I am leaning towards naive if you can't accept the possibility that there is no feasible, good solution that accomplishes your desired outcome. That you see a separate Sunni state as a possible outcome, so that partition can be an acceptable alternative to unity in Iraq, gives me some hope that you are not naive.

I think that throwing off the garments of colonialism and redrawing of borders is a necessary step in the region and that warfare is the most viable mechanism for doing so. There will be no peaceful transition. If Palmyra is destroyed....well, you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.

After that the lines are redrawn, the next step will be establishing democracy in which populist movements are allowed to pass radical religion-inspired laws that horrify you until the people make the decision for themselves, without it being forced upon them from the international community, that maybe some level of secularism in government makes sense.

Did the US kill 1 mil Iraqis? Did Saddam that didnt want inspections allowed which would have put Bush to shame instantly as a war loving loser do it? Did other muslims that kill their brothers do it? Did the decision of a loser administration to go do it? Did the facking Bin Laden that attacked in 9/11 do it? Did the idiot that didnt check those flying school guys do it? Did the fact that there was no software to check who takes planes and with what tickets and how do it? The list can go on forever...

We all own that 1mil or whatever it really is. But it is owned a bit more by those that actually killed them, the last hand that pulled the trigger. This is how we work as mankind. No such thing as free will but collective will by all nature and typical ethical blame derived from the wisdom of our laws in the last guy that pulls the trigger although we all fathered that guy somehow.

Was it all done for oil? Was it all done so that solar technology would be more deployed today than otherwise if a decade of cheap oil was true? Did that high oil actually make the lives of many Arabs worldwide better and gave them the pride of skyscrapers? It is all of these things.

1mil you say. We are 7 bil+ now. In terms of the population of the planet we are less violent than we were 1000 years ago. Less people die in wars and diseases in our times than before in relative terms. The king doesnt exactly come at your door to take your wife and the soldiers of most organized army countries dont die with 50% chance in every battle. The soldiers are not avg young citizens but specially trained fraction of the population.

What will be remembered from 2015 and around that time?

Records and samples from the following;

1) The fastest microprocessor chip. The cheapest microprocessor chip. A mobile phone that has made it possible to never be lost again anywhere in the world. Millions of similar applications.

2) The first images from Ceres, Pluto and a comet from a human spaceship up close.

3) The first AI computer than could do medicine diagnosis and suggestion of disease treatments.

4) The first QM+General Relativity synthesis maybe (any year now maybe a bit speculative though otherwise take the current standard model parameters and general relativity updates as experimentally measured/tested)

5) The collision at 14 TeV at CERN refining Higgs and extending standard model new physics for the first time.

6) The first woman to get a fields medal in Math (isnt that important for the history of women?)


7) CO2 rise in atmosphere to record levels

8) Our inability to unite as planet yet but the record high on people worldwide that want it to happen.


9) Our current understanding of the human brain and its biology.


10) The fact that this list can go on almost forever and we can remain proud of it even when it shameful because it teaches us something that was impossible 1000 years ago in the dark ages without information processing and news communicated so fast.

What will be remembered of our time?

The emerging awareness that the ancients made possible by putting reason in the discussion and arguments and the fact we followed through and registered new all time highs in many things that matter, that we were on an uptrend as planet moreover our problems and more aware than before of our common humanity and our responsibilities to the future generations and our place in the universe both small and rare. We live in interesting times and never forget who we owe all this to. We owe it to dead people that did something more than live a boring uninspiring angry life. And we owe it to the average dead human that didnt think he/she did a lot but mattered eventually somehow. It is their immortality.

Jay suss. Maybe people don't hate the length of your posts so much as the fact that your grammar is worse than microsoft auto correct- and man that's pretty damn bad.

Spank's language fails because it attempts to convey very subtle, often pointless distinctions; however spank usually makes some kind of logical sense if you forensically transcribe him into normal speech patterns. You, on the other hand, actually are what people think spank is, at least so far in this post. So I don't really know what you are saying but I think one of your premises is that some elements of modernity in the Saudis Royals portend some kind of doctrinal moderation in the future. To think this is to be purposefully blind to the past and the present. These people are the wellspring of the ISIS ideology throughout the region, ISIS just being some folks who took the **** too seriously and were given opportunity by the Americans. The Saudis are preaching that **** NOW. You might not be aware you are doing it, but what is going on here is you are making **** up that doesn't exist in some feeble defense of the partnership of the West with the Saudis. You're going to ignore your own crimes while you call lesser criminals beasts.

There is no radicalizing effect so great as Western terrorism, as your terrorism. You can only achieve so much with coercion. You want to generate real hatred and violence there is no substitute for the killing of innocent people- that's what the U.S. does, that's what our allies do with our weapons, and that is the great radicalizing agent. That, and the relentless proselytizing and repressing efforts of the single party dictatorships we prop up for our own ends.

Do you hold mormons responsible for the KKK as well? What about white people in general? are they responsible for everything some group who happens to be white does? The problem is you want to blame somebody who listens to your dumb ass. You don't want to accept responsibility so you make muslims at large your ethnic whipping boy.

ROW says hi.

Deuces do you bite and have foams come out of your mouth when people come close to you or is it just online? Any more lies and imaginary accusations today? Maybe you want to imagine i was part of the administration that gave you Iraq war or some private company security that handled support business for military or some guard abusing prisoners, maybe some drone operator form leaked videos? Did i drop agent orange bombs in Vietnam too? I bet i am not though remotely connected with anyone that ever did anything good in places humanity was so horribly tested in my lifetime, only the bad guys.

When you disagree with someone you find elements of their life and connect that person then with the worse of that greater community they happen to live in? Do you connect them also with the best that happened there or only the worse?

Do you even understand how vile and arrogantly confident that you have a moral high ground you look without ever having actually suggested what can be done to improve the world you so much hate? You are in fact a type of terrorist too. Yes people reading you are waiting to see how ugly it will get. People you respond to are nowhere near eager to read your next vile statement. If they respond to you its mostly to restore some logic to the conversation and undo your damage. You do nothing to make them better, happier, more aware. That is all terrorism. You throw cheap insults to people that did nothing to you and about whom you have no idea what their life is like and how different than what you want to imagine them they may are.

I will not care to talk to you again if you remain such a$$hole.

The difference among many between Saudis and ISIS is that some reporter can actually take an interview with a government representative without being abducted and live executed losing his head. You can go talk to a scientist in their universities about their research and you wont find yourself in some orange suit. You can even tell them in front of them that you do not like what they are doing and force them to prove to you that their oppressive system is maximizing human potential and maybe silently someone listening to you will agree while the other guy is debating you with weaker arguments. They will interact with you and ideas will be exchanged. And this will never be allowed to happen with Taliban or ISIS. You will be executed at the spot as spy or used in videos. And everyone around the gang killing you will be unable to raise their opposition to what is happening because they could be next.

You probably can go do great humanitarian work in Saudi Arabia and be given awards and celebrated, thanked for your work and not have your head missing when its over. You can find people there that their research can improve your research too.

There is a number of things that a free thinking person wont like about Saudi Arabia or what they are believing or doing to people including their own etc. And there will be also some things that are good. That can be said also about many other people including Americans. Every country has problems they can gradually eliminate and show progress in important sectors of the human experience living there or interacting with them. Obviously some countries do a lot better than others in certain important things and prove a great example for others. I am sure America can both prove a great example in certain things and someone that can benefit from the example of others.

There are a lot of things that often are undesirable or unethical about a superpower like America, China, Russia etc as they exert power and try to maintain their strength, not always successfully even or in their best interests. But America wont make it its goal to find your location posting these things about it now and put you in prison or kill you. You can go live on TV and protest US policy and you will be just fine. You will not be suppressed. You may even find elected people that will agree with some you say and work to bring change. You can do a thesis or write a book about how it should treat other countries and you may even get an award for your criticism if you did it right and inspired people to reconsider policy. It gave you even a site to talk how much you dislike it so that if you cant publish in other ways you can do it in this form. More importantly it gave you a lot of the science and technology that makes all this emerging awareness about what is wrong and what is good in the world possible. Sometimes that can prove enough over time even if all else failed.

You are an ungrateful angry person. What is it that is positive you have offered to this thread so far? Any ideas that might actually undermine the ugliness you are seeing in the world?

Can things you heard from me prepare a person for not liking and actually doing something against the ugly things in the world? How about some positive ideas of your own. If there is ever a chance to see improvement in all kinds of countries, US, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iraq even the Sunni extremists, etc how will that happen with what you have said so far? Will it happen with anger and lies and vile statements?

Those ISIS people are doing what they are doing in the name of a God and a religion. This is why all that are in that religion should be against them in the most vocal manner. Right now i dont know a lot of other people that chop heads of innocent people even humanitarians/doctors/reporters and broadcasting it with pride. White people that see what KKK believes or does even today should be objecting to these ideas/crimes and arguing for change with those that embrace them. But KKK is not currently killing people and taking their homes, purging opponents etc. When they did, free ethical people of the world were against it and worked to protect the innocent victims. And change did take place as these things are not happening today at such rates anymore. Nobody here actually claimed that other muslims are to be blamed for what ISIS is doing. WTF is that? I only talked about highly influential religious figures that may have an impact to appear united against these practices and should be very active and effective.

Stop accusing people and associating them with things they have no relation to or they may even dislike themselves more than you do at a level that can actually make a difference.

Stop being a genuine mfer ok? It is that simple. Otherwise get lost and consider yourself ignored until you pick up you lost manhood and dignity and join again the discussion in a proper manner.

I have no idea what on Earth is going on here, but I can't take OP seriously until he at least is willing to free all those ill-gotten goods from the British Museum. The cops there don't even have guns! Nut the **** up for Zeus sake.

Apologists and deniers are generally treated with a similar level and type of scorn as those who carry out the atrocities. I don't know if this is the right way to do things, but it's pretty standard and I like it.

Maybe I am less judgmental in person. I could totally see myself having a civil, amusing conversation with Howard Beale. I'm friends with a married couple who are both Zionists and with whom I discuss the Israel Palestine issue. We never get rabid. They scour wikipedia in real time with their iphones to try to catch me slipping- it's cute. In real life, due to non-verbal communication, it's easier to think that the other person is just ignorant or uneducated but they mean well. In unchained on the internet, Howard's Mr.Magoo like stumbling into total alignment with American imperialism can really chap my ass.

Luckily the world consists of more than people like yourself, and I don't hate it. My suggestion for improving the world is to first stop ruining it and then go on from there.

You don't really talk to people here. You just talk at them through a wall of misinformation stitched together by bad grammar.

Reporters have talked to ISIS. Try getting some information out of a Saudi government representative and report back to me.

Are you really trying to fluff the Saudis by comparing them to ISIS? There is a reason intelligent people don't ever do this. The thing to do is ignore Saudi Arabia, pretend they don't exist. Especially in the internet age, as anyone willing to use google can easily find out how brutally repressive our best buddies are.

The orange suits are an allusion to Abu Ghraib. You remember Abu Ghraib? Where the civilized folk showed the beasts how to behave? Some said it couldn't be done, but they were clownish skeptics in retrospect, their views clouded by the 'soft bigotry of low expectations'. They didn't think we could show the animals how to be civilized. And maybe they still didn't learn but they know it involves german shepherds, so that's progress.

And the orange suits are not a subtle allusion, but still obviously nothing with any chance of penetrating your reinforced wall of ignorance.

Yeah, as long as you are a citizen from the country which has a military base on their sovereign, you can maybe do this if anyone is willing to engage you. Disguise yourself as a guest worker from the third world and start talking that mess. See what happens tough guy.

You've gotta be trolling me at this point, talking up the freedoms of Saudi Arabia. Did you not read the newsweek article I linked to? It's about a third the length of just one of your posts. Check it out.

Well let's see, I offered the suggestion that americans not represent the destruction of objects as the tipping point of rage in a situation which has seen many people killed and maimed in the aftermath of a devastating, illegal american war of aggression. I've suggested that america stop committing terrorism in the ME, and identified such terrorism and other strategic moves as the radicalizing agents ultimately responsible for the formation of groups like ISIS. I would have to scroll back through to find what else.

Are you really going to ignore virtually everything I say, except for my tone, and then accuse me of not contributing anything?

JFC, he's right, I would totally love to have an IRL convo w/ Deuces.

DeucesMcCracken might be god. No irony. At least in my world

Lots of blasphemers in the forum, if so.

You're going to be awfully disappointed when you finally realize that being good at physics isn't enough to get you very far in adult life.

That would depend on the people in question now wouldnt it? Ask me if i care a lot in the end how far i go with someone like you and Deuces after enough time has passed to have finally recognized your true characters. Did you finally make friends with Zeno after getting smeared in $hit first with your attitude in general? Is that now a solid friendship that can go places benefiting both?

Maybe getting far with guys like you that behave the way you do over time with very little positive things to say to others to support a discussion and therefore make your points (if you ever have any) advance easier without friction, isnt exactly a goal worth having and its failure is in fact indication of success and confirmation you have yet to become an a$$hole like them, which probably is the only way to get them happy. Maybe one shouldnt have it any other way in fact.

You come in this thread to post what you did (trying to strike a little bit with something nasty) after quoting a long post. Can you be any more predictable? Try to surprise me next time. It makes reading what one has to say even more exciting. It reverses a little bit of "prejudice" built...Otherwise that equity of yours will remain in a bear market. And maybe like i you dont care about it. But you should care exactly like i do how correct that statement of not caring must be. Have no doubt that although currently i dont care about opinions of such people like you, i remain vigilant in confirming this by constantly evaluating the character of these people in all kinds of instances i am not involved. Maybe if you did the same your attitude would have evolved in time. Maybe the fact that it hasnt is another confirmation for the hypothesis, another failure.

Longwinded, rambling emotional outburst grounded in misconceptions and circular rhetoric.

How unpredictable you are. Not really.

PS -Please quote where Zeno smeared me in $hit, as you say.

PPS -Thanks for illustrating my point so well.

Is masque de zipperhead talking about when Zeno thought he was going to smack talk you, ended up putting his foot firmly in his mouth, and then you were classy enough to throw him a lifeline instead of drowning him?

That to masque was interpreted as Zeno smearing you in ****?

Do these SMP ******s have any intellectual honesty at all? (And by SMP ******s I mean masque, foldN, and cheezeliar.)

Jbrochu and Ctyri you are both off due to lacking essential sensitivities of which ctyri tried to accuse me ironically with his caustic comment to the thread instead of posting something related to the topic that would have contributed to the discussion.


You see, the fact i was compared to people who behead others like ISIS, wasnt more important in the priorities list of what was wrong with that thread. The fact that i was accused of killing for money wasnt something to trigger a caustic comment for Deuces by ctyri. And the fact that i could care less what people like Deuces or others here think of me passed as not getting far enough in adult life. And your problems gentlemen are with SMP people? How about a look in the mirror?

Plus i never played with your login names like a genuine high school a$$hole would.

Zeno didnt try to smear anyone in $hit. The smearing was all Ctyri's on himself and on Zeno followed by a dick measuring process and then the cleanup crew had to be called to keep things ok because after all Zeno is a mod and others are not. If it was someone else for example the attack mode would have persisted and no clean up crew invited. Yeah prove me wrong.

Zeno is very famous for his caustic humor and yet he will quickly recover from it always and prove fair to people that contribute to the forum showing in plenty of other occasions his appreciation for their contributions and his high regard for their intellect. That buys him an instant pardon on the occasional caustic faux pas. The additional fact he likes to quote examples from his adventure in very interesting literature supports the genuine good heart intention of his caustic humor.

Yes his statement about Lord Nelson was one more example of this (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/47...ation-1528747/). His thread was about the space station and ctyri came and talked it down without offering a particular suggestion how to do it in balance with other projects too (since learning how to live in space is very important to big future missions because it will make living on Mars on closed environments, but with resources in the ground, so much simpler eventually, with a proper never ending sequence of supplies provided there with cheaper means of transportation of equipment eventually).

Now i see nothing wrong with what ctyri said actually. But i didnt like the way it happened and the sarcasm about exploring space at 249 miles high (which is not obviously the purpose of it all to begin with). In fact i agree with ctyri and i was about to post about it to stimulate further discussion in a totally positive manner by suggesting how to build on that space station work and how to put to good usage all this investment and education derived from it to do the other greater things safer.

But then ctyri caught on before i did that and replied to Zeno in the famous style of attack mode mentality towards particular people (the others that do worse things have a safe pass).

He took "offense" at the comment and went on the "attack" explaining what he does briefly in "real life" (for me all is real and this is fraction of it lol - i have the same behavior character in both ) and then asking Zeno what he actually does to push civilization and technology forward. Now seriously there is a good way to do things to be effective and clean and get your point through (ie that no my friend you are not the only Lord Nelson here) and the attack way to do it which requires to ask Zeno what he does to improve mankind (that is a polite form of insult - the question itself is the insult - otherwise offer what you do and that it relates to space technology/research and support it with extra thread content and then ask Zeno if he is working in scientific projects as well to achieve the exact same result in a much better way. Thats how you demolish the perceived insult without raising one of your own at all ).

It would have been obvious that Zeno already does great things to improve mankind (that community is already part of mankind) by the way he offers knowledge and interesting threads and discussions on 2+2. We already knew from previous past references he was managing government projects too. Anyway i see nothing wrong about offering what to do and asking for a similar response. But what does this have to do with the thread really or the way done? It feels as if trying to measure credentials instead of reflecting those credentials in actual thread content indirectly. That of course is the less lazy, less aggressive style.

That then resulted in all these exchanges of kindness to clean the mood. Yeah go ahead to tell me that its was all some game played and just a friendly conversation. Thats why, because it was so friendly, it made the gossip in PU weeks ago lol.

Gentlemen we keep our names and actions outside 2+2 private typically. As a result the only thing one can know for sure about us is what is objectively revealed by our posting. The only thing you can count on is the content provided. That is who we are online. As a result when Zeno made his caustic comment he couldn't have possibly be talking about ctyri's real life contributions. Ctyri used to post in SMP long ago more often, an esteemed poster and it was evident he had a scientific/engineering background. The joke was about the forum action and the claim about being Lord Nelson was the equivalent of look i give you info on space station here and you sit back and criticize it instead of adding more content of your own even while in legitimate criticism that is valuable too . He didnt say it like that, because he likes brevity and he let it be possibly interpreted as a hostile statement.

And now you know what i meant. People can improve dramatically in how they treat others here. Thats all. I want you to show me a case i jumped into a thread ever and made a negative comment about someone uninvited , unprovoked not connected to the thread topic etc. But here its a sport.


And i am the bad not socially advanced guy here that wont make it outside Physics in adult life. haha


Ctyri. My argument you called emotional and circular rhetoric is in fact very logically emotional (as any good logic regarding social interactions should be in order to move people, reaching our common humanity and intellect simultaneously) and not circular at all because i explained that i update my opinion of others as i observe more. That is your exit from circular. Without it indeed we are all circular as any opinion comes back to our prior ideas never changing.

This is why real free thinkers update and remain open minded and they avoid all this mess by being friendly as the first and only choice when they have never been insulted. They want friendship and respect the other person and their potential. They do not look for trouble. They add to the conversation and disagree in proper form. That disagreement then becomes another demonstration of constructive approach. But i guess that would require some kind of positive confident personality that is great to be around and who can actually improve the mood of a group instead of looking down at them and keeping them at distance and always at a slight form of subtle disapproval.

And i am the one that has to learn about the world...

We can still be friends guys and learn from each other. But we have to do better than this and show we actually care for each other, especially in disagreements.

He's not even all that good at physics, tbh.

Normally this would be an appropriate spot to suggest you guys get a room, but this is PU, where everyone likes to watch.

You're a ****ing moron if that's what you think happened.

Let me explain the reality of what happened:

Ctyri made a valid comment about the space program. Zeno tried to turn it into a dick measuring contest. Ctyri promptly whipped out his dick and slapped Zeno in the face with it. Zeno realized that his penis was very very tiny and backed off. Then Ctyri had enough class to let it go without busting a nut on Zeno's chin.

If anyone else wants to draw their own conclusion about it, start at post #13 of this thread:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/47...ation-1528747/

If responses were foreplay, masque would be the worlds foremost expert; Unfortunately for him, they're more like masturbation.

Like posts in a forum, these are the days of our lives...

Lol at trying to troll masque on his physics prowess. Is that the only reason you've been dropping by SMP these past few months, gonna get us back for ruining your precious ****box?

He certainly isn't trolling you on your sexual prowess.

If I was more motivated, I'd love to post my comments against yours and let the reader decide who has shown more care in the manner of their disagreements. But this is the standard playbook from you (and other SMP transplants*). Act like children, throw tantrums, and then pretend you're on the side of righteousness throughout.

I'm not interested in discussing much more with you. If you cared much at all about the dialogue here, you'd try harder to communicate in a manner that wasn't such a bombastically self-centered, defensive, and skewed stream of consciousness.

(* Selected recent ones, that is. I myself am an SMP transplant from yesteryear.)

Care to prove that statement. Really go for it as far as you can.

The rambling, point-missing blather you posted in the SMP Zeno's paradox thread speaks for itself.

Why dont you elaborate as far you want on this. You know as far as needed to prove that you have a case that it was rambling and point missed. Really state 1,2,3... the issues you have with what was said and what was missed.


And so that i clarify this to not be seen as arrogant. If you ask me if i am satisfied with my depth of physics and math education for the kind of standard i have set for myself from the beginning of this adventure the answer will be no and remain so for long into the future. You see it doesnt matter how many records in grades you will make or As or what universities and research centers you have gone to. In the end what matters is that there is a ton of material that is never taught in any graduate level classes or seminars or in the depth and seriousness required for a solid holes free education (that allows you to calculate with confidence you didnt miss a process any idea you have) and you have to read it yourself going through a hell of literature alone that is highly questionable near modern times and even unethically developed the last 20 years to a significant degree (people just dont care how realistic what they say is - how far they cover all objections - and that they cant touch with experiments even a little bit, all they care is to publish, anything).