Walsingham

You poor stupid bastard. You're ****ed now.

Godwin's law? Also, prospective defence from a colleague: "An extremely fragile and misshapen childhood results in a volatile adulthood. Already from the crib my client was grossly cheated of his rights and devoid of privileges, kindness and caring. Not to mention they didn't have soap." I assume there's an original source for this, but I've had a pop culture fail. Sounds like Rumpole to me.

I'd take the view that the flag is a communicative signal. The theory of communication I learned was that they consist of three things: grammar, lexicon, and context. Context is _inescapably_ part of any message, whether we like it or not. However, it's been my observation that context can be de-emphasised if you have a very elaborate and specific lexicon or grammar surrounding the word. The issue with flags is that they are (in many instances) a very simple lexicon - only Arabic flags have mottos on them these day I think. And they have about the simplest grammar I can think of because - with the exception of naval signals - flags fly alone. Therefore, when it comes to flags, context is _everything._

There's a good discussion of these issues on Vaginal Fantasy, Felicia Day's book club on Goodreads/Youtube.

The phrase "something popped" is not one I can imagine being good in a human body.

Need to clean out the inbox, old son. Will get on it tomorrow. No time now.

Bruce will save me the trouble of describing what a necklacing is if anyone is interested. But logically speaking it could be fixing a person's roof for free. I saw evidence of black people doing it in South Africa. It doesn't shape my expectations of black friends and colleagues. There is some ****ed up **** out there right enough. But it's down to crises in organisations and individuals, not down to easy to apply labels.

Yeah. Who'd a' thought racist stereotypes would be right wing?

Hey, I know HOW to do it. I'm just not doing it at the moment. When I'm trying to discipline my thoughts I don't discipline my emotions. Fight everywhere lose everywhere, baby.

Up to my ears in old Chinese legalist texts about statecraft and warfighting. At first they were fascinating, and now they just strike me as irritatingly scatty and unstructured.

Meditation, mother******s. Learn it.

Remeber that the play was originally intended to be performed by actors in massive battlesuits. And the swords are missiles. Great fething missile barrages.

We had freezing sleet last Friday. FREEZING SLEET CUTTING MY FACE! IN MAY!

It's an interesting question. If you want an interesting curveball view, check out the way Societies treat non-native soldiers. Particularly the campaign by Joanna Lumley to improve British Army treatment of gurkhas. My own view is that the public in most Western nations struggle to reconcile popular media antipathy to warfighting with the popular media affection for warfight_ers_. Tough, self-reliant, self-sacrificing. And the contrast between those values and the values of other public figures such as celebrities and politicians. Most people reconcile this struggle by painting the Armed Forces as victims in wars beyond their control. There was a British general who discussed this at length - it's not my idea. But I haven't time to look him up just now.

I think Drowsy Emperor's attitude to historical rewrites can be highlighted perfectly by him calling me politically correct. Although his complet misunderstanding of the way apartheid was sold to people as a solution to racial strife is a close second.

Unplanned parties are always the best. Fact.

That song got stuck in my head for the longest time.

I am amused that you are attempting to retrench to a more 'moderate' position by suggesting the solution is separation of incompatible 'races'. Nearly as much by your Daily Mail bleating about how the younger generation is too fat to fight. But not nearly as much as I am by your cherry picking a handful of anecdotal 'evidence' of how repressive 'Muslim' countries are. I have been all over this world apart from Russia and South America and I've seen some ****ed up ****. But not once did I try to explain it by saying "Yeah that **** I saw 6 people doing is definitely the way 2.6 billion other people who have the same hair or holy book, or soup recipes would behave."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectic Well, wiki agrees with Nep.

Asserting that the tone of any Holy Book defines the social, cultural, and philosophical decision making of its official adherents is mendacious at best. I'm down as Church of England, my holy book includes the old testament. The clue is in the ****ing name. Yet one of my favourite foods is prawn curry. The new testament says "Thou shalt not kill" and I was signed up for the Army. The rationale for what you're saying is irrelevant, however. The logical destination of your reasoning is a religious war involving billions that could not end in any way other than extermination. I reject that destination. I reject your logic. I reject you. And now I want prawn curry.

I was thinking dialectic as well, but I think that's more of a rationalist approach to deriving truth. I agree with Tigs in that 'we' as a culture probably use it as the basis for a huge percentage of academic achievement, and thereby social advancement, yet we don't seem to have a word for it.

I don't think you are, ma'am. The original poster was entitled "What do passive aggressive ****ing cowards mean"

No. I can't hold fire any longer. Wait, no. I got it back under control again.

Well played, Rosbif. Well played.