Intergalactic Summit

yes it is. The proof I offer is that according to my interpretation, the "not-Noir" scenario is the more simple and therefore more probable. I have nothing further. If that's not sufficient to persuade you, and you're unable to provide an argument which persuades me, then we're doomed to go in circles.

I do pride myself on adhering to standards of rational thought, however. I wouldn't hold this opinion without good reasons.

Oh, I never questioned your rationality. You're someone I quite admire for that.

So what explanation is there for the carrier being close enough to the atmosphere in the first place?

I wouldn't say it's absolutely incorrect at all, unless you have a better explanation as to why the explosion wasn't mostly contained in Space above atmosphere. Any debris that would have fallen to the planet would have burned up in the atmosphere, or been small shrapnel, certainly not enough to cause the deaths of two million citizens.

You attempt to excuse the inexcusable.

Sadly, the "Gallente Way" hasn't been practiced by the larger part of the Gallente people for quite a while, now. Juveniles running around trying on other people's cultures as fads are not indicative of the nature of Gallente culture. If anything, they demonstrate a lack of it.

That being said, while the catastrophic dilution of our culture is certainly a big problem, it is also our problem, not the rest of New Eden's.

The difference is between aiming the carrier at the planet, hoping to cause enough of an incident to keep the Federation distracted from using Ortillery on civilians long enough for an evacuation, and accidentally hitting a city compared to directly targeting an orbital full of people that is one serious hullbreach away from catastrophe.

And really - who did the city fathers of Hueromont blame? Who did they hound out of office? It was the Federation government. History has already spoken.

I don't know how the people of Hueromont were "intentionally inflicting" anything against the Caldari people. Considering Hueromont was at the forefront of toppling the fascist regime that only lasted a few months, it goes to say how much they can be 'implicated' in an atrocity.

Just another shameless excuse to justify the murder of non-combatants. Both the U-Nats and apparently the Caldari are guilty.

Exactly. How hard is it to understand the following points?:

1. The Carrier was aimed at a PLANET not at a city. There was no attempt to hit a city and a city was only hit when the Carrier exploded and the largest chunk happened to strike Hueromont. I'm sure that wasn't what Admiral Tovil-Toba intended, although it did achieve the objective of getting the Gallente to stop orbitally bombarding the cities on Caldari Prime long enough for the rest of the citizens to escape.

2. The Citizens of Hueromont blamed the U-Nat government. I'm sure they had harsh words to say about Tovil-Toba's decision, but that's to be expected, after all.


And all the rest of the elements surrounding the situation were different. There was a war on. The Gallente were bombing Homeworld at the time. The action was taken in desperation after all conventional methods of distracting the Fed Navy had failed and following a week of more conventional warfare.

Maybe we should dumb it down?

They didn't overthrow their government because they were concerned and unhappy about the generally inhumane way in which burning, exploding stuff was falling out of the sky and killing civilians, oh no. Their complaint was that Caldari burning exploding stuff was falling out of the sky and killing Gallentean civilians.

Prior to that point they were generally tolerant or in favour of of the whole burning-falling-exploding-death thing because it was happening to those damn secessionist bastards, not to them and their neighbours.

And when they did finally decide to complain, it wasn't because having burning exploding stuff fall out of the sky and kill them had given them insight into how awful it was to have burning exploding stuff fall out of the sky and kill people, oh no. They ousted their government because it had been too weak to stop it from happening to them.

It's possible, but the neural map would definitely not be surjective. I would fear that possible memory deficits or mental disorders would result shortly after transfer. Furthermore, a transfer back out of the hijacked clone would naturally result in a corrupted map. Perhaps software could be written to clean up corrupted data, but I'm not sure. In any case, the consciousness leaving the hijacked clone would likely be altered substantially.

Verin, old friend, your arguments are on top form as usual, but I think you've missed a point relevant to and supportive of your argument.

Let us assume for a moment that Alexander Noir was consumed with a fanatical, violent hatred against the Caldari State. Powerful, destructive and irrational antipathy is not, as it happens, a barrier to intelligence, pragmatism and intense rationality in other areas - quite the opposite, in fact, as evidenced by the horrifying yet scientifically astounding breakthroughs made in weaponry and other combat technologies over the course of the past half-millenia. Thousands of brilliant commanders over the generations have been murderously hateful, and it hasn't altered their capacity for intelligent strategy one bit.

Why then would Noir, a man strategically competent enough to reach the rank of Admiral in the Federal Navy - which, contrary to many an off-colour Home Guard joke, is not simply a matter of being knowing where the prostate gland is - do something as singularly ineffective as performing a suicide charge into a station with a supercarrier? Oh, don't get me wrong, killing hundreds of thousands of people was horrific, but in terms of actual damage done to the CaldarI? Minimal. Ishukone has always been the smallest of the megacorporations; not always the least politically powerful (that's usually Hyasyoda, as I understand it), but always the smallest. Even Ishukone collapsing in its entirety (which almost certainly wouldn't result from bombing their offices anyway, and Noir would know that) would hurt the State, but due to the complex and often mysterious nature of the corporation, not in any easily-predictable manner.

Simply put, while Admiral Noir "just snapping" is deeply improbable from a psychological perspective, Admiral Noir deciding that the best option to hurt the Caldari was depriving the Federation of a very expensive piece of military hardware to kill a few hundred thousand civilians is deeply improbable from a strategic perspective. Noir knew tactics, knew strategy. He fought well enough to gain the respect of his Caldari Navy opposites, which isn't something that's easy to do. He was a national hero of ours specifically because he always knew where his enemies were weak, what pressure to apply there and how to do it, not because he made reckless snap judgements.

Oh, here's one more very minor thing that's nonetheless very, very strange.


(Emphasis mine)

"Caldarians" isn't actually a word. The correct plural of "Caldari" is, simply, "Caldari" - there is no differentiation between its plural and singular forms. The correct adjective form of "Caldari" is also "Caldari," or very occasionally, usually in matters related to linguistics, "Caldanese." While "Caldarian" and "Caldarians" are occasionally used with people unfamiliar with the terminology, they are incorrect. Admiral Noir would have known this. He spoke fluent Caldanese, and despite many, many public appearences and speeches, there is not a single recorded instance in the entire one hundred and sixty years of his life where he used the term "Caldarians" in lieu of "Caldari."