Hey, Narcolepsy is my favourite Third Eye song as well, although I have a soft spot for The Background. This is probably my favourite rock album of the nineties.

MarineGunrock, I remember hearing about the "tumbling bullet" wound from a 5.56mm but have read numerous articles since then refuting that logic. It's apparently an "urban" legend that refuses to die.

As best as I can recall, the only reason for switching calibers was weight. A soldier could carry seventy 30-06, ninety 7.62mm (essentially a shortened .30 cal), or a whopping 210 5.56mm at a given weight. The potential reduction in the weight of the rifle was also a factor (bigger calibers require heavier rifles). There was initially great resistance to this caliber switch, precisely because it produced a much less significant wound. Yes, the velocity was slightly higher, but the 50-grain bullet is hard pressed to produce a wound channel anywhere near the size of a bullet weighing 150-grains and almost twice the cross-sectional area. The disparity increases rapidly when you factor in how much more quickly the lighter caliber loses energy over distance.

Lower lethality, however, was considered a worthwhile trade-off, especially since wounding the enemy is tactically almost as good as killing him and the extra 120 bullets made such wounds significantly more likely. There were also small concerns about the diminished range of the 5.56mm, but that's why we have snipers that carry larger calibers. As far as I am aware, most states do not allow 5.56mm for deer hunting because it is significantly more likely to produce a non-lethal wound. It's been a while (a decade or more) since I've looked into this, but I recall seeing that ballistic tests in every kind of medium showed the 5.56mm to be far less deadly than the 7.62mm, and that's without giving any consideration to how much more quickly the lighter 5.56mm loses energy to range and/or shielding, let alone loss of accuracy to crosswinds or intervening light cover.

History has proven the move to 5.56mm to be the right one but it was definitely a trade-off.

Interestingly, the Soviets made a similar decision about calibers but stuck with a heavier round. They shaved off weight, but not as much, by going with a 7.62x39mm as compared to a 7.62x51mm NATO round with a 110-gr(?) vs. 150-gr round. Their heavier round could punch through shielding a little better than the 50-gr 5.56mm, but they gave up a lot of velocity and the flatter trajectory and accuracy that comes with it. And they still couldn't carry as many rounds as soldiers equipped with the 5.56. I don't know who made the right choice, but I do know that in both case, weight (and hence more ammo) was the determinative factor that outweighed the loss of lethality.

There was quite a bit of hub-bub in the media about a local girl who was raped by a U.S. soldier in Okinawa back in the mid nineties. I remember that incident firing up the Japanese lobbyists for the removal of the base then.

This was not an attempt to "mislead" about Hitler being elected by 98%. He falsely stated that Hitler was elected by the German and /or Austrian people:

"Hitler did not take Germany by force. He did not drive in with army tanks. Hitler was elected. Anybody have any idea what the vote count was? What his percentage of the total was? Ninety Eight percent [pause] in Austria-Hungary. That's just about everybody. Everybody voted for Hitler because he was going to solve all their economic problems."

Even the Anschluss was enacted only AFTER Hitler sent his troops in to Austria, because the Chancellor would not fully cooperate and tried to get a plebiscite on independence and reject Nazi Germany's control. The Anschluss was not about voting for Hitler. And the plebiscite was not a free process.

I too think his message is dangerously compromised by incorrectly presenting a false history of what happened in Germany before WWII. We should not need such poorly presented arguments to realize that Bush and what he represents is a danger to the country and its constitution.

We had these in Nevada when I was a kid (not that long ago, btw...early nineties).

Upvote for knitting lady! (Must be sort of a let-down for him to have been practicing since the nineties, only to be overtaken by crazy old knitting lady..)

Sleeeepeeeerrrr??????? daymn. I liked their album but I knew it was crap.

Blur were very very very good. Pulp were good. Oasis were good until they got famous. Other good bands to check out that normally fall below the history radar... the Bluetones, Gene, and of course elastica, the best band ever. Radiohead are in a totally different league and are not up for discussion.

Basically, Tony Blair fucked it all up by trying to play guitar and look cool... seriously, it was that damn Tony Blair guy, what an arsehole.

upvote for noel gallagher being much more intelligent than all his fans put together.

basically, the nineties was a failed sixties revival, the last gasp of humanity before 9/11. As my dad told me: "Seen it all before, son"

My uncle was in art college in the sixties, more than once the students locked the lecturers out of the college and had an orgy for a few days. I was at art college in the nineties, we sometimes didn't bother wearing our ID badges. That was it.

it's one of my favourite rants.

In reply to your comment:
“I just saw this. Priceless.

In reply to your comment:
“Hi
I'm from the nineties and I want to rewind time, back to when people actually watched TV. We haven't got any money though, because nobody watches TV, and we can't afford researchers or talented directors, so we are just basically trying to find stuff on forums that's already popular and cheap. We hope people will watch it on TV, with advertising, nine months after they can get it for free on the the intarwebs. Trouble is, we need a higher resolution copy, and we need to get a clue.

If anyone has a clue, please send it to thenineties@tvland.com
Thanks!””

I just saw this. Priceless.

In reply to your comment:
“Hi
I'm from the nineties and I want to rewind time, back to when people actually watched TV. We haven't got any money though, because nobody watches TV, and we can't afford researchers or talented directors, so we are just basically trying to find stuff on forums that's already popular and cheap. We hope people will watch it on TV, with advertising, nine months after they can get it for free on the the intarwebs. Trouble is, we need a higher resolution copy, and we need to get a clue.

If anyone has a clue, please send it to thenineties@tvland.com
Thanks!”

whoa the nineties invented nothing!

Staged crazy, and so f-ing uncomfortable. I don't like the combination of reality show and pure acting hell. Come on! Wheel covers for bikes have been around since the nineties. They must've just threw this guy on to boost ratings... "Whoa did you see the crazy guy on American Inventor last night?" I don't buy it or like it.

I'm vote ninety-six.

Hi
I'm from the nineties and I want to rewind time, back to when people actually watched TV. We haven't got any money though, because nobody watches TV, and we can't afford researchers or talented directors, so we are just basically trying to find stuff on forums that's already popular and cheap. We hope people will watch it on TV, with advertising, nine months after they can get it for free on the the intarwebs. Trouble is, we need a higher resolution copy, and we need to get a clue.

If anyone has a clue, please send it to thenineties@tvland.com
Thanks!

Started feeling sick about ninety seconds in.

This short can be found on the "The Animation Show" Vol.1 DVD by, Mike Judge and Don Hertzfeldt.
It is done by Alex Boduvsky and named Bathtime In Clerkenwell (2002)
Here is some text that came in the DVD booklet about it, very rich.

ALEX BUDOSKY is calling from somewhere in the 917 area code, in New York City where he and his family call home, and his cell phone signal is breaking up. "Basically the entire family emigrated because of, you know, hard times in Russia in the nineties. we left in December of '94, garble garble garble garble garble garble. Yeah. So it was a good choice, I guess." Never having found out what their alternatives were, I have to say I agree with his assesment, the former immigrant who arrived with only artistic aspirations and no English vocabulary to speak of, is now the animator of choice for pop act The Real Tuesday Weld with a singular style and a rising career as a commercial artist.
Budovsky, who was born in St. Petersburg in 1975, came to America with his family and settled in New York, where they all still live. The then not-quite-20-year-old set his sights on higher education, but the fisrt priority was a practical linguistic one. "I didn't speak English when I arrived," he says, "so I went to Brooklyn College and took some English as a Second Language classes. Then I took some film classes, and graduated as a sound designer, with an emphasis on film".
He graduated in 2000 with an aptitude in all the film basics, including editing, screenwriting, and photography, and discovered a program called Macromedia Director, which is now software generally used in business presentations. He began animating as a lark, without any formal training. "I was working as an electrician in the New York City ship terminal and doing film in my spare for fun", he says, "so I just had fun entertaining myself".
At a friends house, he happened to hear Where Psyche Meets Cupid, a collection of droll cabaret/electronica by Stephen Coastes, a.k.a. The Real Tuesday Weld. He immediately decided to make a video for the haded hip-hop/hot jazz ballad "Terminally Ambivalent Over You".
"I knew nothing about copyright", Budovsky says, "and one of my friends told me, 'You can't just use this guy's music. You have to at least contact him and ask for permission'. So I wrote him and asked for permission, even though the film was laready made. He gave me permission. I waited several weeks, and sent him the film". The Flash-animated depiction of a love-distracted prisoner on a Gramaphone assembly-line unfolds mostly in black and white with a few color accents, and barring the contemporary soundtrack and the ultra-clean frame, it could pass for a particularly accomplished product of the Kruschev-era Zagreb Studio of former Yuogoslavia.
Coates loved what he saw, and sent Budovsky sketches for the songs from his upcoming CD "I, Lucifer". Alex heard "Bathtime in Clerkenwell", decided it was destined to be a hit, and immediatly set to work on a vdieo. The demented product is full of confused humans, belligerent cuckoos, and princers dangling over assembly lines - icons that seem to recur often in Budovsky's work. Don't bother asking where they come from, though, because Alex doesn't have a clue. "I never even think about what I do. It just comes out on its own", he laughs. "I can't really explain how all those characters appear."
To Budovsky's surprise, once Bathtime started making the festival circuit in 2002, it began to pick up an array of prizes, and the notoriety led to more shorts and commercials. He's worked on campaigns for Lucozade and Converse, his latest short is a music video based on Geoff Muldaur's version of "Brazil". Budovsky reworked the song with the help of The Real Tuesday Weld and friend Girt Chatrou (who is a two-time world champion whistler). He couldn't secure an internet license for "Brazi", but most of the rest of Budovsky's work is online at his own Figli-Migli Productions web site. (It means "low jinks.")
Budovsky doesn't have any feature film plans at the momment; his work method wouldn't support it. "All of my films - I don't do any pre-production whatsoever", he says. "I don't do scripts, I don't do storyboarding or animatics. I just build the film shot-by-shot, and halfway through the film I don't know what the end is going to be". For Alex, up to this point, short form has been the way to go because of the amount of contol he carries on the prokect. "In animation, you're a king, and you're a god, and you can accomplish so much alone", he laughs but adds, "I do like to collaborate though. It's exciting to see where people's input can take you."

/my wrists hurt, probably typos