Dietrich

As someone interested most in medieval warfare during the late 12th century (especially the exploits of Norman knights on and off the tournament field), I am repeatedly disappointed that most books, movies, etc., based on war-related events in the Middle Ages focus on the Late Middle Ages (13th century onward), with little attention given to the High Middle Ages (after all, it would be silly to call it the Middle Middle Ages) and even less to the Early Middle Ages (such as the Battle of Hastings and the Norman conquest of Britain... but that's a period of history many Britons prefer to ignore). The first time I saw Braveheart was pre-9/11; I thought, "Wow... gruesome battle scenes." The second time I saw Braveheart was post-9/11; I thought, "Wow... if William Wallace did nowadays what he was and is glorified for doing then, he wouldn't be idolized... he'd be hunted down as a terrorist!" :eek: To be fair, though, the depiction of William Wallace in Braveheart accords with how heroes are depicted in the majority of heroic tales throughout history. Whereas in modern tales the hero is fairly passive, springing into action only after the villain starts doing his thing and then defeating him, from ancient times all the way to the Late Middle Ages the hero was rather more active: he took what he wanted (in terms of both riches and womankind) and killed who he wanted to kill (compare the original account of Beowulf with the extremely yet deceptively modernized 2007 film adaptation).

Not only do the "good guys" in CoD4 dish out capital punishment to two terrorist leaders, in both instances they're done in by an SAS operator wielding an M1911-type pistol. In that regard, CoD4 is rather like the movie The Kingdom, in which not only do the "good guys" positively identify who is behind the suicide/truck bombing of an American-populated suburb in Saudi Arabia, they later personally shoot him dead (with an AK-47, ironically). It is curious that during the few seconds that Khaled al-Asad is being smacked around, the player's view is blacked out (so the player doesn't actually see the "torture"), and it clears up only in time to see Captain Price draw his pistol and shoot al-Asad in the chest. IRL, if an SAS team had captured a terrorist leader, even one who was known to have set off a nuclear bomb in a densely populated city currently occupied by Coalition forces, I seriously doubt they would have just shot him. AFAIK, they would have brought him somewhere for more in-depth interrogation. (By the way, those who think interrogation and torture are synonymous, even mutually inclusive, have clearly never heard of Hans Scharff.) As to why no one mentioned this scene (mentioned it with outrage, that is): I suspect it could be because the character who was "tortured" and summarily shot dead was effectively confirmed to have detonated a nuclear bomb in a large city, killing hundreds of Marines and thousands of civilians (though no civilians are ever seen in the game). According to my understanding, one of modern war's prime challenges (specifically in MOUT) for the typical infantryman is not hitting civilians. (Yes, I understand that the player characters in CoD4 were not typical soldiers; but for some reason they depicted 1st Force Recon as if it were a full-blown MEU with armor, helos, and Harriers.) I really doubt any game will include civilians, even if such would dramatically increase the realism and challenge of MOUT scenarios, since inevitably some malicious 15-year-old wannabe serial killer (or several of them) would just shoot the civilians instead of the insurgents or enemy troops, then some righteously indignant politician (or several of them) would rant and rave about the game, claiming that the purpose of the game was to indiscriminately shoot and kill innocent people, until it got pulled from the stores, as happened with Night Trap. Or am I perhaps overstating the presence of civilians in instances of MOUT-type combat? I had just been under the impression that it's not like civilians dematerialize from towns or cities when Western troops show up.

I know the feeling, both of getting my arse handed to me and of taking it hard when my men end up WIA/KIA. Losing one Stryker and all the soldiers therein to an RPG is one too many, in my opinion! If you even think the enemy has ATGMs, don't expose your vehicles (even your MBTs, though an M1 might be able to shrug off a hit or two from an AT-14), even if the dismounts have boots on the ground. (I understand that some of my advice may not be relevant to "Follow the Euphrates" per se; I've played that scenario, but it's been a month or so.) Avoid moving your Strykers within RPG range of places where the enemy might be lurking, such as buildings and trenches. Try to keep your dismounts far enough away from the vehicles that there won't be any secondaries if one takes a hit (even just a damaging one) from an ATGM or RPG. Since you have M1s in "Follow the Euphrates", lead with them up the road -- their firepower will smash the enemy forces on the road at the far end of the map.

These were Syrian Reserve infantry, so it was either an AKM or an AKS-74.

Dead Man Standing I spotted this in the course of playing "Red Pepper v1.1". As indicated by the just barely visible death's head symbol at his feet, Mr. Oohrah was dead before he hit the ground. =(

Quoting from the article "Above, Beyond and Forgotten" from the April 2006 issue of World War II magazine: The article includes descriptions of about a dozen more instances of Chilson either taking on the enemy alone (except, perhaps, for supporting small-arms fire) or leading parts of his platoon in the attack. In all, Chilson was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross three times, the Silver Star twice, the Purple Heart twice, and the Legion of Merit (which was rarely awarded to enlisted men), as well as several other medals. The caption to a photo showing Chilson shaking hands with Audie Murphy reads: It seems to me that there are a couple of factors why Chilson not only did not receive the Medal of Honor but is virtually unremembered—unlike Murphy, who was (and perhaps still is to a certain extent) almost a household name. Chilson reached only the rank of master sergeant even after reenlisting in November 1947 and remaining in uniform another 17 years, whereas Murphy was a second lieutenant at the time he pulled off the action which earned him the Medal of Honor. Murphy, unlike Chilson, was fairly handsome—some might say "boyishly" so—and thus was much more marketable. 45th Division website with detailed info about and photos of Chilson * I find it sadly unsurprising (not least in contrast to Truman's opinion) that there is no Wikipedia article on Llewellyn Chilson, whereas there is a long, detailed, and rather well constructed article on Audie Murphy.

Hey purpheart, remind me to say, if/when I enlist, that my reasons for enlisting were: 1. To enlist in the stead of some man who, being a husband and/or father, would have plenty of reason to not enlist (since his being maimed or killed in action would inflict grief, bereavement, and hardship on his loved ones). 2. To thumb my nose at all who paint soldiers as brainwashed tools (in all senses of the word) because they think that's the way to effectively express their dislike of their country's foreign policy. Oooh-rah! Besides, arguing is for people who don't have anything better to do.

As I recall, several of the missions are stated to take place in Azerbaijan. Those missions, however, are not the ones in which the player faces obviously Middle Eastern insurgents. Speaking of CoD4, I was rather puzzled when, at the beginning of the mission which ends with the player capturing the Middle Eastern terrorist mastermind Khaled Al-Asad, you hear screams and gunshots in the distance, someone on your team asks what all the noise is about, and a Loyalist (Russian) soldier replies, "It's the Ultranationalists; they're killing the villagers," but when he enter said village, there are no bodies strewn about, no blood stains on walls, no evidence that any killing of civilians per se had happened. I understand that probably the game's developers omitted evidence of the mentioned villager-killing so as to not risk an undesirably high rating, but it yields something of a break in immersion (though an aspect of immersion that many would rather forgo) when the aftermath of a heinous act is concealed thus. If in the end it's effectively like no murdering of villagers actually happened, why state such is happening and include an unnerving amount of corresponding sound effects? I think a not-insignificant part of the appeal of the GTA games and their ilk is the increasingly prevalent criminal-as-good-guy thing. A friend of mine put it thus: "Better to be [i.e., play in a game] a gun-wielding, drug-dealing, prostitute-slapping, amoral criminal than a corrupt, hypocritical politician, since when you're the criminal, at least everyone knows you're an ***hole." I live in a fairly quiet town (a bedroom community of about 40,000) about an hour's drive north of San Francisco. Three years ago, while playing basketball at a local outdoor court with half a dozen friends of mine, a fight broke out between two of the several dozen gangbangers hanging out at the immediately adjacent court (i.e., 20 feet away), which ended when a third gangbanger pulled out his pistol (I actually saw him do so) and shot one of the first two, who later died. I'd rather play a SWAT operator shooting and killing a ruthless criminal than a ruthless criminal shooting and killing SWAT operators.

Is it simply a matter of the soldiers' hurt feelings? Am I supposed to believe the rationale could be or should be "no one got actually killed during that last mortar attack, so we're going to conserve ammo and not perform any counter-battery missions"? Permit me to rephrase the question: What if 81mm (or even 120mm) mortars were used for counter-battery fire against OPFOR mortars/rockets? Less costly per projectile, right? Besides, I had been operating under the assumption that just because I'm entitled to do something doesn't mean I'm beholden to do such or that that which I'm entitled to do is or should be the overriding concern. I just get bored with snidely looking at things from the armchair-general perspective. And I'm sympathetic with the grunts.

I respectfully direct your attention to this thread: http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=84362 Gute Jagd, Dietrich

I think all this arguing about the worthwhile-ness of hurling half a dozen 155mm shells at an insurgent rocket launcher or mortar position ought to be weighed (at least partially) against the feelings one would have if one endured a sudden and unsettingly accurate insurgent artillery attack and then heard friendly howitzers thumping in reply. If I were in camp, mortars started landing all, I flung myself under the nearest sturdy object, and then, as the dust started to settle, I heard one-fifty-fives booming in the distance, I'd be thinking, not "what a stupid waste of money and firepower", but "yeah, get 'em." But then again, I've never actually had such an experience.

Real-time, except for battles involving more than a company and a half of friendly forces. I like the immediacy and responsiveness of real-time. Playing a more-than-a-company battle in real-time, especially on a spacious map, all too soon devolves into hurtling the camera from one hot spot to another, returning to the previous place to find my forces decimated/routed or to realize a great M72-taking-out-T72 bit of action has gone unwitnessed. Thus I play such scenarios turn-based. Perhaps that's why I like the huge-mapped-but-modestly-populated scenarios GeorgeMC designs.

"Geladen und bereit! Wir schießen Dauerfeuer!" .................................................................... "Urrah!" "Noch warten.... läßt sie näher kommen...." ......................................................... "Urrah!!" "Warten... Ruhe, Männer!" ..................................................................... "Urrah!!!" "Feuer frei! Gibt Sperrfeuer, Männer!" ....................................... "Urrah!!!" "Ich kann doch nicht...weiter töten!" ....................... "Urrah!!!" "Handgranate -- Deckung!" "Nahkampf!" ... "Urrah!!!" (insert sound effects as appropriate) *clears his throat and looks sheepish* Uh, yeah, Ostfront, jawohl. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Might CMx2:Ostfront include (I would be tickled pink if it did) some sort of animation for MG42 barrel-changing, and maybe for the MG34 as well? (I wonder if the NATO module will include any sort of animation for changing the barrel of a Bundeswehr MG3...) I suppose this question would apply to CM:Normandy as well.

I live within an hour's drive north of San Francisco, in a town with a population of about 40,000. For the past few weeks, the weather here has been variable from morning to evening. The morning starts out overcast and chilly, but by late afternoon the sun has burned away much of the clouds and is shining blindingly; it makes one feel like bringing both an umbrella and sunglasses on any given day. But even more common than such days are ones which seem rather spring-like -- the cloudless sunny-ness makes it pleasant to stand in the sun, but the actual ambient temperature makes it that as soon as you step into the shade, your teeth start chattering. Like I said, though, since I've been living here (I grew up in Fullerton, CA, but when I was eight my family moved to northern California) I've seen the weather go from fairly dependable to almost bipolar.

My experience living in northern California since 1990 is that I have seen the weather growing more erratic from year to year. It used to be that one could pretty much count on rain most of the day most every day throughout winter, such that creeks and rivers would flood almost every year. Nowadays, "winter" might be characterized by sunny, cloudless, 70+-degree weeks rather than simply days, with virtually no rain until early spring.

I believe I have heard of and seen what you're referring to, though I hadn't heard it referred to as a "bandbox". Are you referring to the plexiglass enclosure often set up around a drumkit so as to minimize its volume? And when you say "stage band", are you referring to a band of the sort that typically plays on a stage or a band of the sort that typically plays in what is commonly known as an "orchestra pit"? So? (As far as y'all know, I might have been married to Angelina Jolie. But "of course" I in fact wasn't.) I disagree. Thorton may be able to strum a guitar and "sing" and be the lead guy in a non-power trio and star in Oscar-nominated/Oscar-winning movies, but I would bet a month's worth of my income that he couldn't defeat the "least" of us here in a round of CM. In my opinion, having been married to the Western world's avatar of hotness does not equal greatness in any sense of the word.

Seems to me that the video in question could have been edited to make Thorton look like an idiot. There are several parts in which Thorton's lips aren't moving in accord with what he's saying (even taking into account how the audio and video are a bit out of sync). Also, he may have been on drugs at the time. And he may not give a flying burrito if what he says during an interview makes any sense. On a parallel note, I think "Boxmasters" as a band name is a combination of (somewhat) stupid and pretentious. Masters of a/the box? What is the box of which they are masters? Is "box" supposed to mean TV? There's no instrument in the band which could be likened to a box, so what's the band's name all about? (Then again, I've long been of the opinion that all the good band names are already taken.)

My two cents: I appreciate that this forum's rules ensure that it's consistently SFW.

I figure I can't be the only one who saw that Mythbusters episode where they rigged up a car to explore, first in the Hollywood fashion (basically a fireball which left the car otherwise intact), then in the real-life fashion (a definite boom, blowing the car to smithereens and sending those smithereens flying for a couple hundred yards).

To cite one example of the kind of thing you're talking about, MikeyD -- in The Punisher (the one with Thomas Jane), when it came time to do that stunt where Frank Castle drives off the bridge, they had to rig up the stunt driver so that his spine wouldn't collapse with the impact of the car landing on the opposite half of the bridge. And, of course, they had to rig up the car so it wouldn't fall apart on landing. On the other hand, stuff that happens to guys in action movies who aren't the hero are usually exaggerated. For example, shooting a pistol (even a .45 ACP) at a guy and scoring a hit (even center mass) doesn't instantly (or nearly instantly) kill him. Thirty-nine times out of forty, in a movie, the hero needs only use one bullet for each thug/henchman... and he usually has more rounds per magazine than would fit in two pistols.

But she does look like she's moments away from fixing that. Also, I'm totally not surprised she's blonde.

To my understanding, it's not a matter of knowing how a reflector gunsight works. The problem with the shot in Battle of Britain that I cited is that the Bf 109 would be out of view when the Spitfire pilot opened fire, because of how much he would need to aim off. As far as I know, the sort of chinstrap doesn't matter because it doesn't have any clear bearing on the action. What does have a bearing on the action in SPR (in the final battle scene, anyway) is that there are at least one MG42 and one MG34 that never fire. In my view, including weapons that were key to German small-unit infantry tactics but disallowing their contribution to the firefight would be like giving the Rangers and Airborne only M1 Garands (that is, leaving out the M1919s and BARs and Thompson SMGs like they had in the movie). And then there's Miracle at St. Anna, in which three of the four 92nd Infantry Division soldiers have Thompsons. True. With today's CG technology, a team making a Battle of Britain film could create CG Spitfires and Hurricanes and add in tracer to show where a fighter's fire is going. With an exterior "chase plane" shot, a kill scored in the middle of a gut-wrenching turn could be made clear to the audience. I say, just because most folks won't notice something is no reason to leave it out. But how many times have we seen tank cannon not recoil in movies? Countless times. If for no other reason, it's just easier to put a flashpot in the muzzle and call it a day. And didn't Ben Affleck get shot down and nose-dive into the English Channel? To my understanding, that could only result in him being killed: if he had his harness straps fastened, the impact into the water would have snapped his neck; if he didn't have his harness straps fastened, he would have split open his skull on the mount of the gunsight. Of course, if he had belly-landed on the water, he would have survived being shot down but might have died of exposure and hypothermia before he could be rescued.

Movies aren't the only medium in which cavalry charges are (over)dramatized. Nineteenth-century paintings of battle scenes, for one, typically depicted cavalry charging too fast and heading directly at the 'square' they're attacking (rather than 'lapping' around the edges of the enemy formation and circling around to attack again).

But why are there certain things (of which there are not a few) that they never (or virtually never) depict according to how things actually work? I view physics integrity (or lack thereof) according to context. Contrary to the claims of certain lazy critics, Stars is not science fiction -- it makes no claims of being in any way scientific and is so obviously fictional -- thus does not need to uphold the laws of physics (at least, not nearly to as great an extent as a movie like Apollo 13). I understand that moviemaking technology has played a part in the perpetuation of cinematic physics rule-bending. For example, in the 1969 film Battle of Britain, one shot shows the view of a Spitfire pilot looking through the reflector gunsight at a Bf 109 as he maneuvers in a fairly tight turn to bring his guns to bear on the enemy fighter. When the ring of the gunsight's reticle frames the Bf 109, the Spitfire pilot fires his guns, even though both planes are banking steeply. In reality, the Spitfire's fire would pass well behind and below the Bf 109 both because of how the planes are maneuvering and because of the time it would take for the rounds from the Spitfire's eight .303-in machine guns to cover the 400 or so yards to the Bf 109. The expectation of this shot is that it depicts the Spitfire pilot shooting at and scoring hits on the enemy aircraft. Since in reality the Spitfire pilot shooting thus would not yield hits on the Bf 109, the action of the shot could be changed so that, say, the Spitfire approaches a seemingly oblivious Bf 109 from behind and ever so slightly below (and perhaps ever so slightly to one side as well), so that when the Bf 109 is framed in the reticle and the machine-guns roar, the fire actually strikes its intended target, on account of the minimal deflection needed to score hits in such an instance. And here is where advanced moviemaking technology could make its mark. Since in the 1969 film they used actual aircraft for the aerial battle scenes, they couldn't very well be actually firing at each other. Were the film to be remade nowadays, even if they used actual aircraft, they could add the fighters' fire through CG or even (as was done in Captain Corelli's Mandolin) create the aircraft digitally. So long as the result is nothing like Pearl Harbor. Flags Of Our Fathers had an interesting example of integrity to reality: in one ground-level from-a-distance shot of twin-engined bombers bombarding Mount Suribachi, you can see not only the aircraft and the explosions several hundred feet below them but also the bombs themselves plummeting from plane to mountainside. It gave me a sort of chill to see the falling five-hundred-pounders. True. I stand corrected. What I meant to say is that the aspect ratio of movies has not always been 16:9 or even 4:3. Thanks for the link. 'Tis enlightening reading. I wouldn't be surprised if it was that someone involved in getting Red Dawn ready for TV saw that scene, noted the delay between explosion and boom, and thought, "Wait, that isn't right", and then had it changed because they thought it was wrong (rather than because they thought the audience wouldn't get it that if a bomb goes off a mile away you don't hear the explosion as soon as you see the 'fire and sulphur'). I say they should have people who check for physics veracity in movies (at least movies that purport to take place in the real world) just as they have people who check for continuity and people who act as "technical advisors" and such.

The Venn View Effect is one of the many little (and not-so-little) untruths Hollywood has perpetuated since practically the beginning of cinema -- cars provide effective cover from assault rifle and even machine-gun rounds (though they are apt to burst into flames or even explode after taking as few as half a dozen bullets), fighter pilots need not aim off when using their on-board machine-guns or cannons to target an evasively maneuvering aircraft, et cetera, ad libitum, ad nauseum. My take on it is that the general moviegoing public is so ignorant of many facts of even fairly basic physics that if films depicted such things accurately, the average audience member would feel confused and would think special-effects tomfoolery was afoot. Movie screens haven't always been rectangular ("letterbox" format). Thus some old movies don't need to have the ends of the frame trimmed to fit a 4:3 television screen. Indeed, one old film in particular, Fritz Lang's The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, when viewed on a non-widescreen TV yields narrow black areas to the sides of the frame. But when looking through field glasses, would one see a single circle or a Venn diagram as is shown in movies? Though some binoculars have a single objective lens, most modern (20th century) binoculars have dual eyepiece lens and dual objective lenses and thus work as illustrated here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Binocularp.svg. All this talk about misrepresentation of optics makes me want to watch the part in Black Hawk Down where the NVG-equipped Delta operators take out the crew of a truck-mounted recoilless gun, so as to notice whether or not the view through their NVGs is depicted accurately (since, as I recall, the NVGs they had were of the single-objective-lens type).