
Nope.
Thanks for that. I'm curious, are you a linguist or...?
I'm not sure what you mean.
You toss around the word "stupid" an awful lot, usually attached to strong intensifiers--but that doesn't make you right about any of your assertions.
You're merely speculating that more people would have died--it's 100% pure speculation. And I don't think it's even logical speculation.
Compared to an average civilian, an average soldier is highly trained and qualified in firearms safety and use, even those soldiers in non-combat MOSes.