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Ronald Pottol's picture

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  • Ronald Pottol

Ronald Pottol

1 month ago

in why music matters. on amandapalmer.net
POW camps are not like concentration camps. POWs had everything she said they didn't, the Red Cross inspected them, granted, by the end of the war the food situation in Germany was bad, and they lost weight, but I've never read of any mistreatment of western POWs German camps. How the Germans treated the Russian POWs were a very different matter.

They had shows, commerce, mail from home, etc.
1 reply
Jon Hanna's picture
Jon Hanna POW camps were certainly very different to concentration camps, and those holding POWs of some nationalities where different to those holding others (Russians were treated worse than Westerners as you say, the same goes for the Poles). For that matter concentration camps differed considerably, from each other and at different periods during the war - a concentration camp is strictly just a place where a large number of civilians are held (the Manzanar in California was a concentration camp where the Americans held Japanese and Japanese America civilians) that doesn't entail mistreatment. Of course, it is hard today to hear the word and not immediately think of the horrors of the German concentration camps. Those camps like Auschwitz 2 where worse again and should more properly be called death camps or extermination camps, as mass murder was more actively pursued there.

These comparisons in themselves become unspeakable though. We can say Auschwitz 2 was worse than Auschwitz 1 was worse than Stalag Luft IV (a POW camp where American, British and Canadian POWs where held where conditions where initially relatively good but they deteriorated to the level of atrocity, including the infamous "death march" when Germany prepared to retreat from the area). At the same time, the suffering of some in the "better" camps was so great that comparisons can never really get at the truth.

That Messiaen was in relatively good conditions was a prerequisite of his being able to compose and perform at all, but this "relatively good" was not necessarily even as good as International Law demands a POW camp be. It is true also as the piece says that "even from the concentration camps we have poetry, we have music, we have visual art". We also have work created afterwards by survivors, Nussbaum's paintings created when he was in hiding. Half a century later, one thing this still manages to do is to pass by the mind-reeling algebra of comparing horrors to the fact that each of those suffering, no matter how great or lesser it may be in comparison, was a human, housing the creative impulse that is in all of us whether or not we have the particular talents and relative fortune needed to leave a legacy like Messiaen's.

6 months ago

in The Answer is Regime Change on Fractals of Change
I still think they should have let Hamas get bogged down in governing when they won two years ago, instead of handing them excuses for how things are.

6 months ago

in LG announces laptop display designed for outdoor use on Liliputing
I expect that would be the tech from PixelQi, the same people (and tech) who did the One Laptop Per Child XO's display, which does all those things.

http://pixelqi.com/

9 months ago

in Announcing the new and improved Liliputer Database on Liliputing
Pixels? I'd really like to know how many pixels the displays have, I'm waiting for the HP Mininote to get the Nano just so I have a decent CPU and more than 1024x600.
1 reply
Brad Linder's picture
Brad Linder Click on any product name and you'll see a screen with more information
including the pixel resolution.

1 year ago

in Eee PC 900 to get Atom processor in June? on Liliputing
I believe the Atom can run two types of external buses, for just that reason.

I said I'd get one when I could get a 1024x600 screen, but that was assuming I could not get 64 bit (yes, I have software that doesn't need speed but would be much better if I could run the newer 64 bit version) and hyper threaded (close enough to dual core, and given the design of the Atom, a big win, unlike the P4).
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