oromagi

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FPELc1wEvk

->@ILikePie5
anti-corruption and economic development measures

This statement is an oxymoron to anyone who has studied history and noted the universal correlation between foreign aid and local corruption of the nations receiving the aid. Africa is poor and corrupt because of the aid, not in spite of it.

https://www.theibfr.com/download/gjbr/2015_gjbr/gjbr-v9n4-2015/GJBR-V9N4-2015-2.pdf

Foreign aid also teaches foreigners that America is a welfare state and not a state of sovereign laws, so it is no wonder they jump the border looking for more when the aid runs out.

READERS will note that Greyparrot is directly replying to my remarks because I place no restraints on Greyparrot's capacity to address me, the same cannot be said of any counterpoint I might wish to make, since Moderation has asked me not to address GP, because GP "feels bullied" when his lies are exposed.

READERS should also note that Greyparrot tags his buddies while directly replying to my content- the forum equivalent of being unable to look a man in the eye.

Here on our debate website, Greyparrot debates like a sniper in a schoolyard, attacking the defenseless and running fast away from any forthright clash. Readers can decide for themselves which of us is the bully remembering that the first mark of a bully is cowardice.

#brownshirts=brownshorts

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4 years ago

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Why are we banning wylted?

-->

@Wylted

Another Loki promo?

How unexpected.

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4 years ago

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https://youtu.be/8qkahQVFzMI

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4 years ago

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https://youtu.be/rMVAqU8fmio

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4 years ago

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https://youtu.be/uyaj2P-dSi8

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CHAPITRE XII

La planète suivante était habitée par un buveur. Cette visite fut très courte, mais elle plongea le petit prince dans une grande mélancolie :

– Que fais-tu là ? dit-il au buveur, qu’il trouva installé en silence devant une collection de bouteilles vides et une collection de bouteilles pleines.

– Je bois, répondit le buveur, d’un air lugubre. – Pourquoi bois-tu ? lui demanda le petit prince.

– Pour oublier, répondit le buveur.

– Pour oublier quoi ? s’enquit le petit prince qui déjà le plaignait.

– Pour oublier que j’ai honte, avoua le buveur en baissant la tête.

– Honte de quoi ? s’informa le petit prince qui désirait le secourir.

– Honte de boire ! acheva le buveur qui s’enferma définitivement dans le silence.

Et le petit prince s’en fut, perplexe.

« Les grandes personnes sont décidément très très bizarres », se disait-il en lui-même durant le voyage.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery, Le Petit Prince

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4 years ago

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CREON:

Can't you see? If a man could wail his own dirge before he dies,

he'd never finish.

To the guards.

Take her away, quickly!

Wall her up in the tomb,

you have your orders.

Abandon her there, alone,

and let her choose—

death or a buried life

with a good roof for shelter.

As for myself, my hands are clean.

This young girl— dead or alive,

she will be stripped of her rights,

her stranger's rights,

here in the world above.

ANTIGONE:

O tomb, my bridal-bed—my house,

my prison cut in the hollow rock,

my everlasting watch!

I'll soon be there,

soon embrace my own,

the great growing family of our dead

Persephone has received

among her ghosts.

I, the last of them all,

the most reviled by far,

go down before

my destined time's run out.

But still I go, cherishing one good hope:

my arrival may be dear to father,

dear to you, my mother,

dear to you, my loving brother, Eteocles—

When you died

I washed you with my hands,

I dressed you all,

I poured the sacred cups

across your tombs.

But now, Polynices,

because I laid your body

out as well, this,

this is my reward.

Nevertheless I honored you—

the decent will admit it—

well and wisely too.

Never, I tell you,

if I had been the mother of children

or if my husband died,

exposed and rotting—

I'd never have taken

this ordeal upon myself,

never defied our people's will.

What law, you ask,

do I satisfy with what I say?

A husband dead,

there might have been another.

A child by another too,

if I had lost the first.

But mother and father both

lost in the halls of Death,

no brother could ever

spring to light again.

For this law alone

I held you first in honor.

For this, Creon, the king,

judges me a criminal

guilty of dreadful outrage,

my dear brother!

And now he leads me off,

a captive in his hands,

with no part in the bridal-song,

the bridal-bed,

denied all joy of marriage, raising children—

deserted so by loved ones,

struck by fate,

I descend alive

to the caverns of the dead.

What law of the mighty gods have I transgressed?

Why look to the heavens any more,

tormented as I am?

Whom to call, what comrades now?

Just think,

my reverence only brands me for irreverence!

Very well: if this is

the pleasure of the gods,

once I suffer I will know

that I was wrong.

But if these men are wrong,

let them suffer nothing worse

than they mete out to me—

these masters of injustice!

LEADER:

Still the same rough winds, the wild passion raging through the girl.

CREON:

To the guards.

Take her away.

You're wasting time—

you'll pay for it too.

ANTIGONE:

Oh god, the voice of death. It's come, it's here.

CREON:

True. Not a word of hope—your doom is sealed.

Sophocles, Antigone

Robert Fagles, (translation to English)

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4 years ago

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They came to the road. It was sunken into the field, choked like the bed of a stream with mounded men. Armistead jumped down, saw a boy in front of him, kneeling, crying, a row of men crouched under the far bank, an officer yelling, pounding with the flat of his sword. There was a house to the right, smoke pouring from the roof, a great clog of men jammed behind the house, but men were moving across the road and up toward the ridge. There was a boy on his knees on the road edge, staring upward toward the ridge, unmoving. Armistead touched him on the shoulder, said, “Come on, boy, come on.” The boy looked up with sick eyes, eyes soft and black like pieces of coal. Armistead said, “Come on, boy. What will you think of yourself tomorrow?”

The boy did not move. Armistead told an officer nearby; “Move these people out.” He climbed up the roadbank, over the gray rails on the far side, between two dead bodies, one a sergeant, face vaguely familiar, eyes open, very blue. Armistead stood high, trying to see.

Kemper’s men had come apart, drifting left. There was a mass ahead but it did not seem to be moving. Up there the wall was a terrible thing, flame and smoke. He had to squint to look at it, kept his head down, looked left, saw Pettigrew’s men still moving, but the neat lines were gone, growing confusion, the flags dropping, no Rebel yell now, no more screams of victory, the men falling here and there like trees before an invisible ax, you could see them go one by one and in clumps, suddenly, in among the columns of smoke from the shell. Far to the left he saw: Pettigrew’s men were running. He saw red flags streaming back to the rear. One of Pettigrew’s brigades had broken on the far left. Armistead raised his sword, saw that the sword had gone through the hat and the hat was now down near his hand. He put the hat up again, the sword point on a new place, started screaming, follow me, follow me, and began the long last walk toward the ridge. No need for hurry now, too tired to run, expecting to be hit at any moment. Over on the right no horse. Kemper was down, impossible to live up there. Armistead moved on, expecting to die, but was not hit. He moved closer to the wall up there, past mounds of bodies, no line any more, just men moving forward at different speeds, stopping to fire, stopping to die, drifting back like leaves blown from the fire ahead. Armistead thought: we won’t make it. He lifted the sword again, screaming, and moved on, closer, closer, but it was all coming apart; the whole world was dying. Armistead felt a blow in the thigh, stopped, looked down at blood on his right leg. But no pain. He could walk. He moved on. There was a horse coming down the ridge: great black horse with blood all over the chest, blood streaming through bubbly holes, blood on the saddle, dying eyes, smoke-gray at the muzzle: Garnett’s horse.

Armistead held to watch the horse go by, tried to touch it. He looked for Garnett ahead; he might be afoot, might still be alive. But vision was mistier. Much, much smoke. Closer now. He could see separate heads; he could see men firing over the wall. The charge had come to a halt; the attack had stopped. The men ahead were kneeling to fire at the blue men on the far side of the wall, firing at the gunners of the terrible cannon. Canister came down in floods, wiping bloody holes. A few flags tilted forward, but there was no motion; the men had stalled, unable to go on, still thirty yards from the wall and no visible halt, unable to advance, unwilling to run, a deadly paralysis.

Armistead stopped, looked. Pettigrew’s men were coming up on the left: not many, not enough. Here he had a few hundred. To the right Kemper’s brigade had broken, but some of the men still fired. Armistead paused for one long second. It’s impossible now, cannot be done; we have failed and it’s all done, all those boys are dead, it’s all done, and then he began to move forward automatically, instinctively, raising the black hat on the sword again, beginning to scream, “Virginians! With me! With me!” and he moved forward the last yards toward the wall, drawn by the pluck of that great force from within, for home, for country, and now the ground went by slowly, inexorably, like a great slow river, and the moment went by black and slow, close to the wall, closer, walking now on the backs of dead men, troops around beginning to move, yelling at last the wild Rebel yell, and the blue troops began to break from the fence. Armistead came up to the stone wall, and the blue boys were falling back. He felt a moment of incredible joy. A hot slap of air brushed his face, but he was not hit; to the right a great blast of canister and all the troops to his right were down, but then there was another rush, and Armistead leaped to the top of the wall, balanced high on the stones, seeing the blue troops running up the slope into the guns, and then he came down on the other side, had done it, had gotten inside the wall, and men moved in around him, screaming. And then he was hit, finally, in the side, doubling him. No pain at all, merely a nuisance. He moved toward a cannon the boys had just taken. Some blue troops had stopped near the trees above and were kneeling and firing; he saw the rifles aimed at him. Too weary now. He had made it all this way; this way was enough. He put an arm on the cannon to steady himself. But now there was a rush from the right. Blue troops were closing in. Armistead’s vision blurred; the world turned soft and still. He saw again: a bloody tangle, men fighting hand to hand. An officer was riding toward him; there was a violent blow. He saw the sky, swirling round and round, thank God no pain. A sense of vast release, of great peace. I came all the way up, I came over the wall …

He sat against something. The fight went on. He looked down at his chest, saw the blood. Tried to breathe, experimentally, but now he could feel the end coming, now for the first time he sensed the sliding toward the dark, a weakening, a closing, all things ending now slowly and steadily and peacefully. He closed his eyes, opened them. A voice said, “I was riding toward you, sir, trying to knock you down. You didn’t have a chance.”

He looked up: a Union officer. I am not captured, I am dying. He tried to see: help me, help me. He was lifted slightly.

Everywhere the dead. All his boys. Blue soldiers stood around him. Down the hill he could see the gray boys moving back, a few flags fluttering. He closed his eyes on the sight, sank down in the dark, ready for death, knew it was coming, but it did not come. Not quite yet. Death comes at its own speed. He looked into the blue sky, at the shattered trees. It may be for years, it may be forever … The officer was speaking. Armistead said, “Is General Hancock … would like to see General Hancock.”

A man said, “I’m sorry, sir. General Hancock has been hit.”

“No,” Armistead said. He closed his eyes. Not both of us. Not all of us. Sent to Mira Hancock, to be opened in the event of my death. But not both of us, please dear God …

He opened his eyes. Closer now. The long slow fall begins.

“Will you tell General Hancock … Can you hear me, son?”

“I can hear you, sir.”

“Will you tell General Hancock, please, that General Armistead sends his regrets. Will you tell him … how very sorry I am …”

The energy failed. He felt himself flicker. But it was a long slow falling, very quiet, very peaceful, rather still, but always the motion, the darkness closing in, and so he fell out of the light and away, far away, and was gone.

Michael Shaara, The Killer Angels

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4 years ago

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Out front, George Pickett had ridden out before the whole division, was making a speech, but he was too far away and none of the men could hear. Then Pickett raised his sword. The order came down the line. Armistead, his voice never strong, bawled hoarsely, with all his force, “All right now, boys, for your wives, your sweethearts, for Virginia! At route step, forward, ho!”
He drew his sword, pointed it toward the ridge.
The brigade began to move.
He heard a chattering begin in the ranks. Someone seemed to be trying to tell a story. A man said, “Save your breath, boy.” They moved in the tall grass, Garnett’s whole line in front of them. The grass was trampled now, here and there a part in the line as men stepped aside to avoid a dead body, lost the day before. Armistead could still see nothing, nothing but the backs of the troops before him. He saw one man falter, looking to the right, gray-faced, to the sergeant who was watching him, had evidently been warned against him, now lifted a rifle and pointed it that way and the man got back into line.
The Northern artillery opened up, as if it had been asleep, or pulled back to lure them in. Massive wave of fire rolled over from the left. Pettigrew was getting it, then on the right batteries on the Rocky Hill were firing on Kemper. Garnett not yet really touched. Nothing much coming this way. But we didn’t drive off any Yankee guns. Win’s doing. He made them cease fire, knowing soon we’d be in the open. Guns to the left and right, nothing much in the center. Garnett’s doing well.
He began to see. They were coming out into the open, up to where the ground dipped toward the Emmitsburg Road. Now to the left he could see the great mass of Pettigrew’s division, with Trimble coming up behind him, advancing in superb order, line after line, a stunning sight, red battle flags, row on row. Could not see Pettigrew, nor Trimble. The line must be a mile long. A mile of men, armed and coming, the earth shuddering with their movement, with the sound of the guns. A shell exploded in Garnett’s line, another; gaps began to appear. Armistead heard the sergeants’ hoarse “Close it up, close it up,” and behind him he heard his own men coming and a voice saying calmly, cheerily, “Steady, boys, steady, there now, you can see the enemy, now you aint blind anymore, now you know exactly where’s to go, aint that fine?” A voice said hollowly, “That’s just fine.”
But the artillery sound was blossoming. A whole new set of batteries opened up; he could see smoke rolling across the top of the hill, and no counterfire from behind, no Southern batteries. God, he thought, they’re out of ammunition. But no, of course not; they just don’t like firing over our heads. And even as he thought of that he saw a battery moving out of the woods to his left, being rushed up to support the line. And then the first shell struck near him, percussion, killing a mass of men to his right rear, his own men, and from then on the shells came down increasingly, as the first fat drops of an advancing storm, but it was not truly bad. Close it up, close it up. Gaps in front, the newly dead, piles of red meat. One man down holding his stomach, blood pouring out of him like a butchered pig, young face, only a boy, the man bending over him trying to help, a sergeant screaming, “Damn it, I said close it up.”
Kemper’s brigade, ahead and to the right, was getting it. The batteries on the Rocky Hill were enfilading him, shooting right down his line, sometimes with solid shot, and you could see the damn black balls bouncing along like bowling balls, and here and there, in the air, tumbling over and over like a blood-spouting cartwheel, a piece of a man.
Armistead turned to look back. Solid line behind him, God bless them, coming on. Not so bad, now, is it? We’ll do it, with God’s help. Coming, they are, to a man. All good men here. He turned back to the front. Garnett’s men were nearing the road. He could see old Dick, still there, on the great black horse. And then the first storm of musketry: the line of skirmishers. He winced. Could not see, but knew. Long line of men in blue, lined, waiting, their sights set, waiting, and now the first line of gray is near, clear, nearer, unmissable, an officer screams, if they’re soldiers at all they cannot miss, and they’re Hancock’s men. Armistead saw a visible waver pass through the ranks in front of him. Close it up, close it up. The line seemed to have drifted slightly to the left. Heavy roll of musket fire now. The march slowing. He saw Garnett move down, thought for a moment, but no, he was moving down into that one swale, the protected area Pickett had spoken of. Armistead halted the men. Stood incredibly still in the open field with the artillery coming down like hail, great bloody hail. To the left, two hundred yards away, Pettigrew’s men were slowing. Some of the men in front had stopped to fire. No point in that, too soon, too soon. Pickett’s left oblique began. The whole line shifted left, moving to join with Pettigrew’s flank, to close the gap. It was beautifully done, superbly done, under fire, in the face of the enemy. Armistead felt enormous pride, his chest filled and stuffed with a furious love. He peered left, could not see Trimble. But they were closing in, the great mass converging. Now he moved up and he could see the clump of trees, the one tree like an umbrella, Lee’s objective, and then it was gone in smoke.
Garnett’s boys had reached the road. They were slowing, taking down rails. Musket fire was beginning to reach them. The great noise increased, beating of wings in the air. More dead men: a long neat line of dead, like a shattered fence. And now the canister, oh God, he shuddered, millions of metal balls whirring through the air like startled quail, murderous quail, and now for the first time there was screaming, very bad sounds to hear. He began to move past wounded struggling to the rear, men falling out to help, heard the sergeants ordering the men back into line, saw gray faces as he passed, eyes sick with fear, but the line moved on. Dress it up, close it up. He looked back for a moment and walked backward up the long rise, looking backward at his line, coming steadily, slowly, heads down as if into the wind, then he turned back to face the front.
To the right the line was breaking. He saw the line falter, the men beginning to clump together. Massed fire from there. In the smoke he could see a blue line. Kemper’s boys were shifting this way, slowing. Armistead was closing in. He saw a horse coming down through the smoke: Kemper. Riding. Because Garnett rode. Still alive, even on the horse. But there was blood on his shoulder, blood on his face, his arm hung limp, he had no sword. He rode to Armistead, face streaked and gray, screaming something Armistead could not hear, then came up closer and turned, waving the bloody arm.
“Got to come up, come up, help me, in God’s name. They’re flanking me, they’re coming down on the right and firing right into us, the line’s breaking, we’ve got to have help.”
Armistead yelled encouragement; Kemper tried to explain. They could not hear each other. A shell blew very close, on the far side of the horse, and Armistead, partially shielded, saw black fragments rush by, saw Kemper nearly fall. He grabbed Kemper’s hand, screaming, “I’ll double-time.” Kemper said, “Come quick, come quick, for God’s sake,” and reined the horse up and turned back to the right. And beyond him Armistead saw a long blue line, Union boys out in the open, kneeling and firing from the right, and beyond that violent light of rows of cannon, and another flight of canister passed over. Kemper’s men had stopped to fire, were drifting left. Too much smoke to see. Armistead turned, called his aides, took off the old black felt and put it on the tip of his sword and raised it high in the air. He called for double-time, double-time; the cry went down the line. The men began to run. He saw the line waver, ragged now, long legs beginning to eat up the ground, shorter legs falling behind, gaps appearing, men actually seeming to disappear, just to vanish out of the line, leaving a stunned vacancy, and the line slowly closing again, close it up, close it up, beginning to ripple and fold but still a line, still moving forward in the smoke and the beating noise.

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4 years ago

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We'd been decelerating at two gravities for almost nine days when the battle began.

Lying on our couches being miserable, all we felt were two soft bumps, missiles being released. Some eight hours later, the squawk box crackled:

"Attention, all crew. This is the captain." Quinsana, the pilot, was only a lieutenant, but was allowed to call himself captain aboard the vessel, where he outranked all of us, even Captain Stott. "You grunts in the cargo hold can listen, too.

"We just engaged the enemy with two fifty-gigaton tachyon missiles and have destroyed both the enemy vessel and another object which it had launched approximately three microseconds before.

"The enemy has been trying to overtake us for the past 179 hours, ship time. At the time of the engagement, the enemy was moving at a little over half the speed of light, relative to Aleph, and was only about thirty AU's from Earth's Hope. It was moving at .47c relative to us, and thus we would have been coincident in space-time"- rammed!-' 'in a little more than nine hours. The missiles were launched at 0719 ship's time, and destroyed the enemy at 1540, both tachyon bombs detonating within a thousand klicks of the enemy objects."

"The two missiles were a type whose propulsion system was itself only a barely-controlled tachyon bomb. They accelerated at a constant rate of 100 gees, and were traveling at a relativistic speed by the time the nearby mass of the enemy ship detonated them.

"We expect no further interference from enemy vessels. Our velocity with respect to Aleph will be zero in another five hours; we will then begin the journey back. The return will take twenty-seven days. "

General moans and dejected cussing. Everybody knew all that already, of course; but we didn't care to be reminded of it.

So after another month of logy calisthenics and drill, at a constant two gravities, we got our first look at the planet we were going to attack.

Invaders from outer space, yes sir.

Joe Haldeman, The Forever War

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4 years ago

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The eight French Crusaders were just making contact with the Backfires. The Russian bombers were on afterburner and were nearly as fast as the fighters. The carrier pilots had all heard their ship go off the air and were consumed with rage at what had happened, no longer the cool professionals who drove fighters off ships. Only ten Backfires were within their reach. They got six of them with their missiles and damaged two more before they had to break off.

USS Caron, the senior undamaged ship, tracked the Russians on her radar, calling Britain for fighters to intercept them on the trip home. But the Russians had anticipated this, and detoured far west of the British Isles, meeting their tankers four hundred miles west of Norway.

Already the Russians were evaluating the results of their mission. The first major battle of modem carriers and missile-armed bombers had been won and lost. Both sides knew which was which.

The fire on Nimitz was out within an hour. With no aircraft aboard, there were few combustibles about, and the ship's firefighting abilities equaled that of a large city. Toland brought her back to an easterly course. Saratoga was recovering aircraft, refueling them, and sending all but the fighters to the beach. Three frigates and a destroyer lingered to recover survivors, as the large ships turned back toward Europe.

"All ahead full," Svenson ordered from his seat on the bridge. "Toland, you all right?"

"No complaints." No point in it, the ship's hospital was more than full with hundreds of major injury cases. h hundreds of major injury cases. There was no count of the dead yet, and Toland didn't want to think about that.

"You were right," the captain said, his voice angry and subdued. "You were right. They made it too easy and we fell for it."

"There'll be another day, Captain.,,

"You're Goddamned right there will! We're heading for Southampton.

See if the Brits can fix anything this big. My regulars are still busy aft. Think you can handle the conn a little longer?"

"Yes, sir. "

Nimitz and her nuclear escorts bent on full speed, nearly forty knots, and rapidly left the formation behind. A reckless move, racing too fast for antisubmarine patrols, but a submarine would have to move quickly indeed to catch them.

Tom Clancy, Red Storm Rising

Created:

4 years ago

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USS NIMITZ

"New radar contact. Designate Raid-2-"

"What?" snapped Baker. Next came a call from the fighters.

"Clipper Base, this is Slugger Lead. I have a visual on my target." The squadron commander was trying to examine the target on his long-range TV camera. When he spoke, the anguish in his voice was manifest. "Warning, warning, this is not a Badger. We've been shooting at Kelt missiles!"

"Raid-2 is seventy-three aircraft, bearing two-one-seven, range one-three-zero miles. We have a Big Bulge radar tracking the formation," said the CIC talker.

Toland cringed as the new contacts were plotted. "Admiral, we've been had."

The group tactical warfare officer was pale as he toggled his microphone. "Air Warning Red. Weapons free! Threat axis is two-one-seven. All ships turn as necessary to unmask batteries."

The Tomcats had all been drawn off, leaving the formation practically naked. The only armed fighters over the formation were Foch's eight Crusaders, long since retired from the American inventory. On a terse command from their carrier, they went to afterburner and rocketed southwest toward the Backfires. Too late.

The Bear already had a clear picture of the American formations. The Russians could not determine ship type, but they could tell large from small, and identify the missile cruiser Ticonderoga by her distinctive radar emissions. The carriers would be close to her. The Bear relayed the information to her consorts. A minute later, the seventy Backfire bombers launched their hundred forty AS-6 Kingfish missiles and turned north at full military power. The Kingfish was nothing like the Kelt. Powered by a liquid-fuel rocket engine, it accelerated to nine hundred knots and began its descent, its radar-homing head tracking on a preprogrammed target area ten miles wide. Every ship in the center of the formation had several missiles assigned.

"Vampire, Vampire!" the CIC talker said aboard Ticonderoga. "We have numerous incoming missiles. Weapons free."

The group antiair warfare officer ordered the cruiser's Aegis weapons system into full automatic mode. Tico had been built with this exact situation in mind. Her powerful radar/computer system immediately identified the incoming missiles as hostile and assigned each a priority of destruction. The computer was completely on its own, free to fire on its electronic will at anything diagnosed as a threat. Numbers, symbols, and vectors paraded across the master tactical display. The fore and aft twin missile launchers trained out at the first targets and awaited the orders to fire. Aegis was state-of-the-art, the best SAM system yet devised, but it had one major weakness: Tico carried only ninety-six SM2 surface-to-air missiles; there were one hundred forty incoming Kingfish. The computer had not been programmed to think about that.

Aboard Nimitz, Toland could feel the carrier heeling into a radical turn, her engines advanced to flank speed, driving the massive warship at over thirty-five knots. Her nuclear-powered escorts, Virginia and California, were also tracking the Kingfish, their own missiles trained out on their launchers.

The Kingfish were at eight thousand feet, one hundred miles out, covering a mile every four seconds. Each had now selected a target, choosing the largest within their fields of view. Nimitz was the nearest large ship, with her missile-ship escorts to her north.

Tico launched her first quartet of missiles as the targets reached a range of ninety-nine miles. The rockets exploded into the air, leaving a trail of pale gray smoke. They had barely cleared the launch rails when the mounts went vertical and swiveled to receive their reloads. The load-and-fire time was under eight seconds. The cruiser would average one missile fired every two seconds. Just over three minutes later, her missile magazines were empty. The cruiser emerged from the base of an enormous gray arch of smoke. Her only remaining defenses were her gun systems.

The SAMs raced in at their targets with a closing speed of over two thousand miles per hour, directed in by the reflected waves of the ship's own fire-control radars. At a range of a hundred fifty yards from their targets, the warheads detonated. The Aegis system did quite well. Just over 60 percent of the targets were destroyed. There were now eighty-two incoming missiles targeted on a total of eight ships.

Other missile-equipped ships joined the fray. In several cases two or three missiles were sent for the same target, usually killing it. The number of incoming "vampires" dropped to seventy, then sixty, but the number was not dropping quickly enough. The identity of the targets was now known to everyone. Powerful active jamming equipment came on. Ships began a radical series of maneuvers like some stylized dance, with scant attention paid to station-keeping. Collision at sea was now the least of anyone's worries. When the Kingfish got to within twenty miles, every ship in the formation began to fire off chaff rockets, which filled the air with millions of aluminized Mylar fragments that fluttered on the air, creating dozens of new targets for the missiles to select from. Some of the Kingfish lost lock with their targets and started chasing Mylar ghosts. Two of them got lost, and selected new targets on the far side of the formation.

The radar picture on Nimitz suddenly was obscured. What had been discrete pips designating the positions of ships in the formation became shapeless clouds. Only the missiles stayed constant: inverted V-shapes, with line vectors to designate direction and speed. The last wave of SAMs killed three more. The vampire count was down to forty-one. Toland counted five heading for Nimitz Topside, the final defensive weapons were now tracking the targets. These were the CIWS, 20mm Gatling guns, radar-equipped to explode incoming missiles at a range of under two thousand yards. Designed to operate in a fully automatic mode, the two after gun mounts on the carrier angled up and began to track the first pair of incoming Kingfish. The portside mount fired first, the six-barrel cannon making a sound like that of an enormous zipper. Its radar system tracked the target, and tracked the outgoing slugs, adjusting fire to make the two meet.

The leading Kingfish exploded eight hundred yards from Nimitz's port quarter. The thousand kilograms of high explosive rocked the ship. Toland felt it, wondering if the ship had been hit. Around him, the CIC crewmen were concentrating frantically on their jobs. One target track vanished from the screen. Four left.

The next Kingfish approached the carrier's bow and was blasted out of the sky by the forward CIWS, too close aboard. Fragments ripped across the carrier's deck, killing a dozen exposed crewmen.

Number three was decoyed by a chaff cloud and ran straight into the sea half a mile behind the carrier. The warhead caused the carrier to vibrate and raised a column of water a thousand feet into the air.

The fourth and fifth missiles came in from aft, not a hundred yards apart. The after gun mount tracked on both, but couldn't decide which to engage first. It went into Reset mode and petulantly didn't engage any. The missiles hit within a second of one another, one on the after port corner of the flight deck, the other on the number two arrestor wire.

Toland was thrown fifteen feet, and slammed against a radar console. Next he saw a wall of pink flame that washed briefly over him. Then came the noises. First the thunder of the explosion. Then the screams. The after CIC bulkhead was no longer there; instead there was a mass of flame. Men twenty feet away were ablaze, staggering and screaming before his eyes. Toland's only thought was escape. He bolted for the watertight door. It opened miraculously under his hand and he ran to starboard. The ship's fire-suppression systems were already on, showering everything with a curtain of saltwater. His skin burned from it as he emerged, hair and uniform singed, to the flight deck catwalk. A sailor directed a water hose on him, nearly knocking him over the side.

"Fire in CIC!" Toland gasped.

"What the hell ain't!" the sailor screamed.

Toland fell to his knees and looked outboard. Foch had been to their north, he remembered. Now there was a pillar of smoke. As he watched, the last Kingfish was detonated a hundred feet over Saratoga's flight deck. The carrier seemed undamaged. Three miles away, Ticonderoga's after superstructure was shredded and ablaze from a rocket that had blown up within yards of her. On the horizon a ball of flame announced the destruction of yet another-my God, Toland thought, might that be Saipan? She had two thousand Marines aboard...

"Get forward, you dumbass!" a firefighter yelled at him. Another man emerged to the catwalk.

"Toland, you all right?" It was Captain Svenson, his shirt torn away and his chest bleeding from a half-dozen cuts.

"Yes, sir," Bob answered.

"Get to the bridge. Tell 'em to put the wind on the starboard beam. Move!" Svenson jumped up onto the flight deck.

Toland did likewise, racing forward. The deck was awash in firefighting foam, slippery as oil. Toland ran recklessly, falling hard on the deck before he reached the carrier's island. He was in the pilothouse in under a minute.

"Captain says put the wind on the starboard beam!" Toland said.

"It is on the fucking beam!" the executive officer snapped back. The bridge deck was covered with broken glass. "How's the skipper?"

"Alive. He's aft with the fire."

"And who the hell are you?" the XO demanded.

"Toland, group intel. I was in CIC."

"Then you're one lucky bastard. That second bird hit fifty yards from you. Captain got out? Anyone else?"

"I don't know. Burning like hell."

"Looks like you caught part of it, Commander."

Bob's face felt as if he'd shaved with a piece of glass. His eyebrows crumpled to his touch. "Flashburns, I guess. I'll be okay. What do you want me to do?"

The XO pointed to Toland's water wings. "Can you conn the ship.? Okay, do it. Nothing left to run into anyway. I'm going aft to take charge of the fire. Communications are out, radar's out, but the engines are okay and the hull's in good shape. Mr. Bice has the deck. Mr. Toland has the conn," XO announced as he left.

Toland hadn't conned anything bigger than a Boston Whaler in over ten years, and now he had a damaged carrier. He took a pair of binoculars and looked around to see what ships were nearby. What he saw chilled him.

Saratoga was the only ship that looked intact, but on second glance her radar mast was askew. Foch was lower in the water than she ought to have been, and ablaze from bow to stem.

"Where's Saipan?"

"Blew up like a fucking firework," Commander Bice replied. "Holy Jesus, there were twenty-five hundred men aboard! Tico took one close aboard. Foch took three hits, looks like she's gone. Two frigates and a destroyer gone, too-just fucking gone, man! Who fucked up? You were in CIC, right? Who fucked up?"

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4 years ago

0

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https://www.metabunk.org/threads/2004-uss-nimitz-tic-tac-ufo-flir-footage-flir1.9190/

Brevity is overated: if one pronounces fauxlaw's name fast it sounds like "flaw"

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4 years ago

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UFO's

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@FLRW

Retired Naval Commander David Fravor was conducting a training mission off the coast of California in 2004 when he saw it — an oblong craft flying erratically through his airspace at incredible speed,

Fravor's estimate was 600-700 knots which is 690- 805 mph. Fravor's own F-18's top speed is 1200 knots- twice as fast. Not all that incredible.

maneuvering in a way that defies accepted principles of aerodynamics.

Fravor reported that he could not keep up with the UFO's rate of turn. He was surprised that the object was mirroring his movement and then vanished just when it should have been in front of him. There's a bit of contradiction there, either it was mirroring his moves or turning faster. Either way, by Fravor's own accounting he never got a very good look at the thing and his targeting computer never got a lock so all distances and speeds are eyeball estimates. Consider that if you spot an object a mile away and you are moving at 1200 mph and the other object is moving at 600 mph, you have less than 2 seconds to see the thing before it is behind you. Fravor estimates that the object was at 4k ft altitude and he was at 16,000 ft - 2.25 miles below him. As an excellent and experienced pilot, Fravor will be the first to say that it literally could have been anything- refracted light, birds, planes, anything.

A different F-18 picked up an object 60 miles away just one second later and got an infrared image but observed no unusual behavior. I am highly skeptical that whatever Fravor saw is the object captured on tape. Here is that tape: https://youtu.be/lWLZgnmRDs4 That object is pretty consistent with what a jet plane looks like on infrared from 60 miles away- you can't make out wings or tail or windows at low resolution but you see light and heat reflecting off the lozenge shaped fuselage angled to about 11 o'clock.

Fravor didn't know what to make of it, but said it was not like anything he had ever seen in nearly 20 years of flying.

My father was a UFO investigator for Air Force intelligence for a couple of years. He used to say that a whole lot of normal stuff looks otherworldly when you are high in the air without reference points moving at high rates of speed.

Keep in mind that this was after days weird radar reports of planes in the vicinity that never proved out. The intercepting pilots were well spooked and actively looking for evidence of something strange going on. Under different circumstances, a pilot like Fravor might have seen the exact same thing and never reported it.

Isn't it possible that since we know that the Universe is a simulation, these objects are just glitches in the simulation generator?

I am not aware of any compelling evidence to suggest that the Universe is a simulation. Glitches in the radar sounds much more likely.

https://www.debateart.com/forum/topics/6181/post-links/267770

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4 years ago

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I also graduated

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@Vader

I’d you are old enough to die for your country then you are old enough to chemically alter your contemplation of that death, I always say.

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4 years ago

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Jokes

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@badger

It's a an old and stolen joke- check out the great documentary about the history of that joke called "The Aristocrats"

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4 years ago

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Double Standard For Females

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@Vader

-->@oromagi
When I was a male, I struggled....
what, what?
I explained what I struggled with in the post lol

Not that- when did you stop being a male?

The lack of holding themselves to the same standards they want for others goes to prove that modern feminism is nothing more than the defamation of men
Can we get some examples, please?
I can site examples through various social media outlets of females dehumanizing men on social media, but I will find some examples

In a TikTok video by @lllarsonmusic, he did a remix to Bella Porch's "Build a Bitch," discussing body positivity for females, and remixed it discussing body positivity for males, the video has over 155k negative comments such as one by the user @inara878: wow we cant have a song with men changing it to suit them, why am I not surprised

Don't use Tik Tok. Tik Tok is a Chinese owned application that Donald Trump warned last fall of "credible evidence that leads him to believe that Tik Tok "threatens to impair the national security of the United States." I agree that freedom of speech ought to prevent an outright ban but wise Americans should stay away from that shit, nevertheless.

Or another by @mai_szu: I feel like some ppl are missing the point, the lyrics here aren't the problem, it's how he wrote over issues that women face and made it about men These comment prove that they demonize a perfectly normal thing to meet their needs and cater to what they want, even if it means bringing men down and the issues they have. The double standards they set are ridiculous.

Well, given the app's history I've got no reason to believe that these usernames reflect the average American woman's values or are even actual women, for that matter. Could just be Chinese shit-stirrers. You got any examples of actual American opinion writers, influencers, etc?

-----------------------

You can even look at corporations and how they are creating plus sized models for females, yet there aren't any for men, is there a reason for that or is it purely coincidence?

Here's a Cosmo article from a week ago called "13 plus size male models to follow *immediately*"

the nonsensical bullshit legislation going on.
Democrats are working on infrastructure and voting rights. Republicans are (pretty much exclusively) working on banning transgender students from athletics (which violates your admiration of body positivity, no?) and recounting ballots from the last election. Which is the nonsensical bullshit, would you say?

There's a difference between choice and biology

Non-responsive. Is US infrastructure and the rights of US citizens to vote generally more important than big govt. telling schools which team 1/100th of 1% of athletes may play for when both schools and athletes clearly prefer to sort it out for themselves?

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4 years ago

0

Posted in:

Jokes

A man in a bowtie walks into the office of a well-known talent agent and says, "I've got the greatest act of all time!"

The talent agent says, "I'll give you one minute....OK, what do you do?"

"It's a bit of novelty act," says the bowtied man, "First my wife and I get naked and proceed to have sex, I then shit in her mouth and make her suck my dick, I then fuck her again and lick the remnants of shit and sperm off of her and spit it in her mouth. Then I cover her mouth with my hand and punch her in the stomach and watch the stuff fly out of her nose. I catch the spray of shit and jizz and blood with my mouth and swallow it whole. Then my daughter comes in and I fuck her in the ass while I suck my sons dick. While this is going on my wife starts banging my father and mother. I then fuck my mother and father while my wife fucks my kids. Then I blow my dads asshole and jerk him off. Then the dog comes in and I fuck it too. I then kill my mother with a gun and fuck the bullet hole. We all join in the blood orgy and piss on one another. We shit in the piss and blood and then puke in it. Then we dump it in a kiddy pool full of dead midgets and aborted babies. We then jump in the pool and bang the hell out of each other. I chop off my wife's boobs and she cuts off my dick, she sucks my stump and eats my balls. Then three midgets standing on each others heads come in and we kill them and add them to the pool. We slurp up everything in the pool and puke it on the audience. Then I smash my wife's head with a sledge hammer and cover the audience with her brains- Gallagher style. We take a bow and leave."

The talent agent says, "Hmmmm....now, what do you call this act?"

The bowtie man flaps his arms wide and says, "Wylted!"

Created:

4 years ago

0

Posted in:

I also graduated

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@Vader

Hooray for Supadudz!

Congratulations!

I went to college at 17 back when you only had to be 18 to drink- everybody went to the bars every night for the first year while I played video games- so see, it is good that you will turn 18 this summer.

Created:

4 years ago

1

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Double Standard For Females

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@Vader

When I was a male, I struggled....

what, what?

The lack of holding themselves to the same standards they want for others goes to prove that modern feminism is nothing more than the defamation of men

Can we get some examples, please?

the nonsensical bullshit legislation going on.

Democrats are working on infrastructure and voting rights. Republicans are (pretty much exclusively) working on banning transgender students from athletics (which violates your admiration of body positivity, no?) and recounting ballots from the last election. Which is the nonsensical bullshit, would you say?

Created:

4 years ago

1

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What's happened to DART mafia?

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@MisterChris

Well, we've never had a constant base of players if we define players as participants who show up at least once a day to play. Unlike any other place I've seen this game played, the most effective strategy by far was to ignore the game to the maximum extent allowed. Worse, without any sort of well-defined ruleset or limited set of potential roles, the capacity for deduction to solve the game's unknowns was essentially nullified (and with it, the point of playing). The game as we played it was mostly reduced to random chance and accidental (or deliberate) self-sabotage but very little of the rational or rhetorical challenge such a game might promise.

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4 years ago

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@fauxlaw

Much like Republican media calling for the Biden administration to visit the border less than four weeks after lifting restrictions while Republican politicians coordinate to deny access thus manufacturing a fake complaint in the absence of any genuine critique, fauxlaw complains that I over-answered a question he neglected to ask but also complains that I failed to answer the question he neglected to ask.

It probably goes without saying that fauxlaw ignored all of my arguments.

Even so and either way, fauxlaw gets it wrong by lazy reading.

I would not be at all surprised if Harris visits the border in NM or CA on her return from Mexico
working at the root of the problem rather than managing the most cosmetic symptom
and
just visiting the border ain't all its cracked up to be

were all quite direct and obvious replies to the never-asked question of when Harris will visit the border.

As has become something of a theme in American politics, Democrats are doing the work while Republicans blow puffy clouds of grandstand and fake indignation within the ever-shrinking confines of their bubblicious delusion. History will recall that illegal border crossings were at an all-time low and declining when Trump declared a fake crisis and ran for office with a entirely fake plan to fix it, the execution of which resulted in doubling the illegal migration as well as tripling the cost for half the effect. Now that America has fired that useless television bunglebunny, Republicans desperately seek to shift the blame for their child-murdering , family separating, billions wasted screw-ups instead of taking the only responsible course, which would be a brief period of moral chastisement and shut-the-fuck-up-so-the-grownups-can-talk.

Created:

4 years ago

2

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https://youtu.be/fQj3sbXivYY

Created:

4 years ago

0

Posted in:

Maybe just visiting the border ain't all its cracked up to be.

As of December 2020, the total funding given for new fencing was about $15 billion, a third of which had been given by Congress while Trump had ordered the rest taken from the military budget. This funding was intended to build new fencing over 738 miles (1,188 km), at a cost of about $20 million per mile; this would cover a little more than half the approximately 1,300 mi (2,100 km) that had no fencing when Trump took office.

A March 2021 review of the Trump work on the wall found only 47 miles (76 km) of new barriers where none had previously existed. While Trump had described the new wall as "virtually impenetrable", it was found that smugglers had repeatedly sawed through the wall with cheap power tools. Also, new dirt roads that had been used to access the wall construction served as new access roads for smugglers.

If we take the $5 billion Congress approved for the wall + the $10 billion Trump stole from our Armed Forces (which courts ruled was a blatant violation of US law) we spent about $320 million (17 times the cost of Trump's promised $20 million [after reneging on the promise that Mexico would pay] ) per mile. Now let's add the $6 billion wasted by the Trump Govt. shutdown to extort the first $5 billion from Congress + $12 billion spent on immigrant detentions we get $33 billion spent in 4 years for 47 miles of new wall and a significant net increase in illegal border traffic (Trump promised to get it down to zero).

Put another way, we could have paid each immigrant we caught during Trump's administration $15,000 if they would just go home and would have saved money over Trump's plan. Or we could have used those billions to prosecute a few high profile employers of illegal immigrants (The Trump Org itself employed many illegal immigrants in many different capacities), and ended illegal immigration altogether. As soon as we start prosecuting the people who pay the migrants to come and charge employers with fraud for hiding and illegally paying such laborers, the immigration problem will promptly subside.

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4 years ago

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@fauxlaw

The Biden Administration's position seems to be that you can't solve migration across the Southern Border by slowly building the most expensive walls in world history and corrupt fundraisers featuring racist rally rhetoric. Harris is working to restore some of the anti-corruption and economic development measures that proved fairly effective during the Bush and Obama administrations (and that Trump defunded) while continuing the maximal refusal policy of the Trump admin.

So, as Trump/Pence could never have done during the whole of their administration after offending both nations with anti-diplomatic insults, Harris is in Guatemala today, Mexico tomorrow working at the root of the problem rather than managing the most cosmetic symptom for the satisfaction of FOX news pundits.

We should note that Texas Gov Abbott has specifically asked Harris not to come to Texas which represents 2/3rds of the border and the AZ Gov has been too contemptuous of Harris to warrant a visit. I would not be at all surprised if Harris visits the border in NM or CA on her return from Mexico, given current FOX news focus on the issue.

NY TIMES:
IN GUATEMALA, HARRIS TELLS UNDOCUMENTED to STAY AWAY from US BORDER
IN HER FIRST FOREIGN TRIP as VICE PRESIDENT, KAMALA HARRIS PROMOTED ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT and ANTI-CORRUPTION EFFORTS, TRYING to STEM the NORTHWARD FLOW of MIGRANTS

GUATEMALA CITY — During her first foreign trip as vice president, Kamala Harris said the United States would bolster investigations into corruption and human trafficking in Guatemala, while also delivering a clear, blunt message to undocumented migrants hoping to reach the United States: “Do not come.”

Ms. Harris issued the warning during a trip that was an early yet pivotal test for a vice president currently tasked with the complex challenge of breaking a cycle of migration from Central America by investing in a region plagued by corruption, violence and poverty.

While President Biden campaigned on unwinding some of the Trump administration’s border restrictions, allowing migrants to apply for asylum at the U.S. border, Ms. Harris amplified the White House’s current stance that most of those who crossed the border would be turned away and would instead need to find legal pathways or protection closer to their home countries.

She did not shy away from brusque language when it came to discussing corruption with the Guatemalan president, Alejandro Giammattei, who has been criticized for having a political agenda and for persecuting officials who fight corruption.

“We will look to root out corruption wherever it exists,” Ms. Harris said, adding that the administration would support an anti-corruption unit in the attorney general’s office in Guatemala that has been the subject of criticism from Mr. Giammattei. “That has been one of our highest priorities in terms of the focus we have put here after the president asked me to take on this issue of focusing on this region.”

Ms. Harris, whose own aspirations to the presidency are clear, was tapped by Mr. Biden to invest in Central America to discourage the vulnerable from making the dangerous journey north. Mr. Biden has faced criticism from Republicans and some moderate Democrats in the early months of his term for the soaring number of crossings of unaccompanied minors at the U.S.-Mexico border.

But the Biden administration has continued to use a Trump-era rule to turn back most migrant adults, sparking backlash from human rights groups.

Rachel Schmidtke, the Latin America advocate for Refugees International, a pro-immigrant group, said in a statement Monday that the organization was concerned Ms. Harris’s remarks discouraging migrants from trying to cross to the border undermined their right to seek asylum in the United States.
Editors’ Picks

The vice president’s top aides have sought to differentiate her role from the political land mine of managing the border, instead saying her focus is on working with foreign governments to bolster the Central American economy and create more opportunities for people who now see fleeing to the United States as their best option.

Ms. Harris announced new steps in the effort on Monday. The Biden administration will deploy homeland security officers to Guatemala’s northern and southern borders to train local officials — a tactic similar to one used by previous administrations to deter migration. The State and Justice Departments will also establish a task force to investigate corruption cases that have links to Guatemala and the United States, while also training Guatemalan prosecutors.

“We did have a very frank conversation about the importance of an independent judiciary,” Ms. Harris said. “We had a conversation about the importance of a strong civil society.”

For his part, Mr. Giammattei described the accusations against him as “misinformation.”

He also said that while meeting with Ms. Harris he once again requested the Biden administration temporarily exempt some Guatemalans from deportation by granting protections normally issued to those fleeing natural disasters or war, citing hurricanes that hit Central America last year. When he asked Ms. Harris about the subject in front of reporters, she did not directly respond.

The Biden administration also outlined an investment of $48 million in entrepreneurship programs, affordable housing and agricultural businesses in Guatemala, part of a four-year, $4 billion plan to invest in the region. Ms. Harris last month touted commitments from a dozen private companies, including Mastercard and Microsoft, to develop the economy in Central America.

But hanging over those programs are questions about how to ensure that U.S. aid benefits those who need it most, and not just contractors enlisted by the United States or Guatemalan officials.

Guatemala in 2019 expelled a United Nations-backed anti-corruption panel, known as Cicig, which worked alongside Guatemalan prosecutors to bring corruption cases but was also accused by conservatives in the country of having a political agenda.

Ricardo Zúñiga, Mr. Biden’s special envoy to Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, described such independent anti-corruption panels as “very successful efforts.” But Ms. Harris’s team stopped short of saying they believed Guatemala needed an independent entity to investigate corruption.

“The point is that there’s not one specific model,” Mr. Zúñiga said. “The point is to provide support to the people within the government, or within the institutions, judicial institutions, mainly, who have the will and the capacity to drive those cases forward.”

Ms. Harris made a point in her opening remarks to focus on encouraging would-be migrants to stay closer to home while applying for permission to enter the United States and waiting to receive replies. Days earlier, her top aides announced plans to establish a new center in Guatemala where people can learn about obtaining asylum protections or refugee status while still in Central America, rather than traveling to the U.S. border.

“Most people don’t want to leave the place they grew up. Their grandmother. The place they prayed. The place where their language is spoken, their culture is familiar,” Ms. Harris said. “And when they do leave it usually has to do with two reasons: Either they are fleeing some harm or they simply cannot satisfy their basic needs.”

In Chex Abajo, a mountainside village 155 miles away from Guatemala City, where Ms. Harris spoke, Nicolás Ajanel Juárez, said his community is unable to secure such necessities, despite promises made by various American presidents.

The village of Indigenous corn farmers embodies the daunting task facing the vice president. Mr. Juárez, a member of the local leadership, said many of the 600 residents watched as their homes were blown away in twin hurricanes. Profits from corn crops are no longer reliable as climate change has extended the dry season.

Many families in the village rely on remittances from relatives in the United States. Those whose standard of living has been raised by U.S. wages have larger homes made of cement and iron, marked with stars and American flags. The main road in the village is called “Ohio” because of the number of migrants who have found work landscaping in that state.

Mr. Juárez, who crossed the border three times in the last two decades, said that until the community members have stable work migration to the United States will continue.

“It would be best if help can come directly instead of through government because that’s where it gets lost,” Mr. Juárez said against music playing for a nearby ceremony memorializing a member of the community who crossed into the United States and died two years ago. “Politicians don’t know because they don’t come here, to see with their own eyes the needs of the people.”

After meeting with Mr. Giammattei, Ms. Harris met with a group of women who have organized development programs for Indigenous communities, or training for those looking to gain business skills.

But before that, she acknowledged the symbolic weight of being the first female vice president, and of making Guatemala her first foreign destination in that office. While a group of protesters holding signs opposing Ms. Harris’s visit stood near one entrance of the military airport, a line of families, many of them women, stood along another fence hoping to catch a glimpse of Air Force II as it landed in Guatemala.

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4 years ago

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ethang5

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@badger

and isnt' our own RELIGION forum just as nasty with a little more wit?

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4 years ago

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ethang5

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@badger

It's like something out of Norse mythology.

is it, tho?

Is cut & paste trolling ever really an epic read? I guess it depends on how much ill feeling you like in your internet conversation.

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4 years ago

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ethang5

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@badger

is it, tho?

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4 years ago

1

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https://www.forbes.com/sites/chadorzel/2016/05/04/the-real-reasons-quantum-entanglement-doesnt-allow-faster-than-light-communication/

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@Lunatic

I love the top of the Empire State building.
Statue of Liberty is great but it will eat major time- perhaps just take the ferry to Staten Island & back
I would do at least one long subway ride underground and elevated- out to Queens or the Bronx
One ferry to Staten Island, Statue of Liberty, or Brooklyn
I would do one long taxi ride, maybe up to Harlem 125th St for soul food or barbeque.
Dumbo is the hippest place these days, I've heard- on the far side of Brooklyn Bridge- maybe walk or bike or scooter out there for a meal or show. Brooklyn Bridge by itself is amazing. Do they have scooters for rent in NYC, I wonder?
I think the Egyptian and Roman exhibits @ the Met are awesome and a walk around Central Park is a must. Maybe get lunch at Zabar's Deli.
I've never been to the Guggenheim but that is on my bucket list.
I would definitely try to walk the new High Line Park.
There's an immersive Van Gogh exhibit on Pier 36 that sounds like a blast.
The best meal of my whole life was a summer night out on Mulberry St. but that was 20 yrs ago. I called the front desk at the Ritz and asked them to tell me the best Italian on Mulberry St. If I was there now, I'd probably see if I could get into Craft- Tom Collichio's place- which is not on Mulberry.
Definitely a bagel from a top rated bagel shop- they really are better in NYC
You got to try to do a show. I would try for Hamilton or Little Shop of Horrors or Company but its all about last minute availability.
Late night Chinese in Chinatown
Coffee shops in Greenwich Village & walk around Washington Sq. There's a Spanish restaurant called Sevilla with amazing Paella & Sangrias.

Of course, it Pride month so I'd be checking out Christopher St.

Some mid-town Dive Bar like Strangelove's
Time's Square at night, of course
Robert De NIro's Tribeca Film Fest is this week- might be hard to get a movie but the art galleries and sidewalks will be hopping down there.
No matter how hard you try you will only scratch the surface- there's a million things to do.

Created:

4 years ago

3

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Would Quantum Communication Affect Time Dilation if at All?

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@zedvictor4

Any place in that last post that reads billions should be millions, sorry for the error

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4 years ago

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Platform development

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@DebateArt.com

I prefer to use a very old, unsupported browser on a very old unsupported Mac and this update broke my ability to post entirely but I'm not sure it worth the effort. The update works fine on my iPhone, Linux and Windows10.

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4 years ago

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Good music

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@Lemming

when I was a kid, the priests in our church would sing the lord's prayer in latin to the mass.

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4 years ago

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Would Quantum Communication Affect Time Dilation if at All?

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@Reece101

Pohl introduced the Heechee in a 1972 novella, "The Merchants of Venus" (sometimes called "The Merchants of Venus Underground"). In 1990, it was packaged with nine original short stories as The Gateway Trip (Del Rey Books), a book of about 240 pages that is the only collection in the Heechee series.[1]

Five novels published from 1977 to 2004 also feature the Heechee.

Gateway (St. Martins, 1977)
Beyond the Blue Event Horizon (Del Rey, 1980)
Heechee Rendezvous (Del Rey, 1984)
The Annals of the Heechee (Del Rey, 1987)
The Boy Who Would Live Forever: A Novel of Gateway (Tor Books, 2004)

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Would Quantum Communication Affect Time Dilation if at All?

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@Reece101

For an extreme example someone orbiting close to a black hole communicating with someone on Earth.

If you have never read Frederick Pohl's HeeChee Saga, I would highly recommend these books to people who like thinking about communication within and without black holes.

As humans begin to explore the solar system, they discover some millions of years old artifacts from some ancient culture, including lots of little spaceships. Humans can figure out how to stop and start these ships but have no understanding of navigation and propulsion and a crazy wild west suicide culture develops for teams who ride these spaceships out into the galaxy- something like one in six returns with some tech or information worth exploiting but the majority of people just die miserably. By the fourth book, one mad scientist has figured out one ship sufficiently to plunge deep into the gravity wells around black holes, trying to rescue a lost relative plunging into singularity at ever slowing rates of speed but accidently discovers that the HeeChee shipbuilding civilization is still alive and is hiding in the super slow time of the gravity wells to escape an massive invasion of the Milky Way by a hostile race from another galaxy, and now humanity has just outed their hiding place.

great stuff.

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Would Quantum Communication Affect Time Dilation if at All?

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@zedvictor4

How do scientists actually know what occurred between 3 and 6 billion years ago.

Ram is right. There are few facts in science, only working theories- astrophysics more than most scientific studies. You might notice that I couched the findings in the language of scientific uncertainty "shows evidence of...", "We might not understand it but that's some indication...", etc.

Olsen, et al. is working to improve our model of the universe as it expanded over time. If we understand that photons of light never die but travel outward through the universe, their wavelength stretching out ever longer and shallower at a constant rate and direction, then we can use measurements of that Cosmic Microwave Background to model the early universe. When we compare that radiation to the radiation of the present universe we make a starting point and ending point for our model. Then we start to fill in that history with known principles of astrophysics. For example, we have a pretty good understanding of the life cycle of stars and how those life cycles vary according to mass. We can also estimate the mass of a galaxy by the size and velocity of that galaxy. We also can measure the metallicity of a galaxy and the increase in metallicity over time which is pegged to supernovae. There are many other inputs on which to build models. Where models based on various constants demonstrate a high degree of agreement with other models based on other constants, scientist start to trust that data and input it into the models. Big galaxies introduce way more variables than dwarf galaxies so we have much better models for the birth and progress of dwarf galaxies. It is easier to measure the changes in light over time from closer galaxies than far away galaxies so we have much better models for closer galaxies. For this exercise, scientists wanted to be able to pick out individual stars and be able to count factors like frequency of white dwarfs and pulsars, etc. to help lock down ages. So of the 80 dwarf galaxies in our local group, scientists picked the 36 galaxies that they could see clearly enough to count stars.

The existing models says we should see such & such radiation emitted by Galaxy XYZ 200 million years ago and such & such radiation emitted buy that same galaxy 100 million years later. These scientists note substantial reductions in radiation compared to the expected model across all these galaxies beginning 600 billion years ago and lasting for 300 billion years, as they break down these finding into pieces (say tens of billions of years), variables like lower white dwarf counts and fewer supernovae suggest that far fewer stars were being created to a degree sufficient to account for the variation in radiation.

I'm sure any student of astronomy would call that an amateurish representation but hopefully that helps explain the scientists' methodology.

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Would Quantum Communication Affect Time Dilation if at All?

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@Reece101

No because we can’t correlate states until measurements from both particles are compared- meaning we’ve never transmitted Information by exploiting the correlation (and Einstein says we never will)

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Would Quantum Communication Affect Time Dilation if at All?

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@Ramshutu

@Reece101

Hi Ram- good to read your name again.

I interpret Reece’s question to be along the lines of quantum entanglement. If a group of particles can be generated entangled so that each particle’s quantum state cannot described independently from other members of the group- even when separated by large distance, can we use that simultaneity for the purpose of transmitting information instantaneously over large distance?

....and is such simultaneity subject to gravitational effects on Time?( I think the answer would be yes)

...and if not, could such simultaneity be employed to transmit information out from the theoretical recesses of very slowly moving time near black holes? (I would say no to the extent that any transmission of information at speeds faster than light is theoretically impossible.

I do think that Reece’s question is intended more in the spirit of sci-fi possibilities rather than established quantum physics.

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