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Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.171.129.69
Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 09:06 am:   

...years since Neil Armstrong became the most famous man in our species' history.

Whether his name is whispered as legend or recorded as fact in whatever future histories come to pass, we should remember we walked the Earth in the years he did.

Salutations to Armstong, Aldrin and Collins. To Gene Krantz and all working at or with NASA. To the moon walkers and solo orbiters after. From this child of Apollo.
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Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.27.129.86
Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 09:14 am:   

I thought you were going to say you'd hit the big one there, mate.
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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 06-2008
Posted From: 86.163.171.146
Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 09:38 am:   

I remember staying up all night watching that live on TV. James Burke and Patrick Moore...
It was one small step for man and for 24 hour TV.
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Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.171.129.69
Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 10:16 am:   

You know, Gary, a vanity Google search shows I died aged 38...or my namesake in California did...my present age!

Hoping this isn't a prediction. I have a million ailments right now, and a horrible feeling I may have just picked up swine flu. Bloody motorway service stations were full of folk coughing and puking. Bloody Cap'n Trips on the highways.

There was a conspiracy nut on the Today Programme earlier, claiming the Apollo missions were faked. Dipstick's theory involves more work than it takes to send someone to the moon in the first place. Buzz Aldrin would've decked the guy.
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Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.27.129.86
Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 10:34 am:   

Nothing compared to what a vanity search on me found: http://miserableswine.com/2009/04/17/gary-fry-what-a-cunt/

Mind you, there's some people who could make a case that . . .
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.21.234.192
Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 11:07 am:   

"There was a conspiracy nut on the Today Programme earlier, claiming the Apollo missions were faked."

I always tell these people that the war in Vietnam was equally faked. A great conversation stopper
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.170.178.214
Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 11:21 am:   

How did they explain the flapping flag again, though?
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.170.178.214
Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 11:28 am:   

Oh, I see. OK; the landings happened.
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Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.171.129.69
Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 11:57 am:   

They want it both ways, Tony. A vacuum studio so the dust doesn't hang in the 'air' and falls correctly, and also a breeze to move the flag.

If they put as much effort into learning how the moon missions were done they'd be all the more amazed than they already clearly are.

Sadly these folk need a conspiracy of such scale to give themselves importance: 'they faked the moon landings because it's too important I not know the truth.'
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Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.26.90.161
Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 12:00 pm:   

In some cases. For instance, you wouldn't want to put the likes of John Pilger in that category unless you were trying to be 'important' yourself.
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Mick Curtis (Mick)
Username: Mick

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.106.220.19
Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 12:14 pm:   

I remember staying up all night watching that live on TV. James Burke and Patrick Moore...
It was one small step for man and for 24 hour TV.


Me too, Des - I was in my early teens then and recall watching those two with my dad, and the fact that I could proudly recognise that they used the opening from 'Also Sprach Zarathustra', having seen "2001: A Space Odyssey" a short while before the moon landings.
Went to the National Film Theatre at the weekend to take Debbie to see 2001, as she'd never seen it before - still an amazing film.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.170.178.214
Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 12:30 pm:   

I want to see this at the cinema somewhere, but can't find it!
I also want to see Moon, but the mainstream flicks don't get it.
I was a 6 year old at the time of the landings. Didn't really bother me as much as a thunderstorm I remember happening round about the same time, or the little bird we found in the laundry room (yes, it had a mangle in it). Interesting finding out what others were doing in their lives at that point.
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.21.234.192
Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 12:58 pm:   

I was swimming a lot at the time. It was a beautiful summer and every morning me and my sister would go to an open air pool in the city's main park. Got an Airfix Lunar Module, a fun kit complete with moonscape base, little astronauts, moon buggy, flag etc. Vietnam was in the news every single day. A couple weeks later the Manson killings took place.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.170.178.214
Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 12:59 pm:   

I have no memory whatsoever of any of those things. Least of all the swimming.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.170.178.214
Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 01:07 pm:   

I do remember the buzz at school, however; they had model kits there too, but instead of making me want to be an astronaut it made me just want to buy toys. :-(
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 89.19.80.125
Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 01:20 pm:   

Anyone want to guess what the last words spoken on the Moon were? (They're fab!)
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 89.19.80.125
Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 01:30 pm:   

Ah, it may not have been as colourful as even the astronauts remember:

According to Apollo 7 astronaut Walter Cunningham in his book "The All-American Boys" Gene's last words on the Moon were "Let's get this mother out of here." During the mission review in Santa Fe, Gene was surprised not to hear those words but what seems likely is that what he was remembering was his "Now, let's get off."
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.170.178.214
Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 01:36 pm:   

It sounds to me like you would be eager to leave a lonely rock in outer space.
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Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.26.90.161
Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 02:20 pm:   

Yeah, a bit like visiting Skegness in November. Similar sensation.
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Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey)
Username: Ramsey

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 195.93.21.74
Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 02:37 pm:   

Are you sure Moon won't be shown in your area, Tony? It doesn't reach Liverpool until 7 August.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.170.178.214
Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 03:32 pm:   

Right - it's on at the Tyneside cinema, and as it's an arthouse that might be a bit of an exclusive for them. That explains.
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Huw (Huw)
Username: Huw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 218.168.178.146
Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 04:14 pm:   

I wonder if For All Mankind will be getting any screenings. I notice Criterion have reissued their DVD edition.
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Karim Ghahwagi (Karim)
Username: Karim

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 80.163.6.13
Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 04:35 pm:   

It must have been amazing experiencing the moon landing on TV when it was originally transmitted! Someone passed me this four hour video tape that a conspiracy nut had made at home. He had vast amounts of data that disproved the moon landing etc. Quite something.It was all produced in his living room with a VHS camera and an old computer with 80's graphics- quite amazing and very, very weird. The fake angling of the shadows on the moon always freak conspiracy people out. Someone had a theory that NASA realized that they didn't have enough propaganda material and therefore decided to create a few additional shots...Kubrick was even asked once if he had helped Nasa create some shots...
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.5.0.139
Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 04:37 pm:   

All this being said, there still remains something so utterly fantastic about anyone being capable of going to the moon, that I find my mind increasingly resisting the notion it really happened. I mean involuntarily: it just seems more and more unreal. And I am basing this on NO "facts" of any kind, just the sheer implausibility of it all overwhelms me. Because such an event should be the single most unbelievably amazing feat in all world history - indeed, it would signal the Monoliths to rouse, it's so sheerly remarkable. So why doesn't the world seem to care all that much...? And didn't it, for all the many years I've grown up...?

Something about the whole thing doesn't pass the smell test for me, is all. Though again, I have NO "facts" I'm claiming - just a queer feeling in my gut.
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.21.234.192
Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 04:50 pm:   

That's because nothing much has happened since the last landings in - when was it, 1972? The feeling at the time was "From now on each successive operation will be bigger and more impressive. In 10 years we will have a space station, 10 more years and we will be on Mars etc. etc." It just didn't happen.

On the other hand if NASA were out to falsify their accomplishments, they could easily have faked Mars or Venus landings.

There is the ISS, for what it's worth.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 89.19.88.137
Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 05:20 pm:   

Stars are fake. A network of satellites in orbit to stop us going mad from looking at black infinity. Maybe most people can't handle the fact that we went to the Moon, they've put a lot of effort into learning how the system works on Earth and don't want to be told that Earth is just a speck in a void and the wisdom they've learned is arbitrary and applies nowhere else in the cosmos. Lack of imagination angers me. The Apollo missions are real. The Moon is fake though.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 89.19.88.137
Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 05:22 pm:   

I was born in the wrong century. A couple of hundreds years earlier or later and I could have been an explorer. I did science, which is as close as you can get these days.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.16.85.18
Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 08:28 pm:   

How did they get those satellites up there thousands of years ago, though...?

It's just this eerie feeling I get - a whisper of suspicion, a strange flavor - the curiously mislaid teacup, that is another of Miss Marple's clues, to help solving the entire murder....

Here's a flavor I got, the other day: on NPR, they were speaking to one of the astronauts who landed on the moon - not one of the famous ones, one whose name I can't even remember. He's just written a kid's book about it. He kept speaking about the wonder of the moon, the way it symbolized man's potentiality, how it sparked the imagination, how it's a testament to man's achievements, etc. But I heard almost nothing about what the moon was like - no facts, no sensations, no tangible descriptions. The interviewer asked him if he ever dreamed about being on the moon - "Never," the guy responded. Really? Never?

You know, it all sure sounded like propaganda... but then, it wasn't, because we really did go there... right?....
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.16.85.18
Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 08:30 pm:   

Did the Russians ever get to the moon? I'm actually ignorant of this basic fact.

Isn't there a story somewhere, about Russians being in orbit, and seeing something that defied description, that inspired terror in them - and then they were lost forever, they never came back? I'm scraping the sides of my memory banks for this, or where I read it, so I probably have it all wrong... anyone?...
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Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.171.129.68
Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 08:36 pm:   

I think it was Charlie Duke who, while asleep on the moon, dreamed he was driving the luna rover and met his double coming the other way. What a dream to have on the moon! And he said it wasn't at all disturbing.
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Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.171.129.68
Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 08:40 pm:   

Craig, did you know the UK had its own space agency? Very few people know it. And, to make you laugh, it ran a different fuel system from US and USSR used. Ours was, basically, running on similar chemicals that you'd use in a hairdressers, I seem to recall. Left a diamond pattern out of the nozzles.

The programme was cancelled a few minutes before we launched our first satellite into orbit. The launch was a success.

This bloody country...
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Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.171.129.68
Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 08:42 pm:   

There's a good history of thsi in The Backroom Boys if anyone's interested.
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.21.234.192
Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 10:21 pm:   

You know, it all sure sounded like propaganda... but then, it wasn't, because we really did go there... right?....

Do you believe the war in Vietnam truly happened? If so, why?
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.5.0.66
Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 10:26 pm:   

Do you believe the war in Vietnam truly happened? If so, why?

Because I was THERE, man! You weren't there! You didn't see the things I saw! You never had to do thing I had to... oh God, the things I had to do... with my bare hands... over and over and over....
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.5.0.66
Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 10:27 pm:   

Mark, I bet the U.K. gave up its space program when someone told them the security could not be guaranteed, and there was a high probability certain "facts" would escape....
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Steve Bacon (Stevebacon)
Username: Stevebacon

Registered: 09-2008
Posted From: 90.210.209.176
Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 10:39 pm:   

When I was a kid (I was born in 1971), the moon landings seemed like something that happened in the distant past. Now I'm approaching middle age I look back to the moon landings and I'm amazed how close 40 years actually is; I mean, the last 20 years have zipped by, so it's only with the perspective that the aging process give us, that I'm able to look back and feel a sense of wonder.
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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 06-2008
Posted From: 86.163.171.146
Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 10:47 pm:   

Hey, you are the same age as my son, Steve.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.152.197.195
Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 10:52 pm:   

The Russians had planned moon landings, but didn't get far. Their lander looked very similar to the Eagle, but was green and less angular in the picture I saw.

Imagine how disorientating it would be to wake up from a nightmare and find you're on the Moon!
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.5.0.66
Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 11:00 pm:   

Imagine how disorientating it would be to wake up from a nightmare and find you're on the Moon!

I wonder how many moon horror stories there are, out there?... Or moon horror novels?... Any good ones, anyone?... (Horror, or at least some horor; not just sci-fi)
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Steve Bacon (Stevebacon)
Username: Stevebacon

Registered: 09-2008
Posted From: 90.210.209.176
Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 11:11 pm:   

Des, you can't be old enough to have a son my age.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.170.178.214
Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 11:16 pm:   

This might sound prejudiced but I'm glad westerners got there first you know. That movie the Right Stuff made me realise I agreed with the people who said that line about 'waking up to a Russian moon'. Is it because I think 'others' would harm it, have less love for it? I don't know. The thought made me feel guilty, though.
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Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.171.129.73
Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 11:26 pm:   

Neil Armstrong said today, that the race to the moon was perfect: a peaceful race in times of great turbulance. The Russians played their part. And were it not for the fact they kept throwing half their scientists in the gullag, it could well have been them on the moon first.

India or China there next?
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Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.171.129.73
Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 11:29 pm:   

Craig - if memory serves, the UK space programme was shut down officially just before the launch of the rocket that put the satellite in orbit. The scientists read the order and muttered such boffiny words as 'Gosh, no, forget that' and launched anyway... (It was launched from Australia, by the way, hence them sort of getting away with it.)
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Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.171.129.73
Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 11:31 pm:   

Incidentally, Radio 4's book at bedtime this week is HG Wells's First Men in the Moon. Neat, but you'd've thought they could've come up with something a little more modern...
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Steve Bacon (Stevebacon)
Username: Stevebacon

Registered: 09-2008
Posted From: 90.210.209.176
Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 11:38 pm:   

All this conspiracy theory guff reminds me how much I like Capricorn One. OJ's second best film, behind Naked Gun...
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.5.2.217
Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 11:48 pm:   

Steve - did you know the movie CAPRICORN ONE was faked?... All those guys you saw in it - they were actors!!!
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Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.171.129.71
Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 11:49 pm:   

Ken Follett wrote the novelisation of Capricorn One, you know. Unless that's a conspiracy theory put out to prevent us learning it was really Graham Greene.
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Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.171.129.71
Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 11:51 pm:   

Also, further proving something in someone's mind, no doubt, in his space race amnesia novel Code To Zero, Follett put the year of the moon landing as 1968.

Ahh...
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Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.171.129.71
Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 11:53 pm:   

All those guys in Capricorn One were actors?

Being a bit generous there, me dear...
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.152.197.195
Posted on Tuesday, July 21, 2009 - 12:24 am:   

Algis Budrys' ROGUE MOON has elements of horror. Copies of a man are repeatedly teleported into an alien maze on the Moon, and repeatedly killed by traps but the original man remembers dying all those times. A surprisingly adult novel.

I'm glad America, the America of the '60s, got there first, too. Seems like the high water mark of that amazing country. Now it feels like a spent rocket, ever falling.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.246.23
Posted on Tuesday, July 21, 2009 - 03:58 am:   

All those guys in Capricorn One were actors?

Being a bit generous there, me dear...


O.J.? Not an actor? Did you not see the great work he did on his own murder trial?...
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.246.23
Posted on Tuesday, July 21, 2009 - 03:58 am:   

Algis Budrys' ROGUE MOON has elements of horror. Copies of a man are repeatedly teleported into an alien maze on the Moon, and repeatedly killed by traps but the original man remembers dying all those times. A surprisingly adult novel.

Wow! Now if THAT were the plot to this upcoming MOON, I might be more excited about it.... I'll have to look for this novel.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.238.113
Posted on Tuesday, July 21, 2009 - 06:05 am:   

And here's another thing of which I believe is, with my rational mind... but of which the irrational part of my mind finds highly fishy and suspicious, as is: nuclear weapons.

The U.S. supposedly has about 9000 nuclear warheads, ready to go; God knows how many Russia has, or anyone else. The whole thing strikes me as a kind of absurdity - that anyone has any, let alone thousands and thousands.

It feels like a big imaginative weapon - a fantasy weapon that destroys, utterly, everything. These 9000 are sitting around, sitting sitting sitting, year after year after year... gathering dust... unused, never used before? Ready to go at the push of a button? Really - these, quote, "nukes" are that primed and oiled and all ready to go?

Are we engaged in gigantic mind-fuck with Iran, say - getting them to desperately waste their time and resources trying to build a fantasy nuclear weapon, for a number of self-serving reasons? (keeping a crazy rogue nation occupied and poor [that's how we beat the Russians!]; a handy excuse to wipe them out later; etc.)

Craig's Rule: Any tool that's ever been invented, HAS been used (why TOTAL RECALL was an absurdly-premised movie, tangent). There is something mysterious about the bombs going off in Japan, set off by the U.S. Was it a big fake out - millions of tons of TNT called a nuclear bomb? Was it really a nuclear bomb, that Truman had to detonate, for occult reasons - knowing Craig's Law would come into play, so this new terrible weapon had to be used once, to cancel the spell? used by the U.S. first, so it wouldn't be another country doing it?

... That's, if you believe in nuclear bombs. Lord knows, I do believe in the existence of nuclear warheads... help thou my unbelief....
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.238.113
Posted on Tuesday, July 21, 2009 - 06:26 am:   

Hmmm....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7RQJyt-BzM

This guy is just this side of crazy, and frankly, he sounds like a doof (translation: like a dweeb). I think this is the realm of paranoia and the black helicopter brigade - and the comments below, vicious as they are, aren't totally unwarranted.

... and yet... as I watch some things here... I dunno....

I imagine a country that wants to be the most powerful country on the planet: that has seen two utterly awful world wars (forget the others!), that decimated millions of lives and changed countries forever. A country that had a world all around it, that might want to invade its shores... and do to it, what was done on their own continents. So that country had to post the biggest, clearest, meanest "Beware of Dog" sign on the planet... so, how to go about it?...

... I'm just sayin's, all....
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.170.178.214
Posted on Tuesday, July 21, 2009 - 07:23 am:   

As a total aside, it's like ghosts, spooky things. I was talking to someone I barely know the other day about this area we both like in Washington (UK). We have both lived there without knowing. We talked about the river, this huge monument on a hill that you can see for miles and is very overpowering. We mentioned a village by the river that felt very 'Wicker Man'. I tell him my story of camping near there one night as a kid and hearing chanting coming out of the trees for ages and seeing a fire and a group of people round it, my friends seeing them 'dance naked' round it at a later point and urging me to go and see (I was too scared). The minute I mention this the guy's eyes glaze over and suddenly he has to go.
I've mentioned an unbelievable thing; he's with a nutjob and it's too much for him.

I believe there probably are nukes, and moon landings, even ghosts and witches, but like you I have a problem with them somewhere deep. It's like logically I think all those things are real, but that another part of me - something animal - won't swallow them. I think it's something like how animals must feel when they see us, or aeroplanes, I think. We have the evidence but it doesn't fit with us somewhere.
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.21.234.192
Posted on Tuesday, July 21, 2009 - 10:11 am:   

You don't believe several tons of aluminium can actually fly, can you? It's back to The Planet of the Apes, where they have forgotten about paper planes.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.170.178.214
Posted on Tuesday, July 21, 2009 - 10:17 am:   

I've just realised it sounds like I don't believe all these things, I'm just saying somewhere deep down can't, just as I can't believe I can breath without having to make myself do it, or have eyes and can see all this stuff. It's more a kind of awe, an 'Oh-my-gosh' thing.
I've mentioned before the time I tried snorkelling. When I stuck my head under the water for the first time my body wouldn't let me breath, even though I had air. It just saw the water around my face and wouldn't let me do it. I had to force myself, and it was hard. It's like something inside us can only deal with so much. It's like it's saying 'Don't be an idiot!'
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.21.234.192
Posted on Tuesday, July 21, 2009 - 10:53 am:   

There are beautiful picture books around delineating the conquest of space with great detail - Sputnik, Atlas/Agena, Gemini, Mercury . . . The Americans didn't just hop onto the moon in a jiffy, you know. I suppose we were still progressing in those days, mentally as well as technically, whereas now . . . I don't know, but the existence of 'disbelievers' (in itself a term loaded with irony) is a sign of regression imho.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.170.178.214
Posted on Tuesday, July 21, 2009 - 11:04 am:   

Oh, I believe it! I love the whole moon thing, the going into space. I'm just saying - involuntarily - that some place in my guts just can't accept it, some old reptile part of me.
I do try and tell him otherwise, believe me!
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.170.178.214
Posted on Tuesday, July 21, 2009 - 11:05 am:   

I don't think I'm getting my idea across very well... :-(
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.170.178.214
Posted on Tuesday, July 21, 2009 - 11:09 am:   

It's like the conquest of space is on the way becoming a myth, a legend, though. Who knows, maybe one day in the far flung future we'll wonder that we even did it?
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 89.19.90.220
Posted on Tuesday, July 21, 2009 - 11:54 am:   

I get what you mean, Tony. There's a primitive part of use that's still there. Common sense. Science is often not compatible with common sense. Those of you old enough will remember the amazement and disbelief when you first realised that with a VCR you could tape one channel and watch a different one at the same time! Witchcraft!!!
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Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey)
Username: Ramsey

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 195.93.21.74
Posted on Tuesday, July 21, 2009 - 12:04 pm:   

"There is something mysterious about the bombs going off in Japan, set off by the U.S. Was it a big fake out - millions of tons of TNT called a nuclear bomb?"

How did TNT cause the lasting effects that victims suffered?
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Huw (Huw)
Username: Huw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 218.168.196.66
Posted on Tuesday, July 21, 2009 - 12:24 pm:   

Yes, I'm sure the victims of the American bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima will be puzzled to learn that the horrendous long-lasting effects were due to plain old TNT and not radiation. Amazing...
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.170.178.214
Posted on Tuesday, July 21, 2009 - 12:25 pm:   

This chap is letting his reptile take over, isn't he? Poor thing.
Not you Ramsey! - the website guy.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.170.178.214
Posted on Tuesday, July 21, 2009 - 12:26 pm:   

Thing is, Americans used to gather round and have picnics watching these bombs going off. They killed John Wayne, fer Gawd's sake.
And the giant ants! Explain them!
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 89.19.90.220
Posted on Tuesday, July 21, 2009 - 12:26 pm:   

A dirty (but conventional) bomb? This is, of course, just a grim exercise in alternative history.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.170.178.214
Posted on Tuesday, July 21, 2009 - 12:51 pm:   

Hey - Torchwood's rift got blown up and nothing happened! They forgot to put that in.
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.21.234.192
Posted on Tuesday, July 21, 2009 - 01:04 pm:   

They killed John Wayne, fer Gawd's sake.

Sure, he got a lethal injection.
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Huw (Huw)
Username: Huw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 218.168.196.66
Posted on Tuesday, July 21, 2009 - 01:31 pm:   

In keeping with the celestial nature of the thread topic, I hear there's going to be a total solar eclipse tomorrow morning. I haven't seen one before, and apparently it's best viewed in East Asia, so I'm hoping to catch a glimpse.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.241.224
Posted on Tuesday, July 21, 2009 - 04:02 pm:   

Why didn't Truman order the bomb to be dropped just off the coast of Japan - a horrific show of force, but no killing of innocent civilians? Or maybe in a remote area of Japan? Or a thinly populated area? Surely it would have frightened them into surrendering. Either way, he was taking a chance that they'd surrender... one way, you just wiped out a lot of non-combatants....

I'm sincerely ignorant of why, is why I ask.
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.47
Posted on Tuesday, July 21, 2009 - 04:55 pm:   

Because he was a cunt
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.247.72
Posted on Tuesday, July 21, 2009 - 05:32 pm:   

My my, Weber - you're colicky today.
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.47
Posted on Tuesday, July 21, 2009 - 05:36 pm:   

No, I'm in a good mood. I was just encapsulating all possible answers to your question into one succinct sentence.
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Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.171.129.73
Posted on Tuesday, July 21, 2009 - 06:03 pm:   

Weber's sort of right. Truman had a bunch of scientists wanting to know what would happen after the bomb hit a populated city, the long term effects, how a future nuclear war would impact on any American cities hit by nukes.
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.47
Posted on Tuesday, July 21, 2009 - 06:07 pm:   

That's the first time anyone's said that for a while
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Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.37.199.45
Posted on Tuesday, July 21, 2009 - 06:53 pm:   

The US government also wanted to stop the Soviet Union invading Japan, which they were planning to do the next day. As Japan had already surrendered, the second atomic bomb wasn't part of the Second World War: it was the first and most devastating military act of the Cold War.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.152.209.147
Posted on Tuesday, July 21, 2009 - 11:25 pm:   

Nagasaki was after the Japanese surrendered? Good God, why isn't that more widely known? I think I can guess. Wouldn't look good in a John Wayne film.

I saw MOON today and it's just okay. A first draft script. The film runs out of plot after about half an hour but keeps staggering on.
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Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.171.129.74
Posted on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - 12:36 am:   

Moon looks nicely nostalgic from the trailer. But what I've read of the script does, alas, suggest as you're doing, Justin. I shall enjoy on late night telly sometime, I suspect.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.152.209.147
Posted on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - 12:45 am:   

I will say that it does show how exciting hard sf can be compared to the science fantasy that passes as film sf today.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.16.78.9
Posted on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - 01:13 am:   

This is what I'm saying, Joel - the entire arms race is a big game of poker - one or both sides bluffing the either. But one can never reveal the cards, or... just think how devastating it would be to American defense, to know we had no nuclear weapons arsenal - nothing of the sort. Or that no one does: it would be very dangerous suddenly, in all sorts of places. It's the biggest "Don't Fuck With Me" warning any country can have. Little countries can try playing... but the big mean countries can force them to show their bluff; the little ones can't force the big ones to, however.

... Though this is all just a fantasy, because nuclear bombs exist, of course. Of course.
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Huw (Huw)
Username: Huw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 218.168.185.215
Posted on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - 02:19 am:   

I'm pretty certain Japan didn't surrender until both bombs were dropped. The Hiroshima bomb was dropped on August 6, the Nagasaki blast followed on August 9. There was a lot of arguing amongst the Japanese military and government, but even after the second blast the military did not want to consider surrender (it was unthinkable to them), and were ready to declare martial law. The emperor's declaration of surrender was made on August 15.

The Russians definitely had intentions on Japan, and had in fact just begun an invasion of Japanese-occupied Manchuria, but they weren't quite that close (i.e. 'the next day') to invading Japan itself. They probably would have attacked Hokkaido island in the north first, which was closest to the long-disputed island of Sakhalin.

This is all 'if memory serves' stuff, by the way - it's been ages since I studied this (the old-fashioned way - no internet in those days!).
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.241.248
Posted on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - 05:45 am:   

And now, the great third "thing" I am beginning to doubt... I'm doubting it exists at all... is

MONEY.

But I don't need to go on and on about this: pondering money's "sources of the Nile" leads you along to a nowhere land, we all know that. However...

I do think that the Governments of the world could print all the money they want: they could print and print and print and flood and flood and flood. This causes "inflation" as we all know - but what is "inflation"? Because it's the only downside to printing endless amounts of money and putting it into the pocket of every poor needy sap on the planet. Giving everyone $100k wouldn't melt glacier ice-caps or fell birds or usher forth Satan's rule. Society could go on as normal, with everyone filthy rich.

But inflation is the key to understanding the great illusion that money is, because what inflation essentially is is a human condition - better, an alternation of personality; or a corruption of the intellect, maybe. It's the point and beyond where humans say to each other, "No, I won't [fill in the blank] for you - fuck you and your measly money."

Money masks the basic condition of man, no matter what the governmental structure - tyranny, democracy, socialism, etc. It's all ever since the dawn of civilizations been one simple thing: A few masters shall rule, and they need many servants to serve them. The ratio is different, depending, but I dunno, an average might be: 1 Master/10 Servants.

Let's assume it is. Then the formula 1 Master/10 Servants IS money.

... and money is also paper. And numbers in accounts, and gold and gems, and so on. That's what it really is. That's what I really meant.
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Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.171.129.73
Posted on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - 09:01 am:   

The USSR was bluffing enormously about the number of nukes it had during the latter stages of the Cold War, it's true. But they still had enough to do the job of devestation.

The UK had a bunch of cardboard tanks on the south coast of England to dissuade Hitler from launching an attack too, you know, during WW2.
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.47
Posted on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - 10:28 am:   

Think how different it would have been if the giant lizards experiment had worked...

Sorry, mistaking James Morrow's Shambling towards Hiroshima for a real life memoir for a second there.

Highly highly recommended book
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Carolinec (Carolinec)
Username: Carolinec

Registered: 06-2009
Posted From: 82.38.75.85
Posted on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - 11:44 am:   

>>The UK had a bunch of cardboard tanks on the south coast of England to dissuade Hitler from launching an attack too, you know, during WW2.<<

And it worked! The comment about "the little guys not being able to force the big guys" reminds me of that Peter Sellars film, "The Mouse That Roared".

Interesting thread, this. Too busy to contribute at the moment though - sorry.

My initial thought re the suggestion that Nagasaki, etc never happened was something along the lines of "that's as offensive as denying the holocaust", but as the thread has progressed and I've realised the line of argument and the amount of speculation (ie. alternate history) involved here, I've realised this isn't what was meant (I hope!).
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Carolinec (Carolinec)
Username: Carolinec

Registered: 06-2009
Posted From: 82.38.75.85
Posted on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - 11:45 am:   

BTW I guess you guys know that the director of "Moon", Duncan Jones, is David Bowie's son?
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Huw (Huw)
Username: Huw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 218.168.185.215
Posted on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - 12:14 pm:   

Yep - formerly known to the world as Zowie Bowie!
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 89.19.90.125
Posted on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - 12:20 pm:   

Nobody's saying Hiroshima and Nagasaki never happened. They're just speculating on the nature of the bomb. (Actually I hope nobody's taking that seriously, either.) Now I do recall from my history books that Nagasaki was before the Japanese surrender.

The biggest fake-out was Reagan's SDI programme. Played a part in wasting a lot of money. Roubles turned the Berlin wall to rubble.
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Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey)
Username: Ramsey

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 195.93.21.74
Posted on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - 01:07 pm:   

Caroline, I had exactly the same thought about Holocaust denial.
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Carolinec (Carolinec)
Username: Carolinec

Registered: 06-2009
Posted From: 82.38.75.85
Posted on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - 01:24 pm:   

>>Nobody's saying Hiroshima and Nagasaki never happened. They're just speculating on the nature of the bomb. (Actually I hope nobody's taking that seriously, either.)<<

Yes, it's OK, I realise that now - but I was a bit gobsmacked to start with. It sounds like Ramsey was too, and I guess quite a few others reading this thread might have been as well.

Craig - I'm right with you on this one about MONEY:

>>I do think that the Governments of the world could print all the money they want: they could print and print and print and flood and flood and flood. This causes "inflation" as we all know - but what is "inflation"? Because it's the only downside to printing endless amounts of money and putting it into the pocket of every poor needy sap on the planet. Giving everyone $100k wouldn't melt glacier ice-caps or fell birds or usher forth Satan's rule. Society could go on as normal, with everyone filthy rich.<<

I recall writing something similar in an economics essay at university - ie. that money was man-made, and I therefore questioned the resulting effects on this fake entity known as "the economy". I got a verbal smack on the wrist from my lecturer who wrote: "Economists don't have opinions!"
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.47
Posted on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - 01:53 pm:   

Giving everyone $100k wouldn't melt glacier ice-caps or fell birds or usher forth Satan's rule. Society could go on as normal, with everyone filthy rich.<<

No - just the baseline for being poor and unable to afford anything would rise massively as all prices would increase to accommodate the buying power of the people. In countries where everyone earns six figure salaries per month, you pay thousands for a loaf of bread..
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.5.0.144
Posted on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - 03:45 pm:   

Weber, that's merely because all structures of society would break down, as the desperately-poor-suddenly-rich fought with the always-rich, say, for a penthouse suite that the owner himself, won't part with to either anymore... unless one or the other ponies up one of their beautiful young daughters....

"Economists don't have opinions"?!? - not in America, Caroline!
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.5.0.144
Posted on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - 03:49 pm:   

Caroline, I had exactly the same thought about Holocaust denial.

Nope, Proto's right in the comment above this - not at all.

In fact, if anyone remembers now, they can hearken back to my concept elsewhere of the UNSPEAKABLE - to broach certain topics is anathema, or verges upon it. The realm of discussion that is itself beyond discussion. A wholly dangerous concept to let stand, ironically, sans discussion....
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.152.215.94
Posted on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - 03:56 pm:   

Is the function of horror to bring those things to light by approaching them obliquely? The subtle teasing out of complex psychological knots? Surely this is the core of Shaun Hutson's ouevre?
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Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 129.11.76.229
Posted on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - 04:00 pm:   

You guys serious about printing loads of money, or is this another alternative history?

I suppose in that scenario we'd have to rely on all the wonderfully altruistic wealthy people to clean all the shit out of the pipes, would we?
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.152.215.94
Posted on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - 04:06 pm:   

A friend told me that his relatives visited from England recently and explained to him that the Irish famine happened because the Irish ate all of the potatoes. That seems more offensive than Holocaust denial -- like saying that millions of people gassed and shot themselves.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.5.0.144
Posted on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - 04:33 pm:   

I suppose in that scenario we'd have to rely on all the wonderfully altruistic wealthy people to clean all the shit out of the pipes, would we?

Most of the time, Gary, when money loses all value - which is no different than it suddenly being ubiquitous: complete dearth and utter glut are equal in the world of money - and, necessarily, society collapses, the angry populace isn't concerned with conscripting the formerly-wealthy into shit-pipe duty... they usually just hoist them up in the town square and proceed to exact their frustrations....
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.5.0.144
Posted on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - 04:37 pm:   

I think horror attempts to approach things taboo, Proto, but from what little I've seen, it's then so oblique as to be non-controversial (though I've not read Hutson).
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Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 129.11.76.229
Posted on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - 04:37 pm:   

. . . which is no kind of answer at all. I was asking whether you were serious about handing out money to everyone and expecting society to function.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.5.0.144
Posted on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - 04:40 pm:   

. . . which is no kind of answer at all. I was asking whether you were serious about handing out money to everyone and expecting society to function.

Uh, no. Just me. We'll start the experiment there, see how it goes.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.5.0.144
Posted on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - 04:41 pm:   

My larger point is, you COULD hand out these tons of money - and society would break down, yes - but then the game would be revealed to everyone and that would be worse than those mythical nuclear bombs going off....
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Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 129.11.76.229
Posted on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - 04:48 pm:   

Society relies on a regulated distribution of resources in order to motivate people to earn a share by carrying out what's needed in order to maintain society. That doesn't mean gross inequality is inevitable, but it does mean that handing out wealth to all would result in utter disaster.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.152.215.94
Posted on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - 04:49 pm:   

A friend told me that his relatives visited from England recently and explained to him that the Irish famine happened because the Irish ate all of the potatoes. That seems more offensive than Holocaust denial -- like saying that millions of people gassed and shot themselves.

Not exactly, though. The causes of the Holocaust can be more directly traced back to human actions. The famine was a more controversial collision of nature, human action and human inaction.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.5.0.144
Posted on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - 04:56 pm:   

Society relies on a regulated distribution of resources in order to motivate people to earn a share by carrying out what's needed in order to maintain society. That doesn't mean gross inequality is inevitable, but it does mean that handing out wealth to all would result in utter disaster.

Yes, sure. But it's still a big game. And you and I know that the game is abused at the highest levels - the powers that be abuse this fucking game to their own benefit, and there's no real drawback, because in the end, it's all a game. They know that, that's why they don't fucking care. But the game must be maintained, publicly. So they abuse the rules of the game in private, and force us to live by them on our end. Your country just went through a whole exposure of such cheating on the game. And when bad times are, that's when everyone's looking at everyone else (finally!) and making sure no one's cheating... unless of course, they get some cheat-graft themselves....
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Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 129.11.76.230
Posted on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - 05:02 pm:   

Well, yeah, I've think I've made these points quite copiously in other threads. :-)

But it's a necessary game, you know. With necessary rules. The rules may need reviewing and adjusting, but they can't be eliminated.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.5.10.12
Posted on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - 05:40 pm:   

Related to this money issue, is a conversation that never took place, some many centuries ago:

“He never came back!”
“Wha?!?”
“We waited and waited, I swear, and he never came back!”
“Holy shit….”
“What do we do now?! What do we do?!”
“Calm down, goddammit! Just let me think for a second.”
“They’re gonna find out he never came back –-“
“I said calm down!… Okay, here’s the plan. We just go along as normal –-“
“They’re never gonna buy that!“
“Listen to me! We go along as normal, and tell them, uh – the place needed cleaning. Yeah. That’s it. It was all too dirty, too messy, he didn’t want to come back to that.”
“I like that…”
“So now we all gotta get together and clean up the place real real good, see? That way he’ll come back to a nice clean shiny place. Hell, the longer we clean up, the better anyway, right?”
“But what if they find out –-“
“They won’t find out! They’ll all be dead by then! Now go start telling them this.”
“So what do we do with all this stuff we got from them now --” [sounds of coffers clinking] “-- should we just give it all back?”
“ ‘Give it back’ –“ [sound of head being slapped] “—what are you, crazy?! Get outta here! Go get me another mistress and someone with a big feather to fan my face, and do what I said. We’re giving nothing back… they don’t want their place all messy with this –“ [sounds of clinking coffers] “— now, do they?”
[malicious laughter – fade out]
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 89.19.83.194
Posted on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - 06:28 pm:   

A friend told me that his relatives visited from England recently and explained to him that the Irish famine happened because the Irish ate all of the potatoes. That seems more offensive than Holocaust denial -- like saying that millions of people gassed and shot themselves.

Not exactly, though. The causes of the Holocaust can be more directly traced back to human actions. The famine was a more controversial collision of nature, human action and human inaction.


God, I love you.
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Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 80.225.193.28
Posted on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - 07:46 pm:   

>>Surely this is the core of Shaun Hutson's ouevre?

It may well be that Shaun thinks his ouevre is something he vacs his carpets with, Justin.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 89.19.83.194
Posted on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - 07:54 pm:   

Watch it, or he'll break his own leg-bone (sic) and point it at you "like an accusing finger".
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 89.19.83.194
Posted on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - 07:56 pm:   

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Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.171.129.69

Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 09:06 am:
...years since Neil Armstrong became the most famous man in our species' history.

Whether his name is whispered as legend or recorded as fact in whatever future histories come to pass, we should remember we walked the Earth in the years he did.

Salutations to Armstong, Aldrin and Collins. To Gene Krantz and all working at or with NASA. To the moon walkers and solo orbiters after. From this child of Apollo.
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Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.27.129.86

Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 09:14 am:
I thought you were going to say you'd hit the big one there, mate.
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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 06-2008
Posted From: 86.163.171.146

Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 09:38 am:
I remember staying up all night watching that live on TV. James Burke and Patrick Moore...
It was one small step for man and for 24 hour TV.
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Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.171.129.69

Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 10:16 am:
You know, Gary, a vanity Google search shows I died aged 38...or my namesake in California did...my present age!

Hoping this isn't a prediction. I have a million ailments right now, and a horrible feeling I may have just picked up swine flu. Bloody motorway service stations were full of folk coughing and puking. Bloody Cap'n Trips on the highways.

There was a conspiracy nut on the Today Programme earlier, claiming the Apollo missions were faked. Dipstick's theory involves more work than it takes to send someone to the moon in the first place. Buzz Aldrin would've decked the guy.
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Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.27.129.86

Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 10:34 am:
Nothing compared to what a vanity search on me found: http://miserableswine.com/2009/04/17/gary-fry-what-a-cunt/

Mind you, there's some people who could make a case that . . .
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.21.234.192

Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 11:07 am:
"There was a conspiracy nut on the Today Programme earlier, claiming the Apollo missions were faked."

I always tell these people that the war in Vietnam was equally faked. A great conversation stopper
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.170.178.214

Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 11:21 am:
How did they explain the flapping flag again, though?
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.170.178.214

Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 11:28 am:
Oh, I see. OK; the landings happened.
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Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.171.129.69

Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 11:57 am:
They want it both ways, Tony. A vacuum studio so the dust doesn't hang in the 'air' and falls correctly, and also a breeze to move the flag.

If they put as much effort into learning how the moon missions were done they'd be all the more amazed than they already clearly are.

Sadly these folk need a conspiracy of such scale to give themselves importance: 'they faked the moon landings because it's too important I not know the truth.'
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Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.26.90.161

Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 12:00 pm:
In some cases. For instance, you wouldn't want to put the likes of John Pilger in that category unless you were trying to be 'important' yourself.
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Mick Curtis (Mick)
Username: Mick

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.106.220.19

Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 12:14 pm:
I remember staying up all night watching that live on TV. James Burke and Patrick Moore...
It was one small step for man and for 24 hour TV.

Me too, Des - I was in my early teens then and recall watching those two with my dad, and the fact that I could proudly recognise that they used the opening from 'Also Sprach Zarathustra', having seen "2001: A Space Odyssey" a short while before the moon landings.
Went to the National Film Theatre at the weekend to take Debbie to see 2001, as she'd never seen it before - still an amazing film.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.170.178.214

Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 12:30 pm:
I want to see this at the cinema somewhere, but can't find it!
I also want to see Moon, but the mainstream flicks don't get it.
I was a 6 year old at the time of the landings. Didn't really bother me as much as a thunderstorm I remember happening round about the same time, or the little bird we found in the laundry room (yes, it had a mangle in it). Interesting finding out what others were doing in their lives at that point.
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.21.234.192

Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 12:58 pm:
I was swimming a lot at the time. It was a beautiful summer and every morning me and my sister would go to an open air pool in the city's main park. Got an Airfix Lunar Module, a fun kit complete with moonscape base, little astronauts, moon buggy, flag etc. Vietnam was in the news every single day. A couple weeks later the Manson killings took place.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.170.178.214

Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 12:59 pm:
I have no memory whatsoever of any of those things. Least of all the swimming.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.170.178.214

Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 01:07 pm:
I do remember the buzz at school, however; they had model kits there too, but instead of making me want to be an astronaut it made me just want to buy toys. :-(
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 89.19.80.125

Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 01:20 pm:
Anyone want to guess what the last words spoken on the Moon were? (They're fab!)
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 89.19.80.125

Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 01:30 pm:
Ah, it may not have been as colourful as even the astronauts remember:

According to Apollo 7 astronaut Walter Cunningham in his book "The All-American Boys" Gene's last words on the Moon were "Let's get this mother out of here." During the mission review in Santa Fe, Gene was surprised not to hear those words but what seems likely is that what he was remembering was his "Now, let's get off."
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.170.178.214

Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 01:36 pm:
It sounds to me like you would be eager to leave a lonely rock in outer space.
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Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.26.90.161

Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 02:20 pm:
Yeah, a bit like visiting Skegness in November. Similar sensation.
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Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey)
Username: Ramsey

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 195.93.21.74

Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 02:37 pm:
Are you sure Moon won't be shown in your area, Tony? It doesn't reach Liverpool until 7 August.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.170.178.214

Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 03:32 pm:
Right - it's on at the Tyneside cinema, and as it's an arthouse that might be a bit of an exclusive for them. That explains.
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Huw (Huw)
Username: Huw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 218.168.178.146

Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 04:14 pm:
I wonder if For All Mankind will be getting any screenings. I notice Criterion have reissued their DVD edition.
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Karim Ghahwagi (Karim)
Username: Karim

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 80.163.6.13

Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 04:35 pm:
It must have been amazing experiencing the moon landing on TV when it was originally transmitted! Someone passed me this four hour video tape that a conspiracy nut had made at home. He had vast amounts of data that disproved the moon landing etc. Quite something.It was all produced in his living room with a VHS camera and an old computer with 80's graphics- quite amazing and very, very weird. The fake angling of the shadows on the moon always freak conspiracy people out. Someone had a theory that NASA realized that they didn't have enough propaganda material and therefore decided to create a few additional shots...Kubrick was even asked once if he had helped Nasa create some shots...
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.5.0.139

Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 04:37 pm:
All this being said, there still remains something so utterly fantastic about anyone being capable of going to the moon, that I find my mind increasingly resisting the notion it really happened. I mean involuntarily: it just seems more and more unreal. And I am basing this on NO "facts" of any kind, just the sheer implausibility of it all overwhelms me. Because such an event should be the single most unbelievably amazing feat in all world history - indeed, it would signal the Monoliths to rouse, it's so sheerly remarkable. So why doesn't the world seem to care all that much...? And didn't it, for all the many years I've grown up...?

Something about the whole thing doesn't pass the smell test for me, is all. Though again, I have NO "facts" I'm claiming - just a queer feeling in my gut.
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.21.234.192

Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 04:50 pm:
That's because nothing much has happened since the last landings in - when was it, 1972? The feeling at the time was "From now on each successive operation will be bigger and more impressive. In 10 years we will have a space station, 10 more years and we will be on Mars etc. etc." It just didn't happen.

On the other hand if NASA were out to falsify their accomplishments, they could easily have faked Mars or Venus landings.

There is the ISS, for what it's worth.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 89.19.88.137

Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 05:20 pm:
Stars are fake. A network of satellites in orbit to stop us going mad from looking at black infinity. Maybe most people can't handle the fact that we went to the Moon, they've put a lot of effort into learning how the system works on Earth and don't want to be told that Earth is just a speck in a void and the wisdom they've learned is arbitrary and applies nowhere else in the cosmos. Lack of imagination angers me. The Apollo missions are real. The Moon is fake though.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 89.19.88.137

Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 05:22 pm:
I was born in the wrong century. A couple of hundreds years earlier or later and I could have been an explorer. I did science, which is as close as you can get these days.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.16.85.18

Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 08:28 pm:
How did they get those satellites up there thousands of years ago, though...?

It's just this eerie feeling I get - a whisper of suspicion, a strange flavor - the curiously mislaid teacup, that is another of Miss Marple's clues, to help solving the entire murder....

Here's a flavor I got, the other day: on NPR, they were speaking to one of the astronauts who landed on the moon - not one of the famous ones, one whose name I can't even remember. He's just written a kid's book about it. He kept speaking about the wonder of the moon, the way it symbolized man's potentiality, how it sparked the imagination, how it's a testament to man's achievements, etc. But I heard almost nothing about what the moon was like - no facts, no sensations, no tangible descriptions. The interviewer asked him if he ever dreamed about being on the moon - "Never," the guy responded. Really? Never?

You know, it all sure sounded like propaganda... but then, it wasn't, because we really did go there... right?....
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.16.85.18

Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 08:30 pm:
Did the Russians ever get to the moon? I'm actually ignorant of this basic fact.

Isn't there a story somewhere, about Russians being in orbit, and seeing something that defied description, that inspired terror in them - and then they were lost forever, they never came back? I'm scraping the sides of my memory banks for this, or where I read it, so I probably have it all wrong... anyone?...
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Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.171.129.68

Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 08:36 pm:
I think it was Charlie Duke who, while asleep on the moon, dreamed he was driving the luna rover and met his double coming the other way. What a dream to have on the moon! And he said it wasn't at all disturbing.
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Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.171.129.68

Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 08:40 pm:
Craig, did you know the UK had its own space agency? Very few people know it. And, to make you laugh, it ran a different fuel system from US and USSR used. Ours was, basically, running on similar chemicals that you'd use in a hairdressers, I seem to recall. Left a diamond pattern out of the nozzles.

The programme was cancelled a few minutes before we launched our first satellite into orbit. The launch was a success.

This bloody country...
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Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.171.129.68

Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 08:42 pm:
There's a good history of thsi in The Backroom Boys if anyone's interested.
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.21.234.192

Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 10:21 pm:
You know, it all sure sounded like propaganda... but then, it wasn't, because we really did go there... right?....

Do you believe the war in Vietnam truly happened? If so, why?
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.5.0.66

Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 10:26 pm:
Do you believe the war in Vietnam truly happened? If so, why?

Because I was THERE, man! You weren't there! You didn't see the things I saw! You never had to do thing I had to... oh God, the things I had to do... with my bare hands... over and over and over....
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.5.0.66

Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 10:27 pm:
Mark, I bet the U.K. gave up its space program when someone told them the security could not be guaranteed, and there was a high probability certain "facts" would escape....
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Steve Bacon (Stevebacon)
Username: Stevebacon

Registered: 09-2008
Posted From: 90.210.209.176

Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 10:39 pm:
When I was a kid (I was born in 1971), the moon landings seemed like something that happened in the distant past. Now I'm approaching middle age I look back to the moon landings and I'm amazed how close 40 years actually is; I mean, the last 20 years have zipped by, so it's only with the perspective that the aging process give us, that I'm able to look back and feel a sense of wonder.
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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 06-2008
Posted From: 86.163.171.146

Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 10:47 pm:
Hey, you are the same age as my son, Steve.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.152.197.195

Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 10:52 pm:
The Russians had planned moon landings, but didn't get far. Their lander looked very similar to the Eagle, but was green and less angular in the picture I saw.

Imagine how disorientating it would be to wake up from a nightmare and find you're on the Moon!
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.5.0.66

Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 11:00 pm:
Imagine how disorientating it would be to wake up from a nightmare and find you're on the Moon!

I wonder how many moon horror stories there are, out there?... Or moon horror novels?... Any good ones, anyone?... (Horror, or at least some horor; not just sci-fi)
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Steve Bacon (Stevebacon)
Username: Stevebacon

Registered: 09-2008
Posted From: 90.210.209.176

Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 11:11 pm:
Des, you can't be old enough to have a son my age.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.170.178.214

Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 11:16 pm:
This might sound prejudiced but I'm glad westerners got there first you know. That movie the Right Stuff made me realise I agreed with the people who said that line about 'waking up to a Russian moon'. Is it because I think 'others' would harm it, have less love for it? I don't know. The thought made me feel guilty, though.
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Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.171.129.73

Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 11:26 pm:
Neil Armstrong said today, that the race to the moon was perfect: a peaceful race in times of great turbulance. The Russians played their part. And were it not for the fact they kept throwing half their scientists in the gullag, it could well have been them on the moon first.

India or China there next?
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Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.171.129.73

Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 11:29 pm:
Craig - if memory serves, the UK space programme was shut down officially just before the launch of the rocket that put the satellite in orbit. The scientists read the order and muttered such boffiny words as 'Gosh, no, forget that' and launched anyway... (It was launched from Australia, by the way, hence them sort of getting away with it.)
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Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.171.129.73

Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 11:31 pm:
Incidentally, Radio 4's book at bedtime this week is HG Wells's First Men in the Moon. Neat, but you'd've thought they could've come up with something a little more modern...
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Steve Bacon (Stevebacon)
Username: Stevebacon

Registered: 09-2008
Posted From: 90.210.209.176

Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 11:38 pm:
All this conspiracy theory guff reminds me how much I like Capricorn One. OJ's second best film, behind Naked Gun...
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.5.2.217

Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 11:48 pm:
Steve - did you know the movie CAPRICORN ONE was faked?... All those guys you saw in it - they were actors!!!
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Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.171.129.71

Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 11:49 pm:
Ken Follett wrote the novelisation of Capricorn One, you know. Unless that's a conspiracy theory put out to prevent us learning it was really Graham Greene.
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Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.171.129.71

Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 11:51 pm:
Also, further proving something in someone's mind, no doubt, in his space race amnesia novel Code To Zero, Follett put the year of the moon landing as 1968.

Ahh...
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Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.171.129.71

Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 - 11:53 pm:
All those guys in Capricorn One were actors?

Being a bit generous there, me dear...
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.152.197.195

Posted on Tuesday, July 21, 2009 - 12:24 am:
Algis Budrys' ROGUE MOON has elements of horror. Copies of a man are repeatedly teleported into an alien maze on the Moon, and repeatedly killed by traps but the original man remembers dying all those times. A surprisingly adult novel.

I'm glad America, the America of the '60s, got there first, too. Seems like the high water mark of that amazing country. Now it feels like a spent rocket, ever falling.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.246.23

Posted on Tuesday, July 21, 2009 - 03:58 am:
All those guys in Capricorn One were actors?

Being a bit generous there, me dear...

O.J.? Not an actor? Did you not see the great work he did on his own murder trial?...
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.246.23

Posted on Tuesday, July 21, 2009 - 03:58 am:
Algis Budrys' ROGUE MOON has elements of horror. Copies of a man are repeatedly teleported into an alien maze on the Moon, and repeatedly killed by traps but the original man remembers dying all those times. A surprisingly adult novel.

Wow! Now if THAT were the plot to this upcoming MOON, I might be more excited about it.... I'll have to look for this novel.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.238.113

Posted on Tuesday, July 21, 2009 - 06:05 am:
And here's another thing of which I believe is, with my rational mind... but of which the irrational part of my mind finds highly fishy and suspicious, as is: nuclear weapons.

The U.S. supposedly has about 9000 nuclear warheads, ready to go; God knows how many Russia has, or anyone else. The whole thing strikes me as a kind of absurdity - that anyone has any, let alone thousands and thousands.

It feels like a big imaginative weapon - a fantasy weapon that destroys, utterly, everything. These 9000 are sitting around, sitting sitting sitting, year after year after year... gathering dust... unused, never used before? Ready to go at the push of a button? Really - these, quote, "nukes" are that primed and oiled and all ready to go?

Are we engaged in gigantic mind-fuck with Iran, say - getting them to desperately waste their time and resources trying to build a fantasy nuclear weapon, for a number of self-serving reasons? (keeping a crazy rogue nation occupied and poor [that's how we beat the Russians!]; a handy excuse to wipe them out later; etc.)

Craig's Rule: Any tool that's ever been invented, HAS been used (why TOTAL RECALL was an absurdly-premised movie, tangent). There is something mysterious about the bombs going off in Japan, set off by the U.S. Was it a big fake out - millions of tons of TNT called a nuclear bomb? Was it really a nuclear bomb, that Truman had to detonate, for occult reasons - knowing Craig's Law would come into play, so this new terrible weapon had to be used once, to cancel the spell? used by the U.S. first, so it wouldn't be another country doing it?

... That's, if you believe in nuclear bombs. Lord knows, I do believe in the existence of nuclear warheads... help thou my unbelief....
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.238.113

Posted on Tuesday, July 21, 2009 - 06:26 am:
Hmmm....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7RQJyt-BzM

This guy is just this side of crazy, and frankly, he sounds like a doof (translation: like a dweeb). I think this is the realm of paranoia and the black helicopter brigade - and the comments below, vicious as they are, aren't totally unwarranted.

... and yet... as I watch some things here... I dunno....

I imagine a country that wants to be the most powerful country on the planet: that has seen two utterly awful world wars (forget the others!), that decimated millions of lives and changed countries forever. A country that had a world all around it, that might want to invade its shores... and do to it, what was done on their own continents. So that country had to post the biggest, clearest, meanest "Beware of Dog" sign on the planet... so, how to go about it?...

... I'm just sayin's, all....
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.170.178.214

Posted on Tuesday, July 21, 2009 - 07:23 am:
As a total aside, it's like ghosts, spooky things. I was talking to someone I barely know the other day about this area we both like in Washington (UK). We have both lived there without knowing. We talked about the river, this huge monument on a hill that you can see for miles and is very overpowering. We mentioned a village by the river that felt very 'Wicker Man'. I tell him my story of camping near there one night as a kid and hearing chanting coming out of the trees for ages and seeing a fire and a group of people round it, my friends seeing them 'dance naked' round it at a later point and urging me to go and see (I was too scared). The minute I mention this the guy's eyes glaze over and suddenly he has to go.
I've mentioned an unbelievable thing; he's with a nutjob and it's too much for him.

I believe there probably are nukes, and moon landings, even ghosts and witches, but like you I have a problem with them somewhere deep. It's like logically I think all those things are real, but that another part of me - something animal - won't swallow them. I think it's something like how animals must feel when they see us, or aeroplanes, I think. We have the evidence but it doesn't fit with us somewhere.
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.21.234.192

Posted on Tuesday, July 21, 2009 - 10:11 am:
You don't believe several tons of aluminium can actually fly, can you? It's back to The Planet of the Apes, where they have forgotten about paper planes.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.170.178.214

Posted on Tuesday, July 21, 2009 - 10:17 am:
I've just realised it sounds like I don't believe all these things, I'm just saying somewhere deep down can't, just as I can't believe I can breath without having to make myself do it, or have eyes and can see all this stuff. It's more a kind of awe, an 'Oh-my-gosh' thing.
I've mentioned before the time I tried snorkelling. When I stuck my head under the water for the first time my body wouldn't let me breath, even though I had air. It just saw the water around my face and wouldn't let me do it. I had to force myself, and it was hard. It's like something inside us can only deal with so much. It's like it's saying 'Don't be an idiot!'
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.21.234.192

Posted on Tuesday, July 21, 2009 - 10:53 am:
There are beautiful picture books around delineating the conquest of space with great detail - Sputnik, Atlas/Agena, Gemini, Mercury . . . The Americans didn't just hop onto the moon in a jiffy, you know. I suppose we were still progressing in those days, mentally as well as technically, whereas now . . . I don't know, but the existence of 'disbelievers' (in itself a term loaded with irony) is a sign of regression imho.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.170.178.214

Posted on Tuesday, July 21, 2009 - 11:04 am:
Oh, I believe it! I love the whole moon thing, the going into space. I'm just saying - involuntarily - that some place in my guts just can't accept it, some old reptile part of me.
I do try and tell him otherwise, believe me!
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.170.178.214

Posted on Tuesday, July 21, 2009 - 11:05 am:
I don't think I'm getting my idea across very well... :-(
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.170.178.214

Posted on Tuesday, July 21, 2009 - 11:09 am:
It's like the conquest of space is on the way becoming a myth, a legend, though. Who knows, maybe one day in the far flung future we'll wonder that we even did it?
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 89.19.90.220

Posted on Tuesday, July 21, 2009 - 11:54 am:
I get what you mean, Tony. There's a primitive part of use that's still there. Common sense. Science is often not compatible with common sense. Those of you old enough will remember the amazement and disbelief when you first realised that with a VCR you could tape one channel and watch a different one at the same time! Witchcraft!!!
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Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey)
Username: Ramsey

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 195.93.21.74

Posted on Tuesday, July 21, 2009 - 12:04 pm:
"There is something mysterious about the bombs going off in Japan, set off by the U.S. Was it a big fake out - millions of tons of TNT called a nuclear bomb?"

How did TNT cause the lasting effects that victims suffered?
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Huw (Huw)
Username: Huw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 218.168.196.66

Posted on Tuesday, July 21, 2009 - 12:24 pm:
Yes, I'm sure the victims of the American bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima will be puzzled to learn that the horrendous long-lasting effects were due to plain old TNT and not radiation. Amazing...
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.170.178.214

Posted on Tuesday, July 21, 2009 - 12:25 pm:
This chap is letting his reptile take over, isn't he? Poor thing.
Not you Ramsey! - the website guy.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.170.178.214

Posted on Tuesday, July 21, 2009 - 12:26 pm:
Thing is, Americans used to gather round and have picnics watching these bombs going off. They killed John Wayne, fer Gawd's sake.
And the giant ants! Explain them!
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 89.19.90.220

Posted on Tuesday, July 21, 2009 - 12:26 pm:
A dirty (but conventional) bomb? This is, of course, just a grim exercise in alternative history.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.170.178.214

Posted on Tuesday, July 21, 2009 - 12:51 pm:
Hey - Torchwood's rift got blown up and nothing happened! They forgot to put that in.
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.21.234.192

Posted on Tuesday, July 21, 2009 - 01:04 pm:
They killed John Wayne, fer Gawd's sake.

Sure, he got a lethal injection.
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Huw (Huw)
Username: Huw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 218.168.196.66

Posted on Tuesday, July 21, 2009 - 01:31 pm:
In keeping with the celestial nature of the thread topic, I hear there's going to be a total solar eclipse tomorrow morning. I haven't seen one before, and apparently it's best viewed in East Asia, so I'm hoping to catch a glimpse.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.241.224

Posted on Tuesday, July 21, 2009 - 04:02 pm:
Why didn't Truman order the bomb to be dropped just off the coast of Japan - a horrific show of force, but no killing of innocent civilians? Or maybe in a remote area of Japan? Or a thinly populated area? Surely it would have frightened them into surrendering. Either way, he was taking a chance that they'd surrender... one way, you just wiped out a lot of non-combatants....

I'm sincerely ignorant of why, is why I ask.
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.47

Posted on Tuesday, July 21, 2009 - 04:55 pm:
Because he was a cunt
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.247.72

Posted on Tuesday, July 21, 2009 - 05:32 pm:
My my, Weber - you're colicky today.
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.47

Posted on Tuesday, July 21, 2009 - 05:36 pm:
No, I'm in a good mood. I was just encapsulating all possible answers to your question into one succinct sentence.
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Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.171.129.73

Posted on Tuesday, July 21, 2009 - 06:03 pm:
Weber's sort of right. Truman had a bunch of scientists wanting to know what would happen after the bomb hit a populated city, the long term effects, how a future nuclear war would impact on any American cities hit by nukes.
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.47

Posted on Tuesday, July 21, 2009 - 06:07 pm:
That's the first time anyone's said that for a while
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Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.37.199.45

Posted on Tuesday, July 21, 2009 - 06:53 pm:
The US government also wanted to stop the Soviet Union invading Japan, which they were planning to do the next day. As Japan had already surrendered, the second atomic bomb wasn't part of the Second World War: it was the first and most devastating military act of the Cold War.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.152.209.147

Posted on Tuesday, July 21, 2009 - 11:25 pm:
Nagasaki was after the Japanese surrendered? Good God, why isn't that more widely known? I think I can guess. Wouldn't look good in a John Wayne film.

I saw MOON today and it's just okay. A first draft script. The film runs out of plot after about half an hour but keeps staggering on.
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Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.171.129.74

Posted on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - 12:36 am:
Moon looks nicely nostalgic from the trailer. But what I've read of the script does, alas, suggest as you're doing, Justin. I shall enjoy on late night telly sometime, I suspect.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.152.209.147

Posted on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - 12:45 am:
I will say that it does show how exciting hard sf can be compared to the science fantasy that passes as film sf today.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.16.78.9

Posted on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - 01:13 am:
This is what I'm saying, Joel - the entire arms race is a big game of poker - one or both sides bluffing the either. But one can never reveal the cards, or... just think how devastating it would be to American defense, to know we had no nuclear weapons arsenal - nothing of the sort. Or that no one does: it would be very dangerous suddenly, in all sorts of places. It's the biggest "Don't Fuck With Me" warning any country can have. Little countries can try playing... but the big mean countries can force them to show their bluff; the little ones can't force the big ones to, however.

... Though this is all just a fantasy, because nuclear bombs exist, of course. Of course.
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Huw (Huw)
Username: Huw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 218.168.185.215

Posted on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - 02:19 am:
I'm pretty certain Japan didn't surrender until both bombs were dropped. The Hiroshima bomb was dropped on August 6, the Nagasaki blast followed on August 9. There was a lot of arguing amongst the Japanese military and government, but even after the second blast the military did not want to consider surrender (it was unthinkable to them), and were ready to declare martial law. The emperor's declaration of surrender was made on August 15.

The Russians definitely had intentions on Japan, and had in fact just begun an invasion of Japanese-occupied Manchuria, but they weren't quite that close (i.e. 'the next day') to invading Japan itself. They probably would have attacked Hokkaido island in the north first, which was closest to the long-disputed island of Sakhalin.

This is all 'if memory serves' stuff, by the way - it's been ages since I studied this (the old-fashioned way - no internet in those days!).
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.241.248

Posted on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - 05:45 am:
And now, the great third "thing" I am beginning to doubt... I'm doubting it exists at all... is

MONEY.

But I don't need to go on and on about this: pondering money's "sources of the Nile" leads you along to a nowhere land, we all know that. However...

I do think that the Governments of the world could print all the money they want: they could print and print and print and flood and flood and flood. This causes "inflation" as we all know - but what is "inflation"? Because it's the only downside to printing endless amounts of money and putting it into the pocket of every poor needy sap on the planet. Giving everyone $100k wouldn't melt glacier ice-caps or fell birds or usher forth Satan's rule. Society could go on as normal, with everyone filthy rich.

But inflation is the key to understanding the great illusion that money is, because what inflation essentially is is a human condition - better, an alternation of personality; or a corruption of the intellect, maybe. It's the point and beyond where humans say to each other, "No, I won't [fill in the blank] for you - fuck you and your measly money."

Money masks the basic condition of man, no matter what the governmental structure - tyranny, democracy, socialism, etc. It's all ever since the dawn of civilizations been one simple thing: A few masters shall rule, and they need many servants to serve them. The ratio is different, depending, but I dunno, an average might be: 1 Master/10 Servants.

Let's assume it is. Then the formula 1 Master/10 Servants IS money.

... and money is also paper. And numbers in accounts, and gold and gems, and so on. That's what it really is. That's what I really meant.
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Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.171.129.73

Posted on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - 09:01 am:
The USSR was bluffing enormously about the number of nukes it had during the latter stages of the Cold War, it's true. But they still had enough to do the job of devestation.

The UK had a bunch of cardboard tanks on the south coast of England to dissuade Hitler from launching an attack too, you know, during WW2.
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.47

Posted on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - 10:28 am:
Think how different it would have been if the giant lizards experiment had worked...

Sorry, mistaking James Morrow's Shambling towards Hiroshima for a real life memoir for a second there.

Highly highly recommended book
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Carolinec (Carolinec)
Username: Carolinec

Registered: 06-2009
Posted From: 82.38.75.85

Posted on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - 11:44 am:
>>The UK had a bunch of cardboard tanks on the south coast of England to dissuade Hitler from launching an attack too, you know, during WW2.<<

And it worked! The comment about "the little guys not being able to force the big guys" reminds me of that Peter Sellars film, "The Mouse That Roared".

Interesting thread, this. Too busy to contribute at the moment though - sorry.

My initial thought re the suggestion that Nagasaki, etc never happened was something along the lines of "that's as offensive as denying the holocaust", but as the thread has progressed and I've realised the line of argument and the amount of speculation (ie. alternate history) involved here, I've realised this isn't what was meant (I hope!).
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Carolinec (Carolinec)
Username: Carolinec

Registered: 06-2009
Posted From: 82.38.75.85

Posted on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - 11:45 am:
BTW I guess you guys know that the director of "Moon", Duncan Jones, is David Bowie's son?
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Huw (Huw)
Username: Huw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 218.168.185.215

Posted on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - 12:14 pm:
Yep - formerly known to the world as Zowie Bowie!
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 89.19.90.125

Posted on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - 12:20 pm:
Nobody's saying Hiroshima and Nagasaki never happened. They're just speculating on the nature of the bomb. (Actually I hope nobody's taking that seriously, either.) Now I do recall from my history books that Nagasaki was before the Japanese surrender.

The biggest fake-out was Reagan's SDI programme. Played a part in wasting a lot of money. Roubles turned the Berlin wall to rubble.
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Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey)
Username: Ramsey

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 195.93.21.74

Posted on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - 01:07 pm:
Caroline, I had exactly the same thought about Holocaust denial.
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Carolinec (Carolinec)
Username: Carolinec

Registered: 06-2009
Posted From: 82.38.75.85

Posted on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - 01:24 pm:
>>Nobody's saying Hiroshima and Nagasaki never happened. They're just speculating on the nature of the bomb. (Actually I hope nobody's taking that seriously, either.)<<

Yes, it's OK, I realise that now - but I was a bit gobsmacked to start with. It sounds like Ramsey was too, and I guess quite a few others reading this thread might have been as well.

Craig - I'm right with you on this one about MONEY:

>>I do think that the Governments of the world could print all the money they want: they could print and print and print and flood and flood and flood. This causes "inflation" as we all know - but what is "inflation"? Because it's the only downside to printing endless amounts of money and putting it into the pocket of every poor needy sap on the planet. Giving everyone $100k wouldn't melt glacier ice-caps or fell birds or usher forth Satan's rule. Society could go on as normal, with everyone filthy rich.<<

I recall writing something similar in an economics essay at university - ie. that money was man-made, and I therefore questioned the resulting effects on this fake entity known as "the economy". I got a verbal smack on the wrist from my lecturer who wrote: "Economists don't have opinions!"
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.47

Posted on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - 01:53 pm:
Giving everyone $100k wouldn't melt glacier ice-caps or fell birds or usher forth Satan's rule. Society could go on as normal, with everyone filthy rich.<<

No - just the baseline for being poor and unable to afford anything would rise massively as all prices would increase to accommodate the buying power of the people. In countries where everyone earns six figure salaries per month, you pay thousands for a loaf of bread..
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.5.0.144

Posted on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - 03:45 pm:
Weber, that's merely because all structures of society would break down, as the desperately-poor-suddenly-rich fought with the always-rich, say, for a penthouse suite that the owner himself, won't part with to either anymore... unless one or the other ponies up one of their beautiful young daughters....

"Economists don't have opinions"?!? - not in America, Caroline!
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.5.0.144

Posted on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - 03:49 pm:
Caroline, I had exactly the same thought about Holocaust denial.

Nope, Proto's right in the comment above this - not at all.

In fact, if anyone remembers now, they can hearken back to my concept elsewhere of the UNSPEAKABLE - to broach certain topics is anathema, or verges upon it. The realm of discussion that is itself beyond discussion. A wholly dangerous concept to let stand, ironically, sans discussion....
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.152.215.94

Posted on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - 03:56 pm:
Is the function of horror to bring those things to light by approaching them obliquely? The subtle teasing out of complex psychological knots? Surely this is the core of Shaun Hutson's ouevre?
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Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 129.11.76.229

Posted on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - 04:00 pm:
You guys serious about printing loads of money, or is this another alternative history?

I suppose in that scenario we'd have to rely on all the wonderfully altruistic wealthy people to clean all the shit out of the pipes, would we?
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.152.215.94

Posted on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - 04:06 pm:
A friend told me that his relatives visited from England recently and explained to him that the Irish famine happened because the Irish ate all of the potatoes. That seems more offensive than Holocaust denial -- like saying that millions of people gassed and shot themselves.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.5.0.144

Posted on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - 04:33 pm:
I suppose in that scenario we'd have to rely on all the wonderfully altruistic wealthy people to clean all the shit out of the pipes, would we?

Most of the time, Gary, when money loses all value - which is no different than it suddenly being ubiquitous: complete dearth and utter glut are equal in the world of money - and, necessarily, society collapses, the angry populace isn't concerned with conscripting the formerly-wealthy into shit-pipe duty... they usually just hoist them up in the town square and proceed to exact their frustrations....
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.5.0.144

Posted on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - 04:37 pm:
I think horror attempts to approach things taboo, Proto, but from what little I've seen, it's then so oblique as to be non-controversial (though I've not read Hutson).
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Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 129.11.76.229

Posted on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - 04:37 pm:
. . . which is no kind of answer at all. I was asking whether you were serious about handing out money to everyone and expecting society to function.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.5.0.144

Posted on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - 04:40 pm:
. . . which is no kind of answer at all. I was asking whether you were serious about handing out money to everyone and expecting society to function.

Uh, no. Just me. We'll start the experiment there, see how it goes.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.5.0.144

Posted on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - 04:41 pm:
My larger point is, you COULD hand out these tons of money - and society would break down, yes - but then the game would be revealed to everyone and that would be worse than those mythical nuclear bombs going off....
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Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 129.11.76.229

Posted on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - 04:48 pm:
Society relies on a regulated distribution of resources in order to motivate people to earn a share by carrying out what's needed in order to maintain society. That doesn't mean gross inequality is inevitable, but it does mean that handing out wealth to all would result in utter disaster.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.152.215.94

Posted on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - 04:49 pm:
A friend told me that his relatives visited from England recently and explained to him that the Irish famine happened because the Irish ate all of the potatoes. That seems more offensive than Holocaust denial -- like saying that millions of people gassed and shot themselves.

Not exactly, though. The causes of the Holocaust can be more directly traced back to human actions. The famine was a more controversial collision of nature, human action and human inaction.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.5.0.144

Posted on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - 04:56 pm:
Society relies on a regulated distribution of resources in order to motivate people to earn a share by carrying out what's needed in order to maintain society. That doesn't mean gross inequality is inevitable, but it does mean that handing out wealth to all would result in utter disaster.

Yes, sure. But it's still a big game. And you and I know that the game is abused at the highest levels - the powers that be abuse this fucking game to their own benefit, and there's no real drawback, because in the end, it's all a game. They know that, that's why they don't fucking care. But the game must be maintained, publicly. So they abuse the rules of the game in private, and force us to live by them on our end. Your country just went through a whole exposure of such cheating on the game. And when bad times are, that's when everyone's looking at everyone else (finally!) and making sure no one's cheating... unless of course, they get some cheat-graft themselves....
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Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 129.11.76.230

Posted on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - 05:02 pm:
Well, yeah, I've think I've made these points quite copiously in other threads. :-)

But it's a necessary game, you know. With necessary rules. The rules may need reviewing and adjusting, but they can't be eliminated.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.5.10.12

Posted on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - 05:40 pm:
Related to this money issue, is a conversation that never took place, some many centuries ago:

“He never came back!”
“Wha?!?”
“We waited and waited, I swear, and he never came back!”
“Holy shit….”
“What do we do now?! What do we do?!”
“Calm down, goddammit! Just let me think for a second.”
“They’re gonna find out he never came back –-“
“I said calm down!… Okay, here’s the plan. We just go along as normal –-“
“They’re never gonna buy that!“
“Listen to me! We go along as normal, and tell them, uh – the place needed cleaning. Yeah. That’s it. It was all too dirty, too messy, he didn’t want to come back to that.”
“I like that…”
“So now we all gotta get together and clean up the place real real good, see? That way he’ll come back to a nice clean shiny place. Hell, the longer we clean up, the better anyway, right?”
“But what if they find out –-“
“They won’t find out! They’ll all be dead by then! Now go start telling them this.”
“So what do we do with all this stuff we got from them now --” [sounds of coffers clinking] “-- should we just give it all back?”
“ ‘Give it back’ –“ [sound of head being slapped] “—what are you, crazy?! Get outta here! Go get me another mistress and someone with a big feather to fan my face, and do what I said. We’re giving nothing back… they don’t want their place all messy with this –“ [sounds of clinking coffers] “— now, do they?”
[malicious laughter – fade out]
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 89.19.83.194

Posted on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - 06:28 pm:
A friend told me that his relatives visited from England recently and explained to him that the Irish famine happened because the Irish ate all of the potatoes. That seems more offensive than Holocaust denial -- like saying that millions of people gassed and shot themselves.

Not exactly, though. The causes of the Holocaust can be more directly traced back to human actions. The famine was a more controversial collision of nature, human action and human inaction.

God, I love you.
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Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 80.225.193.28

Posted on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - 07:46 pm:
>>Surely this is the core of Shaun Hutson's ouevre?

It may well be that Shaun thinks his ouevre is something he vacs his carpets with, Justin.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 89.19.83.194

Posted on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - 07:54 pm:
Watch it, or he'll break his own leg-bone (sic) and point it at you "like an accusing finger".





I agree with everyone.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.255.144
Posted on Thursday, July 23, 2009 - 01:05 am:   

Me, I don't agree with Tony's posting from 86.170.178.214 - if he had any sense or decency, he'd be posting from 86.171.168.204.
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Carolinec (Carolinec)
Username: Carolinec

Registered: 06-2009
Posted From: 82.38.75.85
Posted on Thursday, July 23, 2009 - 11:11 am:   

>>I agree with everyone.<<

You're only saying that to prevent an argument.

>>Me, I don't agree with Tony's posting from 86.170.178.214 - if he had any sense or decency, he'd be posting from 86.171.168.204.<<

Gary, you're only saying that to start one!
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Carolinec (Carolinec)
Username: Carolinec

Registered: 06-2009
Posted From: 82.38.75.85
Posted on Thursday, July 23, 2009 - 11:12 am:   

Eeek! Sorry, I meant Craig, not Gary! Whoops!
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 160.6.1.47
Posted on Thursday, July 23, 2009 - 01:55 pm:   

Oh no. Now the whole thing will kick off again. It's Sarajevo 1914 all over again.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 160.6.1.47
Posted on Thursday, July 23, 2009 - 01:58 pm:   

I think Iceland is fake. A twee accent and a clearly made-up name. It's all forced-perspective miniatures. Speaking of names of countries, why aren't Irish people more angry? Why aren't Finnish people all good swimmers?
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Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.26.90.161
Posted on Thursday, July 23, 2009 - 02:08 pm:   

Let's not talk about natives of the Virgin Isles.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.251.246
Posted on Thursday, July 23, 2009 - 03:52 pm:   

Anyone know the way to Lusty Ladiestan?
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.170.178.214
Posted on Thursday, July 23, 2009 - 05:00 pm:   

WTF??
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Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.171.129.74
Posted on Thursday, July 23, 2009 - 07:41 pm:   

In this world there are people who believe the moon landings were faked and pro wrestling is not. I think extinction beckons.
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Huw (Huw)
Username: Huw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 218.168.188.21
Posted on Friday, July 24, 2009 - 06:34 am:   

What? Pro wrestling is faked?? You mean the Undertaker isn't really a dead man and Hulk Hogan isn't really an invincible all-American? My innocent world-view has just imploded!

Next you'll be saying there's no Santa...
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Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.26.90.161
Posted on Friday, July 24, 2009 - 09:08 am:   

Readers of this thread might fancy contributing to this:

http://ttapress.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=973

Why should Armstrong have said?
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.235.36
Posted on Friday, July 24, 2009 - 04:18 pm:   

Why should Armstrong have said?

"Here I am, about to step out onto the moon - not Nevada, I swear, promise - the moon."
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.237.189
Posted on Sunday, August 16, 2009 - 05:05 pm:   

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation/story/1185467.html

Really?... It's really not feasible?... Would take that long?... Wow, we got us a tin can up there lickety-split, the last time.

How convenient - technology has advanced so much since the 60's, that a Moon landing could reasonably appear on youtube, in real time, have reporters tagging along, etc.

It's advanced so much, in fact - it'd be hard to hide anything.

Does no one think this begging-off a tad suspicious?...
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 160.6.1.47
Posted on Sunday, August 16, 2009 - 07:38 pm:   

We can't afford to peacefully explore space, but they can find the money to do this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZj9qKXetwg

Both satire and horror are redundant. Have any of the people involved with this thing ever actually SEEN A FILM before?
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 160.6.1.47
Posted on Sunday, August 16, 2009 - 07:41 pm:   

And this:

http://costofwar.com/
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 160.6.1.47
Posted on Sunday, August 16, 2009 - 07:41 pm:   

And this:

http://www.iraqbodycount.org/
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 160.6.1.47
Posted on Sunday, August 16, 2009 - 07:44 pm:   

http://www.nationalpriorities.org/world_military_spending
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 160.6.1.47
Posted on Sunday, August 16, 2009 - 07:45 pm:   

Whoa, have a guess who's planning to elbow their way onto the RISK board in the 21st century:

http://www.nationalpriorities.org/top_arms_importers
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 160.6.1.47
Posted on Sunday, August 16, 2009 - 07:48 pm:   

And a look to the future:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/07/AR2008030702846. html

We could feed, clothe and educate everyone AND go into space, but we allow our leaders not to.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.16.76.121
Posted on Sunday, August 16, 2009 - 07:54 pm:   

Insane. All of it. The "dog" is literally insane - I almost feel the Lovecraftian urge to claw my face and tear my hair out and collapse into a drooling mess, watching that thing wander around....

And it's all seeming fodder for my three major doubts: Did we go to the moon? and Are there such things as nuclear weapons? and What the hell IS money?!?
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 160.6.1.47
Posted on Sunday, August 16, 2009 - 07:58 pm:   

Moon - yes, there probably is one.
Nukes - see above.
Money - latent DVDs.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.16.76.121
Posted on Sunday, August 16, 2009 - 08:04 pm:   

You know, "Star Trek" was essentially about a Utopian Earth: Earth had solved all its problems, including money (there's no money to be found), and everyone had achieved perfect contentment and happiness. The Enterprise is a mini-Paradise: everything at your fingertips you want, everyone perfectly content with their place, everyone getting along swimmingly (well, but for the lone "half-breed," who often gets the others bemusedly exasperated). No strife, no people waking up going "Fuck, I gotta go work the fucking bridge all day, goddammit...", no one getting blitzed and sleeping with the wrong crew member.... This is a ship of angels. And it's all thanks to: 100% automation (robots, computers, etc.)

Why can't we have a goal of working towards such complete automation? Why have we never seemed to? Maybe in the 50's.... But why can't we have a movement that strives for: 100% automation, in all fields, everywhere throughout society? Food, clothing, gadgets, etc., all provided for free of charge, endless amounts - because it's been set up to be self-perpetuating machines. Everyone's now free to pursue whatever they want to do, but no one HAS to DO anything.

No need to worry about enemies - that's automated too, our wars - besides, we have, quote, "nuclear bombs," end quote.

... We struggle for this stupid shit anyway in this world, like an amorphous end to poverty and war and such... why not REALLY strive to end it?...

Robots, more robots, and billions of computers, everywhere - that's what we all need. That's the secret to saving humanity.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.16.76.121
Posted on Sunday, August 16, 2009 - 08:06 pm:   

Money - latent DVDs.

... you lost me on this one, Proto....
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.152.191.22
Posted on Monday, August 17, 2009 - 04:22 pm:   

The other day I was washing a crisp packet out for crumbs because it said it was recyclable and I know you can't leave food in them. I suddenly realised i was wasting warm water for five minutes as well as my time, and that I spent even more time washing other packages. I was already feeling down about something else and actually started blubbing a bit. It struck me at that moment that the world is utterly screwed, just cannot be dealt with by rational people. Star Trek is fantasy. :-(
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.243.169
Posted on Monday, August 17, 2009 - 04:30 pm:   

We have a saying in America: "The road to hell is paved with washed-out crisp packets."
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.47
Posted on Monday, August 17, 2009 - 05:58 pm:   

you call them potato chips.

We in England know what chips really are which is why we call crisps crisps.

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