NASA marks 50 years of moon landing.

I recall camping in some of the National Parks in the Southwest a few years ago, and meeting lots of Germans, most of them, apparently, from Stuttgart for some reason (possibly vacation dates for civil servants). I couldn't resist using my schoolboy German to assert, Wir brauchen wieder eine starke Wehrmacht [we need again a strong Wehrmacht] which usually caused a conversation pause... but I think most of them agreed with me, that, eventually, Germany must step up to the plate and lead the defense of Europe after Uncle Sam goes home. On the other hand, I've seen some depressing statistics which imply that German youth are almost complete pacifists. Let's hope it's not true.

 

of course

 

Most germans act differently in person than on the internet

 

Most people of all nationalities do, I think. Or maybe the people who get on the internet are different from those who don't.

One thing we can say about the internet: without being paranoid, it's probable that political discussion boards are being monitored, perhaps by computer programs scanning for key words. It's not difficult to do.

And if you have these rather modest resources, and you want to, say, drive a wedge between country X and country Y -- 'you' being a sophisticated Islamist, or a Russian intelligence agency, or anyone -- then how easy it is to do it: just pretend to be from country X, and start insulting country Y, or vice-versa. You could pay a teenager ten bucks an hour to do this on fifty different boards simultaneously. The impact would of course be very small, but there would be an impact: over time, a few hundred citizens of country X who go away with a negative, or more negative, feeling about country Y. Just a few hundred, but probably most of them are politically-active, even opinion leaders among their peers.

I always think about this when I see posts trying to make the Germans hate the Americans, or vice versa, or the Russians hate the Americans, or vice versa. I'm not talking about criticism of this or that leader, or this or that policy -- the sort of thing that citizens of the country in question do themselves -- but attacks on the country and its people as such. I just wonder if there's some computer-savvy guy, or group, somewhere, maybe in the Middle East, grinning at the ill feeling they're generating.

By the way, this isn't aimed at anything you have posted, just a thought that came into my head as I read some of the posts on this thread.

 

A habitat like that is limited in resources. It will also cost tremendous amount to build, pretty much making it a lifeboat for the richest + their servants. Pretty much what you see in movie Elysium.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming_of_Mars

This looks like a much cheaper option for a heck of a lot more real estate. And if technology is on asteroid mining level I bet decision makers will opt to terraform mars instead of building 100% artificial habitat in orbit.

 

Im not a pacifist and most of east german youth is not. IN west its different.

 

Im not convinced. Mars lacks gravity. It can never be a 2nd earth. A massive Ring Habitat could provie us exactly what we need and want

 

Talking about terraforming, ring habitats, etc. now, is like talking about going to the moon in 1900. We can say some intelligent things, but we don't know enough about what will be possible in the future.

We don't know what advances in science and technology will occur in the next hundred years or so. There may be developments, which we cannot now predict, that will change our possibilities enormously. For example, trillions of tiny nanobots crawling around the surface of Mars, doing chemical/mechanical things that make the soil and atmosphere more to our liking. And/or genetically-modfied organisms doing the same. We may finally crack the problem of fusion power. Ring habitats may benefit from leaps forward in new materials, like new allotropes of carbon. Things like 3-D printing suddenly open up new possibilities -- we don't have to carry heavy spare parts, one of every possible kind, into orbit -- we can just carry the digitalized blueprints and a good 3-D printer and some raw materials. Advances in AI will make space exploration much more sophisticated and less risky.

What's critical is to avoid a big stupid war. The Europeans, the Russians, the Indians, the Chinese and the Americans should join together in some mutual joint venture to make the next big step into space.

For the little boys, perhaps we could have an "Infantry Olympics" where teams of young men who really enjoy armed combat could compete against each other using live ammunition. The viewing rights alone could probably pay for the international space program.

 

There is a big effort from the left to make Americans hate other Americans

 

It's their main strategy now.

America has been almost unique in being able to bring in peoples of many different tribes (races, nations, religions) and melt them together.
Everywhere else, where there are two or more tribes living on the same territory, there is trouble: Northern Ireland, Cyprus, Yugoslavia, Ukraine,
Sri Lanka, Iraq, Burma, almost any country in Africa ... Anywhere else in the world, claiming that "Diversity is Strength" would be regarded as a sick
joke, or evidence of insanity.

Now the Left have found America's fracture lines and are working overtime to widen them.

In the worst case, they will succeed in igniting a real 'white power' identity politics among whites, who over the last fifty years have absorbed the idea
that racism is bad, that Blacks have had a raw deal in America, that immigration makes us strong. When I spent time among the Tea Party a few years
ago I was impressed by how non-racist they were, how in fact they yearned for a qualified Black conservative to take on Obama.

But if the Left finally succeed in getting over the idea that recognizing reality, that defending your own culture, your own country, is actually 'racism' ... they could set off a political inferno. (And they would probably have, probably already have had, some covert foreign help.)

Where Blacks and Hispanics are the overwhelming majority in an area, their own people will be safe. Blacks and Hispanics might be safe in white areas, if enough of the old, official, non-racist American ideology still holds among most whites. Asians will be welcome anywhere, assuming that sane people are in charge.

The people who are not going to be welcome anywhere in a burning America are going to be the arsonists, the white Leftists.

 

West German youth are like American middle-class youth: they've grown up in a soft environment and assume that's the way the whole world is.
I read somewhere that Charles Darwin noted that some English pigeon-fanciers, who selectively bred pigeons, liked pigeons with short beaks. So they selected for them, generation after generation, and each succeeding generation had shorter and shorter beaks. Eventually, they got a generation with beaks too short to peck their way out of the shell.

America has been top of the world for 70 years. There was only the nuclear threat from the Soviet Union, which was just there abstractly, but didn't challenge us to behave any differently. All our wars were voluntary, and after Vietnam, we abolished conscription. So our military is made up, in the base, of young workingclass people, not the boys and girls who go to our elite colleges. 9/11 could have changed that, but didn't. In fact, our liberal elite see Muslims simply as victims -- any other consideration is "Islamaphobia", as if ten million Muslim immigrants should be treated the same as ten million Swiss or Hungarians. The failure in Afghanistan and Iraq seems to vindicate pacifism, to a superficial mind.

In 1934 the Oxford Union (a famous university debating society) passed the resolution, "This House will not fight for King or Country". It was noted, no doubt with great satisfaction, in Berlin and Tokyo.

But it remains true, that Si vis pacem, para bellum. I hope the East German spirit prevails in all of Germany.

 

Much of the fracture involves immigrants

In 1965 the left embraced globalism

and since then have worked tirelessly to bring in as many diverse people as they can

But too much diversity too fast has led to friction and bad feelings on all sides

 

Another factor is this: people who came to America before the 60s came to a country where the 'intelligentsia' -- the teachers, low-level polticians, journalists -- were proud to be American. A city council declining to say the Pledge of Allegiance was unthinkable. A university refusing the fly the American flag was inconceivable. You could not have imagined a school board deciding to paint over a mural about American history -- painted by a communist nearly 80 years ago, as it happens! -- because someone might be offended.

Now it's different: the intelligentsia, especially at the commanding heights, are no longer proud of their country. Some of them openly despise it. So there is no intellectual pressure on new immigrants to want to be real Americans.

Mr Obama's friend, former Weatherman leader and 'distinguished educator', Professor Bill Ayers:

 

von Braun became a US citizen in 1955, so the Saturn V can be argued to be considered American designed.

 

Lots of American achievements, including the atomic bomb, were the result, in part at least, of people who did their work on American soil, but had come from other countries. The Chinese government is attempting to do the same via the ' Thousand Talents' program.

There are many great nations around the world, with talented people. What a compliment to America if they come here to pursue their work. (A recent case: the first woman, Mariam Mirzakhani, to win the Fields Medal, the Nobel Prize equivalent in mathematics, was born in Iran, but did her work at Stanford.) Who gets the credit? Who the hell cares?

We're going to colonize space, we're going to get cheap clean electrical power at low cost, we're going to cure cancer, we're going to do away with genetic defects in our children, we're going to travel from one continent to another at supersonic speeds, we're going to figure our how the brain works ... who gives a rat's patooty where the people who do these things were born? All credit to whatever education system helped them get going, all credit to whatever country provides them with a decent working environment -- with the caveat in the final paragraph. Above all, all credit to the individuals who do these things.

It's true, however, that all this wonderful progress is distorted by military competition among nations, since in many of these areas, progress can be turned to military uses. And if we do turn that progress to military uses, and then actually use it ... In the meantime, I hope it's the democratic nations that draw the talent to themselves and not the dictatorships.

 

Relevant to the who-did-it question, from a comment on a current column by Mark Steyn about the moon program:

 

The biggest obstacle to overcome is building rockets powerful enough to escape earth's gravity. Building a station on the moon where NASA can build space vehicles and launch them from the moon will greatly improve the successes of space exploration. The moon is closer making it easier and quicker to transport people and equipment. We've landed on the moon several times already so we know what to expect.

 

Hind sight is 20/20. Powell sold me on invading Iraq. The second mistake was leaving Iraq and the third was going back.

 

To paraphrase from Hangover:
Iraq is like herpes - it always comes back. After getting ourselves stuck in the quagmire of nation building we are still trying to get out. Our wars should be short and to the point - we go in, blow things up and leave, wait for new leadership to rise and if we don’t like new leadership repeat.

 

When militaries go in and blow things up and leave a vacuum is created where it is refilled with bad guys which is the lesson we clearly didn't learn from Vietnam. Leaving Iraq created a vacuum for ISIS. We do not need to get involved with nation building but we should set up permanent military bases after we invade to insure the country is secured while a new government rebuilds. This is what we did in Germany and Japan after WW2 and in South Korea. We do know nation building under the Marshall Plan worked after WW2. I don't know how much nation building took place in South Korea.

 

Yes its hindsight

I supported the invasion at the time

But I was wrong

 

Japan and Germany were civilized countries. Before the nationalist maniacs took over -- and they had to murder their own citizens in order to do so -- they were on the road to being like they are now. Korea, like all the Oriental countries, was also a civilized country, although without the democratic headstart that Germany and Japan (to a lesser extent) had.

The Arabs are a talented people, who once were at the forefront of civilization. So the potential is there. But 'nation-building', if it can be done, is a tricky process, and we didn't really have a plan when we went into Iraq. There are half a dozen books, mostly written by people who were there, going into horrible details about what we did wrong. You read some of the things we did, and did not do, and slap your head ... how could we have missed that? I suppose we can blame Mr Rumsfeld, whose initial training was as a Navy pilot where the solution to a problem is well-placed ordinance.

The military is not the right institution for nation-building. (I'm talking about the great majority, not the Special Forces guys who learn Arabic and know all the ins and outs of which clan hates which other clan. But we don't have five million of them.) Their job is nation-destroying. The military attitude is "Hearts and minds? Ha! Get 'em by the balls and the hearts and minds will follow." Which appears to work in the short run but runs into what is effectively national/tribal pride among young men in the long run. Just as it would if the Chinese some day occupy the US.

In the long run Iraq may actually turn out not too badly. Our big bete noire there, that Moqtada al Sadr guy, is a genuine Iraqi nationalist, and he's been putting together a coalition of Iraqis -- including Sunnis and even communists! -- to oppose Iranian influence. He appears to be the real thing -- an Iraqi nationalist -- which means he must oppose sectarianism and corruption in Iraq, which is what he appears to be doing. He doesn't like us, but if he can help build a relatively stable, democratic, independent Iraq, who cares?

Give Iraq 20 or 30 years of capitalism, economic growth, social growth -- which means an educated middle class -- and it might turn out pretty decent. South Korea took about thirty years before it became a democracy. Until you've got a strong educated urbanized middle class over there, which has lost or greatly weakend its tribal ties, new 'Arab Springs' are likely to be repeats of the last one.

And the thing is, those middle classes are the result of economic growth, and we don't have to do much to promote economic growth -- good old capitalism does that automatically, even with corrupt regimes.

 

Well yeah....Sobo, "all we wanted were the plans...we got it, dropped interest and built our own"...LOL.

If that isn't thievery what the f*** is it?).

 

It certainly will they won't forget to take Tang to Mars.

 

Gas pockets are the most lucrative mining jobs since gas is lighter to transport than a mineral...