I did not in fact engage in any America-bashing, as far as I can tell. I reacted, somewhat vigorously perhaps, to what I believe is an unwarranted insult -- that ungrateful France laid down without a fight in two world wars only to be rescued by the US. That is not how things happened, and it is my opinion that it's outrageous to let such falsehoods be uttered without a challenge. If my remarks regarding the US participation in WWII were percieved as an attack on America, know that this was not my intent. It is well documented that an atmosphere of fear and defeatsim permeated much of the French political, and some of the military, elites during the run-up to WWII, and, in my opinion, not surprisingly so considering the position they were in. However, I do take issue with people who bundle up WWI right along with WWII as examples of "French cowardice". At a time such as this, when it is considered an affront to the memory of the 3200+ American dead in Irak to question the handling of military operations over there, I believe it is an affront at least as despicable to tax the almost 2,000,000 French citizens, military or civilian, who died fighting what was, after all, a war of survival.
Hahahaha. I'm going to dodge most of the points of your reply, some of which I agree with, some of which less so, to concentrate one a single point, which I consider the main thrust of my original post.
You state in this post: Twice in recent years (one still in living memory) we went over and save them from their own incompetence, even though it was not directly in our self interest to do so. (boldface mine)
I replied in this post, with regards to WWI: Your implication that the US saved France in WWI is laughable and pathetic. The United States did not especially distinguish themselves in that war, they totally failed to learn from the British and French experience in the first 3 years of the war and repeated their mistakes to the same result. They fought for a very short period of time, in much smaller numbers than the cumulative war effort of either the UK or France. In the end, the US' entry in the war served one main purpose: to convince the German command that victory was impossible due to the Allies' superior strength of numbers. In any case, the French fought from beginning to end, had the most soldiers on the ground and suffered the most casualties among the Allies.
And you comeback with: Ah yes - the US convinced Germany that it could not win, but somehow this did not contribute to actually winning the war and saving France. You are so busy spouting propaganda you don't even bother to think about what you write.
So tell me this, little internet troll: where the hell do I say the US didn't contribute to the war effort? Because that was clearly (IMO) not my point. My point was that the US did not, in any way imaginable, save anybody from their own incompetence, they merely provided more of the same, which was what was needed to convinced the Germans they weren't gonna make any progress against increasingly unfavourable odds. The US were not virile saviours there to pick the ball dropped by the incompetent Europeans (French, whatever), which is basically the gist of your original message. They were reinforcements. I'm not sure whether you grasp the difference between reinforcing a front and "saving [people] from their own incompetence", but it's there.
I'm not gonna contest that something was wrong with the French leadership in WWII, as that was pretty well documented to be the case. However I find your implication that demography is not a critical element of large scale warfare among nations of similar technological advancement to be hilarious, or an outright lie.
Hahaha. Are you comparing Nazi Germany, a nation at the pinnacle of military technology in its day, to a bunch of quack regimes that usually go to war with weapons a decade if not more out of date?
Could have, should have, would have. Argue why invading Germany in 1939 would have been a sustainable strategy. Just saying "yeah, the defensive posture didn't work, so they should have tried some other plan" sounds great in hindsight, but that's just trial and error, solution X didn't work, let's try solution Y instead, but that's not the way war works, you can't turn back time and give it another go.
The US having never been invaded by a foreign power of course has nothing to do with being the sole great power in the Americas. Those two oceans on each side are sure great to prevent any land invasion.
Your conspiracy theories about the UN are hilarious and only discredit your position.
Your ignorance is really appaling. I can't comprehend how someone can be a techie, which you'd think entails a respect for knowledge and the ability to tell facts apart from falsehoods, and yet spout bullshit about stuff that they've clearly never read about. It just blows my mind.
True, France didn't help the US in their war of independence out of the goodness of the king's heart. But the US intervention in WWII has nothing to do with benevolence either. Come on! Stalin begged the Allies to open a western front in 1942. He demanded it in 1943. In 1944 it was almost *irrelevant*, Allied victory was virtually assured by the Soviet onslaught. In simple terms: *the United States invaded Western Europe not to defeat Nazi Germany, but to prevent a Soviet Eurasia*. Not out of good will. Self-interest.
Your implication that the US saved France in WWI is laughable and pathetic. The United States did not especially distinguish themselves in that war, they totally failed to learn from the British and French experience in the first 3 years of the war and repeated their mistakes to the same result. They fought for a very short period of time, in much smaller numbers than the cumulative war effort of either the UK or France. In the end, the US' entry in the war served one main purpose: to convince the German command that victory was impossible due to the Allies' superior strength of numbers. In any case, the French fought from beginning to end, had the most soldiers on the ground and suffered the most casualties among the Allies.
In WWII, France was crushed, no question. But I still haven't seen a convincing proposal of what could have been done to prevent the deep penetration of French territory by the German armored forces, short of best-case scenarios requiring virtual prescience from the BEF and French army. And EVEN so. In 1939 the population of France stood at less than 42,000,000, that of the Nazi Germany at more than 76,000,000. Once the BEF fled at Dunkirk, there was no real alternative to surrender. Libery or death sounds good on paper, but that's not how things work in real life.
To imply that joining the Allies was not objectively in the best interest of the US is, to put it bluntly, bullshit. The US didn't join the war to help Europe out of the goodness of its heart (otherwise they'd have joined the fray at once, not years later). There exists *no* scenario where a Third Reich-dominated Eurasia was a good thing for the US, and considering the German technological lead in several fields with important military applications, it's not hard to imagine how such an alternate history might end badly for the US.
You're incorrect. I have R. A. C. Parker's "The Second World War" in front of me, and from 1940 to 1944, Germany is consistently outproduced by the UK + USSR in terms of aircrafts, tanks and self-propelled artillery, guns, trucks and surface warships. The only area Germany dominated is the production of submarines. Note that these numbers *exclude* US output, which from 1942 exceeds that of Germany by itself. Germany was defeated in WWII because it became overwhelmingly outnumbered (UK + US + USSR population in 1939 = ~300,000,000; Germany + Austria + Italy + Japan = ~190,000,000) and with enemies on two fronts besides. Again, note that these numbers exclude the British Empire (Canada + Australia, mainly).
...we pretty much knew that if a nuke went off in a nearby local, jumping under a desk wasn't going to do much for you besides skin you knees before you were vaporized.
Depends on what you mean by nearby locale. This
post gives a link to the D&C movie, and if you read the reviews, you get the feeling a lot of people who mock the previous generation for believing government advice for surviving an atomic blast suscribe to an equally erroneous belief, i.e. that atomic bombs are the equivalent of a super death ray which any attempt to survive is pointless.
I suggest anyone who thinks along these lines to take a look at this report on the subject. True, virtually everyone close to the blast will die, but if, as Duck and Cover presupposes, someone saw the flash and *weren't* incinerated, it means they're some distance away from ground zero and thus stand a chance of survival. Since the main cause of death at longer range is the wind blast (as opposed to the heat wave), ducking and covering makes sense.
Like the movie says, you'll be safER, not safe, but it's better than just waiting to be blown into a brick wall.
Cassiny/Huygens
isn't a US/UK mission, it's a work of collaboration between NASA and ESA, and it says here that the European contribution is led by Alcatel Space, a French company. You can find more details regarding each agency's contribution here.
What I'd like to know is, isn't Italy a member state of ESA? If so, why is Italy's contribution somehow apart from that of ESA member state, and if not, why not?
This story wrongly calls the Huygens probe a NASA/ESA/(italian spage agency?) cooperation, whereas Huygens is actually strictly the work of ESA. The Cassini-Huygens mission *is* however a NASA/ESA undertaking. I'm not trying to play down NASA's contribution, which is of course critical to the success of the whole enterprise, however since a previous slashdot story about the mission talked about "NASA's Cassini probe", I feel it's only fitting that the credit for the success (or impending failure, naturally) be given to ESA.
This doesn't actually make sense, though. Natural selection dictates that organisms that are more fit have better chances to survive and thus to reproduce. The level of fitness, however, is logically evaluated by the environment, not by the organism itself. Your hypothesis implies that somehow the organism can detect by itself what traits are defective and then actually take steps to remove *itself* from the gene pool. IMO, this is more akin to a form of self-sacrificial Lamarckism than to evolution.
I guess it depends on how large and dedicated the wikipedia community is. From July 18th 2002 to September 7th 2002, the Blender Foundation raised 100k euros, so maybe $20k isn't that far-fetched.
Slashdot Mirror
ITYM "where the British go their asses kicked..." The War of 1812 was between the US and the British Empire.
I did not in fact engage in any America-bashing, as far as I can tell. I reacted, somewhat vigorously perhaps, to what I believe is an unwarranted insult -- that ungrateful France laid down without a fight in two world wars only to be rescued by the US. That is not how things happened, and it is my opinion that it's outrageous to let such falsehoods be uttered without a challenge. If my remarks regarding the US participation in WWII were percieved as an attack on America, know that this was not my intent. It is well documented that an atmosphere of fear and defeatsim permeated much of the French political, and some of the military, elites during the run-up to WWII, and, in my opinion, not surprisingly so considering the position they were in. However, I do take issue with people who bundle up WWI right along with WWII as examples of "French cowardice". At a time such as this, when it is considered an affront to the memory of the 3200+ American dead in Irak to question the handling of military operations over there, I believe it is an affront at least as despicable to tax the almost 2,000,000 French citizens, military or civilian, who died fighting what was, after all, a war of survival.
Hahahaha. I'm going to dodge most of the points of your reply, some of which I agree with, some of which less so, to concentrate one a single point, which I consider the main thrust of my original post.
You state in this post:
Twice in recent years (one still in living memory) we went over and save them from their own incompetence, even though it was not directly in our self interest to do so. (boldface mine)
I replied in this post, with regards to WWI:
Your implication that the US saved France in WWI is laughable and pathetic. The United States did not especially distinguish themselves in that war, they totally failed to learn from the British and French experience in the first 3 years of the war and repeated their mistakes to the same result. They fought for a very short period of time, in much smaller numbers than the cumulative war effort of either the UK or France. In the end, the US' entry in the war served one main purpose: to convince the German command that victory was impossible due to the Allies' superior strength of numbers. In any case, the French fought from beginning to end, had the most soldiers on the ground and suffered the most casualties among the Allies.
And you comeback with:
Ah yes - the US convinced Germany that it could not win, but somehow this did not contribute to actually winning the war and saving France. You are so busy spouting propaganda you don't even bother to think about what you write.
So tell me this, little internet troll: where the hell do I say the US didn't contribute to the war effort? Because that was clearly (IMO) not my point. My point was that the US did not, in any way imaginable, save anybody from their own incompetence, they merely provided more of the same, which was what was needed to convinced the Germans they weren't gonna make any progress against increasingly unfavourable odds. The US were not virile saviours there to pick the ball dropped by the incompetent Europeans (French, whatever), which is basically the gist of your original message. They were reinforcements. I'm not sure whether you grasp the difference between reinforcing a front and "saving [people] from their own incompetence", but it's there.
I'm not gonna contest that something was wrong with the French leadership in WWII, as that was pretty well documented to be the case. However I find your implication that demography is not a critical element of large scale warfare among nations of similar technological advancement to be hilarious, or an outright lie.
Hahaha. Are you comparing Nazi Germany, a nation at the pinnacle of military technology in its day, to a bunch of quack regimes that usually go to war with weapons a decade if not more out of date?
Could have, should have, would have. Argue why invading Germany in 1939 would have been a sustainable strategy. Just saying "yeah, the defensive posture didn't work, so they should have tried some other plan" sounds great in hindsight, but that's just trial and error, solution X didn't work, let's try solution Y instead, but that's not the way war works, you can't turn back time and give it another go.
The US having never been invaded by a foreign power of course has nothing to do with being the sole great power in the Americas. Those two oceans on each side are sure great to prevent any land invasion.
Your conspiracy theories about the UN are hilarious and only discredit your position.
"My country" is Canada so suck it.
Your ignorance is really appaling. I can't comprehend how someone can be a techie, which you'd think entails a respect for knowledge and the ability to tell facts apart from falsehoods, and yet spout bullshit about stuff that they've clearly never read about. It just blows my mind.
True, France didn't help the US in their war of independence out of the goodness of the king's heart. But the US intervention in WWII has nothing to do with benevolence either. Come on! Stalin begged the Allies to open a western front in 1942. He demanded it in 1943. In 1944 it was almost *irrelevant*, Allied victory was virtually assured by the Soviet onslaught. In simple terms: *the United States invaded Western Europe not to defeat Nazi Germany, but to prevent a Soviet Eurasia*. Not out of good will. Self-interest.
Your implication that the US saved France in WWI is laughable and pathetic. The United States did not especially distinguish themselves in that war, they totally failed to learn from the British and French experience in the first 3 years of the war and repeated their mistakes to the same result. They fought for a very short period of time, in much smaller numbers than the cumulative war effort of either the UK or France. In the end, the US' entry in the war served one main purpose: to convince the German command that victory was impossible due to the Allies' superior strength of numbers. In any case, the French fought from beginning to end, had the most soldiers on the ground and suffered the most casualties among the Allies.
In WWII, France was crushed, no question. But I still haven't seen a convincing proposal of what could have been done to prevent the deep penetration of French territory by the German armored forces, short of best-case scenarios requiring virtual prescience from the BEF and French army. And EVEN so. In 1939 the population of France stood at less than 42,000,000, that of the Nazi Germany at more than 76,000,000. Once the BEF fled at Dunkirk, there was no real alternative to surrender. Libery or death sounds good on paper, but that's not how things work in real life.
To imply that joining the Allies was not objectively in the best interest of the US is, to put it bluntly, bullshit. The US didn't join the war to help Europe out of the goodness of its heart (otherwise they'd have joined the fray at once, not years later). There exists *no* scenario where a Third Reich-dominated Eurasia was a good thing for the US, and considering the German technological lead in several fields with important military applications, it's not hard to imagine how such an alternate history might end badly for the US.
You're incorrect. I have R. A. C. Parker's "The Second World War" in front of me, and from 1940 to 1944, Germany is consistently outproduced by the UK + USSR in terms of aircrafts, tanks and self-propelled artillery, guns, trucks and surface warships. The only area Germany dominated is the production of submarines. Note that these numbers *exclude* US output, which from 1942 exceeds that of Germany by itself. Germany was defeated in WWII because it became overwhelmingly outnumbered (UK + US + USSR population in 1939 = ~300,000,000; Germany + Austria + Italy + Japan = ~190,000,000) and with enemies on two fronts besides. Again, note that these numbers exclude the British Empire (Canada + Australia, mainly).
Depends on what you mean by nearby locale. This post gives a link to the D&C movie, and if you read the reviews, you get the feeling a lot of people who mock the previous generation for believing government advice for surviving an atomic blast suscribe to an equally erroneous belief, i.e. that atomic bombs are the equivalent of a super death ray which any attempt to survive is pointless.
I suggest anyone who thinks along these lines to take a look at this report on the subject. True, virtually everyone close to the blast will die, but if, as Duck and Cover presupposes, someone saw the flash and *weren't* incinerated, it means they're some distance away from ground zero and thus stand a chance of survival. Since the main cause of death at longer range is the wind blast (as opposed to the heat wave), ducking and covering makes sense.
Like the movie says, you'll be safER, not safe, but it's better than just waiting to be blown into a brick wall.
Cassiny/Huygens isn't a US/UK mission, it's a work of collaboration between NASA and ESA, and it says here that the European contribution is led by Alcatel Space, a French company. You can find more details regarding each agency's contribution here.
What I'd like to know is, isn't Italy a member state of ESA? If so, why is Italy's contribution somehow apart from that of ESA member state, and if not, why not?
This story wrongly calls the Huygens probe a NASA/ESA/(italian spage agency?) cooperation, whereas Huygens is actually strictly the work of ESA. The Cassini-Huygens mission *is* however a NASA/ESA undertaking. I'm not trying to play down NASA's contribution, which is of course critical to the success of the whole enterprise, however since a previous slashdot story about the mission talked about "NASA's Cassini probe", I feel it's only fitting that the credit for the success (or impending failure, naturally) be given to ESA.
ESA page for the Cassini-Huygens mission. They have a couple of Flash animations, some nice pictures of Titan (here) and an interesting factsheet on the mission.
This doesn't actually make sense, though. Natural selection dictates that organisms that are more fit have better chances to survive and thus to reproduce. The level of fitness, however, is logically evaluated by the environment, not by the organism itself. Your hypothesis implies that somehow the organism can detect by itself what traits are defective and then actually take steps to remove *itself* from the gene pool. IMO, this is more akin to a form of self-sacrificial Lamarckism than to evolution.
I guess it depends on how large and dedicated the wikipedia community is. From July 18th 2002 to September 7th 2002, the Blender Foundation raised 100k euros, so maybe $20k isn't that far-fetched.