Oligo
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Posts posted by Oligo
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</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (R. Gerschwarzenge @ Sep. 23 2002,10:33)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Drinking coffee with her or "drinking coffee with her"?
Ilta-Sanomien otsikko: Sotaveteraanikeräystä tekevät sotilaat tarjoavat myös PK-seuraa nuorille naisille. <span id='postcolor'>
Well, considering that my marital status wasn't exactly single, I have to refrain from answering to that question.
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</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (denoir @ Sep. 24 2002,05:00)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">As for "a few Europeans" - well, since most Europeans do military service, you should listen to us. We have done it fairly recently so we can give you a more objective picture of what it is like <span id='postcolor'>
I don't know, maybe it is a question of attitude. If you're the sort of guy to sing the national anthem every morning, you might actually like it in the army, since you can always comfort yourself that you're serving the rodina and all that duty bollocks.
But if you're the kind of non-nationalistic guy that likes to mostly watch after his own interests (like me), then the army seems a little pointless. It's too altruistic to die for your country, since when you're dead, what the hell do you do with the country? Nope, I might die for a patch of land that I own, but not for the homes of people that I do not even know.
I knew guys in the army who just loved all that parade shit and patriotism crap that they tried to cram down our throats. I think they loved it in the army.
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</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (cam0flage @ Sep. 22 2002,17:37)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">I collected money a few weeks ago for finnish WWII veterans. We had our whole company doing it, raised a lot of money.<span id='postcolor'>
Right. That's as "voluntary" as it can only be in the army. But I had nice time when we were collecting money for the vets. One of the first houses I visited had a pretty female occupant and I ended up spending my whole collection trip drinking coffee with her. Needless to say I didn't manage to gather much money, but I don't mind.
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</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (denoir @ Sep. 20 2002,13:27)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">I would never go back. Military service is 99% shit 1% fun. I don't regret my service time since I value the experience, but there is no way in hell that I would go back.<span id='postcolor'>
My thoughts exactly, but I would go back for some peacekeeping duty, since that at least has some purpose (although I bet peacekeeping also is 99% shit and 1% fun).
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Walking In Silico Evolution Automaton
WISEA
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A nice one. I just didn't have time to add a final chapter for my "Afghan Fighter", since I was quite ill last week. So here comes, maybe we can add it to the story:
The wind keeps lifting fistfulls of sand which form miniature tornadoes that race for a few meters before evaporating. This happens everywhere, except around the small patch of land where I lay. The sand there can not be moved, since it is wet, dampened by my life bleeding on it.
The battlefield is deserted now, the sounds of gunshots gone. The only ones to keep me company are the spectres of my father and brother, sitting on a big rock next to me. "Son, why do you join us already? Who will carry on our name?" my father asks. I despair for a moment, thinking about this, but finally I admit: "I was not strong enough. I could not endure the loss of you all. I could not put it behind me. I'm sorry." "I forgive you, son" my father says. "I forgive you, brother" my borther says. Then they're gone.
I can't move. I watch the sun going down. The distant mountain peaks bathe in the dying light. The coldness of approaching night is creeping in me. I feel sleepy so I close my eyes for the last time.
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</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Tex [uSMC] @ Sep. 11 2002,06:41)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Although it always lurked in the background of my consciousness, 9/11 brought to the forefront (at least for me) the importance of the little guy. The firefighter who follows the order to head up into a burning skyscraper, or some working class joe who finds himself on a flight that has been hijacked by suicidal terrorsists and decides to do something about it. They do their part without asking for recognition or asking for high pay, and are continuously overshadowed by people who do things for so much more money and fame, and yet when it all comes down, they are ultimately insignificant compared to the little guy who is willing to give his life to help others or to do the right thing.<span id='postcolor'>
Yes, the little guys do what they're told, be their motivation duty, honor or faith. Ironically this tendency of the little guys both brought us the horror of 9/11 and tried to fight it.
If the little guy hijackers had used their own brain and survival instinct instead of listening to the "faith" preached by mr. maniac Osama, they would not have done their deed. If the firefighters would not have believed in the "duty" preached to them by their society, they would not have stormed the burning towers. See, the willingness of the little guy to follow leaders is both our bane and our blessing.
I wonder what happens when the leaders have pushed the little guys against each other until they're all dead? Do the leaders get scared, make up and go party on the mountain of dead little guys?
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If a bullet very superficially grazes somebody, I think it can be treated by any normal person with a band-aid or a bandage. But if it is a proper hit and there is nastiness like ruptured blood vessels, shredded meat, shattered bone, shocked tissue and mangled nerves... well, you'll probably just lie there and scream for your comrades and for your mother (or for your wife if you're older), while your friends franticly administer morphine and try to press that squirting artery shut.
For a nice demonstration of combat wounds, see movies like Blackhawk Down or (yuck) Saving Private Ryan.
They should seriously overhaul the damage systems of first person shooters.
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Hmm.
I think I'd go for Guderian and Zhukov.
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The battle was raging across the landscape, which had seen enough death and misery as it is. The jagged mountainsides themselves seemed like monuments for death itself. But I had been unlucky so far in my quest for the end.
During the flow of the conflict, I was drawn up to a wreckage of a helicopter. I arrived just in time to see one of my brothers in arms empty his rifle into a wounded enemy. This man was cluthing a rock as he died, defiant up to the moment of his death. I frowned in disgust and spat on the ground, when I saw the raptured expression on the face of the young warrior now reloading his rifle. "What are you doing here, you fool", I thought: "You have left your family behind and come to kill in the name of your god. This god must be laughing when he sees more blood spilled for his amusement."
I leaned over the dead demon and closed his glassy eyes with my hand. On his face, the grimace of pain had been etched for ever. "What are you doing here, you foolish devil", I spoke silently: "Don't you have a family back home? Why have you come here to kill us? Why do you hate us so that you try to throw stones at us when you have nothing else?"
Walking towards the sounds of battle I wondered why so many men thread these paths where only those who have lost everything belong.
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</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (SirLoins @ Sep. 09 2002,02:38)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Would the Europeans rather the US take our guns and go home? Â We could lock our borders and take care of ourselves and say screw the rest of the world. Â Who will you call the next time Saddam invades or uses WMD? Â The UN? Â That will be the day, as the UN is nothing militarily without the US.<span id='postcolor'>
You couldn't do it. U.S. is not even nearly self-sufficient. Loads and loads of goods are imported to U.S. every day. Like it or not, you're on the mercy of trade.
If you locked your country up, you'd be fucked.
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</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Paratrooper @ Sep. 05 2002,12:39)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">So I assume the pockets just look small because they are empty?<span id='postcolor'>
Correct. The canvas in wrinkled, so you cannot see the true size of the pocket.
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The pockets on the chest of the russian soldiers are definitely for AK magazines. This is called a "chest rig" design. The purpose of chest rig is to put the magazines over the vital organs of the soldiers. This way the full magazines provide cheap ballistic protection for the soldier. Each of the big pockets can accomodate 2 AK magazines.
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Reading the forums of that virtual CCCP very much reminded me that all ideologies are crap. They always eventually turn sour and full of bile, including capitalism and the western "democracy".
For example, in Finland it is statistically clear that most of the citizens want cheap booze since most of us just love to drink. Yet the government does not give us this (=cut the taxation of booze). Considering that the government is supposed to represent the people, how come they are going against the majority opinion?
Nope, western countries are ruled by a bunch of celebrities, since in order to get votes, you have to be famous = celebrity.
All ideologies are thus bullshit and defunct. Survival is what matters, for it is the "ideology" of nature.
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My name, well, I don't even think about that anymore, since it was given to me by father, who only lives in my memories and my mother whom I do not even recall.
My whole life has been a struggle for survival through this land of incomprehensible cruelty and immense beauty. My mother died soon after giving birth to me. She got an infection, which sapped her strength and overcame her body in a few weeks. As her last act on this earth, she prayed to god for a bright future for her sons. But god in his cruelty did not listen.
My dad had hard time providing for me and my brother. Therefore we had to help him as soon as we were old enough. We ran shipments of poppies through the ragged mountains of our homeland, forever wary of bands of armed men. There was no other work available, so this was our way of getting the everyday food.
Then came a day when a bride was found for my brother. A wedding was arranged. But fate had his sights set on me, so he arranged for me to go fetch a goat for slaughter just when he sent the wailing banshees to rain fire on all the people I knew. This sight I will never forget and so I will never know peace again.
So this is my fate. To walk on this earth like a shadow wearing tattered rags. To carry a rifle that has seen countless wars and countless warriors. Like time has carved the marks of wear on the surface of this weapon, so god or fate, whichever is true, has carved my soul.
I serve men who believe in god. They want to kill in the name of their god. I don't care about god, but I know these men hate the devils coming to our land with their strange clothes and weapons. So I fight with these pious men. I will kill as long as the devils finish their work and send me to my kin, which they took away from me.
Today we ran into a flock of the evil men. No time for thoughts, it's time to act. I assault with the ghosts of my father and brother running beside me.
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Sigh. Some people in here are a little thin skinned. All I said is that it was a brave thing for the makers of BoB and the U.S. veterans to admit that even yanks did perform loot, rape and kill, like EVERY OTHER NATION that participated in WWII. That includes the european countries as well. I'm absolutely certain, for example, that some finnish soldiers did loot, rape and kill. I'm sure simply because it is in the nature of the male sex. If you take a bunch of males and put them into a stressing situation like a war, some of them will turn out to be a little ... relaxed about certain morality rules. These people will think: "If I'm going to be killed tomorrow anyway, what the fuck does it happen if I rape somebody today, because I REALLY want some poontang?"
Also, the issue about the supposed commandant had nothing to do with whether the man was guilty or not. You cannot just go around shooting people in peacetime, because "some pole told me he was a commandant of some camp". That is bloody vigilanteism.
IF the man was a commandant, he surely deserved to die. But the guilt of somebody has to be established in a court of law.
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Can you say "tripwire"?
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Does murder expire in U.S.? Because in Finland, you can never get away with murder by hiding for so long that they will not prosecute you anymore. They will always prosecute you for a murder.
People blaming them is not the issue here. Despite of public opinion, the law should be same for everybody. I'm sure the german would have wanted to live, if you could ask him (but you can't because he is dead).
Anyway, I perfectly well understand behaviour like shown in the last episode of BoB. After killing people and fearing for your life for over a year, how can you just suddenly return to normal? Based on that, I personally would never go and judge Webster, Liebgott and co. However, those lawyer bastards don't care about circumstances. Thus I'm quite amazed that nobody has started a case on this.
Maybe the germans should sue... ehh, wait a minute, U.S. is not part of the ICC.
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I just saw the last episode of Band of Brothers. I must say that the series deserves some appreciation, because especially in the last two episodes germans are portrayed as human beings and yanks are shown performing loot, rape and kill in Germany.
This brings me to the point of this post. The series makes it pretty clear that most of the characters of the series actually exist even today. You know, those old geezers are shown at the end of the last episode and at the beginning of each episode. However, in the last episode, some of the officers are shown looting german buldings, which is of course illegal, even if you're an occupying soldier. Me, I'd be careful confessing stuff like that, even after this much time. Of course, theft as a crime does expire after some years.
Murder, on the other hand, does not expire, ever. Still they show Liebgott, Webster and some third person hunt down and execute a german man they think is a "comendant" of a camp. This happens after the peace has come.
I don't know whether the killed man was a comendant or not. I do know however, that doing what Liebgott, Webster and co. did is generally considered vigilanteism (=bad). I find it quite surprising that after Liebgott and Webster clearly confess a murder on telly, no enterprising district attorney has taken up a case against them in the promised land of law, U.S.
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</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Tex [uSMC] @ Aug. 28 2002,11:28)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Not when the ball's color, texture, density, political significance, shape, and ethnicity have to be ratified by a bunch of insignificant sniveling countries with GNP's smaller than Los Angeles' who just happen to love to give us a hard time.<span id='postcolor'>
Right.
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</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Tex [uSMC] @ Aug. 28 2002,09:28)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE"><span id='postcolor'>
"Touche'. However, there was documented proof, everything from survivor accounts to sattellite photos to pictures themselves , of Serbian ethnic cleansing. I'd like to point out that US military intervention only went as far as curbing Soviet aggression, securing Bosnia-Herzegovenia and later Kosovo, and reeling in smaller fish like Radovan Karadzic & Co. Slobo landed in the Tribunal because his own people turned his sorry ass over. And there is a slight difference between war crimes (shooting POWs, etc.), and crimes against humanity (ethnic cleansing, genocide, etc.). Slobo was guilty of both- noone was "gunning" for him. We would have left him alone if he hadnt ordered Serb forces to systematically murder Bosnian, ethnic Albanian, and Croat noncombatants."
I don't care about Slobo, he got what he deserved. It was just an example and a poor one at that. But you do gun for people, currently it seems that some of your administration are really out to get Iraq. And in case of Saddam and his cronies being captured alive, I'm pretty sure you'd make sure they would be sentenced in some court, perhaps even the ICC. So you DO gun for people, just like everybody else.
"Now, I have a very recent example of people actually trying to pin war crimes on the US. This new story, surfacing in the past few weeks, of the truck full of dead POWs, had nothing to do with the US other than the fact that the POWs were Taliban- the POWs were being handled by the now defunct Northern Alliance, which we had zero tactical control over. However, the fact that we shared an enemy with troops from a culture where POWs are treated like dirt was more valuable, has given many journalists the apparent license to call this incident a US War Crime."
I've read about this and I categorized it as moronic journalists trying to sell papers with sensational headlines. Do you really think that cases like this would hold in ICC? They have to have some standard there, you know, in order to keep up the prestige of the court.
"This is just a small sampling of the slander that is spread with zero proof, and yet is gobbled up by the European populations, about US military actions."
We're not stupid just because we're euros, you know.
"As for your suggestion that US troops that commit war would be given leeway in a trial or not be prosecuted at all- it is a valid concern, but right now it is just not feasible politically for us to allow other countries decide the fate of accused US troops. At the moment, you are just going to have to trust us to police ourselves."
Yeah, it's not like we have any choice. Anyway, not agreeing to ICC will erode your image around the world, however you justify it to yourselves. It looks like you do not want to play ball with anyone anymore.
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Ok, Tex, you have points there. Consider these two things, though:
You cannot really expect the rest of the world to believe that you would prosecute your own soldiers when they commit warcrimes. You'd cover them all up, of course, rather than admit that your righteous soldiers have done anything wrong. This is what any nation would do.
You're not the only nation somebody is gunning for. On the contrary, you do some of the gunning yourselves. I don't remember Slobo agreeing on any War Crime Court thing, but yet you and euros gunned for him and brought him to a court he does not even recognize. The point is, you have nothing against international "justice" as long as it works for you. But the minute it could work against your interests, you decline to have any part of it, because somebody might gun for you. Judge not for you might be judged yourself.
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All of the documents found on that site are pretty worthless. They have no references to anything that could be independently validated (like blueprints of the powerplant of a flying saucer). Either these papers are bullshit or they have been released just because there is nothing in them. The good stuff is still under lock and key.
National Security...
Internet luvvin
in OFFTOPIC
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</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (IceFire @ Aug. 08 2002,01:32)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Bosun, I know what you mean about that 10 second thing.
Like when you start talking to a girl. Â You can immediately feel if you are interested or not. Â This is because you can really immediately feel someone out when you are talking to them.<span id='postcolor'>
You "feeling someone out" is your body checking whether your MHC-typing is dissimiliar from the person you're talking to.
Wedekind C, Füri S (1997) "Body odour preferences in men and women: Do they aim for specific MHC combinations or simply heterozygosity?" Proc R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 264:1471-9
Abstract
The major histocompatibility complex (MHC) is an immunologically important group of genes that appears to be under natural as well as sexual selection. Several hypotheses suggest that certain MHC-allele combinations (usually heterozygous ones) are superior under selective pressure by pathogens. This could influence mate choice in a way that preferences function to create MHC-heterozygous offspring, or that they function to create specific allele combinations that are beneficial under the current environmental conditions through their complementary or epistatic effects. To test these hypotheses, we asked 121 men and women to score the odours of six T-shirts, worn by two women and four men. Their scorings of pleasantness correlated negatively with the degree of MHC similarity between smeller and T-shirt-wearer in men and women who were not using the contraceptive pill (but not in Pill-users). Depending on the T-shirt-wearer, the amount of variance in the scorings of odour pleasantness that was explained by the degree of MHC similarity (r2) varied between nearly 0 and 23%. There was no apparent effect of gender in this correlation: the highest r2 was actually reached with one of the male odours sniffed by male smellers. Men and women who were reminded of their own mate/ex-mate when sniffing a T-shirt had significantly fewer MHC-alleles in common with this T-shirt-wearer than expected by chance. This suggests that the MHC or linked genes influence human mate choice. We found no significant effect when we tested for an influence of the MHC on odour preferences after the degree of similarity between T-shirt-wearer and smeller was statistically controlled for. This suggests that in our study populations the MHC influences body odour preferences mainly, if not exclusively, by the degree of similarity or dissimilarity. The observed preferences would increase heterozygosity in the progeny. They do not seem to aim for more specific MHC combinations.
So in brief, the more your MHC-type differs from that of the other person, the more you like them after the magical ten seconds. This kind of thing only affects the "crush" phase of relationships, however.