The idea that this would a difficult thing to implement is a bit strange. I mean, sure these days it would almost certainly involve an intel Xeon cpu and 48Gb ram, a 5G wireless contract and cloud based services that disappear after a year...
And people really run one of those vast American hot tub sized washing machines every day ? No wonder water and power are such issues. I don’t think you could make worse machines. Amongst other problems they appear to be designed to damage fabric, presumably to support the clothing industry.
We have a Miele washer right now, after an Asko that lasted 23 years (and that we got from the old Whole Earth catalogue store somewhere in Silicon Valley, sadly long gone) and only died because the electromechanical controller jammed up. Way more sophisticated than the usual US stuff.
]]>"So Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Panama, Kuwait, Grenada, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, etc weren't wars?"
Oh, no! They were "police actions". Only Congress is allowed to declare war. In these cases, they decided to just let the President use his position as head of the military to... "police" other nations.
This seems like a very bad idea.
"I do not see, in the spring of 2022, the Democrats being eager to send troops into a war, knowing that the GOP and its wackos will be screaming bloody murder, and the GOP in Congress and the Senate being willing to turn Biden into a wartime President, esp. when they're pro-Russian."
You really seem to be mistaking the genuine enthusiasm Americans have for getting into "police actions", and the Republicans are always the most eager cheerleaders. In the short term, it's a massive political windfall for the warhawks. Everyone falls in line to support the troops and God Bless America.
I think Charlie had a good point that under the UN Charter of 1948 it's against International Law for one country to declare war on another. It's an idea that had not occurred to me previously, but it does suggest why there have been no declared wars since the mid-point of the 20th Century.
]]>We have met the enemy and he is us.
The next line is:
"We is surrounded by a vast sea of insurmountable opportunity."
]]>As a mathematician way out on the Asperger's scale, I would have been SERIOUSLY put off by those books! Not because I would have objected to the topics, but because I have always objected to people trying to manipulate me, especially by telling obvious porkies, and by polluting a subject I like.
But banning them, er, no, just no.
]]>Don't know about you, but I am. I'm so normal that when you look for the definition of "normal" in the dictionary, they just have my photograph there.
]]>https://popular.info/p/inside-the-dangerous-math-textbooks?s=r
]]>In the U.S. Army when the "band" was not playing concerts to improve civilian/military morale, they frequently became the soldiers who guarded prisoners. The band was usually a separate company in the Division.
And the cooks manned the machine guns to defend HQ (the mess section was usually a part of Headquarters Company Battalion, Brigade & Division).
]]>The chap I heard it from decided to try it, and chose a pair of jeans which could stand up on their own even when brand new. IIRC he spent about three months trying increasingly hard not to admit it was a bad idea and then gave up.
Excluding such extremes, though, with the general point I agree entirely. I am staggered every time the subject comes up anywhere at the incredibly huge quantities of washing so many people seem to regard as an irreducible minimum, and can only conclude that they can only be washing everything far more often than it needs it. It would be an interesting experiment to revive the old manual-laundry tradition of "Monday = washing day", and give the prohibition of washing on other days legal force, just to see how difficult people found it to learn.
If I can stand to revive memories of boarding school, let me see if I can remember the laundry schedule... Clean socks, pants, and hankies 3 times a week; 2 clean shirts a week; one clean sheet and pillowcase once a week; one clean bath towel at some longer interval that I can't remember, probably 2 weeks, maybe more; clean pyjamas fuck knows, maybe twice a term.
PE/games kit simply never got washed at all by the school. It went home dirty in your trunk for your parents to wash over the holidays. School uniform jacket and trousers never got washed at all by anyone, they just got grown out of.
The bulk of the volume of the bedding exceeded that of everything else put together, but happened less often. If they had used a domestic washing machine instead of a great big industrial one, it would have needed about 2 loads a day, every day, to process the clothes, and about the same again for the sheets.
There indeed are people who manage to put three or four loads a day through their washing machine, which means that for just one family they're doing a comparable amount of washing as was needed for a boarding house of about 70 boys. The conclusion that they're making a rod for their own backs by overdoing things far beyond necessity is hard to escape.
]]>"By the 1840s the Army was seen as the principal holdout of dueling, and as such, it was assumed that stamping it out there would kill the practice entirely.
The first was amending the Article of War to remove the catch-22 that officers found themselves in if challenged, since accepting a challenge was an offense, but so was refusing since while not explicit, it was nevertheless taken to be a dishonorable action to refuse a challenge. Prior, the result had been officers generally accepting, since there was less chance of a loss of social standing or cashiering than the alternative".
Goes on to mention the libel laws too.
]]>Rocky, anyone? Rambo? John Wayne?
]]>It's the rare exception to the rule.
]]>Those who were doing the social media may have broken ranks.
]]>Click here to continue this discussion.
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