He’s at it again. Joint Strike fighters still in limbo - Aussies threaten to withdraw - China hones stealth aircraft - Great Debates - Straight Dope Message Board
I thought Australians were supposed to spend their time wrestling crocodiles and disparaging the size of people’s knives. Sablicious apparently spends all of his time hiding under his bed with a laptop complaining that those asshole Americans aren’t protecting him well enough.
A bit off topic but it seems to me he just falls into the long line of posters who are into the whole masturbatory “my big brother can beat-up your big brother.” Which is juvenile enough without taking into consideration that in any hypothetical WW-III there won’t be any winners.
[QUOTE=Albert Einstein]
I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
[/quote]
Einstein’s quote sounds profound (if he is indeed the source of it) but upon further scrutiny, it doesn’t hold up.
First of all, he does know what weapons World War III will be fought with: nuclear. If he didn’t know, then he wouldn’t make the assumption that the war would destroy civilization to the point of sticks and stones.
Secondly, and more importantly, no, World War IV would not be fought with sticks and stones. Because a World War - i.e. multiple world powers fighting each other on multiple fronts - necessarily requires human civilization to be advanced enough that different countries across the world know of each other’s existence, are capable of physically reaching each other, and have political reasons sufficient for doing so. These circumstances are simply not possible in a world of “sticks and stones,” i.e. post-apocalyptic primitivism.
Short version: a true “World War” cannot be fought with sticks and stones, because it requires a modern era.
Jesus, Argent, way to over analyze the joke.
That quote was not intended as a joke. It’s clearly intended to make people think, or else Einstein wouldn’t have said it. But when I think about it, all I can think about is how the quote doesn’t make logical sense.
And it doesn’t even rhyme! What’s funny about that? He probably thought it was more quotable than “The next world war will erase humanity from the Earth, and those who finally emerge from the rubble will fight with sticks and stones”. It just didn’t flow right. Those physicists are very touchy about comedic timing.
But he didn’t coin the joke anyway as it turns out. It is credited to an unnamed soldier in the Bikini islands where the atom bomb was tested. (according to
[Quote investigator]
(The Futuristic Weapons of WW3 Are Unknown, But WW4 Will Be Fought With Stones and Spears – Quote Investigator®)) and Einstein repeated it a year or two later in an interview. (“Einstein at 70,” with Alfred Werner, Liberal Judaism (April–May 1949). Einstein Archives 30-1104)
Speaking of logic.
It’s not a “funny ha-ha” joke. It’s a witty way of pointing out that the progress of science, and the destructive ability of the weapons furnished thereby, has passed the point where we can have a global conflict that will not effectively destroy civilization. It’s not meant to be a literal prediction of the future. It’s not meant to convey the idea that a global war will actually be carried out with sticks and stones, it’s meant to communicate that the destruction caused by the war will be so total that that will be the furthest extent of our species ability to wage war.
And, hell, while I’m at it: the first part? He’s referencing the fact that weapons technology regularly progress to more and more powerful weapons. If we survive the nuclear era, it simply means that we will have progressed to newer, and even more destructive weapons, the nature of which he cannot predict, beyond the observation that they will be even more destructive than the nuclear weapons of his age.
Is that supposed to represent the “excellent” outcome of your trolling attempt? I’m open to other interpretations, but that’s the one that first comes to mind.
Just in case anyone was hanging on my opinion, I find Sablicious’ arguments concerning Chinese miilitary programs to be…unconvincing. Perhaps if he restates his theme one more time, then I’ll be convinced. One can only hope.
I almost did myself an injury laughing so much over his “tomayto, tomahto” (however he spelled it) comment when he was corrected on the surname of the ruling family in North Korea. By the way, wasn’t there another poster who thought the ruling family of North Korea was “the Il family”?
I’m surprised I even missed the moronic postings of Sablicious in GD. After all, I do live in Busan and how ready to go to war North Korea is at any moment isn’t just an abstract topic in these parts. For example, from yesterday’s Korea Times, there is this story:
When reading the story, remember that the reporter’s not a native English speaker so one of the pronouns is used when no pronoun shold be used there. The outfit in Seoul is not the one with the destructive mission. It’s the NK outfit, rather.
What’s with the rash of people who (a) don’t live here and (b) have absolutely no clue what it’s like over here postulating asinine actions? This is the 2nd time in the last hour I’ve seen it (once on another board and now this).
Park you brain and thank Miller – because I’d be going all nuclear on you ass. Though a stick might do. 
Don’t forget Israel!
And yet he was, in many respects wrong about that. The general trend in weaponry has been to focus the power to avoid collateral damage. Rather than carpet bombing, we now aim for a specific building (if not a specific window in a specific building).
Sablicious has been banned. I don’t think anyone is going to miss him.
He was suspended for a month, unless there have been further developments since that announcement.
There have been. Sablicious will not be returning to the SDMB.
Since he’s not around any more, I’m going to close this thread.