There's No Problem I Can Handle

[jrandom]

Welcome, to the real world.

I see you took the red pill...

[Zed]

I see you took the red pill...

Nah I took the blue one, but I negotiated the mainframe Zion codes with an Agent so I could be put back into the Matrix as a rich, intelligent, charming, sprotsbike fanatic who spends his days & nites typing lies over the Internet!

[jrandom]

so I could be put back into the Matrix as a... fanatic...

word, yo.

[Postie]

That's a cheap crack and bloody rich coming from someone who hasn't lived in a country that has, except for the last 50 years, experienced warfare and invasion twice per generation and sometimes 2 generations long wars, for the last 500 years.

i'm from London, i had 3 uncles in the gulf war, my Gradfather was a pilot in WWII and i was 1 mile away from our local train station when it was blown up by the IRA. Does that not count for warfare and invasion?

[Lou Girardin]

That's a cheap crack and bloody rich coming from someone who hasn't lived in a country that has, except for the last 50 years, experienced warfare and invasion twice per generation and sometimes 2 generations long wars, for the last 500 years.

I get tired of people who come from countries that haven't seen their own people chopped up and strewn across the landscape making cracks about France's apparent predeliction to surrender. Battered National PSyche, fortress mentality, and the better part of a whole generation of men missing wouldn't have anything to do with wanting to curl up in a ball behind a ring of concrete and steel (I know, I know - with gaps) and keep the world out, would it?

I'm off to the Doctor to get my bitch chip removed. It's starting to get me down.

Too bloody true.

[Lou Girardin]

i'm from London, i had 3 uncles in the gulf war, my Gradfather was a pilot in WWII and i was 1 mile away from our local train station when it was blown up by the IRA. Does that not count for warfare and invasion?

Not even close.

[Lou Girardin]

There is a school of thought that the depressed are actually seeing the most realistic vision of life.
Optimists, on the other hand, are doomed to continual dissappointment.

[Postie]

Not even close.

so what is?

[SuperDave]

There is a school of thought that the depressed are actually seeing the most realistic vision of life.
Optimists, on the other hand, are doomed to continual dissappointment.

Are you saying that those who are pessimistic are depressed?

[jrandom]

Are you saying that those who are pessimistic are depressed?

no, I think he was just using depression as a less-than-correct synnonym for pessimism.

but hes a grumpy old bastard so I doubt youll get him to admit his mistake...

[James Deuce]

i'm from London, i had 3 uncles in the gulf war, my Gradfather was a pilot in WWII and i was 1 mile away from our local train station when it was blown up by the IRA. Does that not count for warfare and invasion?

As has already been mentioned, no it doesn't. I've relatives that suffered through the same things you mention too, but the last successful invasion of the British Isles (except for a few power shuffles in Ireland, Wales, and Scotland) was 1066. By a bunch of Pseudo-English/Psuedo-French people.

The amount of suffering throughout Europe from 1066 to 1995 far outweighs even the losses suffered during WWI and WWII by Great Britain. Human suffering, misery, war, plague, famine, religious persecution, shifts in the balance of power between warring empires, invasions from the Middle East and Far North East all add up to a pretty sorry bunch of catastrophic "events" that conspired to keep the bulk of European Humanity grovelling in shit for a thousand years.

Great Britain leveraged off this and established a Global Empire and a standard of living for its subjects that led to an outbreak of Democracy. It wasn't all peaches and cream for the average Brit, but they were certainly largely better off than their European counterparts.

[yungatart]

I'm off to the Doctor to get my bitch chip removed. It's starting to get me down.

Nooooh! Don't do that. I, for one, love your "bitch chip", it gives me another perspective on life.

[Lou Girardin]

so what is?

Being French in 1940, or 1914.

[Lou Girardin]

no, I think he was just using depression as a less-than-correct synnonym for pessimism.

but hes a grumpy old bastard so I doubt youll get him to admit his mistake...

No, the article it was mentioned in was discussing depression.
Although, we may soon be including pessimism as a mental illness.
Then the number of sickness beneficiaries will soar. (I'll probably apply too, should ace the diagnosis)

[jrandom]

a pretty sorry bunch of catastrophic "events" that conspired to keep the bulk of European Humanity grovelling in shit for a thousand years.

Great Britain leveraged off this...

hrumm. imho it didnt leverage off the position of continental yew-rope so much as it refined the systems of economics developed during the 17th century or therabouts, which alowed it to create wealth and influince beyond its apparent and obvious natural resorces and population.

the socio-religeous trends that created the society that spawned newton, hooke and smith were probably more important in that achievement than any relative decline of the european powers throughout the 1600s.

certainly largely better off than their European counterparts.

tangentailly, I think that the advantages of an accident of geography, ie, being an island nation, were key.

given the uniting of europe under a single imperial banner, a succesful invasion would have been eventually inevitable, hence the necessity for wellington's efforts and adventures in the iberian peninsula to the end of preventnig that situation from arising.

since that never happened, none of the single nation states on the continent ever quite had the ability to mount such an effort over that thousand years or so.

you will note that nazi germany almost managed to create that situation by 1940, however. without assistance from the New World, britain could have eventually been worn down after some continental consolidation of materiel and resources, although in those circumstances hitler would undoubtedly have preferred a far less expensive truce.