Walsingham

Ululating pixies.

Says the guy who took an hour to reply to messages on Steam I wa sin the middle of a game of Company of Heroe... Oh nuts, now Monte will be mad at me.

Please confirm: are you downloading Norway itself? If so this could alter weather patterns. Sing back.

Your peasterisk was obviously in the closet, and trying far too hard.

And I know I'm kind of where I was. But a bit fatter.

Careful, old man. Judging by the way he's unbuttoning his trousers I suspect he intends to do your orifices some adult themed horror.

I just checked out the video trailers for the Stanley Parable, and I haven't laughed that much since yesterday. It's still a recommendation. I just laugh a lot. Intend to ask for it as a present.

While a concern for appearing adult is childish, being interested in childish things is also quite childish. You can't assert the former without asserting the latter. An adult male takes an interest in the stock market not because he wants to look adult, but because he is affected by it. Same action as a ten year old frowning over the Financial Times but a different basis. By the same token, an adult male doesn't really NEED to take an interest in kids cartoons because the themes and lessons they contain should be redundant. In the same way that grade school biology lessons would be uninteresting.

Stumbled across this. Regarding the 'news' about Bin Laden's porn stash.

Appear to have created a generic response for 95% of the problems I try to tackle. I will either live very relaxedly for the rest of my life, or be killed by my professional associates for devaluing the skills we have. Either way I'm taking the rest of the morning off.

If you're capable of getting by without levelling up your damn main character, then the fact that you manage Xan is hardly surprising!

The wine was great. You guys were useless.

I'd like to throw in three additional points: 1) IMO poor people tend to object to multi-culturalism. But I don't think they do it because they're bigots. They do it because cultural identity and standards are so much more important to them. A Middle class Londoner is a middle class Londoner, irrespective. They get what they need with cash and understanding the official levers. A poor Londoner depends on his or her community to get what they need. They need to have one rule for what's acceptable. If culture gets 'noisy' it becomes correspondingly harder to get what they need. 2) Extending the above, we're all pretty relaxed about multi-culturalism in, say, food or art. But we get awfully antsy when it extends to - to take UK examples - the exorcism of children, or domestic servitude for minors. 3) Culture is inevitably non-static, if only due to changing societal roles caused by technology.

I'd certainly care to hear the cops case against writing up use of a taser. Bab's point is quite interesting.

Can't help feeling that whatever is on that flip chart isn't very profound.

I confess that after two bottles of wine I'm not able to critique this debate. But I think I can ask a question: Is the stagnation a function of the central role in the World economy, played by the dollar and the US citizen? In other words, the fact that all sorts of developing nations who were pure suppliers in the 1980s are now producers?

I'm pretty sure Enoch is stilL very much alive. Isn't he? edit: Separate and distinct to me sounds like apartheid. Correct me if I'm wrong. When I've been travelling I don't compromise who I am ( I hope). Yet I equally try to display mutually agreeable sides to my culture. So, I have found myself capable of honouring and being honoured in kraals and cabanas and working men's clubs alike. If I am talking to a Sikh elder I would refer to values of defending the weak. If he were to assert - for whatever reason - a view that women were automatically weak, then I would endeavour to persuade him that they were not by examples or by logic. Each and every culture I've dealt with has points in common with the others. I haven't worked on a single list of these. But they do exist.

Acknowledging what I thin kis a relaxed debate, I still have to say that I think you've missed the point. In high stress situations you have to set simple rules. I would assert that in this case the police have used a well-established rule: protect the public. If an individual threatens deadly force, then their safety comes a distant second to that of anyone else. Thoughts?

Woops, right you are .. Done.. Skilfully done, sir.

What genuinely boggles me is the relentless examination of police behaviour, demanding they do _zero_ harm, when I perceive their purpose as the reduction of harm done by normal citizens. I don't mean to excuse abuses of power. But it's just irrational to expect the police to do their job without hurting anybody. At least it seems that way to me.

That's a bit of a contradiction, isn't it? Multiculturalism implies they don't have much use for your culture. I could be wrong, but my feeling is that I've never had my own culture cheapened by a respect for (for example) Sikhs. Any more than my like of red cheapens green.

I don't think that's any more depressing than the comment I've heard from some people that the basic standard of living is unimportant compared with the disparity between rich and poor.

There's a lot to feel dark about in this world. But the thought that random goons can make something this beautiful and open it to (most of) the human race... That makes it OK to me.

Liked it. Still used the F word, man.