Thought sure I was going to get a Black Widow...

[G50AE]

I went to Syracuse to install a stairlift  at my mother's and coordinated the trip with the Syracuse Gun Show.

Now that's planning your travels in a very "tactical" manor. 

[Adk.IBO]

Wow! Just plain WOW!...I apologize to those looking under the heading of "NAA Products" for bringing up what I had to do to bring my Wasp home. I won't do that again. What the heck are the subcatagories like "Politics and Religion" on this forum for anyway? Rant back at ya! I'm done.

Stay safe, John

[Dinadan]

We did wander off topic a bit, did we not? That is pretty often the way it goes here. We are not a disciplined lot on this forum.

[TwoGunJayne]

The categories are basically for a starting point and if you were actually looking for something on topic.

If a new thread with an actual question doesn't have the question answered within 20 posts, this is a bad sign.

[Goatpacker]

Yea we got off a bit but once again when do we get to see a pic of your wasp? You explained earlier but even though NY has a lot of gun restrictions don't tell me they keep y'all deprived on electeonic technology? Give us some pics?

[Adk.IBO]

Well, my wife is in Illinois with the Ipad, and the digital camera happened to be in her purse, taking care of my mother in law that went in for emergency surgury on a torn aorta, found a 10" anurism and fixed that too. Neither one of us has smart phones. I have an archaic cell phone. Hopefully my wife will be home by next weekend, but priorities will probably push Wasp pics out a little further than that. I will get to it though. Thanks for the patience for the pics and my gettin' snippy over thread drift.

Stay safe, John

[heyjoe]

if you dont like thread drift you are in the wrong place

[Goatpacker]

Just giving you a hard time! All of us just get excited for each other when one of us gets a new toy. Even though we all know what one looks like it just makes it more personal to see a pic. Hope all goes well for you.

[G50AE]

One thing about the Roman Republic. Those folks did realize that sometimes things just get messed up, and that nothing less than a leader with dictatorial power could fix things. So they did sometimes appoint a dictator, and strangely enough, to modern minds, the appointed dictators surrendered their power when their term was over.

Some times sooner than the end of their term in the two cases of Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus.

[223fan]

223fan has caught the disease as most if not all do. Just one will never do. I see many more Minis in your future.

Yep I'm infected

[TwoGunJayne]

This is our world and what it's become and I truly believe we will never see the good ways that they were . Rome here we come . Don't forget to buckle up . 

When my daughter was young we used to play a game called Jenga where you built a tower out of wood blocks. You have to keep removing non essential blocks and using them to build higher, until the tower comes crashing down. I often think that our society, the developed world, is just like that game. We keep making economic systems and governing systems more complex, more interdependent, and more precarious all the time. Eventually some miscalculation, or just clumsiness, will probably bring our society to its knees. At that point all bets are off as to what happens.

One thing about the Roman Republic. Those folks did realize that sometimes things just get messed up, and that nothing less than a leader with dictatorial power could fix things. So they did sometimes appoint a dictator, and strangely enough, to modern minds, the appointed dictators surrendered their power when their term was over.

One thing about the Roman Republic. Those folks did realize that sometimes things just get messed up, and that nothing less than a leader with dictatorial power could fix things. So they did sometimes appoint a dictator, and strangely enough, to modern minds, the appointed dictators surrendered their power when their term was over.

Some times sooner than the end of their term in the two cases of Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus.

1. I like Jenga. I've played it many times whilst "ordered indoors" under undisclosed circumstances. A little wobble falls on the last one to have moved; we padded our time.

2. The Fall of the Roman Empire was very highly exaggerated. Firstly, it continued for so long that there were many who refused to notice or acknowledge it. Secondly, there is no single date, weekspan, or year range even within decades that could define the "Fall of the Roman Empire." Anyone who taunts you with a question about "When was the Fall of the Roman Empire" is just baiting you. Even for those who could admit that it fell kept something going called the "Byzantine Empire" going for quite, quite, quite a long time... at least as sovereignty lifespans are concerned. Some say some remnants of the Byzantines even persist today.

Some historians peg the Byzantine Empire as lasting approximately 1,000 years from a time of great problems as their extremely very many subjugated and annexed constituency re-asserted their own cultural identity.

A study of both history and sociology is critical for anyone wishing to be a thinking person, much less our falsely-inflated dreams of what a representative might do. I think the Founding Fathers had a solid background in what you might now call "Classics." It's similar but different to something called a "Classical Education." One is a University, the other was a Way of Life.

3. A Dictator relucant to release absolute power, regardless of their shortcomings, is far more of a problem than a servant Of the People, By the People, and For the People. We the People. Traditionally, they are captured first. After their own people come to rescue them, they are hunted. Somewhere along the line they are either killed or exiled. (See also: Napoleon, Old Benito M, Caesar Julius, etc...)

Philosophically, I thout the old "Bio of a Space Tyrant" sci-fi series was pretty expansive on the nature of a Dictatorship. The problem is that you would have to watch everything bad that was done by everyone in that series and realize that the sum total of those affairs were attributable to a Dictatorship overthrowing other forms of government. Bad stuff happens when one person holds unquestionable and unchecked power over what a gigantic industrial-military complex could do, not even counting the damages a "political machine" can and has done to a society. (See also: Gestapo, Stazi, I'll stop there, but I don't have to.)

This is our world and what it's become and I truly believe we will never see the good ways that they were . Rome here we come . Don't forget to buckle up . 

You know what they did in Rome? Some of the upper class thought it was great to bathe publicly with both genders. A few of them would go to temples that were quite hedonistic with barely any limits but the imagination. They attended blood sports. Which of these do you think would be agreeable to a sane person? I'd rather take a hot bath with a special someone. That's just my opinion.

What did the vast majority of those of Rome do? Suffer. Not one person in 100 could afford the luxuries a "Citizen of Rome" enjoyed. Many would die under slavery.

Some of Rome liked feeding Christians to lions. Pretty tame, compared to some of the other exploits.

If you've read the post this far, never go research Caesar Caligula. Let's just say that Hitler got off light compared to what that guy deserved.

[G50AE]

If you've read the post this far, never go research Caesar Caligula. Let's just say that Hitler got off light compared to what that guy deserved.

His name was Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus.  Although it could be argued that Elagabalus, whose name was Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus was a worse example.

[Dinadan]

2. The Fall of the Roman Empire was very highly exaggerated. Firstly, it continued for so long that there were many who refused to notice or acknowledge it. Secondly, there is no single date, weekspan, or year range even within decades that could define the "Fall of the Roman Empire." Anyone who taunts you with a question about "When was the Fall of the Roman Empire" is just baiting you. Even for those who could admit that it fell kept something going called the "Byzantine Empire" going for quite, quite, quite a long time... at least as sovereignty lifespans are concerned. Some say some remnants of the Byzantines even persist today.

Actually, I was thinking of the fall of the Roman Republic. That took place over about a lifetime, with Julius Caesar's generation ending it. Say 100 B.C to 40 B.C. The Republican traditions could not, or at least did not, cope with the growth of the state and the emergence of political leaders who were willing to destroy the state for their own gain. The Republic appointed at least two dictators, Marius and Sulla, in that time frame who tried to maintain and restore Republican institutions (I think), but ultimately they had limited success.

Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people":


First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.

Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.

The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.

Our nation seems unable to control bureaucracy, and the bureaucracy is killing our country like mistletoe in a pecan tree. I am not saying that we need a dictator to control bureaucracy, but we definitely need something that we do not have.

[OV-1D]

We certainly need someone to take military control of our country and that's all I'm going to say about it less I be beaten up .     We need a TRUE PATRIOT is there any ? ? God save the Republic .

[G50AE]

We certainly need someone to take military control of our country and that's all I'm going to say about it less I be beaten up .     We need a TRUE PATRIOT is there any ? ? God save the Republic .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dq4aOaDXIfY&feature=kp

Tina Turner summed it up quite well.