What's Kofi up to now?

My deepest condolences to you Paul.

Thanks for answering Worsham.
Maine? Interesting. Would have been Massachusetts then. They did go far away (almost Canada, like Marc suggested).

True, there is no hell in Judaism (its from pagan Norse mythology), though the Aryan Jesus talks of throwing liars into a lake of fire to burn for ever and ever. Nice chap, even if he didn’t care for gentiles. Not that he was a real person, natch.

I have no faith, I’m not a moron.

I’m just interested to know why people who do think they can influence God’s plan for them by praying.

One of my favorites…  WW2 related.  “Worlds Funniest Joke”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhmnOpoGAPw&feature=related

There’s more then one Bean book?

To be honest, though, I read a few of the Ender books and really only liked Ender’s Game.  Later Ender’s Shadow came out and that was pretty good.

Hegemony
Speaker for the Dead
etc

Really seemed too long winded.  Dunno.

Anyway, anyone read David Feintuch’s Midshipman’s Hope?  Great book, okay series!

I’ll file that one away in the usefull information file.  :evil:

@F_alk:

Still, that does not explain why you chose that era to use the names from. It was not the correct time (as during the NATO and Pact times the Germanies were “independent” nations), and not the current time (as there is noWarsaw Pact anymore).
Actually, “it turned out after the war that all of it was NATO” …
What was the reason to use the intermediate era and thus historically misleading names?

I thought it was occupied until the wall fell in the 80’s/90’s?

I think most of the backing came due to two facts:
(1) the USSR needed reforms, that was obvious.
Still, they probably wanted a long term leader that could be influenced => a younger one, after the two short reigns of Andropov and what-was-his-name… Probably, the influentials wanted some change, but surely not that much that it would threaten their power-base, one of the reasons for the coup that failed due to Jelzins help for Gorbachev.
(2) The general secretary and all the other positions he fills made him the most powerful man in the USSR. Probably, whoever put Gorbachev into place, underestimated him. Pretty much the same underestimation that Hitler faced when he was appointed Chancellor, but luckily Gorbachev used that to reform positively, and i consider the new freedom of information, the right to ask wether the party is right and that the crucial reform.

So, I don’t think that there was “real” backing, i believe Gorbachev was kind of a compromise candidate, kind of a makeshift. Of course, once he was into power, you ccouldn’t remove instantly, that would have meant that the party made a mistake (which was not “allowed” before Gorbachev). And he was clever enough to stay into power, and use his popularity at the beginning (which soon, after the economy started to collapse openly, was reduced to more or less nothing) to enforece the reforms.