Posts by Fletch

  • Israel vs. Palestine

    As per all the tribalism/regionalism stuff:

    For both Israel and Palestine, it is impossible to divide national identity and religious identity. To almost everybody over there they are the exact same thing. God and country are one. It's great for religion. It's horrible for diplomatic politics and international relations. It's not that either side wants more space than the other. They want the entire space to themselves because they view it as their religious right and duty to drive off anybody else from that land. Now, just in case that situation couldn't become worse, you're got Israel's stated international policy: a head for an eye. Most countries stick with "an eye for an eye" as military doctorine. You invade us, we hit you with missles. You blow up our ship, we blow up your aircraft hanger. But Israel's stated policy is that if you kill a settler, they'll throw a missle into the neighborhood of the suicide bomber. You attack a solider, they'll demolish a town. It isn't a system of retaliation based upon proportional response. They chose this policy out of desperation, because when you're surrounded on all sides by countries that are much bigger than you and want you dead, you've got to resort to extremes. Plus, they've got nukes. The overall idea being that their neighbor's know they have itchy trigger fingers and the capability to wipe out every living being in the gulf. It keeps them off the lawn. Problem is, for most extremist Palestinians, they don't care if they die or if everybody int ehri country dies. Again, god and country are one. If you honestly believe with every fiber of your being that if you start a holy war and it gets everyboyd killed, you and all of your friends are going to be realxing in heaven and your enemies won't, death stops being a disincentive.

    So yeah, this shit is going to go on for a long time. It's not going to be stopped by bringing rational parties to the negotiating table. Even if you can find such leaders over there, nobody will be able to win over the hearts and minds of the people that will keep strapping bombs to their bodies (save the second comming of Jesus and Mohammad going on a buddy tour).

  • Spiderman 3 trailer

    It depends what continuity Marvel films is working with. Generally, the Spiderman movies have been working with Ultimate Universe continuity 75% of the time, with the remainder being a mix of Eath 616 (traditional Marvel Universe) and shit they made up for expediency. So my bet is they're going to be using the Ultimate explanation of Venom, that it was a biosuit designed for some other purpose (curing disease was Ultimate explanation), but it bonds with Parker and scares the crap out of him because it leads to the normal Venom problems. Parker casts it out and it bonds with Brock (who will probably be established as a childhood friend of Parker's). It will be interesting to see what they do with this Venom, because Ultimate Venom enjyos killing people because it sustains the suit, whereas 616 Venom hates it when innocents get killed (because the suit has created a twisted version of Spidey's mehodologies).

    I'm excited, but I don't want to wait a year.

  • If you could go back in time...

    For better or worse, every decision big (career choices, relationships) and small (hitting snooze, choosing a seat on the bus) causes slight chnages in our life that add up to the sum total of our experiences. I wouldn't change something in the past because there i no way to say life would or would not be better one way or the other. The best you can do is live and enjoy the ride.

  • The World Cup 2006 thread

    In the last fifteen minutes, if you even looked at the ref wrong you were going to get booked. Granted, the game got really dirty with numerous hard fouls on purpose, shoving matches, and a few players thrown to the ground for the hell of it. At the very least, it was fun to watch. I loved the shot at the end of all of the players who got red carded huddled in the box with no room left, and instead of fighting, they're making fun of the ref.

  • modders are terrorists, lol

    Quote from Holeman

    i dont think misinformation is funny, i think its disgusting. testifying to the people who make our laws about things they dont really know about. some experts huh, but i guess there were probably WMD in iraq too

    I think the misinformation is bad, but the refusal to fess up and admit they made a mistake about this is worse. I mean, shit, we just went ten rounds about pre-war intelligence and how faulty it was (from logistics, to WMDs, to stabilty plans, etc). The whole moral that was supposed to come out of that was to stop crap like this from coming up. As trivial as it is, it's a symptom that seems to show the bigger problem still exists.

  • Quake 2 mappers get your hiking gear! (PIX ON PAGE 2!)

    Quote from hamst3r

    Lol WorldCraft. It took a little bit of searching, but I found a version of WorldCraft that is stable on XP, 1.6A I think. [Blocked Image: http://img158.imageshack.us/img158/284/lolworldcraft0zs.jpg]

    If anybody wants it, I can upload it to my site, to save people searching / having to register on file planet.

    Yeah, WC 1.6 is just kind of funny. Almost all the hot keys are gone. Buttons are missing. It's like driving your car all day long and then coming outside and finding it has 3 wheels, the steering wheel is a dead cat on a stick, and the engine is a bunch of hampsters in wheels.

    I really have no idea where those analogies came from.