Oligo

Well, Blaegis, my ribs are like they usually are after breaking. They hurt when I breathe and so on. But I'm so used to it, that it makes no difference. R. Gerswhatever, I guess you could call it "drunken boxing" what we did.

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Blaegis @ July 02 2002,12:20)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">P.S. That was an AC-130 dumping all the flares, not a B-52, Oligo. Trust me to nitpick  <span id='postcolor'> Blaegis, you old nitpick bastard! How's the eye?

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (USSoldier11B @ July 02 2002,09:19)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Doesn't mean we hollar and fire them up in the air whenever we get an excuse to do so.<span id='postcolor'> Yep. But some of you (like Wobble) holler and fire your guns at paint cans and stuff whenever you get an excuse to do so.

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (theavonlady @ July 02 2002,09:03)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Doing a quick search of the net on the subject of firing weapons for fun at Arab/Moslem weddings, most article, from many of my neighbors next door and others in my neck of the oil fields, frown upon the habit, sighting numerous circumstances of deaths, injuries and damage caused by this.<span id='postcolor'> Of course, makes sense. When weapons are involved (like when planes drop bombs or people fire AKs at weddings), accidents are bound to happen.

More bodies piling up. I wonder how long it will be before more innocent blood has been spilled by U.S. in retaliation to 9/11 than was spilled in the actual event of 9/11? What a waste. And of course the gang of high-ranking tangos that actually did it is still mostly at large. "Mars the god of war and the blood-red planet. For you we unfurl our flags, for you we let our hatred flood, for you we water these fields with blood." -Some Bloke-

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (USSoldier11B @ July 01 2002,10:22)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Well, if it showed real killing up close then I wouldn't be able to post it on this forum now would I? I thought the video was hooah.<span id='postcolor'> The various machines of destruction were cool indeed. I especially loved the B-52 losing a load of flares. It looked amazing.

How typical. The brat doesn't get what it wants and so it reasons: "If I am not having my way then NOBODY will have their way!"

Yeah, right. Let the bodies hit the floor. Incidentally, you couldn't see any bodies hit the floor, just a load of planes bombing ruins or some infantry in training grounds blowing up dummy targets. What is distressing, however, is how professional soldiers can find this cheap shit amusing.

Well, if U.S. has a right to spy on China, China has a right to harrash U.S. spy planes. Two people can play this game, you know.

First of all, it's fine by me if somebody believes in something. If they get strength from it, ok. Anything to help people crawl through life is ok. Duke, you preach and preach, but one of your basic assumptions is wrong. You assume that people want to be saved. While this might be true for some people, it certainly is not true for all people. Did you know that some people (like me) do not want an eternal life or a place in heaven? Did you know that some people do not want some divine being watching and judging over them? Did you know that some people like the idea that their lives are influenced merely by chance and all crap that life thrown your way just happened to happen? I do not want an eternal life in heaven nor hell. When I die, I just want to cease to exist. A fitting end for an intelligent animal, I think. So preacher boy Duke, what you are offering me does not interest me one bit.

Which is definitely not what I am trying to do (drag science to the same category with religion). I just pointed out that resources previously allocated for useless worship are now being wisely used for something that actually makes "profit". We have actually managed to do something intelligent for a change.

Just a thought I had yesterday: During human history, we have worshipped many many gods. And quite frequently, we have sacrificed animals and sometimes even humans to these gods. Our sacrifices ascending to the skies on the sacrificial pyres, we prayed for cure for sickness and for a long and good life. It is a matter of faith, whether those gods answered to any of these countless prayers we sent to them. And it is also a matter of opinion, whether those sacrifices made any difference to the gods or not. Today we still sacrifice animals, but today we sacrifice them to science. We make these sacrifices with hopes of cure for sicness and for a long and good life. And unlike the gods of old, this "god" indeed has answered to some prayers with documented certainty. There has been cures for sicknesses. There is a better and longer life for us westerners. Furthermore, we know that the sacrifices of the animals have not been in vain, because without their sacrifice, these benefits would not have been reaped. It is conforting to know that although we still sacrifice life for greater good of other life, these sacrifices do not go for nothing, like somebody might argue they went in the past. Maybe there will be a time, when sacrifices are not needed. But that time has not come yet. "Without pain, without sacrifice, we wouldn't have anything." -Tyler Durder-

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Paratrooper @ June 24 2002,18:16)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Thats rediculous! Palestine is a country that consists of the West Bank and Gaza, not the rest of Israel. Israel equally has no right to Palestinian territory, the were partitioned according to UN mandate. Israel occupies Palestine hence the Violence, I reiterate; only a few extremist organisations deny Israel's right to exist.<span id='postcolor'> The UN mandates are a joke. As far as history goes, there have been pals living in all of Israel+WB+Gaza and also jews living in all of Israel+WB+Gaza. The only intelligent solution would be to have a single state with both groups living in it. That isn't "denying Israel's right to exist". Unfortunately, both groups have grown to hate each other so much the intelligent solutions don't work anymore = clusterfuck.

Ok, I think I can agree on that term.

Gimbal, you have sober views of religion, but you shouldn't really waste your breath on Duke. Religious fanatics never accept any degree of ecumeny (sp?), so to them, theirs is the only true god. Only people who can remove themselves above belief and bigotry can grasp the big picture and understand how religion, like life itself and cultural things, is subject to evolution. Like you can draw the relations between species by observation, you can draw relations between religions. Religion is a part of cultural evolution, is all. If you compare f.ex. medieval christianity to modern christianity, it is hard to believe it is even the same religion. Ironically, that's why it is so hard for some people to realize that we have descended from apes.

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (IsthatyouJohnWayne @ June 24 2002,10:54)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">(then the only thing left would be internal ethnic violence- which the Palestinian-Israeli police could deal with )<span id='postcolor'> It would be religious violence, since pals and israeli jews are quite the same ethnically. Otherwise you are correct.

Definitely H&K USP. You can get that with .45 or 9mm, whichever you prefer. The performance of that piece is just phenomenal. You can read about the testing here.

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (PitViper @ June 21 2002,16:22)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">I thought drug testing biased toward false negatives rather than false positives for the benefit of the tester. Â You are saying they bias towards false positives? Â that's messed up!! <span id='postcolor'> All tests have a rate for false positives and false negatives. Although cut-off values for drug tests are designed for a minimum of false positives (thus you get a lot of false negatives), that doesn't mean that false positives do not happen. An example: You all know such an old old test as measuring fever with a temperature sensor. We all also know that all sort of "tricks" can be used to heat it up in order to produce a false positive result for fever. Excluding any tricks, you can still get a false positive result. We had this geezer in the army whose natural body temperature was 38 degrees Celcius. So anytime he wanted to avoid some unpleasant exercises he could go to the hospital and whine that he has fever. The cut-off value for fever, 37 degrees Celcius, has been decided by measuring the normal temperature of a sample of population. But perfectly normal individuals exist, whose natural temperature is higher than this. Statistics of averages fail us from time to time, it seems. Psycho1: Are you on any anti-depressant medication or such? Some medicines can give false positives in drug tests, because some medicines are nothing but arguably more benign versions of illegal drugs. If you pop any pills prescribed by a doctor, I suggest you inform the army of that and ask whether that can affect the results.

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (denoir @ June 22 2002,22:32)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">I always thought that atheists and agnostics are in majority. Well, you learn something new every day <span id='postcolor'> It's because in Finland, for example, they count you as christian unless you state otherwise. I am counted as a christian by the authorities, for example, and I don't believe in anything except the struggle for survival (I guess I am an atheist mechanist).

All of the pals engage in terrorist activities, because they want a state. But only a part of such pals would be satisfied with a state which did not include ALL of Israel and Gaza and West Bank. Incidentally, they are correct in thinking that they have a right to the whole land of current Israel+WB+Gaza. Furthermore, also the israeli jews have a right to the whole land of current Israel+WB+Gaza. The problem here is that these ethnically related people cannot coexist anymore, since they have wasted each other so long. Thus there has to be two separate states, despite any god-given rights to some land. Now how do we get both sides to accept that?

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Duke_of_Ray @ June 19 2002,21:06)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">So what those guys did on 9/11 was honorable? What country are you from,if you don't mind me aksing?<span id='postcolor'> Honor is a subjective term. For a yank, it is honorable to serve in the army, kill terrorists and so forth. For an Al-Qaeda terrorist it is honorable to do the 9/11 thing. Honor is defined only by you yourself and your peers. Thus Duke-of-Ray, you cannot make any statements of the honor of the Al-Waeda terrorists. Now cowardice is a different thing. I'd say that slamming a plane into a building is not something a coward would do. The moral rightness of 9/11 actions, however, is a matter of faith.

We couldn't test anything if a test had to always give a correct answer. Such a test would be impossible to make, because people are so different from each other, thus making the sample pool very heterogenous. That is precisely the reason why we should not test such things as drug use, because of the serious impact of the false positive results. If you test positive and say you didn't do it, everybody is merely going to think that you're a lying junkie, because you probably are, but not necessarily. I don't know how hard it is to pry the identity of the test used by the army in question. However, if the identity is established, then it is possible that the manufacturer of the kit has published the performance evaluation of the test. However, I doubt that anything can be done for the poor soul who started this thread. Positive results from drug tests are so stigmatizing that such conventional establishments as armies will shit bricks over them. I'm sorry, but it seems Psycho 1 is FUBARed.

I work in a lab, which develops all sorts of assays for detecting all sorts of things. And I KNOW how unreliable those things are. Did you know that in order to get an in vitro diagnostic test (like a drug test) approved for use, it only has to show less than X % of false negatives and Y % of false positives? That means that it is ok for them to give SOME false results as long as they give MOSTLY correct results. This is the reason I am against mandatory drug testing. If you get a false positive, you're fucked and nobody believes you. Tough.

I got 68% meaning I'm a Total American Warbird. And I'm not even american. Â I guess "We're all americans now"... Bravado Test

Haha! Thanks for filling in for Duke, Denoir. Man, I miss Wobble. Sheesh, I'd never thought I'd say that.