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Colrom

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About Colrom

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  1. Strange thread. Isn't it generally better to be talking to people rather than talking about people? Are we forming an exclusive club of insiders here? Too bad.
  2. Good points. Two other related rules come to mind: 1. Anything worth doing is worth doing well. 2. Anything not worth doing well is worth not doing.
  3. Couple of observations: 1. Good for you! 2. Navy people are busy in Iraq and other places where there is currently combat. Coast Guard too. 3. Navy medics serve with the marines. 4. It is good to have been a military person and have completed service and learned a few things and still be healthy. 5. My grammer school best friend joined the Marines and was killed in Vietnam. 6. My high school best friend joined the Navy and was killed in Vietnam. 7. My son joined the Army and served very successfully. 8. Don't bank promises and don't volunteer. 9. I wish you great personal success.
  4. That's the rub right?! You don't know. Big quakes are scary. I flew into SF from overseas right after the large one there. Lots of people were hurt. The place was a mess. I no longer had a home in Kobe Japan when the large Kobe quake struck. Fortunately my friends got through it OK. When I visited later it was sad to see all the damage.
  5. I think Colorado Springs is on the wrong side of the Rockies for that to work.... You'd have to flood Texas, Oklahoma & Kansas to get your beach front property. Good plan.
  6. Nicely put. Both points are illustrated by the Iraq war. 1. Appeasement never works. The Iraqis tried to satisfy the UN Security Council & US by disarming. The US and UN Security Council after confirming that there could not be found any evidence of WMD in Iraq - promptly attacked. Appeasement never works. 2. Being an overbearing warmongering jackass never works. The US and UN Security Council attacked Iraq and prompty won the war. Instead of leaving after no WMD could be found we stayed since there were people who didn't want us in Iraq in Iraq. Lots of people have died and now there are still people who don't want us in Iraq in Iraq. We can't figure out how to wave bye bye with honor and some say we may be stuck in Iraq for a 100 years. Being an overbearing warmongering jackass never works. Heh.
  7. Colrom

    Books

    Sounds interesting - just checked it out on amazon. What kind of writing is it? Historical fictional narrative? History-book style? The book traces the development of the religious beliefs and behaviors that led to the Holocaust and the erecting of a large cross at Auschwitz. The ideas of important secular-religious figures and institutions are presented - people such as Jesus, Paul, Constantine, Ambrose, Augustine, Anselm, Abelard and Heloise, Thomas Aquinas, Voltaire, the Popes, the Kings, Luther, Alfred Dreyfus and LaCroix, and so on. Some of these represent missed opportunities to do better. There is some discussion of Jewish religious thought and figures. The book does have a narrative aspect as well. Carrol presents the history as an illumination of his own personal religious journey. It is a very good read.
  8. Colrom

    Books

    I read lots of light stuff - like fantasy - about one or two books of that type a week - sometimes re-read them too. Here is the more interesting stuff: I recently finished Constantines Sword by James Carrol - Christianity and the Jews - a masterpiece of religious history - wonderfully sourced. In the Wake of the Plague by Norman F. Cantor - The Black Death - History slightly modified to enhance 2002 terror themes regarding anthrax - presumably to aid in rationalizing the then forthcoming invasion of Iraq. This book is interesting in part for the way in which the history is put in a new perspective and new themes with current resonances are added with very little apparant substance to support them. There are no real footnotes. A non expert will not be able to evaluate or persue points. I'm currently reading: Bible and Sword by Barbara W. Tuchman - England and Palestine from the Bronze Age to Balfour. I think I love Barbara Tuchman. I have read a bunch of her stuff. She is a great historian and a wonderful writer. The Great Influenza by John M. Barry - The 1918 Influenza Epidemic. Starts out discussing the history of medicine in the same way that "The Building of the Bomb" discusses the history of physics and nuclear chemistry. On deck are: Havana Nocturne by T. J. English - How the mob owned Cuba and lost it to the revolution. For me this links to the book "Nazis in Newark" about the US Nazi movement in New Jersey in the 1930s and how the American Jews and some German-Americans others fought against them. Meyer Lanski (Murder Incorporated) was part of the anti-Nazi movement around Newark New Jersey and New York City. (Here's a review of sorts of Nazis in Newark: Michael Alexander - Nazis in Newark (review) - Jewish Quarterly Review 95:2 Jewish Quarterly Review 95.2 (2005) 418-419 Warren Grover. Nazis in Newark. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 2003. Pp. xvi + 380. Nazis in Newark is a model local history that reaches well beyond the border of Essex County, New Jersey, to the national and international arenas. By recounting so many sides of the complicated encounter between Nazis and Jews in Newark, Warren Grover has fashioned a world of street politics, boycotts, Nazi louts, and Jewish bruisers that is as compelling and telling in its detail as any grand tome on the supposed failures and successes of American Jewish resistance to the... ) Next on deck is: The Good Rat by Jimmy Breslin - This is about the mob and criminals
  9. The whole islamofascist narrative makes me think too much of the anti-Jewish narrative of the last 2000 years. Seems like the gullable are encouraged to engage in Crusades while the clever engage in Looting. What a bunch of boorons.
  10. Obama is dangerously charismatic. McCain is dangerously creepy.
  11. It seems the same to me. People seem to be dreaming of their Empire. I don't know why.
  12. Everyone has an opinion. I saw him perform to a mostly empty theater at Carnegie Hall in Newark (not New York) in the sixties. Liked him then. Still like him. I generally prefer his rendition of his songs to other peoples rendition. I think he sings OK. But then consider my other choice.
  13. Mister Tamborine Man http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRbeUnn-AUA...feature=related
  14. Maybe "Wait for the Wagon" - from 1854 Info: http://www.iath.virginia.edu/utc/songs/waitwagonf.html MP3: http://www.iath.virginia.edu/utc/songs/mp3/waitwagon.mp3 What I found on YouTube is terrible.
  15. McCain was a hero and he and the Republican party will make sure no one forgets it. On the other hand, Democrats Max Cleland and Gore and Kerry and most recently General Clark are variously trashed by those same Republicans regarding their service - in some cases while McCain stands by saying nothing. Only a KIA Democrat is possibly safe from Republicans trashing their service - but maybe not even then. Some right wing religious nuts in Tillman's unit said he was just worm meat since he didn't believe in Jesus (FYI an unidentified Chaplin debriefed all the men in his unit immediately after he was killed). McCain's participation in a neverending drum beat of approval on his war service really ticks me off. Maybe he should spend some time talking about some heroes other than himself who didn't make it back from Nam and thinking about all the others who wouldn't have made it back if we had stayed like he still wishes we had. I have some particular heros in mind. I think about them all the time. McCain has become a blow hard over the years. Too bad.
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