StarDestroyer.Net BBS

One of the balloons took out some of the power lines attached to the reactor making plutonium for Fat Man. It only came out in IIRC a New Yorker article in the 70s.

Not that it's any more excusable, but to give a little perspective marital rape was only made illegal in the UK (or more accurately, the marital rape exemption was abolished) in 1991.

The Swiss Constitution, as variously amended since 1848, banned the export of mercenary units, Swiss citizens from becoming mercenaries, and ultimately Swiss citizens from volunteering in other nations' armies. Which does not make it an war crime. They propably loose their citizenship in Switzerlan...

The Swiss Constitution, as variously amended since 1848, banned the export of mercenary units, Swiss citizens from becoming mercenaries, and ultimately Swiss citizens from volunteering in other nations' armies. Edit: And this relates in quite complicated ways to international recognition of Swiss Ne...

I don't know. Obama isn't quite as popular these days, and is polling pretty poorly on healthcare & the economy. There's still a long way to go on this & although more pessimistic than I used to be, I've not given up hope. Remember that whatever Baucus comes up with in his room will need to ...

Murdoch has a couple of other tricks up his sleeves as well. In the UK there's a sustained attack (by, unsurprisingly, the Times ) on the "unfair advantage" of the BBC's guaranteed revenue which allows them to provide superlative news coverage. I don't know how this would work for Murdoch'...

I'll tip ... if the waitress has a nice set of tits. You are the reason hot young waitresses fail to leave their jobs for anything better. There are posh bistros and sports bars scattered even around my own relatively quiet and conservative city where the waitresses compete in the 'sexiest outfit' ...

Androsphynx: All you've done is linked to a study that supports the view that women are abused more, and again mentioned "some studies" that suggest we should view it differently. My reference was the Supplement to the 1996 BCS, discussed on p.2-3 of the report I linked to. A detailed sur...

Pursuant to the thread in G&C, I just reinstalled TIE Fighter. It is still wonderful.

Such studies do crop up from time to time, based on extrapolations of under-reporting. The most recent concrete statistics which I have on domestic abuse (not child abuse, which is a different kettle of fish) are for the UK 1995-2006. You can read them here (pdf) As you can see, although reported fi...

Heck, the "if only the Ruler knew!" story is probably even true some of the time; not all powerful leaders are monsters, and simple statistics means that most governments will have subordinates with a greater taste for atrocity than the leaders share. It's not true all the time, obviously...

The British Council isn't a government department. It's what we call a Quango - Quasi-Autonomous Non-Government Organisation. They're going to lose a bunch of their funding (much of which comes from the government), and have decided to make administrative cuts rather than affecting services directly...

It's a fairly general attitude in any social of political group reliant on the benevolence, supreme intelligence or outstanding personal characteristics of the leader which make him beyond reproach. Medieval kings, cult leaders, modern despots, you name it.

I smiled when I first saw this, but then considered how I would feel about a case where a husband lured his wife to a hotel room, tied her up and superglued her vagina shut. Not funny.

The Ultra-Orthodox tend not to be the sort of Israelis who own handguns, on account of their skipping army service. Draw a distinction - you're talking about the Haredim. The plain old orthodox Jews(Dati Leumi) do army service, and are probably likelier than average to be in combat units. And yes, ...

One which doesn't involve combustion. Like a knife, or a baseball bat, or a railgun.

The Ultra-Orthodox tend not to be the sort of Israelis who own handguns, on account of their skipping army service.

Tenebaum had an article explaining/defending his position last week in the Guardian Here is the first half To a certain extent, I'm afraid to write this. Though they've already seized my computer and copied my hard drive, I have no guarantee they won't do it again. For the past four years, they've b...

I can be PMed for the article as a PDF, if anyone is interested in reading it.

People still call it the "Wailing Wall"?

I hope the Progressive Caucus votes against it if they're going to try and sell something without the public option. Otherwise, the leadership's just going to take their future votes for granted. Also, the reason this is failing isn't the Blue Dogs, it's the Democratic Leadership. If they'd cracked...

Actually, if it's 5 cm across the surface area is c.20 square cm rather than 75. It's still an impressive amount of energy, though. No, Stuart said 75 cm square. I just misread that as 5. Looking back, he said both 5 cm across and 75 square cm. One is in error & I assume it's the latter (i.e. h...

Actually, if it's 5 cm across the surface area is c.20 square cm rather than 75. It's still an impressive amount of energy, though.

Grand Expectations is superb, and although I haven't read Restless Giant it's by the same guy & should similarly be excellent

Start here: S. Alcock, ed. Empires: perspectives from archaeology and history (Cambridge 2001) William H. McNeill, ‘Introductory Historical Commentary’, in Geir Lundestad, ed., The fall of the great powers (1994) A.G. Hopkins (ed.), Globalization in World History (London, 2002) Dominic Lieven, Empir...