Olympics

well, i weighed real carefully whether i wanted to use could or should.

i guess the way the history was taught to me was that the second bomb was a bit of a rash decision. and probably one that would not have been made today under the same circustances given the state of communication. japan was just a little slow about folding but not really that far away given the effects of the 1st bomb. Having been born on aug. 9, i have paid just a little attention to this. i have done several class projects and papers on the atom bomb over the years.
one story most don't know, and i admit i heard it second hand. is that US troops were sent in to the atomic blast areas before all contamination had been dissipated. most of those soldiers developed cancers and other physical illnesses that either shortened their lives or made living an ordeal. this was related to me by a very well respected and famous prof. of mine who must remain nameless. This prof's father was one of those men.
my own father, again another ironic twist, worked in the army corps of engineers stationed in the phillipines that analyzed the destruction caused by the bombs. I have seen firsthand photos of the destruction. nothing was left but a few walls inside the heart of the blast area of the original ground zero. ground scorched barren as if it were a field in winter. the first to die never felt a thing i am sure.
i will never argue the points you presented as good reason for the dropping of the 1st bomb, as much as i would like to believe there could have been a better way. but i have never seen anything to convince me that those points hold up for the dropping of the second bomb. Just as i have never seen a good reason that held up for the war in vietnam.
and i would add in closing, that it is my belief that Japan rebuilt so quickly because of all the guilt money we supplied them with to aid in the rebuilding. which was a good thing. I will never envy the Japanese's success. nor resent them for having it.
 
I'll have to give you the points on the second bomb. And yes, there were US soldiers put in harms way during the testing of later devices.

And as for Vietnam, besides the fact that we should not have been there (the French warned us), the actual war was handicapped by Johnson (and later Nixon). We wasted far to many lives for points that looked good on a map in Washington but had little value to the war effort (other than not bring China into it). I did hear that Johnson interest in the region was based mainly on the nuclear resources of that area (like Bush, Johnson had his hands in the pockets of many energy companies).
 
Back to the topic; I really think it's wrong that USA arranges olympics while they're still bombing (and, by mistakes, killing civilians), and talking about Iraq and North Korea as "the evil satan on earth".

It's simply not correct.

Also, Salt Lake City was chosen for the olympics because of corruption and bribery. Top of american double-moral. God bless America. :rolleyes:
 
It's nice to see that my thread has caught on fire so to speak, I just wanted to throw in a few things.

1) Ritual mourning in greece, at least by the Orthodox Christian standards does take up to five years but it is a matter of personal preference. Once a person dies, from the moment he dies to the five year "anniversary" there are set intervals of church rituals. I think at a week-45 days- six months- a year and so on. From there on in the personal lives of people it really depends. When my friend died I did not do anything special, but others (males) wore a black ribbon on this arm to symbolize mourning (this can stay there as long as the person wants) -- I did not feel the need to do so (partly because I lived here and it woulndt mean anything).

Women, especially widows, usually wear black or darker clothing, even in the summer. Again this is up to the person. My grandmother wore black, but when she remarried she went back to normal clothes (my grandfather is her second husband). My best friend's grandmother is still wearing black and she is 86, still mourning her husbands loss.



Now, this discussion about dropping the bomb, I have to throw in my 2 cents and say that this is a wartime action where civilians are prepared to lose their lives, when they wake up and dont know if they are going to make it. This by no way diminishes the value of their lives, but it does put perspective into the story since the bombing of the WTC was without a declaration of war.



One last point, my comments were not aimed to spark discussion about bombings and whatnots, it was more to express my disgust at the IOC for having the audacity to think they are better than anyone else and actually DICTATE what we can and cant do.




Admiral
 
Oh god, anyone remembers that eurosong song from Israel several years ago -"be happy"
Or the macedonian one the same year?
They sang so extremely horrible that I laughed that whole night of it. Shit, I should've recorded that eurosong show :D

The last two years I've become a completely different person, I think. I do as best as I can to live a good life, without worrying about small and bigger things all the time. It's hard. It's a part of human instinct.
 
Originally posted by ksv
...and talking about Iraq and North Korea as "the evil satan on earth".

It's simply not correct.
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You know I don't agree with everything that Bush has to say, but that surely doesn't make the things he does say that are right any less true (and for the record, it was axis of evil). Just because some small countries feel the need to get in bed with the... "satan" (your term, not mine) in order to gets rights to their resources, doesn't make Iraq and North Korea good world citizens. So I guess your in favor of atomic testing (which North Korea still does) and the use of biological weapons (which Iraq had no problems using on the Kurds) as well. I think it is just as corrupt (though more openly) as any thing that the US or it's corporations has ever done (but at least they try and hide their deeds from the light of day). Corruption, bribery, moral double standards, it warms the heart to see that these values are shared (if not advanced) but some of our smaller allies. :rolleyes:

Also, Salt Lake City was chosen for the olympics because of corruption and bribery.
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I have to agree, the IOC is guilty of both corruption and bribery, so why don't you guys fix it? The IOC has thumb their noses at the USOC for almost 20 years now, Europe has a better chance of fixing the problem than we here in the States do. You should work on that, just not too hard, we really don't want to see the type of violence in our sporting events that you guys seem to take for granted. The Olympics seem like one of the few sporting events that Europeans take part in where they don't try to kill each other in the stands. :D
 
If you guys are having trouble swallowing the politics surrounding the olympics, imagine what the athletes have to put up with.

I LOVE watching the olympics. It's amazing to watch all of these countries compete at a huge range of sports - many of which I never get to see except every 4 years on TV at the games.

You get to see how finely tuned each sport has become, and yet records are always being broken. What does that say about athletic training & technology?

Also, when the athlete wins a medal, you can see they're not worrying about the politics of it all. I follow their lead and just ignore that part of it. :D
 
Were this a true grudge match... I'd probably end up on simX's side...

I'm mostly fed up with American 'culture' as far as it goes... so many are so uninformed about so much. I feel that the populace would do well to spend less time 'mourning' in between watching sitcoms and spend more time reading.

More and more I've been discovering that most of the problems I have with American culture stem from a lack of well subsidized media outlets for the public. Money is in sales. Sales is in entertainment. Entertainment is easier for the uneducated, and thus there is little impetus for wide public education or information. The system seems bent at preserving only itself at the detriment of the people within it.

Gah. Down with the establishment! Damn the Man! Keepin' muh bruthas and sistas down.

Props to Canada for their outfits...

I have to say that the opening ceremony was WHACK. I understand that it won't be my cup of tea... but DAMN. Snake in the grass typa snypah needs to put the snake in the grass on ice ON ICE... 'na'sayin'?

No... I can't explain my break into shameless gangsta speak.
 
posted by that angry .dev.lqd
Were this a true grudge match... I'd probably end up on simX's side...

and

I feel that the populace would do well to spend less time 'mourning' in between watching sitcoms and spend more time reading.
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So you would be on the side of the guy who wants less mourning so it doesn't cut into his sitcoms (like the Simpsons). :confused: Boy, that sure doesn't make any sense to me.
 
1st thanks to Admiral for his excellent expansion on my reference to rural greek mourning rituals. nice to know that what i have read in books can be found thru experience.:)

back to the idea of the olympics themselves. Despite the fact that i am something of a sports fanatic, i never really look forward to the olympics. i didn't watch the opening ceremonies although i am sure i missed a few chills going up and down my spine by making that choice. I watched some of the women's moguls last nite and enjoyed it. the norsk girl really was the gold medal winner from what i saw!!

once they are on, i tend to like what i see. but i still don't find myself getting wrapped up in them and anxious about what medal the us will take next. sometimes towards the end of the games i might get caught up in the emotions of some underdog that is doing the miraculous (like the lithuanian basketball team or the us hockey team in the past).

i'm with jadey, i just ignore the politics and enjoy the athletes. i still think their experience is more important than what any of us think. i think my biggest fear is that there will be a terrorist strike there like in the past. i pray it doesn't happen. it may be for the best that it is on american soil this time as our security is so heightened at the moment. i know it still isn't perfect, but i think that would be impossible anywhere unless the only way to see the games was thru a televised broadcast.

.dev.lqd - better learn to accept that most people don't have your intelligence and education. this is not going to change and you would probably like the world less if it did. lack of education among the masses is a worldwide problem, not just a US one. looking down at people with less is not going to change things.
 
dev.lqd made my point for me, but I will get to that secondly.


My first point is indeed about politics. As much as we want to ignore the politics we can't because of what exactly the olympics symbolize. Yes I enjoy the games, the coming together, the "peace", the sportsmanship, BUT....

you cannot have a good product/ending (i.e. the getting together part) with having fuzzy, or dirty procedures to get to that final end which are the games. We need to get the corruption OUT of teh IOC, we need to get the snottyness and the more-enlightened-than-thou out of the IOC as well. It might be true that in order to make a cake you need to break a few eggs and dirty a few pans, but IDEALLY it shouldn't happen. This corruption is sickening.


Secondly, I did watch the moguls, and I think the japanese girl was the best of them all :D (yes I liked the norwegian one too) but thejapanese one had some EXCELLENT aerial moves :D


finally what dev said.

I'm mostly fed up with American 'culture' as far as it goes... so many are so uninformed
about so much.
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Yes dev, you ARE RIGHT, I couldn't disagree with you, but what gets me is that the europeans, have their share of uninformed, and even worse misinformed populace. Why is there no such mention? Furthermore there exist a culture of "putting down" americans in europe, I have lived it and I had been part of it, for no good reason. Critique is good, if you provide backup arguments, mindless critique because of ingraining indoctrination is just annoying as hell and proves people to be dumbasses (and I have seen my share of dumbasses when I travel to greece).


Exactly what is the problem, that is what I don't get. People follow what their interests are and virtually all people I know DO read on their free time, but read what pleases them, a novel, a textbook, magazine, newspaper, a whatever.


I don't see where you are coming from here.



Admiral
 
My only experience is with Americans. Europeans that I've spoke with have all been very well spoken, but I don't have much experience with a general European populace.

Reading is like pot- it's a gateway media. Reading develops a better command of the language, and enables people to communicate more effectively and artfully. It also lets people comprehend and inspect the words of others (especially the well published ones).

My other beef with America is that the access could be there- the only excuse for it is capitalism. It would be nice if the American institution acted as though Americans actually mattered. Unfortunately... slothful, materialistic citizens are better consumers than active, well informed ones.

Ed- I look down at people less than I look down at the conventions that keep them tethered to a couch. Accepting that the general populace is excused from informed participation in our nation's government or that corporations impose undue influence on complacent and unaware subjects is NOT something I'm down with. The problem may be worldwide, but America doesn't have an excuse for it. We have the money and the infrastructure to do RIDICULOUS amounts of good in this world.
 
.dev.lqd - when you put it that way i can't find much to argue with. I just worry when you or anybody else starts deciding what is "good". a hell of a lot of messes have come when outsiders start imposing their own standards of "good and bad" upon others. Or worse yet when when it gets turned into what is good for the US.

I don't think you will disagree with this too much, as i sense this is sort of the gist of part of what you were getting at to start with. But even by your own admission you have limited experience with cultural diversity outside encounters withthose who visit here. That alone makes them different from the populus of those who make up the masses elsewhere.

so then you're back to who does get to decide? don't worry, nobody here is going to solve this riddle. it is far too complex for any one person to figure out. so perhaps there are times when nature, including human nature, leads us down the paths we need to follow to find what we can realisticly do instead of what we would like done.

That does not mean we just go along and accept the world as it is. far from it. it should be clear from other posts i have made over time that that is not my position. for me it means choosing my battles and measuring my victories in comparison to yesterday, not to my expectations.
 
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