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There is an old novella from the 1930s called Lest Darkness Fall that is probably one of the first alternative Roman history science fiction stories. If you're interested in this thread, you would probably be interested in this story. This involves only one individual mysteriously transported back in time. The protagonist of "Lest Darkness Fall" finds himself in Italy during late antiquity after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Justinian (Emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire) is trying to reconquer and reestablish the Western Roman Empire and the protagonist gets himself involved with the Lombards fighting against the Byzantines. I always thought that this story would make a great movie. However, the time setting would probably have to be changed since few people are familiar with the history after the fall of the Roman Empire. Most of what people know about the Roman Empire is from "Gladiator."

Here is an old FR thread from a couple years ago on the battle: Towton, the bloodbath that changed the course of English history

Another good book about what a NATO-Warsaw Pact conflict would have looked liked is “Team Yankee” by Harold Coyle. I thought it was a great read at the time. However, with the fall of the Soviet bloc, I just cannot get into those type of books anymore.

The article on the Yahoo webpage states that the bidding for the rights to this video, as a potential future movie, went up to $30 million. I have a hard time believing the bidding would be this high.

Not to take anything away from the video— it is amazingly well done for such a low budget production. The special effects would be amazing at 10 times the stated cost, i.e. $3000.

However, the concept is not exactly new. Alien life forms/robots coming to earth and destroying a city has been done in “War of the Worlds,” “District 9,” “Cloverfield,” and “Transformers.” Why would someone bid so much for concept that has been done repeatedly?

Deaconess Medical Center in Spokane was purchased by Community Health Associates in Tennessee in summer of 2008. Community Health Associates is a private, for profit medical care system. Sacred Heart Medical Center in Spokane and Holy Family Medical Center in North Spokane are part of the Providence Healthcare network.

My perspective comes from being a physician on the active medical staff of all 4 hospitals in Spokane. My medical group is independent of any hospital.

I cannot comment upon what type of person Dr. Agwunobi is. I have never met him. His cuts are unpopular but unfortunately I think are necessary. The amount of charity/uncompensated care has increased substantially in the current economic environment. The situation is additionally exacerbated by Deaconess changing from nonprofit to for-profit status. Deaconess is slowly carving off money-losing services, such as trauma, leaving Sacred Heart the entire burden of providing these services.

In my opinion, this blog rant on Dr. Agwunobi seems unjust. The financial picture for hospitals will become far more bleak in the next 10 years when Medicare runs out of money. Sacred Heart Medical Center may have a lot of money now but that does not mean they should not conserve their financial resources for the future. Imagine what the financial situation of California would have been had they been more financially prudent starting 10 years ago.

I worked at the Seattle PI, in the circulation department when I was a teenager in the late 1970's. Back then, Seattle was liberal, but middle of the road. The P.I. was of the same temperament. It was not such a liberal fascist rag as it is now. Given what the P.I. has become, I take pleasure in their demise. However, after seeing pictures of the PI globe, part of me is sad to see it go.

I think they are planning to drag out the seating of Burris so that he is officially not a senator when they hopefully (from their perspective) get rid of Blago.

From the Seattle Times this AM:

Senate officials involved in the tangle of legal and logistical planning said Friday that a Democrat will object to Burris being sworn with the rest of his class and will propose that his credentials be reviewed by the Rules Committee. That would give Burris the status of a senator-elect

--------snip-------------

Senate Democrats are slow-walking Burris' appointment because they hope Blagojevich will be removed from office before the Rules Committee completes its investigation.

WA state ping

To get an idea about the sacrifice our Merchant Marines paid during the early months of WWII, read a brief synopsis of Operation Drumbeat. This describes German U boat offensive off the Atlantic Coast in the early months after US entry into the war. There is a good Wikidpedia entry as well. Finally, if you want to read an excellent book on the subject, one is available from Amazon

From my reading on the subject, the American Navy's incompetence in dealing with the U boats made the losses far worse, since they did not adopt the even minimum protective measures, such as blackouts of coastal cities and use of convoys, that the British recommended. Admiral Kimmel was cashiered after Pearl Harbor. However, the loss of life and merchant ships (609) was greater than from Pearl Harbor. Nonetheless, no officers careers suffered from this monumental failure by the US Navy

Chris Fowler, if he wanted to see why there are not more black coaches, should check the ESPN archive on Tryone Willingham, football coach at University of Washington head football coach. His first three years of coaching lead to probably the worse cumulative W/L percentage in their entire history. There was talk in the local Seattle papers last season to fire him. However, local black community groups pressured University of Washington to keep him for another year. The reward for this patience: UW has a 0 and 8 W/L record so far.

I am not implying that race has anything to with coaching abilities. However, you should be able to fire your incompetent coaches regardless of race. Notre Dame fired Willingham in 2005 and are still labeled as racist, even though he proved to be utterly incompetent. If college presidents have to worry about race card when the want to fire a coach, they may decide not hire them in the first place

The Spokane newspaper (Spokesman Review) publishd a graphic description of a video filmed by Duncan, of him torturing the nine year old boy. If I were juror viewing that, I would have wanted to beat him to death with any weapon I could have found in the courtroom.

On a side note, I thought the level of disturbingly graphic detail provided by the Spokesman Review (separate article, print-subscription based only) of the video was in extremely poor taste. I would have compared it to a cheap supermarket tabloid except they have demonstrated more journalistic integrity than the rest of the press

I think I would hurl if I followed the hyperlink and read the rest of the article. This makes the Der Spiegel Obama fluff piece look like it was written by George Will

Heath Ledger was incredible. I thought all this talk about Oscar performance was hype because of his demise but he was fantastic. Its hard to believe it was the same guy from “A Knight’s Tale.” His characterization of the Joker had this scary, evil, foreboding presence—Kind of like Anthony Hopkins’ Hannibal Lechter in the original Silence of the Lambs

While there is not as blatant as a set up for a sequel as happened at the end of "Batman Begins," there are plenty of places for them to go with a sequel. In a sequel, Batman could redeem himself in the eyes of the public for the alleged acts that he voluntarily took the blame for at the end of the Dark Knight.

One thing I don't understand about the movie (without giving any plot details away) is why did they go through that whole sequence about the district attorney in the last third of the movie? It seemed like the last 40 minutes of the movie contained a subplot to set the D.A. character up for the next movie, but obviously not.

Wisnton Churchill June 4, 1940: ...... we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender........

Barack Obama July 2008: I'll do what I can to stop Iran

Sorry for the double post

“LOL” shouldn’t that be ROR???????????????

“LOL” shouldn’t that be ROR???????????????

One more link: This is a Video of Torpedo Squadron 8 posted on Youtube. All members of Torpedo Squadron 8 who flew from the Hornet on that day perished, except for Ensign George Gay. The movie was orginally a memorial for their families. At about the three minute mark shows the Douglas TBD Devastators taking off from the Hornet on June 4, 1942 and was the last time the planes were seen

Thank you for starting this thread. For some additional Midway comments and pictures here is a link to a Midway thread from few years ago. Self disclosure (and self vanity): It was my thread.