Tero

By Pak40 Depends on your POV. I just watched a Japanese war movie about a sub (I-77 ?) vs an US destroyer and in it the action and behaviour was less than convincing. For example the Japanese sank a tanker and surfaced near the destroyer picking up survivors and there was no firefight. Also, a Japanese sailor made a speach about how the enemy are humans too. All in all the movie was well done but the story line sucked big time in its contemporary PC gumbayaa which had nothing in common with the way period people behaved and had been indoctrinated. What was the purpose of the scene in general ? **** happens in combat and as a result people go off the bend on a regular basis. Believe me, I will be appropriately and similarly indignant when a similarly gruesome Japanese war crime gets a similarly understanding treatment in the series. I do believe the incident really occurred. I just wonder what purpose did it serve vis-a-vis the story. The suicide scene worked far better in support of the theme of the episode. Which all happened to take place in the dead of the night ? How convinient, considering how they cut down production costs. No contest. From what I have read about the campaing as seen so far in the series not all the fighting happened in the dead of night. The unit depicted in the series has suffered surprisingly few casualties so far. Given the historical attrition rate of the marine units. Girlie plot story line is not about girls. It is how the characters are being a bit of pufters for example reading their mail aloud all the time during lulls in the fighting. Nah. In fact Benny Goodman would do better. A general feel of the series and how the story is being developed. Whenever a contemporarily sensitive issue (like combat casualties etc) is depicted the feel of the scenes is just off. BoB seemed more true to life in that respect. The shrink in the hospital for example was not a convincing character as his behaviour was too modern compared to what was known about PTSD, shell shock, whatever you call it and how it was treated at the time. And I would think that he would not have needed to be bribed with a Nambu to get a man back to his unit as soon as he was "cured". Then again US Navy mental medical care may just have been better than what the US Army had arranged for the paras (who did not seem to suffer from other than trench foot).

My PC remark is not about what they call the enemy. It is the general attitude. AFAIK period American soldiers viewed the Japanese as less than human and that does not reflect in the series. What about the dog, the name of which was in the chopping block when they started dreaming up the new movie about the Damnbusters (?) ?

On that same note: after watching three episodes some rather annoying features have emerged: - PC language. No period dehumanization and rough/racist talk among the Marines about the enemy - casually shrugging off a war crime (strangling a wounded enemy) - combat scenes are basically machine gunning down waves upon waves of enemies a la the best war games around (the average war movies about Marines in the Pacific done in the 50's are more convincing and have more action than the series so far) - "heavy Marine casualties" consist so far a few dead marines and a suicide by a nude guy - general girlie plot features - music score is straight from BoB The feeling I have gotten so far is the makers have used a stop watch to calculate the spot where story parallel has gotten too close to reminding the viewer of the current Iraq campaing and they have shifted the storyline accordingly. In general, it seems to me parallel with Iraq seems to have adversely influenced very heavily how the series has been written.

By Cuirassier What muddies the water with this type of classification of losses they do not separate civilian and military casualties.

Wasn't there a hubbub not long ago about how much customers pay for ice in their frozen foods ? IMO the seller loses money (as if !) depending on how the berries are measured. More dry berries are sold by unit of sale than moist berries. If they are sold by weight the dry berries weigh less and consquently more berries are needed to fill the desired weight as opposed to moist berries which reach the desired weight with less volume. If they are sold by volume he loses again as more dry berries fit in the same space than moist berries.

By dieseltaylor It would not have been much of an ambush. How many men seen in the film actually carried a weapon ? I spotted definitely only one with a possible AK with banana clip (man in striped shirt), his pal carried what might or might not have been an AK or a RPG. If it was a RPG where was the grenade ? A number of men had something slung on their shoulders but that can be anything. What bothers me is nobody was observed collecting the weapons from the scene and the US military can or will not corraborate any weapons or ammo on or around the bodies. Shooting children up is bad for image even when the shooting is justified. Giving up ROE would be a bad tactical move. Shielding US operational practices is a far more likely excuse.

By Angryson Except the van which got shot up had a light roof while the van seen moving at the start seems to have an all dark roof. Unless of course they had time to tape the roof up.

By dieseltaylor The laughter does not bother me as such. It is most distasteful but after all the crew had just killed 8 people who most likely knew not they were being monitored (and targeted). I see it as an attempt to keep sane in the presense of their murderous act. Dehumanizing the opponent is part of the game (no pun inteded). The way they later on rationalized the children being casualties shows they were starting to realize they had possibly just committed an attrocity.

By Boeman I am willing to let some of that slide due to human nature. But they must know they are being recorded. Apparently they have no sense of decency and professionalism if they feel they can talk what they like while being recorded. That did make them sound like my 6-year olds pleading to get some more candy. "Can we ? Please, pleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleaseplease." Most distasteful. What kind of radio discipline and protocol are they enforcing in the US Army anyways ? Which in a sense it was. They monitor the events through a TV-screen circling around the scene at a distance (a considerable distance at that given the gap between the sound of the gun firing and the rounds hitting). True. However, while prudence is the better part of valour these pilots had a long time to assess the situation. I must guestion the training of these pilots if they think an RPG tube looks like a boombox. And the sequence did not show any AK's or anything remotely resembling them. AFAIK insurgent cameramen use compact portable cameras, not the professional huge cameras as seen on the film. That intention backfired on all involved. Literally. Agreed. The brass should back up the troops up to a point. And tragic mistakes are inevitable. But in this case the point was exceeded.

By Affentitten Don't you go dissing non-British navies, buddy. When they say they were ships then they were ships. The reason for these battles were so prolific in numbers is the fact the Finnish archipelago is comprised of small islands and shallow waterways and anything larger than a shallow draft frigate is simply impossible to navigate in there. The British-French navy paid the area a visit during Crimean war http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_War#Baltic_theatre The British "1000 ship" convoy was most likely comprised mostly of these same kind of coastal "ships".

By There is an old British TV series called Danger UXB around. Not exactly explosive action and by modern standards the suspense is firmly in the "yawn" section. But all in all the series is not all that bad compared to much of the drivel being broadcasted these days.

And on second thought the combat pilot level of stress is actually present in husbands following their wives in shopping trips. No wonder so much flirting is going on in stores and supermarkets....

By costard I'm guestioning the study on its premise that all stress is similar. Doing studies in a laboratory by inducing short bouts of stress and then having the test subjects pick between images in rapid succession is not IMO very indicative. It well may by that the stressed men picked undoctored pictures over pictures doctored to resemble the subjects themselves only because under stress their senses and wits were/are more susceptible to discern between what is real and what is not real. True. But when cognitive ability is impaired incognitive abilities take over. In animals mating with your father/mother/son/daughter is the least preferable option. The test subjects did pick dissimilar pictures. But the similar pictures were doctored to resemble the test subjects themselves. Thus I do not find it that surprising the subjects did not pick what their subconsciousness told them looked too much like a blood relative. True. But the demanded quality of service is not the same in a bar filled with hot shot combat pilots as in a bar filled with hot shot bankers.

By costard That is the point. If you are stressed you seek diversity. I think it is safe to say say prostitutes behind frontlines find it easier to find business than prostitutes hanging around bars frequented by stressed bankers. Yet, IIRC, bankers are under similar levels of stress combat pilots are.

By Michael Emrys I agree. Sometimes perpetuating the genetic heritage is even undesireable. It is interesting to read how different levels of intoxication affect how people choose prospective partners. The premise is of course intoxication alleviates stress.....

By costard I'd say they are willing to seek ANY mate, similar or dissimlar. I'd go for the more ellaborate explanation: the survival of the species is not in jeopardy as suggested in the text, only the survival of the individual. When your own particular mix of genes is more likely to be discontinued you will mate with any female of the species in a hope to perpetuate your genetical heritage. Sure, the underlying drive is to perpetuate the species but that is stretching the point a bit further than is logically implied in the conducted tests.

By Bugged Ever been around identical twins ? My twin sons are not classed officially as identical, there is officially only something like 25% chance based on a test on the placenta. They are now 6 years and telling them apart is at times impossible unless you can see the only clear difference in their appearance: one has a round chicken pox scar in the forehead. They have always been within 1cm in height and 400g in weight for one. We were at Legoland Denmark last summer and had a 3D-image glass gube made of all our boys much like as seen here http://www.awardsinglass.com/en/photographic.htm . The twins sat next to each other when the picture was taken. While they sat in slightly different poses looking at their side profile in the cube they match almost 100% Telling them apart is hard not only because they look alike but they also act alike. There are some basic differences but these manifest themselves at special occasions. Mainly these differences are in how they react to different situations and stimuli. What makes things worse is they seem to switch behaviour traits almost at regular intervals. Once you think you have them down they switch. Of course much of this is due to differences in their learning curve. But while there are differences there are definitive similarities in both their learned and instinctive behavious. IMO the learned behaviour is almost more down to them learning and adapting from each other rather than from outside. We joke with the wife that we have four sons of two basic models: the twins have paired up with a different elder brother and that pairing is fairly constant. It seems the pairing is based on similarities in their personalities. That has led us parents to believe that to some extent personality traits are hereditary. Or at least predisposition to adapt learned behaviour patterns is hereditary. This is true. But that also means that all the children in a family carrying the "gay" genes would turn gay and not just one of the litter.

Gay penguins and other species with same-sex couples do occur in nature so the entire discussion about how natural homosexuality is debatable. IMO homosexuality is just another manifestation of the primal urge to procreate. It just happens to be an evolutionary dead end and the species lose that part of the gene pool in a natural manner when it comes to it being a dominant feature. In my view the recent "explosion" of human homosexuality is just a statistical anomaly as the human population has been growing exponentially.

I'd say, given the director is a female, they needed a groggy, gritty manly-man scene to offset the "deep" girlie-plot base camp boozing, wrestling and chewing of fat scenes. It nicely also moons both the Brits and manly-man gung-ho attitudes of war. But hey, they did get to use big name British talent in the scenes. As to the smoke-popping scene: it sort of makes sense as the smoke obscures the vision for the mobile phone fielding insugents so they can not command detonate the mine when they are supposed to. To a woman that is. I wondered why they did not command detonate when they saw the guy approach the site anyway.... All in all, not a bad movie. A girlie-plot war movie without the oblicatory romantic sub plot.

Nice one. But there is one flaw in the theory I wish you convey to the professor: If hell has indeed frozen over it is no longer expanding. If we assume the gas-like souls are frozen and dissipated in the space too thin to absorb more heat the weight of the mass compared to the space it occupies and the velocity of the expanding mass will turn the expansion an implosion resulting in heating up of the core which in turn initiates the re-expansion and cooling up cycle. Thus "Hell" is a pulsar like perpetuum mobile which operates by the constant source of souls. Given it is working under the laws of physics of its own no divine being is needed to operate it thus negating the proof of the existence of any devine beings. EDIT: Sandra shouting proof is a non-sequitur since her exclamation may or may not be based on fraudulent/dishonest testimony and incomplete presentation of facts.

Which of course does not apply to German heavies......

What kind of proof do you accept ?

Equal treatment is not the same as positive discrimination.

Nah. Definitely they were the offspring of Auto

By JasonC How many combat casualties did the US armour forces sustain during these periods ? The number of total write off's is not indicative of their combat performance or efficiency, given their reliance of heavy artillery and aerial support to be able to gain and hold ground. And how many automotive-mechanical losses did the US numbers include ? The number of total write off's does not indicate their mechanical reliability. And this brings up nicely the point I'm trying to make: for the Germans you can find all types of loss cathegories by model and type down to a single vehicle down to a single engagement level while US armoured units apparently lost only absolute numbers during entire campaigns. And I really can not believe this is only because the Germans were anal about keeping records. IIRC the only German armoured unit (21st Panzer) engaged initially in Normandy was directed at the British. That makes your statement a bit dubious since US armour was not engageing German armour initially (AFAIK the British faced some 70% of German armour present in Normandy). Yet it was not the short 75mm Sherman which punched the hole through which the US poured out of Normandy. It was the heavy artillery and aerial bombardment which paved the way. Given you only use absolute numbers I'd like to see real day-to-day force return figures to see just how effective the US armour was against the Germans. The Bulge showed again the presence of aerial and heavy artillery support accompanied the US armoured success.