Stalins Organ

Not nearly as good a chance as you have these days of making it to 50+ if you get to 15, or 21 or whatever. Sure some did......but child mortality aside, plenty did not make 50 back then. The blog addresses teh issue by looking at how long members of the Welsh royal family and marcher nobility/royals - and only at the adult members - so completely excluding infant mortality. The "natural" deaths occured at ages 76, 67, 64, 53, 51,, 49, 48, 47, 45, 43, 42, 42, 38,26. Deaths in childbirth at ages 30 and 25. And "unnatural" deaths (war, accident, hung for sleeping with hte boss's wife!) at ages 57, 48, 40, 32 so of the 20, only 3 made it to their 60's or beyond - that would be considered a demographic disaster if it were happening today! And this little bit from there: This is not an "average" including infant mortality - (apart from any child monarchs & monks??) - this is how long people lived in those times, and it wasn't very long by modern standards. This is also relvant: And she also did a post comparing christian & moslem lifespans in the medieval world - and there might not have been much difference. This is also important, I think, to discussions of the values of medians and means:]

so to summarise - medieval folk did a lot more work, ate to enable them to do it, and were probably quite fit by our standards. and it killed them young. Anything significant missing??

Perhaps we were better at rigging our hutchies than you lot

Well the bayonet fitting does sem to be adjustable - perhaps when hte zombies coem the gun's toolkit has an allen key you can use to loosen the clamp and shift it down the barrel? In the absence of a gun rack, leaning the weapon against a tree seems preferable to plonking it on the ground, and lighting up under a lean to is something "we" used to do all the time in the military - helps keep the rain out of the food. I mean you need to consider that all the pro' "tooled up" folks are probably the zombies you're going to be ...er....."killling" with this - since they'd have been the first to battle, and hence the first to be consumed

It was probably their fathers who bought the armour.......dads with swords in fact

Which is all fair enough - but that's the very top elite of society - saying they were fitter than today's average jo blo is like saying Billionaires are richer than the average!

So you're saying the professional soldiers then were fitter than everyone except professional soldiers now - bit of a non-sequiter really I think:rolleyes: Of course these days we also have professional athletes, amateur athletes, gym bunnies, better nutrition, anti-biotics, and a much longer expected life span. The sort of fitness ppl had back then was the sort of fitness that kills you young - unremitting hard work year in and year out. And what did the rich do if they could afford it?? Henry VIII turned from a fit young noble into a massive fat slob. There were times when you could be a professional mercenary - Again you're comparing things that are not equal - the modern era is what - the last 50 years - whereas "European history" gives you a couple of thousand...even just "medieval europe" gives you 500....and being a mercenary in the 30 yrs war or any of the wars of the next 150 years when mercenaries were still very common (think "Hessians" in the AWI!) wasn't a recipe for fitness and long life! I think you have an unjustifiably romantic view of the situation.

Hey I resemble that remark!!

latest reports have 80 killed on the island

The English more-or-less started the practice of knights dismounting to fight, often using them to stiffen the levy of militia spearmen in the era betwen the Norman conquest and the arrival of the massed longbows. It became "formalised" in the Scottish wars when mounted men-at-arms repeatedly failed to make any impression on the Scots schiltrons (blocks of pikemen), but the archers wrought havock - as Warwick had done first against the Welsh spearmen at Maes Mydog. It took a while to catch on fully - Bannockburn in 1314 was an obvious abject failure, despite the earlier success at Falkirk on a nearly identical battlefield. By the time of the 2nd war of independence (1332 start) the english had fought a rebellion, and the idea of dismounting knights combined with massed archery on the wings as a defensive formation had appeared - Dupplin Moor was a signal victory by a small number of English & Scots rebels that was in large part due to archery from the first (AFAIK) use of such a formation. and after that it essentially became the English way of war - Englisyh mercenaries & allies took it to all sorts of places - including Spain & Gemany. The French copied it because their mounted knights had been hammered at Crecy and Poitiers & they figured if they can't beat them they should join them! And to be fair spearmen and men at arms on foot did defeat English archery in some battles during the 100 Years War - although IMO it seems having large shields made quite a difference! However a major difference betwen the 2 sides is that the English tried very hard to ensure they were in a defensive positions that had to be attacked, so their men-at-arms did not have to move long distances in all that armour! the French remains an "attacking" army that could be forced to move due to archery. It is perhaps noteable that 2 major English defeats that pretty much ended the HYW occured when they had to attack - Formigny in 1450 where French artillery outranging the English archers may have goaded them to attack, and Castillon in 1453 where the French commander constructed fortification and sat on eth defence with greater numbers

Only until they die......

sorry about that - I tried to be a bit less confrontational - it's a new tactic that seems to work better for me! Absolutely - it's all about perceptions of profit/loss or risk/gain or however you choose to label it. As I see it the current overall perception in the US is that the down side of other approaches outweighs their benefits. Individuals obviously differe - but there is not enough support to change your society's approach. this may change over the years - in fact I bet it will.....but I'm not so bold as to predict a time frame!! and were done so by the British in 1689 which you piggy-backed on and extended. but times change......

You are the one who connected guns and the border - you tell me? <about glibness> - yes - and why is it that when you say it, but you're all upset when someone says it about you?? Why thank you for your confidence - but I dont' think I have all the answers at all. but like yourself I find it quite easy to have an opinion - but you shouldnt' confuse that with answers. And my opinion is that society, collectively, accepts all sorts of things, but often seems quiet stupid when it comes to understanding that there are consequences and then dealing with them. For example "you" collectively accept thatall those drugs should be outlawed, and then get upset that they still get dealt, and unwilling to do whatever it takes to stop the dealing - whether it be by living in a police state, executing dealuers, or legalisiing the drugs, or whatever else might actually stop the resultant problem. Again - c'est la vie - it's nto really surprising - societies have always had such problems. Just my opinion of course

Does possession of firearms help with policing those?? :confused: And you accuse the OP of being glib??!! no it isn't - it's a simple statment of fact - what you & others have identified is that in the US, as a whole, there is NOT the will. C'est la vie - if you have knowledge of alternatives and choose not to follow them then that's OK - you are adults, you are allowed to make these choices. But at least you (the royal you - not you personally) should accept the obvious consequernces of your choice.

Apart from the major news stories (arrests, resignations) here in NZ we're getting quite a lot of "just how did Murdoch get to be so powerful anyway?" pieces purporting to analyse to structure & ownership of media worldwide, along with the relationship betwen the media & politicians & others in positions of power. It's quite interesting.....given that 75% of out dailies are owned by Fairfax.....

Without knowing more detail, perhaps hitting the rim sufficiently changed the trajectory to keep him alive? the way it is worded it appears that the breaking of the clasp was sort of incidental - it just happened to hit the rim of the helmet at the point of the clasp.

And, as predicted ......the news wires this morning are covered with reports of an FBI investigation into Murdoch's troops hacking phones in the USA

I've seen the aussie one athough I didn't initially know what they are talking about or hte people involved, etc. The NZ version of media watch is radio only, and well worth a listen.

Remember it also takes the people on the other side of hte transaction to agree to perform the actions, accept the money, etc. I don't douobt similar things are happening elsewhere in the world - they just haven't been discovered or made public yet!

not at all - they've been full of shirt for a couple of centuries now, and toilets have been a necessity for all of that time

I'm glad you understood it (Costard's post). Could you translate it for us mere mortals please??

....if not your body...:eek:

I don't see restricting the right to vote to those who have "served the state" as being either accurate as a description of the SST's system, or as a tenet of fascism. In the book citizens are those who serve _society_ IIRC - the state is actually quite subordinate to the needs of people - government is actually almost unimportant....except insofar as it meets the needs of people - in that respect it is very important indeed. Fascism does also ahve people serving the state - but the state is seen as more important than the individuals, and nothing else can be tolerated - fascism must be authoritarian - it cannot exist otherwise, so if there's a restriction on voting it is to those who will vote fascist - whethe htey have done any particular service or not - ie to party members, or restricted by outlawing other parties or voting entirely! I see them as quite different.

There's not really a lot of fascism in the book - the Govt is actually democratically elected, and it is also OBLIGED to give service to everyone who wants it. There's a section on the fascism allegations on wiki - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship_Troopers#Allegations_of_fascism Note Sircar's Corollary of Godwin's Law

Yeah - I recall movies about nuclear weapon effects, the importance of overhead cover against back scatter, lethal radii (that's a 10 MT one coming in now - we should get another 2 miles away..quickly now...:eek:), the relative values of concrete and earth as radiation shielding, etc...happy my kids don't need to!