Colrom

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Obama is dangerously charismatic. McCain is dangerously creepy.

It seems the same to me. People seem to be dreaming of their Empire. I don't know why.

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.

Mister Tamborine Man http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRbeUnn-AUA...feature=related

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.

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.

What would we have predicted for ten years in the future in 1935?

From wiki on Strong AI: "Modern AI research began in the middle 50s.[9] The first generation of AI researchers were convinced that strong AI was possible and that it would exist in just a few decades. As AI pioneer Herbert Simon wrote in 1965: "machines will be capable, within twenty years, of doing any work a man can do."[10] Their predictions were the inspiration for Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke's character HAL 9000, who accurately embodied what AI researchers believed they could create by the year 2001. Of note is the fact that AI pioneer Marvin Minsky was a consultant[11] on the project of making HAL 9000 as realistic as possible according to the consensus predictions of the time, having himself said on the subject in 1967, "Within a generation...the problem of creating 'artificial intelligence' will substantially be solved."[12] However, in the early 70s, it became obvious that researchers had grossly underestimated the difficulty of the project. The agencies that funded AI became skeptical of strong AI and put researchers under increasing pressure to produce useful technology, or "applied AI".[13] As the eighties began, Japan's fifth generation computer project revived interest in strong AI, setting out a ten year timeline that included strong AI goals like "carry on a casual conversation".[14] In response to this and the success of expert systems, both industry and government pumped money back into the field.[15] However, the market for AI spectacularly collapsed in the late 80s and the goals of the fifth generation computer project were never fulfilled.[16] For the second time in 20 years, AI researchers who had predicted the imminent arrival of strong AI had been shown to be fundamentally mistaken about what they could accomplish." By the 1990s, AI researchers had gained a reputation for making promises they could not keep. AI researchers became reluctant to make any kind of prediction at all[17] and avoid any mention of "human level" artificial intelligence, for fear of being labeled a "wild-eyed dreamer."[18] This is an unfortunate consequence of developing nascent technologies." Never-the-less it seems increasingly clear that serious thinking robots are coming soon enough.

It is safe to predict that there will be those who see the changes that come as good and those who see the changes that come as bad.

there ya go, make the company responsible for the actions of other people. so, what happens when someone commits a crime with a butter knife? taks Or a chemical? Or a virus? Really the point would be that you might want to restrict the manufacture and common ownership of the things that seem most dangerous first - and worry about the butter knives a bit later.

Outline: Key Factors 1. Population growth 2. Resource depletion and resource limits - especially carbon based and nuclear fission based energy 3. Global warming - climate change 4. Christian millenium prophesies 5. Development of computer machinery - robots 6. Development of bio technology and bio machinery 7. Space power Possible Key Events 1. Population depletion - by disease or starvation or war - planed or willfully allowed or accidental 2. Robots impact productivity - measured how? - energy efficiency of robots may be a factor 3. Resource aquisition wars - nations and even businesses and political groups arm themselves - bio and nuclear. 4. Insurgencies - tyrannies - assymetric warfare - including space systems - resource utilization struggles. 5. Religious wars. 6. New social structures continue to develop - neo feudal system? 7. Robots reduce the need for a social contract and the consent of the governed - new serf class begins to form 8. Expanded space utilization - especially military - Permanent moon base planned 9. More unexpected consequences of more desperate acts. Ten years is not very long in the scale of things so it will probably take 50 years for some of this to occur.

Depraved for sure. It isn't easy to understand such people. They definitely need to be locked away and treated. I don't really understand how cults work but they seem to be able to beguile people into attrocities they might otherwise not even be able to imagine and certainly wouldn't engage in.

Congrats. Thesis Topic? Now the staff members will treat you like a human for a little while. PostDoc?

If fanning the flames of sectarian violence in Iraq makes a foreign nation a bad guy then the US and the UK get top honors for evil! Aside from that - I think some facts would be good to back up assertions. Also, how do you feel about not bothering to fan the flames of sectarian violence at all, and just going there and doing it yourself, like we and you did? Does that make it better, when you are swimming in the blood of your own murders rather than someone elses?

The idea that Jews somehow control US policy is insane. They are a tiny voting block - nothing more. It would be accurate though to suggest that US and UK policy involves using Israel to advance US and UK "interests" in the Middle East and Persia/Iran. As well, there are some fundamentalist Christians in the US who have an interest in seeing Israel created and thriving and in conflict with its neighbors and ultimately destroyed and most Jews killed so that the fundamentalist Christians can ride into heaven in a boat kept afloat by a river of Jewish blood - or something like that.

I really can't agree, based on my knowledge. There were several attacks on Bill's watch, but no increase in counter-activity was ordered despite calls for it. Clinton's response on Somalia, Colombia, and Iraq were equally desultory. Desultary is good. It is so tiring endlessly killing other people all over the world in anticipation of what they might do if they were allowed to live. We Americans should let the Brits do that kind of thing.