Xoon

[Collimatrix here, I fissioned this off from the active shooters thread.  It's good discussion, but it should be separated from the other thread.]

What is the tolerance for violence and misbehavior in US schools? 

I honestly do not have much of a good experience with US schools, I know very personally a girl who was assaulted and beaten, and sent to the hospital by a group of black girls because someone spread a rumor about her being racist.  The irony being that she is scared shitless of being racist, to the point of fearing for her life. 

We have some fights on the schools here too, but usually only a fist fight, once on a blue moon a retard grabs a pipe or spike gun ammunition or a knife, but no murders or grievous wounds. 

I only know one mentally unstable individual on the highschools in my area, and I know he does not currently have access to any effective weaponry, if he ever does I will be sure to watch him.

1 hour ago, Laser Shark said:

 

What's odd about it? Most of the desert tan paint has come off, revealing the standard green color underneath, but otherwise it looks normal to me.

Just looks odd, not that it is a weird incident.

CV90 GIFs from Forsvaret's video:

Source:

Just a few gifs from Forsvaret:

Note the odd 5th roadwheel. 

Source:

Recovering M113 from the ice:

On 17.1.2018 at 2:23 AM, Meplat said:

If it's electric, why does it have that huge goofy looking grille?

The obvious answer:
Cooling, a electric car requires the same amount of cooling as a gasoline car.

The actual answer:
"It looks cool" 

Car designers love grills, to the point that they have a lot of fake grills in modern cars.

9 minutes ago, Renegade334 said:

There are several reasons commonly cited for this choice:

 

1. Turrets are the part of the tank anatomy most frequently targeted (assuming your FCS or guidance system is precise enough to guarantee a direct hit on the spot aimed at) by the enemy.

2. Placing half or most of your ammo in the hull lightens your turret (better traverse speed and whatnot), frees up space for more freedom of movement for the crew and provides potential growth room for turret armor.

3. It plays well with hull-down tactics, as it means most of the ammo will be out of sight and reach in these conditions.

 

Then again, the Leopard 2's turret allocates half of its turret bustle to hydraulics and a computer, so they have no choice but to stuff the rest in the hull.

Also, a turret is A LOT cheaper than replacing the crew. Crews are crazy expensive, especially in well developed countries where good wages and work conditions is demanded. 
Crews also wins wars, conserving experience is key. Until we can completely automate AFVs, crew experience will still have an huge impact on the battlefield.

It also conserves precious manpower, and reduces casualties, which the public tend to frown on.

Just now, Meplat said:

There is no 7,62 version, here is the Mk211 in .50 Browning.

 

Wiki entry on Mk211

Oh, the Multi. 

How on earth was this guy supposed to make a smaller variant of this? 

And how would this round be practical for such a small size?

56 minutes ago, Ramlaen said:

 

If I am reading this correctly, they are claiming that Haig made a 7.62 Raufoss round.

What is the Raufoss 7,62 round? 

6 hours ago, barbaria said:

Could also be an M60 or sabra mbt. Anyway, this shows why hull ammo storage is faulty and bustle stored ammo with armored doors and blow off panels a la M1 is the best solution for mbt. Unfortunately the Altay also comes with ammo stored in the hull.

 

 

Numerous studies show that by moving the ammunition from the turret to the hull greatly reduces the chance of a ammunition explosion. The turret takes the majority of the hits. Adding further to this, the front is the most armored part of the hull, so by placing it behind the frontal armor you provide the most efficient armor coverage.  

The only thing this proves is that blow out panels massively improves crew survival rate in case of a ammunition detonation.

There are only a few reason why you would ever want a bustle:
Best location of a ready rack for a manual loader.

Easy to isolate from the crew.

Easy placement for a autoloader in a oscillating turret.

Works as a counterweight to the frontal armor and main gun.

Some of the main disadvantages include:
Makes the turret heavier because the extra armor required, and in the M1's case a lot of extra armor. 

Requires the deck of the tank to be constructed in such a way that it does not block the turret from rotating 360 degrees.

Makes a big target for enemy troops flanking the vehicle, and with a bustle rack, makes a big weak spot, the Tiger II is a good example here.

Makes a weakspot for enemy charges and HE explosive rounds that can rip the turret off the turret ring or jam the turret ring.

It basically boils down to firepower vs protection for a conventional tank.

19 hours ago, LostCosmonaut said:

Gore dumped a bunch of snow on one of their black diamonds the past couple days. Normally, ski areas groom out the huge piles, but Gore decided that was too much work.

 

 

They made the correct choice.

 

 

 

That looks like a really bumpy slope, how fast can you go there?

This is what I am used to off-pist:

Since a ski on a yearly basis I guess I can post here. 

First I would add to your advice list:
-Wear a helmet.

-Use a balaclava or similar to cover your face when it is cold, you don't want to get frost bitten.

-For the love of god and your kids, don't stand right below the top of a slope half way down the mountain, especially not in a line covering most of the slope.

-Wear a back spine guard, unless you want to live dangerous and paralyzed, especially if you are new.

-Do not do long windy turns while going downhill, it will wear out your legs faster and you are a pain in the ass to pass.

-Wear a helmet.

-Do not pile up in front of the lift at the top.

-Do not force yourself in on others when they take a T-lift or bench if they are in a group.

-Do not slam the harness of the bench in the head of the others.

-Do not slam the harness of the bench in the head of the others.

-Do not slam the harness of the bench in the head of the others.

-Do not slam the harness of the bench in the head of the others.

-Do not slam the harness of the bench in the head of the others.

-Do not slam the harness of the bench in the head of the others.

-Wear a helmet. 

-Do not cover up narrow passes.

-Do not stand still right around the corner in the middle of the track.

-If you are waiting, go of the track into the loose snow and wait there.

-Do not buy hot chocolate at the cafe up at the top of the lift, unless you love your 6-8 dollar coca. 

-Wear a helmet.

I use randonee skis, they are designed for back country skiing and climbing mountains, but they were leagues above my downhill skis, so I use them for both.

They aren't as stiff, which makes the skis wobble at high speeds, but they are also way lighter, which is practical. Also I can run like a maniac in the boots. 

When I go downhill I prefer going fast, as fast as I can manage without crashing down the slope. I always try to break as little as possible. 

I do recommend the Swiss alps as they have much larger resorts than here in Norway, but also have a amazing amount of beginners than want to kill you.  

Here in Norway it is tradition to go skiing, a joke is that we are born with skis on our feet.

This of course means that you will mostly meet experienced skiers in Norway, be it cross country or downhill. Though, cross country is not as common.
Oh, and we don't have ratings, we only have child slopes, family slopes and then just different names for the slopes.

On 4.1.2018 at 7:10 PM, SH_MM said:

The Abrams' turret bustle has much thicker side armor than the one of the Leopard 2 - in fact the side armor of the Abrams' turret bustle is even thicker than the side armor of the crew compartment. So the Leopard 2 would need a lot of add-on armor for the turret rear, otherwise a single hit could leave the tank without ammo.

The idea would be to use the space for extra ammunition. Meaning, adding for example 15 more rounds. By separating them with a firewall into 2-3 sections, you could avoid heavily armoring the bustle and losing all your ready ammunition. This would weight up for the lost rounds in the mine protection kit.

On 4.1.2018 at 7:10 PM, SH_MM said:

 

The hydraulics are already replaced on later variants, but the place is occupied by more electronics. I.e. on the Leopard 2A7 the SOTAS-IP radios from Thales are located in the old place of the hydraulic pump.

I think I was a bit unclear about that, I meant that because the hydraulics and old ballistic computer was removed, we had a lot of empty space. Couldn't the radio be moved somewhere else, or placed in a separate compartment from the ammunition? For example to the left in the bustle (as seen from the inside), with the ammunition on the right.

When it comes to saving weight, the only reasonable thing I could think about is replacing the current composite armor modules with lighter ones, and using more reactive armor/APS. Since armor is all or nothing, it could be beneficial to reduce the armor, if it fails to defeat the current threat, and is overkill for the next threat. 

One example could be the King Tiger from WWII. When AP rounds managed to reliably penetrate the tank, it would make more sense the reduce the frontal armor to something that stops AC or medium caliber rounds. All the extra armor being dead weight. This was impossible with RHA/CHA tanks because it required a new tank, but with modular/semi-modular armor, it is entirely possible.  For example if it turns out to be too expensive or makes the tank too heavy to deal with long rod penetrators from 125mm guns, you could reduce the KE protection to stop something like a CTAS 40mm, this would be protection decrees from 600mm vs KE to 200mm roughly. This way the tank focus on more protection against ATGMs and RPGs, or mines. Alternatively you could discard it for weight savings. Same goes for CE, though less likely. 

Makes sense to discard useless armor for more mobility, both strategically and tactically, fuel economy, reliability and wear.

4 hours ago, Serge said:

So it can be interesting to introduced a new hull with two possible designs (according Army needs) :

- a shorten hull to keep focussing on weight reduction ;

- a same length rearranged hull with the move of the ammo rack to a rear segragated compartment (an Abrams like compartment). So, at the front, we can have two options :

   - move the pilote to the center to improve its protection ;

   - add a left modular volume to accept mission kit or a fifth crewman.

 

Whatever the configuration, the suspension would be hydro-gaz to have better IED protection 

You could also use the large space taken up earlier by the ballistic computer and hydraulic aggregate. 

The hydraulic traverse and elevation mechanism is replaced by electric motors, and the ballistic computer is digitized and miniaturized to the size of a laptop.

Removing it and removing the firewall dividing it in two. Restructure the inside so that you essentially has a bustle rack similar to the M1.

"

February 25, 2017 at 4:03 am

42° is quite good, although for indirect fire an 89° maximum will always be preferable. Yes the CTA cannon will add some complexity but current British trials are quite promising, and the ammunition footprint is better than standard cannon ammunition – whilst offering more firepower. I mention a 200 round capacity, which is not a huge amount but it should definitely fit inside the turret. I explored having a saboted shell fired from the cannon to get some half-decent velocity but the round would be quite large (about the size of a 200 rounds 40mm CTA drum), and it wouldn’t be all that useful against heavy armour, only really for anti-helicopter use. There will definitely be mounting options for Hydra-70 pods (and hopefully CKEM) on the outside of the turret."

Mounting Hydra-70 pods and a 200 rounds capacity.

And some talk about CAS planes being better than light tanks, what? 

11 hours ago, Priory_of_Sion said:

That's something you don't see in Merica. 

It should be noted that the right party is Liberal Conservative, the left party is Social Liberal, The Progressives are classic liberal and Christian party is, the Christian party, nobody cares, people just vote for them since they are THE Christian party.
So the coalition could be called a Liberal coalition.

The opposing group was the Labor-Center-Socialistic-environmentalist-communist Coalition. 
With the labor party being unionist, workers rights, socialist and for more wealthfare. Center party is basically social democratic agricultural party, previously called the farmers party. Socialists are socialist, not really much new there. The environmentalists are basically communist hippies detached from reality. They wanted to remove all diesel vehicles by 2040, want us to stop expanding hydropower, and instead invest in wind and solar, very rational for country with periods with only 4 hours of sunlight a day, and further north, zero for 3 months. The Reds, is basically a communist party (they identify as communist, though call themselves socialist is public), take everything related to communism and slap it together, and you have the Reds. 

Which makes this a socialist coalition. 

11 hours ago, Priory_of_Sion said:

 

What is the Norwegian opposition's platform regarding this looming oil crisis/dispute?  

 

 

Looking at the potential reserves in the Arctic on the Business Insider map, Russia looks like it is in a good position to take advantage of deposits in the western Barents Sea towards Franz Josef Land without needing to get too antagonistic towards Norway. 

Norway is for the most part, just ignoring Russia's complaint and trying not to make a big fuzz out of it, so that the environmentalists don't catch wind of it.

Only thing I have seen through the Norwegian media and heard from oil industry is that Norway opened 3 new zones in the Barents sea for oil drilling. Simply going with the Barents sea treaty. The small line stretching out of Norway up to Svalbard is the product of that treaty.

The only opposition internally to drilling oil in the arctics is from environmentalists, who are afraid it will hurt the environment. And some that feel we should seek to grow other sectors instead. 

On 26.12.2017 at 4:47 PM, xthetenth said:

 

I'd be interested to see sourcing on IQ being set in stone from birth.

 

I'd also be interested in entertaining the notion that IQ is criticized for a bunch of things that make it an imperfect match for natural intellectual aptitude, but that increase its capability as an indicator of success. Rather than just saying that IQ isn't a perfect indicator of natural intellectual aptitude and trying to come up with something better at that, do that with an eye towards looking at IQ's imperfections and what they say about society.

http://medcraveonline.com/JNSK/JNSK-01-00023.php

Here is one source. 

When I said "set in stone" I meant that there was no reliable way of permanently increasing your IQ past small amounts.  You could of course malnutrition, poison and damage a baby to make it's IQ drop. Just so that is clear. 

Well, the big question is, what is intelligence? 

3 hours ago, LostCosmonaut said:

I’d assume that the US would support Norway in any dispute, due to the NATO connection and desire to contain Russia.

 

Norway’s economy already has a lot of oil money coming in, how are they doing at preventing Dutch Disease? I’ve heard they’re doing better than the middle eastern petrostates, but that’s not exactly a high bar to clear.

Norway's current strategy is to invest the oil money in the Sovereign wealth fund, which then is used to diversely invest in the stock market, which the country can live on in the future. 

The New government, the Right-left-Progressive-christian coalition has a new strategy, investing in the industry and growing other sectors and making Norway more entrepreneur friendly.

But the Dutch disease is still very real. The oil crisis hit the Norwegian economy pretty hard. 50 000 people lost their jobs in the oil sector, and many more from the sectors living off the oil sector ( shipping, supply). This caused a lot of ships to be decommissioned. On the other hand, the fishing industry boomed, with some fishers making up to 600 USD a day. This also helped along the automation industry.

But Norway has no automotive industry, no aircraft industry, a agricultural sector that lives on subsidies, and in general very little industry outside exceptions ones like furniture, ammunition, missiles, and aluminum. 
The previous governmental decisions are completely to blame for it, like shooting down any attempts at a automotive industry. 

At least we are good at making millionaires, we are however, bad at keeping them around and taxing them. 

Oh and, the reason Norway began handing out licences in the Barents sea is because our current oil deposits are running out.

@LoooSeR
Not a war, maybe sanctions or sour relations. 

5 hours ago, LoooSeR said:

I can't take that videos seriously with those Soviet athems and almost all footage of russians were some military drills.

Yeah, try to look past the propaganda parts. I posted them since they gave neat graphics on claims, oil deposits and talked about trade.

Because of climate change, new trade routes to Asia is opening up over the arctics. To top this off, it is estimated that 30% of the world oil reserves is there 13% around Svalbard. Russia and Norway are working on grabbing as much as the arctic as they can, while Canada and Denmark is currently having their new borders reviewed by the UN. Same applies to Russia, but they top it off with military presence. 

Svalbard is a peculiar thing in the north however. Because of the Svalbard treaty, any signers can exploit its resources at the islands or sea and it is a demilitarized zone. Also, you can freely immigrate to Svalbard, without ID, passport or whatever, as long as you come from a participant country. Funny enough, Afghanistan is one of them.

What causes conflict is the overlapping claims in the Arctic between the Canadians, Danes and Russians, all claiming the North pole. On top of this, because of the Svalbard treaty and the larger amounts of oil there, Russia wants to get in. However, Norway claims that the Svalbard treaty does not include the resources below the sea, and has laid claimed to the Continental shelf around Svalbard. This has angered the Russians, accusing Norway of violating the treaty.  The dispute is if "exploiting the ocean" counts as exploiting the hydrocarbon deposits below it.

If not, then the Barents sea treaty states that Norway owns it, because of a line drawn between Norway and Russia in 2010, which states that Norway own the continental shelf on it's side of the border, which includes Svalbard.  The only exception is deposits that cross the border, in which case close cooperation between the two parties must the done. 

This is a lot of money. They claim this could make Norway the next Saudi Arabia. Adding to this, china is currently in the process of buying land in Svalbard.

I wonder what the US will, say, if they support Russia, so that they can drill oil themselves or if they support Norway and is allocated drilling rights by the Norwegian government.

This is a huge deal of Norway, as we have the closets warm water ports to the arctic.  

Relevant documents:
http://www.jus.uio.no/english/services/library/treaties/01/1-11/svalbard-treaty.xml

https://www.regjeringen.no/globalassets/upload/ud/vedlegg/folkerett/avtale_engelsk.pdf

All of this is a bit confusing the me,  so this is how I understood the points:

 

Ulric's point:
       Fundamental rights are innate to human beings, and can not be removed.
       Practical rights are worthless unless you have power to enforce it, but still exist in the absent of power.
       One can for example theoretically act in opposition to the wishes of the one in power at a cost, and the only way to stop this is to take their life.

Sturgeon's point:
          The concept of rights originates from power. Without power, one can be subjugated.
           One can be broken and rebuilt to never oppose their master, unless conditioned to do so. 

First of, be sure to correct me so that I don't accidentally strawman someone.

Secondly, the only thing I can see you to disagreeing about is if we can count theoretical rights as rights. Rights than can be acted upon, but in situations not practically possible, not being worth the cost. 

1 hour ago, Xlucine said:

Transferring power through the hull would screw with the efficiency - for conductive armour you'd induce eddy currents, and for non-conductive armour you'd still have a big "air" gap to deal with. Probably not worth it for AFV's, but if it eliminates the shaft seal then this could be very useful for submarines (depending on the EM signature)

Forgot that a big metal plate works as a conductor. 

Still, the air gap should not be too bad if something like ceramic are used. Alternatively, a composite sandwich of conductors and isolators could be used, like NERA.

12 minutes ago, Alzoc said:

Why not, give a free pass on what kind of pedagogy to apply over the course of a few year, and compare result with a standardized exam at the end.

Maybe doing it in a selected exclusion zone so that it can be directly compared. 

12 minutes ago, Alzoc said:

Well it comes from the idea that the public service is here to serve the people, not make profit.

Anyway the schools are in general more underfunded than the contrary, so any left over money is in general used on sensible purchases.

I am thinking about cases like renovating the school. Instead of keeping it for later, they spend it all, because or else the government takes it back.

12 minutes ago, Oedipus Wreckx-n-Effect said:

Putting faith in IQ testing standards is a sure fire way to weed out those of low IQ.

Well, you have to do it properly and in such a way that people will not feel superior and discriminate against the lower IQ people. 

On 26.11.2017 at 3:19 PM, Alzoc said:

 

I would say that it's fairly balanced between the two here.

Our current president is openly liberal (both sociologically and economically) and believe in meritocracy, saying that we  must aim not for egalitarism but rather making sure to give a way/chance for everybody to get out of their situation on their own.

But egalitarism have always been deeply rooted as an idea in France, we still have amongst the last socialist and communist party in Europe (even if they are slowly dying).

I believe social mobility is important too, but no more than 20%. 

Though, there are a lot of big socialist parties in the west, we have 3 in Norway.

On 26.11.2017 at 3:19 PM, Alzoc said:

Although I'm not well versed in this matter, IQ have it's own bias too.

We still haven't reached a consensus on the definition of "intelligence"

So basing a system on IQ could work, but would also discard a number of valuable people at the same time and would be viewed as a totalitarist regime by the population.

And totalitarist regimes never last long.

IQ is the best indicator of success we have found. Meaning, that it has the biggest impact on your life, and is set in stone from birth. 

But yes, it should not be the only indicator, as we still we people high in IQ that do nothing in their life or even worse than the average person.

On 26.11.2017 at 3:19 PM, Alzoc said:

Well private schools are authorized in France but since they have a convention with the state to be able to deliver the same degree than public schools, the program is determined by the state so pedagogy wise private schools have next to no liberty.

They do have the liberty to choose who they'll hire however (contrary to public school).

It would be interesting to do a experiment where private school got free reign in a limited region or education class. 

On 26.11.2017 at 3:19 PM, Alzoc said:

Most people who put their kids in private education do it to give them a religious education since it's strictly forbidden in public school (and I'm happy it is).

The others chose privates schools in order to avoid their local public schools which happen to have a particularly bad reputation (but you can ask for a derogation to go to another public school anyway).

This is quite normal in Norway too. The religious studies here however are main subjects and pretty bad. And most students hate them since they don't really provide a good insight into religions and do no serve any purpose for the average student. 

On 26.11.2017 at 3:19 PM, Alzoc said:

Here the budgets for schools are allocated by the state and managed by local government representatives:

 

-Primary shcools are managed by the city/village

-Collèges (part one of secondary education) are managed by "départements" (sub division of regions)

-Lycées (part two of secondary education) are managed by regions

-University are managed by an elected president working at the university and report to the ministry of research and higher education

-Grandes écoles are managed by a president appointed directly by the tutoring minister (Energy, Industry, Economics etc)

 

Their budgets are allocated by the state and decided by a number of parameters amongst them being the number of student, but the catch is since all of them are public organization they are strictly forbidden to make a profit.

The allocated budget must be spent within the year, the excess will simply go back to the state's chest.

Budgets coming from industrial partnership are different but how this money is used is strictly controlled (you can't use it for anything else than the original purpose).

The rule that unspent money goes back to the state is a very stupid rule I have found. What actually happens is that the school aims to use up all the money, often buying useless things or spending them carelessly. The middle school in my area is a great example of that. 

Pardon me for the very late response, but I have been very busy lately and have not found the time to create a new thread.