An Eye for an Eye?Follow

Yeah, Giap was a military genius. He ran his men through the meat grinder. If those numbers indicate we "got our *** kicked", that "We were outfought on every possible level", well....

Well what? Is that your idea of how we keep score in war: casualties? Someone better go let Germany know they won WW2 and that Russia lost.

Giap was okay, but he was no Mao.

My mother calls him "Mousey Dung" and laughs any time his name comes up. True story.

I'm a military genius, too. I know that if you point the end of the barrel at your enemies instead of yourself, casualties are reduced by... like... a lot.

Well, you did state that Giap was a military genius...losing men at a 23 to 1 ratio doesn't seem like a genius to me

That's because you don't understand war. No one gives a fuck about anything you say that ends in "to me" unless your some sort of expert in that field. Are you an expert in military tactics? Or is it counting. Is it that you know how to count and you feel that means you can speak usefully on war?

By this standard, I am as much an expert as you are.

I am really trying to follow your logic here, and I am failing. Can you explain what you mean?

By this standard, I am as much an expert as you are.

Well aside from me literally being an expert in the psychological underpinnings of how asymmetrical warfare leads to unique devotion among the groups with less direct access to force, yes, we're identical.

That's a fancy job description. You're a psychologist, right?

Wish my job description was better than: "Try to make kids less dumb." Maybe if I run it through Google Translate a few more times it'll come out more fancy.

Edit: Nope.

Edited, Feb 8th 2015 11:30pm by Mazra

Even so, the Zam apron will save your house-clothes from getting soiled.




Edited, Feb 9th 2015 2:30pm by Elinda

What gave it away?

For one, his pointing weapons at enemies would increase casualties, not reduce them.

And before that, weren't you a contractor shilling overpriced and possibly unneeded medical equipment to government funded hospitals? And before that, weren't you a semi-unemployed professional gambler? And before that, some vague comments about work where you claim to have been stabbed and/or shot at, but as far as any of us know this could just mean that you drove a taxi in a bad part of town or something. I'm honestly curious what professional background you possess that qualifies you as an "expert" in military history and tactics, specifically as they apply to asymmetrical warfare, that sets you apart from any other random person who's maybe studied this stuff a bit and talked to people about it a bit?

As far as I've been able to glean from your various postings here, you've never served in the military, but have worked in government, presumably in some kind of contractual or civil servant capacity. Now maybe in the land of the blind and low standards that is government work, you are king, but I'm not sure how that really makes you any more qualified to intelligently discuss topics like this than anyone else. Doubly so when your only real contribution to the discussion has been to dismiss the hanging of two terrorists with one of the more silly straw man correlations I've seen on this forum. For someone claiming to be an expert, you sure do fall back onto tired rhetoric quite consistently.


Ironically, having said that, you're actually correct about the fact that numbers of losses don't correlate to victory. So I suppose I have to give you that. But let's remember the source of the claim you were responding to.

And before that, weren't you a contractor shilling overpriced and possibly unneeded medical equipment to government funded hospitals? And before that, weren't you a semi-unemployed professional gambler?

I was, most recently, a consultant for a healthcare company. I was primarily a systems integration architect, taking them through a very large merger with another company. That was, in theory, going to be a 1 year gig, but they continued to acquire things and let me bill them at my daily rate for most of another 2 years.

Mostly that meant project management, but I also developed a probabilistic record linkage algorithm that I sold the patent rights for (which may or may not turn out to be valueless going forward because of some recent breakthroughs in that area, but hey, I got paid!) . I did some work for them on automated pattern recognition of digital imaging, along the lines of computationally highlighting likely masses on mammograms, but not actually exactly that. There is a fair amount of overlap in the math. I also wrote a lot of PL/SQL, a few custom APIs in C, and the occasional COBOL routine.

Prior to that, I was a fully unemployed poker player who played for a living, but it's probably important to note that I easily made more money doing that than consulting, but the hours aren't great if you have a family and don't hate them, so I went to a 9-5ish job instead. The combination of those two things made it possible for me to hang out with my kids and do dishes and stuff now while Nexa saves the world. I doubt I'll ever work again.

Edited, Feb 10th 2015 7:38pm by Smasharoo