gunnergoz

Hmm...sounds vaguely familiar.

Yep. The old camo manuals recommended countershading in white or light gray to ease the problem. Thus you'd see the underside of the fenders, bumpers and gun barrels painted in white or some other light color. Only worked until the first time they hit dust or mud, of course. Funny how, in the end, daubing on local mud and foliage worked as well as any fancy paint scheme for the most part. And "soon" we'll all have invisibility cloaks, right? Happy day on the freeway when that happens...

Few too many shrimp on the barbey, eh mate?

What I perhaps am not being clear enough about is that I would like people to self-censor out of consideration for others. I am not saying that society or government censor everything - though there are a few things that should be and are (child porn sites, snuff films, just to name a few.) I'm an idealist, clearly, but I've been that way all my life and am not about to change now. I would never lend my name or assistance to a project that espoused gratuitous violence without social value. I would never willingly profit from any such thing. And its not that I couldn't use the dough. But I have values and they don't include promoting violence. I will admit to never playing GTA...but you guys have written enough about that game, or other games that include torture and execution, for me to have a sense of what the games allow. And I think that if these games contain that sort of freedom for the players, they go too far. I think individuals have the responsibility to think about the greater impact their works will have upon society. Money and profit already drive way too much of what people do in the world. What passes for entertainment is to me often just exploitation of our baser selves. And while there is certainly a segment of the population that can tolerate and be analytical about experiencing such products, there are also parts of the population that will be impacted very negatively by these products too. All I can do is hope that, over time, people are educated and mature to the point that they lose interest in such products and the market for them diminishes. If there would be no profit, there would be no temptation to create them. Unfortunately, one of the many negative by-products of modern culture is the widespread acceptance of gratuitous violence as normal and "entertaining." In that sense, the species is making little progress towards elevating itself above the base and self-destructive.

From the English Russia site, some nice photos of Red Army equipment on parade preparation drills in Moscow. Enjoy! http://englishrussia.com/?p=2668#more-2668

I've seen many of those movies and of the books read only Gulliver and Jaws. I have no idea about Angela's Ashes, Brokeback Mountain, Oranges are the Only Fruit, Harry Potter and Silence of the lamb since I've not seen/read them. I have heard of many of them and don't particularly know of them as being in the category of what I am describing. I have a bone to pick with GTA and games or films that show violence or torture for shock value, without a real plot or story that is worth furthering but simply to expose the audience/player to the opportunity to experience gratuitous violence. That is my point. Adults can see and enjoy many things that have a lesson to teach, a moral to express or a worthwhile story to tell. The objection I have is in respect to those games or films in particular that have nothing to say except that crime is worthwhile, killing is fun, one can get away with impunity with crime and sadism, etc, etc. I would exclude many books from this entirely, since the sort of people most warped by junk don't read, they watch TV or films or play games. Books are not the issue and I'm not espousing book burning or literary censorship. If someone wants to make a game or film about torturing people, raping people or hurting children, does the fact that there is a (albeit twisted) petential audience for it, who "would be entertained by it", justify making it? What is the responsibility of a game/film maker to the public? Is their obligation only to their own need to make a profit? At what point is entertainment the holy grail? If the entertainment comes at the cost of worthwhile social values, then it should give the makers pause for thought.

So those who believe in "self reliance" and the primacy of the individual, enjoy playing a game where they can blow away other people...what a surprise. And no, I see no redeeming social value in games that promote gratuitous violence. These games don't even have a pretense about representing war...only crime. Where's the benefit to that? On the other hand, if the games allowed the player to kill an innocent person(s), be captured, tried and executed, after which their copy of the game would no longer function, then that would perhaps have some educational value. And I would argue that books, games and films that represent only gore and gratuitous, mindless violence, have no real social value. It's a shame that they are done at all, but there is no stopping those individuals who place their own benefit above that of society at large.

Its all about responsibility. The makers of violent tripe, be it on the internet or the media, release it and absolve themselves of any responsibility for how it impacts other people. All the makers are interested in is making money. People have to look out for themselves, in this philosophy. Other people see things differently, figuring that we all have a mutual responsibility to one another to not make life more difficult than it already is. This philosophy concedes that there are persons who are ill and impressionable out in the real world and that certain experiences can impact such persons and encourage them to attempt to act out what they have witnessed. So under this latter philosophy, people oppose the making of gratuitously violent products arguing that such products have no redeeming social value other than profit for the individuals making them. This dualism conforms to the two primary camps that humans invariably find themselves aligning with - the "rugged individualists" who place their own needs above all others and who think each man should survive upon his own merits, and the "altruists" who believe that a spirit of community and acting for the common good are what are most important to our survival as a civilized species.

Boy, talk about "for want of a nail..." Sometimes history does turn on such seemingly trivial facts. One bomb on that drop hammer in Sheffield and perhaps the Battle of Britain might have ended differently.

What bothers me is that I have to subscribe to all sorts of cable TV crap to get the few documentary and news channels that I do watch a few times a week - not to mention that I also have Dish Network to get the 4 or 5 Ukrainian and Russian channels for my wife and mother in law to watch - a ton of money for what? 95% I don't watch at all. On the other hand, when I visit friends and family in Ukraine, they have satellite there that brings in (at last count) over 1,000 channels from all over the world. Sure, some is porn, some pay per view and some subscription, but probably over half is free. And it's interesting. So why can't I do that here? But nooooo...I have to be force fed the same crap that the mindless bots down the block want; American Idol or some "reality" fantastic bilge. US media sucks, mostly. Feh.

STD's probably have a way of slowing you down a bit, I would think. (Spy Transmitted Diseases: think DU, thalium and dioxin...)

Many in the colonies mistakenly equate a British accent with a superior being, worthy of adulation. Or, as was mentioned, it could just be the botox... Did I ever mention that I don't watch commercial TV? What I know of it I learn in forums like this, or other mentions in the web. I'm afraid that if I watch it, my brain will rot at an advanced rate...So I really don't know.

Never played it or heard about it. Care to elaborate? As I said earlier, I mostly avoid games that invite you to direct violence, at least these days. I tried a few when I was younger but didn't acquire a taste for them. Or the real thing, for that matter.

The point is, she seized her moment and ran with it. What happens later is almost irrelevant. But I do hope that she can keep it together, not compromise who she is and reap the rewards of her life's work. Is that too much to hope for?

Sharon Boyle is definitely the hero of the moment in my house and consequently also in Ukraine where our relatives and friends greeted the re-post we sent them, with much applause and happiness. Everyone loves an underdog, most especially the other underdogs. I just hope the lady can keep her character and values through the coming months, which will surely have enough weirdness to try a saint.

Yep. Pretty amazing. Makes you wanna go out and kill something...like a media exec. Present company excepted, of course.

It certainly is big. Recall that it has two interconnected pressure hulls, side by side, with a smaller third pressure hull on top and between the two, for the conning tower - not too small, mind you. I don't know if you noticed the one photo showed its tiled compact swimming pool?

I would attribute any decrease in violent crime from '93 on to the increasingly longer sentences for many crimes, and the greater number of people being incarcerated in the many new prisons built all over the country. For many years I was part of the machinery of government that front-loaded these jails and prisons and I know they did make the streets safer - for a while. Now, all those prison graduates have given birth to offspring who will be our next headaches, since we failed to provide sufficient remedial services to the families that keep breeding criminals, and so they continue to do what they do so well. Oh well...better luck next time.

Well, you did find a couple of points we agree on: first, that U.S. society has done a progressively worse job of helping individuals with mental health issues. I fault the conservative crowd that love to crow that "its each man to himself" and "survival of the fittest" as they gleefully cut spending for mental health programs. Second, I concur that the state of gun control in the US is lamentable and it is largely so because of the effective propagandization of the subject by the NRA and gun manufacturers, who jointly and skillfully manipulated the wrath and ire of people who would rather own a gun that live in a safer society, and converted this into a significant political interest group. Now, I have to admit - if I could own a tank or a working machine gun, I'd love to...but I'd also happily give up the right to do so if it would make the streets safer. Same for gun ownership. I'm one of those people that believe that the 2nd Amendment guaranteed the right of citizens to belong to a well regulated militia, and in the pursuit of that organization, they would be permitted to keep arms at home. The idea being that a well-regulated militia would tend to counter the tendency of a central national government to use its national army to suppress the population. That's it - no guarantee to your own AK-47 or MG-42, not even a guarantee of an M-1 or .45....unless you happen to belong to that well-regulated militia. I think the Founding Fathers had the Swiss national defense system in mind, but we have taken the idea and made a suicidal/homicidal circus out of it...and of course our politicians made sure to appoint judges that would support the NRA/gun manufacturer lobby's view of this topic.

I can agree with that, but I would argue that, to some degree, and with certain personality types and situations, graphic violence in media and games sets up conditions which encourage a portion of the population to more readily resort to violent behavior to resolve personal problems.

Not a full blown elaboration, just that it seems to me that such arguments (denying the influence of gratuitously violent games and films upon certain individuals) mostly consist of repeatedly saying "it ain't so" over and over again. Of course, we cannot crawl into the skulls of people who kill (often they are dead afterwards) but even when they are still around to comment about their behavior and its causes, it is clear that they are different. And I would offer that such people react differently from normal people, when exposed to repeated scenes of violence or murder in games or the media (both of which obviously require the consent of the watcher or participant, if for nothing else but to stay tuned in to the show/game.) As for me, I would gladly give up watching ultraviolent movies, if the makers of such films stopped making them in the hopes of reducing violence in society. I see it as a worthy experiment which could only benefit all of us, but especially those most vulnerable to such stimulation, and to their potential victims down the road. I don't play such games, but I'd be equally happy to see their demise as well.

Don't know when it was laid up, but I know that a properly mothballed warship need not look like that. In the 1970's I was given a tour of the USS Bunker Hill, a WW2 Essex-class carrier taken out of mothballs prior to scrapping so the antenna array for the CVN Nimitz could be tested out on her. She was barely opened up when I came aboard. The desiccants, cocooning and air conditioning had kept her in beautiful internal condition. Plans of the Day dated 1945 were still on various work surfaces, paper still crisp and workable. Exposed metal surfaces were free of corrosion. Even gun sights were clear and free of fogging. If I were an admiral responsible for the laying up of an extremely costly and dangerous national asset like these SSBN's, I'd for sure have made certain that they would have been maintained in top-notch condition and ready to go to sea again with darn little preparation. However, Russians (and their military) are justly famous and even proud of their "If it isn't my problem, it's your problem" ethos.)

I thought many of you would enjoy this opportunity to look around the inside of one of the old SU's Typhoon-class SSBN's. The amount of corrosion present is frightening, but then it appears that they know nothing of the art of mothballing vessels over there...or they do, but no one cares to manage the process, or to at least maintain them in inactive status; one has to presume they've been written off. link: http://englishrussia.com/?p=2525#more-2525

The arguments against the influence of gratuitously violent games (I call them killer porn) reminds me very much of the arguments taken against global warming theory.

Columbine comes to mind. There was influence, but extent of which is unclear; still, there is no question that both shooters played DOOM a lot. They were also apparently influenced by film (The Basketball Diaries, where a trench-coated shooter goes around killing students in a high school) and who knows what else from the media. link: http://wiki.media-culture.org.au/index.php/Video_games_-_Columbine_and_violent_video_games