The end of the world

Today marks the 100th anniversary of the event that is commonly held to be the end of World War I: the armistice on the Western Front. Germany’s war effort was on the verge of collapse both militarily and domestically, and its allies had already signed separate armistice agreements during the preceding months. The signing took place early in the morning, the ceasefire went into effect at 11 AM.

Formally speaking, the notion that World War I ended with this armistice is incorrect. Hostilities had ended, but unlike the end of World War II, the armistice did not constitute a formal capitulation. So legally speaking, the war continued until the various parties involved had reached separate peace agreements, a process which took several years to complete – in the case of Germany, the Versailles treaty which was signed in 1919 and took effect on January 10, 1920. And the state of war with Turkey even continued until the 1923 treaty of Lausanne.

@ABWorsham:

Stalin’s mustache was awesome in the series, that is the only positives you will hear from me.

––What a great ‘one-liner’  :-D

Tall Paul

I see no problem signing your free will away to some computer who will put you in the perfect job for society, will genetically engineer your children to propegate the species and will determine the most efficient utilization of your resources.

Wow what cool guys.
I would take the money and just buy XBox 360 and/or the Wii.
Not that many games come out only on PS3.

I think its not. That thing you quoted is an US law proposal, and the only difference from the situation today is that a UN controlled lightly armed force would subsitute the US controlled heavily armed forces…. maybe that difference between “N” and “S” is the thing you dislike that much.

@El:

Another form of World Charity…
What happens to the world’s economy if all countries buy their own products where available, but elsewhere when necessary…

I think i didn’t totally understand that. You mean “buy their own even if moer expensive”, and only if that is not enough go and import?
I suppose so, so let’s look…

Canada buys its own lumber. The US buys Canadian lumber. Who is helped? Canadian limber industries. Who is hurt? US lumber industries.

Not right. Canada is the biggest exporter of lumber products (21.2%). They would be hurt if people did not buy from them. The US only has 11.1% of that market, they mainly sell their lumber in their country anyway. In contrast the 31 millions Canadians don’t use as much wood as the 275 million USies (per capita they are comparable). The US lumber industry would lose not as much as the Canadians. So…. you are wrong :)

Source: http://www.cofi.org/reports/factbook2000/Chapters from FACTBOOK 2000-Part I.pdf

The US buys its own Christmas decorations. China buys its own Christmas decorations. Who is helped? The US foofaraw industries. Who is hurt? Chinese prison wardens and sweatshops.

Well, does it hurt the chinese (who probably don’t have that big market for christmas deco)? They would put that work into something else. It would help the US industry though, taken that you USies import a cheap lot from China.

Japan buys its own computer chips. The US buys Japanese computer chips. Who is helped? Japanese tech industries. Who is hurt? US tech industries.

Why are they hurt? By what you say in the beginning the above means that there are no US chips available. How does that hurt the US, when there are none anyway?

The US buys its own wines and beer. France and Germany buy their own wines and beers. Who is helped? The US alcohol industries. Who is hurt? The French and Germany brewmeisters.

Do not forget the US customers here, who are hurt, and the german and french drinking people, who can be sure to get good beer and wine only and not fall into this mean “Budweiser”/“Budvar” trap….

Russia cannot afford to buy its own diamonds. The EU and US buy Russian diamonds. Who is helped? Russia, the EU and US. Who is hurt? Nobody.

“Can’t afford” kind of contradicts the term “available”. The EU and US, having no large diamond mines would buy russian/south african diamonds anyway. So, i don’t see why the real world and your model would differ here at all.

The US watches its own Whorelywood movies and TurpitudeVision. The EU watches Cannes movies and ?. Who is helped? France is better off because the youth of France no longer have American negative behavioural influence and the French language is saved from Anglicization. The US is better off because Whorelywood only has 30% of its original budget. This causes fewer movies to be made, but they are of better quality(otherwise, the good and great directors, producers, actors keep working, but Sean Penn, Michael Moore, Madonna and Julia Roberts are working as telephone solicitors in East LA.) Both the US and Europe find a strange thing happening… families are spending personal time together. Who is hurt? Canada has an influx of unemployed actors and Peter Jennings.

Don’t forget Australia who would suffer from that with unemployed actors… and i don’t think the quality for Hollywood movies would go up:
(1) Sean Penn is a great actor
(2) you would lose/have lost the services of Mel Gibson, Nicole Kidman, Cate Blanchett, Russell Crowe, Elle Macpherson, Stephen Hopkins (dir), Errol Flynn (all Australia); Klaus Kinski, Johnny Weissmüller (!), Franka Potente, Marlene Dietrich, Fritz Lang (dir), F.W. Murnau (dir), R. Fassbinder (dir), W. Wenders (dir), Billy Wilder (dir), Roland Emmerich (dir); Wolfgang Petersen (dir), E. Lubitsch (dir), Peter Lorre (all Germany, Austria)…

Now look at the movies never made or seen by you…
Casblanca (Lorre), Tarzan (Weissmüller), for Flynn see:
http://www.imdb.com/Name?Flynn,+Errol
No “Independance day”, no Godzilla (Emmerich), no “Patriot” and “Lethal Weapons” (Gibson), No “beautiful mind”, “Gladiator” (Crowe), no Nosferatu (Kinski, Fassbinder; Murnau), no Metropolis (Lang), no “M” (Lorre, Lang), no “Run, Lola, run” (Potente),
etc. etc. etc. etc.
and these are only two countries …

So, i guess the quality would be even worse :)

hey welcome back tm how was sandiego?