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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Solon who wrote (42335)	1/15/2002 4:57:29 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

The point (as you said) is that they were "hopeless". The victor then decides how to deal with the "hopeless". You can draw and quarter them...or simply hang them. We were not in position to hang or draw and quarter any Japanese except for POWs until after the surrender and even then we where not in a realistic position to do either to all of them. There position was hopeless in the sense that they could not win, not in the sense that they all faced death. PLEASE!!! I can quote you nuclear experts from 1945 who said that additional bombs could have been made available..."forthwith"! We only had a very small number until the 50s but even if we had dozens, or a hundred Nagasaki or Hiroshima type bombs and we used them all it would not have wiped out the entire population of Japan. Neither bomb even wiped out everyone in the target city, and the % of Japan's land area represented by the two cities was extremely small. What are you talking about? What island are you referring to? What population numbers are you presuming, or intending to cite? Japan is not a nation of "countryside", LOL!! Japan does not have vast open areas like the US but it is not all city either. It is a lot more densly populated then the US but it does have rural areas, and areas of moderate density. Whatever its density it does not have a small land area. (yes it is a lot less then that of the US but it is not small). You vastly overrate the destructive ability that we had in 1945. We could have eventually destroyed all their major cities completly, but that would not have killed every single person in Japan. As far as "nukes"? They could have been produced in unlimited quantity. In 1945 production of nuclear weapons was still relatively slow and costly. Later on we could and did crank out large numbers of them. But I am talking about 1945 or at latest 1946 not the 50s. No, you are not. You have never travelled to the past, nor to the future. We have seen images of the past, but we have never been there.. The present is where we are now. I have not traveled to the past but I have traveled from there. The rest of the universe has moved along with me. (or to sound less arogant I have moved along with it). Looked at either through physics or philosophy the nature of time is a complex thing. Most people don't ever define time even if they use it in defintions of other things. When it is defined it is often in circular ways such as refrencing units of time. I've also seen it defined as something like "A dimension that enables two otherwise identical events that occur at the same point in space to be distinguished." But that doesn't really say anything about the nature or time or "space-time". Time is normally just part of the framework of our other statements in a was similar to the way axioms are not proven but are part of the framework of math or logic. You don't even observe time, you observe that things are different over time (for example a chemical reaction completes or the hands of a clock are in a different position then the where before). Statements about time may be reasonable and consistant but we don't have the level of understanding of time needed to really say "these are the facts" IMO. If we could slow down all the processes that are going on in the universe would time itself slow down? Certainly any measurement of it would. Can you discribe time independently of those processes? ___________________ On the Nature of Time wfu.edu ___________________________ bartleby.com bartleby.com " Now before the advent of the theory of relativity it had always tacitly been assumed in physics that the statement of time had an absolute significance, i.e. that it is independent of the state of motion of the body of reference. But we have just seen that this assumption is incompatible with the most natural definition of simultaneity" _____________________ plato.stanford.edu " The first debate concerns the reality of tense, that is, our division of time into past, present and future. Is time really divided in this way? Does what is present slip further and further into the past? Or does this picture merely reflect our perspective on a reality in which there is no uniquely privileged moment, the present, but simply an ordered series of moments? Tensed theorists say that our ordinary picture of the world as tensed reflects the world as it really is: the passage of time is an objective fact. Tenseless theorists deny this. For them, the only objective temporal facts concern relations of precedence and simultaneity between events. (I ignore here the complications introduced by the Special Theory of Relativity, since tenseless theory-and perhaps tensed theory also-can be reformulated in terms which are compatible with the Special Theory.) Tenseless theorists do not deny that our tensed beliefs, such that that a cold front is now passing, or that Sally’s wedding was two years ago, may be true, but they assert that what makes such beliefs true are not facts about the pastness, presentness or futurity of events, but tenseless facts concerning precedence and simultaneity (see Mellor (1998), Oaklander and Smith (1994)). On one version of the tenseless theory, for example, my belief that there is a cold front now passing is true because the passing of the front is simultaneous with my forming the belief. Now one very serious challenge to the tenseless theorist is to explain why, if time does not pass in reality, it appears to do so. What, in tenseless terms, is the basis for our experience as-of the passage of time? ___________________________ scientificexploration.org (note link is to abstract only not full article) One of the most fundamental concepts in our experience of existence is the flow of time — continuously from the past to the future. Yet, the basic nature of time as part of the description of the universe is not understood at all. The conservation laws of physics seem to be time-symmetrical, every detailed action could occur in reverse, which argues that the concept of the passage of time is not needed in nature. Yet, that time flows in one direction remains part of our experience. Can time stop? Can we influence the future? Can we influence the past? The historical and thermodynamic arrows of time are discussed and several enigmas and contradictions about the nature of time are revealed. The concept of "entropy" and its relation to the universe as a whole is explored. _____________ pbs.org