I used to live in the Old Town segment of San Diego.  They have a state park there with some neat stuff (CA's oldest school house, recreation of SD's first courthouse, Whaley House–supposedly the most haunted house in America, and some other odds and ends) but mostly it's just tourist trap stuff.

Gotta agree with nemesisenforcer for two reasons. China and other potential threats are navel-gazers: the world ends and begins in their own sphere and they could care less about the rest of the world. Islam, on the other hand (and not just Islamofascists), is based on total world domination without competition allowed. What's bad about the religion in a cultural sense is Mohammad's claim that his generation was the all-time best and most successful, and that each succeeding generation will be less and less potent. There is no built in concept of growth and betterment, only conquering and taking the leavings of other cultures as homage. Any knowledfge or technology ocurring after Mohammad's time is heretical and worthless, so the technology must be beaten back as well as the infidels.

Interesting take.  Is that Muslim doctrine about the technology or your interpretation of their actions?

Favorite piece of WWII tech?  Fat Man and Little Boy.

Nemesis:  you know me bettert than that.  But America has been far from perfect.

I was hoping you hadn't fallen off the wagon. 😀   Yeah, we're not perfect but what seperates us in specific (and the West in general) is that we actually strive to better our cultures and societies and actually learn from the past (or we hope we do.)  I'm not in favor of ignoring our less than noble episodes, but I'm more opposed to giving them undue prominence in the study of our history.  We may have screwed up a few times, but when weighed against the real champs of evil, there's no doubt that we're lightweights.

You put some thought into that, didn't you?  Under those circumstances, I don't see why I wouldn't just go back a day and not to work after that. 😀 😀 😀  I wouldn't have the presence of mind to worry about  much besides self-preservation.

You may be on to something.  You're not the first to notice the correlation between rich/north and poor/south.  Huntington would say that climate is a major factor but only one of others.  The culture and societies of the peoples that inhabit the various climes also play a role.  You could put the aborigines or African pygmies in the middle of Europe and they would not have produced the success of European societies did.  Likewise, Huntington points out the well-known phenomenon of Europeans “going native” in tropical locales: turning lazy, forgetting about their original religions, not working hard, taking on a life of leisure, etc.

So far in the post-CW world, Islamists or Arab dictators have proven themselves the greatest threat to the to the established order.  The Chinese, for all their sabre rattling, have been restrained by realism and cost-benefit analysis over Taiwan.  North Korea is somewhat of an unknown quantity, their unpredictability both a plus and a negative (who knows what they'll do?  Maybe they'll do nothing.)  CHavez and Castro are a worrisome axis, but what real threat could they pose to the security of us or their neighbors?  They have no real militaries or the capability to project any meaningful force.  Chavez's control of oil is the most concering aspect of his power, but we've dealt with madmen on top of oceans of oil before and there's no evidence Chavez is as great of a threat as a Saddam or the Mullahs in Tehran or the Taliban.  For my money, Arab Islamofascists and nihlists are the greatest threat to any peace in the world right now.