SteveThaiBinh

Radio 4 announced a winner in its 'Peace Cartoon' competition here. The winning strip is the first three frames - some of the runners-up are pretty good, too.

I don't think Freedom Fries was worse - I think there's enough stupidity and gross overreaction around for all to share equally.

Did you see the men's skating tonight? They were falling about all over the place - honestly, it wasn't great entertainment. The winner was just streets ahead of all the others and clearly psyched them out of the game. Oh, and Britain won its first little medal today: a silver. We're joint seventeenth on the medal table. Woo!

No, they lost precisely one mark for the fall, but the rest of the routine was really good. The TV commentators went into it in great detail, because of course there was that big fuss with the pairs skating in Salt Lake City and the TV people love a whiff of scandal. They seemed to think that the rules had been applied correctly, though. I remember watching the skating as a kid and a fall pretty much put you out of the running, but that's not the case any more.

I can't think of anyone here who gets huffy at the slightest criticism of their country. In the UK, we have taught children very little British history and virtually nothing about the British Empire. Various governments have indicated that they wished more British history were taught so children would feel proud to be British, but they're worried that left-wing teachers will dwell too much on the attrocities of the Empire, so the compromise position is to ignore British history and teach about Nazi Germany instead. The German ambassador even complained about this, I think. But it's morally safe for us - we're not the baddies, in that story at least. Most Japanese schoolchildren do learn about the Rape of Nanking, despite its absence in the official textbooks. In so doing, they learn to be sceptical of official textbooks, which I think is a history lesson well spent.

I'm watching the 'Snowboard Cross'. They seem to crash randomly and often. It's as bad as speed-skating. And the commentator is obsessed with the participants' footware.

Every Joseph Bulock post is another NWN2 bug squashed.

In British English, rising intonation at the end of a sentence indicates a question, falling intonation indicates a statement. I've heard that one of the reasons German speakers often come across as arrogant or rude to Brits is because they use falling intonation, as in German, when asking questions. Similarly, Australian and Hawaiian rising intonation takes the sting out of everything, whereas South African falling intonation seems aggressive. However, this is all relative - we misinterpret their meaning because we assume they're following the same system of rules we are, when they're not. It's the foundation of all cross-cultural misunderstanding, and if more Brits bothered to learn a foreign language, any language, we would be better able to handle it.

Vietnamese is a beautiful language, as I guess all languages are to their speakers. It can depend on which area of the country the speaker comes from - the southern accent has fewer harsh consonants and sounds more pleasant to me, and the central area accent is of couse completely incomprehensible. :D Once you start to learn the language and get a feeling for how the tones work, it sounds much more musical. Japanese too is difficult for the non-speaker to appreciate at first, because it doesn't have rhythm the way English does - I've even heard the sound of Japanese compared to machine gun fire. Again, once you've learned a little of the language and appreciated that Japanese has tonic stress instead, you can start to break up the sentences into manageable chunks and begin to appreciate the structure and beauty of the language a little more. I've been to the Phillippines, and I thought Tagalog was a lovely language, very sing-songy with lots of ng sounds. I've always thought English spoken with a South African accent was quite unpleasant, but that's most likely the political associations rather than any quality of the sound itself.

It's sad, but Londoners actually believe that.

What actually happens in Black History Month?

You can't learn much in the span of a tv show, but you can learn more than you knew before. I agree with Vashanti that this could be interesting if done right, but I know nothing about the network in question or their past record. If the show sets out to show that the US is a divided nation, it won't convince because this agenda will put sceptics off. If it just shows people's experiences objectively then the differences (where they exist, and I'm sure they do) will speak for themselves.

It's footage from the original scandal, released by the US military under US Freedom of Information laws. I saw it on BBC evening news, though the BBC is mostly showing stills. There are images and footage that hasn't been seen before publicly, but it's from the original 2003 incidents - there are no new crimes here, just new information about the old crimes. In a sense, there's nothing new here. We always knew that only a percentage of the abuse that took place would have been filmed, and only a percentage of that film would have been released. I remember when the original images were released - it took the US government several days to get its response right, even though they had advance warning of publication. Bush needs to get on television quickly and repeat his original apology for the abuses - it won't matter to the extremists, of course, but it will matter to the moderates.

Go Latvia! I lived in Latvia for a year and have a small Latvian flag which I am now waving.

When you say 'Don't speak for Iraqis', you mean the US hasn't destroyed its credibility in Iraq? If the US-led coalition had credibility in Iraq, that would imply that the Iraqi people have confidence in its ability to restore basic services and create a secure environment. I don't think either is supported by the most recent opinion polls. If Iraqis believe the future will be better, that's not necessarily a vote of confidence in the coalition. The picture in Iraq is complex, that's true, and it's wrong to suggest that Iraqis hate US and British troops as much as they hated Saddam's security forces. They don't . They just don't have confidence in the coalition troops because they've largely failed to deliver security or basic services. Why would any Iraqi believe that the coalition is going to accomplish this year what they've failed to do for the last three? On the other hand, they also don't want coalition troops to leave tomorrow because they don't have confidence in any alternative. But if what we are doing right now isn't working, maybe we should spend more time working out a viable alternative instead of just pushing on with a failed policy.

Let alone those actually responsible. That can never happen now. The US has destroyed its credibility in Iraq. We've seen more horrific videos of the Abu Ghraib abuse emerge today. I doubt the whole US economy could buy peace for Iraq as long as US soldiers remain there. Britain and the US now have a particular problem being in Iraq, and it's not going to go away if we stay there and keep trying to get the job done. We can't. We'll just continue to fail. We need to pull out, but we also need to be clear what we're going to put in our place to make sure the chaos doesn't get worse.

Ambleside's in the Lake District, so though I've never been to the village itself, the surrounding area is beautiful, excellent for hikers/walkers, and has at least some infrastructure for tourists. March weather? It will be gloomy. There will be rain. We were promised a harsh winter, and it hasn't happened yet, so I guess snow in March is a real possibility.

I had ME for six months, and I'd say upgrading to XP is a really really good idea, well worth the money. My overriding memory of ME was constantly waiting for the next inevitable crash. Edit: Home Edition is fine, though.

I'm definitely taking my character with me, unless he's too low level and gets killed a lot. I'm going to install and start BG2 tomorrow. I remember playing the demo a few weeks ago and meeting in the opening moments, which is interesting since they were both killed (exploded) in my final battle with . I wonder if this information is included in the saved character file. Will I meet someone else instead?

The latest best thing is a waste of money. I upgrade or replace my computer when presented with a game it can't handle - extra RAM for Bloodlines and a new video card for Civilizations IV. Though my nice new video card is already below recommended standard for Oblivion. Maybe if I turn off the shadows...

Thanks, but no. I'm on a post-Baldur's Gate-winning high - but not that high.

This should be good. . . . . . . . *Waits for something to happen.*

That's an adaptation of a toy, not a comic.

Spiderman 2, but there are quite a few I haven't seen, as I don't go out of my way to see comic-based movies. I thought number two was pretty downhill: too many characters, not enough point. The first was fun, though.

Well, that was tricky, but I got through it. I wonder if I was the last person on the forum to play this game. :D Hmmm, shall I play again, or take the same character on to BG2 next?