Wilhammer

I am going to send my list to friends and family and let them work it out...should be the best Christmas ever for this old gamer.... Really, this has been THE year of wargaming for me. Got a great wife, a wonderful location, a War Room, have found several local FTFer, reconnected with the guy in High School who got me into this hobby.

For the board wargamer, two buyer's chances are available with deep discounts. First, GMT games has one heck of a nice sale for the holidays, and will even GIVE you TWO games if you recently lost your job. GMT Games - Google it. Second, a venerable old company is closing its doors - OSG. Wow, the last of the companies of my youth. Everything is 50% off. www dot napoleongames dot com

That looks like a black widow. Perhaps someone threw that snake in the web. I must admit a fascination with spiders - we have had some rather beautiful orb webs and their spiders about. the webs can be rather huge, and rather irritating to walk into in the dark. I have been know to feed spiders by tossing in 'experiments', like half dead Cicadas for those Orb Weavers. Years ago at the NC State fair in Raleigh, some fella was making nice web art - he would use shellacked boards to capture webs in the morning, overspray them, frame them, and sell them. They were quite popular.

On NPR this morning, I heard a great commentary suggesting that the Feds really botched it by going all panicky with the bail out package and screaming for it, thus making it worse than it was - fear driven over reaction caused far more damage than just let the market sort itself out. The suggested best course would of been to have the Republicans let the market correct itself as they said before it should - self regulation due poor decision making. So, the Socialist aspects of our Neo-Capitalism is from the Neo-Cons. Rather ironic. The best part was her quote from Napoleon: "In politics stupidity is not a handicap."

That oughta be obvious - the damned Spider put it there! -------- Well, at least you don't have to put up with Black Widows- we seem to have a rather healthy population around my house - I've encountered and killed 6 of them this year.

How the heck do you live there?!?!?!

I hope so, but in General, the Law seems broken for the little man - just ask the Male African American youth about the unfair sentencing it is forced to endure.

"WillH - you have a dirty on the police, fer sure." Not the police only - the entire Justice System. I've never got myself in trouble, seriously, with the law (beyond youthful traffic issues), but I know those who have. Changing it - slowly, I hope, by bitching about it. It could be I / we are fighting windmills, but if we take that attitude, we lose by default. The old saw though that Police and Criminals are a decision away from career choices seems so very true - Cops and the Law are like crooks - they detain you, threaten you, take your stuff, and show no remorse for it, and they act above the Law.

Karl Marx is back in Fashion with the Germans! http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/oct/15/marx-germany-popularity-financial-crisis

Ironic, ain't it? All you need do for Ye Olde Firefox user is to highlight it, right click it and select Search Google, and BAM!, Muse Lyrics.

"I used "ostensible" to show that there was the original topic of the thread and then what it has become. " Well, you might of used it incorrectly. You might like this story; Man 'roused from coma' by a magnetic field http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026783.400 It is almost common knowledge about iron being in our bodies, btw. And no doubt in a massive Earthquake, everyone is going to be shook up and jittery.

Yes, it is not Democracy as we are taught in civics class or are lead to believe by the propaganda of our States. In the US it is quite bad - he who pays the lawyers can do just about anything, those who can't have their lives totally screwed up for minor infractions. Worse is the fact that if you are sued or prosecuted, you DO get punished before any guilt is proven and even if found innocent - legal fees, court costs, imho, should be paid by the accuser when the accuser loses. When defendats are provided counsel, it is seriously under resourced and often wet behind the ears or completely uncaring. Almost no honor or decency exists in that profession. RIAA lawsuits benefits from such things - in fact, our society is based on proving our innocence, not the other way around as we are told. Lawyers are the Scum of the Earth, and the Law is not doing its job in protecting us, in fact, it shelters the wealthy and connected. ...To get perhaps a little political - the Palin/Trooper Gate thing warms my heart - the press does not seem to care about the abuses of that cop, only using it to trash a public servant who took him on...and that is all that is needed as way of example - we don't need to delve into Presidentila Politics over this. This is a good thread topic - lets keep it active.

"the ostensible thread topic" So, this thread topic was a ruse by you?

So, you write crap and they pay you crap - that is to be expected.

kvetching, I had some of that with my fries last night. Not whining, critiquing your abuses of the web. You see, your scholarship, if that is what it is, consists of typing in search phrase and surfing the web, 99.9% of the time. And it shows. By the way, don't thank me, the link I posted was NOT designed to help you. I found it interesting that that person, an obvious fan of the period, has absolutely nothing about Horse Armor. As some might have hinted at, consider this - the bones and artifacts often dug up by Archaeologists is from the upper crust (pun intended) of society, and the trappings of wealth go into the grave with them. Further, as you are an expert on this, when the Grays showed up on ancient battlefields, the horses got spooked, and armor meant nothing. Also, Archaeologists are notorious 'embellishers' - nearly all their conclusions are biased to meet some personal quest, and are mostly opinion. Panther skins and other big cat skins were often the best 'armor' to find on a horse back then. Was horse armor EVER effective? In the middle ages it was used by the Chivalrous Class, but to show off. A slow heavily armored horse in a pitched battle was a huge deficit. The exploits of knights are overrated - the fools had rules preventing battle with commoners, and they expected ransom if captured, and killing each other was generally against the rules. Calvary is about speed and shock due to the animal's size, and the most effective defense against a horse, the pikeman and its square worked against areas of a horse that could NEVER be armored as it would turn into a statue. Further, and you know this as this is your field of expertise, when the Greys showed up on ancient battlefields, the horses got spooked, rendering any protection moot. ----------- Wow, computer games as source material? Are you mixing up your copies of Rome Total War and Medieval Total War? I have no doubt that some rich maniacs armored their horses as signs of wealth and not for any real military needed or doctrine - though someone probably fielded them at one or two points as an experiment that failed, but definitely was unusual. It's kind of like WW2 - reading comic books, veteran accounts, and the movies would leave everyone to think that all German Tanks were Tigers, and we know that 95% of the time, that simply was not true. Finding one horse in a grave with armor is no indication of its widespread use, and logically it would not be - the logistics of the time would prevent it.

http://phoenicia.org/index.shtml Remember, Carthaginians are/were Phoenicians.

John, is there nothing you can't Google up?

JK, You should be writing or consulting for Fringe - unless of course that is where you are getting your ideas. I swear, everything I have been reading from you for the past 4 weeks has pretty much MATCHED what Fringe is doing on TV. It is some riveting Fiction, I tell ya.

Another Weasel Tactic, right Jon? He throws up SOOO MUCH Flak, he can't help but ACCIDENTALLY hit a target...and Google is his Flak Battery - certainly no internal guidance system of any worth hits the target.

But does it have a good conspiracy in it?

Wow, that is some quality name calling!

If he has the right to post anything, so then does everyone else. And, you are not too observant DT, for as one of his strongest critics, I have praised him on the many military items he posts about, so you can tear down that strawman.

'As The Kettlerian World Turns' is great drama and farce...

Weaselout words - Kettler's New Tactic. "I can't be crucified if is I *say* I don't believe."