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Basically, this is just a regular rifle scope with a "peace-sign" for a reticle, instead of the standard cross-hairs. It would be designed to be mounted on the M-16/M-4 (Standard rifle/carbine issued to U.S. military) and the M-14/Barret 50. Cal (U.S. Sniper rifle).
This idea, albeit tongue in cheek,
does have some valid points.
1. Every time a soldier takes aim at a potential target, the peace sign will be a reminder that his utmost goal is peace through the destruction of those violently apposed to peace.
2. The peace sign reticle could act as a moral check before pulling the trigger: "Is it necessary that I shoot this man?" Possibly averting unwarranted killing/murder of unarmed civilians and non-combatants.
3. The irony of using a peace sign to place lethal fire could *possibly* help disassociate the act of killing, and *possibly* reduce the cases of post-traumatic stress disorder in soldiers returning from combat.
And, above all, it will remind us that peace is but a trigger pull away.
(?) SUSAT image
http://www.army.mod.../_150-022_susat.jpg
Simple but highly effective [8th of 7, May 10 2008]
Confused Peace Activist
http://sayanythingb...ays_buy_a_mercedes/
Found this while I was searching for bakededness and thought I'd share [MikeD, May 11 2008]
Rugby players have been known to indulge in cannibalism [8th]
http://en.wikipedia...ir_Force_Flight_571
[coprocephalous, May 15 2008]
(?) History of the peace sign
http://www.cnduk.or...s/the-cnd-logo.html
CND's version obviously, and therefore possibly biassed. [nineteenthly, May 24 2008]
ODS
https://www.fbo.gov...=list&cck=1&au=&ck=
[mouseposture, Jan 10 2010]
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Normally I'd question the originator of an idea like this as their sincerity, but you come pre-qualified. |
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I only know a little about distance shooting - the whole time-your-squeeze to the pulse beat figure-eight thing. Would this interfere in any manner with the lower portion of the sight picture? |
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I like this. It seems to me that the ^ at the bottom would actually help the sight picture as the eye would be naturally drawn to the apex. Opposed to guns, personally, but great idea. [+] |
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OR would it associate the peace symbol with an act of murder, thus diluting and altering its original purpose? |
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It should of course be mounted on a long-range tasp... or better still, a trebuchet that shoots hippies (not shoots hippies, shoots hippies) |
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This would be quite similar to the image presented by the SUSAT sight fitted to the SA-80 (L85A1) British infantry assault rifle. |
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Excellent for potting long-haired lefties, Anti-Nuke activists, etc. |
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[Normzone] I don't know about the trigger squeeze timed with pulse bit. That is probably above and beyond my training. At my level (Basic Rifle-man) we are taught to time the trigger pull with the natural pause in breathing after an exhale. I however operate a machine gun so I have a wee bit more room for error. |
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[sloth Jr.] Anyone whom has lived through the 60's would, undoubtedly, associate the peace symbol with the vietnam war regardless. |
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[8th of 7] & [FlyingToaster] Amen. |
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// we are taught to time the trigger pull with the natural pause in breathing after an exhale // |
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Spot on, old boy. Three slow breaths, and as the sights settle on target on the third out breath, squeeze the trigger. The pulse thing is a bit of an urban myth. |
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To do it well, you need to be calm, and fairly relaxed, which can be a tad difficult when in contact. However, since this technique is applicable to the single-aimed-shot-from-cover scenario, it's possible, with practice and training. |
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The usual thing is to put one or two guys in cover with a good postion and line of sight and let them stay back as the rest of the unit move forward, then they can provide excellent fire support on point targets. |
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I'm going to try that out [8th] with my point n'shoot camera. |
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You're going to provide fire support with nothing more than a camera ? You really should consider some sort of projectile weapon, otherwise the enemy will just laugh at you, and your buddies will be less than impressed. |
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I guess it could be myth, but my source was a marine marksman. Never had the opportunity to try it yet, I'm a pistolero myself. |
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This is [po] you're talking about here. I'm sure she wields a serious camera. |
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It's a little "Full Metal Jacket" but I'll trust you on this one. |
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PS My camera has laser night focus and it really is bright enough to cause temporary blindness. I'd had it switched on when I first got it and made a singer on stage flinch. |
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You should go back to wearing the paper bag on your head, then. The cosmetic surgery hasn't worked. |
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[Normzone] It may well be true, but I must warn you; Not only are marines prone to exageration, but training one to perform such intracate tasks would most likely be analogous to training a brick to tap dance. |
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[Nineteenthly] I've never had one, but I've watched alot of light colonel's and seargents majors have them. |
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/\ = N
¦
¦=D
</semaphore>
Superimpose the two and you have the peace symbol. |
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//put one or two guys in cover with a good position // [8th of 7]
//I'm going to try that out [8th] with my point n'shoot camera// [po]
Well, it'll make a change from the duck photos. |
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Some flower shaped silencers, a couple of dove grenades and we're all set. |
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Does this mean I should have Bambi shaped sights on my shotgun? |
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You shoot deer with a shotgun? |
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Not to question you MikeD, but it seems to me that the last thing you want to do to a guy under fire is give him a reason to pause and think. If you don't see that as a potential problem, I don't. |
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I don't think he was serious serious, more like halfbaking (lower case) serious. |
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Amusing for all the various flavors of stereotypes this one pulled out of the woodwork. |
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[Absent] Yes I do shoot deer with a shotgun. In my state it is against the law to use a rifle. They want it to be more sporting I guess. You have to be much closer with a shotgun. When you go deer hunting you do not use a multiple shot/grain cartridge. They make shotgun cartridges that have a single slug for deer hunting. |
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Now what we need is for it to project a peace-symbol onto the target with the laser sight. |
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[Nineteenthly] I thought you meant ND as in Negligent Discharge. It's what the army calls it when your weapon fires when it is not supposed to (I.E. in your room while cleaning it, in a briefing tent while you are fiddling with the trigger, at a clearing barrel outside of a chow hall). People who have been in the army for just a few months are prone to it, as well as high ranking lifers that don't really have to do training anymore. |
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[NoExit] Agreed. This is really more tongue in cheek than anything else. |
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[Normzone] Indeed. My personal favorite:
//(not shoots hippies, shoots hippies)// |
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//They want it to be more sporting I guess//
What is "sporting" about that? Does the state allow the the deer to arm themselves with assault rifles or something? |
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Maybe not deer, but isn't there something in the US constitution about being allowed to arm bears ? |
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//US constitution about being allowed to arm bears //
I thought that was a rule that allowed people to wear short-sleeved shirts?
[EDIT] But a shotgun that fires solid slugs isn't really a *shot*gun anymore, is it? All it is is a rifle with the bit that makes a rifle accurate (the rifling) taken away. |
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Get a peace off him: Shoot! |
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[MikeD], "ND" stands for a whole host of things, but "negligent discharge" would be an excellent choice and would fit with the semaphore story. |
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What i actually meant was that according to CND, the peace symbol was originally a superimposition of the semaphore signs N for nuclear and D for disarmament. There might be more information in the LSE archives - i'm getting this from personal memory and real life, not the internet for once. Someone in a local group in London made clay shapes with this symbol on them to make the point that they'd be among the few objects to survive a nuclear holocaust intact. The oldest badges i've seen were actually embossed, not printed, so that makes sense. |
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However, it also looks like the rune calc, and some people say it's from there. That would also make sense considering its origin, but calc isn't a proper rune as it's not in the poem. I suppose the bloke who came up with it could have been influenced by runes, but he was probably communist rather than at all New Agey, so i doubt it. |
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Anyway, "Negligent Discharge" works better than that. |
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//personal memory and real life, not the internet for once// {muffled applause} |
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I'm all for tongue in cheek designer crosshairs! [+] I want a Playboy bunny for wabbit season. |
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[coprocephalous] A rifle has rifling, a gun has none. You are however technically correct, which of course is the best type of correct, so maybe the word shot should be taken off of the name shotgun when using the slugs. Other than that, as far as I know there is no law that prevents the deer form caring their own weapons. |
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//A rifle has rifling, a gun has none//
But handguns do. |
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//What is "sporting" about that?// |
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Shooting a deer is no easy task, especially when juxtaposed to the ease of using pressure activated explosives in conjunction with a salt-lick. |
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It is quite essential that one knows how to feed oneself and his/her own. Just because supermarkets have always been accessible doesn't mean they always will be. |
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//They want it to be more sporting I guess.// |
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Many rifles suitable for hunting deer can, if they miss the intended target, hit something a considerable distance away--well over a mile in some cases. Shotguns, even using rifled slugs, have a much shorter "worst-case" range. |
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As for the original idea, I've sometimes thought it would be helpful to a have a scope with diagonal lines (particularly since the horizontal line on a typical scope may be hard to see against certain backgrounds). The diagonals would be more useful if they were in the sky, though, than against the ground. |
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Nope, still not seeing "sport" there. |
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Sport? Yeah, sure; running, ice-skating, cycling, volleyball, SCUBA diving, gliding, football, rugby, cricket, swimming, skiing, sailing.
Yeah, really quite a lot. |
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// running, ice-skating, cycling, volleyball, SCUBA diving, gliding, football, rugby, cricket, swimming, skiing, sailing. // |
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All well and good, but how many of these activities present you, if successful, with a large quantity of tasty and nutritious meat at the end ? |
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The Biathlon is a winter olympic event and evolved from hunting animals through the forest on skis (although in World War 2 the Finns under General Mannerheim sucessfully adapted the techniques of the Biathlon for removing unwanted Soviet troops from Finnish territory) and is classed as a sport. |
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If you like Rugby, which inevitably involves the ruthless slaughter of the slower and weaker players by the big strong ones, how can you object to hunting ? Fair enough, Rugby players don't tie bloodstained corpses of their adversaries to the front of their team bus and drive them home to butcher them with big knives, roast them over an open fire, and comunally cosnume the resuting meal, but that's only because sucessful rugby players have so few functional neurons in their 'brains' (if any) that they have lost the use of their opposable thumbs, and are unable to tie the requisite knots; having likewise having had their knowledge of fire and the use of tools removed by cerebral percussion, the only thing stopping eating their opponets raw is their dislike for getting strands of rugby shirt caught in their teeth ........ |
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An upside-down peace sign should satisfy supercats longing for diagonals in the upper. Also, it would be appropriate for this application in analogy to the inverted cross or other symbols which invert their meanings when themselves inverted. |
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The peace sign could also be embossed onto billy clubs, to make a nicer impression on the pacified. |
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//how many of these activities present you, if successful, with a large quantity of tasty and nutritious meat at the end //
Don't be obtuse, [8th of 7] - meat pies are eaten at half-time. |
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// meat pies are eaten at half-time. // |
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Still trying to find the “sport”? |
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Deer hunting is usually illegal in Brown County. A few years ago the deer population was so out of hand there that the deer were destroying the vegetation while slowly starving to death. So the Brown County officials decided to have a special hunt to thin the herd. The tree huggers in Brown County threw a fit and published their plans to dress up like deer and walk through the woods so the deer hunters would be afraid to fire on anything. |
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The deer hunters laughed. The tree huggers changed their strategy and published a call for all tree huggers to show up at one side of the park where they planned to enter the woods wearing hunter’s orange clothing and making much noise. |
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The deer hunters laughed again. Then positioned themselves on the other side of the woods and let the tree huggers drive the deer to them. |
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"Hunters one, Tree-huggers nil. The Tree-huggers' manager commented that it was end-to-end play from the first whistle, but at the end of the day he was as sick as a parrot."
Tell me [O3], is shooting fish in barrel considered a sport too? |
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That depends entirely on the number of fish, the size of the barrel, and the calibre of the weapon used. Shooting at a single goldfish in a 50 gallon oildrum full of water with a .22 pistol while leaning out of a window ten metres above is a sport. Shooting a full-grown catfish in half a metre of water in a beerkeg at point blank rage with an M-71 is not a sport. |
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//point blank rage // [marked-for-tagline] |
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That's so good that it might as well stay ..... |
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[AWOL] I agree. Going out and shooting the food you eat is not much of a sport, when compared to the extreme physical and mental demands of purchasing a beef brisket at the super-market. |
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[MikeD] I think we're arguing about different things here.
Shooting (trapping, hooking.. whatever) food is a biological necessity, not a pastime.
By extension, washing your hands and cleaning your teeth afterwards (and other, later, bodily functions) should also be elevated to sport-hood.
For the record, yes I have killed, cleaned cooked and eaten game, and like car maintenance and house decorating, it is something I can do, but prefer to leave to those better qualified than I. |
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[-] and would give many many more [-] if I could. Every reason for this is ridiculous. |
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Killing people is a direct act against peace and an unacceptable way to shape a conflict. Likewise it is never necessary to shoot anyone. Finally, the murderers who return from military service suffer psychological problems because they have done terrible things, it is entirely right that they should do so and hopefully one day wake up to the full enormity of the evil they have done. |
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Ok, for those shocked at the Brown County information. Please understand, this was not truly a sport hunt. Deer that should have been coming in at 200 lbs wieghed in the 70s. The herd was starving and needed to be thinned. While there was not as much meat as there would have been on well fed deer, what meat there was had been cleared to go to the local food banks. There was no fault that I could find in any of the actions taken by anyone except the tree-huggers who would rather see all the deer starve to death rather than just some of them harvested. |
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The sport came from the tree huggers |
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// it is never necessary to shoot anyone // |
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Hitler ? Stalin ? Idi Amin ? Pol Pot ? Robert Mugabe ? Barry Manilow ? |
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[8th of 7], don't let bad people draw you down to their level. |
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[Vince^3] I sleep well at night. Tell me, would you kill to protect your progeny? Your freedom? Your life? Is it really your opinion that it is never right to kill another human being? Even Immanuel Kant, (Quite possibly the most tight-assed of all ethical philosophers), agreed that certain scenarios would allow killing. |
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You want to discuss the ethics of killing, and that is fine with me. I have contemplated the ethics of killing ever since I first killed a fellow human being during my first deployment (circa Nov, 2004). I have studied Kant, Plato, Confucius, Mills, Locke, Hobbes, Nietzsche, Freud, Darwin, Aurelius, Epictetus and Heidegger.
None of these individuals expressed such absolutist views on killing... |
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Now don't start a debate if you can't keep up, Vince. I am here for sound reason and well thought out replies. I just want you to know, I'm not going to answer some self-righteous adolescent, drunk on idealism, calling me a murderer, and frankly; This stinks of it. |
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Stay away from that stuff, kids, it's bad for you. And it can be very bad for others .... Just say no .... |
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//I am here for sound reason and well thought out replies// |
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//Immanuel Kant, (Quite possibly the most tight-assed of all ethical philosophers)// Have you tried Tolstoy (not an absolute pacifist, I think, but named as a inspiration by Gandhi and extremely cranky in his later years)? |
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//that's only because sucessful rugby players have so few functional neurons in their 'brains' (if any) that they have lost the use of their opposable thumbs// |
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In my experience, rugby is unique in the contrast between players brutally pummeling each other on the field and then happily getting drunk with their opponents afterward. I think it is the greatest sport, for those who can play it. |
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// brutally pummeling each other on the field and then happily getting drunk with their opponents afterward // |
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The reasons being that {a} they all look pretty much the same (eyebrow ridges, prognathic mandible, cauliflower ears), and {b} the short- and medium-term traumatic amnesia, meaning that they cannot recognise their opponents of a few minutes before. All the alcohol does is saturate and incapacitate their remaining functioning neurons, if any ....... |
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Rugby players only die when they lose so many mnemonic neurons that they forget to breathe. |
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Maybe I'm missing a joke here, but why is this under Business: Delivery? |
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[Sninctown]
The comment on the Rugby players reminds me of a poem I once read ... |
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Yes; quaint and curious war is!
You shoot a fellow down
You'd treat, if met where any bar is,
Or help to half a crown. |
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- Thomas Hardy (The Man He Killed) (last stanza) |
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[Pertinax]
I have Tolstoy's War and Peace but haven't read it yet. I purchased more books than I had time to read while on this deployment, but it is in the queue. Do you have any reccomendations in the philosophy/ethics department? |
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Also, couldn't find a sighting / scope / targeting / target-aquisition category under weapons, so I figured delivery would fit ;) |
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D'oh! I did miss the joke. {Adjusts joke scope} |
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//any recommendations in the philosophy/ethics department// |
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Well, a personal favourite of mine is Bishop Berkeley's 'Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous'. It's weird, but beautiful, and propounds the idea that things exist, not in and of themselves, but only as ideas in the mind of God. It has the added virtue of being much shorter than War and Peace. |
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More recently (in historical terms) I remember thinking that George Steiner was good, too, but I now forget why (because it wasn't that recent in my life). |
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To see Tolstoy being tight-arsed, read The Kreutzer Sonata where, describing a troubled marriage, Tolstoy concludes that sexuality *of any kind*, even in marriage, is a Bad Thing. I was thinking that this was the sexual equivalent of absolute pacifism. |
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Sorry to churn, but i just found this. See link. |
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Well, since this has re-surfaced again ... |
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[Pertinax] I ordered some of your suggested reading from amazon. Waiting ... waiting ... waiting for them to arrive. |
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(Sometimes I wonder if mail would get here more expediantly if I used the Iraqi Postal Service.) |
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"Religio Medici" is worth a look. |
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...churning again, it's worth it... |
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I thought it was a system which detects and automatically
shoots at peace signs. Phew. |
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Not the signs themselves, just those holding them. The target identification system is very sensative, however. I reccomend not using hand gestures to indicate the number two. |
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I'd really like to say this would be a good idea, but
after not very long the latest, most realistic war
video games would start including the peace sign
reticule and the symbol would completely change its
meaning forever. |
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How about a reticle shaped like those yellow smiley faces from the 70s? It doesn't actually help you aim but everybody likes smiley faces. |
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Plus it's like, ironic and stuff. |
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By the way, you sould file a design patent and sell these. They'd be big with firearms enthusiasts with a dark sense of humor. |
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why is this in "business: delivery"? |
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//why is this in "business: delivery"?//
[senatorjam] It's a pun. A gun is an "ordinance delivery
system" (see link). |
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Best blend of polar opposites that I can ever remember seeing. Better than the smiley face with a bullet hole in the forehead! |
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