Jamie123
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Posts posted by Jamie123
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Only partially relevant I know, but I recently watched a video that argued it was not the bomb that caused Japan to surrender, but the fact that the Soviet Union chose that same moment to declare war. The Japanese knew they would need to surrender to someone (bomb or no bomb) and the Americans seemed like the softer option. The US promptly rewrote history to make their glorious bomb the big deciding matter. One could say that the Soviet invasion was triggered by the Americans' use of the bomb, but it was going to happen anyway whatever. Had Truman not given the order to drop it, that would only have delayed the inevitable.
Another thing (not in this video): the Manhattan project was an international effort, not just purely American. There were British scientists at Los Alamos. After the war, Truman broke the agreement and made the bomb "USA only" - which achieved absolutely nothing except to make him look like a jerk. The British scientists just developed their own bomb at Harwell.
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19 hours ago, LeKillerWallaby said:
I thought all vacuum cleaners in Britain were referred to as "hoovers"?
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16 hours ago, Vort said:
What with venturing into space and the likelihood of off-world colonies, we're headed back to the future.
Btw, urine from a healthy person is almost perfectly sterile. Some people drink their own urine for supposed health benefits. Disgusting? Yes, at least to me. Unhealthful? Probably not. While I doubt there's any benefit to it, there is very little risk to drinking your own (fresh) urine. Repurposing such bodily fluids to harvest useful chemicals seems eminently reasonable to me.
In Dune, the still-suit reclaimed all bodily excretions and recovered the water in drinkable form (which the wearer could sip from a tube around the neck). I've often wondered how that would work, and if anyone will ever invent such a thing.
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https://youtu.be/1AJmKkU5POA?si=509M2spbwAtEHx-g
Michael Bubble* later married the blonde girl in that video and they now have 4 kids. She's Argentinian, though I wouldn't have said so looking at her.
Yes I know it's Buble - with an accent on the e - but I enjoy being perverse. If Michael doesn't like it he can come and punch me in the gob.
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2 hours ago, Vort said:
Ozymandias, or maybe Galadriel.
Ozymandias "king of kings". I think Galadrial said "all shall love me and despair".
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34 minutes ago, Carborendum said:
This is more like me at the moment:
Long dreary text-debate with my wife this afternoon left me with little enthusiasm for life. Then thinking about the Gadianton robbers got me thinking about Adolf Hitler. Thinking about Adolf Hitler got me thinking about chocolate cake. Bought and ate an entire chocolate cake. Now feel very like the man in the picture (without the actual vomiting).
The best I can say in my defence is I haven't actually turned to drink. That's even worse than chocolate cake. You wake up next morning with all your troubles still there, plus a splitting headache. You Latter-day types have the right idea about drink.
P.S. Feeling a bit better now...
- Carborendum, zil2 and Vort
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5 minutes ago, zil2 said:
When the Lord comes again, the wicked will find his perfect righteousness so terrifying they'll wish the mountains would fall on them. I'm not saying this has ever happened, except perhaps with the city of Enoch. Those verses are about what will happen at or around the Second Coming. And if we're going to theorize on the right way to do something, then our model should be perfection, even if we can't quite get there.
Maybe you're right in theory. But if a robber were to break into my house in the middle of the night, I wonder what the best method of repelling him would be?
a. Singing songs of praises, to fill him with the terror of the Lord.
b. Fooling him into thinking I was a 6ft tall body builder and had an 18 inch machete in my hand. (Assuming, of course, I had a means to pull this off.)
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8 minutes ago, Carborendum said:
I just couldn't let this go without...
("Earth! render back from out thy breast...")
Never seen that movie! It reminds me very much of Kenneth Branagh's Henry V:
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16 minutes ago, zil2 said:
Let the enemy be frightened by righteousness and songs of everlasting joy and the terror of the Lord.
You've set me a bit of a challenge here - to find an example of where the unrighteous were "scared away" by the righteous for any other reason than their righteousness. I can't help thinking that two thousand sword-wielding, spear waving stripling warriors bearing down on you would have been a fearsome sight whether they were righteous or not... But you could be right.
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11 minutes ago, zil2 said:
I'll take my cues from God, not man.
I think even God would agree that you cannot win a war without risking frightening the enemy.
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19 minutes ago, zil2 said:
K. Remove the "smeared with blood" - their going to war to take what isn't and never was theirs is necessarily a black mark against them.
Like I said, I'm not suggesting they were good guys.
20 minutes ago, zil2 said:Personally, I wouldn't want to answer for having smeared the blood of any creature all over myself to terrify my enemies in war.
Do you think it would be OK to wear war paint made out of...ummm...whatever they made regular paint out of in those days to terrify your enemies in war? Or is it the very idea of terrifying your enemies in war that bothers you? Henry Vee would not agree...
Quote...but when the blast of war blows in our ears, then imitate the action of the tiger; stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, disguise fair nature with hard-favor'd rage.
Quote21 And wo be unto man that sheddeth blood or that wasteth flesh and hath no need.
Woe be unto me then... Many a time I've had a steak when I could have gone for the vegan option.
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16 hours ago, zil2 said:
But these folks came from the Jewish / law of Moses tradition - that should have given them a particular attitude toward using blood...
Sorry Zil - I imagine this topic grosses you out (and I don't blame you) but if use of blood as war paint is wrong, we ought at least to ask why. Leviticus 17 clearly prohibits the drinking of blood, but...
- Exodus 12:7 - In the Passover, the blood of the sacrificed lamb is to be places on the sides and tops of the door frames. (When I did confirmation classes many years ago, some bright spark suggested that the "top and the sides" - being at 90 degrees to each other were a prefiguring of the cross. The priest teaching us admitted he had never thought of that before.)
- Leviticus 4:6-7 - The blood of the sacrificed bull is to be sprinkled in front of the sanctuary curtain, then placed on the horns of the altar.
Blood was not to be imbibed, but it had its ceremonial uses.
As for wearing blood as war paint, I can't help thinking of Revelation 19:11-16. Here Jesus appears and defeats the beast, and we know this is a reference to Jesus because "his name is the Word of God" ("Logos" from John 1). Verse 13 says "He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood" (presumably his own).
I'm not saying the Gadianton robbers were good guys - I just don't see that their going to war smeared with blood is necessarily a black mark against them.
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14 minutes ago, JohnsonJones said:
It sounds more like a slow descent into anarchy. Similar to what happens when empires or great nations fall apart.
People may be most familiar with one of the most famous Western empires faltering, or the Roman Empire. It slowly retreated it's borders until most of Europe was held by a bunch of independent tribes and such. For a while it was chaotic as well.
It probably won't be the last time. "Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
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6 hours ago, askandanswer said:
The king men finally prevail although with the coming of Christ within a few years, they didn't prevail for very long.
And they did call him their king; therefore he became a king over this wicked band;
Only over "this wicked band". It sounds like the "king" was an irrelevance except to a very few people.
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6 minutes ago, zil2 said:
But these folks came from the Jewish / law of Moses tradition - that should have given them a particular attitude toward using blood...
The law of Moses certainly prohibited them from drinking blood, but I'm interested in whether they were allowed to use it in other ways. (I have read the entire OT, but I don't have all the intricacies of Mosaic law memorised.)
Also there is the matter of spin. Did the Gadianton people self-identify as "robbers", or is that just what their enemies called them? Perhaps they would have seen themselves as more like "freedom fighters".
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47 minutes ago, zil2 said:
I hope it was animal blood. The only prohibition I can think of is the Spirit of Christ - one's conscience, one's sense of decency and cleanliness and such.
I wouldn't attach too much weight to "sense of decency". What is considered "decent" changes from age to age. It wasn't all that long ago that ammonia extracted from human wee was used to bleach linen - disgusting though that sounds today.
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3 hours ago, zil2 said:
Chapter 4: "OK, men, shmear blood all over yourselves, we're off to war!"
I wonder whose blood it was - or maybe it wasn't human blood at all, but the blood of animals they had slaughtered anyway for food. Was there ever a prohibition against using animal blood as war paint?
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2 hours ago, Carborendum said:
This is known as the pride-prosperity cycle in the Book of Mormon. We see parts of it in the Old Testament as well.
It reminds me of the "Wheel of Fortune"
I always interpreted the "Wheel" a little differently from this woman. I saw the wheel as constantly rotating: the man in squalor at the bottom if the wheel learns humility and hard work and so he rises and eventually becomes a king at the top, but then hubris and complacency set in and he gradually falls until he is back where he started and the cycle repeats - though I agree that would make the goddess "Fortuna" who turns the wheel a bit superfluous. I have seen this painting myself in Rochester Cathedral. The colours are amazingly vivid given that it is so old. It gives you a taste what our English churches must have been like before the Puritans got their mucky hands on them.
P.S. the words to Carl Orff's Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi in English are:
Fortune, like the moon
you are changeable,
ever waxing, ever waning,
hateful life first oppresses
and then soothes as fancy takes it;
poverty and power
it melts them like ice
fate – monstrous and empty,
you whirling wheel, you are malevolent, well-being is vain and always fades to nothing, shadowed
and veiled you plague me too;
now through the game
I bring my bare back
to your villainy
fate is against me
in health and virtue,
driven on and weighted down, always enslaved.
so at this hour without delay
pluck the vibrating strings;
since Fate strikes down the strong man,
everyone weep with me!It sounds like something Job might have said.
- zil2, Carborendum and Vort
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2 hours ago, zil2 said:
v7: If everyone surrendered as requested, there wouldn't be anyone left to rob, so either they would have to earn an honest living, or the people who surrendered would indeed become slaves... (Logic, people, logic!)
It sounds very much like the promises of Hitler that Chamberlain trusted. "Peace in our time" etc.
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Anniversary of Pearl Harbor: 7 December 1941
in General Discussion
Posted · Edited by Jamie123
It does seem incredible to me that my father, who is still alive (and still drives even!) lived right through World War II and can remember rationing, evacuations, air raids and friendly American GIs sharing out their chewing gum with the kids. Yet even back when I was at school, Nazi Germany belonged to comics, war movies and history books. It was not at all connected with the colourful modern Germany that school trips sometimes went to.