Toxn

It is what it says: an attempt to destroy an entire genotype. Now, forget that race/religion/whatever aren't that well linked to genetics and you get a definition like so: - actions conducted by a state, nation, organisation or group; - with intent to completely destroy another group; - such that the other group ceases to exist at a genetic level. Thus, herding people into reservations - while incredibly asshollish and terrible - isn't genocide. Forcibly sterilising a people (even if they're then allowed to live in luxury) is. Intent should, as with all crimes, factor into things somewhat as well.

What it says on the tin: I know stuff about genetics and biotechnology (especially population genetics and crop biotechnology), so feel free to ask me anything about these topics. If there is something I don't know enough about (human genetic disorders, for instance) I will do my best to remedy that issue or tell you so. I am also a trainee patent lawyer, so you can also ask questions related to Intellectual Property law. I must, however, stress the 'trainee' part. Fire away, chaps.

This is interesting and pretty much in line with my own (less scientific) tests. A few caveats should be mentioned, however. One is that the longbow itself is not special. Although there is a considerable cult of the longbow whose members hold it up as some sort of perfectly crafted superweapon, the reality is that its only really unique feature (a d-section form) has been proved by testing to be worse than either a round section longbow or flatbow. In terms of energy retention and velocity, the longbow is nothing special. What was special was the archers. Not that they were superhuman or could all draw ridiculous weights, but that they were all uniformly well trained and suported by a dedicated production and logstical infrastructure. The second caveat concerns the real purpose of the bow: the arrows. There is considerable disagreement over whether needle-nosed bodkins (aka: the best overall performers in those tests) were used as specialist armour piercers or as xheap munitions. If the latter, than the hardened steel tips go out the window. This won't really affect the cloth or mail results, but will make the brigadine and plate results even worse. Finally, I am somewhat skeptical that longbows were routinely fired with draw weights of over 100lb. My personal take is that the bows that have been recovered so far represent a good sample of weights (50 -90lb), while the Mary Rose bows represent unfinished weapons intended to be retillered upon issue. Others have covered the same ground: http://margo.student.utwente.nl/sagi/artikel/longbow/longbow.html What this test represents, then, is a best-case scenario conducted at point blank range rather than the combat-range scenario the author was envisioning.

Perhaps I should have been more precise and differentiated between riots, protests and revolts. My interest here is in protests: where people are organised, still attempting to work the system (rather than blindly trying to get destroy it) and are aware of the useless nature of completely passive demonstrations. The idea for these groups is to be able to hold whatever action it is that they want to hold without getting shoved onto a 'free speech' zone, getting dispersed in the first 5 minutes or turning into a minute-long news segment. Young assholes rolling the bus because their team lost are, as you correctly point out, never going to be organised enough to do this stuff.

Toxn's fancy-pants guide to properly eating a grapefruit: Step 1: Cut off ends Step 2: peel like an orange (side cuts can be used if need be) Optional step: cut excess white stuff off sides Step 3: Cut into pieces and eat. NOTE: you can do nearly all of this stuff without even using a knife. ANOTHER NOTE: I have never been squirted in the eye doing it this way A FINAL NOTE: This grapefruit sat on my counter for six months before I ate it. Proof that citrus are awesome and god's gift to sailors.

Please elaborate?

Having given it a lot of thought, I have decided on the perfect weapon for any angry crowd wishing to get ahead in today's fasy-paced world: the pike. The pike is easy to make, easy to use, works well en mass, keeps mounted police at bay and provides some measure of protection against missiles. Additionally, it looks pretty slick when properly deployed and can double as a means of displaying slogans and flags.

Points taken. Going further, then: where should I look for useful approaches?

Come over to my end of the world - it's 90% woodsball and 10% using the gun as a bludgeon.

Or just peel it like an orange and man the fuck up. I'd put pears ahead as well, yes. As for apples, we're one of those places that sends all our best produce overseas. Given that I then have the choice between a terrible, floury red and an edible granny smith I'd take the latter any day.

As always with pets, the problem is YOU.

His Dad had a horrible grasp on spelling, a fact which inadvertently saved him from being called Chanelle.

Your law seems to have a real problem with overly rigid and overly tightly-written laws (which are ripe for both stupidity and gaming). Then again, you inherited English common law and the English legislative approach...

Thanks to the ongoing adventures* of one of my bosses, I'm prompted to ask a very silly question: just how useful is something like paintball as a means of sussing out basic small unit tactics? As an example: from my fairly limited experiences, it seems that, sans any sort of pre-existing training or unit cohesion, about the best thing you can do is simply to buddy up and adopt simple fire-and-move tactics rather than anything to do with formations. Is this actually a good approach, indicative of a general process which can be extrapolated outwards? Or is it merely an artefact of how the game mechanics interact? * Which are so crazy that they'd require their own post at this point. Suffice it to say that I'm trying to think of ways to keep the man alive as he and a bunch of dudes from his neighbourhood (lawyers, accountants and shop keepers) fight what is increasing looking like a turf war between the local residents and a bunch of violent gangs.

I'd be exceedingly wary of making an argument rooted in anthropology without taking some time to consider just how mind-bogglingly diverse human social structures and sexual practices have proved to be. You can construct a narrative for pretty much anything using this particular assertion. Playing the noble rather than the peasant - I'm down with the ren-faire approach to history. Seriously, though, I'd take eunuch over the cage any day. Better my body mangled than my mind.

Considering how new the nuclear family is as an institution (working families are as old as peasantry), I feel that the problem lies more in that direction than in the decline of the nigh-mythical stay at home mom. my take is that its the extended family unit that makes it more feasible to have children by the simple virtue of spreading the load. Having my parents nearby, for instance, has almost certainly saved our marriage from taking strains that push it past its yeild point. As for men as thr expendable gender, you make very valid points.

Fite me irl, you filthy heathen

Subjective scoring system is subjective

Here lies madness.

Agreed, although I'm more on the 'let all who want come' side when it comes to military service. That said, I don't think it's necessarily an untenable position to argue that women should be kept out of the armed forces. And having recently gotten a more detailed glimpse at just how intensive (and expensive) the process of producing people is, I feel you can make real arguments for a system that identifies only the most replaceable and expendable individuals to send off to war*. Here, for purely biological reasons, it's going to be men that society can more afford to throw away. I just wish that people would make their argument (whatever it is) rather than play the 'but, but... my unit cohesion!' card or similar. Because that shit is cynical, disingenuous and weak - if you're going to wilt away under criticism, then for god's sake grow thicker skin and come up with better arguments. Ideas, in the end, are only worth something if they can receive a pounding without falling over. This style of argument where you explicitly attempt to prevent that by means of misdirection and evasion just annoys me. *It could, of course, also be used as the basis advocating mandatory welfare for mothers, legalisation and normalisation of poly households, old-school polygamy and a bunch of other things.

This is a public service announcement to anyone living in the United States and currently in possession of a rifle, musket, crossbow, bow or spear: kill and eat as many deer as you can. Thank you for your cooperation.

He also makes the point in comments (similar to mine) that people are suddenly all about infantry standards being sacrosanct and ultra-high now that women might get their cooties on them. I mean; God knows all the blokes they let in back in the good old daystm were all over 180cm, able to run 10km and could do obstacle courses in full packs right out of the gate. Small, weak, sickly, overweight, unfit, myopic, stupid and uneducated men, of course, never made it into the infantry. And obviously the standards we have now are perfect and perfectly suited to determining the best material for the demanding job of combat. And obviously, even if we only let people in based on the existing standards they must all be of the same race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation and like the same sports or unit cohesion will cease to exist. Because the US army is literally Sparta now.

Also obligatory - it just looks so pretty

The South Koreans pretty much win at riots, yes. Obligatory commentary from the War Nerd - worth it mainly for the vids of Egyptian recreations of ancient warfare, tbh. As with all things related to the continent, diversity is the name of the game in terms of African bows. On the one hand, you have fairly common use of short bows with poisoned arrows. On the other hand, you have the Hadza. For those interested in traditional bows/bow making, I found this article pretty interesting as it seems to point to two separate optima for hunting arrows. The first is a lightweight arrow (~500 grains) just long enough to draw, with a weight balance about 15% FOC. The second is to have a heavy (>2000 grains) arrow with an FOC of around 40%. This is interesting because only traditional archers seem to have explored the second optimum. As the heavy, high-FOC approach allows one to overcome the issue of broadhead wind sheer - meaning you could stick a bigger head on your arrow and increase your wound potential - I feel that this is a bit of a missed opportunity for modern archery.

Appropriating and expanding on Toffler's (of all people) definition of power; there seems to be something of an inverse correlation between how broad and effective a given approach is, versus how specific it is. For example, you could blackmail only a single person using a single piece of information, bribe a multitude of people with more-or-less limited effect or use brute force against almost anyone (but only achieve very limited changes in behaviour). Finally, on a tangent: I've given it some thought and decided that we should be talking about adaptions of pre-gunpowder weapons and tactics as protest weapons. Because they are easy to manufacture, less prone to backlash and much more entertaining to see in action. Can we convince some doughty protesters to use a basic pike formation, perhaps?