If you could have asked Hitler one question just before he killed himself, what would you have said?

Do you hate your Mother?

Do you know where my time machine went?

Did you shave your pubes into a square little mustache too? If so, can I see?

I would ask his Swiss bank account number and password for which he stored his Jew gold.

Where did you hide the spear of destiny?

Where is the treasure?

I would have shot him in the head.

"Mind if I do the honor?"

Do you really believe all that crap?

I would have asked him where his secret documents were. The reason why he thought he could take over the world. I'm sure that info was mind blowing and than I would destroy it.

Who does your hair?

Was haben Sie gedacht, du dummer, dummer Mensch?

I'd love to just have a chat with him, see what kind of person he was. Hadn't he started WWII and commited such genocide, he might've gone down in history as one of the greatest men. Maybe not necessarily world history, but German history for sure. He did a lot for his country, but then he goes all coockoo and starts killing Jews, Gypsies, and other people.

Are you a loser???

WHY?

I'm not sure I even would have said anything. I would have had a yellow Star of David on my clothes, though.

I think cuckoo was part of the picture from the beginning.

I just skimmed his biography and you're right. For some reason I had this preconcieneved idea that he used to be a fairly decent person (well, as much as any politician can be). He did fix Germany's economy and bring it out of an incredible depression, but I just see that the first volume of Mein Kampf was published in 1925.

But I think the greatest mistake people make about Hitler is that they see him as the primary perperatrator against Jews. I always thought him as a reflection of his time. Anti-Semitism was widespread throughout Europe at that time, not only in Germany, and he acted on it. He didn't start the whole killing process out of blue.

I wouldn't ask him anything, I would just shoot him.

It's true, he absolutely maximized on serious antisemitism, coupled with growing German nationalism. But he came back from the trenches of WWI pretty well fudgeed up and nearly ready to take the rest of the world down with him. All he needed was the power. He was a totalitarian from the start, too.

Could you just sign this do not resuscitate order?

I still think he's a fascinating person (in the same way I'm fascinated by Robert Mugabe or Sadam Hussein). I'd love to just talk to him, see what's behind all that hatred and fanaticism.

Sure. If you could penetrate the crazy, he'd certainly be interesting!

Would it be ok if I shot you instead?

Well, I'm pretty certain that the crazy would not be immidiately apparent. If you'd meet him for the first time, he'd probably come off as a very nice guy, very charismatic.

Really? Nice? Charismatic I can see, but from all the pictures and footage of him that I've seen, I don't think he ever looked nice. I guess it's hard to tell. He might initially come off as a little more normal than he was, I suppose. And I'm sure it would depend on when you met him--at what stage in his life. If it were right before he was about to kill himself, then the crazy would likely be right out in the open.

What I always have in mind is this story of a journalist who met Saddam Hussein when he was in jail. The journalist (he was a Western guy, btw) recalled all these stories with Saddam and he claimed that Saddam acted extremely nice; in fact, he claimed, had he not known what is known about Saddam, he'd say Saddam was probably the nicest guy he's met. He'd joke and tell light hearted tales.

I also have Forest Whitaker's portrayal of Idi Amin in my mind. He was able to charm that boy, and while we, the spectators, could see right through him (mostly because we were familiar with the story and knew where movie was going), the boy was completely enchanted with Amin.

I think that all famous (or infamous, for that matter) leaders have to have that trait, otherwise they'd never get to be so powerful.

But yes, end-of-WWII, everything-is-lost Hitler would probably be anything but nice.

Why are you only committing suicide now?

Can you give me the name of your agent?

My mom had a picture of him bending over and petting a dog on the head. He looked very kind in that picture. It was truly an enigma.

Can I have your uniform and medals when you're dead?

"Can I just take a lock of hair from you? There might be a website called ebay and it might be worth sticking it on there..."

I imagine he was quite charismatic. There's no way he would have succeeded otherwise. I'm skeptical that he would often have seemed nice, given what else is known about his personality.

He loved that dog. Seriously.

Of course, that was the same dog he fed cyanide to..you know, to make sure it'd work on him.

Why did You kill the Jews? Why do you think there is an Arian race, when there is no evidence that they ever existent?
There is only 1 white race Caucasians. Why were you cruel to other Germans because they didnt have blond hair, when you, yourself dont have blond hair. I knew a lady whos dad joined the Nazi army, and abandoned his wife and daughter, because they had dark hair, My friend and her mom had to lived in bombed out buildings, and were forced to get food out of the trash, and they had to keep moving to different bombed out and abandoed buildings to avoid the Nazis. She met and married an American soldier, and moved to America.

'What were you thinking?' ?

Possibly 'How did you figure that some folks deserved life more than others?'. The basic question hopefully everyone thinks of.

Maybe 'What was the moment in life in which you loved most?'.

Just when the war was starting I read a bunch of Sadam speeches to be up on what was happening. He never mentioned the US except in passing as pertains to Israeli armamentation (and if you saw Israel fill the skies with solid bombs around 1980, you'd see why). His main concern was the river Iraq shares with Iran. That's mostly what his own wars were ever about. Mexico would probably have gone to war with us over exhausting the Colorado River supply if they thought they had half a chance. That kind of thing is as important to a country as an arm is to a person. I don't believe in killing people for any reasons, but his actions weren't too far off from what any modern nation leader might do in his position (as far as I know). Body doubles, and that sort of strange sh~t, well it's a different world out there.

You got any gold or treasure hidden away anywhere I can take care of for you?

"Abracadabra, you will be reborn as a Jew in the early 1900s!"

I am not too familiar with Saddam's history, I must admit. Mostly what I know is from what I heard on the TV and I've learnt to take everything I see on TV with a grain of salt. Someone's hero can be someone else's butcher at the same time.

Yeah, all the media ever had here were our excuses. Even the alternative media focused on what was happening here (the more corrupt side) and not much exposing their scene. Media is like that in general.

Our whole presidency seems to be a theatrical facade. On one hand I find afterward that my hero Clinton was responsible for a lot of stuff I didn't care for; On the other hand I find that even the dreaded Bush did things behind the scenes like prepare ocean law for offshore wind generation. Who would have guessed? The media blows up soap-opera style affairs while consequential news happens behind the scenes. We have several problems with media: It's packaged as entertainment, it's owned by the people we'd wish to scrutinize...

Identifying trustworthy sources isn't easy. Lengthy debates are what I find to be the best picture, so long as one side isn't faked (a trick used when media wants to convey a position, and sometimes, when they're really tricky (like NPR) done in reverse).

"Identifying trustworthy sources isn't easy."

Have you ever read "A Canticle for Leibowitz"? This is a science fiction novel which starts in the Dark Ages after a nuclear holocaust. One of the guiding lights in this new era is the Catholic Church and an abbey controlled by brothers of the Order of Leibowitz, whose mission is to preserve books from the past. Near the end of the novel, when humankind has regained and surpassed the knowledge of 20th century Man, the world is once again on the brink of nuclear war. The abbot in charge of the Order of Leibowitz is frantically trying to figure what he should do, scanning newspapers, listening to news on the radio. In frustration, he rails at the impossibility of discovering what the real truth is: "Over there, the news media says what the government wants them to say. Over here, with our much-vaunted free press, the media says what will least offend the public, which, coincidentally, is what the government wants them to say anyway, so where's the difference?"

I find what's good to do is follow majority of media of sources and if possible, check out foreign media sources, too. I read BBC which sometimes gives me a different perspective on what's going on in Canada.

"A Canticle for Leibowitz" - When I was 12. Terribly dry reading for a one punchline book which was evident half way through, but the concept was memorable. The seals of Solomon now stick with me as possible nanotech wiring diagrams for narrative archetypal energy.

We are entering an age where our technology is mostly lattices of electrons. If we were wiped out there wouldn't be much informative trace of us two millenia from now. The main indictators of who we were would be transformers and combustion engines.

Now that I think of it, I grew up in a time (original Star-Trek) in which a pocket communicator or pocket laser was sci-fi two centuries away. Voyager, far out as they got, had trouble staying five years ahead. Virtual technology hardly makes good cinema anyhow. A crystal dot on one's forehead hardly makes for a world of interesting props. BTW, there are ancient decriptions of such bindi as mind matter interfaces complete with nanotech software formulae. When I came up with a solar-thermal paraglider, mythology pointed to that being around before too (aka 'flying carpets'). Leibowitz isn't terribly preposterous as our current reality. The Hindu mythology claims that advanced societies have come and gone 50,000 times already. Considering what we've experienced in a mere 5000 years, from pottery to VR, that's not too outlandish. It either means that advanced societies had no durable artifacts, or intentionally wiped out their tracks, not unlike the scenario RisingRoad and I discussed in which we transcend physical matter except for a nano-phone, and just hang out overseeing the primitive mortals.

As you've probably noticed, there's no US perspective on Canada except Ren and Stimpy cartoons. Once a year there's mention of something a PM said, enough to remind us that you guys have provinces there. Sometimes the healthcare is mentioned too, and yet surprisingly we even bring up Europe in our discussion of models more than Canada. It's like you guys are a lost tribe of mythological lumber-jack elves who half speak French and have a couple gardened English castles.

That's unfair because there's a lot of going on here. Canada is one of those countries that nobody knows much about; they associate it with the US a lot, but that's about it. I know that the ban on seal hunt products in the EU has been a big story recently.

I find BBC has one of the best coverage of the world news as whole. And they're somewhat unbiased.

95% of what I know of Canada is from driving through there on my way to Alaska.

A total ban on seals isn't going to last long unless the population never recovers. What we need is annual adjustable sustainable lottery allotment the world can agree on, as well as a code of humane practices. Same applies to any natural resource unless it's farmed, and then the displaced resources need cleared as well.

> "A Canticle for Leibowitz" - When I was 12. Terribly dry reading for
> a one punchline book which was evident half way through, but the concept
> was memorable.

Dry reading, Hmm that didn't come through for me at all. I thought it was hilarious in parts, particularly some of the scenes with the Old Jew. That one scene where the abbot is returning the Poet's mutant goat to the Old Jew had me rolling on the floor, literally. Lazarus, the Old Jew offers him some murky water, and the priest is looking at it suspiciously, then decides to drink it as he doesn't want to insult an old friend he hasn't seen in a long while. As he finishes drinking, Lazarus says, "Not too particular, are you. I wouldn't touch it myself. It's for the goats."



> Now that I think of it, I grew up in a time (original Star-Trek) in
> which a pocket communicator or pocket laser was sci-fi two centuries
> away.

Heinlein was using portable telephones in his fiction off and on from the 1940s. I believe Space Cadet was the first novel of his to mention them. In one of his essya, he also points out that he himself was born in the horse and buggy era and lived to see men land on the Moon.


> It either means that advanced societies had no durable artifacts,
> or intentionally wiped out their tracks, not unlike the scenario RisingRoad
> and I discussed in which we transcend physical matter except for a
> nano-phone, and just hang out overseeing the primitive mortals.

Isaac Asimov's concept of the Immortals living in Eternity and guiding humanity toward an optimal destiny makes some use of energy-based civilizations on some timelines. In these civilizations, structures are made from planes and beams of energy rather than matter. I always thought that was an interesting idea, though we would need to make energy far cheaper and more readily available before this could become reality.

I was 12. Just because I technically understood all the book had to say doesn't mean doesn't mean things like absurd cynicism weren't lost on me. A kid might get the cause of a lovers quarrel or understand that possibly losing a job means losing the apartment, and still not see why it's something to worry about. Either way, it's still not sounding like my sort of humor, which is P.K. Dick, Vonnegut, and mostly Douglas Adams (hitch hikers guide to the galaxy).

I used slide rules and later punch-card computers. Transistor radios and color TVs were the big thing when I was a kid in the 60's. No digital anything, certainly not door locks, clocks, or blenders. Nothing in space, nothing microwave, nothing wireless except ham radios, no power windows or seat belts (turn signals were recent ('55 Bugs had pop out semaphores in the door post)), cash registers were electro-mechanical with price stickers on each grocery item, most phonographs were still mono and weighed 200 pounds, 5 and 10-speed bicycles with caliper brakes were the new big thing and wheels on skates and skateboards were made of clay or metal, phones of course were rotary and required an extra pair of wires for the ringer and duplexing, fuseboxes instead of circuit breakers, gas refridgerators (not even legal now), AA batteries were the new mini battery, every drug-store had a tube tester for fixing your TV or Hi-Fi, you had to have a good sense for light levels to set the aperature and shutter speed on your camera. Back then people even went to the hardware store to buy new brushes for their vaccuum and blender motors. Compared to today everyone had to be a jack of all trades back then, cook, sew, etc etc, without an internet as reference. Dick Tracy comics had two-way wrist TVs though. Horse buggy to the moon sounds more extreme, but just being born pre-digital is quite a leap. It wasn't until the late 60's that portability or miniaturization really even became a design concept, and was mostly limited to phonographs one could take to the beach with 12 D batteries. A typical complete home entertainment center probably weighed 800 pounds.

The sun offers tons of energy. A surrey canopy is enough to drive a moped if done efficiently. As ultrasound lattices improve, the energy to transport us will approach the ideal physical limits of countering gravity and accelerating. You dont need structure for any place no one is standing on at the moment.

> see why it's something to worry about. Either way, it's still not
> sounding like my sort of humor, which is P.K. Dick, Vonnegut, and
> mostly Douglas Adams (hitch hikers guide to the galaxy).
>

P.K. Dick I'm not familiar with. I've read some Vonnegut, specifically Slaughterhouse Five and the Sirens of Titan. Also, an essay (or was it actually a whole book?) documenting his descent into schizophrenia. I can't remember the title of that work. Vonnegut struck me as quintessentially weird. I liked Slaughterhouse Five much better than the Sirens of Titan, though his stuff struck me as more fantasy than straight Science fiction.

> I used slide rules and later punch-card computers.

Some years ago, I went on a quest to find a slide rule. They are amazingly hard to come by these days. One of the most frequent obstacles I encountered on this quest was the question, "What's that?" I finally found one and paid $25.00 for it. They used to be around 5 - 10 dollars. The guy I bought it from was wondering why I wanted it. I had to explain to him that I had a son and I wanted to teach him how to use it. Again, "why?" Well, the thing about slide rules is that you actually have to understand something about number theory to use the thing. I didn't want my son being entirely dependent on the answers from a pocket calculator without any notion of why the answer was correct.

> brakes were the new big thing and wheels on skates and skateboards
> were made of clay or metal, phones of course were rotary and required
> an extra pair of wires for the ringer and duplexing, fuseboxes instead
> of circuit breakers, gas refridgerators (not even legal now), AA batteries
> were the new mini battery, every drug-store had a tube tester for
> fixing your TV or Hi-Fi,

As I recall (around 1965 or so, just before we went to Puerto Rico) you couldn't even buy skateboards in any store. All of 'em were homemade from scrap boards and wheels from street skates. I remember my father making many a trip to the drugstore for a new tube for the television. Back then, you could actually accomplish something (sometimes) by giving the TV set a good whack on the side too.

> without an internet as reference.
> Dick Tracy comics had two-way wrist TVs though. Horse buggy to the
> moon sounds more extreme, but just being born pre-digital is quite
> a leap.

Yeah, I don't think the term internet had even been coined yet, but there was a beginning to it back then. Not that I heard about it then, but sometime around the mid-sixties or so, DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration was toying with the massive computers they had to work out a communications system that wouldn't be shut down with a few strategically placed bombs. And that was the very beginning of the Internet we know now.


> A typical complete
> home entertainment center probably weighed 800 pounds.
>

We didn't even know anyone then who had a "home entertainment system."


> The sun offers tons of energy. A surrey canopy is enough to drive
> a moped if done efficiently. As ultrasound lattices improve, the energy
> to transport us will approach the ideal physical limits of countering
> gravity and accelerating. You dont need structure for any place no
> one is standing on at the moment.

Sure, the sun provides limitless energy. Unfortunately, we're sitting here under this often cloudy thick atmosphere which kind of limits our access to it. Photovoltaic cells have come a long way now, but they are far from providing sufficient energy to construct a shelter from planes of force, or even a comfortable sofa from a cushy force field, which was the idea Asimov had about his "energy oriented civilizations."

> Some years ago, I went on a quest to find a slide rule. They are
> amazingly hard to come by these days. One of the most frequent obstacles
> I encountered on this quest was the question, "What's that?" I finally
> found one and paid $25.00 for it. They used to be around 5 - 10 dollars.

I recently started collecting slide rules and have found there's quite a brisk trade on eBay. I'm a bit astonished at what some people are willing to pay but if you're patient, you can also find models in decent condition in the $10-$20 range.

"I had to explain to him that I had a son and I wanted to teach him how to use it. Again, "why?"" - There's more than that too. Often we forget old conceptual streams that have new potential. In this case analog math might apply to optical computers and such.

"We didn't even know anyone then who had a "home entertainment system." " - Eight foot wide, three foot tall blonde oak with 15" woofers, a tuner, a turntable with a heavy metal ceramic-ceated arm shaped like a cobra, and a 24" TV in the center. Bigger than most couches these days and far heavier for something the equivalent of a flat-screen TV and an iPod.

I don't give photovoltaics much thought. That solar moped of mine will heat steam through a parabolic trough and crank the rear pedals of a tandem. ..much less efficiency loss, much cheaper. - Last nights idea has been to beam mid-west wind/solar to the coasts via lasers through vacuum tubes where they hit thermal-fluid baffle plates going to boiler-plate heat exchangers to conventional (coal/nuclear) steam power-plants. One obvious use of midwest green energy is transcontinental shipping, electric trucks and trains. Relocating industries like aluminum, glass, and steel off the coasts might not be a bad idea either. Our coastal steam power-plants should be doubling as sea/waste-water distillation plants.

A few years ago I was thinking to seek out slide-rules on eBay too.

> "We didn't even know anyone then who had a "home entertainment system."
> " - Eight foot wide, three foot tall blonde oak with 15" woofers,
> a tuner, a turntable with a heavy metal ceramic-ceated arm shaped
> like a cobra, and a 24" TV in the center.

Ah, no still didn't know anyone who had one of those. We knew a few people who had "console stereos" though. A piece of furniture nearly the size you describe, which had a stereo turntable and usually an AM/FM radio. No TV though. Later on, in the early and mid-seventies, they included an 8-track tape deck. I never understood the advantage of those bulky 8-track tapes over the cassette tapes...

> I recently started collecting slide rules and have found there's quite
> a brisk trade on eBay. I'm a bit astonished at what some people are
> willing to pay but if you're patient, you can also find models in
> decent condition in the $10-$20 range.



Thanks, I'll look into it. Although I already have one. It might be fun to track down a circular slide rule though.

"I never understood the advantage of those bulky 8-track tapes over the cassette tapes... " - Over the cassettes? I'm pretty sure cassettes came later. Only one advantage, not having to flip over the tape. The ka-chunk which happened between switching tracks was it's downfall. Possibly 8-tracks used up older stock. 8-tracks surely got eaten by tape players less though. I was good at tape splicing. Actually I have a huge cassette (my old archives) and vinyl (recently collected) collection still. The next generation which was too pricey to really catch on was the DAT drive. You could buy the A]/D converter separately and digitally record your music on VHS, 8-track, or reel-to-reel if you wanted, and have the non-lossy copying permanence. Probably it failed because the music recording industry wouldn't go along with it. They were dead set against anyone ever making a stereo which had both direct DAT recording and CD with a digital output. With computers those fears of reproducible digital fidelity came true anyhow and they're still trying to figure out what to do about that. If it were just about the technology, the late 90's would have been all digital cassette walkmans, with direct CD to DAT-cassette at home for burning mix tapes. Actually we managed to skip over a whole generation of CD tech anyhow, probably for the same reasons. Back in '93 when CD's were new here Japan was listening to recordable micro-CDs.

The way it's going now you'll be able to buy everything ever recorded on a single flash drive soon. That would be one one grueling Time-Life advertisement to make it through. "But wait, there's more! You get the original 1907 Blue Moon sonata for piccolo and accordeon, Dolly Parton singing in her shower to her cat, every rough take of every Argentinian garage punk band, Italian monks tuning their wine goblets, every birthday party ever recorded, every DJ dub mix, SETI project space noise,... - all for four low monthly payments of $16.99. Do you remember the Captain and Tennille? How about Leonard Nemoy singing 'Bilbo', and perhaps this.. Yes, that's YOU walking home from school after fifth grade choir practice!"

The scary thing is that it really is this way now, with supercomputers at Iron Mountain and Pine Ridge parsing every word that passes through wires.

> "I never understood the advantage of those bulky 8-track tapes over
> the cassette tapes... " - Over the cassettes? I'm pretty sure cassettes
> came later.

If they did, I am surely remembering things backwards. But no, the cassettes were first, at least commercially. I had a cassette recorder when I was 13 in 1970. I don't recall ever seeing or hearing about an 8-track deck until 1974. They may have come out earlier, but that's when I remember the first one I had seen.


> The scary thing is that it really is this way now, with supercomputers
> at Iron Mountain and Pine Ridge parsing every word that passes through
> wires.


Yeah, well I just don't worry about it much. I just try to keep quiet about current events in my life if I don't Big Brother to know what I'm up to this week.

> Thanks, I'll look into it. Although I already have one. It might
> be fun to track down a circular slide rule though.

They're less common and so far have sold for more money than I was willing to pay.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8-track_tape

Cassette 1963
8-track 1965

They were made popular as car players (I can hardly imagine a 70's van or Cadillac without them), but phased out as cassettes increased in fidelity.

The early 70's market for cassettes as I recall was mostly as voice lecture recorders or low-fidelity children's audio. My uncle was a recording tape device engineer. He was proud in '87 of quadrupling the resolution of recording heads in one year.

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8-track_tape
>
> Cassette 1963
> 8-track 1965
>


Okay. I doesn't change the fact that I never saw or even heard of 8-tracks before 1974 though.

Who said I think he killed himself?

> Who said I think he killed himself?

??

From wiki: "In 2009, analysis of the DNA and bone structure of a skull fragment retained by SMERSH, and linked to Hitler, belonged to a woman between the ages of 20 and 40."

I'm just being difficult, anyway.

> From wiki: "In 2009, analysis of the DNA and bone structure of a skull
> fragment retained by SMERSH, and linked to Hitler, belonged to a woman
> between the ages of 20 and 40."
>
> I'm just being difficult, anyway.

Still completely baffled

At least it didn't turn out to be a german shepard skull.

Who is your barber?