"Not everyone thinks like the French," explained Jean-Michel Billig, Naval Group's program director for the project to build 12 new "Attack class" submarines.
"We have to make a necessary effort to understand that an Australian does not think like a French person, and that it's not better or worse, it's just Australian."
He cited the barbecue as an example of Australian culture, which is an important part of fostering good work relations, but said there was a reciprocal need for Australians to understand the French sanctity of the lunch break — not just a sandwich snatched at the screen.
Mr Billig also suggested the submarine project needed to be organised so that French translations were not just into English, but Australian English, and for employees "to speak a common language in cultural terms".
. . .
Another example of the cultural gap between both sides was highlighted when Naval Group CEO Hervé Guillou wrote to staff and referred to "la rentrée", a term describing the time when staff go back to work in September after a company closes down throughout August for the traditional French holiday.
"Stunned" Australian staff reportedly had to be educated about the one-month holiday, while the French were also apparently surprised to see their colleagues' insistence on punctuality, meaning "a meeting scheduled for an hour meant just that, not an extra 15 minutes".
In France, according to SLDInfo.com, there is the concept of a "diplomatic 15 minutes", indicating that one is not considered to be late if the tardiness is a quarter of an hour.
First thing to get your melons around is that the French are fabulous people, it’s just that when it comes to being a weird mob, they are the gold medallists, while we can only crack it for silver.
The second thing to realise is that their wonderful creativity actually originates from their sometimes shambolic nature. If I may draw on the celebrated Jean Cocteau bon mot that the “French are just the Italian in a bad mood” ... Don’t try to tighten the parameters within which their French flair reigns, embrace it. It’s just the way they are.
. . .
[The French] want the spirit of something, rather than the dull literal meaning.
Hence a meeting at 10 am, doesn’t actually mean at 10 am, it means as soon as you can after 10 am, and we’ll see how we go.
But, and make no mistake, if that meeting goes until lunchtime, it will be stopped rigidly at lunchtime because the only thing that can get in way of lunch is ... dinner, should our lunch run long.
Praise the Lord, and pass the wine!
For you see, here is the key to the French. Beyond being world leaders in submarine technology, they’ve also got the market cornered on all the finer things to do with pleasure – from cuisine, to wine, to fashion, to art, to, yes, sexual expression. It’s just in their blood, and nothing can get in its way.
There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the very best Americans I have ever known were naturalized Americans, Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is not an American at all. This is just as true of the man who puts “native” before the hyphen as of the man who puts German or Irish or English or French before the hyphen. Americanism is a matter of the spirit and of the soul. Our allegiance must be purely to the United States. We must unsparingly condemn any man who holds any other allegiance. But if he is heartily and singly loyal to this Republic, then no matter where he was born, he is just as good an American as any one else.
The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English-Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian-Americans or Italian-Americans, each preserving its separate nationality, each at heart feeling more sympathy with Europeans of that nationality, than with the other citizens of the American Republic. The men who do not become Americans and nothing else are hyphenated Americans; and there ought to be no room for them in this country. The man who calls himself an American citizen and who yet shows by his actions that he is primarily the citizen of a foreign land, plays a thoroughly mischievous part in the life of our body politic. He has no place here; and the sooner he returns to the land to which he feels his real heart-allegiance, the better it will be for every good American. There is no such thing as a hyphenated American who is a good American. The only man who is a good American is the man who is an American and nothing else.
Lasers have many advantages over conventional projectile weapons. A laser moves at roughly the speed of light, or 186,000 miles per second. Unlike a missile, an accurate laser beam can't be avoided. Lasers aren't affected by strong winds and can't be blown off target.
Laser weapons are invisible, operating at an optical wavelength the human eye cannot discern. They are also silent and unlike bullets and shells, do not produce miniature sonic booms. Unlike conventional weapons, which utilize a controlled explosion to generate energy, lasers have no recoil.
Lasers are also affordable. A single Griffin short-range missile costs at least $115,000. A shot from a laser costs usually costs less than a dollar, the price of the energy used. The actual laser system is more expensive ... but expect the price tag to fall as they become more common.
AFRL is leading a project to develop an experimental podded solid-state laser weapon for fighter jets under the Self-protect High Energy Laser Demonstrator (SHiELD) program. The main goal there is to demonstrate a system that would be able to shoot down incoming missiles.
But if this arrangement works, it could provide a starting place for an offensive directed energy weapon. Such a system could theoretically work in both air-to-air and air-to-ground roles and could offer a host of advantages over more traditional guns, missiles, and bombs.
The inherent ability of a laser focus its beam narrowly on a particular point could improve overall accuracy and help limit collateral damage during air strikes, especially in constrained environments such as densely populated urban areas, which is itself an increasing topic of concern across the Pentagon. Depending on the exact nature of the power source, it could also offer an effectively “bottomless magazine,” allowing an aircraft to remain on station and armed for a protracted period of time, even after engaging multiple targets.
Each bearing is at least 12 feet in diameter, and weighs 40,000 to 50,000 pounds. Talk about some XXXL bearings!
And, when earthquakes hit, these magnificent bearings can allow for up to six feet of horizontal movement with little to no structural displacement. That’s unparalleled.
Making the bridges durable and safe during seismic activity cost around $122 million. Now the bridges are complete with a seismic monitoring system, seismic isolation bearings, steel joints, and expansion hinges.
NO ONE WEAPON SYSTEM is indispensable. You equip the man, you don't man the equipment!
More alarming details have surfaced about how many people were listed in the Boy Scouts of America’s “perversion files,” according to lawyers who demand the full release of thousands of names of alleged offenders in the files. Nearly 200 of them are from New York and New Jersey.
Though allegations came to light Monday night, a victims' rights attorney who compiled an "incomplete" list of former Boy Scout leaders accused of abuse in New York held a press conferences Tuesday to discuss what he claims to be a widespread pattern of abuse. He also asked more victims to come forward.
The victims’ rights attorney, Jeff Anderson, called it a system of denial and cover-ups. He claims the Boy Scouts have files on child abusers within their ranks dating back to the 1940s.
. . .
He said, citing testimony by a professional retained by the BSA to audit the files, that there were 7,819 suspected perpetrators, while the number of victims total 12,254.
"That is a number not known before today or ever revealed by the Boy Scouts of America," he said.
Dressed in a blazer and gray slacks, Eagle Scout Rex Tillerson — better known as the CEO of Exxon Mobil — approached the podium during a national meeting of the Boy Scouts of America at a Grapevine hotel last year.
The organization’s delegates had just voted to allow openly gay youths to join their troops and earn their merit badges. And Tillerson began laying out next steps in the same forthright tone with which he delivers financial results to shareholders.
“So we’ve made the decision we’re going to change. Now what?” he said. “No winners or losers. After we make the decision to change, it’s the mission.”
. . .
Tillerson’s close ties to the Scouts were evident last year when he took the stage to address the decision to allow gay youths to join.
The Boy Scouts of America declined to make board members or professional staff available to discuss their well-known Scout. And Tillerson, through the public relations office of Exxon Mobil, also declined to be interviewed ... Nonetheless, Tillerson was instrumental in lobbying the Scouts’ board to accept openly gay youths, said John Hamre, president of the Washington think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies, of which Tillerson is a board member.
“I can’t get into the intimacy of these conversations. But he agonized over this. He prayed on it, and ultimately he came to the conclusion the only thing that can guide him here is what’s best for the young boys,” he said. “I think he became a key leader in helping the group come to a consensus.”
Kuwaiti new-age therapist Dr. Mariam Al-Sohel said in a March 25, 2019 interview on Scope TV (Kuwait) that she has developed an anal suppository based on the "Prophetic medicine" of the Prophet Muhammad. Dr. Sohel claims that the new suppository cures homosexuality by exterminating the "anal worm that feeds on semen." Showing examples of the suppositories, she claimed that this treatment has been subjected to modern research and testing. She referred to homosexual men as "the third gender" and to "butch lesbians" as the "fourth gender" and said that the new treatment "cures" both. She also claimed to have developed a balanced diet as part of the treatment that includes plenty of bitter foods and root vegetables, the consumption of which she said increases masculinity in men.
Dr. Al-Sohel was presented as a "Human Development Advisor," and on social media she identifies as a Reiki Master, and a member of Toastmasters International. She said that she received an honorary doctorate in "Sex Management," homosexuality, and sexual harassment from the International Union of Universities in Turkey.
Let’s place ourselves, for a moment, into the mindset of a statist. If you and your cronies wanted to control everybody’s lives, how exactly would you go about getting such raw power? Obviously, you wouldn’t come right out and say you have a special project designed specifically to cement a permanent one-party state.
You wouldn’t explain, full disclosure, that the ever-growing bureaucracy you have in mind would promote a surveillance state and coercion that produces toxic levels of social distrust. You wouldn’t clarify that the point is to keep tabs on everyone in every aspect of their lives, including their education, their businesses, their medicine, their housing, their families, and their churches.
No, of course not. You would mask your self-supremacist intentions with a benign and trendy word like “equality.” You’d pretend that your project was about helping a vulnerable minority. To prevent scrutiny, you’d quickly shame anybody who had a question about it and defame them as haters. At the same time, you’d give special favors to those who can be persuaded to support your con job.
. . .
So we have the “Equality” Act, recently introduced by Democrats in Congress ... On the surface, the “Equality” Act is supposed to protect LGBT folks from discrimination by adding the categories of sexual orientation and gender identity to all federal civil rights laws, including the 1964 Civil Rights Act. It would make claims of discrimination related to these characteristics legally actionable in the way racism is, and applying to virtually every area of life: the workplace, education, banking, jury service, federal funding, housing, medicine and psychiatry, and all public facilities.
It is a power grab in the guise of anti-discrimination. A bait-and-switch. It’s another attempt by a ruling micro-clique to exert mega-control over everyone else’s lives, including those it purports to protect. It allows the Mass State to maximize bureaucracy and social engineering, especially by its huge regulation of speech and expression. It erodes individual rights while claiming to uphold them.
US scientists say they used HIV to make a gene therapy that cured eight infants of severe combined immunodeficiency, or "bubble boy" disease.
. . .
The babies, born with little to no immune protection, now have fully functional immune systems.
Untreated babies with this disorder have to live in completely sterile conditions and tend to die as infants.
The gene therapy involved collecting the babies' bone marrow and correcting the genetic defect in their DNA soon after their birth.
The "correct" gene - used to fix the defect - was inserted into an altered version of one of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
Researchers said most of the babies were discharged from the hospital within one month.
Dr Ewelina Mamcarz of St Jude, an author of the study, said in a statement: "These patients are toddlers now, who are responding to vaccinations and have immune systems to make all immune cells they need for protection from infections as they explore the world and live normal lives."
As soon as I qualified as a doctor, I went to Rhodesia, which was to transform itself into Zimbabwe five years or so later. In the next decade, I worked and traveled a great deal in Africa and couldn’t help but reflect upon such matters as the clash of cultures, the legacy of colonialism, and the practical effects of good intentions unadulterated by any grasp of reality. I gradually came to the conclusion that the rich and powerful can indeed have an effect upon the poor and powerless—perhaps can even remake them—but not necessarily (in fact, necessarily not) in the way they wanted or anticipated. The law of unintended consequences is stronger than the most absolute power.
. . .
Unlike in South Africa, where salaries were paid according to a racial hierarchy (whites first, Indians and coloured second, Africans last), salaries in Rhodesia were equal for blacks and whites doing the same job, so that a black junior doctor received the same salary as mine. But there remained a vast gulf in our standards of living, the significance of which at first escaped me; but it was crucial in explaining the disasters that befell the newly independent countries that enjoyed what Byron called, and eagerly anticipated as, the first dance of freedom.
The young black doctors who earned the same salary as we whites could not achieve the same standard of living for a very simple reason: they had an immense number of social obligations to fulfill. They were expected to provide for an ever expanding circle of family members (some of whom may have invested in their education) and people from their village, tribe, and province. An income that allowed a white to live like a lord because of a lack of such obligations scarcely raised a black above the level of his family. Mere equality of salary, therefore, was quite insufficient to procure for them the standard of living that they saw the whites had and that it was only human nature for them to desire—and believe themselves entitled to, on account of the superior talent that had allowed them to raise themselves above their fellows. In fact, a salary a thousand times as great would hardly have been sufficient to procure it: for their social obligations increased pari passu with their incomes.
These obligations also explain the fact, often disdainfully remarked upon by former colonials, that when Africans moved into the beautiful and well-appointed villas of their former colonial masters, the houses swiftly degenerated into a species of superior, more spacious slum. Just as African doctors were perfectly equal to their medical tasks, technically speaking, so the degeneration of colonial villas had nothing to do with the intellectual inability of Africans to maintain them. Rather, the fortunate inheritor of such a villa was soon overwhelmed by relatives and others who had a social claim upon him. They brought even their goats with them; and one goat can undo in an afternoon what it has taken decades to establish.
It is easy to see why a civil service, controlled and manned in its upper reaches by whites, could remain efficient and uncorrupt but could not long do so when manned by Africans who were supposed to follow the same rules and procedures. The same is true, of course, for every other administrative activity, public or private. The thick network of social obligations explains why, while it would have been out of the question to bribe most Rhodesian bureaucrats, yet in only a few years it would have been out of the question not to try to bribe most Zimbabwean ones, whose relatives would have condemned them for failing to obtain on their behalf all the advantages their official opportunities might provide. Thus do the very same tasks in the very same offices carried out by people of different cultural and social backgrounds result in very different outcomes.
Viewed in this light, African nationalism was a struggle as much for power and privilege as it was for freedom, though it co-opted the language of freedom for obvious political advantage ... These considerations help to explain the paradox that strikes so many visitors to Africa: the evident decency, kindness, and dignity of the ordinary people, and the fathomless iniquity, dishonesty, and ruthlessness of the politicians and administrators.
. . .
The naive supposition on which the argument for education rests is that training counteracts and overpowers a cultural worldview. A trained man is but a clone of his trainer, on this theory, sharing his every attitude and worldview. But in fact what results is a curious hybrid, whose fundamental beliefs may be impervious to the education he has received.
I had a striking example of this phenomenon recently, when I had a Congolese patient who had taken refuge in this country from the terrible war in Central Africa that has so far claimed up to 3 million lives. He was an intelligent man and had that easy charm that I remember well from the days when I traversed—not without difficulty or discomfort—the Zaire of Marshal Mobutu Sese Seko. He had two degrees in agronomy and had trained in Toulouse in the interpretation of satellite pictures for agronomic purposes. He recognized the power of modern science, therefore, and had worked for the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization, and was used to dealing with Western aid donors and investors, as well as academics.
The examination over, we chatted about the Congo: he was delighted to meet someone who knew his country, by no means easily found in England. I asked him about Mobutu, whom he had known personally.
“He was very powerful,” he said. “He collected the best witch doctors from every part of Zaire. Of course, he could make himself invisible; that was how he knew everything about us. And he could turn himself into a leopard when he wanted.”
This was said with perfect seriousness. For him the magical powers of Mobutu were more impressive and important than the photographic power of satellites. Magic trumped science. In this he was not at all abnormal, it being as difficult or impossible for a sub-Saharan African to deny the power of magic as for an inhabitant of the Arabian peninsula to deny the power of Allah.
Feel free to publish my comment, if you like — but please do not publish my name.
I think that it is clear from your writings that you oppose the Apartheid approach to the ordering of civil society in Sub-Saharan Africa. I think that it is also clear that you acknowledge that current conditions in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe (and, perhaps, to a somewhat lesser extent, in South Africa) are simply dreadful — for both whites and blacks.
What is not clear to me is how you would would recommend as an alternative. How would you propose to organize and govern countries like Rhodesia/Zimbabwe and South Africa in light of the potent and undeniable realities of race, IQ, and culture (and their attendant, inescapable, behavioral consequences) that you addressed in your essay yesterday (“IQ, Countries, and Coping Skills”)? What alternative can you identify to the widely discredited system of Apartheid that will not result in the appalling dysfunctionality and squalor that characterizes Sub-Saharan Africa today?
Just go to the CIA World Fact Book, pick any of the African countries (Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, Malawi etc.), and compare the statistics to any Western country (eg. Portugal, Italy, Spain, Ireland). The disparities are appalling — and it’s going to get worse, not better. It has certainly got worse since 1960, when most African countries achieved independence. We, and by this I mean the West, have tried many ways to help Africa. All such attempts have failed.
Charity is no answer. Money simply gets appropriated by the first, or second, or third person to touch it (17 countries saw a decline in real per capita GNP between 1970 and 1999, despite receiving well over $100 billion in World Bank assistance).
Food isn’t distributed. This happens either because there is no transportation infrastructure (bad), or the local leader deliberately withholds the supplies to starve people into submission (worse).
Materiel is broken, stolen or sold off for a fraction of its worth. The result of decades of “foreign aid” has resulted in a continental infrastructure which, if one excludes South Africa, couldn’t support Pittsburgh.
Add to this, as I mentioned above, the endless cycle of Nature’s little bag of tricks — persistent drought followed by violent flooding, a plethora of animals, reptiles and insects so dangerous that life is already cheap before Man starts playing his little reindeer games with his fellow Man. What you are left with is: catastrophe.
The inescapable conclusion is simply one of resignation. This goes against the grain of our humanity — we are accustomed to ridding the world of this or that problem (smallpox, polio, whatever), and accepting failure is anathema to us. But, to give a classic African scenario, a polio vaccine won’t work if the kids are prevented from getting the vaccine by a venal overlord, or a frightened chieftain, or a lack of roads, or by criminals who steal the vaccine and sell it to someone else. If a cure for AIDS was found tomorrow, and offered to every African nation free of charge, the growth of the disease would scarcely be checked, let alone reversed. Basically, you’d have to try to inoculate as many two-year old children as possible, and write off the two older generations.
So that leaves only one response, and it’s a brutal one: accept that we are powerless to change Africa, and leave them to sink or swim, by themselves.
. . .
The viciousness, the cruelty, the corruption, the duplicity, the savagery, and the incompetence is endemic to the entire continent, and is so much of an anathema to any right-thinking person that the civilized imagination simply stalls when faced with its ubiquity, and with the enormity of trying to fix it.
Authorities say a man has suffered third-degree burns over half of his body while trying to melt a plastic jug full of gasoline in a Northern California parking lot ... [he] was using a lighter to melt the mouth of a gallon water jug into the shape of funnel to make it easier to pour the fuel into his car.
Instead, the jug exploded in flames. The man and a nearby car also caught fire.
. . .
He was airlifted to a hospital.
100,000 dead people in a year is 0.03% of the American population. A real number, to be sure.
But..... all those trucks, trains, cars, boats, agriculture and industry -- the source of that fine particulate emission -- is why we have:
And so on.... basically, all the trappings of modern civilization.
- Food.
- Energy.
- Warm houses in the winter.
- Cool houses in the summer (A/C, to be specific)
- Fire engines so if your house catches on fire it can be put out.
- Water pressure at the hydrant so the fire engine can put the fire in your house out.
- The ambulance to haul your about-to-be-dead ass to the hospital when you have a heart attack.
- The chemicals required to sanitize your city water.
- The chemicals required to turn your **** (literally) into safe discharge water in that same city.
In short without those emissions many more than 100,000 people would "prematurely die" -- 10x as many, if not more, due to a lack of food, electricity, clean water and readily-available transportation yet that alleged "paper" includes none of the positive effects and avoided deaths, premature or otherwise, that come along with those emissions.
This isn't "science", it's political advocacy and lying wrapped in "environmental" claims.
The visceral response of many Rhodesian servicemen was to "do unto others what was being done to them". They became as much terrorists, in the way they treated their own people, as the guerrillas against whom they fought. I know they did - I saw them do it. (If you don't want to believe that, read some of the literature that's come out of the security forces since then. I can list some books here, if there's enough interest. It was a brutal time.)
1. "Europeans f***ed up a lot of stuff but they also helped a lot as well": Why we can't re-colonise Africa for fear of being called racists, why Africans have starved themselves, and why European imperialism brought Africa "forward in history"(???)
2. Was Rhodesia as racist as South Africa?
