@newtboy

I believe the quote you were looking for from me was:
What is more, upon the UN mandating a two state solution to the whole mess, the Jewish Palestinians immediately accepted. The Arab Palestinians though appealed to the Arab league, and many of the leaders within it that stood alongside the Nazi's pontificating solutions to 'the problem'.

The word stood being in the past tense. Guys like the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, leading the fight in Palestine in the 30's and coming back to fight during 1948.

You said:
The few actual refugees there that the axis created were absorbable by the Palestinians.

In which time frame did those few refugees arrive that you would count legitimate and absorbable? IMO it has to predate the Grand Mufti's uprising in the late 1930s, simply because tensions between Jewish and Arab Palestinians at this point were bad enough that Arab Palestinians already wanted negative immigration numbers for Jews.

Also maybe re-read you last paragraph. You come dangerously close to stating that the European Jews had the choice between living in camps and doing what the folks led by Haj Amin al-Husseini told them to do, or being considered invaders themselves. That's about the closest we've come to agreeing on something in fact, and I hardly blame the refugees for not choosing camps under the rule of a guy that stated:
Germany and Italy recognize the right of the Arab countries to solve the question of the Jewish elements, which exist in Palestine and in the other Arab countries, as required by the national and ethnic (völkisch) interests of the Arabs, and as the Jewish question was solved in Germany and Italy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Palestine_(region)
I admit I was wrong about the 8% figure, I got the columns crossed, recalculating, it was about 11% in 22, 17% in 31, and 32% in 47. That still sounds like a pretty huge influx by my standards, almost tripling the per capita population in 25 years (and more than tripling the actual population) compared to others in the region, mostly by imigration.

You said they stood along side the Nazis " upon the UN mandating a two state solution to the whole mess" (I think you've edited what you originally stated, that they then stood along side the Nazis, and clarified what you meant, that the leaders that turned down the 47 proposal had stood with the Nazis in the past, which I don't disagree with...too bad I erased the quotation for space). The U.N. mandated a two state solution in 74...in 47, they 'mandated' a 3 state solution that took massive territories from the Palestinians and handed it to Jewish immigrants, it turns out the Palestinians should have accepted because they've lost far more since then, but it sounded terrible at the time.

What points? Are these universal points? Can I redeem them for trips to the store by the universe...it owes me some milk.

In 48, when the illegal immigrants became land thieving invaders, the U.N.partition plan was to split the territory 3 ways, and for the U.N. to control Jerusalem. It would be like the U.N. agreeing today with illegal Mexicans in Texas and California that the southern 1/2 of all border states was now a new country because they are now a majority in many areas, with the U.N. taking control of the LA basin....we might say "no thanks" like the Palestinians did...at least I hope so.

The 37 British plan for Partition came before 47.
WIKI-The first proposal for the creation of Jewish and Arab states in the British Mandate of Palestine was made in the Peel Commission report of 1937, with the Mandate continuing to cover only a small area containing Jerusalem. The recommended partition proposal was rejected by the Arab community of Palestine,[8][9] and was accepted by most of the Jewish leadership.

You said they stood with the Nazis when the two state solution was proposed...which was actually 74, but I'll give you leeway and say you meant 47, which is still ridiculous, the Nazis were long gone in 47.

They didn't seize it as payback for the holocaust, but many allies went along, seemingly out of guilt for not stopping it sooner (a valid complaint about the US, but no reason to help take Palestinian territory and hand it away).

Yes, there was Jewish hatred in Europe before the Nazis, that's one reason why they were able to grab so much power, they had a ready made scape goat. Your point?

No, not every Jew in Palestine was a Zionist, but enough of the 11% were that they tripled their presence in 25 years....and far more importantly, today it's near 100%, and they are violent, expansionist, ruthlessly inhuman, and zealous.

I refuse to call it a civil war when one side was made nearly completely of immigrants....that's called an invasion.

I do agree, the inability to assimilate is not 100% the immigrants fault, but it is 100% their responsibility. Refugees, that are not expected to stay, so not expected to assimilate, are kept in camps. These people did not go to camps, so they were, at best, illegal immigrants, and many were coming with the goal of stealing inhabited territory for their own, which makes them invaders. The VAST majority of them came after the war ended, so could not be war refugees. During the war, Jews had an incredibly hard time traveling in Europe.

The few actual refugees there that the axis created were absorbable by the Palestinians. It's their multitudinous militant expansionist friends that continue to immigrate there to this day that are the problem, IMO. I'll continue to call them violent invaders, you've said nothing to convince me otherwise.

@newtboy,

Why do you insist on trying to contort things?

The stats I found showed 8% in mid 1930's....Before the war.
Provide a source then, I did and it's over 16% as of 1931.

You said the Palestinians stood alongside the Nazis....in 47?....so.....what Nazis?
I observed that the Arab revolt between 1936 and 1939 was led by the grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini. Who later found himself in Germany talking with Hitler and advocating a 'solution' for Palestine ala Italy and Germany. I didn't present an opinion for you to disagree with. I presented a statement of fact which stands regardless of whether you refuse to believe in it or not.

As for partition, stop trying to win points or something, it's inescapable that the partition agreement that the Jewish Palestinians accepted when they declared independence in 1948 was the 1947 UN Partition Plan, on account of the other partition agreements having not yet come into existence yet and all.

I didn't say the tensions didn't begin when Nazis existed, I said they were gone when the events you describe happened.
I think that was addressed earlier what with Arab uprising in the 30s, and the conflict between Arab and Jewish Palestinians continuing on from then all the way till it hit an all out civil war.

Nothing I'm saying here has to justify, forgive or declare Israel a saint and Arabs the sinners. I AM however pointing out some very basic facts that refute the argument that Jewish invaders just came in from Europe and seized Palestine from the Arabs as payback for the holocaust. That simply was not what happened.

Jews were unwelcome and persecuted in Europe long before WW2. Hitler wrote Mein Kampf in 1925, and he wasn't exactly putting pen to brand new ideas nobody had been circulating in Europe already. The Zionists for their part were also busy and in action long before WW2, in no small part for reasons above. The Zionists were absolutely looking to take back 'their' homeland and by invasion if need be. That doesn't mean every Jew in Palestine was a Zionist anymore than the above makes every European and Arab nazi sympathizers. The reality was a lot more muddled and complex.

In the end, the big events driving the Arab-Jewish civil war in Palestine was as you say, an inability of the immigrants to live together with the natives. So on that front we are well agreed. You seem content to place 100% of the blame on the immigrants(which I must insist we refer to as refugees given they are largely European Jews between 1940-1947). I disagree. I believe I've given adequate evidence to demonstrate that the inability to live together was as much to blame on the Arab Palestinians as it was on the Jewish. If we want to blame anyone in the whole mess, the strongest blame still lies with the Axis powers for creating the refugees in the first place.

Well, since the 'chump' is the one that got furthest of those two candidates, I don't know if a valuable lesson was learned at all. I think it's equally likely that the system will get more polarized along that axis as well - that the Republicans will double down on the crazy populism next time around, continuing the trend of Palin to Cain to Trump, and the Democrats will want to play it even safer* and more establishment because of the gaping maw of insanity on the other side.

It might even be that this is the preferred way for this to shake out in their eyes - the Democrats go on to take the White House this term and the next, and the Republicans lose the presidency but gain more ground on the local level. I'm not saying that the Republicans want to lose the presidency, but since almost every local Republican runs on the premise that they'll stand up to Washington, it doesn't hurt to be in opposition. Supporting Trump might not get you the white house but it might make you mayor. Plus, that's where the Koch money is, for now.

*On the other hand, let's not go nuts. Right now, given how the election's turned out, Clinton seems like an incredibly establishment, incredibly traditional politics, choice - but when they made the decision to run, it must have still seemed like a risky move, since no woman had ever made it all the way before. I can't imagine that anyone predicted what this race would look like (?), so maybe the 'lesson' from 2016 can't be accurately applied by either party.

I was completely baffled by how he manages to make all the cookies move away from each other. I had a moment where I was completely confused and thinking it was impossible or CGI.

Then the gears started turning again and I realised he could be spinning the wooden platter with the axis at the centre of all the cookies and using the centrifugal force - which I thought was interesting.

I "sifted" (hahalame) through a ton of your comments to share this one with a friend of mine. Would it be ok with you if I stole it to share with others? I promise not to share it with North Korea, Drumpf, or my ex wife. You know, the real axis of evil. I would obviously give you credit if need be, or rescue a cat and name it in your honor, or possibly scream out your name during coitus while I'm within earshot of one lucky winner of your choosing. Thank you for your time.

@newtboy ah finally see what you mean. And yes you are right a Coke can would be stable and it could rotate. It is no longer considered a spinning top I think, so that is why the contestants didn't make it that way but for sure it would work.

If the can rotates I think the torque (force due to rotation) is in the same direction as gravity. (Where in the normal spinning top case gravity pulls the cg off center and torque back on.) In the can case both would move the cg back to equilibrium, Ie on center. there would be no precession at all. Every time some small Bump would make the cg move of the center axis it would be pulled back instantly.

I think it would work, and that it would take away the challenge ;-)

The article linked above mentions Röpke and Eucken as champions of free market capitalism, so to speak. Ironically, Bernie Sanders is quite in line with many of Walter Eucken's core ideas. For instance, Eucken declared legal responsibility to be an absolute necessity for competition within a market economy. Meaning that under Eucken's notion of capitalism, US prisons would be filled to the brim with white collar criminals from Wall Street and just about every multinational corporation, including Volkswagen.

Ludwig Erhard, credited by many to be the main figure behind the German "Wirtschaftswunder" (nothing wonderous about it), postulated real wage growth in line with productivity and target inflation as an imperative for a working social market economy. Again, very much in line with Bernie Sanders. Maybe even to the left of Sanders. A 5% increase in productivity and a target inflation of 2% requires a wage increase of 7%, otherwise your economy will starve itself of the demand it requires to absorb its increased production. You can steal it from foreign countries, like Germany's been doing for more than a decade now, but that kind of parasitic behaviour is generally frowned upon. Minimum wage in the US according to Erhard would be what now, $25-$30? So much for Sanders' $15...

Sennholz further mentions the CDU as a counterweight to the SPD. Well, the CDU's "Ahlener Programm" in 1947 declared that both marxism and capitalism failed the German people. In fact, it put significant blame for Germany's descent into fascism at the feet of the capitalistic system and called for a complete restart with focus NOT on the pursuit of profit and power, but the well-being of the people. They called for socialism with Christian responsibility, later watered down and known as social market economy or Rhine capitalism.

As for the economic policies conducted by the occupation forces: German industry, and large corporations in particular, were shackled for the role they played during the war. If you work tens of thousands of slaves to their death, you lose your right to... well, anything. If they had stripped IG Farben, Krupp and the likes down to the very bone, nobody could have complained. No economic liberties for the suppliers behind a genocide.

Next in line, the comparison with Germany's European neighbours. Sennholz wrote that piece in '55, so you can't really blame him for it. Italy had more growth from '58 onwards, France had more growth than its devastated neighbour from '62 onwards. The third Axis power, Japan, had significantly more growth from '58 onwards.

Why did some European and Asian countries grew much more rapidly than the US? Fair Deal? Nope, Bretton-Woods. Semi-fixed exchange rates caused the Deutsche Mark and the Yen to be ridiculously undervalued compared to the Dollar, thus increasing German and Japanese competitiveness at the cost of the US. Stable trade relations created by the semi-fixed exchange rates plus the highly expansive monetary policy in the US – that's what boosted Germany's economy most of all. Sort of like China over the last two decades, except we were needed as a bulwark against the evil, evil Commies, so the US kept going full throttle.

Our glorious policians tried the same policies (Adenauer/Erhard) in East Germany after reunification, even though global conditions were vastly different, and the result is the mess we now have over there. The entire industry was burned to the ground when they set the exchange rate too high, thus completely destroying what little competitiveness remained. Two trillion DM later, still no improvement. A job well done, truly.

Anyway, if anything, Bernie Sanders' program is closer to post-war German social market economic principles than to the East-German bastard of socialism, state capitalism and planned economy imposed by an autocratic system. However, even that messed up system produced significantly less poverty, both in quality and quantity, than the current US corporatocracy. No homelessness, no starvation, proper healthcare for everyone – reality in the German Democratic Republic (East Germany). And despite the fact that they were used as cheap labour for western corporations, no less. My first Ikea shelf was produced by our oppressed brothers and sisters in the East. The Wall "protected" the West from cheap labour while letting goods pass right through – splendid membrane, that one.

PS: Since that article was written in '55, I have to mention one of my city's most famous citizens: Otto Brenner. He was elected head of the IG Metal, this country's most influential trade union, in 1956 after having shared the office since 1952. The policies he fought for, and pushed through, during his 16 years in charge of the union are very much in line with what Sanders is campaigning for.

Back in the days, Y axis mapping was neither standardised nor adjustable, so many of us went through this back and forth countless times. As a result, it takes me just a few seconds to adjust to an inverted Y axis on an input device.

An inverted X axis on the other hand wrecks my brain in any fast-paced situation.

If you want to experience something similar at home, take a game controller and invert the Y axis in a first person game that you've played a lot. Play until you get the hang of it and then switch back. See how long it takes you to readjust.
You're engaging fewer motor functions but you should feel the bewildering and frustrating sense of everything being backwards and the experience of retuning your brain.

When you think about it hard enough you come in to conclusion that since the only external self-image we have are from looking at mirrors and that the mirror actually shows you back-to-front.. (shudder...)

You know when you look at a photo of yourself and it looks really really odd? That is because pictures are in normal order along depth axis, which means they are not reflections, you are not used to seeing yourself that way. The tiny tiny little details only you know so well are all reversed in your head and thus the creature from blue lagoon is what your brains see in that photo. Only others see you as you really look... And only you know how it looks from inside out, ie, depth axis reversed.

So in a sense, every time you look at yourself in the mirror, you are inside out.

I think I can explain the democrat hate: pure romanticism

Lincoln was a Republican, arguably our best president in history. I think people still try to attach to that and ignore the fact that the parties basically flipped because of the Southern Strategy after the Civil Rights Act. That and Republicans weren't always hijacked by the crazies. I think too many people don't want to admit their party has changed. It's also indoctrination. I've met plenty of people that agree with me point by point, yet they still manage to do these crazy mental gymnastics to rationalize to themselves that they HAVE to vote Republican. It's how they were brought up. Hell it almost happened to me, as a kid, long before I had any political identity. I always assumed I was Republican simply because I believed what everyone told me "Republicans are good with money, Democrats waste it" It wasn't until much later that I realized how untrue that was. Hell, even my first presidential vote in 2000, I listened too much to a Republican friend of mine ( one of the people I mentioned before that agreed with me on most everything, but still voted Republican) and because of his influence, I did vote for Bush in 2000 (so so sorry...not that it mattered in my red non-swing state)

One of my best friends is like this. he doesn't vote purely along party lines, and we agree on most political points, yet he still identifies as a Republican when in my opinion, he's an Independent like me. I think it's mainly because he was brought up by a military family and he was brought up to believe that the dems were the devil...despite how much he tends to agree with them.

its totally dysfunctional.

Its also part of the human condition IMO. There is a human need to have an enemy. Back in WWII we were pretty much united because we had to defeat the Axis. In the Cold War we were mostly united because we had to defeat the Russkies. America kinda stands alone now. No other military on earth can really challenge us. Sure the Taliban and ISIS are a source of terrorism, but they're still not a real threat, they could never invade or occupy us.

So there just aren't any real big threats out there...and when that happens...that's when infighting begins. People need an enemy, and when you can't find one without, you find one within.

My recommendation, from cheaper to more expensive:

Thrustmaster T-Flight HOTAS, Saitek X-52 or Pro, CH Fighterstick + Throttle, Warthog.

Only the Thrustmaster (but not the Warthog) and Saitek stuff will have a twist rudder axis, which is a convenience for space sims. I hear good things about the HOTAS-X, and in the States it's only about $50 or so, so it's cheapest by far but wants a bit for buttons and HAT switches.

Personally, I'd go cheaper on the control setup if it meant you could also afford a head tracking setup like a TrackIR (ideally) or an ED Tracker.


I have a bunch of this stuff because I'm a flight sim nerd, but for Elite Dangerous I use the throttle from a Saitek X-65 and a Logitech Extreme 3D stick.

Yeah there are slap bands out there, but they don't work like this is presented to work. The arms would have to bend in multiple dimensions, and then straighten out and be able to provide a stable flying platform. The closest thing I think of for doing something like that is the "bendy" character toys where the metal wire is co-molded inside the body. That is a very heavy solution.
I misspoke on the 2" square, it is 2" x 2", so 4" square. I'm not sure that I agree that theirs is 6" x 3", but even if it is that would mean that the prop size would have to be about 1.25" and that doesn't work for a 6" x 3" vehicle. There isn't enough thrust and the motors at that size don't provide enough RPM's for that kind of weight.
On the electronic side, they show it connecting to a smart phone with video feedback. That means you have to have bluetooth at least, or a 5.4ghz video system if you want more than 30' range. or it has to have a Wifi TX on it. All of those thing require power. Sure it could analyze the video signal to determine subject matter, and provide guidance but you have some very serious issues there. If you do it on board it requires some processor power (More drain), if you do it on the smart phone app it will create lag.
Your phone has over 1,000 mAh in it (1440 in Iphone 5), that is a TON (4-10x) more than what this thing would have. Battery technology may be a big research project right now, but there isn't anything on the horizon that will get them to where they need to be. Most of the tech research is in sub 1C rated batteries for things like full size cars. Something like this needs a 10C rating minimum if not a 20C rating. Unfortunately most of the upcoming technology can not handle drains that fast. Things tend to go "Boom!". When you do something small, and even 6" x 3" is small, you have very serious power vs weight issues. It all comes down to issues of power density, and nothing exists today that will give it to them as they would need..

So right now these guys need to figure out:
1) A new light weight material that can lock rigid but also bend as needed in multiple directions.
2) A new battery technology that allows them to get the power they need, for a 6 axis gyro, 4 motors, control board,a RX, a HD camera and some sort of VTX while reducing weight. How long it powers all of that would be open, but if it is under 10 minutes I think people would be a little disgruntled. Right now people are wanting the video quads to get about 30-45 minutes of flight time on the 5200+mAh batteries.
3) Write code that allows them to analyze video in real time so as to provide object tracking and avoidance without lag while capable of running on a smartphone. It would also need to return to home when the battery runs low. That would be a little tricky on a cliff face, or if you are riding a bike through a forest. Another issue is that they tilt the camera down, they don't say if this is actuated, or done by hand, but it could lead to serious issues with programming object avoidance if you can't see anything above you.
4) Since they show the image as HD on the phone screen, they would also need to come up with a new way to broadcast HD video wirelessly. Right now that system costs $40K and is rather large.

All in all it is a dream product that people are going to get suckered into funding it. Some tech may come out of it that could be monetized, but I don't see the item coming out in this format, at least not in the next 3-5 years. You'd be better off going with AirDog.

The only one I can say for sure is the Iphone flip. It is because the center of gravity is not perfectly in the middle the phone. It is located on the center of the other two axis, but not on the one that is not stable. Meaning it must be either a little be closer to the top or the botton of the phone.