Oh...I bet you do know many. You just won't admit it, or refuse to see them as others do. You already said that all cops 'bluff' people out of their constitutional rights, meaning they are all (to some extent) unthinking, lying, smarmy assholes....
Or are you stating that cops NEVER recover people's stolen property? That I could almost believe, but I think they do recover a tiny percentage...maybe <5%.

The courts have ruled that police officers can bluff. You can call it lying. Ever play poker?

Damn those courts again, right?

I think you know that the police have fought to keep those numbers from being kept at all. There is no national database that has numbers on innocent people shot by cops. I saw a news story about that just last week.
Cops aren't doctors. If a cop does their job properly and conscientiously, people don't often still die as a result. The same can't be said for Doctors. Also, Doctors don't break into your home and force surgery on you....EVER! ;-)
What the numbers DO clearly and definitively say is, in a meeting between a cop and a citizen, the cop is more than 10 times more likely to kill the citizen than the citizen is to kill the cop. That's outrageous under any circumstance.

Bluffing=lying. Respectfully, since you are now an admitted liar, how can you be trusted about anything?

I wish police would consider that before 'bluffing' citizens out of their rights, often by pretending they don't have any and hoping the citizen will follow what SEEMS like a 'legal command', but is really carefully worded to be a 'forceful request' that only sounds like a command.
Once you've 'bluffed' once, you are untrustworthy for life. Because so many (if not all) police 'bluff' remorselessly, shamelessly, and consistently, most people rightly don't trust ANY of them about anything.

I would prefer to buy my grass at the weed store in full daylight, legally. Sadly, right wing insanity and left wing fecklessness continues to perpetrate the disastrous 'drug war', which is really a militarization of the police and a war on Americans, not a war on drugs...no drugs have been sentenced or fined, but many people are. It's because of this situation that the black market exists, and those in it must protect themselves, because they can't call the police for help. That puts us all in danger...for less than nothing in return.

Saddam started the Iran Iraq war, which saw over a million dead, including the most prolific deployment of chemical weapons since WW1.

Saddam followed that up with the Al-Anfal campaign. Read up on it, it's one of the most brutal attempts at genocide in recent history, including chemical weapons, concentration camps, over a hundred thousand deaths and an effort to breed the Kurds out of existence through systematic rape of Kurdish women.

Saddam followed that up with the complete annexation of Kuwait. Effectively removing a UN member state and claiming at as part of his Iraq.

Saddam followed up his forced removal from Kuwait with a retaliatory genocide of Shia Iraqis again topping a hundred thousand dead again.

But yeah, he fortunately lacked the military might to succeed in such ventures for a time. He was bluffing having stocks of chemical and nuclear weapons to keep his neighbours in check. Pity he was removed from power then and we didn't wait till he could make good on his bluff.

Ah, I can see you have a FORT in mind. There is no FORT, really. The whole area is the Fort, the land itself. The "blocking fort" ARE the bunkers -- on top of the bluffs and at water level. There are two other forts in a triangular shape -- one on Whidbey Island and one on Marrowstone Island. The idea was if any boat came into the waters of Admiralty Inlet, one of the forts bunkers' big guns could take them out.

The bunkers are all still there. They were going to jackhammer them away, but they were made from imported Belgian concrete and they just would NOT break up.

So you can go crawling around in all sorts of bunkers. Some of the rooms have had their doors welded shut, for safety reasons. But there are plenty to explore.

These three forts aren't on an estuary, however. It is ocean water, but not the ocean. The Pacific Ocean stops about where the Northwest corner of the Olympic Peninsula is kind of south of Vancouver Island, in Canada. Things get narrow there, and the ocean waves can't reach. Or something. So there are bodies of water that ships and boats follow going east, then they turn south to Seattle, which is on the coast of Puget Sound.

It's all very confusing. I can never figure out which way is north. Port Townsend has water on three sides, fer pitys sake!

Oh, and they did remove the big guns, even as they left the bunkers. You can see where they were and get a good sense of how big those guns were.

None of the three forts ever shot in anger. Just practice.

Exactly! "Shop fronts" only.

So when are you coming to America? It is beautiful in my part of the country, albeit very young by European or even East Coast standards. We are very proud of our oldest building. I think it was built in 1875 or something. Maybe even later. Ha.

And why was it a military base? Because all those "founding fathers" who poured a butt load of money into PT were in danger of losing it all when Seattle got port status instead of us. Those "founding fathers" still had lots of pull in Washington DC, so they got the Fort put here to prop up the local economy. And now it is a State Park -- one of the few that actually doesn't need any tax funds to stay open -- it actually makes a profit.

Plus there are wonderful bunkers to play in. And walks to take through the woods.

Have you ever seen An Officer and a Gentleman, with Richard Gere and Debra Winger? That was filmed here. All the base scenes were filmed at Fort Worden. A couple of years before I got here. You could tell which buildings were used in scenes -- or rather, which SIDES of buildings were used in scenes. They repainted the buildings a pristine white -- if they were in camera view. So the backsides were all peeling and nasty.

That was before the Fort started making money, of course. All the sides of the buildings look nice now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1Ehz_cAMGc

You can see the Fort at :57, 1:05,1:52 and the iconic 2:06. All a brisk 15 minute walk from my house. Look out my kitchen window, and you can see the tree covered hill that is the Fort. (The jogging scene at :38 is on the other side of the hill - sheer bluffs to the water.)

It is indeed a very neat place. You watch that movie, come over here, and I'll give you a tour, okay?

Why you never set-up camp on a coastal bluff that isn't comprised primarily of bedrock outcrops.

As I recall from studying this is a college class, we had only the two atomic bombs available. Getting material for another was possible, but I think I recall that at the time we could only collect enough for one bomb every several months.

So, a HUGE aspect of this is that we had a pretty good hand of cards in the poker game, but felt that we had to bluff to suggest that it was even more overwhelming.

To me, the interesting part of the debate isn't blockade vs conventional bombing vs invasion vs A-bombs. I think it gets most interesting to consider alternatives that involve dropping one or more of the 2 A-bombs some place where their power would be demonstrated, but where casualties would be as low as possible.

Either option you mentioned would have been GREAT, if they worked (and forced surrender). But both had potential pitfalls also. Drop one on an unpopulated area, and they might have believed we were trying to take credit for some sort of natural event (German V2s blowing up in London were often attributed to sewage gas explosions early on). Staging a demonstration for scientists and leaders to witness might have hardened their resolve and/or made them question ours.

If I had been in Truman's shoes, I feel like I would have preferred to use ONE of the two bombs on something like one of your suggestions; either unpopulated drop or demonstration. Then, use the second on a target of military significance if/when they didn't surrender.

However, in hindsight that would have been a risky move -- they didn't surrender after the Hiroshima bomb, only after both. Would a demonstration and one "we mean business" bomb have been enough to elicit the same response? Who knows. At that point, consider how screwed we could have been if it HADN'T, and it would have taken months to build another bomb (plus keep in mind that we weren't 100% confident in the bombs working reliably, even after trinity and the first two drops). I guess that we could have maintained a blockade and said "we'll give you 3 months to come to your senses" while we made another bomb, but I think that would have legitimately resulted in Japan questioning our resolve quite a lot; we'd be showing our cards too early.

I guess that at the end of the day, I don't envy Truman for having to make that kind of decision. Given the givens, I think that he probably played it as safe as possible and went with the option that was the MOST likely to force surrender. Perhaps some other option would have worked as well but avoided some of the casualties, but Truman took the information available to him and made the decision that he felt was the best -- I think that is pretty much the best we can ask of our leaders.

Somebody had their bluff called ....

>> ^rychan:

>> ^st0nedeye:
>> ^SWBStX:
>> ^PalmliX:
In hindsight I don't think runnign was the best thing for him to do here. Thankfully it worked this time but doesn't running potentially activate the bears predator instinct and cause him to give chase?

I think if you're that close to the bear and already moving at that kind of speed when you first see it you're probably better off just booking it like this guy did.

Hell no. Running away is the absolute worst thing you can do.
Steps to not getting mauled by a bear/mlion:
1. Stop
2. Show a short threat display (arms wide, yell, shake a branch, throw a large rock)
3. Back away

Stop spouting BS that could get people killed. It's ludicrous to think that stopping and doing a threat display would be safer than continuing on your way uninterrupted.

If the bear isn't showing aggression you're best off just backing away with no sudden movements. If it charges/attacks it depends on the bear. Play dead if its a Grizzly, be as aggressive and as loud as possible if its a Black Bear. In either case the advice is never run.


So I'd say he was lucky the bear decided not to go after him. He probably surprised the bear as much as it did him. It even seems to bluff charge. Had the bear chased he'd not have outran it.

Here's my suggestions for channels
~Subterfuge (artifice, bluff, device, hoax, ploy, stratagem, trick, deception of all kinds)
~Beavershots & Moonbeams (exactly as it reads)
~Liquor channel (Booze)
~Channel N°5 (fashion)

bet you wont hit my kid

she called his bluff kudos

My favorite moment with an eagle... sat down near the edge of a bluff. An eagle playing with the cliff updrafts flew right in front of my face, not three feet away.

Scared the crap out of both of us.

Glorious!

>> ^longde:

I think it's insane that when confronted with the gun, the girl calls the bluff and doesn't shrink at all.

I'm trying to remember where, but I recall hearing it said that the classic movie\tv line of "Go ahead and shoot me, then" and variants are commonly reported to be someone's last words. It seems in the real world aggressors are much more likely to comply with the request.

I think it's insane that when confronted with the gun, the girl calls the bluff and doesn't shrink at all.