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San Francisco, 9:00 AM
Sat Nov 21
26 posts in the last 24 hours
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11/12/09
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And there was one class of standoff I think was overlooked- futures where the USSR was still kicking, but had liberalized with the effects of glasnost and perestroika and settled into a passable working relationship with the US- novels between 1987 and 1991 were pretty regularly filled with fraternizing space captains and the like. Such a future might actually have been more plausible than total collapse around the time of the wall coming down. #analysis
11/12/09
Correct.
Short-range rocket artillery was pretty ubiquitous in the conflict.
-Kle. #analysis
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Still the Cold War lumbered on, with the Soviets ever less capable of sustaining their end of it. Why? Inertia produced by the military industrial complexes was one thing (the Soviets had a more poetic name for theirs - the Steel Eaters). But there was also a sense of geo-political inevitability. Through the late 1800s, Europeans started to realize that their turn at the top was ending. Their empires would not last, and once they were gone, they would be medium sized powers. That's why long before the Bolshevik revolution they had begun to fear Russia, which was behind the curve developmentally but coming up fast and had this tremendous size. And the only other country that would one day be in their league was America, once they had grown into their Western territories. So they were guessing even then that this match up would define the 20th century. #analysis
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Oh, i just found There Will Come Soft Rains online *goes to read it* #analysis
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11/12/09
As a matter of fact since the Civil war, body counts in any particular battle have been in sharp decline. Consider that in the whole of the Vietnam conflict...12 years worth of fighting the United States lost 58,000 soldiers. In the Battle of Gettysburg, over three days of fighting 54,000 soldiers lost their lives.
I think that the Cold War has been a great back drop for many a classic Science Fiction yarn, and the aftermath just as rife for the plucking. I myself am a Fan of THX 1138 and Logan's Run ((the film is about the aftermath of nuclear holocaust)) and how can one not be stirred by the image of a society that is domed and walled off, and naive. The fast that some would actively choose the pleasure lifestyle. Heck even as late as 1999 with The Matrix, nuclear Destruction is not off the table. This time with the machines standing in for the Soviets. #analysis
11/13/09
There's obviously a lot of difference between Vietnam and the Civil War - part of this is the Cold War, which actively threatened the civilians of not only target countries, but the ones surrounding them - this is something that has never really happened before, and represents a huge change in how wars are fought. However, there are other differences to take into consideration - look at the medical facilities and treatments avaliable. Between the Vietnam and Civil Wars, you have things such as antibiotics and better ways to help people - that alone would skew the numbers, because a lot of Civil War deaths weren't from bullets, but from disease.
I think this environment is a very interesting proving ground, simply for the changes in it that people would have seen. Imagine - you saw the end of the napoleonic era and saw the rise of industry, while being threatened by it? #analysis
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Alaska never told me. I mean, I'd ask about her previous relationships, but she'd quickly change the subject by dumping a snow storm on me, or a 2 week long -20 F cold snap. Should have known there was something she wasn't telling me, but I guess I didn't really want to know, ya know?
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10/30/09
*ahem*
I love how one of the photo captions in the original article states:
Ice-rich loessal deposits, or "muck," in the Klondike goldfields.
Muck is, like, "goop" and "spew" and like, stuff.
10/30/09