pluto9

How else should one interpret this sentence other than, "I've already corrected you on this, so you should know better"?

> We've been through this argument, recently, and I'm a little disappointed that you're framing this observation as if that discussion hadn't occurred already.

Do you doubt that even one does? Because if one does, it gives them such a ludicrous advantage that the others can't even be competitive if they don't.

Good thing all my games are on PC ;)

I think people give too much credit to the government for being a rational and calculating actor. I don't find it difficult to believe that they attempted a "men who stare at goats"-style program. They are absolutely not above throwing a billion dollars worth of shit at the wall just to see what sticks. These are the same people who thought they could implant cats with listening equipment and train them to eavesdrop on Soviet officials, which went about as well as you'd expect.

For what purpose? Do you have any evidence of this?

That's how all of physics is constructed. Even things you may think are obvious, like Newton's 3 laws of motion, are only accepted because they agree with our measurements. How else should we determine their validity?

> There are literally infinite ways to create equations that satisfy measurements.

There really aren't. You seem to be thinking of something like in the movie The Number 23. But we're talking about equations, not numbers. Take Newton's Second Law (f = m • a). What equation can you write that expresses that relationship that can't be simplified to f = m • a?

Let me save everybody a click. From their website:

> Suncell® directly generates electricity from reaction of hydrogen to dark matter using water freely available in the humidity in the air.

Lol

I don't doubt that you've seen examples of that, but I've seen plenty that go the other way. Heavily downvoted comments that are only slightly defensive of him, and others that rise to the top for bashing him when it isn't even relevant to the conversation. It really depends on the thread. Different topics attract different crowds.

There is little difference in maturity between a 17 year old and an 18 year old, and I would not consider either a child. And 17 year olds cannot be deployed.

But since we're being legalistic, yes, we signed the convention. But we did not ratify it. It is not legally binding on us.

I enlisted right out of high school. Did my 4 years and got out.

I think it made me more mature, or at least less naive about certain things...eventually. The experiences were valuable but it took a long time for me to fully reflect on them and extract that value. I was 22 when I got out, barely past being a teenager.

Money wasn't a factor for me. I had 96% of my tuition to a good engineering school paid for by scholarships, which I gave up to enlist. My reasons were a combination of things. I had a lot of friends who enlisted and I felt bad that they were risking their lives and I wasn't. I was also sick of school and saw war as an adventurous alternative, and a way to prove myself as a man. And I genuinely believed in the mission at the time.

I think the influence of money on soldiers going into actual combat is overstated. It's true that there are a lot of people who enlist for a paycheck, vocational training, or as a way to pay for college. But you get to choose your job. I was in the infantry, and pretty much everyone I knew legitimately wanted to fight, which is the only reason to join the infantry. If you're after job security or education benefits, you can be a clerk or a mechanic or a thousand other things that will generally keep you away from enemy fire. There's an idea floating around that the government keeps people poor so it'll have an endless supply of desperate peasants to feed into the meat grinder, but that doesn't hold up in my experience.

Unfortunately I can't find it now. I was looking for it earlier because I wanted to reread it myself. Wish I'd bookmarked it at the time. Sorry about that.

I'm talking about the men in this article. Both of them were career military officers. It's fair to say that that was their choice.

Certainly there's propaganda that goes into recruiting naive young people in the US, but it's quite a stretch to equate that with child soldiers. I chose to enlist and so did everyone I served with. The vast majority of us do not regret it or feel that we were conned.