Star Wars Lives!

@alexgreat:

Horta, Tholians, Sheliak, Species 8472, Calamarain, Tribbles, to name a few on the top of my head. And then there are aliens like Gorn, which I guess could pass as humanoids in a way.

Just because those pretty dancers have lekku doesnt mean they are non-humanoid, and the same goes for wings of Geonosians.

Comparing not only screened aliens (would be unfair I guess) but all things in the books as well, I dont think that Star Wars has more biodiversity. And in any case humanoids cannot come cooler than Romulans :)

And as Wheat said, Star Trek explained why there are so many humanoids, in I guess another attempt to picture our similarities, not our differences.

So having said all that, both franchises are great if you include the books, but Star Trek is maybe richer overall, with more time devoted to more cultures.

Agree with Wheat, SciFi cannot come better than as DS9.

@wheatbeer:

@amanntai:

I just find the aliens in Star Trek boring. They all look like humans. Vulcans are humans with pointy ears. Klingons are humans with weird foreheads.
Star Wars has more biodiversity in my opinion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chase_(Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation)

This episode sort of explained away the similarities but saying that life was seeded by some earlier species.

Most Star Wars aliens are still bipedal, with heads featuring eyes/nose/mouth/ears, who communicate with vocalizations. A truly alien creature wouldn’t be able to emote for a human audience.

(and just in case, I didn’t geek out enough already, Star Trek aliens have more deeply developed cultures than Star Wars aliens)

I wasn’t thinking of Twi’leks. I was thinking of Hutts, Ortolans, Wampas, or the Sarlacc (which is indeed a sapient creature in the Star Wars universe).

I also believe the humanoid species in Star Wars are considerably less human than the humanoids in Star Trek. Dugs are technically humanoid, but don’t really look like humans.

Also, Geonosians aren’t really humanoid. Just take a look at the Geonosian Queen, she doesn’t resemble humans at all.

@seththenewb:

Very interesting stuff there Mark. Although Dyer’s credentials lend his thoughts a lot more weight that mine do, I have to disagree with his analysis of what the threshold for a war to be dubbed a ‘world war’. I guess my thinking is that his criteria (based on this short narrative) seems to pretty Euro-Centric in account the 30 year’s war and the Spanish Succession to be a world war. I could be wrong, but I thought both of those wars were pretty much just fought between European powers and confined, for the most part, to Europe itself. 
I know I’m pretty guilty of knowing a LOT more about Western civilization and history than I do about Eastern history/civilization. I’m not trying to dig on him or his work, I just figure that you could apply the label of ‘major power’ to at least the Incan, Aztec, and Chinese empires. I guess it depends on how you define major power though.
[…]
I do however agree that the last four on his list qualify as world wars and I like his theory on treaties reflecting the true balance of power. I never really thought of the time periods between wars in that light before and on the surface it seems to make a lot of sense and in my mind goes a long way towards explaining the cycle of war and peace in Europe.

You make a good point about Dyer’s list being Eurocentric, which is something that hadn’t occurred to me (since I don’t have much familiarity with wars outside the western world).  And I don’t know enough about the first three wars on the list to make an informed judgment about how well they fit the all-the-major-powers-of-the-time criterion.

In his discussion of the fifty-year cycle, Dyer speculates that this amount of time is about how long it takes for the difference between the fixed world power structure defined by major peace treaties and the constantly-evolving actual power structure on the ground to become sufficiently large that it reaches the breaking point.  Dyer’s book (based on a TV series of the same name) was published two years before Paul Kennedy’s 1987 book “The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000,” but the argument Dyer makes has some similarity to Kennedy’s.

Kennedy argues that, even when a particular country retains the same level of absolute strength, it may still find itself in a position of decline relative to other countries whose strength happens to be growing.  He identifies the source of that strength as the relationship between economic and military power in any given country, saying that they reinforce each other: economic power (gross national product and foreign trade ) enables you to boost your military power (by buying weapons and enlarging your military forces), and military power returns the favour by helping to protect your economic interests from foreign threats.  A classic example is the synergistic relationship that existed between the Royal Navy and the British merchant marine in the 19th century.  An example closer to home (here on this discussion board) is the fact that, in A&A, income buys units, units fight battles, battles win territories, and territories generate income.

Kennedy states, however, that economic and military strength must be kept properly balanced for the equation to work.  He points to the way in which history’s great powers have tended to get caught in the following trap: when their power declines in either relative or absolute terms, they try to maintain their standing by devoting more and more of their economic resources to the expansion of their military strength, thus upsetting the balance of the equation.  His book came out before the USSR imploded, but as I recall one of the factors which contributed to the fall of the Soviet Union was that it bankrupted itself through excessive military spending, along the lines of Kennedy’s theory.

Very helpful, thank you guys!
I think I’m going to order the John Keegan and Erwin Rommel books.
Thanks again!

One last: Jen made the point that to almost win is the same as losing. Not true. For example, if I punch someone in the face repeatedly, and ALMOST knock him out, did I somehow lose the fight? Meade’s forces were defeated on the first day… Meade was punched repeatedly on the 2nd, but stayed on his feet… Lee thought he could land the knock-out blow with Pickett, and failed.

That is basically Gettysberg, in one paragraph.

Edit:

Just to extend the metaphore further, Gettysberg was like a three-round fight:

Round 1: Lee cautiously approaches Meade. Lee lands several devastating blows. Meade staggers. Lee continues pummelling Meade, but Meade is saved by the bell. Meade retreats to his corner and regroups.
Lee wins the round.

Round 2: Meade assumes a defensive stance. Lee pummels Meade the entire round, opening up several cuts. Meade reels, staggers, drops to the ground twice, but Lee misses several knockout blows. Meade counters and bloodies Lee.
Lee narrowly wins the round on points.

Round 3: Meade keeps his defensive stance, knows Lee will go for the knockout blow to the center. Lee begins the round with a weak attack that Meade easily counters. Lee and Meade circle each other warily. Lee, unaware he is ahead on points, throws one last desperate haymaker. Meade guards his center. Lee breaks his hand on Meade’s forearm. Meade, barely conscious, has a chance to finish the fight, but is too battered, bruised and bloodied to do anything but wait for the bell.

Lee is unable to continue the fight. Meade wins a TKO.

Edited cause I like boxing.

There are no permenant lines so that alternate land sets could be made and layed down over the water base color. Originally we would lay down low tack adheasive narrow black tape but found that on a map that large, the zones are obvious and you really don’t need them. The next stage that we never got around to was an elevated plexi layer to place the aircraft on.

Results 
Based on your answers to the above questions, your current life expectancy is 86 years. If you’re not happy with the result, consider that by adopting a healthier lifestyle and avoiding various risk factors, you can increase your life expectancy by up to 15 years.

Your “ideal” weight for maximum longevity is: 172 lbs.

The three biggest positive factors that you have going for you are:
    1. Age of parents
    2. Age of grandparents
    3. Personality type

The two biggest negative factors that you have going for you are:
    1. Gender
    2. Weight

The weight thing is stupid, I haven’t weight that since I was 17, when I was in the best shape of my life I weighed more than 200lbs, at that time I could run multiple 7 minute miles and had on multiple occasions run 10miles plus with out stopping.

Also age of parents / grandparents is crap all but one of them is still alive, so I have no idea what age they will die at.  I guess I have to getr them to do this quiz so I will know…

Yes i did a long search as well when i was debating that point and could not find anything about the second war-just 1991. He may not have much of an air force to move anyway at that time.

@Zooey72:

What happened that made Germany so strategic, the cold war. And you know that. It was also in our best intrest to have Germany rebuild its military to help with the Warsaw pact/Nato arms race

You think that was the reason why the US entered the war? AFAIK only Churchill was “wise” enough to look into the future and see this upcoming conflict. The US gov’t did not, thus it can not be the reason for invasion. (Remember that is what we are talking about)

You also know that democracy failed in Germany because of the stab in the back mentality of the German people.

I know, but you know that your point of the last post was "If the US had wanted democracy after WWI, you would have ‘gone in’ ". My answer was: there was no need for you to go in. I don’t argue what you wrote in this post, but this here does not really relate to your earier post.

3rd point. Have we destroyed Iraq the way we did Germany? Think before you knee jerk reaction of “yes” …

Think and remember this should not be a flame war, before you warn me of a knee jerk reaction, especially when you are not long enough a member here on the board to know that i often enough disapproved of this comparison. Germany was bleeded out by the war, Iraq was not. The German population suffered from a year long war, Iraq did not (they suffered from a year long trade-ban, but that is not the same than having bombs fall on your regularly).

Mien kamph… if you are going to study Nazi Germany you should read the autobiography of the man who ran it all. Some of the refrences I used was to show what a dumb a** Stalin was for thinking he could trust Hitler when the book clearly states that he was going to attack.

Like the “dumb” jews who stayed?
Anyway … the book was written in prison, before 1933. If you want to study the regime, then yes, it is interesting to compare what happened to what was proposed in the book. But, it is more important to study what really happened.