Star Wars Quirks

@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.

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.

@CWO:

I can’t recall the details, but Peter Perla’s book The Art of Wargaming decribes a professional wargaming exercise conducted by the British army a few years (about five or ten, I think) before WWI.  The scenario included a German violation of Belgian neutrality and a British expeditionary force being sent to the Continent.  The exercise apparently revealed that Britain had an inadequate military transportation capacity to deal with such a situation in a satisfactory amount of time.  Perla speculates that the British officer who played the role of Britain in the wargame must subsequently have experienced a disconcerting sense of deja vu in 1914 when he saw a very similar scenario being played out in real life.

The Officer was Henry Wilson, a future Field Marshal and Director of Military Operations. He was capable of looking at a map, and thus saw that clearly the Germans would come through Belgium (though he, like the entire French High Command, assumed it would just be through the Ardennes instead of the whole on flanking attempt that it was).

After the initial Moroccan Crisis and increasing tensions with Germany, Wilson was probably THE key figure in organizing Anglo-French military cooperation. Wilson eventually had plans to move the entire BEF (all six divisions, plus the cav) to France and be fully ready for combat by no latter than M-15 (the Germans expected them on M-12). The organization was essentially flawless, however political dithering and fears of German invasion eventually screwed it all up and we had the 4 divisions plus the cavalry moved over that we all know about.

As to the question: Britain was not going to sit back and let Germany assume hegemony over the continent, just like she hadn’t let France assume hegemony over the continent 100 years earlier. The Liberals would dither, and it could take awhile, but with men such as Churchill in charge of their military, Britain was going to war.

Also, MANY people don’t seem to know, that regardless of the government, the British military and foreign offices took war with Germany as a matter of fact, to the point where they had a treaty with the French (kept secret from the government) that the Royal Navy would assume responsibility over the entire French Atlantic coast in the event of war with Germany, allowing the French to concentrate their fleet in the Med. Lord Grey had the wonderful task of informing Parliament that they were duty bound to guard the French coast from any German excursion. Needless to say the liberals took it well  :-D

@CWO:

On the subject of Star Trek, here’s an odd news item: the first Star Trek beer to be licenced by the franchise.Â

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/story/2013/04/27/calgary-vulcan-beer.html

Alas, it’s Vulcan rather than Romulan and it’s amber instead of blue – but I guess one has to start somewhere.

We have green beer here.  I’d wager we could add some orange coloring and make it more vulcan…if we can add green, why not orange?

Vader. Cult icon. Leader. Revolutionary. Visionary. Only sith capable of dancing ‘Can’t touch this’ and do it better than MC Hammer.

A true American.

GG

@Amon:

@cyan:

@Petrucci08:

The indian Sepoy mutiny of 1857.

…. and if you stretched it enough i suppose you could call the reformation a civil war in the church  :-D

they forgot a lot of them without haveing to strech. like all the english civil wars and the glorious revolution. and they forgot the war where more americans died than any other war. (also happens to be the second modern war) the Civil War. (what a creative name) Does the Hungarian Revolution count as one and all the other minor communist revolts. Does Italian Renuifaction count as a civil war. because it just this one dude going around and forcing others to join the great italian cause. but someone said something about Greece. they did have a civil war right after world war I i think.

Greece had its civil war after WWII

the communists tried to seize power

the USA and UK backed up anticommunist forces which eventually win

very important event was closing the borders of Yugoslavia and Albania to Greece, that how Greek communists found themselves trapped
-it happened after the Tito-Stalin split

and the Greek communists were i think ideologicaly connected to Soviets

yeah i think that happened after both wars. first the brits and the french were dividing up Turkey and the Russians and Americans created the coldwar.

even if the mexicans didnt really contribute that much, due to PC, we need to have revisionist history to make the mexicans happy.

LOL! spot on but  its better to just leave it as American contribution and leave out the race BS. 85% of those who fought as US GI were Anglos anyway why even bother to mention the others? Vietnam was another story.

Industrialization was bound to kill slavery.  however there were enough radicals in both parties to make it a major issue in the conventions.  so much so in the Charlestown convention that democrats were willing to lose the election rather than nominate stephan douglas who was THE states rights candidate.