I Have Slipped the Surly Bonds of Earth: Aviating Objectivsts Land Here


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(NOTE FROM MSK: The first half of this post is actually the first post of a new thread to which was added a discussion moved from another thread. I could not leave the original thread-starting post here because the system orders them chronologically and by time-stamp.)

I believe the author of Stick and Rudder, Wolfgang Langewiesche, was the flight instructor who taught a friend of mine to fly in Rockland County, NY. He had a small airfield--now long gone but I saw it once or twice driving by--he didn't want anyone landing on not based there. He'd run out onto the strip and wave them off. ... --Brant

See, that is unusual. In aviation culture, grace is the norm. One of my instructors was coming back from a long cross country with a student and they ran into weather just short of home. (Student cleared for Visual Flight Rules only, of course; it was her flight, not the instructor's.) As in most places, a little farmer's strip was on the charts, so they landed there. They rolled up to the barn and shut down. The kid came out to meet them. They told him who they were and why they landed. He said, "My dad is in town with the car right now, but you can take the truck," and he handed them the keys.

In a lot of places, those little fields have common locks whose combinations are published for pilots. If you get in late, you fuel yourself up, use the phone or computer these days to check the weather ahead, make coffee if you want to, clean up after yourself, leave a charge card slip at the desk, lock up and leave.

The thing with aviation is that we say that some planes (such as the Cessna 150... 180 series) are "forgiving" because you can make a mistake and not necessarily get killed. That makes pilots different from most other people. I never met anyone I could not like. ... not even online ...


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(NOTE FROM MSK: The rest of this post was the first post in the discussion that was removed from another thread.)

Never "got" it. I can push wood, know how the pieces move, have books, even took classes. Basically, ho-hum.

Reminds me of people who scream on roller coasters. When I was a child, I did. Then, I had a class in engineering mechanics. Roller coasters are perfectly contrained. Chess, for all ofi its bazillion possibilities takes place on an 8x8 board. Like a bigger Rubik's Cube but in two dimensions.

I think the screaming you hear on rollercoasters are screams of exhilaration, not fear.

I think that an appreciation of chess "clicks" when you begin to realize how many life-metaphores exist within the game. I could go on and on about that realization forever (and I have in the past).

It's truly a metaphor of life on an 8x8 board.

Here is an example of something much more real than a roller coaster and where screaming - either in fear or exhilaration - is not heard.


I never spun an aircraft, but I have performed many stalls, both power-on and power-off. In fact, every landing is actually a power-off stall, really. ... and no yelling...

As the direct result of this thread, I spent about 40 hours over four weeks playing chess against the Microsoft "Champions" game. It whiled away some time. I found it as interesting as watching a video. (See my blog for reviews of films about industrial design and graphic design.) But as amusing as it was, I just never saw the fluid, dynamic, spatial flow of power and force. I did it somewhat interesting to see what it takes to win (against a program). I did run games back several moves to try alternatives. But basically, the experience was sterile.

Crossword puzzles are another ho-hum. I have done them and sometimes do them when time permits or demands. But basically, having read some books about it, I know that I am playing against the puzzle maker. I know their constraints. Play the same field repeatedly (NY Times or the Big Dell Book) and you see the same clues, the same patterns, over and over. My wife is a murder mystery fan, going back to Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden. Thanks to her, I enjoyed some Rex Stout and Agatha Christie, even though I never knew much about the culture. But I knew that the Thin Man's dog is named ASTA, four letters.

Chess is like that: you show that you are "smarter" than someone else without actually creating anything.

And to open another topic, perhaps, I think that baseball is a better metaphor for life.

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Looks like a Decathalon spinning. I spun a Cessna 172 two or three times during private pilot flight training. It wasn't required for the license, but it used to be and too many students were getting killed so they stopped it. It impressed the flight examiner when he reviewed my log. A twin-engined Baron was susceptible to flat spins during one engine out power-on stalls. Because they were flat--the nose wasn't pointed down--they couldn't be recovered from. One of my supplemental flight instructors may have bought the farm in 1983 here in Tucson that way. Visiting in 1980 I had a few flights with him, learning to do power-on short field landings--and I mean really short--dragging the tail tie down ring on the asphalt before the wheels touched down.

--Brant

it's hard to get a spin going in a 172

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.... I spun a Cessna 172 two or three times during private pilot flight training..... and I mean really short--dragging the tail tie down ring on the asphalt before the wheels touched down.

--Brant

More fun than chess, right? ... and no screaming like with a rollycoaster ...

And... and here's the really fun part: you keep the trigonometry in your head while you are doing it. Aviation is a mental task. A pilot will spend as much time or more in flight planning as in the actual flight. You have to know meteorology, every chapter in basic physics, geography and geology, as well as civil aviation law. Every time.

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.... I spun a Cessna 172 two or three times during private pilot flight training..... and I mean really short--dragging the tail tie down ring on the asphalt before the wheels touched down.

--Brant

More fun than chess, right? ... and no screaming like with a rollycoaster ...

And... and here's the really fun part: you keep the trigonometry in your head while you are doing it. Aviation is a mental task. A pilot will spend as much time or more in flight planning as in the actual flight. You have to know meteorology, every chapter in basic physics, geography and geology, as well as civil aviation law. Every time.

Absolutely. Piloting separates the thinking people from the dead and injured people.

And flying is for real. Once one is thirty feet or more in the air one is in the Ranks of the Endangered. There is no fooling. Flying is reality raw and no fiddling or mental equivocation will get a high flyer back on the ground safely. I think piloting is the ideal pass time for Big O Objectivists.

I am (or was) a soaring plane jock. Once I dropped the tow line I was on my own. I had to manage my energy budget by getting more energy from thermals and spending my energy getting back to the field safely and neatly.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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Soaring in sail planes is real piloting, Bob. I tip my hat.

Anything will fly if you push it hard enough, but sail planes are real flying. I had one experience. Couldn't do everything at once and flying powered craft is just operationally easier because so many places sell the service. Soaring clubs are farther apart and you cannot just rent one out of the hangar like a Cessna or Piper. The road not taken....

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Soaring in sail planes is real piloting, Bob. I tip my hat.

Anything will fly if you push it hard enough, but sail planes are real flying. I had one experience. Couldn't do everything at once and flying powered craft is just operationally easier because so many places sell the service. Soaring clubs are farther apart and you cannot just rent one out of the hangar like a Cessna or Piper. The road not taken....

Our Jet jocks are all glider trained. At the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs the first planes that the students fly are soaring planes. The U.S. got that lesson from the Nazi Luftwaffe. Because of the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, Germany was not allowed to have an air force. So glider clubs sprang up all over Germany and the Luftwaffe Pilots were all glider trained. Stick and Rudder. That is as basic as it gets. The nice thing about soaring planes as that the pilot must learn to read the sky. Once the tow line is dropped there are only two sources of additional energy available: thermal lift (hot air rising from the ground) and ridge lift, air diverted upward from the windward side of a ridge or mountain.

One of the truly great (non-sexual) moments of my life was going to FL. 180 (18,000 feet above MS). For this I needed a time slot and FAA clearance. For a half hour all the commercial traffic was directed away from the region in which I was flying. I had to go on oxygen (above 11,500 feet oxygen is a legal requirement). It was wonderful. A half hour in my slot then I cam down below the level at which commercial plane fly and stayed aloft for another hour. It does not get much better than that. It is the most exciting thing one can do with his clothes still on.

Just like the poem says: I reached out and touched the Face of God.

On another occasion we had 8 soaring planes flying in formation at about 11,000 feet. We were three miles away from the commercial airline route victor 88 which connects Denver to Colorado Springs. While aloft a commercial flight was flying parallel (but at legal distance) from the course of our squadron. We dould see faces at the windows of the plane. I can only image what the passenger must have been thinking. 8 planes with no engines flying along side them. Of course the commercial plane was much faster and it pulled ahead pretty fast. I assume the pilot of that commercial flight must have had some 'splainin' to do to the passengers.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Ba'al Chatzaf

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Our Jet jocks are all glider trained. ... Stick and Rudder. That is as basic as it gets. ...

Just like the poem says: I reached out and touched the Face of God. Ba'al Chatzaf

Stick and Rudder I have my copy.

"touched the face of God" Every pilot knows High Flight.

"... and done a hundred things you have not dreamed of ..."

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;

Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth

of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things

You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung

High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,

I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung

My eager craft through footless halls of air....

Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue

I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace.

Where never lark, or even eagle flew —

And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod

The high untrespassed sanctity of space,

- Put out my hand, and touched the face of God

For me, it was flying at night, my ship pointed to Mars...

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Our Jet jocks are all glider trained. ... Stick and Rudder. That is as basic as it gets. ...

Just like the poem says: I reached out and touched the Face of God. Ba'al Chatzaf

Stick and Rudder I have my copy.

"touched the face of God" Every pilot knows High Flight.

"... and done a hundred things you have not dreamed of ..."

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;

Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth

of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things

You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung

High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,

I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung

My eager craft through footless halls of air....

Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue

I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace.

Where never lark, or even eagle flew —

And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod

The high untrespassed sanctity of space,

- Put out my hand, and touched the face of God

For me, it was flying at night, my ship pointed to Mars...

John Gillespie Magee, jr. He was a Brit caught in this country by the start of WWII who went to Canada for aviation training and was sent back to Britain that way. He never saw combat but died age 19 in a training accident in Britain flying a Spitfire (mid-air collision). He was inspired when taking his plane up to 33,000 feet.

Is this great poem the only poem about aviation worth a damn? Pilots don't tend to poetry but this one was a poet. He didn't live long enough to be a great poet but if he had I doubt if he ever would have beat this one.

--Brant

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I believe the author of Stick and Rudder, Wolfgang Langewiesche, was the flight instructor who taught a friend of mine to fly in Rockland County, NY. He had a small airfield--now long gone but I saw it once or twice driving by--he didn't want anyone landing on not based there. He'd run out onto the strip and wave them off. He didn't believe in licensing (and insuring?) his car. He made up a fake license plate out of cardboard (and got caught). My friend bragged to me his instruction was so good(?) Wolfgang wouldn't let him do anything wrong and in all his flying he never had to do a go-around. I think he was BSing me and himself, for one of the times I flew with him he did do a go-around. He was my friend but he let his ego pull him about by the nose. (That also led to his divorce because his wife had an affair and he couldn't stand the idea.)

--Brant

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If he had lived he might have become an ace. But well shall never know. In any case his poem (and few are better than this) has made him immortal.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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It's my favorite poem, but I can't get it into my long-term memory to stay although I made a big effort to once upon a time. The same thing happened to me with "The Cremation of Sam McGee". My father, who probably had 55-60 IQ points on me (189), remembered a great piece of doggerel he heard once in early grade school and entertained me with it from time to time. I've read you can get up to 220 commands into a smart dog's head. Comparatively, my head must be pretty empty. I've decided to get a brain book and study how to fill it up so stuff doesn't leak out. Anybody have any ideas what I should put into it?

--Brant

hey!--I've got a brain!

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Brant,

If you can figure out how to use it, the very best system for rote learning of lots of boring stuff is a software called SuperMemo.

There are several free versions and several paid ones. All of them are good, in my opinion. I own SuperMemo 12 (2004), but I intend to get the super duper version (SuperMemo 15 (2011)) after I get this one working the way I want.

The problem is figuring out how to use the damn thing. There are far, far easier flash card programs out there (Anki is a very popular one), also free, but they don't allow you to chop up articles from the Internet and pop them in like SuperMemo does (called "incremental reading").

Also, I learned a technique from the SuperMemo documentation for spaced learning called "cloze deletions" that is really cool. Basically, you take a sentence from the text you are reading, copy paste the whole thing in, replace the word or phrase you want to commit to memory with an underline, then throw it into the pile for your training sessions. This is used a lot in "incremental reading."

I've only messed with this thing a little so far, but the results do stick in memory. Piotr, the developer, promises 90% retention in long-term memory and there are people out there on the web saying that is what they got. My own paltry efforts have been well rewarded. I just need to learn it better to get to the incremental reading, which is the part I am really interested in.

On flash card level alone, this thing is great for learning foreign languages, increasing vocabulary, learning technical jargon, and things like that. There are already prepared flash card packages for SuperMemo, too. Some of free and some you have to buy.

Here's the theory in a nutshell. After you read something, your mind remembers it for only a certain amount of time, then it starts forgetting. You need repetition to get a fact to stick in long term memory--the part that is easily accessible by short-term memory, especially facts that are not emotion-laden.

But repeating facts by rote while the mind still has them solid and fresh bores you and actually makes you forget. So the developer of this software made a program based on repeating stuff right at the moment when you almost forget it. That keeps your interest up and does the repeat reinforcement at the same time.

How does it know how long to wait before feeding an item to you again? You grade yourself from 1 to 5 every time you try to answer a flash card. Then it automatically calculates the time you need based on several algorithmic factors and schedules it for you automatically. Over time, you will repeat something at a greater and greater intervals until you finally throw it into the done pile because you have it down cold.

There's also a great book (another one I have not yet read, but is on my reading list). It's called Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything by Joshua Foer. Even a top neuroscience/psychology dude like Daniel Kahneman is impressed by this book. This goes the traditional memory systems route of tying disconnected facts to a bizarre narrative and other memory tricks.

Both are good.

I only wish I could remember to do them.

(All right... that's a groaner. But you knew I couldn't resist, right? :) )

Michael

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For me, it was flying at night, my ship pointed to Mars...

Alas. Soaring is a daytime sport. Once the day cools off there are no more thermals to use to gain altitude.

All my flying was daytime, fair weather and VFR. My only instruments were altimeter, compass and rate of climb gage. By the way, a good thermal will take a glider up as much as 1500 t0 2000 feet a minute. If you get a get thermal you can feel it in your butt. That is seat of the pants flying.

The real trick is to find the thermal and go into a thirty second turn and circle up with the warm air. It is a hoot. For the more courageous one finds a ridge and catches the ridge lift. That is moving air diverted upward from an escarpment. Where I flew in Colorado the closest ridges were over the front range of the Rockies just north and west of Colorado Springs. I never tried that. I felt much safer climbing with thermals over flat land.

The worlds distance record for soaring is about 1200 miles from near the Mexican border along the ridge line of the Rockies up to Northern Montana to near the Canadian Border. The altitude record as 49,000 feet. right up to where the troposphere stops. It is amazing what one can do with a solar powered plane.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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THE VIRTUES OF AVIATION CULTURE

BY MICHAEL MAROTTA

(Originally written for StudentPilot.Com in 2001, where it is archived under Articles, I was inspired by Dierdre McCloskey's "Bourgeois Ethics".)


What is the culture of aviation? In what ways do pilots think, talk, and act differently from other people? What is good etiquette in aviation? When is a pilot behaving in a non-aviation or anti-aviation manner? What mechanisms inform us of aviation’s unwritten rules and by what means is our behavior corrected when it strays from the expected or normal?


One way to draw an outline of aviation culture is to look at its virtues. We all might want to be virtuous according to every standard. However, humility is simply not a virtue in aviation. Bragging is not a virtue, either, and displaying humility is not necessarily wrong. However, nothing in aviation implicitly demands and specifically rewards humility — even though a good dose of it might be a blessing. Other virtues, such as charity or fidelity also might be nice to have, but aviation does not require them of you.


The virtues of aviation are those positive character traits that are implicitly demanded and specifically rewarded by the nature of aviation. They are: Intelligence, Self-Control, Independent Judgement, and Honor. Within these overlapping spheres are other concepts, often shades of meaning with arguable differentiations among them.


Intelligence

The primary virtue of any human. More than being born “smart” it means using what you have. Intelligence is thinking things through, knowing a tool when you see one and knowing when and whom to ask for help. Accompanying Intelligence are honesty, foresight, wisdom.


Self-Control

Aviation is scary. The question is whether or not you are ruled by your viscera. Other aspects of this are courage, fortitude, pride.


Independent judgement

The first Federal regulation of flying is that you can break any rule in order to maintain or achieve safety. This derives from the undisputable fact that the pilot is in command. Objectivity, conjectivity and integrity are corollaries.


Honor

The above are personal virtues. These here are social virtues. Generally speaking, the unequivocal nature of aviation — the fact that you can get killed — is the source of these honorable attributes. Other aspects of Honor are responsibility, trustworthiness, forthrightness, magnanimity, respect, courtesy, and humor.


As an attribute of intelligence, honesty means more than not lying to other people. It means recognizing the “primacy of existence” — in other words admitting what you know to be true (about the plane, about the weather, about yourself) no matter how much you wish it were not.

Pride is an aspect of self-control. Ultimately, pride may be considered the source of self-control. In either case, the pride referred to is not just the external show of proper respect for your own achievements but the inner strength that causes and is rewarded by self-control.


Integrity makes independent judgement possible. Not all pilots practice it, but aviation rewards it, nonetheless. Integrity is being who and what you are. Independent judgement requires the objectivity (honesty) of recognizing the facts. Conjectivity is the virtue of being willing to try something — especially when you are in trouble — to see if the effect is beneficial to you.

The list of social virtues under Honor stem from the fact that no one else’s opinion of you is as important as your own opinion of yourself. We tend to gloss over this. We are shy and we do not like to brag. The bottom line is that every flight is a test flight. Flying is unequivocal: you cannot argue the facts away. We are reality-based and this colors all of our relationships.


To act dishonorably, or irresponsibly, or disrespectfully is to fall from grace. Can you imagine pulling into an FBO station late at night, refueling, and before you take off, stealing the coffee maker? The thought is ridiculous — but for most people in most times and places the thought (if not the deed) is very real. Can you imagine having a line jockey tell you about a problem with your plane and then making the problem “go away” by belittling the jock for not being a pilot? We do not act like that. We act like angels because we live in the sky.

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And what is more important: pilot virtue is not a sanctimonious act. It is a necessary thing. It is the difference between flying and living on the one hand and crashing and dying on the other. Virtue is life. The lack of it is death.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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And what is more important: pilot virtue is not a sanctimonious act. It is a necessary thing. It is the difference between flying and living on the one hand and crashing and dying on the other. Virtue is life. The lack of it is death.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Sad to say, I've witnessed too much of this, from the top to the bottom and the bottom to the top. You can apply it to a person and to a country and most human circumstances. Then there are always "acts of God" wherein virtue simply fails and pure tragedy prevails and the irony of seemingly getting away with "it" which is usually faux.

--Brant

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Maybe if everyone flew airplanes, people would be different -- at least, the survivors would. Ultimately, Objectivist ethics is a statement about the consequences of ideas and actions. The otherwise "ordinary" or "normal" person with an integrated objective, life-based personal philosophy actually lives and acts like a pilot. The ones who do not - Brant's top and bottom - are able to get away with it because "the ship of life" they fly is not connected in their own minds to the outcomes demanded by their actions.

I think that if you took Don Antriedes's initial post about free will to a group of pilots at your local airport, they would simply declare it baloney and refuse to discuss something so silly. I could quote The Right Stuff chapter and verse. In one scene in the movie, about the fatalities adding up at Edwards AFB, Majorie Slayton says to Deke something like "Five men in five days, do you know what that averages?!" And he replies, "Averages only apply to average pilots." In other words: you always have a choice.

No pilot I know would entertain the determinist, fatalist fallacy that your actions were fixed from the moment of the Big Bang.

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Maybe if everyone flew airplanes, people would be different -- at least, the survivors would.

This might improve the gene pool and we'd certainly then have "the rule of the airmen" (and women), but at the price of ...?

--Brant

everything (optional) costs something

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Maybe if everyone flew airplanes, people would be different -- at least, the survivors would.

This might improve the gene pool and we'd certainly then have "the rule of the airmen" (and women), but at the price of ...?

--Brant

everything (optional) costs something

See the movie version of H.G. Wells "Things to Come". The picture was released in 1936.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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I actually have two copies of the movie and I read the book. As you know, at first in World War I, reconnaissance pilots from opposing sides would wave to each other... then someone took up a gun.... In World War II although Goering insisted that air force POWs be given better treatment, British pilots machine-gunned Germans who had bailed and were floating the water, truly sitting ducks. (The British, not the Germans, were the first to bomb civilian targets. Dresden was the paradigmatic case, but they started it earlier in the war.) The airmen of Things to Come were organized out of Basra. Seemed far-away back then....

I believe that Cuffy Meigs was modeled on The Boss. Certainly John Cabal's walking in to a trap unconcerned about the putative powers of the Boss was also Galt-like; and then being rescued by the airmen was also similar to scenes in Atlas Shrugged.

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I actually have two copies of the movie and I read the book. As you know, at first in World War I, reconnaissance pilots from opposing sides would wave to each other... then someone took up a gun.... In World War II although Goering insisted that air force POWs be given better treatment, British pilots machine-gunned Germans who had bailed and were floating the water, truly sitting ducks. (The British, not the Germans, were the first to bomb civilian targets. Dresden was the paradigmatic case, but they started it earlier in the war.) The airmen of Things to Come were organized out of Basra. Seemed far-away back then....

I believe that Cuffy Meigs was modeled on The Boss. Certainly John Cabal's walking in to a trap unconcerned about the putative powers of the Boss was also Galt-like; and then being rescued by the airmen was also similar to scenes in Atlas Shrugged.

Before the Brits bombed cities, the Nazis bombed Rotterdam and Amsterdam. The Germans also started the bombing of London before Arthur Harris took over Bomber Command. However Harris formulated a -policy- of area bombing (which means bombing women and children as well as male workers). His premise (a false premise) was that city bombing, killing women and children and de-housing the non-combatant population would break the German will to fight. It did no such thing. Our own General Curtis Lemay took up a policy of city wrecking on the grounds that it would break Japanese stubbornness and bring them to negotiate surrender. It did not work. The civilian population was ready to strap on explosive charges and meet invading allied troops with sharpened bamboo spears.

Finally it was the entry of Soviet troops in Manchuria plus a second A-bombing that brought the Emperor to Jesus.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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