AngusThermopyle

Then you should go and rent the movie I was talking about because thats exactly what the moderate Palestinians whom they interviewed stated had happened. I tend to believe them as they are actually Palestinian and living the very subject that we're talking about.

Come on guys, everyone knows that beauty is only skin deep but ugly goes all the way to the bone.

I agree, the shame is not only that this happened but that it has in effect wiped the slate clean as far as the good work that was done is concerned. I remember when this all blew up, the media went into a feeding frenzy. The scandal was only the beggining, after that came the "hazing" scandal, the primary reason I have no respect for reporters, I've seen first hand how they edit and slant points of view in order to create the impression they want. For instance, I saw video they showed of the crossing the line ceremony, I've participated in five of them. They're a lot of fun, basically a big game of hide and seek where the previously initiated have to hunt down the uninitiated and present them to Neptunes court, even Trudeau had participated in at least one of them. After the court ceremony, involving dunking people in cold water, music and making them eat a "pill" made of the worst stuff the cooks could find it progresses into a BBQ and party, innocent fun and a good way for the guys to blow off steam after being at sea for a while. Watching the footage on the news it didn't even look like the same thing after they were done editting it. It more closely resembled a bunch of depraved barbarians than sailors performing an ancient ritual of the sea that everyone enjoys. Not that it was the same thing in Somalia but the media's one sidedness was very blatant. a lot of good people did a lot of good work there yet Canadians will never know this as no one ever bothered to report it. The entire problem was primarily caused by a drastic failure of command and the actions of two depraved individuals that this failure empowered. As I said, Canada was the only nation there that achieved its stated goals, yet nobody knows this, and most likely never will, speaking in broad terms anyway. Of course the whole situation was only made worse by Chretiens bone head move when he disbanded the Airborne. This only served to cement the impression in the publics mind that the troops were the real problem and divert attention away from the actual problem, one of command that went very far up the chain.

I've noticed a lot of references to the Somalia affair on these forums. Invariably the tone seems to be one of painting the entire mission as a failure based on the actions (primarily) of two individuals. This perception can be laid sqarely at the feet of the media who, as the nature of their buisness dictates, focussed attention on the incident and no other aspect of the mission. As a result I've found that people everywhere, not just in Canada, are unaware of the actual work Canada did accomplish over there. No mention is made of the fact that Canada was the only nation present to actually accomplish the stated goals of their mission. Further to that a great deal was accomplished in the reconstruction of wells, hospitals, schools and even in some cases churches. Food supplies and medicine were delivered and distributed and medical assistance was rendered to a great many, friend and foe alike. Less tangible results were of a more informal nature, stuff like the guys saving rations then handing them out to the kids whilst on patrol. In short, all the good that was done was destroyed by the media reporting of this attrocity and the subsequent ignoring of the good works done. It is not the fault of the average person that they do not know what actually happened, after all when fed onlty negative information people will naturally formulate negative views. As one who was in Somalia at the time of this incident I find it upsetting that all the good work done by all the good people present there is discounted because of the actions of two individuals. Thus the reason for me bringing this up. A good place to start if one wants a less biased and more balanced picture would be this site, its a lengthy read but well worth it as its from the perspective of one of the "non-command" guys who were over there and as such has no reason to cover his ass or hide the facts. It would make for better discussion and debate if more people knew the facts and not just what the media decides is more news worthy. A Soldiers Story

Interesting, thats the reason she gives, I wonder if the real reason could be that she discovered most people don't give two sh^ts about her and her "protest" in service of her brother. After all Ghandi fasted for much longer than her on several occasions and actually affected change by doing so. Of course the reasons he did this actually made sense on a rational level, unlike her reasons for fasting.

A declaration of war, this is an interesting point. For myself it appears fairly obvious that that is exactly what it was. A declaration of war does not always have to be in the form of a written or spoken missive. For instance using an aquisition and targetting radar to "paint" a ship of another nation is considered an act of war, to attack that ship is considered a declaration of war. As you can see a declaration of war does not always have to be in the form of written or spoken word.

Very good point, it most certanly would not. However the comparison does not stand the weight of scrutiny. In your example you compare going into someone's personal physical space and performing highly offensive physically demonstrable acts with the opposite side of the spectrum. That is, having the temerity to offer a diferent opinion on an internet discussion board. There is no logical comparisson that can be made between the two acts. If they are so concerned about talking to others who might have an opinion differing from theirs they should just post a big readily discernable disclaimer that states the fact that its a semi private club and any who enter must agree or be booted. Of all people to defend this one sided stifling attitude you're are the last one I would have expected to do so. I can't even remember the amount of times you've spoken about the right to freedom of expression and the importance of dissenting views. Yet on this subject you appear to be staunchly opposed to those very principles. It can not be disputed that their rules are their rules. What can be disputed is the point that their rules make the entire site worthless unless you simply want to indulge in some form of collective auto masturbation of the individual ego. That being the case: what is the point of such a forum? The bottom line is. If you start an internet discussion board you should expect some dissenting opinions, that is if you actually want to hear from people who might want to talk about what you are discussing. If you actually don't want to hear opinions from others that may disagree with your own then restrict membership to the forum. Don't invite people to join unless they agree to go along with the rest of the members and the mods. Make it clear that individual opinions are forbidden and no such nonsense will be permitted. One thing I can assure you of is the fact that I wouldn't waste a second of my time on such a piece of one sided mutual stroking.

I just watched it last night, its been years since I first saw it, a great quirky, punky irreverant sort of movie. You'd be surprised how hard it is to find now. Did anyone mention Little Big Man yet? That was one of my favourites when I was younger, now I'll have to see if I can find a copy of that one. I did just find a copy of the Hopper classic Easy Rider, that was a movie that spoke to an entire generation. The new Tarantino movie Hell Ride has Hopper in it as well, I love the way they gave him the same jacket he wore in Easy Rider, the fringed Buck Skin one. DOP, I don't think I've ever seen Theodoric of York, judgeing by the quote you provided it looks interesting, I'll have to see if I can find that one as well. On a related theme, soundtracks, one of my favourite movie theme songs has always been the one from The Good, The Bad And The Ugly, love the erie sound it has. Yep, something is up with the forums, I've been getting erroneous errors lately, such as the one above where I quoted Dancers mention of Tank Girl. I'll correct it so it makes more sense rather than just a bunch of HTML sitting there.

You should check out the new Tom Clancy game, EndWar, it looks really good. its set in the not so distant future where ICBM's have been rendered useless. Its an RTS and looks very slick and polished, well its a Clancy game, he vets the whole thing before giving it his stamp of approval. Looks like one I'm going to have to get. The naval scenes in TW look great as well, in fact the whole game looks very well done, another to add to my list. For me the big news in the shooter genre will be Far Cry 2, those Crytec guys really know how to do shooters. Of course HL and HL2 will always reside in my favourite list. HL pretty much revolutionized shooters when it was released and HL2 continued to build on this legacy. Even though the source engine is getting older now it still does a good job.

You must be confusing me with someone else. If you look at my posts you'll see that America is not my favourite punching bag, I reserve that honour for the french. However if I didn't know better and based my opinions on your quite often irrelevant comments it could be quite easy to view Americans as arrogant silly people with an undeveloped childish wit. As for misspelling Charmin, what can I say? Perhaps I just don't share you slavish devotion to registered trade marks.

Does it really piss you off so much? That the woefully under supplied and suported CAF still outperforms your so vaunted united States Millitary? Sure you have a shit load of people and equipment, big deal. Your individual servicepeople are undisciplined and unreliable. Please don't try to argue otherwise, I've served with these "John Wayne" yahoo's, they weren't exactly what I'd call a well disciplined fighting force. The simple fact is that the CAF punches way above its belt line in terms of equipment and man power, you want to try and deny that? Go ahead, bring up some of your selective "facts" to support your assertation, implied or otherwise. If you can't then just STFU, or at least try to show a little respect as opposed to animosity. If you can't manage that then I suggest you get a few sheets of nice soft Charmine and wipe your old attitude away. Thanks, have a good day.

Holy shit! I just checked out that babble site, what a huge pile of steaming unfounded erronious crap! Everything I saw there was based more upon emotion and opinion than fact. I now withdraw my banned/competition suggestion as I've realized that i couldn't be bothered wasting that much time on such a one sided gab fest.

Thanks man. I appreciate the info but I've just begun reading the recommended materials you should know if you want to enjoy this sim. It looks to me like its something that could become a passion and long term hobby, after all what normal person has never dreamt of being an Astronaut? Like I said, it looks like it has a pretty steep learning curve, it'll take a while to figure out but I know I will, then I'm sure it will become one of my favourite programs. The only thing I can think of right now that would be better than being a virtual Astronaut would be to actually be an Astronaut Or a fighter pilot.

Of course you would say that, what else could you say? After all you have no real knowledge or experience of such things, all you have is your imagination and opinion based upon eronious "facts". You've never watched a fight of 3 Cobras come in and obliterate an entire city block in about 60 seconds. You've never witnessed a low level bombing run that obliterates all in its path. It appears that you believe a bunch of wahoo's hiding in the bush can overcome a Leopard Mk2, it just isn't so. As was pointed out, if the Romans had discovered NA it would have been subjugated and ruled as was every place the Romans went. You may want to ignore reality and delude yourself into believing Native Americans could have withstood the might of the Roman Empire but you'll be in a very lonely club of the deluded if you do so. The simple fact is that primitive stone age technology does not in any way compare to modern technology developed by use of the scientific method, either in efficiency or desired result. By the way. I'm still wating for you to aknowledge the truth, that being that a Bow and Arrows could not be made in an hour to an hour and a half as you claimed earlier. C'mon, quit being a pussy and admit that you just made that up with no basis on actual reality. You might as well admit it no intelligent person would believe that crap anyway. All that you accomplish by dodging and denying is prove that you have no credibility as an honest poster so you might as well turn over a new leaf and discover how good it feels to be honest.

So very very true. Honestly I can't take one side or another on this question. I love to ride, doesn't matter what it is I love riding. It could be a street bike or a motocrosser or a mountain bike or even a horse, I love riding. Some of my most vivid memories are of my father taking me out on the back of his Triumph Trident when I was a little boy, I wouldn't trade the experience for the world. On the other hand now that I'm no longer a little boy I can see the potential danger of doing such things but you know what? I still wouldn't change anything, you have to skirt danger before you really know what it is to be alive. Or maybe I'm just a natural born adrenalin junkie. Seriously though, I would never take a kid onto one of our major highways on the back of a bike, its just way too dangerous. It's not the skill of the rider that really counts but the stupidity of the other occupants of the road.

I only ever played a short demo when it first came out, thats the one where you can manipulate time to your advantage isn't it? Sort of a Max Payne type effect? When I first bought SC I played it for about a half hour then put it away. About a year later I was bored, had just finished Bioshock, so I thought why not give it a try? Once I gave it a chance I found it was pretty good, like any game I just had to get used to the particular control scheme they use, pretty standard except for a few differences. It's fun when you can develop the experimental weapons and also use nukes. The award for best Nuclear effects that I've seen in a game so far has to go to World In Conflict, it really is a great looking game and I also like the alternate Cold War scenario its based on. It's just very very hungry as I said so if you want the full eye candy you'd better have ample power.

It really was an amazing and revolutionary weapon. As you said, it wasn't until the rifled barrel that it was truly replaced. They actually considered using it at Waterloo as a trained archer could fire much faster than a man with a musket, not to mention that it had more hitting power. The musket was primarily chosen because of ease of use, it took a long time to train a profficient archer and at that time there weren't too many left. the report I read stated that a Long Bow Broadhead arrow has more potential and kinetic energy than a modern sporting rifle within it's effective range (I believe that was about 500 yards, not sure though). At first this seems preposterous but when you think about it it does make sense. A rifle bullet is not very large so it would have less potential energy than the steel tipped arrow which would have far greater mass thus far greater potential, and upon striking, kinetic energy. Even the bullets higher velocity is not enough to overcome this mass deficit. It was interesting, I'll see if I can find it again, given the mass and velocity of both objects its a very simple calculation to make, very basic physics. Okay, this is really strange, the words "that it" and "kinetic energy" are linked to some commercial sites or something. How did that happen? I didn't link to anything in the post.

Bungee cords?

Maybe we should start a contest and see who can get banned from it the fastest?

I checked out the link and have to say that it does look like the kind of game I would enjoy, lots of stategic depth and variables to consider. Is it turn based, given the type of game I would guess it is, not very expensive either. It reminds me of the old SSI games actually. I heard the new Total war will incorporate Naval elements and scenario's as wel, that should be very very cool, just call me Nelson. I also checked out that Orbiter space flight simulator that DOP has mentioned several times. That looks really really good, a hell of a steep learning curve though, I just started reading JPL's Basics of Space Flight last night, they recommend you read that and R. Braeunig's Rocket and Space Technology before you even start with the sim. It looks very impressive, beautifull graphics and the attention to detail is astounding. Some pretty cool user developed add ons as well.

Precisly, I myself suspect that it was just BS, like you said, wrong subject. Right again about the canned versions, they do provide valuable assistance in pointing you in the right direction though. To tell the truth I was quite surprised when I realized just how much work and research I had to do in order to write this policy for our company. It was a lot of work but in the end well worth it as it is quite comprehensive and more than conforms to applicable laws. Sorry about the quote being screwed up, don't know what happened there. MLW has been giving me problems lately.

Yes, it was a composite, an amazing weapon really considering its small size, ideal for Horse back use and accredited with being a major factor in the expansion and dominance of the Mongols. Now we've gone and given the answer away, double recurve, composite. Now I should point out something Dancer brought to my attention. It appears that some Oaks can be used for Bows, I stand corrected. He showed me a nice example of an English long bow fashioned from Red Oak. It only has about a 35lb draw but is still a nice little bow. The English Long Bow is another fascinating subject. The largest had pulls up to 175lbs to 200lbs, it took a strong man to draw and fire these bows. Skeletal remains show the growth of bone spurs on Long Bow archers in order to support the extra muscle mass these guys developed. It was also law that every Englishman possess a bow and practise regularly with it, they even introduced a Yew tax to ensure the supply of Yew to make them. I recently read a study comparing both the potential and kinetic energy of a shaft fired from a long bow to that of a high powered sporting rifle round, you'd be surprised by the results.

I'm not familiar with that one, what type of game is it? yes, the total war series is good. Did you know that they use the Total War engine for historical shows when they need to display thousands of units on the battle field at one time.

Once again your ignorance is showing, what do you think curing wood means? There are different methods of curing but they all return roughly the same results. Oak as bow material, you must be drinking or something. Hard woods are pretty much useless as bow material as they are too brittle when cured, the best wood for a bow is Yew, always has been and always would be if we hadn't figured out composites. NA Native bows were crude affairs with little range or power, once again they failed to fully develop the art t its high point. Compare the NA Native bow to the British Long Bow and you will see marked differences in the technology utilized between the two. this subject is of particular interest to me as I used to be passionately into Archery when I was younger, I've made my own bow in the past, a real bow, not some stick with a string tied to it. I used yew (of course) and laminated it with fiberglass, when i was done I had a nice little double recurve with a pull around 55lbs. Just soaking and steaming the Yew so it would conform to the double recurve design took a considerable amount of time, with the benefit of modern tech to help out. Perhaps instead of taking any bullshit thrown at you as gospel you should actually try experiencing things instead. As for your feeble comment about survivalism, well thats on par with all the other unfounded unproven crap you post. All I can say is that in survival terms, knowing how to properly fashion a bow most likely places me head and shoulders above you. Not to mention the fact that I'm a proponent of the minimalist aproach to Woodsmanship, e.g. purify your own water, provide your own food through fishing and hunting or gathering edible plants. One of my favourite things to do out here is take off into the mountains alone, I know, you're not supposed to do that but I enjoy it. I do take a rifle with me though, minimalism just doesn't cut it when you run into a Bear or Cougar (fortunately I haven't encountered a Cougar yet, just some Bears). You really shouldn't make bold statements of superiority when you know nothing about the person you are attempting to denigrate. Oh yes, in all fairness I feel I should mention that I bought the Bow string, I didn't make it. Also, my Father turned out some really nice shafts from Aluminum for me, his hobby was making muzzle loading weapons from scratch, he was a Machinist amongst other things. Now, you want to discuss the Mongolian Bow? I'll be nice and tell you why even though it was roughly the same dimensions as the NA bow it had many times the power and range, if you want, heres a clue, it was a double recurve. Edited to add: Why am I even bothering with you, its obvious that your usual style is still predominant. That is, making outlandish statements then when refuted claiming the other person doesn't know what they are talking about while denying anything said.

Well look at that, it appears that I have a little more time than I thought. Lets look at this statement shall we? For the most part this is an indisputable statement. Except for the part about the skill sets being lost. There are still indigenous tribes who utilize stone tools, one notable example would be certain more removed of the Mauri tribes of New Zealand. Further to that, stone knapping is quite popular as a hobby with quite a few people, the techniques are thouroughly understood and practised to this day, once again I can point you toward some very good resources dealing with this. I don't know which "Archeologists" you were listening to but if they made claims as absurd as the ones you posted then all I can say is that these people should get their asses back into school and actually learn some factual information rather than spreading garbage such as the skill sets being lost. As an interesting aside, the finest stone tools that have been found originate in Scandanavia and Northern Germany. I've seen pictures of stone daggers and they were actually beautifull pieces of work.