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Author Topic: miscellaneous musings  (Read 532532 times)

GarandMarine

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Re: miscellaneous musings
« Reply #900 on: 05 Dec 2014, 08:47 »

Yes! I've seen footage... but... yeah... I mean I got to go to a shuttle launch, I've been space happy since I was a pup, but this is the first time I've gotten to see a new spacecraft launch (the shuttle program was over 30 years old when I was born) and of course capsule splash down.
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osaka

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Re: miscellaneous musings
« Reply #901 on: 05 Dec 2014, 17:19 »

If you can hear them, but you can't shoot them, you can probably grenade them.

Life tips.
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Re: miscellaneous musings
« Reply #902 on: 05 Dec 2014, 17:34 »

If you can hear them, but you can't shoot them,
they must have some damn good camouflage.
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Re: miscellaneous musings
« Reply #903 on: 05 Dec 2014, 18:08 »

Yes! I've seen footage... but... yeah... I mean I got to go to a shuttle launch, I've been space happy since I was a pup, but this is the first time I've gotten to see a new spacecraft launch (the shuttle program was over 30 years old when I was born) and of course capsule splash down.
You're less than 15 years old?

(The Space Shuttle program was proposed in 1969...)
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Re: miscellaneous musings
« Reply #904 on: 05 Dec 2014, 18:15 »

The Program didn't formally commence until 1972, though as you say, the it had been a proposal that had been around since the '60's.  Glide tests began with the ALT Tests with the Shuttle Testbed Craft Enterprise in '77, leading up to the first Spaceflight in '81 with the Columbia.
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Re: miscellaneous musings
« Reply #905 on: 05 Dec 2014, 18:35 »

I remember seeing (not in person) Crippen and Young take Columbia up for its first flight.

I vaguely remember Apollo 17, but mostly remember Apollo/Soyuz and Skylab.

The last time any sort of "splashdown" occurred of a NASA-launched vehicle was 24 July 1975, when Apollo/Soyuz Test Project landed in the Pacific.

I was actually a bit giddy about this whole thing when I got up this morning.
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Re: miscellaneous musings
« Reply #906 on: 05 Dec 2014, 21:38 »

As much as Mana claimed to have invented the whole "gothic lolita" thing, I'm pretty sure that Strawberry Switchblade did it first.
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Re: miscellaneous musings
« Reply #907 on: 05 Dec 2014, 22:33 »

Are those people?
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GarandMarine

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Re: miscellaneous musings
« Reply #908 on: 05 Dec 2014, 22:50 »

As much as Mana claimed to have invented the whole "gothic lolita" thing, I'm pretty sure that Strawberry Switchblade did it first.

I honestly don't think there's a traceable origin point for Gothic Lolita. Somewhere deep in Shinjuku ward, or perhaps Harajuku itself.
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Re: miscellaneous musings
« Reply #909 on: 05 Dec 2014, 22:53 »

Mana is/was a Japanese musician and clothing designer, who coined the term.  Strawberry Switchblade was a Scottish musical duo in the '80s.  The latter came first, and generally went for the frilly monochrome dresses, hair ribbons and gawth makeup.  The former made it a bit more formalised, as in the looking "cute" instead of "sexy".

SS:

The latter is Mana from Malice Mizer:


As much as Mana claimed to have invented the whole "gothic lolita" thing, I'm pretty sure that Strawberry Switchblade did it first.

I honestly don't think there's a traceable origin point for Gothic Lolita. Somewhere deep in Shinjuku ward, or perhaps Harajuku itself.

See above, I think SS did it first, and they were out of Scotland.  Edit:  They were also a lot bigger in Japan than they were back home, so they may have had more of an influence there.
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Re: miscellaneous musings
« Reply #910 on: 05 Dec 2014, 23:00 »

gawth
This spelling is just utterly confusing.
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hedgie

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Re: miscellaneous musings
« Reply #911 on: 05 Dec 2014, 23:22 »

Sorry, back in the Usenet alt.gothic days, we'd use that spelling as a joke.
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Re: miscellaneous musings
« Reply #912 on: 06 Dec 2014, 20:33 »

Oh. I don't get it.
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Re: miscellaneous musings
« Reply #913 on: 06 Dec 2014, 23:38 »

Is it because some people spell God like gawd? So goth becomes gawth?
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Re: miscellaneous musings
« Reply #914 on: 07 Dec 2014, 14:51 »

I pronounce the "o" in god and the "aw" in "gawd" the same, though. Just a short o sound. Maybe that's why it threw me off. I think I know what "gawd" is supposed to sound like (I live in north Jersey, and many people have the awful accent that comes with it), but...yeah.
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GarandMarine

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Re: miscellaneous musings
« Reply #915 on: 07 Dec 2014, 15:36 »

“Did you really think we want those laws observed?” said Dr. Ferris. “We want them to be broken. You’d better get it straight that it’s not a bunch of boy scouts you’re up against... We’re after power and we mean it... There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced or objectively interpreted – and you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt. Now that’s the system, Mr. Reardon, that’s the game, and once you understand it, you’ll be much easier to deal with.” ( Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged )
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osaka

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Re: miscellaneous musings
« Reply #916 on: 07 Dec 2014, 15:55 »

Explains speed limits. *braces for shitstorm*
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Re: miscellaneous musings
« Reply #917 on: 07 Dec 2014, 16:05 »

Or at the very least, speed traps.
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SubaruStephen

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Re: miscellaneous musings
« Reply #918 on: 07 Dec 2014, 20:15 »

For-profit privatized prisons anybody?
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GarandMarine

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Re: miscellaneous musings
« Reply #919 on: 07 Dec 2014, 20:23 »

Explains speed limits. *braces for shitstorm*

Actually it explains most every little law that doesn't really do any harm to another person. Including the law that got Eric Garner killed.

Subaru, the money they make is peanuts compared to the revenue generated by the state via their enforcement arm. Especially with modern Asset Forfeiture, which basically means if a cop likes your stuff, he can and will take your stuff, and unless you have a stupid amount of money, you won't get it back. Homes, cash, cars. Whatever.
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SubaruStephen

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Re: miscellaneous musings
« Reply #920 on: 07 Dec 2014, 20:44 »

It's not how much $ they make, it's how they make it that chaps my ass. I'm talking about shit like this: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal
"Well, when there aren’t enough criminals one makes them"
If a FPP doesn't meet a quota of prisoners, they lose their operating license. They certainly don't want law abiding citizens, that's bad for business.

And I agree with you on Asset "Forfeiture", that's just theft-by-cop masquerading as legal action.
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GarandMarine

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Re: miscellaneous musings
« Reply #921 on: 07 Dec 2014, 20:52 »

Symptoms of the same issue my man.
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I built the walls that make my life a prison, I built them all and cannot be forgiven... ...Sold my soul to carry your vendetta, So let me go before you can regret it, You've made your choice and now it's come to this, But that's price you pay when you're a monster with no name.

Akima

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Re: miscellaneous musings
« Reply #922 on: 07 Dec 2014, 23:04 »

Subaru, the money they make is peanuts compared to the revenue generated by the state via their enforcement arm.
Which is a bad idea. From last weeks edition of The Economist:
Quote
In Ferguson, bad policies help to explain why distrust turns to anger. Take, for example, the way the town is financed. In 2013 a fifth of Ferguson’s general revenues—some $2.6m, in a city of 21,000 people—were derived from fines and asset confiscation. That is equivalent to $124 a year for every man, woman and child in the city. Paying fines, even for minor traffic offences, can involve queuing for hours. Those who miss court dates can be jailed until they pay, accumulating more fines along the way. Slowly but surely, the justice system has become an elaborate mechanism for criminalising poverty.

And where poverty is closely correlated with race...  :-(
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GarandMarine

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Re: miscellaneous musings
« Reply #923 on: 07 Dec 2014, 23:13 »

The quote is correct, it's scope is too small though. It's about criminalising all of us and fleecing us for even more money, and in turn makes everyone affected (i.e. everyone except those wealthy enough to swat away the petty nibbles of the justice system and the elite who don't care) poorer and poorer as the boot heel boots a little more pressure down. Thus returning us to Ms. Rand's quote.
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Re: miscellaneous musings
« Reply #924 on: 09 Dec 2014, 09:08 »

A friend of mine recently pointed out to me that Shakespeare's lead characters often have somewhere else to be during most of Act IV so that the actor can have a break.

Romeo spends Act IV in Mantua. Hamlet, save for a brief scene, is in England. Macbeth has the witch's prophecy scene at the beginning but then the rest of the act is at Duncan's castle and about half of Act V is without him as well.
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Re: miscellaneous musings
« Reply #925 on: 09 Dec 2014, 10:34 »

I tried a recipe for danish brunkager (lit. "brown cakes", a type of christmas cookies). It didn't turn out too well. The cookies are light and crispy. I don't know that type of cookie as crispy. They're supposed to be hard and dense.

And I noticed that the recipe is missing the ginger, after baking the cookies.
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Re: miscellaneous musings
« Reply #926 on: 09 Dec 2014, 10:46 »

Every once in a while I get a crackpot email telling me to read some rant about how God is a proton or something... the one I got today begins with the sentence: "I please you to read carefully my two physics articles."

No. No, I neither want to read your articles nor be pleased by you.  :psyduck:
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Method of Madness

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Re: miscellaneous musings
« Reply #927 on: 09 Dec 2014, 15:28 »

A friend of mine recently pointed out to me that Shakespeare's lead characters often have somewhere else to be during most of Act IV so that the actor can have a break.

Romeo spends Act IV in Mantua. Hamlet, save for a brief scene, is in England. Macbeth has the witch's prophecy scene at the beginning but then the rest of the act is at Duncan's castle and about half of Act V is without him as well.
And in season 4 of The Wire, McNulty spends most of it drunk off screen. COINCIDENCE?
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Re: miscellaneous musings
« Reply #928 on: 09 Dec 2014, 17:18 »

God I hated McNulty.
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Re: miscellaneous musings
« Reply #929 on: 09 Dec 2014, 17:20 »

Well yeah, he was a terrible person...while still being less terrible than plenty of others. That's The Wire for you.
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They call me Mr. Madness.

Quote from: Polonius
Though this be madness, yet there is method in't.
MR ARCHIVE-FU MADNESS
Does anybody really know what time it is?
(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

Thrillho

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Re: miscellaneous musings
« Reply #930 on: 10 Dec 2014, 08:56 »

I just randomly remembered a very fun night with one of my friends. We watched a terrible sci-fi movie called Sci-Fighters starring Rowdy Roddy Piper, made in 1994 and set in 2009. It was 2010 when we watched it, which amused us greatly. Any time we saw some kind of futuristic technology, we'd respond with 'I don't think you could do that with a laser, but then, this is the distant future of... 2009.' I never stopped finding it funny.
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Re: miscellaneous musings
« Reply #931 on: 10 Dec 2014, 09:01 »

In "Canadian Bacon" (filmed in 1995) there's a scene where Honey is in a hospital in Canada, and the nurse tells her, "Our healthcare system has decided you do not need to see a doctor until... *looks at chart*... 2006." In the same movie there's also a line where a general makes fun of the ludicrous idea of declaring war on terrorism.  :psyduck:
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Re: miscellaneous musings
« Reply #932 on: 10 Dec 2014, 09:30 »

I just randomly remembered a very fun night with one of my friends. We watched a terrible sci-fi movie called Sci-Fighters starring Rowdy Roddy Piper, made in 1994 and set in 2009. It was 2010 when we watched it, which amused us greatly. Any time we saw some kind of futuristic technology, we'd respond with 'I don't think you could do that with a laser, but then, this is the distant future of... 2009.' I never stopped finding it funny.

Hey, don't blame science fiction writers for setting their goals too high. Arthur C. Clarke, one of the greatest authors ever, thought in 1968 that we'd have cryogenic chambers, moon bases, and homicidal super computers by the years 2001.
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Re: miscellaneous musings
« Reply #933 on: 10 Dec 2014, 12:45 »

I think you missed why we were finding it funny.
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Re: miscellaneous musings
« Reply #934 on: 10 Dec 2014, 13:12 »

Rowdy Roddy Piper makes everything funny. Admittedly, I think the only one of his movies that I have seen in full is "They Live", which has a fight scene that is an even more effective rebuttal than the one from "The Quiet Man" to complaints about long unrealistic fights in wuxia cinema.
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Re: miscellaneous musings
« Reply #935 on: 10 Dec 2014, 13:28 »

Who the hell complains about wuxia fight scenes? That's half the fun!
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I built the walls that make my life a prison, I built them all and cannot be forgiven... ...Sold my soul to carry your vendetta, So let me go before you can regret it, You've made your choice and now it's come to this, But that's price you pay when you're a monster with no name.

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Re: miscellaneous musings
« Reply #936 on: 10 Dec 2014, 13:33 »

Rowdy Roddy Piper makes everything funny. Admittedly, I think the only one of his movies that I have seen in full is "They Live", which has a fight scene that is an even more effective rebuttal than the one from "The Quiet Man" to complaints about long unrealistic fights in wuxia cinema.

He is amazing in They Live, also funny in Hell Comes To Frogtown where he is one of the last potent men left on Earth and is sold to the state for breeding purposes.

In Sci-Fighters he makes things funny simply by putting more into stupid fucking lines than he reasonably should - ('Why are you here so late?' 'I'm queer for evidence rooms.')
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Akima

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Re: miscellaneous musings
« Reply #937 on: 10 Dec 2014, 18:49 »

"I have come here to chew bubble-gum and kick ass..... And I'm all out of bubble-gum." The dramatic pause (to tension music) totally sells a completely ludicrous line. In his own way, Mr. Piper is a fine actor.

And I quite agree, GM, but I am a fellow fan.
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Re: miscellaneous musings
« Reply #938 on: 10 Dec 2014, 21:58 »

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Re: miscellaneous musings
« Reply #939 on: 11 Dec 2014, 00:27 »

I'm seeing lots of hay made about the CIA torture report. Lots of people defending it seem to want to list Johnny Jihad's various tortures and what have you, the issue I take with that is that we're supposed to be the good guys. Not just "Well we're better then a bunch of goat fether religious extremists!" but we play ourselves off on the world stage as the bonafide guy in the white hat. Reading the report, more then a few times we got the wrong guys, we even got some of our own guys and tortured them too. Shouldn't that mean we have reason to question our methods? Absolute bottom line? We broke our own rules and we violated our own morals. So we need to take a look at ourselves because of that. I give not one single feth what some mouth breathing, camel jockey does in comparison to my own government, they're not my government. To those who seem to think this excuses this failure on our part, I just want to ask... Should sink to their level? Be the animal you hate so much? Or should we maintain our standards and fight like warriors? Yeah it's hard being the good guy. It's supposed to be. It's not easy to maintain your morals and standards in the face of scumbags who have none, but when you become them, when you abandon your standards, you've already lost.

Now I have been informed, mostly by guys who look like they spend more time with airsoft guns and at the local sammich shop then in the military, studying geopolitics and the methods and theories of armed conflict between nation states and non-state actors, that my ideals of upholding our convictions the right way, and not stooping to the level of the gaks we're fighting is a pipe dream. How about that? Apparently, to defeat the enemy, we need to wallow in that mud, throw out our humanity, take a leak on any concept of honor and just start glassing countries. Now I will absolutely joke about glassing the Middle East. That Ground Zero Ocean meme has to be over a decade old now and I giggle every time, but there's a lot of people in the Middle East, and even with the rise of ISIS not even a majority of them desperately need a case of acute onset lead poisoning. I even know some of them. I have friends in Jordan and Kuwait that I treasure greatly. I've even read the book a lot of people are so damn hung up about over there, and you know... with all the men I've buried, I still haven't seen, heard or read one damn thing that makes me say to myself "Yeah, feth it. Let's go burn a village and torture some fethers and see if anything comes out of it. Not like it matters."

Maybe I'm just outdated though.
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Re: miscellaneous musings
« Reply #940 on: 11 Dec 2014, 00:43 »

What you just said is one of the reasons why I like John McCain. Even if you don't agree with him at least he goes against his party when it means he'd have to abandon his morals/beliefs. I also listen to him more about this issue than anyone else in the government because the guy actually was tortured for years. So while almost everyone in his party is going, "well, you know, safety, blahhhhhvomit" he's actually taking a stand.

Anyway, you're right, we portray ourselves as the good guys and we should act like it. Regardless of the merits behind torture (which are mixed, cause the whole false evidence thing that happens a lot), we're supposed to be... you know... not dicks.
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GarandMarine

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Re: miscellaneous musings
« Reply #941 on: 11 Dec 2014, 01:00 »

Well. John McCain is still a chicken hawk sonabitch. So he can STILL fuck off, even if I happen to agree with him on this particular subject.
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Re: miscellaneous musings
« Reply #942 on: 11 Dec 2014, 01:07 »

Right, my point is that he at least thinks for himself, unlike most of congress who just goes with what their party wants. I think a lot of his ideas are fucking stupid, of course, because I have a brain.

And I guess when you feel the way I do about most people in the government I could not like one and they could still be one of my favorites. The bar is not set very high, is what I'm getting at.
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Re: miscellaneous musings
« Reply #943 on: 11 Dec 2014, 02:14 »

Gotta say Garland I didn't expect that post to go the way it did. I am impressed and pleased.
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Re: miscellaneous musings
« Reply #944 on: 11 Dec 2014, 03:02 »

Yeah it's hard being the good guy. It's supposed to be. It's not easy to maintain your morals and standards in the face of scumbags who have none, but when you become them, when you abandon your standards, you've already lost.
Outdated? If so, I must be too; I couldn't have put it better myself. I believe this is right, not for the sake of the scumbags of this world, but for our own sakes. We demonstrate that we are not like our enemies by refusing to treat them the way they treat their victims. The idea that we are of such inherent worth that our actions become acceptable, no matter how base they may be, is a step onto a very slippery slope.

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Re: miscellaneous musings
« Reply #945 on: 11 Dec 2014, 03:18 »

I think your geopolitical airsoftcocks have been watching a bit too much Jack Bauer, Garand Mate. Bloody insulting to infer that trying to be the actual better man in all this shit is idealistic, not to mention stupid in that it gives stains like ISIS an actual basis for whatever propanganda they want to spout. Fucking half assed and short sighted is anyone who believes in torture, IMO.
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Re: miscellaneous musings
« Reply #946 on: 11 Dec 2014, 04:22 »

It's just like Nietzsche's "he who fights monsters" bit.
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Re: miscellaneous musings
« Reply #947 on: 11 Dec 2014, 05:34 »

Or perhaps Orwell's "Animal Farm."
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Re: miscellaneous musings
« Reply #948 on: 11 Dec 2014, 06:29 »

I'm just saying that I feel I don't have to lower myself to the level of the nearly sub-human scum who make up ISIS to effectively remove them from the universe, I'm confident enough in my skills as a warrior, and the skills of those around me to not need to. Janitors don't get down on the deck and crawl around, they get out a mop and a bucket with some chemicals.

I'd say Hedgie's on point, I was thinking Nietzsche... or you know, die the hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain. Nolan.
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Re: miscellaneous musings
« Reply #949 on: 11 Dec 2014, 06:42 »

Some more highlights.

- Torture is worse than useless as an intelligence-gathering tool. We've known it for sixty years, the CIA knew it twenty years ago, and it's just been proven again that torture gets you no actionable intelligence, corrupts what once might have been viable sources of intelligence and produces false intelligence. Since it doesn't actually help us do anything, anyone who says that we "needed" to torture anyone is a fucking idiot.

- The CIA tortured at least two prisoners to death - one by beating him to death, one by use of exposure to the elements as a torture device.

- The CIA tortured two of their own spies for 24 hours before they bothered to translate the messages they had been sending to the CIA and realised who they were torturing.

- The CIA was recruiting abusers to act as torturers - these are not hard men making hard decisions for the good of the country, they are sick bastards who like inflicting pain on people who can't fight back.

- Waterboarding is torture, but anyone who tells you that this is the worst thing the CIA did to these people is lying. To paraphrase one particularly odious quote from the report, CIA medical officers wrote "Sure, an IV is a safe and effective way of hydrating prisoners who refuse to drink, but we're impressed with how subjecting them to anal rape makes them stop refusing to drink."

The CIA's torturers produced no useful intelligence, produced a lot of white noise, destroyed sources of intelligence, raped, killed, turned allies into enemies and broke international and American law. They have used no methodology and produced no intelligence that could benefit us by being kept classified to keep it out of the hands of the enemy, and deserve to be remembered as men who sold their souls - and were subsequently executed - for nothing.
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I built the walls that make my life a prison, I built them all and cannot be forgiven... ...Sold my soul to carry your vendetta, So let me go before you can regret it, You've made your choice and now it's come to this, But that's price you pay when you're a monster with no name.
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