First, OSC may have quite different political ideas than you. You may think he's a crappy writer. You may think he has bad breath.
But you (and the GP) didn't say any of those things. You said *he's insane*.
Now, think for a moment. You know how sometimes you hear about how what's wrong with America is how we demonize people who don't agree with us? About how far political discourse has fallen, because instead of talking about ideas, all we do is call each other names? About how the few voices of reason get drowned out by all the voices shrieking hate?
Well, now consider this: I bet, when you do, it never occurs to you that they're talking about *you*.
OSC's views are, as far as I can tell, well within conservative mainstream. You may *disagree* with them, but that doesn't mean they're extreme, or that he's "batshit insane." Calling them "batshit insane" doesn't say anything about OSC -- if anything, it tells us about *you*, and how seriously we should take anything you say.
Understand? I think gun control advocates, for example, are wrong and misguided. But I don't think they're "batshit insane."
My second thought, to the moderators: I just wanted to point out that you took a post that said, essentially, "Me too," and modded it INFORMATIVE. Nice.
1. Eliminate the need for a cable, the way the Shuffles and some other MP3 players already have.
2. Waterproof 'em.
- AJ
Something I'm surprised no one has pointed out
on
Office 12 Exposed
·
· Score: 1
Like everyone else, I'm just going off the screenshots here. But it looks like, with the use of a set of buttons to toggle additional toolbars, that Office 12 is adopting the same approach used by WordPerfect 3.5e on the Mac. I've only used it a little, but it does seem pretty handy and intuitive.
Damn, I did mean Google Groups. Great, I probably just blew my chances of ever seeing it on slashdot.
In response to your second comment, all kinds of sites have recognized the utility of having an overview of a comment thread, so you can tell at a glance who is replying to whom, and so on. Yes, I know about nested comments and threading, but I still find/.'s implementation of those pretty dicey.
Most sites that do provide this sort of overview do it at the top or bottom of a page, like this:
Google news has the most useful web interface I've ever seen: The "tree" view, which shows you exactly where you are in the hierarchy in a pane off to the left. I've always wondered why this paradigm never caught on -- it's so useful and intuitive. I'd love to see Slashdot adopt it.
(If you don't know what I'm talking about, go to Google News, search for Britney Spears, click on the first result, then go up to the top of the screen and click on the "view as tree" link.)
I urge the Slashdot gods to consider implementing something like this.
The other replier to this comment is basically right, although he puts it in harsher terms than I would have.
You're making a common mistake, one that a lot of people made about the whole rent control issue in decades past. They figured that, as long as the landlords and builders etc. could still make a decent amount of money, they'd stay in the business. But it's not about whether or not the investors can make money -- it's *how much* money they can make, relative to their ability to make money investing in *other* things.
Investors will simply shift their resources to areas where they believe they will profit the most (i.e., areas where they are not going to get the fruits of their investments snatched away from them.)
1. About ten years ago, my job required me to make a 1,000 mile road trip about twice a year. I would just get a box and address it to the local library. Then I would check out a whole bunch of audio tapes (no CD player back then). When I got to my destination, I would just put all the tapes in the box and mail them back to the library.
2. When I was a kid, CBS had this program called CBS Radio Mystery Theatre. This was back in the 70s -- the program received a lot of publicity at the time, as an attempt to "revive" the radio-drama format. I was poking around USENET a while back, and lo and behold, found that a community of CBSRMT fans had lovingly restored and were posting, in rotation, most of the old episodes.
I wouldn't advocate doing anything illegal, but on the other hand, there's no other place you can obtain these old broadcasts -- at least, not to my knowledge.
The episodes were intro'ed by E.G. Marshall, and the quality of the voice acting is excellent. The writing itself is pretty uneven, but some of them are excellent and quite memorable. The newsgroup is alt.binaries.cbs.radio.mystery.theatre, or something like that.
Uhhh... I guess the GP *could* be sarcastic, but there's absolutely no hint of it in his post. He seems to be suggesting that the GGP is overly sympathetic to Hitler. Perhaps he assumed that the simple outrageousness of the charge itself would signal sarcasm. Unfortunately, slashdotters in fact accuse each other of sympathizing with Hitler with some regularity. So where's the irony?
Every thread like this spawns an enormous number of comments criticising the Religious Right, Jesus Freaks, President Bush, the Moral Majority, Jerry Falwell, etc. etc. etc.
If I understand the above posters correctly, the reason that China is making rapid gains relative to the U.S. isn't due to the fact that China is a third-world country emerging into the first world; it's because George Bush believes in God, or something like that.
So here's my question:
First, President Bush has (again, if I understand correctly) forbade the U.S. of federal funds to create new stem cell lines. Even if I don't agree with him, I can certainly understand how one could have moral and philosophical objections to this practice. To use a crude analogy, we can get useful and potentially life-saving data by performing hypothermia experiments on Jews; however, I certainly hope most of us would agree that this would be horrible.
2. Second, I understand that some few school districts in the U.S. have come under pressure to include Intelligent Design in their curriculum. I disagree with this, but in the larger picture, it hardly seems like a firestorm that is sweeping the nation. And aren't school districts supposed to be responsive to local concerns?
3. So, what other evidence is there that the fundies, or Jesus Freaks, or mindless religo-bots or whatever are taking over our educational system? I just don't see it. From a historical standpoint, our schools are far *less* religious than at just about any other point in our history, as far as I can tell. What am I missing? Where is this blitzkrieg of uptight, WASPY/redneck stormtroopers?
1: Utilizing energy sources that continually spew out pollution everywhere, diffusing it throughout the environment, or
2: Utilizing an energy source that concentrates its waste in one spot, allowing us to isolate it from the environment
You choose #1?
There are so many problems with your post it's hard to know where to begin. For example, you say "either way, it's just another variant of "throw it somewhere out of sight." This shows pretty clearly where you are coming from. It's like saying, "Sending my trash to the landfill is just another variant of 'throw it somewhere out of sight', so instead I'm going to spread it around my house and neighborhood." I mean, what sense does that make? Clearly, the point isn't keeping it out of *sight*, it's keeping it *concentrated and out of the environment*. Sight doesn't have anything to do with it.
The rest of your post is filled with similar FUD. Would a nuclear program have to be handled carefully? Of course. Does that mean we shouldn't do ANYTHING until your beautiful vision of edible nuclear waste becomes a reality? For God's sake, get a grip on yourself.
Here's another thought I'll leave you with. If we develop a cheap source of renewable energy, do you know who will benefit the most? The poor. Prices come down, the economy goes up, jobs are created, etc. etc. etc. What you're saying is that screwing those who would benefit is fine with you, until we discover the perfect energy source -- if it even exists. Boy, talk about the perfect being the enemy of the good!
As another poster has astutely noted, "sometimes passionate self-righteousness precludes any rational thought."
This would be more plausible if the environmental movement hadn't opposed nuclear energy under Clinton, and the previous Bush, and Reagan, and Carter. And I don't recall it being a big part of Al Gore's campaign, nor Kerry's. (I could be wrong about the last part, not having studied their campaign platforms.)
You know, it's not the rants themselves that bother me -- I mean, you're going to get ranters everywhere, no matter what. What I can't understand is, who in their right mind would label something like that "insightful," of all things?
This is a weird thing to say, because conservatives ARE making a huge fuss about it. Go to, for example, nationalreview.com, or better yet, their group blog, The Corner (http://corner.nationalreview.com/print/) and that's all you hear about: Kelo, Kelo, Kelo. But the fact is there's nothing they can do.
Also, note that the conservatives on the court (Scalia, Thomas, Rehnquist) and the generally conservative (O'Connor) voted *against* Kelo. It was the liberals on the court who issued the majority ruling.
believe it or not, you can extend the functionality even further by installing Ben Goodger's "SmartSearch" extension.
With SS installed, when you highlight a word and right-click on it, you don't just see "web search for...". Instead, a submenu opens up that lets you search for the word specifically on those sites you have already specified via the bookmark keywords.
- AJ
A trick if you know what you're looking for
on
Shopping Online
·
· Score: 1
1. Get Firefox, or another browser that lets you subscribe to RSS feeds.
2. Go around to all the deal sites listed in this thread (Dealnews, Ben's Bargains, edealinfo, techbargains, etc). Subscribe to all their RSS feeds, setting up "live bookmarks" for each one. Put all the RSS feeds into one bookmarks folder, if you want to keep them organized.
3. A few times a day, go to "manage bookmarks" then do a search for whatever you're looking for.
I used this trick when shopping for a Sandisk MP3 player. I would just type in "sandisk" and it would show me all the current deals that mention Sandisk. Alternately, you could search for MP3, or whatever -- you get the idea. A great use of RSS.
A) Iraq certainly was harboring terrorists. Abu Nidal and Abbu Abbas, two of the most notorious terrorists of the last half-century, were *both* caught there. And Saddam himself proclaimed he would pay money to the families of suicide bombers. For God's sake, man, these facts aren't in dispute. Are you telling me you hang out on Slashdot but don't know how to use Google?
B) Listen to yourself. Now you're arguing that hunt for Bin Laden hasn't been successful. But that's not what you said. You said the U.S. was "ignoring the real, original terrorist groups." So again, I don't get it. If now you are saying the U.S. is unsuccessfully pursuing these groups, why at first did you say it was "ignoring" them?
c) There is simply no way you can say "His (sic) links to Al Qaeda are non-existent." You are confidently stating as a fact something that, practically, you have no way of knowing. Just because you *wish* it to be true doesn't automatically make it so. There is a good deal of circumstantial evidence linking Al Qaeda to the Saddam regime -- we just don't know what the extent of those links was. If you want to call them "unproven," fine. Just stick to the facts.
D) Let me get this straight -- the UK didn't act in the 1970s and 80s out of a "desire to stop terrorism"? ooookkaayyyyy....
At this point it becomes obvious that we have taken leave of reality entirely. I'm sorry, I tried to point out that you can still think the U.S. actions are wrong, without needing to resort to sheer looniness. If you want to argue on the *facts*, please feel free. Otherwise you're just wasting my time.
You might expect responses to this post to be long, angry rants, but how about just a couple friendly notes instead?
1. "US, which won the war in your history book..." This suggests that this is what you imagine "our" history books must say. All I can say is that I'm reasonably well-read, and I hope you find it reassuring that none of the WWI books I've read say that. To the contrary, the ones I've read all give a pretty balanced account of the War. In fact, if the U.S. is lauded, it is usually for our stance *after* the war -- i.e., that Germany should be rebuilt, not vindictively punished.
2. The whole "Russia did most of the fighting" meme has been addressed again and again. I won't go into it here, only remind you of the highlights: The Stalin-Ribbentrov pact; the fact that the Russians had previously executed most of their own skilled officers; the fact that Stalin disastrously insisted on a line-based defense, (rather than the defense-in-depth that his remaining generals advised); the fact that Russian troops went into battle accompanied by political officers, who shot their own troops to force others into battle; the fact that Russia received vital food, fuel and equipment via the U.S. Lend-Lease program; Russian mass-wave tactics vs. German armor; the fact that as many Russians as Germans froze to death; etc. etc.
3. "Many of the European wars have been because one of the great nations got the military upper hand"
Actually, allow me to suggest that the *only* times of extended peace Europe has ever known has been when one party (Rome, the British Navy, The Soviet Union, the United States) achieved a monopoly on power and *enforced* a peace. Believe me, I sincerely understand the degree to which this might rankle. It would bug me too. But think about it -- does France feel militarily threatened by Germany? No? Maybe that's because, 60 years ago, the U.S. forced Germany to become a democracy (then, of course, helped it rebuild).
4. China may indeed be a dominant nation. On the other hand, that "dominance" is supported by untold millions of faceless peasants laboring away in the fields under a communist government, occasionaly joining the People's Army so they can move into the city, massacre some political dissidents and throw others in prison. Is this really the nation you want to hold up to the U.S. as an example to emulate? Which country would you rather be: Canada, or Tibet?
Anyhow, don't want to come across as France bashing. France is no more or less motivated by self-interest as any other nation, as far as I can tell. Myself, I'd love to go there someday. I've heard it's wonderful.
1. You say "The UK has seen far more terrorist activity from Catholics vs Protestants in the last 30 years than from any Islamic groups."
So? The grandparent wasn't just talking about the UK. He said, in quite clear English: "You will find most if not all major global terrorist activity by religious zelots are those who practice the faith of Islam. That is a fact."
Besides, I seem to remember the UK moving quite aggressively against said terrorists. Obviously, there were downsides against doing so, but the people of the UK clearly understood that the alternatives had even bigger downsides.
2. It gets even weirder. You say "Iraq was not harbouring terrorists." Uhhh, excuse me, do you ever read the papers? Perhaps the name Abu Nidal means something to you? No? How about Abbu Abbas? How about Saddam's payments to families of Palestinian suicide bombers? Or do you feel they don't "count" because, technically, they weren't in Iraq? In that case I have bad news: another definition of "harbour" is "to nourish."
The fact is, Saddam was up to his eyeballs in terrorism. You can make an argument that the extent of his ties with Al Qaeda, specifically, are unclear, but then I would argue that those ties, specifically, are not as important (to Americans, anyway) as many Europeans seem to think they are.
3. Yeah, and our invasion of Nazi Germany resulted in more Germans taking up arms against us as well. And UK action against the IRA meant more thugs came out of their pubs and into the street to commit crimes. I mean, so? Are you saying that the possiblity of creating more terrorists should deter us from fighting those who already exist? Do you allow you fear to dictate your actions? Does that seem, in the long-term, like a wise course of action?
Don't take this as criticism -- I'm trying to *help* you by pointing out that none of these arguments make *sense*. Here's another one -- you say we're "ignoring the real original terrorist groups that were the route (root?) cause of all this." The only person who would believe this is one who was deliberately blinding himself to reality. The U.S. went after Al Qaeda and their Taliban allies quite aggressively in Afghanistan. That was even before Iraq, remember?
You're entitled to believe that invading Iraq was a big mistake. You're entitled to believe that George Bush is a big huge jerk. You're entitled to believe that Americans are overpaid, over sexed and over here, for all I care. But you're not entitled to your own *facts*. Try again.
You make several good points. Unlike most of my posts, I didn't really put a lot of thought into this one.
In my not-too-extensive experience with eBay, most sellers seem to have flat shipping rates on their items *anyway*. And those flat rates are generally, in my experience inflated -- even for Alaska, it only costs a few bucks to send a light item via the USPS regular Priority Mail.
If I was a seller, then, I guess I would just leave it up to the buyer to let me know how he wanted it shipped, and tack that cost on to the final price. That, I suppose, makes the most sense.
Another approach would be to set a reasonable minimum price, then say !!FREE SHIPPING!! in your subject line. The reasoning would be that people take the total cost (price + shipping) into account anyway, so bidwise it shouldn't make much difference, and you might actually get more bids.
I wonder if the eBay folks ever break down their numbers to see what works best.
Slashdot Mirror
Two thoughts:
First, OSC may have quite different political ideas than you. You may think he's a crappy writer. You may think he has bad breath.
But you (and the GP) didn't say any of those things. You said *he's insane*.
Now, think for a moment. You know how sometimes you hear about how what's wrong with America is how we demonize people who don't agree with us? About how far political discourse has fallen, because instead of talking about ideas, all we do is call each other names? About how the few voices of reason get drowned out by all the voices shrieking hate?
Well, now consider this: I bet, when you do, it never occurs to you that they're talking about *you*.
OSC's views are, as far as I can tell, well within conservative mainstream. You may *disagree* with them, but that doesn't mean they're extreme, or that he's "batshit insane." Calling them "batshit insane" doesn't say anything about OSC -- if anything, it tells us about *you*, and how seriously we should take anything you say.
Understand? I think gun control advocates, for example, are wrong and misguided. But I don't think they're "batshit insane."
My second thought, to the moderators: I just wanted to point out that you took a post that said, essentially, "Me too," and modded it INFORMATIVE. Nice.
- Alaska Jack
what happens in the end? What does it turn out happened to her kid?
- AJ
1. Eliminate the need for a cable, the way the Shuffles and some other MP3 players already have.
2. Waterproof 'em.
- AJ
Like everyone else, I'm just going off the screenshots here. But it looks like, with the use of a set of buttons to toggle additional toolbars, that Office 12 is adopting the same approach used by WordPerfect 3.5e on the Mac. I've only used it a little, but it does seem pretty handy and intuitive.
- AJ
Gyaaa, I meant Google Groups. Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!
- AJ
Damn, I did mean Google Groups. Great, I probably just blew my chances of ever seeing it on slashdot.
/.'s implementation of those pretty dicey.
6 03725
In response to your second comment, all kinds of sites have recognized the utility of having an overview of a comment thread, so you can tell at a glance who is replying to whom, and so on. Yes, I know about nested comments and threading, but I still find
Most sites that do provide this sort of overview do it at the top or bottom of a page, like this:
http://forums.nasioc.com/forums/showthread.php?t=
I think Google Groups' vertical implementation is better.
- AJ
Google news has the most useful web interface I've ever seen: The "tree" view, which shows you exactly where you are in the hierarchy in a pane off to the left. I've always wondered why this paradigm never caught on -- it's so useful and intuitive. I'd love to see Slashdot adopt it.
(If you don't know what I'm talking about, go to Google News, search for Britney Spears, click on the first result, then go up to the top of the screen and click on the "view as tree" link.)
I urge the Slashdot gods to consider implementing something like this.
- AJ
The other replier to this comment is basically right, although he puts it in harsher terms than I would have.
You're making a common mistake, one that a lot of people made about the whole rent control issue in decades past. They figured that, as long as the landlords and builders etc. could still make a decent amount of money, they'd stay in the business. But it's not about whether or not the investors can make money -- it's *how much* money they can make, relative to their ability to make money investing in *other* things.
Investors will simply shift their resources to areas where they believe they will profit the most (i.e., areas where they are not going to get the fruits of their investments snatched away from them.)
- AJ
1. About ten years ago, my job required me to make a 1,000 mile road trip about twice a year. I would just get a box and address it to the local library. Then I would check out a whole bunch of audio tapes (no CD player back then). When I got to my destination, I would just put all the tapes in the box and mail them back to the library.
2. When I was a kid, CBS had this program called CBS Radio Mystery Theatre. This was back in the 70s -- the program received a lot of publicity at the time, as an attempt to "revive" the radio-drama format. I was poking around USENET a while back, and lo and behold, found that a community of CBSRMT fans had lovingly restored and were posting, in rotation, most of the old episodes.
I wouldn't advocate doing anything illegal, but on the other hand, there's no other place you can obtain these old broadcasts -- at least, not to my knowledge.
The episodes were intro'ed by E.G. Marshall, and the quality of the voice acting is excellent. The writing itself is pretty uneven, but some of them are excellent and quite memorable. The newsgroup is alt.binaries.cbs.radio.mystery.theatre, or something like that.
- AJ
Uhhh... I guess the GP *could* be sarcastic, but there's absolutely no hint of it in his post. He seems to be suggesting that the GGP is overly sympathetic to Hitler. Perhaps he assumed that the simple outrageousness of the charge itself would signal sarcasm. Unfortunately, slashdotters in fact accuse each other of sympathizing with Hitler with some regularity. So where's the irony?
- AJ
Every thread like this spawns an enormous number of comments criticising the Religious Right, Jesus Freaks, President Bush, the Moral Majority, Jerry Falwell, etc. etc. etc.
If I understand the above posters correctly, the reason that China is making rapid gains relative to the U.S. isn't due to the fact that China is a third-world country emerging into the first world; it's because George Bush believes in God, or something like that.
So here's my question:
First, President Bush has (again, if I understand correctly) forbade the U.S. of federal funds to create new stem cell lines. Even if I don't agree with him, I can certainly understand how one could have moral and philosophical objections to this practice. To use a crude analogy, we can get useful and potentially life-saving data by performing hypothermia experiments on Jews; however, I certainly hope most of us would agree that this would be horrible.
2. Second, I understand that some few school districts in the U.S. have come under pressure to include Intelligent Design in their curriculum. I disagree with this, but in the larger picture, it hardly seems like a firestorm that is sweeping the nation. And aren't school districts supposed to be responsive to local concerns?
3. So, what other evidence is there that the fundies, or Jesus Freaks, or mindless religo-bots or whatever are taking over our educational system? I just don't see it. From a historical standpoint, our schools are far *less* religious than at just about any other point in our history, as far as I can tell. What am I missing? Where is this blitzkrieg of uptight, WASPY/redneck stormtroopers?
- Alaska Jack
Moderators:
...
"Insightful"?
oookkaayyyy
- AJ
Hmm, I'm curious. Do you think Americans spend more on defense spending, or on education?
- AJ
So, confronted with the choice of:
1: Utilizing energy sources that continually spew out pollution everywhere, diffusing it throughout the environment, or
2: Utilizing an energy source that concentrates its waste in one spot, allowing us to isolate it from the environment
You choose #1?
There are so many problems with your post it's hard to know where to begin. For example, you say "either way, it's just another variant of "throw it somewhere out of sight." This shows pretty clearly where you are coming from. It's like saying, "Sending my trash to the landfill is just another variant of 'throw it somewhere out of sight', so instead I'm going to spread it around my house and neighborhood." I mean, what sense does that make? Clearly, the point isn't keeping it out of *sight*, it's keeping it *concentrated and out of the environment*. Sight doesn't have anything to do with it.
The rest of your post is filled with similar FUD. Would a nuclear program have to be handled carefully? Of course. Does that mean we shouldn't do ANYTHING until your beautiful vision of edible nuclear waste becomes a reality? For God's sake, get a grip on yourself.
Here's another thought I'll leave you with. If we develop a cheap source of renewable energy, do you know who will benefit the most? The poor. Prices come down, the economy goes up, jobs are created, etc. etc. etc. What you're saying is that screwing those who would benefit is fine with you, until we discover the perfect energy source -- if it even exists. Boy, talk about the perfect being the enemy of the good!
As another poster has astutely noted, "sometimes passionate self-righteousness precludes any rational thought."
- Alaska Jack
This would be more plausible if the environmental movement hadn't opposed nuclear energy under Clinton, and the previous Bush, and Reagan, and Carter. And I don't recall it being a big part of Al Gore's campaign, nor Kerry's. (I could be wrong about the last part, not having studied their campaign platforms.)
- AJ
No, he's saying that in Hitler's case, the villification was justified.
It's just poorly worded. I had to read it a couple of times myself.
- AJ
You know, it's not the rants themselves that bother me -- I mean, you're going to get ranters everywhere, no matter what. What I can't understand is, who in their right mind would label something like that "insightful," of all things?
Another ranter, I guess.
- AJ
This is a weird thing to say, because conservatives ARE making a huge fuss about it. Go to, for example, nationalreview.com, or better yet, their group blog, The Corner (http://corner.nationalreview.com/print/) and that's all you hear about: Kelo, Kelo, Kelo. But the fact is there's nothing they can do.
Also, note that the conservatives on the court (Scalia, Thomas, Rehnquist) and the generally conservative (O'Connor) voted *against* Kelo. It was the liberals on the court who issued the majority ruling.
- AJ
believe it or not, you can extend the functionality even further by installing Ben Goodger's "SmartSearch" extension.
With SS installed, when you highlight a word and right-click on it, you don't just see "web search for...". Instead, a submenu opens up that lets you search for the word specifically on those sites you have already specified via the bookmark keywords.
- AJ
1. Get Firefox, or another browser that lets you subscribe to RSS feeds.
2. Go around to all the deal sites listed in this thread (Dealnews, Ben's Bargains, edealinfo, techbargains, etc). Subscribe to all their RSS feeds, setting up "live bookmarks" for each one. Put all the RSS feeds into one bookmarks folder, if you want to keep them organized.
3. A few times a day, go to "manage bookmarks" then do a search for whatever you're looking for.
I used this trick when shopping for a Sandisk MP3 player. I would just type in "sandisk" and it would show me all the current deals that mention Sandisk. Alternately, you could search for MP3, or whatever -- you get the idea. A great use of RSS.
- Alaska Jack
I still don't get it.
....
A) Iraq certainly was harboring terrorists. Abu Nidal and Abbu Abbas, two of the most notorious terrorists of the last half-century, were *both* caught there. And Saddam himself proclaimed he would pay money to the families of suicide bombers. For God's sake, man, these facts aren't in dispute. Are you telling me you hang out on Slashdot but don't know how to use Google?
B) Listen to yourself. Now you're arguing that hunt for Bin Laden hasn't been successful. But that's not what you said. You said the U.S. was "ignoring the real, original terrorist groups." So again, I don't get it. If now you are saying the U.S. is unsuccessfully pursuing these groups, why at first did you say it was "ignoring" them?
c) There is simply no way you can say "His (sic) links to Al Qaeda are non-existent." You are confidently stating as a fact something that, practically, you have no way of knowing. Just because you *wish* it to be true doesn't automatically make it so. There is a good deal of circumstantial evidence linking Al Qaeda to the Saddam regime -- we just don't know what the extent of those links was. If you want to call them "unproven," fine. Just stick to the facts.
D) Let me get this straight -- the UK didn't act in the 1970s and 80s out of a "desire to stop terrorism"? ooookkaayyyyy
At this point it becomes obvious that we have taken leave of reality entirely. I'm sorry, I tried to point out that you can still think the U.S. actions are wrong, without needing to resort to sheer looniness. If you want to argue on the *facts*, please feel free. Otherwise you're just wasting my time.
- AJ
You might expect responses to this post to be long, angry rants, but how about just a couple friendly notes instead?
1. "US, which won the war in your history book..." This suggests that this is what you imagine "our" history books must say. All I can say is that I'm reasonably well-read, and I hope you find it reassuring that none of the WWI books I've read say that. To the contrary, the ones I've read all give a pretty balanced account of the War. In fact, if the U.S. is lauded, it is usually for our stance *after* the war -- i.e., that Germany should be rebuilt, not vindictively punished.
2. The whole "Russia did most of the fighting" meme has been addressed again and again. I won't go into it here, only remind you of the highlights: The Stalin-Ribbentrov pact; the fact that the Russians had previously executed most of their own skilled officers; the fact that Stalin disastrously insisted on a line-based defense, (rather than the defense-in-depth that his remaining generals advised); the fact that Russian troops went into battle accompanied by political officers, who shot their own troops to force others into battle; the fact that Russia received vital food, fuel and equipment via the U.S. Lend-Lease program; Russian mass-wave tactics vs. German armor; the fact that as many Russians as Germans froze to death; etc. etc.
3. "Many of the European wars have been because one of the great nations got the military upper hand"
Actually, allow me to suggest that the *only* times of extended peace Europe has ever known has been when one party (Rome, the British Navy, The Soviet Union, the United States) achieved a monopoly on power and *enforced* a peace. Believe me, I sincerely understand the degree to which this might rankle. It would bug me too. But think about it -- does France feel militarily threatened by Germany? No? Maybe that's because, 60 years ago, the U.S. forced Germany to become a democracy (then, of course, helped it rebuild).
4. China may indeed be a dominant nation. On the other hand, that "dominance" is supported by untold millions of faceless peasants laboring away in the fields under a communist government, occasionaly joining the People's Army so they can move into the city, massacre some political dissidents and throw others in prison. Is this really the nation you want to hold up to the U.S. as an example to emulate? Which country would you rather be: Canada, or Tibet?
Anyhow, don't want to come across as France bashing. France is no more or less motivated by self-interest as any other nation, as far as I can tell. Myself, I'd love to go there someday. I've heard it's wonderful.
- Alaska Jack
I don't understand you.
1. You say "The UK has seen far more terrorist activity from Catholics vs Protestants in the last 30 years than from any Islamic groups."
So? The grandparent wasn't just talking about the UK. He said, in quite clear English: "You will find most if not all major global terrorist activity by religious zelots are those who practice the faith of Islam. That is a fact."
Besides, I seem to remember the UK moving quite aggressively against said terrorists. Obviously, there were downsides against doing so, but the people of the UK clearly understood that the alternatives had even bigger downsides.
2. It gets even weirder. You say "Iraq was not harbouring terrorists." Uhhh, excuse me, do you ever read the papers? Perhaps the name Abu Nidal means something to you? No? How about Abbu Abbas? How about Saddam's payments to families of Palestinian suicide bombers? Or do you feel they don't "count" because, technically, they weren't in Iraq? In that case I have bad news: another definition of "harbour" is "to nourish."
The fact is, Saddam was up to his eyeballs in terrorism. You can make an argument that the extent of his ties with Al Qaeda, specifically, are unclear, but then I would argue that those ties, specifically, are not as important (to Americans, anyway) as many Europeans seem to think they are.3. Yeah, and our invasion of Nazi Germany resulted in more Germans taking up arms against us as well. And UK action against the IRA meant more thugs came out of their pubs and into the street to commit crimes. I mean, so? Are you saying that the possiblity of creating more terrorists should deter us from fighting those who already exist? Do you allow you fear to dictate your actions? Does that seem, in the long-term, like a wise course of action?
Don't take this as criticism -- I'm trying to *help* you by pointing out that none of these arguments make *sense*. Here's another one -- you say we're "ignoring the real original terrorist groups that were the route (root?) cause of all this." The only person who would believe this is one who was deliberately blinding himself to reality. The U.S. went after Al Qaeda and their Taliban allies quite aggressively in Afghanistan. That was even before Iraq, remember?
You're entitled to believe that invading Iraq was a big mistake. You're entitled to believe that George Bush is a big huge jerk. You're entitled to believe that Americans are overpaid, over sexed and over here, for all I care. But you're not entitled to your own *facts*. Try again.
. - Alaska Jack
My guess: less than 12 parsecs
- AJ
You make several good points. Unlike most of my posts, I didn't really put a lot of thought into this one.
In my not-too-extensive experience with eBay, most sellers seem to have flat shipping rates on their items *anyway*. And those flat rates are generally, in my experience inflated -- even for Alaska, it only costs a few bucks to send a light item via the USPS regular Priority Mail.
If I was a seller, then, I guess I would just leave it up to the buyer to let me know how he wanted it shipped, and tack that cost on to the final price. That, I suppose, makes the most sense.
Another approach would be to set a reasonable minimum price, then say !!FREE SHIPPING!! in your subject line. The reasoning would be that people take the total cost (price + shipping) into account anyway, so bidwise it shouldn't make much difference, and you might actually get more bids.
I wonder if the eBay folks ever break down their numbers to see what works best.
- AJ