[OT] Potpourri: Responsibility, Paintball, List Seniority

Alan B said:
"Responsible for" implies "involved in" - though not the converse. That
is you may be powerless to alter a situation, but you're still involved.
But you can easily be involved in something without being responsible
for it. Typically, innocent bystanders, people hit by drunken drivers
etc.

[Tomb] I think you're talking about causation (by saying responsible
for, you mean "a cause of" or "contributing as a cause of").
Responsibility to my mind usually means who has to deal with the
results. There are many times I've been responsible for something that I
had no hand in creating ("here, you fix this"). I was "involved" later
on in the project, and then made responsible. Responsibility is (to my
thinking) about accountability. You are responsible for a thing if you
can be called to account for a failure or problem with it or its
application. Who is to blame and who is responsible are two very
different questions for me. I think many folks who blame society for
their problems don't assume personal responsibility - they say "but I
had a bad upbringing or bad breaks". This is possibly true, but it says
_nothing_ to responsibility. Responsibility is "who's going to clean
this up? On whose head does a failure fall? Who will deal with the
aftermath?". It doesn't address causation. But that's only my 0.02. As
far as defence projects go, the ones I worked on were of the benign
variety (teaching air navs, etc) rather than the more malign (blowing
people up). Although if one of those air navs gives bad direction and a
plane augers in, I have some very minute degree of association and
causation to acknowledge. 

Paintball:
Paintball is (mostly) an outdoor sport and a bit dangerous as a direct
consequence. OTOH, on a well run field with tight refereeing and
administration (gun checks, using only good new paint, following strict
googling rules, etc), it is a minimally risky prospect and waaaaaaay
fun. Paintballs sting, but if you are wearing more than a T-shirt, they
don't tend to do much actual damage. I usually wore a combat shirt (fall
weight) over a T-shirt and a set of combat pants. And webgear. Most of
the time, I didn't even get much in the way of a welt. (One exception
was 16 welts at point blank in the back, but I dug my own hole there....
damn 12 gram.... pagewire fencing.... stupid me....). 

List Seniority:
I was on the old bolton list and I'm sure I must have joined in 1996
sometime. I'd have thought early on. I should see if I can find my
original mail archive.... (of course, I doubt I have the mailer to find
it). It has been a long, mostly excellent, run with this list and this
wonderful community and I've made a lot of wonderful friends!

Goose Green:
>From what I understand, the Paras were pinned and the Col. was trying
to
get them up and moving. This is part of where standard battle-school A2C
drills failed... apparently they were going too slowly (part of what had
the Colonel desperate to get them moving) because A2C isn't that fast
(relative to some other options). Ended up that just getting up and
saying "f*ck it!" and moving/assaulting was better (though it killed a
few like the Colonel, it eventually got the unit moving). Or so was
roughly the way I've heard it recounted. This was the particular part of
Goose Green that I was referencing originally, though thanks to Derek
for the good exposition though he did fail to mention part of the reason
their were problems for the Brits was a shortage of choppers more or
less courtesy of some silliness from the SAS on a Glacier... ;)