10:47 – Yesterday turned into a major mess, with ice taking down lots of trees and leaving more than 100,000 homes and businesses in our area without power. Our lights flicked a couple times, but otherwise we’re fine. There’s still a lot of white stuff on the ground, but the high today is to be in the mid-60’s F (~ 18C), so it’ll melt off pretty quickly. USPS didn’t run in our neighborhood yesterday. I hope they deliver today. Neither cloudless days nor moderate temperatures nor gentle breezes stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.
Barbara spent most of the day yesterday filling and labeling vials. In the past, we’d typically make up 30 or 60 complete sets of chemicals for biology kits or chemistry kits, or whatever, just enough to keep up with demand. Now that we’re building serious inventory, I have her doing bigger numbers of one chemical at a time. For example, among other things yesterday she did 210 vials of gum Arabic for biology kits. I’d have had her do twice that number, but we ran out of gum Arabic. Which reminds me that I’d better order more 5 mL PP RIA vials and caps. We’re down to only around 2,000 of them in stock. Not to mention that I need to order another kilo each of sulfadimethoxine, penicillin G potassium, and several other components.
“stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.”
I didn’t think I was a Terry Pratchett fan but I very much enjoyed his ‘Going Postal’.
Thru my childhood our postal delivery was always by mailman Bob. He delivered our letters to and fro family in New Zealand and right thru high school college applications and acceptance letters. Letters used to be a significant part of my family’s life.
Mailman Bob was always late as he frequently paused during his walking rounds to chit chat with folks on his route. I dont recall that anyone minded his tardiness because he was such a damn nice guy. He always had a biscuit for the dogs.
He retired and was replaced by a succession of timely and efficient but unfriendly drone. I don’t remember any of them.
I miss mailman Bob and receiving ‘real’ mail.
“We had no business whatsoever in being involved in …WWII” An interesting observation, that.
Is it awful of me to not want to fly on airlines with muslim sounding flight crew?
http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/07/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-plane-missing/index.html
“The airline’s website said the flight was piloted by Cap. Zaharie Ahmad Shah, 53, a Malaysian. He has 18,365 total flying hours and joined Malaysia Airlines in 1981, the website said. The first officer is Fariq Ab.Hamid, 27, a Malaysian with a total of 2,763 flying hours. He joined Malaysia Airlines in 2007.”
Well, it was certainly the prevailing attitude among the American public at the time, few of whom thought we had any business intervening in a European war.
Japan attacked the US, and the US rightly responded, ultimately by nuking the sons of bitches. The war with Japan enjoyed nearly universal support among the American public, but WWII was a different story. I’ve always thought that Hitler’s biggest blunder–worse than delaying the invasion of Russia by a critical six weeks, worse than pulling back and allowing Britain to evacuate its trapped forces from Dunkirk, worse than purging his officer corps and installing political hacks in their place–was declaring war on the US. Roosevelt wanted war with Germany, but absent Germany’s declaration of war on the US it’s very unlikely that the US public would have allowed it. Our fight was with Japan.
Of course not. I wouldn’t trust a muslim under any circumstances, let alone flying an airliner.
“Our fight was with Japan.”
Thanks mainly to Pharaoh Roosevelt II and his crowd.
http://www.amazon.com/Churchill-Hitler-Unnecessary-War-Britain/dp/0307405168/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1394306943&sr=1-3&keywords=patrick+buchanan
Agreed on the airliner being flown by hadji bastards. Remember that Egyptian pilot who drove his plane into the ground a few years ago? And I see in today’s nooz that at least two passengers on that aircraft were using stolen passports. So much for airline security, eh?
On Edit: Fact checking foobar; that earlier Egyptian pilot/crew drove the plane into the Red Sea, not the ground, and the Wiki article implies that it was just an accident.
On Further Edit, sorta related: Just saw a diagram of how the aircraft would have had to approach the Pentagon on 9/11 to cause the damage that it did: basically belly-surfing on the ground up to the building at the right angle. And not an iota of physical evidence from it has ever been found, evidently.
QUOTE: And not an iota of physical evidence from it has ever been found, evidently.
My wife was in the Pentagon on that day; I was a mile away in another government office building. A dozen of so of my colleagues were dragooned into searching the site for classified documents (one of our intell offices was in the direct path of that flight). My wife and her staff were evacuated to the south parking area of the Pentagon, and reported seeing LOTS of airplane debris. My folks actually laid hands on airplane parts, people parts, luggage, documents, etc. There were TONS of it. All this crap about “no evidence,” “not an airplane, but a missile,” etc, was started by one Thierry Meyssan, a man who, to suit his own purposes, simply invented a pack of lies about that day. He’s a nutcase unworthy of anyone’s attention. FACT: It was a commercial aircraft with a whole lot of passengers on board, none of whom came home.
Are there any government or otherwise sites that lay out the true scenario? Because the stories of no evidence, the flight path, etc., are all over the net now and zillions of people see them and repeat accordingly.
This Meyssan guy sounds like a genuine commie type:
“Meyssan is currently living in Damascus, Syria. He is a journalist for the Russian weekly magazine Odnako (Однако)” (from the Wiki on him)
A friend of mine actually watched the jet hit the Pentagon. Anyone who thinks it was anything but is delusion.
A friend of mine actually watched the jet hit the Pentagon. Anyone who thinks it was anything but is delusion.
The one that I question, as does my brother who is a commercial pilot for US Airways, American or whatever they are now, is the flight that never made it’s destination, flight 93.
My brother, along with dozens of his pilot friends say that getting a cell signal at almost any altitude above a few thousand feet up is almost impossible, especially a reliable signal at aircraft speeds. Cell towers do not broadcast signals up as it would waste energy. Cell towers broadcast horizontally and for an aircraft at a couple thousand feet the connected cell tower would be several miles away and a very weak signal. Couple that with the attenuation of the aircraft skin and the chance of a good signal becomes questionable.
My brother, along with his pilot friends, are all under the impression that the flight was taken down by the military and the cell conversation “Let’s roll” is concocted by by the government to cover up shooting down a civilian aircraft over American soil. This would have the government targeting US citizens. As if the government has never done that before.
I make no judgement. But I would tend to trust my brother and other pilots over the word of the government. Our government, or rather the people working in the government, regularly lie to save their jobs.
Someday on one of my flights I need to turn my cell phone on and just check the signal and see what I get. Of course I might get arrested by the TSA, met at the airport arrival gate with 5 swat vehicles, 14 police cars, four ambulances, three fire trucks and one tow truck in case I parked somewhere.
I just saw a bunch of footage and pics from the Pentagon strike and I guess I’m satisfied it was indeed an aircraft, probably the Boeing, that hit there. It’d been a while since I looked into any of this stuff, and I kept seeing stories that there was no evidence, etc., etc. That said, there has certainly been a lot of confusion, obfuscation and lying by the government and its stooges in the media over the years so we don’t know anymore who to believe, on this, and many other events.
I haven’t flown in a commercial aircraft since 1994 so I’m way outta date on aircraft and airline stuff, other than what I hear from Mrs. OFD, who flies many tens of thousands of miles per year all over the country; I think there are only six or seven states where she hasn’t been yet, including Hawaii.
“Japan attacked the U.S., and the U.S. rightly responded….”
So are you saying that we should have limited our response only to Japan, or that once Germany made the catastrophic mistake you point out of declaring war on the U.S. we should have become involved in WWII? I agree that there was not much support for war prior to December 7, 1941, but subsequently there was overwhelming support for war. Absent the attack, perhaps we would never have joined the Allies, but after the attack it doesn’t appear to me that we had much choice.
Unless of course, you subscribe to the theory that FDR somehow put Japan in the position that that nation had no choice but to attack us.
Yes, we should have responded to the Japanese attack. When Hitler declared war, we should not have used that as a pretext to engage in the European war. Even after Pearl Harbor, the sentiment was for war with Japan, not for war in Europe.
A sizable minority people, including Americans, seem to hold the opinion that Japan and the US fighting in the 1940s is entirely the fault of the Americans, for boxing the Japanese in and leaving them no choice but to attack. After all, the invasions of Korea and China were necessary because the US trade policies were starving Japan of resources, even though the naive might think that the US trade policies vis a vis Japan came after, and as a result of, the invasions. But, you know, just ignore that.
I was on a flight when another passenger was told to turn off his cell phone mid flight. We were flying from NYC to Calgary, so I would think cell phone coverage is the part that gets lied about. I’ve heard they may relax the rules soon, as every one is so connected by phone. We had Wifi for most of the trip, so I figure if we have that signal, a cell signal can’t be too hard to find. I know some ATC people, I’ll try to remember and ask their opinion about it. One of them was working at Hamilton airport on 9/11. An exciting day for an ATC.
I’m not sure what to believe about Flight 93. It’s plausible that some of the passengers would fight back and it’s equally plausible that they were shot down. I do find it hard to believe that the government could cover stuff like that up, and keep everyone quiet about it. I wonder if Eric Snowden knows?
“…you subscribe to the theory that FDR somehow put Japan in the position that that nation had no choice but to attack us.”
Yes.
“…the opinion that Japan and the US fighting in the 1940s is entirely the fault of the Americans, for boxing the Japanese in and leaving them no choice but to attack.”
Not entirely. We share that blame with the Japanese, of course.
I’ve heard they may relax the rules soon, as every one is so connected by phone.
The calls will not use cell towers but will instead use some type of system in the plane that routes the calls through the aircraft system to the ground. You are effectively using a cell within the airplane. Of course it will cost money for the user.
It’s plausible that some of the passengers would fight back and it’s equally plausible that they were shot down.
Indeed. I really don’t think that cell towers would be transmitting UP when such transmission would waste a lot of energy. Even TV transmitters transmit horizontally and not vertically. A lot of antenna design has gone into optimizing a radio signal for optimum coverage. Notice that all the antennas on a tower are in a vertical orientation.
I do find it hard to believe that the government could cover stuff like that up, and keep everyone quiet about it.
I don’t. I think our government, or rather the people working for the government, fabricate the truth and outright lie about events. I have seen it with government contractors where they would lie on their reports, stretch the truth. I have even been told to “enhance” my reporting when I was working on a contract. I know of contractors (Martin Marietta) that would make a major blunder and cover it up or blame it on something, or someone else. The blame game buck passing was significant. It is all about protecting jobs, not doing what is right.
Ray, you were talking about whether the government would (try to) cover it up, but bgrigg was talking about whether the govt could cover it up. Totally different.
The would part is indisputable. I’ve seen military information classified solely to prevent a general or a high-up bureaucrat from looking bad. And I’ve seen official government reports and statistics which are arrant lies, obvious to anyone who knows something about the matter at hand but presented with a straight face to the credulous press and public. Would these people not want to cover up something that would make them look bad? I doubt the thought of full revelation ever entered their heads.
The could part is debatable. I have my doubts, but I never operated anywhere near that level of the snooping/concealing game, so all I can go by is third-hand reports and supposition.
Distinction between “would” and “could” already noted here. I believe, depending on the issue, that certain sectors of the government have the muscle and the will to implement and enforce silence and that they exercise this ability regularly. The threat level can range from minor to major and they probably have experts available to calibrate this for individuals and groups. We’ll probably find out some really interesting chit in the next few decades as people confide in others, or to diaries and journals that become public. There are folks who will stand up to death threats against themselves, but how many will prevail against threats directed to loved ones?
“OFD, if you talk about this incident we’ll have to kill your ass.”
OFD: “Well fuck you, then, go ahead and do it. I’ve lived 60 years and had a mostly interesting life. Fuck you.”
“How ’bout this, OFD; we’ll kill your grandchildren slowly and make you watch?”
OFD will probably STFU in that case.
As SteveF says, the would part is indisputable, so I didn’t even bother to mention it. Its keeping it quiet all these years. Look at how easily Snowden walked away with all the information. Look at how badly Nixon and company covered up Watergate. Too many people (Feds, black helicopter pilots, grandchildren) need to be involved. At some point it leaks, like carrying water with only your bare hands. I have a simple rule about conspiracies which is “If I can find one on the internet, it’s bullshit”. That rule is closely related to my rule about the Internet, “You can find anything you want on the internet, and some of it is true”.
As for cell phone use in-flight, cell phones use radio waves, and AFAIK radio waves are broadcast in all directions. Yes, we need cell towers to carry the signal along as we travel, but each tower is receiving a broadcast signal and re-transmitting it to other towers. I’m betting that the eastern seaboard is simply littered with cell towers. I’ve lost a cell signal by turning a corner, but never by going up a hill. Getting a signal from a plane seems fairly trivial to me. Besides which, the FCC recently voted to lift the ban on using cell phones in-flight, even as the DOT and Congress are working to block them. Seems to me that you don’t ban, then lift the ban, on something that can’t be done.
bgrigg, you’re sorta right about the radio waves being transmitted in all directions, but the antennas are engineered to minimize wasted energy. Basically, most of the power will go in one direction (basically either a horizontal plane or a pie-slice of a plane) and lesser amounts will go above or below the plane. See this handy illustration, which shows one typical pattern. Certainly some energy goes upward, enough for at least sporadic connections from flight altitude.
And cell phone technology is amazing, if you dig deep enough into the details. The germane point is that they’re designed to work in cities, with big lumps of steel blocking signals, so they can operate on tiny trickles of incoming signal and can boost their output by a couple orders of magnitude if needed. Just as an armchair speculator, I wouldn’t have any trouble concluding that cell phones can work from six miles up.
But it’s not just theory. At least five years ago I knew people who claimed to have talked on their ordinary cell phones while in flight. I didn’t care enough to ask about quality of signal, coverage along the Eastern seaboard versus in flyover country or the ocean, or any of that.
Cell phone tower transmitters are very low power — just a few watts. My friend in the industry is an antenna expert in the field. That is the only thing he does: build towers and install antennas. I’ll ask him. He will know, but geez, I cannot get a solid signal in Tiny Town from a tower 4 miles away, so I sure doubt that one could connect 6 miles up with less than 5 watts. Cell phone antennas ARE directional, as are almost all antennas for any type of radio transmission these days. FM radio broadcast antennas are polarized at very specific tolerances so their signal goes mostly out and down, not up. The more it can go out, the less RF waste, and the less electricity is used generating the RF.
None of this explains why the FCC has voted to retract the ban on cell phone use on planes. I’m stuck at why would they do that if it isn’t possible?
Same with using a cell phone in a hospital. The local one has signs everywhere imploring people to turn off the cell phone as it “interferes with sensitive equipment”, and yet all the doctors and nurses are busy using theirs. Does it or not? In cases like these, I can well believe that government agencies are lying to us. No would. No could. Just are.
My brother, along with dozens of his pilot friends say that getting a cell signal at almost any altitude above a few thousand feet up is almost impossible, especially a reliable signal at aircraft speeds.
It is my understanding that they were using the Airphones built into the seats to make the calls to the ground.
None of this explains why the FCC has voted to retract the ban on cell phone use on planes. I’m stuck at why would they do that if it isn’t possible?
The concern was radio interference with the instruments on the plane from the cell phones. There were reports of some early cell phones causing such interference. It is my understanding that additional testing has shown that the risk is minimal.
ame with using a cell phone in a hospital. The local one has signs everywhere imploring people to turn off the cell phone as it “interferes with sensitive equipment”, and yet all the doctors and nurses are busy using theirs.
Same concern for RFI from the phones messing with diagnostic equipment. Again, testing has shown that it’s not a concern. The signs are probably old ones that were never taken down.
AFAIK radio waves are broadcast in all directions
Yes, but the main radiated power can be made highly directional. Being off-axis from the transmission plane and the signal strength drops off rapidly. Antennas are designed to radiate most of their energy in the intended direction. For cell phones that energy is primarily horizontal. For an extreme example of controlled radiation patterns consider radar. Different frequency range of course but the concept is the same.
It is my understanding that they were using the Airphones built into the seats to make the calls to the ground.
I have heard that also. But what the chances that someone was on one of those phones and just happened to be told about the crashes. I have been on planes with those phones and I have never seen anyone using those phones. I question that scenario.
None of this explains why the FCC has voted to retract the ban on cell phone use on planes. I’m stuck at why would they do that if it isn’t possible?
The FCC was concerned about interference with the planes electronics. However the power produced by a cell is very small and is generally not enough to interfere with current aircraft and their shielding. The avionics produce far more interference than cell phones and the signal paths within the plane are significantly protected from the plane’s own radiation energy.
Cell phone calls from an airplane to the ground would be handled by electronics on the plane. A mini-cell tower so to speak, very low power, except it is nothing more than a radio relay not really doing anything with the traffic except collecting billing information. Cell phones on the plane would connect to that system and that system would relay the signal to the ground.
The main objection is a personal interaction one. No one wants some cretin in the seat next to you telling her friend about her latest menstrual cycle. Planes are annoying enough and I don’t want my ear that is about a foot from someone’s mouth having to endure their annoying conversation.
My friend whose job is in cell phone tower antennas says it is certainly possible to connect while 6 miles high. But, he says, “…problem will be not [being connected] for very long because all of the sites in a network are visible to the mobile – which is good and bad…our systems work on interference mitigation – up there it’s all noise/interference – and certain sites will not hand off to others –
so you couldn’t maintain a call for long before having to redial and
redial again ….but it would work.”
As far as interference goes, phones definitely caused interference in a variety of devices, up until a few years ago. In Germany, car radios would burp and ‘gallop’ (as Pournelle put it) if there were cell phones in the car. When I got back 4 years ago, phones would induce crackles and interference into bare audio wires. Blackberrys and iPhones were the worst, and those were the phones lawyers used the most.
However, during the last 2 years, those problems have completely disappeared. My old Motorola PEBL would cause galloping in the Roadmaster’s radio, but absoutely zero from the Samsung Galaxy S3 Android. We used to have attorneys turn off their cell phones during recording, but it is no longer a problem at all — even with iPhones. Nobody uses Blackberrys anymore, so I do not know anything about them.
“The signs are probably old ones that were never taken down.”
I’d normally accept that answer, except here in Ktown we have a new hospital building, and they tore the old building down. The signs are also new. And the doctors and nurses are happily using their cell phones in flagrant violation of the rules. But then, the service entrance is littered with cigarette butts. Clearly both are cases of “Do as I say…”
I did see a sign somewhere on the internet the other day that I’m sure is a joke sign, but maybe not. It was the typical pictograph depicting “use stairs in case of fire” that we’ve all seen, but had the additional text “leave building before texting about fire” added to it.
“Planes are annoying enough and I don’t want my ear that is about a foot from someone’s mouth having to endure their annoying conversation.”
Ha ha ha, nobody uses their phones for talking anymore, not unless they are of an age where their menstrual cycles have ended naturally. 😀
Not entirely. We share that blame with the Japanese, of course.
Nope. The blame is on the expansionist Japanese warlords. They had already invaded China and Korea, subjugating both and causing problems that are still existing to this day. They then attacked Hawaii to see if they could take Hawaii away from us. Could we defend it? Remember, Hawaii is physically much closer to Japan than the USA mainland.
They were not able to take Hawaii but they did take the Philippines, Guam, Burma, Singapore and many other South Pacific territories. The Japanese were thinking about invading Hawaii when we won the battle of Midway in 1942 that actually decimated both sides. The USA was able to rebuild the Pacific fleet quicker than the Japanese due to our natural resources. It took an incredible effort on the part of the USA, Australia and many others to dislodge them from all of these places.
If the USA had stayed out of WWII then we would have lost Hawaii during the war and ended up with a German Europe. The Cold War would have been an ever present live war with German / Japanese subs and warships continuously harassing our coasts. You do know that the Coast Guard sunk three German subs during WWII, two in the Mississippi delta and one on the east coast. It would be like that to this day.
Those tremendous moats (some people call them the Atlantic and Pacific) surrounding the USA are not insurmountable, just difficult to cross. Hitler would have eventually done it. And remember, Herr Hitler was only 18 months behind the USA in his nuclear bomb development effort. He would have used them without any qualms whatsoever.
I’m with Lynn on this one. Germany declared war on the US, not the other way around. Did Japan feel threatened by the US into attacking everyone around them? Who cares? They had already fought a war with Russia, and kicked their asses. I’m thinking Russia is more to blame than the US. Had they won that war, Japan wouldn’t have gotten nearly as uppity.
Heck, even Canada was attacked directly by the Japanese, who fired a torpedo at a lighthouse on Vancouver Island thinking it was a ship.
Having learned much more about Hitler, after living in Germany for 10 years, my inference is that he was mean as hell, a psycho, and pretty damned stupid, although incredibly charismatic. It was the stupidity that was his downfall, but he sure caused a lot of misery before — yellow-bellied chicken that he was — he took himself out.
There is nobody I met in Germany, who did not believe that Europe would have been a totalitarian society, had we not intervened. Many were secretly praying for our victory over them. And we sure came out okay, what with Von Braun becoming an American hero to my generation. I built every model kit that came out with his name on it.
I commend again the German movie “Downfall” or “Der Untergang” (literally ‘the going under’). Bruno Ganz is simply incredible in the role of Hitler, and was praised as providing a very accurate portrayal by people I knew who lived through that period.
Having been aware of all of this information, I still maintain that we should have stayed out of both world wars; lose Hawaii and a German Europe? Who cares? And Germany still got beat by the Soviets anyway, so Europe may well have been Russian instead of German. I further maintain that we had, and would have continued to have, the resources and ability to stave off any coastal attacks or invasions. We would have beat everyone anyway with the atomic bomb and it would be a different world today.
It’s a lot of what-ifs; in the end, after destroying both Germany and Japan, we rebuilt them and they became our allies and formidable economic competitors. And our former allies, the Soviets, became our enemies. I could easily forgive former fellow soldiers for getting confused after watching all this go down over the past hundred years, let alone my fellow soldiers from SEA, where now the Vietnamese are our pals and we trade with them and run tourists through there. It is like unto “1984” where Oceania is our enemy this week and we have our fifteen-minute Hate, and next month it’s someone else and another fifteen-minute Hate.
I ask that age-old question: cui bono? From all these wars? Certainly not ordinary grunts and their families, from all nations, and all opponents.
And there are still up-and-running German/American corporations who benefited significantly from organized, industrial slave labor during that war. No one cares. Money talks and bullshit walks.
Not to mention our own dismal and wretched record during the Good War in Europe and the Pacific; it warn’t all tales of heroism and warrior derring-do by any stretch.
Ray Thompson wrote: I make no judgement.
Ahh, but you did (and DO), sir, because you also wrote: Our government, or rather the people working in the government, regularly lie to save their jobs.
To use a few old-fashioned terms, this last remark is a base canard, a vile calumny that none of my friends and colleagues in government deserves.
You’re fortunate, Larry, if your friends and colleagues in government do not deserve this base and vile calumny applied to them. Ray’s experience is different and so has been mine and Mrs. OFD’s, the latter serving for ten years in state gummint and myself for a four-year sentence.
That’s just anecdotal stuff, incidentally; we also have the few crumbs and remnants that the state-controlled media toss our way from time to time which illustrate the continued and deliberate deceits perpetrated on us, lo, these many decades past. I do not feel the need to begin listing them here; they are infamous and legion.
Davy, I don’t see a big difference between a German Europe or a Stalinist one. Both would have been hugely bad for everyone else in the world. Even the Americans who would rather stick their heads in the sand like ostriches. Hawaii would have just been the starting point for an invasion in North America.
But what the chances that someone was on one of those phones and just happened to be told about the crashes. I have been on planes with those phones and I have never seen anyone using those phones. I question that scenario.
The people on Flight 93 called home after the plane was hijacked and talked to family members who were watching/listening to the news at the time. They told them about what was happening. The hijackers saw them using the phones and didn’t care.
As for the use of those phones, I’ve used them a couple of times on vacation. My wife and I were flying home and used it to call our (at the time) young daughter to say goodnight.
Ah, but there’s been plenty of reasoned explanation of why your cell phone didn’t work, ech. Who are you going to believe, them or your lying eyes?
“…I don’t see a big difference between a German Europe or a Stalinist one. Both would have been hugely bad for everyone else in the world. Even the Americans who would rather stick their heads in the sand like ostriches. Hawaii would have just been the starting point for an invasion in North America.”
Well, half of Europe WAS Stalinist; we and the Brits *gave* them that as a reward for helping out, and incidentally losing ten-million soldiers. We also gave them Operation Keelhaul, an obscenely despicable event which is a permanent shit-stain on Anglo-American history. I don’t see where an entirely German or Soviet Europe would have been our problem, especially when we possessed the Bomb and the means to deliver it well before they could. And both Hitler and Stalin croaked within a few years anyway; who’s to know what their successors would have done.
Yes, those pesky Murkans who stick their heads in the sand and refuse to see or hear the rest of the wonderful world; isolationists, nativists, xenophobes; we’ve heard it all before. Well, in the coming decades we’ll all have our heads in the sand on this continent by default, anyway. No choice.
Invasion by the Japanese from Hawaii? Or the Germans from Iceland and Greenland? Good luck to the buggers; their forces from that time would have been mown down like the late summer wheat. The former would have done well to pay better attention to their Admiral Yamamoto. And I’d hazard a guess that Hitler’s generals or successors would have balked at trying it from the Atlantic; yes, they sank ships off our coast, lobbed shells onto Cape Cod and landed spies in Florida, none of which stopped this great Leviathan for a nanosecond.
Ah, but there’s been plenty of reasoned explanation of why your cell phone didn’t work, ech.
I have no idea what you are talking about. I’ve never tried to use a cell phone on a plane in flight.
To use a few old-fashioned terms, this last remark is a base canard, a vile calumny that none of my friends and colleagues in government deserves.
I make no judgement as to whether the government lied about flight 93. Did they lie? I don’t know. There are certainly enough items that can be called into question.
As for the people in government lying to save their butts, I have personally seen such action and been a victim of such action. It is quite common in the contract world surrounding the Oak Ridge government plants.
ech, I had to modify the facts to fit the not-really-a-joke. “Who are you going to believe, the experts or someone else’s lying eyes” doesn’t point up the absurdity nearly as well.
“Invasion by the Japanese from Hawaii? Or the Germans from Iceland and Greenland?”
Really? I imagine Hitler sitting in his bunker going “Nein vay ist der Amerikanders capable of launching der invasion from der udder side of der Atlantic. Not mit mein U-boats patrolling der seas.”
Except the USA did invade Europe by ferrying troops to the aircraft carrier that some call Britain. Just as the USA eventually beat down Japan by taking each little island in turn. Don’t ignore that the Germans were making all sorts of friends in South America, not to mention rockets and atomic weapons.
I’m beginning to think you should stick to archaic English literature.
Maybe so, as I am unclear as to your point.
You keep mentioning the possibility of invasions here from the Japanese and Germans and I attempted to refute that by the cold hard fact of our island-fortress manned, by as Yamamoto told his colleagues, “…an American rifleman behind every blade of grass…” or maybe it was “every tree,” I forget. As for either enemy, long supply lines; for the Germans; we had pretty much destroyed der unterseebooten of der Kreigsmarine branch of their armed forces.
I don’t get your straw-man Hitler in his bunker hypothetically claiming we couldn’t hit them from over here; he damn well knew we could, and if he fogged over at that, his generals and admirals certainly knew. When we hit Normandy, they knew it was over; even Himmler tried to open negotiations. In any case, the Germans shot their wad on the Russian Front and they would have been in no shape to launch wars from South America or anyplace else.
But my main and original point is that we had no business getting involved in any of these wars anyway. The Soviets ended up with half of Europe for half a century, and they did their best to destroy it along with their own country. Now they’re gone. The Germans are the biggest force for whatever in Europe *again.* So what was the point of all that? And couldn’t we have jaw-jawed with the Japanese for a while longer instead of war-war? Or was Pharaoh Roosevelt and his cronies too eager to get into it, at the fevered and desperate behest of Churchill and British intel operatives here?
http://www.amazon.com/Churchill-Hitler-The-Unnecessary-War/dp/0307405168/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1394412324&sr=8-2&keywords=Patrick+Buchanan
Japan and Germany both declared war on the US, not the other way around, so you didn’t have much choice in the matter. And jaw-jawing has never been the US’s strong point. Your more successful “negotiations” have always involved warships.
Do you honestly think they weren’t going to follow through? That they were so afraid of a rifleman behind every blade of grass/tree that they wouldn’t have figured out how to fly a nuke over on one of their rockets, much like the US did rather than fight every samurai lurking behind the bamboo, once they found how hard it was to kill the typical Japanese soldier? I submit that if they were, they wouldn’t have declared war in the first place. And if the US could hit them there, they could hit the US back.
Do you seriously think Stalin could have built up his army without the ample aid of the US supplying war materiel? Do you think that the U-boats wouldn’t have continued their patrols of the sea without US intervention? It took a number of British ships just to sink the Bismark. The US HAD to get involved, it was only then that the Allies had any chance at all.
Look, I’m no friend of Churchill’s, I consider him as dangerous as any Stalin or Hitler. He effed up a lot of countries, that are still ringing from his terrible leadership. You seem to think the US can isolate themselves from the world. 9/11 proved they cannot. Open your eyes man! IMHO, the US is fast becoming a lame duck country, ruled by a lame duck president voted in by lame duck people who willing give up their arms for the perceived safety of Homeland Security. You no longer have the manufacturing clout that Detroit had. And that makes me pretty sad, for I genuinely like Americans!
Your much awaited hell in a handbasket will not be a pretty thing. Nobody is seemingly bothering to setup an Asmovian Foundation to survive the interregnum.
Do you seriously think Stalin could have built up his army without the ample aid of the US supplying war materiel?
No way! The Lend-Lease program which turned into the biggest giveaway in history, rearmed the British and Soviets with good weapons, food and a lot of toys.
Your more successful “negotiations” have always involved warships.
Negotiation always works better when someone is pointing a gun at someone else.
Churchill was a mess because they only used him in times of war. The minute the war was over, they would put him back into his glass box with the caption, “break in case of war”.
BTW, Pournelle has a great column today, “President Obama says Russia must be punished. Conscripts or paid soldiers?”
http://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/president-obama-says-russia-must-be-punished/
“I am now convinced that no one in power in this nation knows any history whatsoever. Not even the history of the Seventy Years War with Bolshevism or what we call The Cold War – which now may become Cold War One if Barrack Hussein Obama de Santa Anna has his way. The State Department has, I am told, 3000 officers with PH.D.’s. One wonders in what subjects. Certainly not in history.”
I nearly fell out of my chair when I read the following:
“Speak loudly and carry a willow switch.”
And Barrack Hussein Obama de Santa Anna! Oh my! Texas history is not very kind to Santa Anna.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but my school-learnt understanding was that we did not have a working atomic bomb in ’39, and our engagement in WWII put the hurry-up on that. Without WWII, would we have had it?
I don’t think either side had the ability to launch an attack via long range missiles in WWII. So we could not have launched an attack on Germany from our shores. I mentioned here once that there is a notebook of weekly reports at the museum that was the Peenemünde science playground where, in the late ’30’s, Von Braun and others were actively working on delivering a long-range bomb to hit NYC, but funding for that project evaporated by the early ’40’s.
I am so glad we got Einstein and Von Braun out of that disaster. They were among my childhood heroes — along with Tonto, the Lone Ranger, and Superboy.
In the what-if game, few people ever consider the gigantic number of degrees of freedom in a massively n-dimensional speculative matrix.
Just as one example, if the US had not become involved in WWI, Germany and England would likely have reached stalemate. The Allies would not have been able to dictate the punitive terms of Versailles, and Hitler would very likely have never come to power. So, in that sense, the US intervening in WWI led directly to the Nazis and the Holocaust. If England and Germany had instead fought to a standstill, they likely would have come to terms and WWII in Europe might never have occurred.
Very interesting possibility. And further proof of my contention that deterrence does not work. In the case of WWI, the deterrence hoped for at Versailles, actually fomented retaliatory events in Germany. Although Germany’s invasion of neighbors had as much to do with the economic belief at the time, that expanding the land base was necessary to sustainable growth.
The problem with deterrence (or pacifism) is that both parties tend to get stronger over time. But, the rate of change can be double or worse, non-linear, for one of the parties. When the nuclear bomb was created, it changed how war is waged. I have no idea what the next war device will be, quite possibly kinetic weapons from orbit or, worse, the asteroid belt.
Without WWII, would we have had it?
Yes, after quite a few years. Physicists new it was possible.
Knowing something is possible and devoting the huge resources necessary to develop a working model are not the same thing.
I quite enjoyed the movie “Fat Man and Little Boy” that shows some of the efforts required to the develop the atomic bombs:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_Man_and_Little_Boy
Development of the atom bomb was already underway before the US got in to WWII. Without that the atom bomb would still have been built, it just would have taken a bit longer. These projects develop a life of their own.