costard
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Posts posted by costard
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I've seen references to C4 having the texture and smell of marzipan (almond meal and sugar) - is this correct?
As far as I know, eating something that smells of almonds is pretty brave: there's a high probability that there's cyanide in there somewhere.
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Second the thanks to DT for posting the article.
I think the challenge is going to be forging a compromise given the differing hopes of the parties involved: the government wants to keep as many people gainfully employed as possible (keep its taxation income and its citizens relatively happy), the company owners want to keep making money and haven't shown that they give a toss for their employees.
The banks aren't interested in lending money - most of them are in the unfortunate position of having borrowed at high interest rates to cover bad investments and are now needing to service that debt - and not at all to an industry which has deliberately refused to make long term decisions beyond "the government won't let us fail - we're too big". Not surprisingly, the banks aren't prepared to throw money away - why should the taxpayer? BD6 and the NYT are spot on here - the sad bit is that the pain isn't going to be shared out in any sort of democratic fashion; it'll be parcelled out in the biggest lumps to the small guy.
That seems to be the sticking point, the point at which management and the board offer the illusion of a rescue ("If you give us x billion dollars, you won't have to go through this pain.."). The reality is that they cannot be trusted and don't really expect anyone to - they're just playing the game in the hope of scoring another few million each out of the suckers.
The banks have been given enough rope to hang themselves (I don't believe they understand this fact: they still haven't gone through any major cleanout of senior management and are unlikely to whilst their majority shareholders are corporations. i.e. until we see a large number of bankruptcies of some very large corporations, there will be no incentive for change: it is business as usual and the devil take the hindmost). It is unlikely and unnecessary to give the manufacturers the same consideration: they're already history.
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It cuts both ways - having abused any trust they might have used to maintain their reputation, they now find themselves with in a position where nobody is prepared to credit them with an altruistic position. "hard nosed" business practices have earned them lots of money, now they'll have to spend it to gain the opportunity to make more.
The banks are in a similar position - they won't lend to each other because they don't trust each other: because trusting someone has become the definition of a fool in business.
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Just a thought (I'm not particularly good at 'puter stuff) - does your DVD drive read CD's?
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howardb
I find it nigh on impossible to dictate the terms of any discussion or debate - the moment I do, it ceases to be such and becomes a monologue.
I have a preference for reading a single sentence that highlights the absurdity or demonstrable falsehood of a proposition or viewpoint; I don't regard the need to reference every statement or fact as intellectually sophisticated, rather, it is condescending and ignorant of the fact that we all inhabit the same universe and experience pretty much the same things therein: attribution of cause to effect differs with the understanding and intellectual capability, the mechanisms for perception are necessarily extremely similar.
On the subject of bullying - I agree with you that it is a reprehensible behaviour, one that ought not be tolerated. However, I do regard a robust exchange of ideas and experiences as necessarily containing some element of emotion, and the conflict arising from these leads to change and even resolution. Also, teasing, snideness, sarcasm, schadenfreud(sp?) - all these are mechanisms by which we manage to express the limitations of our and others' understanding. To pretend otherwise is to exclude yourself from the everyday intercourse of minds.
John K is a prolific contributor to these boards and does come in for a fair bit of flak from his habit of posting articles that are not mainstream: I don't believe he takes the shooting down of these personally (feel free to contradict me here John) - it isn't his head he's putting up above the butts. It is quite possible that he derives pleasure from the failure of someone to meet him in anything other than an emotional argument but I haven't seen one of these for a while. It is also possible that he is indeed a seeker of truth and regards the continuing contributors to these boards as some sort of exploitable resource for the analysis and proofing of the arguments he proposes. Good luck to him - "for what it is worth" is precisely what he, and everyone else here, gets.
Good to see you back in the game.
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I find it somewhat amusing that we're prepared (and expected) to debate the existence of an historically important human, but the idea of proposing the same of a "spirit", "ghost" or "god" is anathema, seen as unjustly condemning a populace's belief system. And far, far more likely to result in unwelcome outcomes for the participants.
The original article seems to be nothing more than a statement of the bleeding obvious - that the record is unlikely to truly portray the reality. At the fundament, this is a statement about the inability of a language, any language, to accurately model the universe.
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is there any "lessons learned" primary document for the post Boer years, that produce the "Old Contemptibles" of the BEF in 1914 ? (Is the practice of *rapid* aimed volley fire at long range [e.g. five rounds rapid fire by whole units at 600 yards on single targets] a British specialty to increase range of engagement vs. Boer-style sharpshooting at extreme long range ?) Small arms manuals, tactical manuals ?
Russo-turkish war of 1877 might also be relevant to all this.
I've read about the rapid volley fire being used against entrenched machine guns (Sassoon and Graves in separate books) - I think the idea there was that the MG could only reply to part of the attacking group, if at all.
JasonC - yet another fine piece of writing, thanks. Makes for a pleasant Sunday morning read.
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The above comments notwithstanding -
six or seven years ago I watched a Mr Smith lie down at 600m and put three bullets from his 7.62mm bolt action rifle through the ten ring on a "F" class target. He was well into his sixties then, wearing glasses and shooting over open sights.
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Adam
I don't know about Mausers, but the projectile from a Lee Enfield .303 is tumbling at 900 yards, often requiring two patches to cover the hole on a range target. No doubt superior ballistics for the projectile are achievable, but in 1899? With the optics available? - not likely to be an aimed shot. As far as I know the projectile back then had a square back end (the modern one has a "boat" shape). Kipling wrote about soldiers on the North-West frontier sniping at 700 yards with the Lee Metford (in "Debts and Credits" I think) but he was a reporter writing for the British press at the time. Come to think of it, he was doing the same job in the Boer War. I wonder....
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Why do the French hold such strong belief in the offense, pre-1914 and indeed (I think ?) into 1915 ? Cultural reasons, I suppose (neo-Bonapartism ?); is it belief that the Mle 1893 75mm field gun will help them blast through rifle held defenses ? (If so, why does that not happen ?) I also remember reading something by M. van Creveld--(perhaps in Transformation of War ?) arguing that there was some logic to the cult of the offence (namely that rapid infantry assault in the face of aimed rifle fire and even Maxim fire had succeeded during the Russo-Japanese war, and had been observed to do so by Western observers).
Possibly it is to do with holding the initiative - by attacking you attempt to dictate the course of the action. It could also be to do with the idea that if you promulgate the idea that defense is the best option, you'll never attack anyone: a fine culture for a defense force, not so useful to a nation intent on gaining territory and resources. And at a tactical level, you remove half your options. The French suffered for the adoption of the defensive doctrine in 1940 when they sat in the Maginot Line and the Germans went through, over and around them.
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Yup, fastest sheep in the world. At least we haven't given them the right to initiate divorce proceedings, like the Kiwis have.
Where are you all week, cyberspace or Oz?
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Use a hammer for best results.
Your wife has impeccable taste, yours is in your bum. What's she doing married to you?
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Congratulations! Mine isn't crawling yet - his parents are pushovers and he reckons rolling is just as good anyhow.
I reckon you're right about budget directions in the near future.
Mostly my personal feelings regarding the US foreign policy directions over the last few years have been about the idea that there are so many things the US is rightly admired for around the world: why, oh why did it go THIS way? And the only answer I can come up with that makes sense is that the human race is incapable of learning from it's history, it's members incapable of behaving rationally. Still, as I neither understand [my] history perfectly, nor do I behave rationally at all times, it is a little hypocritical of me to judge. Fun but - throwing rotten tomatoes from the back of the crowd.
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Hey BD6, how's it hanging?
"4. Russian military chauvenism assumes most Caucausian nations cannot or will not fight, and when they do fight the Russians inherently are more competent. In fact, this actually turned out to be mostly the case for the Georgians; but there were exceptions, particularly the Georgian air defence and to a lesser extent artillery. The standard Russian explaination for any military comptetence on the part of Caucausians is, they hired "mercenaries" from nationalities the Russians consider better fighters than Caucasians: particularly Balts and Ukrainians. This plays well to Russian racism (the assumption only fair-skinned, mostly blond ethnicities fight well) and Russian hegemonism (the thinking is that Russia's western neighbors the Balts and the Ukrainians are inherently antagonistic towards Russia and so should for Russia's safety be dominated by Russia.)"
I find this difficult to believe - I can understand that the Russians were absolutely delighted that Georgia gave a conventional war for the Russian military to come along to and show off it's stomping ability (hell, the Yanks would be a much happier crew if someone gave them the same opportunity (e.g. GW1)). But the recent history of the Russian military is one of long, hard wars fought against guerillas supported by the local populace - in the Caucasus and regions thereabouts. Whilst I have no doubt that the Russians are at least as good as anyone else at believing their own press, it was in the western press that I first saw reports of Baltic nationals fighting in Georgia - a circumstance that does make some sense (to me).
If it is true that Russian leadership has seen the opportunity to grasp for more power with the exploitation of lies and the whipping up of nationalistic sentiment, then US foreign policy can be said to have been a complete, total f*ckup. Somehow it has managed to turn a moderating, rational leadership into a version of itself - self-obsessed, completely lacking in intellectual honesty and ignorant of the value of anything but power.
Where's Albright when you need her? - another schoolmarmish type (oh, and did anyone else note the civil war that was going on in the US State Department from about 2001-2007? The Albright clique went down fighting hard.)
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Dietrich,
the only problems I find with sneak are to do with the tiring effect and the amount of time it takes to reach an objective (where a rest is necessary to bring the squad back to fighting fit). Where terrain demands and time allows, it is a perfectly viable movement option with good advantages accruing to the sneaker.
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Thanks for the link John.
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Fantastic stuff!
That ammo box is gonna fall off though...
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Hang on, so Dogface and Wicky are cooking the same goose?
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One option would be to start exporting to Cuba. I hear they have a taste for US cars, and their current fleet is getting long in the tooth.
Sergei, this is far too good an idea for it to be adopted.
How old is the photo? -
Should make it very easy for Emrys to buy it all up and vote them out then, eh?
Sure, the execs get their share of the blame too. They gave in to the union contracts, dealer contracts, pension plans, private jets, etc. And it does look like soon they'll be out on the street.
But before going off on exec pay, a good question to ask is, if you find a guy who can fix GM, what would you be willing to pay him?
Problem here is that the "fix" is the same no matter who takes the reins. It is a series of decisions and actions taken, unpopular, unsympathetic and unlikely to benefit anyone who's pay packet has skyrocketed in the past two decades - and that includes all the professional staff and middle-management. All those uni grads with monster debts, the children of the stock owners and management (we're talking middle class here, right?).
Someone able to perform miracles? - well, first you have to believe, than he has to deliver. It's a gamble, and you don't have a lot left to gamble with. He'll quite happily take it all.
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meh - each missile weighs in at more than 10kg - sort of man portable. And a 600m range sucks - though you don't then have to spend money on superduper optics. Twice as much to go wrong and a ballistic trajectory to boot.
How cheap, exactly?
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yup, fluff piece. Not a single item of hard data. Quality reporting, that.
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The market for the Big3 has been the US domestic market - no need to export when the profit can be made at home. With this market going belly-up, the US manufacturer has to, all of a sudden, compete globally. Some, like Caterpillar, have always competed there and should do ok if the US dollar falls. The Big3 can't and won't.
Let the companies fail. Get rid of the top two or three levels of management (kick 'em out - no way they can be about to starve unless they're outright oxygen thieves) and have the units of the companies re-formed into govt. funded startups - i.e. the state owns the issued shares and provides start-up capital for retooling.
This way the original shareholders, who could not be ****ed doing the work and taking the decisions required to protect their capital (retooling, R&D, proactively competing, medium to long term decisions based on developed strategies) - they lose the lot. Sobs to them. The management that presided over the fall should do the decent thing and fall on their swords. In a more just society the bastards would be doing it for real.
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Oi Diesel - you owe me a turn!
Not much to see from within a tank - if your sniper takes out his TC his tank has lost about 40%? (SWAG) of its effective spotting. The team leader in the tank is the one with his head outside.
How old is the photo?
CMBO for $3 - good price for a stocking stuffer!
in General Discussion Forum
Posted
Patrocles,
you're getting a stocking full of coal from cdv! (and maybe a good bottle from BTS?)