Posts by Xander

Million dollar question, then....what are the changes in the new book? (As an aside - don't knock the power of these "secret/special" meetings. Finding out about the November one all those years back is what led me to *this* site. And from there....)

3

It's only funny because of Google's suggestion...

by Xander in

take a look at the query run.

then take a look at google's "did you mean..." suggestion.

you'll need to copy and paste this, linking doesn't work for some reason.

Xander

Take a look at the query run.

Then take a look at Google's "Did you mean..." suggestion.

You'll need to copy and paste this, linking doesn't work for some reason.

http://www.google.com/search?lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=Dirt%20Devil%20Sweeper%20Vac%20with%20Swiffe

26

LCD screens, do you have one?

by JH in

jw
friends

this week, i'll go and buy a lcd screen for my computer.

try to fit a 4:3 ratio picture into a 5:4 ratio screen, and it will distort.

i'd like to have your feedback on this, if you noticed any distortion in your pictures when you changed from a crt 4:3 ratio to a lcd screen 5:4 ratio.

Xander

Oh here is my setup too:

HEY!!

I've *seen* that setup before?!

JWBot, do you post on the HardForum? I'm 100% sure I've seen that system posted there!

BEST BOARDGAME EVER!!!! (Awesome "family game" present for LotR fans)

by Xander in

how's this for "behind the times", i'm recommending a game from 2000!.

anyway, lord of the rings is basically the best boardgame ever.. the cool 'gimmick' about it is that it is *cooperative* - all the players playing together are on the same side (the hobbits, actually).

if you lose, everyone loses.

Xander

How's this for "behind the times", I'm recommending a game from 2000!

Anyway, Lord of the Rings is basically the best boardgame EVER.

The cool 'gimmick' about it is that it is *cooperative* - all the players playing together are on the same side (the Hobbits, actually). If you lose, everyone loses. If you win, everyone wins. No players are trying to beat each other, or compete for some goal, or otherwise cut each other out of the game. Your team has the best odds of success when everyone is working together as hard as possible.

The production values for the game are also something to behold. Very nice art, the board mounting is excellent, box is sturdy, everything is easy to put away in the parts tray (each thing has its own place), etc.

The gameplay is pretty easy to pick up, but has a lot of depth to it. Basically, the "overall game" is played from a small board up top. It has two 'tracks' on it - one with a series of scenarios that need to be played to finish (starting at Bag End, through Rivendell, Moria, Lothlorien, etc to Mount Doom), and the other track is where the hobbit pieces go (in the leftmost box) as well as the Sauron piece (rightmost box, position 15). This is the "corruption" track, and as the game is played, Sauron moves closer to the hobbits through various events, and the hobbits move closer to Sauron by other events (or using the ring). Once a hobbit is beyond the Sauron piece on the corruption track, they are out (but still win with everyone else if the ring is destroyed). If the hobbit carrying the ring is corrupted by Sauron, the game is over and everyone loses. (A harder variant of the game has it that if any hobbit falls to corruption, the game is also over - this is how my wife and I play - no fun in going on without the other, in our opinions)

Anyway, for a lot of the scenarios there is a seperate scenario board that is include and played. These have 4 or 5 tracks that counters are moved on. This is where the real "meat" of the game is. A stack of (randomly shuffled) tiles determines what event happens next (which track a marker advances on, or what game event happens, or what happens with Sauron or the ringbearer). It's up to the players, with their hands of cards, to try and get through the 'main track' on each scenario. The cards in your hand are played to advance you on the various tracks - or, may be called for by some event to prevent something awful from happening (for example "Watcher in the Water" on the Moria scenario requires each player to give up at least one "hiding" card or face corruption).

Along the way in the side tracks, each player can also pick up 'life tokens' (three types) that are needed to prevent the player's hobbit from being corrupted on the corruption track when the scenario ends (for each token missing, your hobbit is corrupted one level). Also, shields can be picked up. These are also called for in some events ("Faces of the Dead" on the Shelob's Lair map requires 3 shield tokens or a wildcard from the hand, or the player is lost), or can be used to summon Gandalf, who has several cards that can be played for good things!

Anyway, I'm blathering. This game is the most fun that can be had with clothes on. Check out the link above (or read below). The game is just incredible - my wife loves it, I love it, it's awesome. Good for families, it fits well in with the "Lord of the Rings" universe, and is just a hoot to play:

15

Studying the "Keep on the Watch!" brochure - The clergy and terrorists!!

by ozziepost in

after being deceived in the first section "where is this world heading?

" the next section of misrepresentation in the brochure is "what does it all mean?"..

it starts with this mind-numbing statement:.

Xander

Heathen, you are the textbook example of 'missing the forest for the trees'.

I do like to read but still like to use my own interpretations of information

That's well and good, but when your 'own interpretation of information' directly conflicts with established fact, maybe you might want to reconsider your opinion?

I guess you are forgetting the violence in the world and concluding that since the worlds super powers aren't involved that somehow I am in error to the fact that the UN and the league of nations have little or nothing to do with the peace and security issues they so boldly claim they can bring to mankind

And the first thing I need to question is you keep bringing the "League of Nations" into an UN discussion like they were related at all (like a good little JW would, of course).

That's equivelant to arguing that the Article of Confederation and the United States Constitution were different versions of the same thing just because the basic intent was the same (to unify the independant states).

Please, PLEASE do a little more research on a topic before posting about it. Your woeful lack of education in some of these areas is rather embarassing.

Iraq and Iran were at war for a long time the US was at war with north vietnam and korea which were really being supplied by the chinese

Indeed, and that list highlights most of the major conflicts of the 20th century (plus WW1 and WW2, of course). Now, obviously, I know you've studied nothing of pre-20th century history other than what the JWs told you, so you can't accurately answer my next question, but I'll throw it out as a hypothetical, anyway.

How do any of these wars compare to the following:

14-18th Century Wars
(Fun fact! World population peaked at 1 billion as the 19th century dawned. Middle of the 17the century, world population was around 500 million. For most of these wars, the total world population varied from 200,000,000 or so UP TO 500,000,000)

Civil and Domestic Wars

White Lotus Rebellion (100,000 dead)
Sainte-Dominique Civil War (160,000 dead)
Szechwan Revolt (120,000 dead)
Sino-Dzungar War (600,000 dead)
Shah Nadir's invasion of Persia (approx 170,000 dead)
Shimabara Rebellion (approx 100,000 dead)
Chinese Manchu Conquest (25,000,000 dead)
French Civil Revolutions 1789-1792 (600,000 dead)
Razin Rebellion in Volga area (100,000 dead)
Dnieper Cossack Rebellion (100,000 dead)
English Civil War (868,000 dead)
St. Bartholomew's Massacre (100,000 dead nationwide)
French Catholic-Heugenot Wars (4,000,000 dead)
Waldensian Persecution (900,000 dead)
Ivan the Terrible's wars (215,000 dead)
Peasant's War in Germany (100,000 dead)
War of the Roses (100,000 dead)
European Witch Hunts 1400-1800 (500,000 dead)
Saracen Slaughters in Spain (7,000,000 dead)
Saxon and Scandanavian 'Conversions' (2,000,000 dead)
Albigensian Crusade (1,000,000 dead)

International Wars (generally, only military deaths counted below)

French Revolution 1792 - 1802 (2,030,000 dead)
Russo-Austro-Turkish War (192,000 dead)
Seven Years War (1,200,000 dead)
War of the Austrian Succession (450,000 dead)
War of the Polish Succession (88,000 dead)
War of the Spanish Succession (1,324,000 dead)
War of the League of Augsburg (680,000 dead)
Ottoman War (384,000 dead)
Franco-Dutch War (342,000 dead)
Thirty Years War (2,000,000 battlefield dead, total population drop of 7,500,000)
Russo-Tatar War (500,000 dead)
Hundred Years War (185,250 battlefield dead, total population drop of 16,300,000)
Crusades (2,000,000 - 5,000,000 dead)

Ummm...okay, that's just up to the 18th century. Only getting warmed up!

19th Century Wars
(keep in mind the peak world population at this point was only 1,600,000,000 people - several of these wars on their own killed off quite a substantial fraction of the world's population!)

Napoleonic Wars (3,500,000 dead)
Mfecane and the Reign of Shaka (2,000,000 dead)
19th Century Slave Trade Wars (5,500,000 dead)
Taiping Rebellion (20,000,000 - 30,000,000 dead)
Congo Free State (8,000,000 dead)
United States 'Indian' Genocide (250,000 dead)
Indian Thuggee Cult 'Revolt' (500,000 dead)
Russo-Turkish War 1806-1812 (225,000 dead)
Javanese War (200,000 dead)
Russo-Turkish War 1828-1829 (205,000 dead)
Crimean War (508,000 dead)
American Civil War (650,000 dead)
War of the Triple Alliance (610,000 dead)
Cuban Ten Years War (200,000 dead)
Franco-Prussian War (750,000 dead)
Russo-Turkish War 1877-1878 (285,000 dead)
Cuban Revolution (300,000 dead)
Mexican Revolution (1,000,000 dead) - 20th century, but pre-1914

Astute historians will, of course, note that I am ommitting a TON of wars. Probably listing only 1/10 or so of the total conflicts from the 11th to the 18th century. Point of fact is that I am only listing conflicts were creater than 100,000 people died. Maybe an arbitrary number to use. After all, the entire world population in the year 1000AD was only 250 million. So when you are talking about 5 million possible deaths in the Crusades, you are actually referring to an entire 2% of the world population dying in ONE 'war'.

Of course, that's really nothing! According to statistics in Lawrence Keeley's War Before Civilization: the Myth of the Peaceful Savage:

Table 6.2 lists the Percentage of Deaths Due to Warfare. Of the 8 primitive societies that survived long enough to be analyzed by modern demographics, the median indicates that some 15.4% of all primitives, male and female alike, died by warfare. Of the 14 prehistoric cultures excavated and analyzed by archaeologists, the median indicates that about 14.8% of all prehistorics, male and female alike, died by warfare.
Combining these into a sample group of 22 gives us a median of about 15.1%. The middle one-third of this combined sample runs from 12% to 16%. In practical terms, this means that for every 1,000,000 people who lived outside of a literate state, some 120,000 to 160,000 would eventually be killed in war.

I think you'll find that, excluding WW1 and WW2 (which happened before the UN was formed), we of the 20th and 21st century have done a pretty good job of preventing significant fractions of the global population from dying in war!

15

Studying the "Keep on the Watch!" brochure - The clergy and terrorists!!

by ozziepost in

after being deceived in the first section "where is this world heading?

" the next section of misrepresentation in the brochure is "what does it all mean?"..

it starts with this mind-numbing statement:.

Xander

I think the real danger of living in todays world is that man has the ability to not only kill himself with WOMD but also destroy the planet to point where all life could become extinct .

There is a great chasm between the ABILITY to do something and ANY CHANCE of it actually happening. During the 60s and 70s? Maybe, but mostly because the long-term effects of a nuclear war were not widely known or acknowledged.

The thing is that you are looking at WMDs all wrong. They are weapons that are most effectively used by never using them but by HAVING them. I'm sure we'll see a couple localized nuclear exchanges in the near future (India/Pakistan, for one), but nothing on a global scale to worry mankind. The superpowers will never fire them in anger - just too much at risk, and everyone knows that now.

Big corporations have poluted the environment to the point that if there are no measures to preserve the eco system that in itself could wreak all sorts of havock on the planet .

True, this is a concern. However, consider that the US is the ONLY first world country not currently *trying* to do something about it. And how long do you really think the US will be able to stand alone on this issue?

True Mankind has always had the world in a state of war throughout the history of the planet but never before in the history of man has there been attempts to negotiate with diplomacy thru a medium such as the league of nations or the UN but to no avail , so you might say it is impossible for man to live in peace under his own terms . WW1 was believed to be the war to end all wars but nothing could be further from the truth on the issue .

See?

Sorry, no offense, but this is EXACTLY the kind of....lets see....how to put this....semi-retarded?...revisionism the society uses. Or, maybe worse, exploiting the poor education system of this country.

1) NOBODY, *EVER* thought WW1 was the 'war to end all wars'. Not one person, not ever, at no point in time thought that. The whole 'war to end all wars' line was a recruitment line fed to teenagers to try and get them to enlist - but even then, nobody really believed it. It's like the modern Army's "Army of One" slogan. Does the idea of being an "Army of One" gets recruits in? Sure it does! Does ANYBODY really believe someone is LITERALLY an 'Army of One'!? Hell no! It's just a recruitment slogan, nothing more or less. There is no meaning behind the words.

2) Quick question - how many wars between world powers have happened since the forming of the UN? What's that? NONE? Huh, guess it really is worthless, huh? Look through history. Before the 20th century, the 'world powers' were France, England, Prussia (later Germany), and Russia. Earlier than that Spain and Denmark were. Find me a 50 year stretch in time before the 20th century when you didn't have at least two of the world powers at the time at war with each other. The UN has succeeded in keeping the world powers from fighting, and drastically minimized the number of 'proxy' wars fought.

Has it ended war entirely? Of course not, but nothing will. Human nature to fight over resources and ideology. MINIMIZING it is an amazing accomplishment on its own!

Seriously, please, STOP POSTING ON SOMETHING YOU HAVE NO CONCEPT ABOUT.

Really.

Stop.

Go read some books on pre-1914 society. Heck, I'm busilly reading a great one right now. "Dreadnought" by Robert K. Massie. It is about, interestingly enough, the actual cause of WW1. It's written by a journalist rather than a historian, so although it's a HUGE book (over 1000 pages), it's a very easy read. Really - VERY easy read, VERY interesting book. Covers the topic thoroughly.