Walsingham

Yes, but their case is better. I would love for them to be wrong though. The priority of placing religious or metaphysical traditions or thinking at the top of the list of apparently irrational behavior in others to be addressed is effectively an endorsement of more real problems in mass popular behavior such as consumerism which are far harder to tackle and far more widely enabled. In this way I find atheists particularly bothersome when vocal, because they tend to single issue crusade something they mistake for not being piss-ant relative to their own contributions to our problems. We can point our fingers in the mirror for the walmart, over population, EU zone, BP etc rather than at Jesus or Ganesha. Christmas trending from the religious to consumerism is just well rationalized degeneracy. Good point! What I DO find interesting is that just as there seems to a sybaritic instinct native to a certain percentage of humans, so too seems the puritan ecstacy of self-denial and other-denial. IT's just that the sins have changed. Not the beards and pointing.

All this war talk segues neatly into results on the 'lightsaber versus taser' testing.

I'm really not losing any sleep even if it was espionage. Although there's **** all along that border that I know of so would be pretty boring. Unless it was searching for infiltartors. My point was really that the best programming in the 21st century won't fix a map drawn in the the 19th century.

My God, this soup is good! I mean, just staggeringly good. ~ Re social stuff, of course we can plan as much as we like, but the more impromptu a party or gathering is the better it gets. Every time.

ROFL. Brings back memories.

On the subject of butter, and my incipient sore throat, I made an all butter and wholemeal roux as the base for a soup I am now enjoying. Mostly swede, carroway seeds, ground mace, pepper. Lamb stock. bit of carrot for sweetness. small quantity of sausage. Red lentils for unctious weight. Blended up before serving with a dash of dark soy sauce. Unbelievably good.

Glad it made you laugh!

I still play Civ5 to cope with hangovers. But the military component is completely bungholed. It desperately needs more Panzer General elements like entrenchment. At the moment you just hit anything with three times its number and it's dead. The strategic map becomes simple geometry. There's no strategy to speak of, as I'd understand it. Still, nice and simple. Good to play with some tea and a radio murder mystery on.

What I love is all the halfwits sounding off about how it couldn't have accidentally wound up in Iranian airspace. As if the Afghan border is some neatly defined Euro stateline. I'm not saying it WAS accidental. Just, you know, Volo-tanting.

Some township guitar playing. Drives me nuts to see talent like this sitting in a dusty alley and half-baked greenhorns flooding the domestic airwaves.

I can understand your confusion, but maybe it's because it's the other asking you to. If he subsequently fails to do any good then that's his bad karma. Becomes his problem?

Buying and installing Borderlands appears to have cured him. Thought I'd say.

I've discovered that I ca nstay logged into a running game of Borderlands, shoot for five minutes, then get back to work. So my stats are off the charts on that. Although this last week has been so busy I haven't even had time for that!

Fixed yet?

I smell an app in there somewhere. Something using linear programming. I could certainly use one for meetings. ...By which I mean my social life is simplicity itself. I know where my friends are. They're in the pub. Or at someone's house. Or gone to town. To a pub.

More techie than sciency, but here's an article on how the iranians probably nabbed that US spy drone.

It's certainly in the shops. Although there's so much around Cookery wise I find I'm becoming more and more like the fabulously drunk .

Butter's one of those things where quality is worthwhile. Get good butter, and use sparingly. Far better than margarine by the bucket.

Butter is one of my kitchen essentials.

To suggest that the imaginary has no impact on the physical world is pure snow-driven nonsense. If it didn't, what would be the point of double-blind clinical trials? I'd like to proudly announce that due (at about 80%) to Krez' neo-puritan claptrap I went out this afternoon and bought a bottle of whisky I can barely afford and am guzzling it now. It is delicious. But even if it weren't I would be glowing.

Seen in the UK

OK. If it comes to waste, what about pride? Christians massively against pride. Yet how much money do we waste as a culture on cosmetics? HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS of dollars are spent on cosmetics every year. there's no medical necessity for it. Why don't we run about chucking mud at people trying to look nice? Don't give me any straw man crap either. Cosmetics are a bigger issue for waste than Christmas. If we're going to be against waste it's a fair target. Come to that why do I have a wardrobe full of all sorts of shirts and jackets and things? Boiler suits. That's the ticket. One sort of boiler suit, made locally from local materials. Lovely pig-skin boilersuit. None of this bongzilion garments from China nonsense.

Krez, you sound like some kind of green commissar right now. Waste is evil! The unbeliever must be struck down! NO holidays for the sinful! Can you really not see that? Because if you can't then for the love of all that isn't holy don't say another word until you do.

Hehe... "floor pizza" Didn't know there were so many of them. Last time I checked they were up to I'd forgotten about it as well. Hence the reminder.