60,000 wakadoos
 

She was speaking of factors specific to Spain and Italy, and thus my comment. Men are fat and lazy everywhere, and so yours is unresponsive.

60,000 wakadoos
 

I'm sorry if I didn't use the right terms, but the strategy is not about how you name people -- the point is, shifting the focus to preventing unwanted births will tend to divide the pro-life side into those who don't like abortion but don't have a problem with reasonable birth control, and the folks who can't abide either.

60,000 wakadoos
 

A Pope is selected, and bilmore comes out of seclusion. Coincidence?

60,000 wakadoos
 

Italians no longer need that protection.

School's out for Summer
 

Probably, yes.

60,000 wakadoos
 

Ouch

60,000 wakadoos
 

Sorry. I've been preparing Vatican III. I just came out for more candles.

60,000 wakadoos
 

This explains why European countries that border on being socialist have much lower birthrates than African countries with no viable social welfare and massive unemployment.

60,000 wakadoos
 

That was kind of my point, honeybuns, you lithe hardworking stud, you.

60,000 wakadoos
 

I don't understand why you find this to be such a difficult question. The issue is, who has the right to terminate the life?

I think that the courts were right to let Terry Schiavo's husband terminate her life. But, if someone had broken into the hospital and cut her head off, that person would, and should, be prosecuted for murder. Not for breaking and entering.

The legal, and moral, issue is to whom we give the rights to make such decisions. Scott Peterson had no right to terminate his unborn child's life. (And yes, I recognize the greater difficulty that would be present if, say, she had been on her way to the abortion clinic the morning he murdered her, but these sorts of law school hypos are not that helpful).

And now, I give up on ketching up from yesterday.

60,000 wakadoos
 

I thought your point was that guys like bilmore shouldn't make fun of women's looks- glass houses- still someone like Sidd should yell at you and bilmore

60,000 wakadoos
 

Why should I be yelled at because you missed my point?

60,000 wakadoos
 

When i used that derogatory term I was merely trying to make a point about man's apparent need to dehuminize and through that try and expand everyone's outlook to ask not what is different from other ethnic groups, and instead encourage people to look for what we have in common- they all missed my point and I got yelled at.

60,000 wakadoos
 

Over here on the PB, Hank pretty much yells at everyone indiscriminately.

60,000 wakadoos
 

Hold me. Please.

60,000 wakadoos
 

Bazooka Joe- I was right!

60,000 wakadoos
 

I ain't no fudge packer, sheesh

settle down there, little lady.
 

Could you jump up and down again, please? It's just so cute when you do it!

I got your point. And so I know that Hank's comment should have been directed to bilmore. Who incidentally responded to Hank's comment by saying that it's ok to make fun of stereotypes if they aren't stereotypes of oppressed minorities. Which I sorta agree with. However, his comment seems kinda misogynistic to me, rather than being merely anti-Italian.

60,000 wakadoos
 

I don't even like Vonnegut.

(aside to everyone else: there is no reason for you to understand this exchange)

settle down there, little lady.
 

Dissent. An expression of lustful preference for women who do NOT have manly facial characteristics can hardly be termed misogyny. While I admire Margaret Thatcher, it would not be misogynistic to lack the desire to sleep with her.

60,000 wakadoos
 

Kilgore would have gotten it.

settle down there, little lady.
 

Oh good, tell me what nationality your mom is, so i can spread the joy.

settle down there, little lady.
 

You know her name?

strategic bombing
 

This is from that book review by Freeman Dyson in the NYRB that I was discussing yesterday. Dyson worked in the RAF's Bomber Command HQ during the war.

• There is overwhelming evidence that the bombing of cities strengthened rather than weakened the determination of the Germans to fight the war to the bitter end. The notion that bombing would cause a breakdown of civilian morale turned out to be a fantasy. After a devastating attack on a factory, the Germans were able to repair the machinery and resume full production in an average time of six weeks. We could not hope to attack the important factories frequently enough to keep them out of action. We learned after the war that, in spite of the bombing, German weapons production increased steadily up to September 1944. In the last few months of the war, bombing of oil refineries [and the Russian advance into Rumania? -- t.s.] caused the German armies to run out of oil, but they never ran out of weapons. Putting together what I saw at Bomber Command with the testimony of Hastings's witnesses, I conclude that the contribution of the bombing of cities to military victory was too small to provide any moral justification for the bombing.
  
  Unfortunately, the offical statements of the British government always claimed that bombing was militarily effective and therefore morally justified. As a result of their ideological commitment to bombing as a war-winning strategy, the leaders of the government were deluding themselves and also deluding the British public. Hastings says that in the last phase of the war "the moral cost of killing German civilians in unprecedented numbers outweighed any possible strategic advantage." I would make a stronger statement. I would say that quite apart from moral considerations, the military cost of killing German civilians outweighed any possible strategic advantage.

60,000 wakadoos
 

Only if he read my blog, and Hank's comments thereto.

60,000 wakadoos
 

Okay, so I whiffed. How is this day any different?

strategic bombing
 

Factories being down for 6 weeks provided no value? And the Germans were bombing cities- they came up with the theory. Do you think the British would have stopped bombing factories because they might be near cities given the Blitz? What world do you live in?

strategic bombing
 

Like a good conservative, you have done a fine job of ignoring the costs of waging war. I helped you along by declining to type the paragraph before the two above. It explains:

• At Bomber Command headquarters, I was responsible for collecting and analyzing information about bomber losses. Our losses were tremendous, more than 40,000 highly trained airmen killed. Until the last few months of the war, a crewman had only one chance in four of surviving to the end of his tour of thirty operations. Many of the survivors signed on for a second tour, in which their chances of survival were not much better. The total economic cost of Bomber Command, including the production of airplanes and fuel and bombs, the training of crews, and the conduct of operations, was about one quarter of the entire British war effort. It was my judgment at the time, and remains so today, that the cost of Bomber Command in men and resources was far greater than its military effectiveness. From a military standpoint, we were hurting ourselves more than we were hurting the Germans. It cost us far more to attack German cities than it cost the Germans to defend them. The German night-fighter force, which was the most effective part of the defense and caused most of our losses, was miniscule compared with Bomber Command.

If you ever find yourself in an argument with Freeman Dyson, I suggest that you don't assume he's stupid. If you're not understanding what he's saying, it probably reflects poorly on you, not him.

My point, previously, was not that strategic bombing had no effect, but that it was ineffective relative to the claims made by its proponents.

strategic bombing
 

Keep in mind that "determination" is not the same as "industrial capability". That's why the new paradigm - accurate bombing of strategic assets while minimizing civilian loss - works so much better. All those hours sitting in subways listening to buzz bombs was worth quite a few "let's take it to 'em" votes.

strategic bombing
 

Was there a morale value to the british population from our beginning to bomb Germany?

If I ever find myself in a room with your bloggers I'm heading for the bar- I wouldn't argue with them

settle down there, little lady.
 

If you read my posts, you'd know that Irish is the answer. To make your job easier, here's a picture of mom and dad:

http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/omalley/...ien/shanty.jpg

And here's Grandad and the bishop:

http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/.../cartoon-2.jpg

chnaged to a link because the image screwed up the margins. Sorry, kids.

strategic bombing
 

This is hardly the first time that proponents have said: technological advances mean that this time, bombing really works! Similar claims were made during WWII. Bombing was going to close the Ho Chi Minh Trail. This time around, we have impressive video of a few precision weapons zooming down bunker air shafts, but the Pentagon and FOX were showing us the weapons that missed. I believe that the studies since the war have shown us that precision bombing wasn't. Shock and awe, anyone?

strategic bombing
 

2. And remember, Bill Clinton's entire anti-terrorism push was to try and kill Osama with a few missiles. That didn't work either.

60,000 wakadoos
 

Because everybody knows we Americans really love the Italians. Really, some of my best friends are dagos. We even have a couple at the club and you can hardly tell them apart from the real Americans.

strategic bombing
 

So, when will our Iraq invasion quagmire end?

strategic bombing
 

If your military tells you, incorrectly, that they're doing something effective and good, is there a moral value to that?

He's not a blogger, you dope. He's a famous physicist. Per Wikipedia:

• Freeman John Dyson (born December 15, 1923) is an English-born American physicist and mathematician. He worked as an analyst for the British Bomber Command during World War II; after the war, he moved to Princeton. In 1957, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States.
  
  In the years following the war, Dyson was responsible for demonstrating the equivalence of the two formulations of quantum electrodynamics which existed at the time - Richard Feynman's path integral formulation and the variational methods developed by Julian Schwinger and Sin-Itiro Tomonaga (Dyson operator).
  
  From 1957 to 1961 he worked on the Orion Project, which proposed the possibility of space-flight using nuclear propulsion: a prototype was demonstrated using conventional explosives, but a treaty banning the use of nuclear weapons in space caused the project to be abandoned.

60,000 wakadoos
 

You're posting, for one. Welcome back.

strategic bombing
 

Are you quoting Wikpedia as a primary source these days?

60,000 wakadoos
 

No, no Hank. I feel your pain. I don't know why you shouldn't be able to say how some groups of people have slanty eyes, or big noses, or how they smell bad.

strategic bombing
 

There are huge gaps between these two formulations. And if you think string theory leaves any of Dyson's work as important, maybe you'd like to buy my old lps?