ISS Heads of Agency Meeting ...Crew Expansion?

Alan Anderson wrote:

RS: What "straight line" would that be?

EC: "Multiple takes".

RS: What does that have to do with schizophrenia?

ES: Multiple personalities wouldn't have multiple takes?


Okay, what does *that* have to do with schizophrenia? You're making less
sense than usual, Eric.

And that's a pretty high bar.

Rand Simberg ) wrote:
: Eric Chomko wrote:

: : : Sorry, I couldn't resist such a straight line from you.
: :
: : : What "straight line" would that be?
: :
: : "Multiple takes".
:
: : What does that have to do with schizophrenia?
:
: Multiple personalities wouldn't have multiple takes?

: I wouldn't know. I do know that single personalities can.

So someone with multiple personalities that have only a single take on
life could exist as a mentally ill person, yet we would not know it?

Fascinating!

Eric

Rand Simberg ) wrote:
: Alan Anderson wrote:

: RS: What "straight line" would that be?
:
: EC: "Multiple takes".
:
: RS: What does that have to do with schizophrenia?
:
: ES: Multiple personalities wouldn't have multiple takes?
:
:
: Okay, what does *that* have to do with schizophrenia? You're making less
: sense than usual, Eric.

: And that's a pretty high bar.

Coming from Mr. Lowbrow himself.

Eric

(Henry Spencer) writes:

No, the pollsters are getting it from somewhere. There's a difference.

Conducting an opinion poll without stacking the deck in favor of specific
answers is seriously hard, and all too often, the people paying for the
poll -- polling firms are not charitable institutions -- want ammunition
for their pet cause rather than an honest answer. The first question,
always, is "who *paid* for that poll?".

(The *second* question is "exactly what question was asked and in what
context?".)

Some other useful questions:

* How many people hung up on the poll recording?

(I hung up on one earlier this week; question 1 was "Are you voting
for Bush or Kerry... press 1 for Bush, press 2 for Kerry..."

Next question:

"Press 1 if you are voting for Kerry because... and press 2 if
you are voting for Kerry because..."

(Pressing random numbers besides 1 or 2 didn't produce a different
question; not pressing anything also caused the question to be
repeated...)

pgf

--
Warning: I am very behind on usenet; if you really want me to
see a message, cc: me a copy. - pgf

(Henry Spencer) writes:

In other words, the S. Vietnamese Army was doing fine only with massive
outside help, which was rather obviously a precarious position at best.
And having that support coming from a tired and disgusted US wasn't by any
means "at best", since that made it highly vulnerable to the shifting
winds of US politics, and the low opinion a lot of Americans had of the
South Vietnamese government. It was pretty predictable that sooner or
later, that support would be sharply cut back.

"Americans do not like long, inconclusive wars. This is going to be a
long, inconclusive war." -- Ho Chi Minh

North Vietnam seldom made the mistake of thinking that the military
situation and the political situation were separate issues. A strong
South Vietnamese Army that was strong only by virtue of a heavy stream of
US aid obviously wouldn't *stay* strong for very long. It was only
necessary to continue mild pressure, avoid being worn down by pushing
too hard, and wait for the US to get fed up.

The US, as you put it, then "faced reality"...

Specifically, the reality that the US was not willing to either invade and
conquer North Vietnam, or to fight (directly or by South Vietnamese proxy)
an indefinite defensive war, and thus was almost certain to lose to a
patient and determined opponent who never "bet the farm" on a single
offensive.

Actually, N. Vietnam did "bet the farm" on both of their offensives;
after both Tet and the second one, they were enourmously weakened and
probably could not have repelled an invasion.

THEN roughly 150,000 people died in reeducation camps.
According to the UN High commissioner on refugees, about 900,000 boat
people reached safety, and about 250,000 died trying to reach safety.

And this could have been prevented... how, exactly?

You're saying the US could not have continued because politically the
US wasn't going to continue.

This sounds suspiciously close to circular logic to me.

That wasn't one of the choices being offered. The claim was not that the
North Vietnamese were saints, but that the US -- within the constraints it
put on itself -- could not prevent their victory.

We chose those constraints. We didn't _have_ to choose those constraints.

And the line about "long, drawn out wars..." are their any potential
enemies, including Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan, with their
cross-border sanctuaries in Waziristan Province in Pakistan, who aren't
going to be betting their farm on that strategy, while extorting
civilians into being their portable human shields, and pretending
they're a popular movement?

(There's another parallel involved here, since the Taliban initially
came to power with the help of Pakistani troops.)

The really pitiful thing is that a very large number of the refugees were
people expelled by the Vietnamese government, not for being associated with
the S. Vietnamese government, but for being of Chinese descent...
(And China was one of N. Vietnam's major allies during the war).

If (dim) memory serves, China actually did not contribute a lot of real
support, particularly later on when it was clear that N. Vietnam was
unlikely to lose. China and Vietnam are historically enemies, and China
preferred an ongoing Vietnam War over any sort of conclusion that would
leave Hanoi free to turn its attentions elsewhere.

They had a rather rapid falling out after the end of the war. Also with
some of their allies in the South, and in Cambodia, especially when the
Khmer Rouge started to fragment into multiple factions.

Phil
--
Warning: I am very behind on usenet; if you really want me to
see a message, cc: me a copy. - pgf

Invid Fan writes:

And they were the ones who rose up when the US troops started to attack
and helped, right? Apart from the Kurds, who we all know the US can't
fully support (give them their independent homeland, and Turkey will
invade it a minute later), the rest of the country seemed to be either
neutral or anti US. In Afganistan we at least had a native group to put
in power.

I think it only takes an active slice of 1% of the population and the
willing cooperation of another 5% to pretend to be a popular uprising,
take over, install your own dictatorship, and start putting enough of
the other 94% into reeducation camps to consolidate your hold on power.

Real dictatorships rarely have problems with popular uprisings.

--
Warning: I am very behind on usenet; if you really want me to
see a message, cc: me a copy. - pgf

(Henry Spencer) writes:

As I've noted elsewhere, I don't think North Vietnam's planners believed
in an arbitrary separation of the two. I side with the view that Tet was
first and foremost a *political* offensive, aimed at decisively affecting
US policy on Vietnam; military victory was a secondary goal, nice but not
essential. So long as Tet was big and conspicuous, it was virtually
certain to achieve its primary goal, so it *wasn't* betting the farm for
the North Vietnamese high command. (For the Viet Cong it was, but they
weren't making the final decisions.)

They lost a lot of regular forces too, and they wound up relieving
commanders. I'm fairly sure that Giap himself wound up relieved of
comamnd after the Easter offensive of 1972.

(One of these days I've got to get his book, if it's available in
English anywhere...)

Phil
--
Warning: I am very behind on usenet; if you really want me to
see a message, cc: me a copy. - pgf

Andrew Gray writes:

If memory serves, a policy which involved significant wastage of the VC
whilst conserving NVA strength and resources, from an internal political
standpoint, was probably a feature and not a bug.

Well, they eventually wound up having to replace VC casualties with
infiltrated NVA personnell, who weren't as good at doing the sort of
tactics the VC needed to do.

They also weren't familiar with the terrain the way the locals the
VC had recruited were.

--
Warning: I am very behind on usenet; if you really want me to
see a message, cc: me a copy. - pgf

(Derek Lyons) writes:

And how will their take be accurate? The grunt on the ground sees
very little of the 'situation'.

That's why I suggest talking to many of them.

Phil
--
Warning: I am very behind on usenet; if you really want me to
see a message, cc: me a copy. - pgf