From: Michael S. Lorrey (retroman@together.net)
Date: Thu Dec 24 1998 - 13:40:26 MST
Spike Jones wrote:
> Michael S. Lorrey wrote:
>
> > It depends on what you call winning. In our own Revolutionary War, we lost every
> > major battle save two: Bennington and the last one, if you only go by such bean...
> >
> > I don't think I even need to mention the Vietnamese's earlier experience at Dien
> > Bien Phu, do I? Mike Lorrey
>
> yes if you dont mind, mike. i am historically challenged, this being deemed
> not important to teach when i had my state sponsored "schooling". {8-[
> my stepfather did four tours in nam, seldom speaks of it. had an uncle
> killed there but didnt even know it until a couple years after he got home
> and found himself full of cancer. {8-[ what happened at dien bien phu?
> spike
The French garrissoned up in a fort within a supposedly unpassable no mans land in the
bottom of the valley. The Vietnamese, with cannon borrowed from the Chinese and stolen
from the French's own reserves, dismantled the cannon and brought them in and
reassembled them on site and proceeded to bombard the French, which was thought to be
impossible. Genius is almost as likely in a stone age society as any other. Since most
military technology, for practicality and savings, is made so a high school dropout can
operate it with minimal instruction, I would expect that similar thinking would go into
any alien technology as well, so it shouldn't be too hard to steal and use. Reproducing
it may take a bit more work, but half of science and engineering is simply knowing if
something is possible or not.
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