birdlike

Mike, I'm so sorry you and your family have had to endure this tragic loss. My sympathy to all of you; and a prayer for your lovely daughter, and one for peace for your family. -birdlike Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

Well, the fight ended with the soldier eventually stabbing this bloke to death (though cutting himself with his own knife several times in the process) but I'd imagine whether the gouging changed the outcome is probably more or less impossible to gauge. (Just had another quick read of the book - probably not). I just suspect that if he had kept up his fortitude (whether or not I'd be able to is irrelevant) and completed the eye-gouging, he would not have sustained wounds of his own in the later stabbing. I'd also be interested in knowing whether it was just a gut reaction to an unearthly scream, coupled with the squicky feeling of eye-goo on the thumbs, that caused him to break off the gouge-attack. Grossness is something that people can, and should, be able to overcome and ignore when a gross job needs to be done. But if it was some kind of misbegotten compassion for his adversary that caused him to want to cease causing him so much pain... I would remind the guy that when you are fighting to the death, compassion for your fellow humans is not your friend, now is it. And I hope to god that people don't come on here to start the, "So, birdlikejeffrey, do you think you are so tough that you could have done better," because we're not talking about what I could or could not do, or have or have not done. I also have not been through BCT or AIT. Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

SEE how evil we Americans are! We brainwash the Germans who visit us and send them back with GUNS! If we do this enough, the world might finally get to see what the sweet, peace-loving people of Germany will attempt to do if they acquire enough armament... Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

An unlocked car in a wide open garage in the middle of the night?!.... Sounds just as inviting for the sort of people whom are looking for this exact situation to take advantage of..... And when they do, they are the ones who have done wrong, committed the crime. Or is that still a debatable assertion? Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

It's ok I still like you; but not thinking chicks are dude might help with that sex thing I knew that if I waited long enough, someone kind would volunteer the solution! Thanks! :-X Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

Communism (with little c) will never work, except on paper, same as capitalism w/o government regulation. Having said that, it would not require a totalitarian government. A democracy would work equally well (or badly) as a totalitarian system. The quantum difference between the two is that it doesn't take a government forcing people to go against human nature to get them to accept a capitalist system, because a capitalist system operates on the very principle that people want more, and will work to obtain it. Communism operates contrary to major human drives, and thus requires a government to FORCE people to accept it, and would require this coercion in perpetuity, because it requires people to suppress the innate desire for ownership, and for "more." Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

I'd argue that there is already. Then defending their use of the substandard English that keeps them easily recognizable as the underclass implies that you're fine with it being that way. Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

I wish there was a way to reproduce, in print, that sick dog barf they call "Cockney" and then I could pretend that all Brits speak that way. Man, when some of you SC folks don't like a person's posts or ideology, you show it in funny ways, like by posting passive-aggressive "response" threads like this poor pathetic excuse for one. And then you come into threads I make and say that I'm the one with "issues"... Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

The apologists for the NOLA residents are the same who gripe about how our grand-children will be paying for the war; I wonder how our great-grandchildren are gonna get out from under paying to bail out NOLA. Let's not forget that people scammed BILLIONS OF DOLLARS out of FedGov on bogus claims. I fully agree. Good points. Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

Exactly. I've been thinking that "liberal" has been used as a dirty word for ages. Although I do wonder if this philosophy owes something to McCarthyism too. Just like a liberal to immediately start looking for someone to blame. Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

You don't get it. Around the time or Ronald Regan, the GOP began a campaign to vilify the word "liberal" so it became an insult. Now all these years later, you have people on the right equating it to evil! And the people on the left liked the concept so much, they decided to apply it to the term "semi-automatic handgun"! Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

Oh, "ABSOLUTE" right to gun ownership, huh? McCain says there's an "ABSOLUTE" right to gun ownership? Hell, I don't even claim it's an "absolute" right. I guess you just felt your example needed the appearance of a little more juice than it truly had. Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

So what you're saying is that we should not expect anyone who speaks in this way to rise up to become those things? Doesn't that open the door to them complaining that they're being "kept down"? What you pointed out seems to just rationalize an "elitist" system... It opens the door to having the members of the demographic groups that speak this way (be they black, white, hispanic or other) continue using the substandard language and then those who use proper English get criticized for not helping them get educated to the point where they are competitive for those top jobs... We'll be accused of being complacent about having a hierarchical society and too happy to sit at the top of it. I know it's not new. I'm saying that I think it is becoming MORE PREVALENT. Blame entertainment, movies, cartoons, rap music... it IS showing up more and more in people's speech! Combine this with school-aged kids submitting term papers and book reports with "SMILEYS" in them, and txt msg abbrvtns, and I fear for the "future" that everyone says our kids are. Who's going to write legal briefs, new laws, treaties...? Will there be a dedicated underclass that is free to be as dumb as they want, and a dedicated overclass that takes care of everything that requires standardization to work correctly? Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

Sigh, it's soo female to harbor resentment. Just let it go, sweetie. It'll be good for you in the long run. Oooh, negative and patronizing! If we see condescending soon, it'll be a hat-trick! Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

dude, you're complaining about uneducated people, not being able to speak correctly or to find the cheapest kitty litter in the store, but you can't even divide 50 by 35 without using a calculator?!?! Are you kidding? 1.3, done just now with no calculator. I'm talking about shopping at 3 a.m., after 8 hours of work, and looking at a box of kitty litter that is 27 lbs. for $9.87, and 35 lbs. for $12.87. No, I do not make the claim to easily be able to do the math, retain the figures, and make the determination of the better value in my head. Maybe if I put my mind to training it to do these (as I had in high school) I could, but I have the calculator at hand, so why bother, anyway? What I am saying is that I doubt a lot of people still remember--if they ever knew--how to even set up the equation that would help them get the right answer. Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

What?! Not even with those damned Republicans driving the price of gas up to $8 per gallon?! Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

I'm sure that there are a lot of people who don't know how to do that. But I can't generally tell who those people are based on their appearance (looking around at people in WalMart). I didn't mean to imply or give room for the impression that I was talking about visually seeing the people and making judgments about their ability to do this based on appearances. I just meant that in a general sense, I don't think a lot of people can do that stuff--at least, not once they're more than a couple of years out of high school. Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

Come on, dude. The thread was obviously made in a partisan way by a partisan. I doubt she's looking to be shown that she ought not to support the Democrats either; she already knows she will, and was trying to rationalize her dogged allegiance to a party that promised to fix America and then did nothing but make excuses and point fingers. Same here. Well, except for the granddaughter part. (Remember, I've spared you all the suffering of my procreation. ) Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

...but she was also solving a Rubik's Cube with her feet! Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

SWEET! What more do I need than that?! What's strange, to me, is that you are still trotting out that tired old "the founders did not conceive of the semi-automatic killing machines we have today," as though it is a reason to re-think the 2nd Amendment; but you won't go near to pointing out that the founders could not have foreseen reaching millions of listeners with a 50Kw radio antenna or millions of readers from a laptop computer. If you want to apply the "they could not have foreseen the new technology" argument, you must apply it to all of our rights, not just the ones you don't like. So you're essentially saying that the founders would not have allowed us semi-automatic handguns, OR modern computers, high-speed printing, or radio stations... Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

Awww... didoo piss yooself laughing?! Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

You're at the ripe old age of 25 jumps... surely you're a tandem instructor by now! What's stopping you from getting out there on the scene and picking up some fun with all of that experience?! Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

Great idea, Stitch! Tell him it's flippin' sweet, and it has shocks, pegs, and you used to hunt wolverines while wearing it as a ghillie suit! If he asks you what size it is, tell him "It's a freakin' 12 gauge, what do you think?!" Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

They started to lose something with Test for Echo, and then with the subsequent albums. I never spent enough effort to try to figure out exactly what it was, but something (spirit?) is gone from their music lately. Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

No, I don't think it makes it ok because he's LEO. I think he should lose his badge... oh, wait, the thief took care of that for him, at least in the literal sense. I see, you're looking to push me into agreeing with chrastilsebeni, saying that people should lose claim to every privilege that involves being trustworthy and responsible when they screw up. Well, the cop left his gun IN VIEW in a CAR that was OUT IN PUBLIC. Not parked in a garage. I see that as just the first of many differences in the situations. Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire