dieseltaylor

Ghurka VC's per head might be an interesting source of comparisons - if one takes VC' s as a measure of good soldiering. Individuals are important but leadership makes a huge differnce when talking of divisional effectiveness. Cota, Freyberg etc.

1. But how come you say, and I quoted it, that religious people are more likely to follow a moral compass than non-believers. So are you saying that only true "Christians" can be put into this category. Which I can understand as an argument and I fone thinks of the Quakers they must be near the epitome of what a good religion is. - in terms of doing harm, enforcing views. 2. As I understand it several states are currently introducing bills to make women wishing for abortons have an ultrasound and counselling before they can have a termination. It is the Christian right that is behind these moves. Of course whilst espousing anti-big government views the control of people seems to be on the agenda. I find that slightly hypocritical as either you believe the foetus belongs to the mother or to the state and I go with the first. 3. Currently the most violent countries are in Central America according to the Economist this week. US drug habits fuelling a war supplied by US armanents and money. With US tax havens for the proceeds. Do not confuse wars with societal violence! External wars are comparatively few due probably to distances, lack of population and impoverished countries. 4. I suppose placing UK troops in another country was likely to elicit a reaction in which the natives are deemed threatening - though of course a specific order to kill is never given. Possibly the lethal weapons are the clue. Iraq was not a threat. Shooting missiles at Libyan forces by UK planes does not adress a threat to the pilots. Despite their possible moral compunctions they are killing people of another country to allow other people of that country to change leaders. I am not saying in the Libyan case it is necessarily wrong - I am saying that people in a democracy are killing people to order. And if they do not do the killing are they shot? No. They are jailed and punished financially. SO they still kill people. So are we better or worse than animals if we override our apparent moral compunction for the sake of money. Perhaps the ability for self-justification is the real difference between man and animals. : )

Aha! The point I was skirting around was the notion that man was in some way morally superior to animals - in that man tries to do good. We do have a rather grave problem that those people with a religious moral compass are the same people who have been killing their kindred racial types for having the wrong religion. Let alone the wrong colour skin, or language. I am not sure we have had any non-believers making war on all who believe - ever. Possible exception being the Communist parties removing religious infrastructure as a possible challenger to power not for beliefs. So religiousness does not mean that you have a better or more active morale compass than non-believers. Of course we can talk of religious leaders taking the wrong message etc and trying to extrapolate to the modern thoughtful church as a refutation of past "errors". Unfortunately modern US politics seems to point to an enforcement of one religions viewpoint. One thing I have always thought odd is that southern countries seem to be bloodier than northern countries, is it the climate or being primarily Catholic you can get absolution? : ) Thinking abstractly has been mentioned though the problem solving exploits of animals suggest that they can think through a problem before they start experimenting. I suspect humans being omnivorous had to learn plenty of different skills and if the enlarged brain due to DNA change is right that provided the extra capacity to go beyond the strictly necessary. So in AB' scenario a reason we are superior to animals is that we can decide to kill or not to kill whereas animals are either trained or cannot help themselves. Thats kind of interesting theory we leaves me wondering about the cross-animal adopting, the animals who do kill humans but generally do not. Incidentally the "dictatorship" where someone is ordered to kill example. Is this different to a democracy? : ). However your argument is flawed in that you posit an animal trained to kill - presumably by a human, and ordered by a human to do the deed. SO unfortunately we cannot know the state of mind of an animal that you suggest. If he were left to his own devices I suggest the animal would only attack and kill what he could eat or what is a danger. There are a few oddities in the animal kingdom who do kill vicariously but they are the rarities.

Ah yes ssssssSteveS. Certainly was... and after that he had to go into hiding. I am not saying I take losing seriously but ..... : )

Thanks guys : ) Just goes to show how with some clever black propaganda you could put people off!! The later version is beautiful!!

AB - I find that argument slightly dubious. However without wishing to delve deeply into research literature it struck me that the converse of your behaviour is a very interesting one. Men killing non-threatening animals and people for sport, or obeying orders. Is thta perhaps the best example of man being superior morally.

Why would the French build a two lane road to what looks like a footbridge? And the style of bridge also suggest it is not built for any serious load. BTW if the footbridge were to one side a ford could sensibly be placed to link the roads. I love the game but when talking of realistic scenery it helps the realism if roads and bridges actually work together. However perhaps this is just a quick knocked up example : )

How about taking an FOO with your sneaky night-time commando force and he calls in the artillery on the bridge?

Getting back to animals, including the human kind. : ) Apes using Japanese thermal springs in winter is recorded as a new behaviour so they can learn new tricks without man. However we are getting to the point where semantics loom large. I don't really want to get into defining terms but morality for me is really trying to do good rather than anything else. Good in this context is actually quite simple it means making people feel happier after we have interacted : ) The interesting part is why this does not occur all the time. Why do people get ratty , mad, psychotic during interactions. However before we meander off down that interesting highway there is the rather grimmer thread of whether in fact humans just think they have free-will but all we actually have is a post-action reconciliation to make sense of what we have done. The theory going that this is a very necessary requirement if you live in a troop of animals were a pecking order is needed/exists. How do you know your place in the order of things unless it can be rationalised? You would otherwise be continually fighting other pack members. This is an interesting and growing area with some confusing answers. However as an example where a group of people are split and half are subjected to the theory there is no free-will when tested at maths with an opportunity to cheat they will cheat more than those who were not subjected to the theory. There are other tests. People subject to deterministic reasoning become less altruistic, they become more aggressive to strangers. Personality types who resist this trend tend to score high for extroversion. As determinism is a big subject it is perhaps best for the Wikipedia article to look at its ramifications. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Determinism I actually favour quite strongly linguistic determinism as an important factor. I think it shapes how one thinks ... which might imply I therefore believe in free-will. No I think it actually structures your mind to react in certain ways and actually may modify your gut reactions. SOOOOO ..... having lost the thread slightly. Formal "Morality" is a construct of society to enable large groups to co-exist. We have societies that have opposing morals such as multiple wives etc so it is not innate. Animals if anything tend to be more uniform in their behaviours. The innate morality I think is derived from empathy which we and some animals certainly have. Though some humans less than others - Aspergers. ANywya time to get some food ... and warmth.

Coastal, bigger fields, drainage ditches , marshy in areas. Higher ground smaller fields bocage edges. I looked at the village you mentioned in Google Earth and there is plenty of rise and fall in the land as you can see by the way the fields and woods flow to the contour around the river. : ) Its fascinating to look at the hundreds of photos offered and check the landscape - though not taken for military appreciation !

Sivodsi - Seems to me we run under the Nabla and then see how it compares with "facets" and then consider the results. Life out east must be interesting. My bathroom fitter has a Japanese wife so I am getting almost daily news from a Japanese viewpoint. : 0

I have a possible answer. Car Light4x2 Kfz 2 Based on a Hanomag Garant with a large rear locker for signals equipment. Known as Kleiner Fernsprechkraftwagen. It also existed on other chassis Car Light 4x4 Stoewer R200 Spezial Around 13000 built but had 4 variants including a Kfz2 Signals body. Some of this class were actually built on BMW chassis My proposal is that the author part remembered the name, or the troops just ran Stoewer and Kleiner together.

The CMBB version provided by CDV in Europe was a true nightmare being incredibly picky about running on certain drives - and you were meant to have the GD in the drive. It got so bad I bought the US version. And as for swopping disks when you had multiple CMAK and CMBB games.!!!!! SO I am really grateful that this DRM is much more forgiving.

Yeah! silk undies for the Marines! Now normally that would be unmerciful ribbing time but I suspect everyone at the sharp end would fancy a pair [ a complete pair] http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/04/14/us_marines_british_underpants/

Fetchez - I like random maps also. But I am hoping in the fullness of time a vast library of maps wfrom which can be plucked at random. So QB's on "random" maps will still be here. An dwith the benefit of human smarts to make them a little more logical. God knows what an AI generated map would look like if it had 250,000 physical points to consider!! : )

Yummy stuff.

I think Pandur has actually read the entire posting rather than seeing how it unfolded. By the end SOD and actually clarified exactly what he meant rather than a string of questions that he started with. SO to argue we were wrong in the advice we were giving when SOD has not even established his level of interest/expertise in CM is asking too much. I actually find it is very refreshing to remind ourselves how fortunate we are and how few tossers are here - and they mainly stay on the Peng threads anyway. : )

Perhaps I should have said social animals - in the UK it would probably be understood given the context. Chambers Womble I am not sure which attributes you think humans have that are different to animals ... : ) I will accept that we may dress our motivations ups in fancy language. If there are specific areas you are interested in please say. The ability to work together to solve a human made puzzle does not only apply to apes but to crows and elephants also. Studies show dogs understand unfairness and will sulk to show it. Crows count to three - roughly the same as some Amazonian tribes. There are so many instances of animals sharing some of our smarts, and all our primal desires, it would seem impossible to say we are divinely different. : )

: ) : ) ...............

Interesting. I assume that someone has to rate the scenario at the start ... but on reflection it does not need that. Can you attribute 40 to 60 as the [approximate] difficulty for the two sides and then plot a probability against that? The only fly in the ointment would seem to be what an opponent allows you to do ..? Is that not it.

Do you honestly think he has any ? Or have I just missed the irony : )

Let me say on behalf of the community that your conciseness and bonhomie will be sorely missed from here in the future.

If playing QB's I would recommend humans anyway. AI can never be as good as a human. .... to play that is. After all chess is now pretty much AI assisted but playing humans allows for compensating idiotic mistakes and strokes of genius . Much more fun.

AB - what you say are my moral compass points but I am totally without religion. A large peroportion of non-religious people would be the same as me. I think that they are innate within advanced pack animals. To ascribe them solely to religion is actually slightly offensive. To reverse it slightly I would say religions tend to use what it is innate for some social engineering/control. In primitive tribes this was actually very important as it also allowed for some disciplne as tribes grew toward cities/nations etc. However with better education and scientific discoveries it becomes increasingly obvious that religions are not unique. By that I mean almost without exception every religion believes it is right, other religions are wrong. And therefore the people who follow those other religions are deluded, lied to, stupid etc. For those of us who believe humans are advanced mammals the sight of all these churchs claiming that they are the one and only is an example of both mans need to believe, and the nasty ends they will go to prove themselves correct. Incidentally the reason why man has risen above other animals may well be to do with DNA mutations. Recent research has identified 510 lost bits of DNA - that is humans do not have it but other animals do. The DNA's looked at were the ones found to be conserved most frequently in mammals - well chimpanzees, macaques, humans , chickens, and mice. So out of all the species Humans lacked 510 of these DNA pieces and therefore the question was what was it that they controlled. AR was suppressed in mice and were revealed to control facial whiskers and penile spines. Humans therefore no longer having this gene lost both attributes. GADD45G regulator controls the growth of brain cells in the cortex. Loss of GADD45G meant that parts of the brain could grow larger than before. The next stage of the study has now commeced with mice who have the two bits of DNA missing = will thye develop as suggesested with human-lke traits?

We have four possibilities here: 1] Improve the candidates 2] Improve the party system 3] Change the way the current government works 4] Re-think what democracy means In reverse order 4] My suggestion of people chosen by lot. To provide some continuity those retiring after a term are reuired to vote for a third of their number to continue for a second/third/fourth term etc. Therefore those that are effective should become a core. We do get away from those that seek election and there can be no argument that the Congress is rigged between two Parties. 3] Change the way the Governemnent works. AFAIK every 4 years there is potential change in the Department of States and the incoming hack has an agenda. And friends and relatives etc. Should the power of elected and appointed officials be moderated. There can be no doubt that countermanding directions every 4 years cannot be efficient. The number of ways are numerous. Probably more than I can add here - but perhaps nt allowing add-ons to bills for pork purposes. Have long term policies recommended by experts discussed passed and agreed. To stop such a project requires more than 2/3 majority or wome such thing. How about the Departments propose and Congress becomes a talking shop on the merits. 2] The party system as exists in the US is very much looser than in European countries which means the Presidential candidates do not necessarily have a decent track record to be judged on. VP Palin? I am not quite sure how it can be improved other than people vote for Congess and Congess votes for the President and Vice-President. No party would then be pressured to put up a moron because they look good on TV. 1] A tricky one. If one allows anyone to sstand as being a sign of democracy then you are a trifle snookered. However it does not seem fair, given how without money there are generally only a few realistic candidates, that the electorate should see hoe thwey perform And I am not talking sound bites. : ) All candidates would be required to do comprehension, simple maths, geography, and perhaps some world history. The scores and the test then released to all the electorate so they can assess the stupidity or otherwise of the candidates. I no way am I suggesting that these should be hard. Knowing where Afghanistan, England and France are would be a minimum : ) Knowing Canada and Mexico is unimportant. Comprehension is very important so failing simple comprhension would be fairly disastrous. Ditto maths.