Posts by Joe Wylie
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His remarks are prefaced by: "I would be disturbed to find out that we had a vigilante approach to security going on."
Just as he'd presumably be hypothetically disturbed to discover that Dave "Seventeen Million Dollar Man" Henderson might just be a raving shonk. When you're Bob, the bleeding obvious penetrates at a glacial pace.
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Still, according to Bob Parker, you don't exist. How does that make you feel?
Not quite. According to Parker, these geese are "Well-meaning amateurs" who could easily become "loose cannons". Well-meaning - what mealy-mouthed rubbish. Let's not forget that the party at Edgeware Road in May of 2007, which lead to the deaths of two high school students and injury to others, was run by white supremacists. A deliberately provocative sign at the gate telling non-whites to stay out was no more well-intentioned than the current pin-headed nonsense that Parker's attempting to play down.
New Brighton is quite strange. I had a great afternoon there with a friend recently, but some of those streets look kinda ... unloved. With all the mortgagee sales on the go, I couldn't see why bohemians weren't descending on the place for the super-cheap housing. But they're not.
I've not lived here long enough to understand why, in contrast to most towns, Christchurch's residential desirability is kind of arse-about, with most low-lying waterfront areas being relegated to the proles. When you ask why, people look resigned and mutter about the easterly.
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Band of Brothers
Well, I wasn't relying on it as my primary source, just using it to illustrate a point.
Yeah, got that. It was the Band of Bs quote that triggered the truck thing with me.
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. . . while Germany may have had the trucks, they didn't deploy them effectively.
You too, Rich:)
If they deployed them much like Band of Brothers deployed meaningful historical insight, no wonder they lost. Give me Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance With Death any day.
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Everything I've read about Ford indicates that he was more opportunist than idealogue or engineer. Like Gates he happened to be in the right places at the right times, and wasn't shy about taking credit for the innovations of others. By 1927 he was largely a technical as well as a political reactionary, and regarded within his own company as a bit of a crackpot. Whether Hitler realised it or not, his open admiration for Ford seems to have been largely for the guy's talent in creating a personal myth.
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Thanks J T, interesting link.
. . . Ford was bigger than Hitler or Stalin
In Huxley's Brave New World he's god. Over in the Windows 7 thread I think I spotted someone making similar claims for Bill Gates - single-handedly raising Africa from the primeval slime and all.
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. . . but I take it the Fords & Holdens would have had slaves too?
Um, not exactly, though there are those who've voluntarily enslaved themselves to the cult of Holden. The wiki GM history page explains the strange mix of separation and complicity rather well.
As for old Henry, that supreme self-publicist managed to be honored by both Hitler and Stalin. If you're into quantifying such things a good argument could probably be made that he had a bigger influence in shaping the 20th century than both of them.
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There's a scene at the end of 'band of brothers' where the US troops are driving in their truck past endless columns of German prisoners, all on foot, and one of the Americans starts yelling 'how could you expect to win? You're walking! Look at us! Say hello to Studebaker! Say hello to General Motors!' etc.
Sigh. Typical loud-mouthed ignorant c*cks*cker. While Nazi Germany lacked Studebakers, GM's massive Brandenburg plant produced vast amounts of American-designed Opel trucks for the Wehrmacht. Along with similar German-made Fords these were used on all fronts, often against very similar designs operated by the allies. Although under Nazi control, Ford and GM's German plants were never nationalised.
Ford's technical involvement with the Soviet Union started in 1929. There's plenty of footage from the siege of Stalingrad showing large convoys of a locally-built version of the Model A truck supplying the city. With its high ground clearance and abundant low-end torque the rugged Ford A often outperformed the Jeep in off-road conditions.
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He was the only kid in the class who knew how to spell "attorney".
This was the guy, if I remember rightly, who was once assessed as being a potential trolley hand in a garden centre?
From my own experience, I once got rather angsty over someone being IQ tested by 'experts' as not much above a rhesus monkey. Didn't stop them eventually marrying an outgoing intellectual and having a lovely family. Personality, for lack of a better word, counts for so much.
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An early example of the all Hitler's fault trope.
Everything's ducky until the little moustachioed creep pokes his oar in.