Recent content by Steve Thompson

It's possible that the United States, at least, will end up placing satellites in orbit with, at least, anti-ballistic missile capability. This would not violate that old space treaty (I think it only prohibits WMDs and Nukes, not intercepters) but how cost-effective would it end up being...

Not able to confront regional states? Babbler are you serious? This isn't 1979 on the Vietnam-China border. Mao's been dead a long time and the PLA has grown into a formidable force, as advanced as many "Western" countries but with many more people. To underestimate their willingness to go to...

I've recently been brooding over the prospects of a war between the US and China, after coming across this in a google search, as well as many other articles: The overwhelming assessment by Asian officials, diplomats and analysts is that the U.S. military simply cannot defeat China. It has...

There are at least 3 - White, Black, and Oriental (or Caucasoid, Negroid, and Mongoloid). As far as I know, the "scientific community" isn't in agreement on the status of so-called "Australoids" - some contend they are a separate 4th group, others say they're too similar to Caucasoids, or...

How hard is it to pronounce Central Asian names? It's no big deal. Scandinavia is a more complex name than Uzbekistan.

Funny you'd say that. From my personal experience boys use and abuse girls, and girls generally aren't treated any better than boys, if not worse. Or, to be more specific, guys go out with girls to get them to put out and stop going out with them if they don't. And girls, being emotionally and...

That's hard to gauge. The Americans weren't really fighting for their country in the sense that they were defending it against invaders who had ruined their cities and killed their civilians, rather they were invading the countries of their enemies. But if the Americans were in a truly desperate...

I used to be a "child-expert" on geography in elementary school, then in 7th grade I sorta grew out of it but didn't grow into anything else. Then in 8th grade I got Age of Empires II and then the Conquerors expansion and that's what got me going in the direction of military history, and from...

Ethiopia had the Ogaden long before Somalia was independent of Italy/Britain...

But if time is a way to account for constant change, doesn't that mean that it exists only in our minds? It's not the changes themselves, right?

I thought of this after reading some of the mathematics thread, obviously... What is time? Is time man's way of measuring natural progress, development, processes, etc.? Or is time natural progress itself? Is it part of nature or a way of reading nature? Is a day man's measurement of...

Why is Georgia more pro-Bush?

do you have estimates of German losses for Typhoon?

The Germans count Kursk as one battle, and Soviets count Kursk and their counteroffensive as one? That's confusing, but I guess it makes sense from their perspective... So the combat deaths in a battle or campaign are only part of the picture, because a lot more died in captivity or crappy...