Adjust fire, over!

[civdiv]

Originally posted by MikeyD:

Yup, J. Edgar Hoover proved to everyone's satisfaction that anyone who's pro-labor rights, pro-privacy rights, pro-environment, and pro-social justice was ipso-facto a yellow-bellied commie. Might as well have some fun attaching electrodes to their genitals because commie fellow-travelers ain't real citizens like you and me - heck, commies ain't even human beings! We'd simply be doing God's work locking up all those degerate fellow-travelers and their famlies.

Blackballing them from Hollywood is a bit different than locking them up in a Gulag, or even worse, in an insane asylum, or putting a bullet in the baclk of their head and sending their family a bill for the bullet.

One of my favorites;

http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/sinclair.asp

[Battlefront.com]

No question about it... in relative terms, the old saying holds true. Something along the lines of no state has ever held so much power so totally and yet used it so judiciously as the US has. Too many people forget this too frequently, that's for sure. Still... it's hard to find this track record "good enough" when things like this are considered:

Feeding children radioactive materials to see what would happen

A society without internal critics is more likely to look like the Soviet Union than the United States. We should remember this well since those in power have a strong track record of trying to shut down criticism and to block fact finding all in the name of patriotism, national interests, or greater good. I'd rather have unfair criticism than no criticism at all.

Steve

[civdiv]

It is clear that the doses involved were low and that it is extremely unlikely that any of the children who were used as subjects were harmed as a consequence.

Come on Steve, you can do better than that! 56 children in an institution 7 decades ago weren't told they were ingesting radioactive material as part of a program to improve childhood nutrition. Based on the information available the amounts were too small to cause any damage. Unethical, sure. Wrong thing done for the right reason? Yup. Did it help more than it hurt? Sure it did since noone was hurt.

Jim Crow laws, sure. Japanese internment, yup. strike breaking and Pinkertons and wooden nickles and 'The Jungle' and Pinochet and Noriega and Whitlam and Mossadegh, you got me.

Oh, sort of an aside but related as it deals with the advance of science in unethical ways. Most of what we currently know about hypothermia and frostbite was learned from mad doctors in Nazi concentration camps.

And on that sick detail I will sign off for the night. Having trouble getting my body to shut down after an intense work out. Check out P90X, what an ass-kicker!

civdiv

[Battlefront.com]

Jim Crow laws, sure. Japanese internment, yup. strike breaking and Pinkertons and wooden nickles and 'The Jungle' and Pinochet and Noriega and Whitlam and Mossadegh, you got me.

I was trying to list something novel, not the same old same old (the Civil Rights era is massive all on its own) Here's another one that went on as late as 1979 that many don't know about:

Forced sterilization of tens of thousands

Oh, sort of an aside but related as it deals with the advance of science in unethical ways. Most of what we currently know about hypothermia and frostbite was learned from mad doctors in Nazi concentration camps.

And don't forget about the effects of pressure the Nazis came up with that formed the basis of altitude affects on the Human body. It's still one of the most hotly debated ethical research questions out there. Is it immoral to use data that was collected immorally? That sort of thing. Then there was the whole "we wanted them prosecuted as war criminals until we found they could build neato rockets for us" thing

Anyway... my only point here is that we in the US just need to be careful when throwing stones at other people's glass houses. We might not have a glass house, but we sure do have some pretty big windows!

Steve

[Sequoia]

Speaking of Battleships, didn't the Turks use the ex WWI Goeben to shell Cyprus in the 70's?

[David Chapuis]

Originally posted by rudel.dietrich:

I could not think of a worse way to waste money than to spend it in brining back a concept that has been dead since Japan did their buisness in Dec of 41

But when its the US military we are talking about, they always manage to suprised me in new and exciting ways of money wasting

Seriously, the idea just boggles the mind.

If you want to sink a ship in North Korea, have a sub surface 700 miles away and fire a missle at it.

If you want to support ground forces then 3 USN carrier task forces and their aricraft can have air superiority and 40% interdiction rates over any nation in the world.

The battleship is best left in the dustbin of history where it belongs besides such things as the musket and the broadsword

Hacking at someone with a sword is pretty cool and looks pretty damn cool.

But I would rather use a modern assualt rifle thank you very much [/QB]

I loved this post - took me 20 days to find it - but still funny

[Londoner]

Originally posted by Sequoia:

Speaking of Battleships, didn't the Turks use the ex WWI Goeben to shell Cyprus in the 70's?

Nope, she was decommisioned in the '60s.

[Lee]

More cool battleship pictures.

[Darryl]

If IRC the New Jersey class will move sideways about six feet as a result of a full broadside. Further, someone asked the range of her main battery. When using rocket assisted sub-munitions she has a range of approximately 50 miles. I don't recall the CEP off hand though.

One of the main problems with the New Jerseys is that they're just too darned labor intensive. Remember they were designed when manpower was not a limiting factor. As a consequence there's virtually no automation of her powerplant and other subsystems.

I do believe there is a place in the fleet for heavy fire support ships. I also believe with modern automation and fire control accuracy we can design and build a few ships with large caliber guns that could simply overwhelm an enemy at a per round cost that would be less expensive, and far more demoralizing than using cruise missles.

Just my humble rambling.

Cheers,

Darryl

[dan/california]

Here is my two cents, it is probably not worth that much but what the heck.

GMLRS is engineered and in very successful use. If a truly massive naval fire support capability is needed simply take some medium sized merchant hulls and and fill them up with GMLRS systems. They don't need to be extraordinarily fancy because we are not going to attempt to land the Marines until the enemies anti-shippping capability is essentially wrecked. Parked 10 or twenty klicks off shore they could provide devastating fire support against point or area targets for a long way inland.

It would be a cheap simple ship with one use, the ammo would be more expensive but it is the cost of the total system that really counts.

[Sequoia]

Didn't we already have the Battleship moving sideways debate?

[NoxSpartana]

Everyone needs to relax. Lee's comment was pretty stupid, though I'm pretty sure he was thinking that watching something getting the crap blowed out of it by 16 inch shells would be cool, not seeing actual people blown to bits. It's a fact of life, guys like to see stuff get blown up. Live with it. Not really any different than someone thinking that the Pearl Harbor bombing scene was cool (as idiotic as the movie was, and as innacurate as the bombing scene was, it was still cool).

On the other hand, I don't think LoneSyrian should have gotten banned, because he wasn't really out of line, and I completely understood his reaction. A lot of the people on this forum are pretty hypocritical and naive when it comes to the thin moral line our wars (and war in general) are always balancing on.

I wish some of you could go visit some Moroccan slums (the part of the ME I lived in for 6 years), and talk, and live with, and start to understand them. You'd all change your tune pretty quick (I hope).

[ July 23, 2007, 06:26 PM: Message edited by: NoxSpartana ]

[Sequoia]

Wow another know it all. You don't have any idea as to how many chances Lone Syrian was previously given or what a real asshole he is. Oh but you know better because a lot of the people on this forum are hypocritical and naive. I really think you need to learn a few things yourself about the many fine people on this forum before you start preaching at us again.

[NoxSpartana]

Sorry I came off as a "know it all". I am a relative noob in this forum, I've only been browsing since maybe a year ago and registered in March, but all I'm saying is in many political arguments people really fail to see "the other side", which is, yes, naive.

I'll be the first to say that this community is vastly more mature than the majority of gaming communities I've been a part of, but that doesn't change the fact many times people still have very, very biased views when it comes to this sort of thing.

As for Lone Syrian, I'm not aware of the guy's past, and I'll take your word for it that he's had multiple offenses, but in my mind it still doesn't justify his most recent banning. Think about what your reaction would be if some Iraqi guy online was talking about how cool it would be to see some American soldiers get the crap blown out of them by an IED (regardless of whether the person meant it in a bad way)