JerseyJohn
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Posts posted by JerseyJohn
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Nice call, I forgot all about that one. A great flick! :cool:
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That's strange. I used to manage a movie theater in the early 70s, back when the projecting machine used a stick that lit very brightly and being a projectionist was a well paying but unhealthy job -- all the ones I knew developed cancer by the time they were sixty or so. I understand that since then the whole operation has changed and now they use a very bright bulb, wonder if they still use the old fashioned reels or if the films are shown on some sort of casette? If that's the case, and it were set wrong, I can see how they'd be unable to make it right in the theater.
-- There was an incident at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials where the concentration camp film was running upside down and Goering turned it into a joke. It was straightened out and run the right way. When it ended he wasn't joking, he was wiping his forehead with a handkerchief and looking at the floor, his face pale and the other defendants looking pretty much the same way. I'm sure they all knew about the death camps but that was probably the first time any of them had a glimpse of what was going on inside of them. I'd like to think their tears were from shock, but more likely it was because the film brought home the gravity of the crimes they were being charged with, and also that they really were looking at the gallows.
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Brother Rambo, dega vous on posting the stock tips.
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The great part was that theater seemed to be all middle-aged married couples and from the middle of the movie on it became a sort of James Thurber (The War Between Men and Women) scene with all the husbands laughing and all the wives crying. When it got to Doolittle's Raid one of the guys said, "Wake me up when they're in Nam." The lights came on and all the women were teary eyed and all the husbands were looking at one another, still laughing and joking about the movie. It really was the most fun night I've ever had watching a film.Originally posted by The K Man:JerseyJohn: Thats funny about Pearl Harbor at the movies. Yeah, the wife really likes the movie (it would be #2 on her list.)
Guess I'm with the majority on A bridge too far. (Not crazy about it)
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With A Bridge Too Far, I didn't care very much for it the first time I saw the movie on cable. Later I bought the movie on DVD in a clearance bin and was surprised when I found myself really enjoying it. I think they did a great job in representing all the different nationalities of both sides. The scene where the Dutch boy is killed by a stray bullet and his father carries the corpse home really packs a wallup.
The Bridge at Remagan is a very similar movie to me but not as effective. In both movies the Germans are shown in a very sympathetic light but not overly so. The ending with the German major, very well played by Robert Vaughn, being shot by an SS firing squad because he failed to blow up the bridge, was a very good scene. There were many good scenes in the movie but somehow it doesn't quite make its way to the top ten or twenty. Only my opinion, of course, but we don't see it mentioned much in lists like this one.
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Not sure why, it's a wonderful movie! After playing a round or two of Battlefront's Market Garden scenario, I had the urge to watch it again. I seem to enjoy it more each time I watch it. </font>Originally posted by flintlock:</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr /> A Bridge Too Far
...it doesn't seem to rate very highly with other people.
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Terrific choices Brother Rambo.
-- Another I'd add is the 1945 B&W flick,
A Walk In The Sun
A very faithful adaptation of Harry Brown's short wartime novel about an infantry unit landing at Salerno and moving inland without an officer (he was killed on the Higgins Boat) to take a bridge guarded by farmhouse turned into a fortification.
A lot of really excellent acting from people like Lloyd Bridges and John Ireland, who would become famous later on, and all the equipment shown is the genuine article, including a German Mk II light tank.
Another classic made during WWII is
Sahara
with Bogart as an NCO commander of a Grant tank. I think it came out in 1943.
Above and Beyond,
About the Hiroshima bomb mission is also great.
I also like
A Bridge Too Far
About the Arnhem operation, but it doesn't seem to rate very highly with other people.
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Agree on most of them. Regarding Pearl Harbor, I'll always remember it as one of the best times I've ever had at a movie theater. Women crying all over the place, guys laughing, a couple of us getting up at different times thinking the movie was over -- but it wasn't!
And when it finally ended one of the guys nearby said, "They must have run out of film." -- But I agree about the special effects, both naval and air, though I think Tora-Tora-Tora was a much better movie.I'll add the HBO movie,
Conspiracy,
very aptly portraying the Wannsee Conference of early 1942. I particularly like the way the historical participants are presented, especially Bragnauh playing Heydrich and Tucci playing Eichmann.
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Brother Rambo,
Haven't seen the movie yet. Someone started a WWII movies thread -- hope you posted something about it there too.
Attitude toward the Japanese, I suspect you're mad about Ichero [?] hitting that inside the park homerun in the All Star Game.
This article gives some good detail on pre-Columbus globes showing the earth to be round:Originally posted by Stalin's Organist:The ancients know the world was round a coiuple of hundred years BCE - a chap called Ptolemy (what else!!) calculated the diameter by comparing the shadows at the bottom of 2 wells at a fixed point in time in the 3rd century BCE.
He got it wrong of course - by about 1/6th - initially too big, then by hte same margin too small a bit later!
His work was rediscovered in the late 1200's CE, so was known well before Colombus sailed.
< The original article with a photo of a 1492 globe replica >
Martin Behaim
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Martin Behaim (October 6, 1459 – July 29, 1507), or Behem, was a navigator and geographer of great pretensions.
Behaim was born at Nuremberg, according to one tradition, about 1436; according to Ghillany, as late as 1459 and was supposedly of Bohemian origin. He was drawn to Portugal by participation in Flanders trade, and acquired a scientific reputation at the court of John II of Portugal. As a pupil, real or supposed, of the astronomer Regiomontanus (i.e., Johann Müller of Königsberg in Franconia) he became (c. 1480) a member of a council appointed by King John for the furtherance of navigation.
His alleged introduction of the cross-staff into Portugal (an invention described by the Spanish Jew, Levi ben Gerson, in the 14th century) is a matter of controversy; his improvements in the astrolabe were perhaps limited to the introduction of handy brass instruments in place of cumbrous wooden ones; it seems likely that he helped to prepare better navigation tables than had yet been known in the Peninsula.
From 1484-1485 he claimed to have accompanied Diogo Cão in his second expedition to West Africa, really undertaken in 1485-86, reaching Cabo Negro in 15°40 S. and Cabo Ledo still farther on. It is now disputed whether Behaim's claims are true; and it is suggested that instead of sharing in this great voyage of discovery, the Nuremberger only sailed to the nearer coasts of Guinea, perhaps as far as the Bight of Benin, and possibly with José Visinho the astronomer and with João Afonso de Aveiro, in 1484-86.
Martin's later history, as traditionally recorded, was as follows: on his return from his West African exploration to Lisbon he was knighted by King John, who afterwards employed him in various capacities; but, from the time of his marriage in 1486, he usually resided at Fayal in the Azores, where his father-in-law, Jobst van Huerter, was governor of a Flemish colony.
[edit] The Erdapfel
On a visit to his native city in 1492, he constructed his famous terrestrial globe, called "the erdapfel" and still preserved at the Nuremberg National Museum, on the same floor as Albrecht Dürer's galleries. (Nuremberg was the heart of the German Renaissance.) The influence of Ptolemy is strongly apparent, but every attempt is made to incorporate the discoveries of the later Middle Ages (Marco Polo, etc.). The antiquity of this globe and the year of its execution, on the eve of the discovery of Americas, make it not just the oldest but the most historically valuable globe extant. It corresponds well with Columbus's notion of the Earth; he and Behaim drew their information from the same sources. All globes are virtual worlds, but this antique provides a glimpse inside the European world on the eve of unparalleled change. Its surface is covered with legends and paintings, and the Erdapfel or Earthapple, as Behaim named it, could be described as a turning encyclopedia. (The state-funded Digital Globe Project has made it available as software for scholars and the interested layperson.) Though less navigationally accurate than the beautiful Catalonian portolani charts of the 14th century, as a scientific work it is of enormous importance.
Its West Africa is marvellously incorrect; the Cape Verde archipelago lies hundreds of miles out of its proper place; and the Atlantic is filled with mythological islands that were psychologically important to isolated Medieval Christendom -- Antilia of the Seven Cities of the Christian Visigoth Kings would become the Antilles. Japan is 1500 miles offshore where Marco Polo had left it, putting it within tempting sailing distance of the Canaries. St. Brendan's Isle contains the entire Western Hemisphere in capsule form; the Earthapple is a map of just how unknowable the future is, and the difficulties of mapping the planet. Blunders of 16° are found in the localization of places the author claims to have visited: contemporary maps, at least in regard to continental features, seldom went wrong beyond 1°, but longitude was very difficult to ascertain before the invention of accurate clocks. It is generally agreed that Behaim had no share in transatlantic discovery though his globe suggests an easy sail to the East. Though Columbus and he were apparently in Portugal at the same time, no connection between the two has been established. He died at Lisbon in 1507. His family rescued the globe from city hall before it went the way of so many out-of-date artifacts.
[edit] References
C. G. von Murr, Diplomatische Geschichte des beruhmten Ritters Behaim (1778)
A. von Humboldt, Kritische Untersuchungen (1836)
F. W. Ghillany, Geschichte des Seefahrers Martin Behaim (1853)
O. Peschel, Geschichte der Erdkunde, 214-215, 226, 251, and Zeitalter der Entdeckungen, esp. p. 90
Breusing, Zur Geschichte der Geographie (1869)
Eugen Gelcich in the Mittheilungen of the Vienna Geographical Society, vol. xxxvi. pp. 100, etc.
E. G. Ravenstein, Martin de Bohemia, (Lisbon, 1900), Martin Behaim, His Life and His Globe (London, 1909), and "Voyages of Diogo Cao and Bartholomeu Dias", 1482-1488, in Geographical Journal, Dec. 1900;
See also
Geog. Journal, Aug. 1893, p. 175, Nov. 1901, p. 509
Jules Mees in Bull. Soc. Geog., Antwerp, 1902, pp. 182-204
A. Ferreira de Serpa in Bull. Soc. Geog., Lisbon, 1904, pp. 297-307.
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This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
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Just noticed something odd. My post above says it was put up at
-- posted July 11, 2007 10:22 PM
and
-- [ July 11, 2007, 07:27 PM: Message edited by: JerseyJohn ]
I did the edit almost three hours before writing the original post?!! :eek:
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Retributar,
That's an interesting myth that still persists to this day. The crews believed the world was flat, but Columbus knew better, and so did the earlier Portuguese explorers whose records and maps he'd studied before going to Spain.
Christopher Columbus had a copy of the 6th century journal of Irish priest Brendon The Navagation who, with a group of Irish monks, travelled far north of Scotland, then out into the Atlantic and wound up off the coast of South America and up into the Caribean, following the trade winds in a circle back to Europe. The same year Columbus set out a globe was made in Italy showing the world as being round with the island of Bimini alone where the western hemisphere would be -- it was named for Brendon!
The Portuguese, who sailed well out into the Atlantic in order to get around the Cape of Good Hope with favorable winds, knew about Brazil because they kept skirting it! And Columbus, who'd worked for the Portuguese, knew about it too.
When he set out from Spain his three caravels had triangular sails so they could tack against adverse winds. They stopped off at the Spanish colony of the Canary Islands and switched to square sails, which enabled them to go faster but they wouldn't be able to go against the wind.
Columbus already knew the southerly winds went west the came around north and east again, almost forcing ships back to Portugal, where he almost wound up, at the northern harbor of Oporto. Not that he wanted to land there because the Portuguese would have killed him for giving the Spanish their secret. Portugal wasn't able to colonize both west and east at the same time so they chose Africa but wanted South America for the future.
Columbus didn't actually discover anything, he just uncovered what the Portuguese had been hiding.
The Portugues also knew about Nova Scotia and Iceland -- there's a document from 1475 in which the Portuguese and Danes agreed to a trading company that would have operated in that area. The trading route and colony never came into being, but the map they used still survives.
The only thing Columbus and the others didn't know was what, exactly, lay where North and South American run north and south. For a long time after Columbus they thought it was a huge chain of large islands. Most people who knew about these things didn't think you could sail around the world without running out of fresh water. Aside from which, the ships of that time weren't built to stay on oceans for very long; they were better at moving along coastlines.
-- There's an interesting book about these things, don't remember the author, but it's called They All Discovered America. Personally I think it was only discovered by the Ice Age Asians and Europeans who came to the east and west coasts via land bridges and established settlements. I could never see how anyone can discover a place already populated by millions of people, guess that's all in how one interprets the word.
[ July 11, 2007, 07:27 PM: Message edited by: JerseyJohn ]
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Kuni,
That was one of the better ones -- I think Sebastian Cabot played the guardian angel, uhh -- devil. The crook says, "I'm getting tired of heaven." and the reply is, "Heaven? Oh, this isn't heaven!"
Most of the good ones had a humorous twist. I also like the ones about returning to childhood, or a simpler time, and of course it never works out. And Gig Young had a great episode called Next Stop Willoughby that I think was unforgettable.
I've seen them on sale as DVD's but not as a DVD set. I'm sure they're also available that way too and it should include a lot of extras. PBS had a very good biography of Rod Serling that I hope would be included in the package.
Liam,
Sounds like we had a good time back in 200 B. C.
Terrific post. The Romans were well known for their battlefield medics -- those surgeons had plenty of practice, of course.
There was a show about one of them on the History Channel. In addition to legionaires he also tended to wounded gladiators and became renowned for his skill.
In more modern times I think the Austrians were the first to have an organized military medical system that was started around the 18th century.
But most countries didn't pay much attention to the welfare of their soldiers, it was all hit and miss as late as the Crimean War and American Civil War.
The wealthy and royalty, of course, bought commissions (Wellington started off as a major) for their sons, or organized a regiment to command. There was a lot of that in the U. S. Civil War.
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Brother Rambo,
Yes, the cockroaches and rats are always included as surviving and, with the environment slightly altered, various creatures start getting larger. In the human case and most other mammals we branched off into disproportionally larger brains. But that might have been a mistake, perhaps the dinosaurs, with very small brains in proportion to their body size, might have had the right idea. I mean, they lasted something like 170 million years, which is a bit longer than we've been around.
Terrific slogans! :cool:
-- I think Jack Klugman was in a dozen or so Twilight Zone episodes. Two of them are among my favorites, the one where he's a trumpet player getting another chance, and the other one where he's a small time rackets man who gives his own life so his son, Billy Mumy, wounded in Vietnam, can live. I remember seeing that episode at a time when Vietnam wasn't even a big issue, I think JFK was just becoming president at the time! Shatner was in everyone's favorite, with the gremlin tearing up the wing of an airplane. Also love the one with Pat Pringle where he wants to go back to his own childhood and, when he gets the chance it turns out to be different from what he expected. A lot of other great episodes, mainly great stuff with the inevitable few scattered duds. :cool:
-- The episode with Andy Divine as a classic blowhard being taken by space aliens who take him at his word and think he's the greatest man on earth is also a really great one. My own favorite.
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Brother Rambo, As you've noticed my views are swinging ever more toward your own. Maybe the dinosaurs will get another chance after we cancel ourselves out.
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Baron,
Hope it all gets straightened out but I agree with you, the government is so screwed up now, and has been for a long time, that it's anybody's guess.
America was very good to it's World War Two veterans, made it's Korean War vets return home through the back door. Allowed a bunch of asshole hippies to piss all over its Vietnam vets with a lot of other people who should have known better joining in. And from what I've seen it's been going downhill ever since.
I was injured in 1970 during my brief Air Force stint. It was bad even back then. The hospital administrator gave me forms to fill out for benefits but I heard so many red tape horror stories that I waived all of that and just took the honorable discharge. For a long time I regretted doing it that way, especially seven or eight years later when accident related problems started developing. In my own case the VA hospitals were very good, saved both my right leg and probably my life. That was in 77, friends have told me that the VA has also been going steadily downhill.
We have a country now that doesn't care about it's own people and treats its veterans with indifference -- or worse.
A pretty pathetic situation. But, again, I hope the mess clears up for you as soon as possible, no one should have to go through that nonsense. It's like being punished because you served your country.
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I didn't say, or mean, that you should advertise your problems. What I'm saying is that often the only way to fight the government, and win, is to start an investigation. In doing so you wouldn't only be serving yourself, but also others who are being screwed by the government.Originally posted by targul:...
As to advertising my problems I would never do that. We do what we must to care for our families. I made these boys and love them dearly so money really isnt important when it comes to them. ...
I know all about the reluctance to get into that, been there, done it three times over and was quietly screwed three times over. Doing something like that goes against my grain too, as it does with probably 99% of the population, which is what the bureaucrats count on. The other 1% who actually speak up and go to different organizations for representation are the ones who actually get what they're entitled to while the rest of us get screwed over and over again.
Blashy,
Glad you like that title editing.
-- I wanted to do it earlier so I could spell Armistice correctly, then the thread started meandering around so I figured it would best to update things.
Hopefully there's enough room in that space (going to a second row) for another two or three digressions.
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Bravo Brother Rambo!
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Terrific footage, Kuni, and a fine score. Thanks for sharing it.
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I worked in a pharmacy for a few years in the late 90s. Up till then my attitude was pretty much like Brother Rambo's in that I thought most depression was self-induced. I sympathized with people but deep down felt people who got abnormally depressed were just wallowing in self-pity.
Not true. Most of the Rx's I handed out were for depression cases, or for people with other problems and depression was in there too. Some of the people getting them were young kids.
While I was working there a few of those people committed suicide. One guy kept going through his Rx the day he'd get it and once he came in and wanted to fight me across the counter (I ran a cash register, wasn't a pharmacist). He got out of control and ran around, which was insane because he was half my size and none too strong. We finally calmed him down -- of course I wasn't about to have a fist fight with him anyway -- and he apologized. The pharmacist had to make a quick fix for him and she called his doctor for authorization. After that he was so doped up that he was never again a problem.
Clinical Depression has nothing to do with self-pity or whether the person has a job or a good career or is happy or sad. It's just something a person gets, as Liam and Blashy were saying, and last I heard they don't even know the cause or have a cure.
I do agree with Brother Rambo that Americans are way too pill oriented and a lot of people do try and find happiness in a pill. Doesn't happen, of course, if they do find something like happiness it's only temporary and the downside is usually very bad. Others try finding it in a bottle or illegal narcotics. My choice has always been the bottle, but I've been fortunate in that it never ruled me. I love the stuff but have gone years without a drink, which is pure luck, if my genes were a little different I'd have been a real alcoholic.
When it comes to things like drug addiction, alcoholism and manic depression there's no point feeling smug if you're not in that wretched number. As was said earlier, different people react different ways to the same thing. You're either stuck with those genes, or you aren't, it has nothing to do with choosing a path.
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Brother Rambo,
Appreciated and likewise. I wish the two of us and Desert Dave have the chance to play on the same team in some league where the players get to be twenty again. I'm sure we'll have a great time. :cool:
-- Out here there's neither a chess club nor an adult male softball league. I may actually have died and wound up in hell.
As you know I'm not big on religion, but even I have to admit all the gloom and doom prophesies do seem to be well on the way to being fulfilled. :eek:
It would be a shame for the human race to join the dinosaurs now, at the very time when we're finally poised to set off and do something meaningful. Despite all we're saying I remain hopeful that some day, hopefully in the not too far off future, all of humanity will join hands and start working productively for the betterment of the human race.
targul ,
What a nightmare! My heart's out to you, brother. I'm not the praying type but if wishing that everything straightens out for a person counts for anything, you've got my sincere best wishes, and condolances for your son's death.
Over the years I've heard about and have actually seen people with hideously bad situations that have been treated in a very similar way to yourself. The United States government, and the vast majority of state and local governments, openly function on an adversarial system. And the adversary is seen as the American citizens.
Your case is so bad that I honestly believe you can get coverage from something like 60 Minutes or NBC Dateline. I don't mean for the publicity but to see if they can get something done for you and your family. Also, most local stations have a segment of the nightly news where they try to help people. I can't imagine any of them not covering what's been happening with your family. It's a real travesty, and that's putting it mildly.
My last memory of the U. S. Air Force was borrowing some money to get home when I discharged, getting home and getting a job right away and mailing the money back to my buddies with my first paycheck. A few months going by and, one fine day, a check from the government arriving -- my travel pay. :confused:
Really hoping all works out for you without your having to go back to work. You definitely don't want to work in a store; neither do I at 58, tried it a few years back and hope now that I'll never again need to go that route.
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SeaMonkey,
Appreciated, and I'd definitely trust my own future to your ability to not squander it through personal greed. It seems to take a special kind of person, not particularly rare but still of a specific type, who feels the need to have it all even if means having everyone else living in poverty. I know we aren't among them.
Desert Dave,
Many thanks, and I've been enjoying your posts as well, and I read all of them.
I neglected to mention, but I'm sure you realize, that nation of squaters living around the UN is all the more surrealistic because that whole part of Manhattan is dripping with wealth. Men in business suites step over them without noticing on their way to high priced restaurants, at least that's the way it was when I was there, if it's different now it's just because the Police have relocated the box people to some other part of town.
Baseball -- they still play that game?
I was glad they had a news splash about Bobby Bonds being very good with an intoxicated fan who jumped the fence to go talk with him. He told the man something like, "We'll walk to the gate together because if you do it alone the police will jump on you and stick handcuffs on you and lead you off like a criminal." Really great to see the guy portrayed in a positive light; making it better was the fan being white so the race issue didn't enter into it.
Glad he broke the record, liked Hammerin Hank Arron a lot, but I think Bonds over the course of his career has earned the record -- as did Arron thirty years ago.
Game unrecognizable? For sure. More than any other game baseball is built on statistics, so I think the records should be kept by era now, something like:
1860 - 1899 Standardized Rules Develop
1900 - 1919 Deadball
1920 - 1946 The All American Game
1947 - 1968 Finally Integrated, Then Expanded
1969 - 1995 Divisions and Playoffs
1996 - .... Steroids and Plentiful Homers.
I was glad to see Pete Rose telling a sportscaster some thing like, "I played with and against some of the greatest players ever, some of the best power hitters to play the game, and even the strongest of those guys almost never hit an opposite field homerun. Now I see guys half their size doing it all the time."
*He laughed here.*
"Something in the game is real different from what it used to be."
*Another laugh*
"And these guys hitting 50, 60 homeruns all the time!"
*He shook his head and waved it off.*
The past ten years or so about the only baseball games I've watched was with my wife at the park, Little Leaguers. But even that's been ruined lately by an overabundance of dads acting like their sons are being groomed for the big-big-bucks. Along with that I notice it's summer and we don't see kids just playing on their own, no more sandlot games, they'll only pick up a bat and glove if pop is around and it's a league game. Really pitiful, they'll know the joys of using half a field, running the bases backwards and the team at bat supplying the pitcher. In other words, whatever this activity is these days, the word game seems to no longer fit.
JJ_R
I was fifteen in 1964 and really don't recall that happening. What I do recall is plentiful jobs that paid well and the whole country manufacturing. The United States has never been a country of lazy idle bastards. For every person who cheats on benefits there are twenty who are entitled to them and either denied by the bureaucrats, or too humiliated to push for what they should be getting.
-- There's an old newsreel from the height of the Depression in which a pair of white haired old men, Henry Ford and Thomas Edison tell the camera that if all the lazy bastards got off their butts and went out and worked everything would be fine. They nodded their heads knowingly. What they didn't mention was that there weren't any jobs to be had so what were those millions of lazy bastards -- the same ones who'd built the damn country in the first place -- supposed to be working at?
Social services in the United States today is a joke. It's a game. The government does it best to keep people from getting them and the ones who know how to play the game get whatever they want out of the system while the ones who really need it get turned away, by the scores.
I think the whole government, Federal-State-and Local, all over the country, is suffering from some sort of dimentia. Forget For the People and By the People. It's been so long since any government official in this country has thought about the people except at election time that the whole concept has become meaningless.
Time for all the nieces and nephews to lift Uncle Sam off the ground by his heels and shake him up and down a bit till he comes to his senses. -- wondering if I'll go on some government enemy list for writing that!
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Know the feeling, SeaMonkey.
I don't know what the answers are, don't know what form of government serves all of it's people without also being stifling and restrictive.
It would be great if human nature were inclined for each human to look out for all of humankind, but it's never seemed to work that way.
A few years back Kuniworth wrote an interesting piece at a defunct website regarding social democracy. When I told people I knew some of the ideas they said it was the sort of thing that would work in a place like Sweden but wouldn't work in the United States. Maybe so, but I'm not convinced.
In any case I think in the next decade or so a lot of sweeping changes in the United States will have to be made. Can't see how a country can have 12-20 million people living illegally in it and something 45 million of its registered citizens having no health care at all. Unemployment figures are a joke because anyone who's fallen out of the system isn't counted, add them in and the unemployment % will suddenly be three or four times higher.
-- All that reading earlier about the I. R. S. reminded me of the 1974 when I took a seasonal job as a tax examiner. The Internal Revenue, from what I saw, was a nice organization to work in but I never felt comfortable dealing with other people's financial records and was glad when they laid us all off and didn't go back the following year. My supervisor stormed up to me one night with a file in her hand that I'd passed through despite it having some suspicious deductions. She waved it in front of me, "Who do you think you are, Robin Hood? You see something like this circle the cheat items in red and send it to my desk." :eek:
It would be great to have the tempations of great wealth; I'd like to see if I give in to blind greed.
-- Saw an interesting documentary on the Czars with a section that goes directly into all of this. Czar Alexander III, probably the wealthiest man on earth with several palaces containing hundreds of rooms each, lived with his family in Spartan conditions, small and not very comfortable basement rooms because they could be easily protected there. His father was about to enact sweeping reforms when he was assassinated and the son immediately went as far as possible in the opposite direction. I wonder if he ever made the connection that his incredible wealth made him a very poor man.
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I think being rewarded for achievement is essential; pure communism/socialism doesn't seem to work very well. But I don't think pure capitalism works well either.
Wealth, within reason, doesn't bother me. But I think tremendous wealth is very bad, the next step is always for the very wealthy to also become the very powerful.
There has to be a balance. Does anyone really need to be a billionaire?
When I lived in Manhattan I used to walk past the United Nations every day on my way to and from work (it was a hike from the East 70s down to Canal Street but I like walking). One thing that never showed up in photos of the place was the dozens or people in cardboard boxes right across the street from that shiny glass and steel building. And wealth all around the wretches living inside them.
I remember reading that Venice, back in the city state days, had no poverty and no beggars because the ruling council and citizenry felt it was impossible to allow the wealthiest city in Europe to allow such things to exist. The United States seems to have chosen a different path, that the super wealthy should be allowed to grab every cent in sight without looking back. Historically that's never worked; we should know better, but apparently we don't.
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I'm sure your post is going to get stoned, DD, but I think it's great.
All we need to do is look at our neighbor to the south, with it's abundance of extremely rich -- no one knows how many billionaires.
Their national product?
Poverty.
Their chief export?
The destitute. -- two or three million a year, every year, no one bothers to keep track.
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Terrific post.Originally posted by Hyazinth von Strachwitz:Concerning Mr. Hitler and chemical weapons:
It is true that he was severly hurt by chemical weapons in WW1.. some people even say that he lost his mental health during that period. He was blind and in hospital for months. I think this is just a partial explanation.. in WW1 both sides noticed that chemical warfare hurts Attacker and Defender as well.. and the conquered land is toxicated and useless for german colonists.
Concerning Dünkirchen:
There are two main reason why the Wehrmacht didn´t finish off the british Forces:
(1)
Fat Goering promised Hitler he`ll wipe out the whole expeditionary force with the Luftwaffe, but that didn`t work out.
(2)
The Panzer divisions where exhausted and running out of fuel. One of them (equipped with Tank II and 38t) ran into a unit of Mathildas and was severly hurt, so Hitler stopped the attack.
Sepp Dietrich, one old comrade from Hitler (took part in the 1923 coup) and Commander of a Waffen-SS Divison didn`t care about Hitler orders and attacked on one part of the beach head and made good progress.. he claimed afterwards that wiping out the beachhead would have been easy..
Does anyone remember the Panzergeneral Scenario Dunkirchen? It was like kicking ducklings in a pond....
A lot of German panzer officers who could have struck north and seized Dunkirt initially, said the stop order was wrong because the entire coast was virtually undefended. It also turns out that Rundstedt's infantry would have reached those ports, solidifying the positions, before the BEF could have retreated into them.
Additionally, some of the same generals who said the tanks were good for the push on Dunkirt had earlier been very cautious in their advice, von Kleist more than most, so it's understandable that Hitler was being cautious at this point.
Regarding Goering's claim, that too is reasonable because the RAF hadn't really shown itself in Belgium or Holland and the Luftwaffe had no reason to suspect it's true effectiveness. Goering's reasoning was that his bombers would sink whatever ships came in for the evacuation, weakening the Royal Navy while keeping the B. E. F. caught in a trap. Inevitably the evacuation would have been called off and the B. E. F., along with the French troops also caught in the pocket, would have been forced to surrender.
-- What Goering didn't take into consideration was the advance had taken place so quickly that the Luftwaffed was unable to catch up with the ground troops. It was still operating out of bases in Germany so, at the English Channel, the R. A. F. was much closer to the action than the Luftwaffe. That proved to be the decisive factor.
Also, bombs dropped on the beaches were wasted as the sand negated their effect. The entire effort should have been against the ships, but no one seems to have issued that order, it was all done as targets of opportunity, which was a poor choice.
Ironically most of the dog fights took place east of Dunkirk and both the British troops and sailors felt betrayed by their own airmen as the only aircraft they saw were German.
Brother Rambo,
Regarding the moral distinction of different killing methods, Hitler had some odd guidelines. He ranted about how, when Leningrad was finally taken, he would have the place leveled and all of it's people enslaved. But the Germans had little chance of taking it because too many troops had been diverted to other parts of the line. The Finns came up with a plan to empty Lake Ladoga into the city, probably making it uninhabitable, Hitler went against the operation. It's hard to see him doing that on humitarian grounds. Probably, despite his diatribes, he wanted the city captured and everything inside functional.
Victory, Defeat, Armistice, Taxes, Depression
in Strategic Command 2 Blitzkrieg and Weapons and Warfare
Posted
Ja, ja!