Would You??

No, if you had the choice to live somewhere else I don't know why you would move to a place with toxic waste even if allegedly safe.

If you were only allowed to get married once and divorce was not an option would you marry the person you loved knowing that if in the future things didn't work out you would be stuck?

If those were the conditions, and if I were being entirely rational, love would be a necessary but not sufficient condition for marriage. A good financial future and the compatibility of our families (at least) would also be necessary.

Would you be roommates with someone who had done time for a felony?

Depends on the felony but probably.

Would you rather listen to an album of your choice by John Cale or John Cage?

I am going to go with John Cage

Would you rather live a long fulfilled life and die in old age but be completely forgotten after your death or die young but have your name immortalized in history?

Of course the long and fulfilled life.

Would you rob someone of their last morsel of food, causing them to starve, if in doing so you could save five others from starvation?

Nah, it wouldn't be a long term solution in any case. I'd just see if we could find some other way to get food. And if there wasn't we could always draw lots or someone could volunteer to kill himself to be eaten by the others.

Would killed a prisoner of was as a soldier, would you ever mention it to anyone--even a trusted family member?

Did I have good reason? I probably wouldn't talk about it, no.

Would you prefer to see all media (books, cd's, dvd's, etc) converted into digital files in order to save space and reduce some impact on the environment?

No, just to have some to talk with about it, maybe in old age. I think it helps some

No, I wouldn't want to see the paper go. I read mostly ebooks now, but that's just because I travel a lot. But libraries are still worth it. The environment is going to have to muddle through.

If an unattended toddler fell into a gorilla pit at the zoo, would you jump in and rescue him/her?

I'm more likely to cause the gorillas to freak out and kill us both, this has happened and sometimes the gorillas are relaxed enough to let it slide. Also zookeepers with tranquilizers are more likely to do a good job with the situation than I am. Raging river or something though, yeh I am probably jumping in.

Would you be a member of a resistance movement in a country occupied by Nazi Germany during WW2?

i have thought about things like that before and I actually think that'd be my best role, so yes.

if you had a chance to go back in time, would you take out hitler in some fashion? (ever see the star trek episode with joan Collins playing a woman named edith keeler?)

Yes, to plagiarize that movie about Kim Jong Un, I'd take him out for drinks. As far as messing with the butterfly effect goes, I dunno, probably yes. Postwar life wasn't all that great. And having no WWII would probably mean that there would still be a British Empire, something that MANICHAEAN would like. Okay, consider it done.

Would you rather have lived as a Nordic übermensch in Hitler's Germany or as a worker in Stalin's Russia?

German, at least I have a chance to come through the war and not live in total misery forever.

Would you rather have Mussolini or Stalin as a father in law (exact same personalities but they aren't dictators).

Oh tough choice. The food on holidays would have been better at Mussolini's but, in a really perverse way, there was something appealing about Stalin's psychotic bravado. Okay, Il Duce. Stalin would doubtlessly have had me killed after a few years, as I think he did to his real son-in-law.

Would you have advocated the imprisonment/execution of French collaborators who worked for Vichy?

I wouldn't, people try to get by during wartime, we don't need to be executing everyone who ended up on the wrong side after the fact.

Would you marry/date a woman who had been a gestapo agent? Assuming she is magically younger than she would be naturally and assuming you were single?

Only if she had had repudiated her past with genuine contrition. And still had the boots. Heh heh. Just kidding.

What about someone who was a sadistic concentration camp prison guard, but is an old beloved Grandpa when he is found out?

I wouldn't believe it honestly. I can't imagine someone being beloved and sadistic, I don't think sadism rubs off. But yes, if it could be proven the obviously he would have to face justice.

Would you cooperate with the NKVD if you thought by doing so you could avoid doing time in the gulag?

There was a case like that in a town in Massachusetts. Sweet (or at least sad) old man--turned out to be "Ivan the Terrible." His family really loved him, if I'm remembering right.

No, I wouldn't cooperate with the NKVD period. I might do what they said if I thought they were going to murder me or someone in my family, but coercion is not the same thing as cooperation.

Were the Nuremberg Trials morally justified? In other words, were they something other than "victor's justice," as the Nazi defendants claimed?

I'm inclined to believe it was a serious case of victors justice. During WW2 the U.S interned Japanese citizens, fire bombed half the civilian population, leveled cities with nuclear bombs and annihilated German cities of no strategic importance and large civilian populations. The red army (our allies, headed by quite possibly the worst dictator of modern times) committed basically unspeakable atrocities against the defeated German civilian population and their land grabbing at the end of the war left hundreds of millions of people impoverished and miserable, the effects of which are stronglly felt by everyone living in the post soviet union countries to this day.

No "good war" in my opinion. No matter how many movies come out of Hollywood.

Would you say WW2 was inevitable once Hitler came to power?

Well, according to the school of history I subscribe to (in effect, Tolstoyan), historic inevitabilities don't really exist, just trajectories, which are multiple, interactive, and ultimately unpredictable. But it was always part of his plan, let's put it that way.

If Bounty had gone back in time and killed Hitler when he was a corporal at Ypres, would the British Empire now be remembered as the racist monsters of the 20th century? (Sorry MANICHEAN--I just asked :)).

Are you saying in place of the Germans? I think all the white colonial powers have been branded with the racist monster stamp nowadays. The Germans, being cartoonish super villains acting under a short lived government actually seem to take less flak for racism than the anglosphere which has just chugged along since then.

Would you debate seriously with a Maoist?

Only from behind sandbags. :)

Will the final presidential candidates in the coming election be Clinton and Bush?

Could be, I don't know that either will get the nod though.

Would you rather support Ron Paul or Rand Paul?

Neither is perfect, but probably Ron. He seems to have more integrity. On the other hand, Rand is a bit more practical.

Would China see a libertarian US president as a green light for global expansion?

Rand has the benefit of having more than a snowflakes chance in Hell at winning an election.

Good question. I don't know that much about libertarianism so it's very possible but I couldn't tell you.

Would a libertarian president necessarily see the rise of massive, deregulated, unstoppable corporate entities (raping and looting the poor and the environment in their wake)?

Do you think so? His strategy seems a little flawed to me. Civil libertarians and social conservatives/Evangelical Christians are hardly birds of a feather, and since both groups are highly principled, each may be hesitant to crawl into the sack with the other. I think the next Republican president is going to be whoever can recreate the Big Umbrella. And that's going to mean coming to some kind of terms with the RINOs.

No, of course not, and certainly not "necessarily."

Will Obama's rapprochement with Cuba help democrats or republicans in the Florida primary?

Well more of a chance than his dad had at least.

And good answer, most people bring up that sort of apocalyptic scenario whenever libertarians are mentioned (it seems to be one of the most widely hated political philosophies), or else they say something about roads.

I have no idea haha, sorry. Cuba/Florida relations is not an issue I follow at all.

Would you strip Obama of his Nobel peace prize?

All I worry about with libertarians is the long term effects of isolationism. China's building a big kick as s navy at the moment. That's something that sooner or later is going to be a problem for us, even if we stay home and mind our own business. Rand Paul has made some noises about getting that, but I'm not sure I trust him. He also wants to be president.

Yes, Obama's Nobel Peace Prize is the biggest joke since Hitler's nomination for the same prize.

Edit: Oh sorry. Would you rather date an innocent/virginal-looking girl or a slutty/sexy-looking one?

Right now I'll take the latter.

Plain and intelligent or beautiful and dumb (for a romantic partner)?

Plain and intelligent. Beautiful women are all insane.

Short perky hair or long luxurious hair (on a woman)?

Long I suppose but short hair can be quite cute on the right girl.

Would you rather dress fashionably or comfortably?

I have no fashion sense at all, so comfortable wins by default.

Would you rather be too tall or too short?

Too tall I guess, but I wouldn't want to be much taller.

Would you rather work too much or not enough?

It depends what you mean by work, but I'd rather work for somebody else to make money or to pay a bank a mortgage check or a car payment not at all. So let's say too little, but while financially solvent.

Would you rather do creative work involving hard physical work (laboring in the construction of a skyscraper, for example), or boring work that involved your mind (working as an insurance adjuster, for example)?

Hard physical labour if it's a short term job, doing that for forty years or so is not good for your body.

Would you want a fully stocked and fresh buffet in your place of residence at all time?

...duh?

Would you sacrifice your life for art? i.e. become an alcoholic if you knew for sure you would produce something magnificent?

Nah, I only get one life, why ensure it's miserable just for art? There's already so much great art that nobody could ever hope to experience it all anyway.

Would you?

Probably... not sure.

Would you adopt?

I think yes if I had a wife! no exasperation there for goodness sake! there are so many kids in the world who need parents.

would you give up living in the place (city, country, mountains, lake, etc) of your strong preference to live in a place of a disliked preference, in order to live with a mate?

I prefer the Persephone-Hades solution: just go back and forth.

Would you rather be in Heaven without your beloved life partner, or a ghost with her/him in the house where you two were happiest (hypothetically, if you don't believe in such things)?

Ghost! Yay for satisfying love, assuming our 'happiest' dwelling really was happy.

Would you eat blood soup?