Walsingham

If you have those figures for development handy - and I assume you do or I wouldn't ask - could you post them or the source? Could be interesting to root around.

I've been there, except I was the dog.

Surely you mean the next British androgobot.

I think it's more to do with a sense of 'honour', and having independence from the US and India even if it kills them. That Hitchens article Agiel linked to has been bouncing around my consciousness all day like a fifty pence piece in a tumbledryer full of jeans. Large chunks of the country contain men who genuinely think that the correct approach to honour is to respond to rape by murdering the woman. Get your head inside that perspective and frankly all bets are off. Every time I try I start getting all sorts of anomalous cognition , like: what IS the sound of gingernut biscuits?

The fundamental problem with the Mideast is the old curse of raw materials. In short they have bags of them. Making money doesn't require skills or organisation, just gaining corrupt control of the materials. Then selling them off. Except for the bits of the mideast with no raw materials. Theirs is the old curse of being fecked.

I'm just not sure what anyone can do in a country with such weak economic foundations. I mean, what can you do, really? If you Tropico'd up, what would you do?

That, my dear, is because the first thing we do after we get laid is try to stop any other bastard from stealing our erm... you know... crumpet. Speaking of war: best opening from Wikipedia EVER. Lieutenant-General Sir Adrian Paul Ghislain Carton de Wiart[1] VC, KBE, CB, CMG, DSO (5 May 1880 – 5 June 1963), was an English officer of Belgian and Irish descent. He fought in the Boer War, World War I, and World War II, was shot in the face, head, stomach, ankle, leg, hip and ear, survived a plane crash, tunneled out of a POW camp, and bit off his own fingers when a doctor wouldn't amputate them. He later said "frankly I had enjoyed the war."

If the devs want a treat they should check out the Pitt-Rivers exhibit at the Natural History Museum in Oxford. More weird clothing and armour than you can shake a severed head at. And some severed heads.

The problem, as has been discussed here before , is that the 'evil' option is mainly just the 'I have the short term perspective of a gnat' option. Being a douche and being evil are two rather separate things.

Challenge for you then. Which AK mag is it? Many more options at http://www.weaponeer.net/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=2239&SID=B71108169F816182B3D0766A7D157AE77B0 (won't link to any other images)

Maybe we're over-thinking it? Maybe it's like you get some proper racists in the British Army, but instead of them getting arrested or thrown out, the Paks can't get rid of theirs. So they use their contacts to aid equally poisonous bastards outside the Forces?

No-one I've ever spoken to knows what makes elements in Pakistani government support Al Qaeda. I would suggest that (as many authors have suggested already) that nations can basically go nuts when it comes to certain issues. Toxic pride combines with an equally toxic unwillingness to address real problems. Argentina and the Falklands is another example. Years ago I did meet a Pakistani major visiting the UK. He had about the saddest face I think I've ever seen.

I agree with Gorth. I don't feel Tamarod is a mass movement. It's just manipulated the media to make it look like one.

Link between zoroastrianism and Iranian foreign policy?

My own view is that the use of proxies - and the delusion that they ARE using the proxies (and not the other way around) is fundamental to big bits of the Iranian state. The Revolutionary guards are the guardians of the Islamic Revolution and they also control the proxies. I can imagine them getting a kick out of shepherding Bin Laden through their turf to Pak. ~ Complete aside, I looked up Christopher Hitchens, and apparently he was the man who popularised Islamofascism as a term. Weird that I use it, but only barely recognised his name.

So, if he fled with the complicity of Iran then it would make the Iranian-AlQ nexus a bit more credible. I seem to recall the notion being rejected as bunkum a while back. Much like Syrian WMD.

I'm not involved in games development. But taking a rough bearing from the nature of most devs I know I'd recommend courses in: - exotic dancing - firearms maintenance - project accounting - baking

It's not offensive. It's bloody art! Art I tell you!

That sucks. I'll be quite honest, but even when I was out of work having a good solid break was worthwhile. You can't relax properly in less than a month, IMO.

I thought it was Robert Wisdom in Sahara (1995). Probably more well known these days for being police commander in The Wire.

There's an idea bulletproofbacks. We mould or acid etch favourite books onto titanium-ceramic pages, ring bind it, and voila! Your favourite book preserved for future generations, and possibly you too.

I think you should go full Brando style Colonel Kurtz. If in doubt, why not formally request advice from HR on the matter?

If I wanted a stool softener I'd read biological warfare manuals.

Copy that, melkathi. This is Tower. Advise change your bearing to 1925, and decrement your professional standards fifteen degrees. Come level when you achieve a desire to drink coconut juice with rum and crushed ice. Relax. Over.

Perhaps if you boiled it down a bit?