California Mountain Snake

The risk of getting bad subs is equal to getting bad dubs (although all fan-dubs are terrible without exception), so I can't use that as a factor. Basically I've been practicing my Japanese listening skills by watching animes with just subs, and for most animes I start watching now I prefer to have them subbed. But for the one's where I've gotten used to the dubs, even if they're incredibly annoying, I ussually stick with them (I started Bleach on dubs, and I've gotten used to the English voices so it's unlikely I'll switch even as the series goes on).

Well, just in case you thought I was "too dumb to notice", I'm going to have to go ahead and show what a "know-it-all" I am and call bullshit on your entire statement, because it's evident you no idea what you're talking about. Yes, Napoleon tried to take over Europe, but this is in no way an exception to the land-grabbing which makes up 95% of Europe's history. Furthermore, inferring personal motive from this not only a preposterous notion; it also leads to staggeringly inaccurate interpretations of history (see:above post). Claiming that Napoleon's motivation was simply "greed" and that the forces driving him were his "selfish needs" is something I'd expect to hear on an Animaniacs summary of history. Additionally, accusing Napoleon of being responsible for inspiring Hitler, Stalin, and every modern dictator shows- in the politest way I can put it- an overly-naive voluntarist approach to history (And because I already know you don't know what it means, please look up voluntarist-in a comparative politics context-before you respond, it's an important vocabulary word). The move towards dictatorship this world has seen can be largely attributed to an increasing perception that authoritarian regimes will lead to quicker modernization and development. And in the cases when authoritarianism works, it does lead to quicker growths (see China's sustained 10% growth for the last couple years). However, I say this with heavy reservation because on a statistical scale despite the fact that almost all successful emerging states of the 20th century (Japan, China, USSR, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Chile, etc) were authoritarian, all of the wildly unsuccessful authoritarian regimes (see the rest of Latin America, most of Africa) basically make it break even in terms of success-rate. This trend towards increasing authoritarianism was set in motion when England and America became the first countries to modernize, and from then every country had to play catch up, using increasingly drastic measures the farther behind they fell, or the later they modernized (if you want a full account of this read Alexsander Gershenkron's Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective). Now I'm not going to say relative-backwardness (another vocabulary word for you) is the only way to look at this, many other theories have been floated by this "thick-skull", but claiming that somehow all of modern history was formed by the actions of one man: that if Napoleon never existed there would never have been dictatorships, or Hitler, or Stalin, or any World Wars, etc, is simply, without-a-doubt, inexplainably wrong.

I lost it here.

The truth doesn't hurt me in the slightest, considering I attribute my admission to the best university in the world as a product of my American secondary education. But if you're basing your opinion on your own failures within the school system, I guess that's just as valid as me forming an opinion off my own success. Fuck "standards". National standards are what fuck up schooling, trying to turn an education into a "skills-building" workshop similar to technical school (hello, Europe), rather than an exercise in critical thinking and qualitative judgement. The point of school isn't to memorize dates or formats for expository essays, it's to teach you to be a productive citizen who makes qualitative judgements based off evidence, not believe something "because someone told me so." Just for demonstration, The State of World History Standards, a corporation set up for evaluating how schools comply to standards, gives my state (Vermont) an F as a grade (IE worst), because Vermont doesn't make students take a standardized test in social studies (which considering the vastly contentious nature of history, would be retarded). However, in terms of quality in education, Vermont has by multiple accounts the best overall education system in America (indirect factors include: high teacher-student ratios, low dropout rates, high % of student age kids actually in school, high per-student-expenditures, high teacher salaries, etc). So maybe being a Vermont student has skewed my judgement over the American school system, but excuse me if I don't hold "standards" of education in the highest regard.

Cool story bro.

Subjective judgement. If you're just going to start making stuff up then this isn't a debate anymore. Japan didn't have much of a military left at that point, and in no location were there any concentrations of soldiers great enough to warrant the use of a nuclear warhead that you couldn't just use regular carpet bombing techniques for. A nuke wouldn't have done much more at Iwo Jima than days on end of Navel barrage didn't do, and it's not like all of the Japanese soldiers were on Yavin 4 or something, a secluded "military target"; soldiers were concentrated and deployed from urban centers, and it was impossible to bomb any location without involving citizens. A US land invasion would have resulted in more casualties on every front, not just US soldier deaths. They would have held out to the last man standing, and only in the face of nuclear weaponry, a foe there was no way of countering, would they surrender. The casualties would have been literally twenty-fold, if not more, had a mainland invasion been attempted. Anyways, this is all irrelevant to your original accusation; that somehow Truman decided to bomb Nagasaki and Hiroshima to "one-up" FDR, another outlandish claim I can only attribute to psychotic mental illness; and your second unfounded conjecture that FDR wouldn't choose to end the war in the same way that Truman did, which is also without proof considering FDR was president during the firebombings of Japanese cities, which included one single B-29 air raid that killed over 100,000 people in Tokyo, more than the immediate deaths of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.

Japan didn't surrender even after a bomb was dropped on a city. Only after the second one 3 days later did they comply. Saying we could have just dropped one on an uninhabited island shows a distinct lack of historical perspective.

Broad, baseless opinions will get you no where. And I beg to differ.

ALERT: subject has failed to escape the own'd. Recommend immediate termination.

LOL it's sooo funny when you say it! XDXDXDXDXDXDDDDXXDDDXDXDXDXDXD!!!!!!!!!!!

urdoinitrong

That kind of reminds me of this thing a guidance counselor at my school said: "Never call someone a fag, or a retard, because you know what, WHAT IF THEY ARE?" Yeah, it sounded fucking retarted when she said it too. I guess I know why you reminded me of it.

......... Also, enjoy hell, you blasphemer, creating false idols is a sin.

*insert lol macro here*

If you think "Hitler" killed the Jews "because of their religion", you need to do a lot more research on the subject (as well as just understand that being Jewish is an ethnic identity that encompasses religion among many other factors). It's a subject a lot deeper than one man's random prejudices, and in reality spans back centuries in Europe (and even longer globally). I know some people from eastern Europe that would very much disagree with this statement. Put these quotes together for the delicious irony. Let me understand this, so you're going to call Blacken out for making a perfectly understandable rhetorical statement pointing out the obvious contradictions someone presented, that just requires you utilize that walnut sized bundle of nerves between your ears for maybe 15 seconds to understand, and yet after calling him out you make an even more vague and unsupported statement within the same breath? Considered by who? You? Napoleon was not a dictator any more than Loise Quatorze (XIV, if you don't know French [14, if you didn't get past 3rd grade]) or any of the kings and queens from centuries before him. Calling Napoleon a dictator, of all rulers, especially since he was (and still is) so loved and was so popularly supported by his people, is idiotic. I'm also noticing a certain Japanese ruler missing from your list, little miss Okinawa.

It is absolutely impossible for me to fall asleep on my back. I use it as a technique to do late night readings I have to get done for the next day, because as long as I'm on my back I won't fall asleep. I sleep sort of halfway between on my side and stomach. Doesn't matter which side.

Edit: nevermind. I mostly find cities overrated.

- The World Trade Center buildings were destroyed during his presidency (not something he "did", but it will be remembered) - He started a war in Iraq that's lasted 8 years and is most likely going one for another 1 or 2. - Our involvement in Afghanistan is probably going to be increasing in the next few years, a war born out of president Bush's terms in office. - Whether it's his fault or not (irrelevant), the biggest economic downturn since the great depression started out of his presidency. - You're also forgetting that he also choked on a pretzel There are plenty of other noteworthy things that happened/were done during Bush's presidency, and he will be most likely quite well remembered. Also, dismissing the September 11th attacks as a day when "we lost two tall buildings" severly downplays its importance, as it will probably be an event remembered and commemorated for a very long time (think Pearl Harbor), and probably like other events in the past, be viewed as a "catalyst", which had sparked a massive increase in US interest in the Middle-East, in the previous years and probably for years to come.

Bolded for delicious irony. Also, I'll have you know Harvard has a program for mentally handicapped students. There's actually a person in my dorm who's enrolled under that program. Edit: spelled it ha-vard. Damn that accent is getting to me.

It's PKMN GET IT RIGHT GODDAMNIT.

I always thought of Mozilla as the analogous counterpart to the Mac fanatic. Sure, I guess Opera fans are perhaps a little more zealous (lol I use Opera), but it's a little too marginal to be compared to Mac's popularity, which projects an image of young cool hipsters who are "trendy", an image I'd mostly associate to people who use Firefox. I see Opera being more like the person who uses Linux just in terms of minority usage but fanatical following.

Insinuating that outside sources, such as Anime, are the "cause" of someone becoming a phychopath is foolish. Would John Lennon still be alive is Mark Chapman hadn't read Catcher in the Rye? No. Would this guy have become a phycho killer even if he never saw any Anime? Probably.

Stop it. You're exciting me.

I smacked a car once in a parking lot :3. I also put my head through a window once. My hands were full, and I had no other way of knocking on the door. It seemed like a good idea at the time.