Timewaster's Guide Archive

Someone over at the Huffington Post has a sense of humor.

By supporting Israel in the way we did we caused hundreds of thousands of Arabians to die and think nothing of it,

Bullshit. The wars Israel has been in, from its inception as a country, have all been started by the surrounding Arab states.  Israel kicked their asses with our help on every occasion, thank heavens.  You want to talk about people harming Arabs?  Look at those same surrounding states and how they treat the Palestinian refugees not to mention their own citizens.

I am by no means saying that Israel has lily-white hands. They do not.  However, until the jihadists get over the idea that blowing up women and children on purpose is acceptable behavior they can negotiate with a rifle round.

As for Hiroshima and Nagasaki?  Those were humanitarian acts. They killed fewer people by an order of magnitude than would have died had we had to invade the home island in our efforts to end the war.
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I remember 9/11. The thing that bothers me today is the language a lot of people use in their remembrances.  It is important that we remember the day and the events.  But most people say we should 'honor' the dead and their sacrifice. For what?  The dead from the towers did nothing but show up to work that day they sacrificed nothing.  We should be remembering who did it, so that we can attempt to ensure that it never happens again. 

7 years of success on that front so far.

I'm with you there.  I gotta say the petty resorting to feigned offence is really getting on my nerves.  Latest offender? McCain's camp.

I don't care if the crowd at Obama's speech where he whipped out the 'lipstick on a pig' line was hooting, hollering, and chanting 'no more pitbulls' or whatever.  (All of which is a good indication that they thought he was talking about Palin whether he was or not.) It's irrelevant.

Please.  Why get offended over something stupid like that?  Do you really want to be seen taking a schoolyard quality insult seriously? Gah! Just let it speak for itself.

I honestly think that if the question is specifically intended to garner the opinion of fellow Sanderson fans on what other books they like then this is a fine place for it.

And on that note... I just finished "The Blade Itself" by Joe Abercrombie and I will be buying the next one this evening.  Bloody awesome book. In all ways.  Really enjoyed it. Highly recommended.

Yeah.  And I noticed several errors in the piece that would have been caught by a good editor.  Painful.

The article was relevant to the thread in general and should not be seen as a reply to you specifically.

As for the experience discussion:  I think a lot of assumptions that don't agree with each other are being held by the folks involved.  One of the things I object to when people discuss politics is when one holds an entire spectrum of people responsible for the statements of individuals.  If you want to say that the same people who were blasting Obama for inexperience are now happy with Palin I'd like to see quotes from those people, with bylines.  I for one never got into too much of a huff over Obama's lack of experience, yet, as a Republican by voting preference, you have just accused me of hypocrisy.  A little more precision would set my mind at ease.

As for experience in general, I honestly see quite a difference between executive experience (actually being responsible for people, money and infrastructure) and legislative experience where you are responsible for nothing but your own re-election or even 'community organizing' experience, whatever that means.  So I don't really have a problem with the people who went on about Obama's lack of experience and yet are happy about Palin.  Apples and oranges and all that.

Edit: Oh, and I just watched Mrs. Palin's speech at the Republican Convention.  She's got a lot more ammo than Obama's inexperience. A lot more.

Quote from: Skar on August 24, 2008, 02:51:07 AM

Oh no, MsFish.  If you paid for it, it's yours.  Is there some question about who owns the plastic shark I just bought? Does it somehow still belong to the rickets victim who assembled it in far off Taiwan?  In what way would a paper that I paid a legless Indian street urchin to write not be "my own?"

In the way that if a student in my class did that I would fail them outright, and the university would support me in it.  You might own it, but that doesn't make it okay in an academic setting.

Well, thank heavens that I was never in your class. All the professors I had at BYU were fine with it.  Where do you teach?

I am intrigued and would have kept reading were it a book.  The descriptions of the world feel pretty solid, though I would have liked a bit more detail on just how they were jumping down from the tower and less info-dump description on what it's like when crystalhearts fight. Let us see that when it happens.

I have a real problem with Ves.  I think he's supposed to be the bad guy but IMO you've overplayed him.  As portrayed, with the screaming and the egomania, I have a hard time believing that he's never been beaten senseless and deposed or simply locked up as a nutjob.

I'm also a little confused about the 'war.'  Ves seems to think it's a pretty big deal and this is supported by the fact that Dantes and Aermyst are out doing his bidding, hunting for more materiel to fight the war with but at the same time, they don't even really think about the war they're involved in at all until they're in Ves' presence and then they act like he's a nut for being concerned with the war at all and refer to it as 'one war or another'.  Is the war a big deal or not?