True or False?

cc

cc

Accorfing to Zephabiah 25:1 that was bever to b edusclosed or even looked into--what are ya doing trying to cause dissension?

just kiddinjg --don't know.Probably if you esided in jaopan, you'd say it was teh Americans and if AMerica, you sayt eh Japaese.

It usually causes teo to haevve a fight.

Read the Rising Sun by Toland and it will all be explained. This is written from the viewpoint of Japan with respect for the US point of view, my kind of book.

Carol

domenic Pappalardo wrote:

How many things are accepted as truth, that are bogus?

I'll start it.

Question: Who believes Japan started the war between America and Japan?

Actually, the US stopped selling oil to Japan before the Pearl Harbor attack. This is likely one of the main reasons Japan attacked the US.

Domenic,

That just isn't the issue.

I look on everything as interesting, as part of knowledge, as valuable. I look on research as a journey, not a destination. I acknowledge that I will never get to the end of a research project, that I only add more questions. I add statements to my Cuba Missile book all the time, not because I'm making corrections, but I'm adding snippets of interesting info. It is all interesting info, but with religion trying to come to the truth depends on which window you are looking through.

And, as I've found in my writing, there can be too much info. Writing history is winnowing down information to that which is important, important so the reader will think and ponder and wonder.

Carol

Some things people think are true that are not:

-time moves at the same speed for all observers
-the angles of a triangle always equal 180 degrees
-water always boiles at 212F (100C)
-air is mostly oxygen
-the sun will last forever
-two lines drawn perpendicular to a third line will never intersect
-ice is always slipery
-all printed books are made of paper
-weight and mass are the same thing
-speed and velocity are the same thing

cc

And it had something to do with Japan being an island nation in need of resources and the US being a huge nation with many resources.

And now we are friends.

Carol

P. Gordon,

Good points to ponder.

Carol

cc

P. Gordon Kennedy wrote:

Some things people think are true that are not:

-time moves at the same speed for all observers
-the angles of a triangle always equal 180 degrees
-water always boiles at 212F (100C)
-air is mostly oxygen
-the sun will last forever
-two lines drawn perpendicular to a third line will never intersect
-ice is always slipery
-all printed books are made of paper
-weight and mass are the same thing
-speed and velocity are the same thing

When do the angles of a triangle not equal 180? When do two parallel lines intersect?

As for the rest, don't you mean some people think they're always true? And if something is mostly or usually true, what does it matter that some people think it's always true? If the sun will burn out in four billion years, isn't that basically the same as lasting forever? Re weight and mass, someone might think they're the same if they haven't taken a physics class. Otherwise, using them interchangeably is no different than the mis-use of many other words.

When is ice not slippery? When it's water? What are the .00001 printed books not paper made of?

Just wondering...

The angles of a triangle do not equal 180 degrees if it is drawn on the surface of a sphere. You could have a 90 degree angle at the pole and two 90 degree angles at the equator, thus a triangle with 270 degrees for example. Two lines perpendicular to the equator of a sphere will intersect at the sphere's pole if drawn on its surface. Four billion years is a very long ways off from infinity (its infinitely short of infinity). Ice is not slippery if it is extremely cold. It is the layer of melted water on the surface of the ice that acts as a lubercant and makes it slippery. If it is cold enough, there will be no melted water on the surface of the ice and thus it will not be slippery. Books can be printed on parchment, cloth materials, sheets of wood, sheets of plastic, or any number of other materials.

Ok, Gordon, but all this is kind of disingenous, as it brings in factors that most folks don't experience. If they think ice is always slippery, it's because most ice isn't cold enough in a habitable climate to NOT be slippery. Same with books -I don't see any printed on cloth or calfskin at Barnes and Noble. BTW, paper is derived from wood, so you could technically call all books "wood" if you want to go there. Re 4 billion being far from infinity -for a human with an 80 year lifespan, 4 billion years IS infinity.

Bringing in a sphere when discussing a triangle or parallel lines is sneaky. I didn't quite follow what you said, but most folks (including myself) think of a triangle as a two-dimensional surface, with two-dimensional rules applying to it.

cc

Marie,

It is always complicated and we always try to make it simple.

It just always makes me think about how we need to teach history.

Maybe the answer is at the beginning of a semester, have each student take a research project and work on it all semester. When they discover all the complexities of a certain topic, they'll figure out that is the way it is with all topics. In the last few years it has certainly worked for me.

What I have learned, while trying to become an historian, is that everything is complicated and the truth is allusive and wait ten years and we'll know that everything we learned in the first place has other ramifications.

I love discussions like this. I just don't like looking for answers that can't be found, or blaming.

Carol

Our daughter's first major was History. Then a Master's in Secondary Education, then another Master's in Creative Writing.

Now, heaven help us all, she's after a doctorate in Education.

All of this from a kid we didn't thnk would make it through High School.

If the purpose of this thread is to say the Japanese were innocent of all wrong doing, consider their behavior in China. It was not their intention to turn China into a world power, but in the long run they did just that.

The Japanese invaded Manchuria in 1931. That is as in A MILITARY INVASION, they didn't lease the place...LOL. They invaded the whole of China in 1937 in a bloody frenzy.

Who were these gallant American officers attacking Japanese installations in 1939? Certainly not the Flying Tigers since they didn't exist in 1939. Plus, the so-called Flying Tiger pilots were required to resign their military commissions, they weren't on leave.

It was in America's strategic interest to stop the expansion of the Japanese. So we did what we could but we did not conduct a sneak attack on the country. The Japanese started the war and we finished it. The Japanese would have one believe that we started the war and they won it. It just isn't true. Oh yeah, and the Japanese never committed a single atrocity. Right?

If you claim the Americans started the war it is with the same logic that the British started our Civil War. You know if those early British slave traders hadn't brought slaves to the colonies that war would not have happened. So it is their fault!

I love the Japanese long-term plans. When they don't work they just keep plugging away at them. The Japanese are restricted to a small military force for home protection, by our treaty, so they can continue to plan attacks on California for the next 1,000 years if it amuses them.

Then there is the problem that if the U.S. leaves Japan they would be the weakest country in the area. They would probably become a providence of China or North Korea in quick order.

If we and England had just left the Germans and Japanese alone there wouldn't have been a WWII. So I see our hands are not clean but then I didn't have to learn Japanese nor German language skills...LOL

cc

Sounds like chaos theory to me. One small event in one part of the world can have catastrophic effect on the opposite side of the world. So the physicists tell us.

Quote :

The flapping of a single butterfly's wing today produces a tiny change
in the state of the atmosphere. Over a period of time, what the
atmosphere actually does diverges from what it would have done. So, in
a month's time, a tornado that would have devastated the Indonesian
coast doesn't happen. Or maybe one that wasn't going to happen, does.
(Ian Stewart, Does God Play Dice? The Mathematics of Chaos, pg. 141)

http://www.imho.com/grae/chaos/chaos.html

It is true that winners write the history books. Much of what we learn in our high school history classes is based on that concept. In college, especially in upper level courses, what we learn sometimes becomes more objective. I took a course called History between the Wars (WWI & WWII). I remember learning that Cordell Hull had been setting policies which were detrimental to Japan's trade and economic status. By the time of Pearl Harbor, the Japanese leaders felt they had been pushed as far as they could be pushed.

That's not to say they were innocent of wrongdoing. As Carol wrote above, there are no easy answers to these complex questions. Japan was an imperialist state. The government was intent on expansion, and was not about to listen to Hull's messages concerning open world trade.

Discussions like this one can be good if they lead to broader perspectives. Sometimes they fizzle into either/or stands that don't ever get anywhere. If a new, stable order is to come out of chaos, we need to recognize that there are at least two sides.

Ann

LC wrote:

Ok, Gordon, but all this is kind of disingenous, as it brings in factors that most folks don't experience. If they think ice is always slippery, it's because most ice isn't cold enough in a habitable climate to NOT be slippery. Same with books -I don't see any printed on cloth or calfskin at Barnes and Noble. BTW, paper is derived from wood, so you could technically call all books "wood" if you want to go there. Re 4 billion being far from infinity -for a human with an 80 year lifespan, 4 billion years IS infinity.

Bringing in a sphere when discussing a triangle or parallel lines is sneaky. I didn't quite follow what you said, but most folks (including myself) think of a triangle as a two-dimensional surface, with two-dimensional rules applying to it.

Four billion years is a very long time, but it does not even begin to approach infinity. Most books are printed on paper, true. However, I've seen books printed on parchment, which is not derrived from wood like conventional paper. The surface of a sphere is a two dimentional surface, only it's wraped around a third dimention. If its surface were three dimentional, it would be a hypersphere (a four dimentional sphere).

I don't think they were innocent either Marie.

I don't think anyone does.

Carol

Phil wrote:

If you claim the Americans started the war it is with the same logic that the British started our Civil War. You know if those early British slave traders hadn't brought slaves to the colonies that war would not have happened. So it is their fault!

I'll cherry pick something to comment on, as I'd rather talk about this than about Japan.

Phil, your surmise that the War of Northern Agression was over slavery is wrong. The war would have happened regardless of whether or not slaves were brought here. It was a war over states rights, and the fact is that at that time in our history the states had the right to secede if they wished to. It was Lincoln and some others who decided that the southern states could not leave the Union, and in the beginning were more than willing to allow slavery to go on as it was. There were slaves in the north as well as in the south, and it wasn't until the abolitionists came into the picture that Lincoln started talking about freeing the slaves. He'd made some comments before that to the effect that it might be best to free them, but at the start of the war he also said that if it would preserve the union, then the south could keep her slaves.

Slavery was doomed to come to an end anyway, and it would not have lasted long even if the south had won the war. It had become too expensive to keep them, and there was already talk about freeing them before it was made into a war issue.