Nuclear Armageddon is here... (Wheres The Satellite?)
- Thread starter Dastardos
- Start date
Recommended Videos
Well that means that we don't have to worry about a nuclear launch form North Korea for a while. Whew, the Earth survives Armageddon for another day.Dastardos said:
A wise man was asked once, Whats the difference between the ATLAS rocket engine that launches astronauts and satellites into space and the ATLAS rocket engine that launches a massive nuclear warhead"Booze Zombie said:
He responded "Attitude"
if you can put something in space you can launch a nuke, and launching a nuke would start a nuclear war close to China's borders causing China to get involved.
dekkarax said:
I tend to disagree, humanity can be unified through the spread of ideas. Military force simply becomes nessicary when dealing with groups of people that are effectively closed to the influance of outside ideas for whatever reason. A unified humanity is going to come about through a combination of idealogy and military force.
For the most part the US is "winning" on the field of ideas. Every year most of the world becomes a bit more like us, whether they like it or not. Some nations like France have tried to do things like limit the number of American movies that can be shown in their country each year compared to French movies because of this, and you oftentimes hear things about foreign leaders going off about the erosion of their core identity/values from American influance.
Nations like China have also taken extra care to try and lock off the Internet (their deal with Google was a big deal) because American ideas represent a problem.
It won't happen tomorrow, it won't happen next year, heck it won't happen in a decade, but I think eventually a good portion of the world is going to come around to the whole "Planet America" idea eventually. Albeit in all seriousness there will cease to really be nations including the USA, it will rather become a global unity under American principles. This is of course assuming we do what it takes to survive and remain on top.
Violence and conquest become nessicary when dealing with cultures/nations that are totally xenophobic and cut off from outside influance. For example, while I'd actually hope it doesn't come to this, I do not think that the religious based cultures throughout The Middle East will come around to enlightened thinking, and they are closed to outside ideas/influance largely because of their religious basis. In the end I feel that is going to come down to massive violence, and I even see the increasing need for it now.
It is possible that we will see a East Vs. West war largely between the US and China as both have powerful idealogies that are not likely to convert each other, even gradually.
What role Russia plays remains to be seen, however their return to old form I believe has as much to do with identity issues than anything else. They'd rather be a group of ogres than third fiddle in a capitolist world, though it remains to be seen how that one will play out.
-
At any rate, one "question" made by Armchair academics is whether or not Hitler taking over the world would have been worth it. It's true beyond a doubt that he had the capcity and came very close. He was popular enough, even among the people he conquered, where he didn't need to engage in massive occupations and police actions. A few twists of fate and he could have been running the world. We would have seen the jewish ethnicity eliminated, along with Gypsies, and other groups that invoked the ire of his regime for whatever reason.
However, in the long term would the loss of a couple of ethnicities not have been worth a united planet, knowing that Hitler would not live forever, and whether it lasted or was overthrown from within later, humanity would be one entity from there on.
Of course I say "Armchair" academics because it's easy to talk about when your not one of the people who was going to get purged of course.
The point is that it's not impossible to unify the planet, Hitler came close, Alexander The Great also came extremely close.
>>>----Therumancer--->
Unless it was a crit-rocket, I don't see it being a problem... it missed everyone, all it was was a satellite... so kim wanted his own direct TV satellite? Who cares! I mean, even if it is for military use, you really think we don't have some kind of counter measure against it? They don't have enough money or resources for a good satellite, it's probably some kind of cheap wanna be satellite that'll be easily destroyed if the need arises...
Stop worrying about that stuff, it just depress the shit out of you, try doing thinking about something else...
Stop worrying about that stuff, it just depress the shit out of you, try doing thinking about something else...
Goodman 528:
Let's be serious here.
As amusing as you might find it to imply that I am saying "America is the Master Race" it's ridiculous. The entire arguement for American supremacy is a cultural one specifically because America allows all Ethnicities to become part of the culture and live as equals. That sort of precludes any kind of master race idealogy.
At the worst I'm making a statement of cultural bigotry, as I'm rather clearly stating that a culture as tolerant as America is in a league of it's own, and above ANY achievement by any mono-ethnic culture, or even one that has attempted to do something similar on a lesser scale.
What's more when I read statements about how "Well China isn't racist, they're just like the Japanese before World War II" I can't help but wonder how serious you are trying to be. The Japanese being one of the most sadistic groups of racists to ever grace the planet, World War II having been a huge kick in the teeth for them. Even today you have them producing pop culture like Anime that has an underlying theme of misplaced national destiny. You've got guys in series like Gasaraki slicing their eyeballs out because they can't bear to see a world in which Japan is not ruling over everyone as nature intended. Then you have crud like Blue Seed where the same attitude is pretty much the honorable motive of the major bad guys, and one that is supposed to be "pure" enough in the context of the story to give the good guys pause (and that right there says something).
-
As far as the rest goes, China was making international newspapers by rounding up all of their "unsightly" elements and political dissidents before the Olympics. To say nothing of the forcible relocation of residents to make space for the facilities themselves. This stuff was all over the papers and had people going "WTF" since China hosting pretty much made a human rights tradgedy out of an event about global humanitarianism.
THEN it was all over the news that China cut a huge censorship deal with Google, so they could pretty much keep outside ideas about democracy and such off the Internet there. Now granted there are hackers and such who still access such things, but again this was a big deal, and had a lot of people calling Google a group of sell outs.
Also according to the few mentions I've seen about it, it's still illegal to be vocally democratic, something they are working to quash. This was a point of tension when we went to the Olympics not too long ago, and extra special effort was taken to ensure that there wasn't any... incidents... with visitors while they were in China's back yard.
What's more on a personal level, before I became disabled, I used to provide Casino security down here in Connecticut. We got a ton of traffic from between New York and Massachussets, iuncluding such a massive volume of Chinese we had specific departments to deal with them.
To be honest with you, I have never dealt with a ruder, more racist group of people. They stole, cheated, insulted people, and felt it was their right. I know this because I investigated the incidents, questioned people, and watched on cameras. I also had to deal with the employees like waitresses and such who were always complaining that they did not tip. This isn't even getting into all of the racial slurs thrown my way trying to do my job. This wasn't isolated incidents, this was part of my job.
The news, combined with my own experiences (and no, it wasn't me being a racist twit or anything, but a general situation affecting everyone) really paints a differant picture of China and the Chinese.
In general Americanized Chinese are okay (ie Chinese Ethnicity, but otherwise American) but those that hold onto the original culture and might not even speak english clearly... no.
If a bunch of guys from New York's Chinatown are like this, I can't imagine China is any better (especially going by what we hear).
On a final note, I once read a novel by a guy called Michael Slade (which is a pen name for a trio of writers from Canada), who claimed as facts in their novel that the Chinese in general are convinced of a divine destiny. A basical idealogy for a lot of them is that they are of divine lineage and China is like "The Middle Kingdom" because it's between heaven and earth, and the "celestrial people" are a step above all of us poor pathetic goobs with our purely mortal ancestory. This last bit isn't that reliable, and I never got the impression that it was claimed that everyone followed that idealogy, but apparently it's enough of a factory culturally that it makes me... wary... when it coems to any suggestions of China as a progressive culture.
Heck, for another fact SARS pretty much started in China because you had people living so close to their livestock and such.
-
As far as the number of empowered minorities in China, I'm going to call "BS" on that one. It IS true that there are a large number of differant ethnicities living in China that the rest of the world labels as "Chinese" though they might maintain a distinction within China and have it be obvious to someone who lives there. But as far as Blacks, Whites, Latinos, etc... no. There are some, but nothing like what we're talking about.
... and I'm sorry, if you can't even Google freely, then I'm not buying anyone down there has the requisite freedom to even begin to compare to America. Once you have America's level of freedom, then it becomes a question of whether you maintain that level of freedom within a society that has all ethnicities living as equals, OR if your by and large a mono-ethnic society.
Honestly if I went down to say Beijing right now and looked around I'd think I'd be hard pressed to find a white person or a black person. Even if I did, I doubt I'd find them in any numbers compared to the rest of the country. In the US on the otherhand if I go to DC I'm going to see people of all kinds of differant ethnicities all over the place.
Let's be serious here.
As amusing as you might find it to imply that I am saying "America is the Master Race" it's ridiculous. The entire arguement for American supremacy is a cultural one specifically because America allows all Ethnicities to become part of the culture and live as equals. That sort of precludes any kind of master race idealogy.
At the worst I'm making a statement of cultural bigotry, as I'm rather clearly stating that a culture as tolerant as America is in a league of it's own, and above ANY achievement by any mono-ethnic culture, or even one that has attempted to do something similar on a lesser scale.
What's more when I read statements about how "Well China isn't racist, they're just like the Japanese before World War II" I can't help but wonder how serious you are trying to be. The Japanese being one of the most sadistic groups of racists to ever grace the planet, World War II having been a huge kick in the teeth for them. Even today you have them producing pop culture like Anime that has an underlying theme of misplaced national destiny. You've got guys in series like Gasaraki slicing their eyeballs out because they can't bear to see a world in which Japan is not ruling over everyone as nature intended. Then you have crud like Blue Seed where the same attitude is pretty much the honorable motive of the major bad guys, and one that is supposed to be "pure" enough in the context of the story to give the good guys pause (and that right there says something).
-
As far as the rest goes, China was making international newspapers by rounding up all of their "unsightly" elements and political dissidents before the Olympics. To say nothing of the forcible relocation of residents to make space for the facilities themselves. This stuff was all over the papers and had people going "WTF" since China hosting pretty much made a human rights tradgedy out of an event about global humanitarianism.
THEN it was all over the news that China cut a huge censorship deal with Google, so they could pretty much keep outside ideas about democracy and such off the Internet there. Now granted there are hackers and such who still access such things, but again this was a big deal, and had a lot of people calling Google a group of sell outs.
Also according to the few mentions I've seen about it, it's still illegal to be vocally democratic, something they are working to quash. This was a point of tension when we went to the Olympics not too long ago, and extra special effort was taken to ensure that there wasn't any... incidents... with visitors while they were in China's back yard.
What's more on a personal level, before I became disabled, I used to provide Casino security down here in Connecticut. We got a ton of traffic from between New York and Massachussets, iuncluding such a massive volume of Chinese we had specific departments to deal with them.
To be honest with you, I have never dealt with a ruder, more racist group of people. They stole, cheated, insulted people, and felt it was their right. I know this because I investigated the incidents, questioned people, and watched on cameras. I also had to deal with the employees like waitresses and such who were always complaining that they did not tip. This isn't even getting into all of the racial slurs thrown my way trying to do my job. This wasn't isolated incidents, this was part of my job.
The news, combined with my own experiences (and no, it wasn't me being a racist twit or anything, but a general situation affecting everyone) really paints a differant picture of China and the Chinese.
In general Americanized Chinese are okay (ie Chinese Ethnicity, but otherwise American) but those that hold onto the original culture and might not even speak english clearly... no.
If a bunch of guys from New York's Chinatown are like this, I can't imagine China is any better (especially going by what we hear).
On a final note, I once read a novel by a guy called Michael Slade (which is a pen name for a trio of writers from Canada), who claimed as facts in their novel that the Chinese in general are convinced of a divine destiny. A basical idealogy for a lot of them is that they are of divine lineage and China is like "The Middle Kingdom" because it's between heaven and earth, and the "celestrial people" are a step above all of us poor pathetic goobs with our purely mortal ancestory. This last bit isn't that reliable, and I never got the impression that it was claimed that everyone followed that idealogy, but apparently it's enough of a factory culturally that it makes me... wary... when it coems to any suggestions of China as a progressive culture.
Heck, for another fact SARS pretty much started in China because you had people living so close to their livestock and such.
-
As far as the number of empowered minorities in China, I'm going to call "BS" on that one. It IS true that there are a large number of differant ethnicities living in China that the rest of the world labels as "Chinese" though they might maintain a distinction within China and have it be obvious to someone who lives there. But as far as Blacks, Whites, Latinos, etc... no. There are some, but nothing like what we're talking about.
... and I'm sorry, if you can't even Google freely, then I'm not buying anyone down there has the requisite freedom to even begin to compare to America. Once you have America's level of freedom, then it becomes a question of whether you maintain that level of freedom within a society that has all ethnicities living as equals, OR if your by and large a mono-ethnic society.
Honestly if I went down to say Beijing right now and looked around I'd think I'd be hard pressed to find a white person or a black person. Even if I did, I doubt I'd find them in any numbers compared to the rest of the country. In the US on the otherhand if I go to DC I'm going to see people of all kinds of differant ethnicities all over the place.
Debatable. No one seems able to confirm that it worked or not.Dastardos said:
Of course Japan will say it failed and DPRK suck worse than a Dyson Twin Cycle, and of course DPRK will say it worked and they are the descendants of Lord McAwesome.
In the midst of all this, no one seems to be able to give us a damn answer about if it worked or not.
Sometimes I wish I occupied a high level position in a clandestine secret service just so I could watch world events unfold without propaganda.
On a vaugely related note, read Red Star, Winter Orbit, a short story by William Gibson.Therumancer said:
Its set 20 minutes into the future, when the Russians have landed on Mars and there has been significant advances to various space programs etc, but then it basically asks the question "What if space exploration just isn't profitable, and all manned space flight gets shut down?"
I actually found it quite disheartening to think that such a thing could ever come down to crunching numbers and working out "Hey, all this technology might look cool, but its not gonna get us anywhere." What's worse, is if you look into the problematic issue of how close the nearest habitable planets are, you start to think the Gibson may have had a valid point.
EDIT: Sorry dekarrax, misquoted you by accident.
