07:40 – I just started reading An Unmarked Grave: A Bess Crawford Mystery. It’s set during WWI. Bess is a British nurse serving in France. She could be my grandmother, literally.
My father’s mother was born in 1893. She trained as a nurse, and joined the US Army when we declared war on Germany. At the time, women were allowed to serve in the US Army only as nurses, and all US Army nurses were women. Age 24, she went to France and spent the rest of the war caring for wounded and ill US soldiers. She survived the flu epidemic. That’s all I know. I don’t know if she served at a field hospital or a base hospital in Paris, or both. She never talked about it. Nor did my father, who may himself not have known.
In fact, grandma wasn’t much for telling stories about the past, period. The only one I remember was the one about December 7th, 1941, when she said she was literally almost lynched as a German spy. She’d hung a quilt over the railing to air it out. Unfortunately, the quilt (which we still have) was white with a pattern of large red swastikas. At the time, my grandmother and other quilters still thought of the swastika as an obscure Indian symbol. Even so, grandma had some quick talking to do to calm down her outraged neighbors. Someone had reported it to the police, who came out to interview her. I think I remember my dad saying that she also got a visit from the FBI. She must have satisfied everyone, because she wasn’t arrested. They let her keep the quilt, which she packed away for 20 or 30 years.
13:05 – We just got an order for seven chemistry kits, which is the most we’ve sold to a single buyer. I think the previous record was four. That order takes us down to eight chemistry kits in stock, with another 30 nearly ready to assemble. I had planned to do 30 forensics kits as the next batch, but I think we’d better do 30 more chemistry kits next instead. Given that we don’t expect orders to peak until August/September, it looks as though we’ll sell a lot of kits this year. Now, the only problem will be keeping up with the orders. We’re still shipping the same day for orders we receive before 11:00 a.m. our time, but that’s likely to start slipping soon.
I’m also placing purchase orders for larger numbers than I’d have believed just a few months ago. Yesterday, I ordered a case of 216 9V batteries and 4,000 coin envelopes. Chemicals that I had been ordering 100 g at a time I’m now ordering 500 g or a kilo at a time. By necessity, I’m spreading out, with raw materials, components, subassemblies, and finished inventory stacked all over the place. Fortunately, Barbara has a sense of humor about it. At least so far.
16:14 – Oh, yeah. With regard to the failed two-day EU summit that commences tomorrow, don’t even bother reading the news articles. The two sides’ positions are already set in concrete, and they’re entirely irreconcilable. France, Italy, and Spain demand that Germany pay their bills, but refuse to give Germany any control over how its money is to be spent. Germany, personified by the new Iron Lady, Angela Merkel, says that’ll happen over her dead body. And she means it. There’s really not any reason to hold this summit. If Germany does not give France, Italy, and Spain what they’re demanding, the three of them collapse, Italy and Spain sooner and France a bit later. If Merkel tries to give them what they want, she’ll be overruled at home, if not crucified. She’d certainly lose the election next year. And, even if somehow Germany agreed to pay all the bills, that simply means Germany will be dragged down with the rest. It’s not going to happen. Everyone knows it’s not going to happen. And yet everyone talks about this summit as though there’s actually even the slightest hope of anything being accomplished. Cloud-cuckoo land indeed.
I was pretty sure that the Swastika had an eastern origin, this article seems to confirm that:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika
I don’t know why people would have been upset with the Swastika on 7th December ’41, since Germany didn’t declare war on the US till a few days later.
By that time, the isolationist sentiment in the US had started to shift, particularly on the Eastern seaboard and in most larger towns and cities. The Midwest and most of rural America still favored staying out, as well as the North Central areas that had been settled by Germans and other mid-Europeans, but even there Germany’s actions were generally abhorred. My grandmother was at the time a matron in her late 40’s who didn’t pay much attention to politics, particularly European politics.
I’ve often thought about what Hitler’s biggest strategic mistake was, and declaring war on the US has to have been in the top two or three, if not number one. Had he not done that, the US might have focused all of its attention on the Pacific war. You have to remember that at that time most Americans thought the situation in Europe was really just WWI Part Two, between Germany on the one hand and the UK on the other. The slaughter of Jews and other Nazi atrocities was not yet known. In fact, it hadn’t really started yet on a large scale. There was a great deal of sentiment in the US favoring neutrality in the European theater, even after Pearl Harbor. But there were also many people who hated Nazi Germany and favored supporting the UK with whatever it took.
When I was a kid in the 1950’s, we lived in an apartment building in Chicago (in Hyde Park, Obama’s neighborhood). The lobby floor of the building had a swastika pattern set in tile. Once I understood what it was, I thought it strange.
In the early 1980’s, my wife and I spent three years in the same neighborhood while I attended law school. The building was still there, but the floor was covered with carpet.
Rick in Portland
Swastikas appear in almost every culture, in one form or another. Shame it’s been perverted out of sight. Hundreds of societies can use it for peace, and one to ruin it, forever.
I still consider WWII to be WWI: Part Two, and like many sequels was much worse than the original. IMHO WWIII will be WWI: Part Three, and will be the worst of all. The atrocities were certainly known about, but who listened to Jews and homosexuals in the thirties? Many countries thought the Nazi treatment of Jews to be valid, in those days. This is a video about Sir Nicholas Winton, who in 1938 traveled to Prague to try and help Jewish refugees escape before the war broke out.
Further to repeating history, all this messing about in the Middle East is historically the same as the Crusades. It’s bleeding us white, and diverting our attention from home, where the rulers are entrenching themselves, and seizing more power than they should. I wonder if we’ll be able to extract anything resembling the Magna Carta out of Prince Obama Lackland and his Czars?
The Louis XVI treatment would be ideal for all members of the American
ruling class. We probably won’t get that, so the Romanov treatment would
be acceptable.
What I meant was that the Final Solution was not implemented until after the Wansee Conference in January 1942. Before that, the Nazis had concentration camps, where a lot of people died, but the organized mass murder didn’t really start until the Nazis created the death camps in the East. Before that, they were murdering in much smaller numbers, thousands rather than millions; afterwards, it went wholesale.
While the Final Solution wasn’t implemented until 1942, there were lots of temporary solutions already in place. By the time the FS was set to roll, over a million Jews, and homosexuals, and other undesirables had already been “solved”. Many with nods of approval by future enemies. Even Canada’s PM at the time William Lyon MacKenzie King referred to Hitler in 1938 as “a nice man, who has his country’s best interests at heart”. Coincidentally, King was born in Berlin, Ontario, which was later renamed Kitchener due to anti-German sentiments.
Yes, the western democracies to their lasting shame did nothing until much too late. Before 1941, the Nazis attempted to deport Jews en masse, but the UK, US, Canada, and others refused to take more than a pitiful few. And even after the Allied leadership was fully aware of the extermination camps it refused to bomb the railheads, claiming that war production targets were a higher priority. Certainly by that time the Nazis had gotten very good at repairing damage to their rail transport system. Damage done one day was often repaired overnight and the trains moving again the next day. But even so.
One American did more than the rest of our entire state department to help Jews escape Occupied France, and was reassigned in 1941 because of his efforts. Here’s the Wikipedia page about Hiram Bingham IV.
WWI was fought to rid Europe of the destructive, ever-fighting kings, and WWII was fought to rid them of the dictators which replaced the kings. Kings were once educational proxies when education of the masses was prohibitively expensive, but one man could be well-educated and make rational decisions for the uneducated. However, as education became cheaper and pervasive, kings were outmoded and often did not act in the interests of their subjects. Time to remove them from decision-making, but it took WWI to do that.
People were a generation closer to Europe back then; most had European parents or grandparents. Mine certainly did—on all sides. That no doubt made the decision for the US to help Europe an easier one to make. I have always been in awe that the US would do something on such a grand man, machine, and economic scale for basically nothing in return (and then rebuild the devastation of WWII with The Marshall Plan later), but then, nearly everyone of that generation had a parent or grandparent who came from Europe.
What really has made me proud, is that the American military took great pains to avoid bombing courthouses with city records, schools, universities with knowledge, and hospitals—and kept the British from bombing them, too. Unfortunately, Dresden was a perfect example of the British functioning out-of-control. However, I doubt any US military feels a connection to Europe that would keep them from bombing those sites today.
Temps here to jump to 102°F/39°C tomorrow. Have to be in a high-rise office building in downtown Indy tomorrow, and from past experience, those places do not seem able to cool well at all in sunshine and that kind of heat. Since all buildings are sealed up tight these days, it won’t even be possible to open the windows—not that you would want to when it is 102 outside.
“Dresden was a perfect example of the British functioning out-of-control.”
Dresden was intended to play the same same role in Europe as Hiroshima and Nagasaki played in Japan. On the basis of your logic, then I assume you say that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were perfect examples, multiply and re-iterated, of the USA functioning out of control. That’s fair, is it not?
And do let us remember that the Boche bombed Coventry, doing there, at that stage of the war, without reason, excuse or even much warning, what was later done to Dresden; but well over four years before the Allies moved to end the war in Europe by bombing Dresden.
The difference between a king and a dictator, and for the duly elected President for that matter, is moot to the cannon fodder sent to fight their wars. And I can’t help but notice that most of the Allies that had kings before WWI, somehow retained their monarchy…
You are correct; I would not have nuked Japan, nor fire-bombed Dresden in the manner in which it was. Of course, I was not there, but Kurt Vonnegut was, and from what I know, his position agrees with mine. Since he went to high school with my MIL, I trust his analysis.
Dresden did not force Germany into surrender, the Russians did.
Yeah, retained their monarchy like the British do. 100% impotent.
RBT writes:
If Germany does not give France, Italy, and Spain what they’re demanding, the three of them collapse….
All 4 of them. There is no way Germany can escape this now. Everyone is well aware of that, and it explains Merkel’s recent waffling. Merkel is out of there. This is her last term, no matter what path she follows now. Germany might as well pay now, because they will be paying, regardless. That is just now becoming clear to the general populace.
Solidarity is such a nasty thing when you insisted on it in the beginning, but did not really mean it.
Chuck the peacenik wrote:
“I would not have nuked Japan…”
How would you have won the war in the Pacific? An invasion would have cost millions of lives on both sides and added at least a year to the war. Starving them out would have cost less of our lives but possibly more of theirs.
Avoiding an invasion was only part of the reason for using the atomic bomb. With the war in Europe over, the Soviets were about to turn their attention to the east. To keep the Soviets out, the war had to ended quickly and the atom bomb was the fastest way to do that. It also served as a demonstration to the Soviets. If the Soviets hadn’t already stolen the information to build their own, it would certainly have encouraged them to start. As it was, it was only four years until they tested their own atomic bomb and eight years until they had their own hydrogen bomb. But the US (and the British) really wanted to keep them out of Japan and the Far East,
Although the Sovs stole a lot of information from the Manhattan project they actually had some very smart people, who were highly motivated. (Cars, a nice dacha, good education for the kids for performing well, and taskmasters like the humanitarian Beriya and Stalin for the under-performers.) Although it was thought that the Sovs were well behind (their atom bomb was four years behind the allied effort and based on espionage) they had a deliverable H-Bomb before the US. The first American H-Bomb was the size of a small apartment block.
Certainly Truman got it right by dropping the two Atom bombs on Imperialist Japan and thus saving many more Japanese but more so US Troops.
I believe there was a third bomb which should have been loaded onto a B29 which should have then been flown to Moscow and released.
Considering the atrocities committed by the Nazi’s the bombing of Dresden was appropriate as well.
People who oppose the atomic bombings in Japan have to state how the war would have ended without their use. Sometimes they say that Japan was effectively defeated and on her knees, true, but the practical problems of invading Japan were still there. The invasion points were completely obvious to both sides and so defensive positions could have been put in place that would have cost many lives to overcome.
An alternative was starving them out. Japan’s navy was completely buggered and there’s no way they could have brought in the necessary fuel, food, and so on. That would have been an effective way of forcing surrender but it would have taken many months and the cost in Japanese civilian lives would probably have been higher than the A bombings. The ruling clique had the general population so brainwashed that a good portion of them thought they were winning the war.
You’re all a bunch of murderous killers who hate Gaea. Atomic weapons
and atomic energy can never be justified because the nuclear waste will
be around forever. And how can you blithely condone the nuking
of innocent civilians just to save the lives of murderous, baby-raping
American soldiers?
The only justifiable use of anything nuclear is in turning ordinary
people into super-powered mutants. Let’s face it, the world is boned
because of incompetent and dishonest leadership. No “normal” fix will
pull us through this mess. What we need is to think outside the box for
a solution. I suggest exposing everyone to different kinds of radiation
in hopes of superpowers developing and saving the world.
I suggest exposing everyone to different kinds of radiation
in hopes of superpowers developing and saving the world.
But then we would have to be worried about Kryptonite.
Actually, nuclear medicine saved me from a life of being able to eat whatever I want and sleep whenever I want and not gain weight. It was a thyroid condition called Graves disease, and the treatment was Iodine 131.
We need a sarcasm font for SteveF to use…
What we really need is a troll font and a bunch of stupid visitors
coming to this site. Get on that, will ya, RBT?
Wow, RBT works fast!
I’m not interested in revenge, and you guys are driving me to become a Quaker. I already vote in their church basement.
Revenge?
Dresden.
So bombing Dresden and the Atom bomb drops on Japan were all acts of revenge? Those actions were necessary for unconditional wins and the surrender of both Japan and Germany. I feel no remorse that my Country undertook those actions necessary to win a decisive victory in a major war, something that seems lacking in our current crop of military and civilian leadership.
The bombings of Dresden and Hiroshima/Nagasaki were all generally considered military necessities at the time, and only with revisionist historians did they become “atrocities”. I don’t understand how anyone who understands anything about the military situation could condemn any of those bombings. All of them ultimately saved a lot more lives than they cost, and in particular they saved Allied lives.
Dresden in particular has been used to falsely claim that the US and UK engaged in war crimes. In fact, Dresden was as valid a military target as any that the Allies bombed. It was a major rail hub and communications center, and a major center of production for military goods. The bombings occurred in mid-February of 1945, at which time Germany was by no means down and out. (In fact, IIRC, German war production peaked around that time.)
German deaths resulting from the bombing were relatively light, given the size and importance of the target and the scale of the bombings. IIRC, the actual deaths were only around 25,000, although there have been ridiculous claims of 20 times that number. (Even the Germans at the time, trying to make this into a war crime, claimed only 25,000, IIRC.)
Obviously, you military and ex-military guys are not going to oppose Dresden or Japan. I did not condemn that action; I said only that I would not have done either, had I been President. But, lucky for you, I had not yet been born. We had better Presidents than Truman, and his revengeful act of firing MacArthur is proof in my book. Truman’s style I admired, but so many of his decisions were positively whacked.
My own take on German history from living and learning inside Germany, is that by 1942, they were in significant financial trouble. By ’44 they were incapable of new military initiatives that cost additional money. Even so, any military failures occurred largely only because Hitler was countermanding many of his officer’s orders—thus the willingness for some of his officers to participate in the failed July ’44 assassination attempt. But thanks to Hitler’s own incompetence, Germany would have fallen without Dresden.
Re-fighting wars with modern sensibilities isn’t really fair, is it? Had I been Chancellor of Germany during the 30s, I wouldn’t have invaded Poland. We can make up many imaginary scenarios. However, I think that had you been born then, you would have had different ideas than the modern Chuck does.
Also consider that the bombing of Dresden also served as a warning to the Soviets about the Allied resolve and willingness to break things, before they got any ideas about further encroachment into Europe.
Sacking MacArthur was entirely the right thing to do. He was insubordinate amongst many other things.
I would have preferred not to have to toast cities like Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki but there was simply no choice. They started the war, hadn’t surrendered and so targets in those countries were fair game. The Japanese had plans to fight to the bitter end, even if it meant extinction for their nation. Words to that effect were used by top Japanese leaders. And they planned to make the US pay a very very high price for an invasion. The war would have gone on for another year at least, millions of casualties on both sides. They also could have been starved out by a blockade, but that would have cost millions of Japanese and Asian lives – a blockade would not have immediately stopped what Japan was doing in China and SE Asia.
So Chuck, which do you prefer? Atomic bombing and a quick end to the war? Blockade and millions more Asian deaths? Invasion and many millions of US and Japanese deaths? Or unconditional US surrender?
I doubt that my sensibilities would have been much different, had I lived in another era, however, I LOVE living now. Flush toilets, modern shower, and air-conditioning, I would not want to live without. Nor would I want to be without modern computing. One of the Rivendell software guys just got that automation system installed on a Raspberry Pi. The Pi, if you don’t know, is a $35 credit card-sized PC with a 700mhz ARM processor with 256mb non-expandable RAM, RS232 connector, LCD screen ribbon connector, HDMI video out, RCA composite video out, audio out, LAN, USB, SD card plug, and 8xGPIO connections. It has an LXDE version of Linux pre-installed, but you can install other distros. Runs on USB power or 4xAA batteries.
To run the radio automation, it needs to be networked to the audio store and its associated database, as the Pi has no local storage other than the SD card. It is not robust enough to perform production tasks (importing audio events or ripping CD’s), but as a strictly automation playout machine—wow! Things are getting tiny.
I am NOT refighting the war. I stated that had I been President, Dresden would not have been bombed in the indiscriminate way it was, nor would Japan have been nuked. Play out your alternative scenarios if you want; what they are makes no difference to me, nor would it change my conscience. It so happens that my family had 2 members involved in WWII Pacific Theater operations, and neither of them approved of nuking Japan. Both are now dead, and both blamed Pearl Harbor on incompetent US military, not on the clever Japanese who outwitted them. Neither of those relatives avoided buying Japanese products postwar—although one of them was odd enough that he maintained to his death that the manned lunar landing was a Hollywood-produced hoax.
Unrelated, I ate lunch today at a local Tiny Town restaurant owned and run by a Japanese couple, which serves a Chinese buffet. I told them that I wished they would serve Japanese, but they say Japanese dishes would never survive in this area. People want Chinese dishes, which are more familiar to them. Generally, it is hard to find Japanese restaurants anywhere in Indiana. The couple run a very good operation which is always packed at noon, but never keep the place cool enough in summer or warm enough in winter, and all in our party agreed with me today. Food was fabulous, though.
Chuck, my uncle flew in the Battle of Britain and my dad in Sicily and Italy. My FIL fought at Al Elamein. My MIL was bombed out of two homes and was evacuated to Canada. The sister ship they sailed with was torpedoed by a Uboat. All of them approved of the bombings of Dresden and Nagasaki/Hiroshima, and figure both the Japanese and the Germans got off easy.
Chuck the peacenik wrote:
“…the manned lunar landing was a Hollywood-produced hoax.”
Well, it was wasn’t it? I saw the set they used in Diamonds are Forever.
Hahahahahahahaha!
800 years ago he would have been the Sheriff of Nottingham…
I remember in business school one of our professors made a comment that offended a lot of people. He said that if our group had lived in Spain 500 years ago we’d all have been Inquisitors and that if we’d been in Germany in the 1930’s we’d all have been members of the SS.
Discounting the fact that there wasn’t much social mobility in Spain 500 years ago, I’d have agreed if he’d said “most” rather than “all”, but I know I most certainly would have joined neither of those organizations. I’ve been a rationalist and a skeptic since I was a very small child, and that’s hard-wired in my DNA.
We would like to believe that, wouldn’t we? I not at all sure about that.
As for the moon landing…
Again, everything is hard-wired in our DNA. We just like to believe we have free will.
But it’s only hard wired in your DNA because of how that DNA combined at that time. I suggest that the DNA that would have combined “then” could have made RBT either an inquisitor, or a Nazi, or perhaps something else altogether. Otherwise, this concept of the DNA being cast in concrete seems a lot like predestination.
But the point I was striving to make was that we cannot imagine ourselves in history, without being in context of that history. Armchair quarterbacking from 2012 about something that happened in the 1940s is amusing, but not very realistic.
I’m kind of interested in how Chuck would have ended the war, since he thinks the Allies, and specifically Truman, did such a poor job.
It always amuses me that Bob is as strong a believer in predestination as the staunchest Calvinist or Augustinian. Born 500 years ago he might have been Calvin, Knox or Beza.
But if the genes had combined differently, it wouldn’t have been me, would it? We’re talking about homologous recombination in meiosis, which shuffles things around. No two zygotes are identical.
Predestination in no way follows from the absence of free will. Predestination is a religious concept that speaks to whether an individual will end up in heaven or hell. That concept is just as imaginary as the destinations.
Hard-wiring in DNA simply means that we don’t actually make decisions. Our programming makes them for us. We are automata. So, yes, whoever it was that raped and murdered that 6-year-old girl a couple days ago didn’t “decide” to do it. He was programmed that way. He had no choice in the matter. Which doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be tracked down and killed.
There are also exterior influences. For example, liberals (in the current sense) suffer from an infection that alters how their brains work. I’m totally serious here; uninfected people are conservatives or libertarians. And it wouldn’t surprise me if scientists eventually located another infection that caused people to be conservative. Nor would it surprise me to learn that there is another infection that causes people to become religious. People whose brains work correctly, which is to say rationally, are atheists and libertarians.
But that’s why you can’t say “If I was born then”, you wouldn’t be YOU, then. Your DNA wouldn’t, couldn’t, have combined the same way.
There will be, of course, an infection that causes people to believe they’re rational…
No. Rationality is the normal state of a healthy mind.
RBT, your statement implies that two, maybe three percent of adult humans have healthy minds. Not that I’m disagreeing with either the assertion or the conclusion.
I’m not sure it’s as high as 2% to 3%.
But who’s to say yours is healthy? See the problem, or is the infection preventing that? Insane people rarely think they are the insane ones.
Well, if you want to define rational people as insane and delusional people as sane. In that case, I’ll take insanity.
I’m not defining anything, you are. I’m saying that what is rational to one person can be irrational to another, and you can’t always judge your own rationality. Naturally, we are hardwired in our DNA to have this argument.
Um, no. “Rational” isn’t a matter of opinion. One of those two people you mention is mistaken.
Rationality simply means thinking logically rather than emotionally. Of course, no one is rational all of the time, and generally rational people may act irrationality (under programmatic control of their DNA). That’s why any of us here would jump in to save a drowning child, despite the risk to ourselves. Programmed behavior.
On the continuum from emotional to rational, I consider myself to be considerably farther toward the rational side than Mr. Spock, who always struck me as overly-emotional. On the other hand, I may be a bit to the other side in comparison to Holmes.
I have always been struck by how I seem to sense danger in places where others—especially women—are totally oblivious. Recently, somebody sent me a copy of an ITV documentary on the Tsunami that hit Thailand and the surrounding area back in 2004. I am absolutely confounded that there were clues that would have scared the hell out of me, which other people totally ignored. Holiday divers going out into the ocean and seeing zero fish and being swept around almost uncontrollably, but sensing no danger whatsoever. Ocean tide retreating waaay out to sea, and people remarking, “I have never, ever seen that before,” but actually being drawn down to the beach, only to be swept away and drowned by the Tsunami when it came. Worse, some of these people had heard about the earthquake in the Indian Ocean earlier that morning.
Damn, I would have been running for the hills the instant that tide backed out into the sea. It is really hard to watch that doc, and see people absolutely and totally ignore such obvious signal warnings that other animals instantly obey.
This appears to be the doc I was sent:
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/tsunami-caught-on-camera/4od/
If that link does not work due to rights problems, start with this on YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9HIXZmmSus
I have seen ocean tide rapidly receding before a couple of times and man, I boogied back away from there just as fast as I could. You do NOT wanna be on that beach.
I’ve also been in other situations when all the usual animal and bird noises have stopped and having to show the FNGs to STFU instantly, and this happened a few times both with Uncle and back here in street cop work; weird that others don’t notice a damn thing.
Chuck wrote:
“I am absolutely confounded that there were clues that would have scared the hell out of me, which other people totally ignored.”
Pliny the Elder died on 25th August 79 having walked and sailed towards the erupting Mount Vesuvius. Reminds me of the Jesuit brother on the outskirts of Hiroshima who walked in towards ground zero to see if he could help his co-religionists.
The night Princess Diana died, we were driving back to Melrose, Mass from a dinner engagement in the far west suburbs. We were talking intently but I had the radio on low to the station which played Saturday night oldies. The DJ broke format and I instantly recognized that and turned the radio up. Sure enough it was a sober announcement that Diana had been in an accident, but more news was not known. My wife was astounded that even while we were talking I could discern something was wrong.
Btw, as I am around medical people so much, one thing I learned recently was that certain accidents throw the body so violently that the plumbing right into the heart becomes disconnected. (There is a name for that, but I forget what it is.) Anyway, a doctor recently told the assembled group I was in, that was what happened to Diana. It is not well-known that is how she died, but he claimed that was the reason. Death is near instantaneous. Only if it happens in the hospital to someone being actively monitored, is there any chance for survival. The case was about somebody who had also died in an auto accident when his car was legitimately stopped for a red light, but was rammed behind by a drunk in a pickup truck travelling about 90mph.
I really liked Diana, and have vivid memories of hearing of her death just after I’d returned from my father’s funeral in Adelaide…
I’ll never understand what made her marry a creep like Charles (damn, I nearly used the name I always use for him, Chuck) and also, I can’t understand why Charles preferred the company of Camilla, surely one of the ugliest women in the world.
Chuckles the Clown Prince
Chucklehead
Chuckie the Cheesehead
I give him points for not caring about Camilla’s looks but remove those points for not paying closer attention to his marriage. At the very least, the dimbulb could have been a bit discreet.
I hope the monarchy skips over him.
I think Elizabeth is holding on for dear life. If her son wasn’t a moron, she’d probably have abdicated in his favor long ago.
I think that that phrase is why subjunctive tense was invented. Chuckie
is the offspring of cousins marrying, the bottom of family trees with
frequent loop-backs. What are the odds that he would not be a
moron?
Camilla, surely one of the ugliest women in the world
I submit Janet Reno and the current head of the TSA, Janet Napolitano, as very much qualified candidates for the title.
SteveF wrote:
“At the very least, the dimbulb could have been a bit discreet.”
You mean, like not saying over the radio that he wanted to live out his life as a tampon inside Camilla?
What a dope.