Grasshopper's Avatar

I liked the skating and team play.
It is improving each olympic game.

Fantastic.
I like how HG Wells was not bothered what happened to his soldiers.  How very WW1General of him!

I really liked, it it’s not in my top 5 or anything, but it was well put together good plot, good action.
I would buy it on DVD.

Of course THIS video is 100% on topic for this forum…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ME0U9nY0AH4&feature=related

All though I loved Ender’s Game I found all the other books in that seires to be extrmely boring and I wasn’t able to finish any of them.

On the other hand I loved Ender Shadow and Ive read all the Shadow books which I also love. I like how after battle school the Shadow books focus on Earth politics and what the future geopoliticals is like. Plus Enders Shadow is longer so it’s a better deal.

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.

Still a good pic though! Now if they could show his cabinet as the the RING WRAITHS that would be cool!

Yeah, there are different ways to make that cut.
Some say Columbus, some say Fall of Byzantine…. I don’t think that you can make that up on one event. It happened around 1500, that’s good enough for me :)