Walsingham

With a degree of humility I'd ask if you're both wrong about gold AND Australia. Both of those objects are overvalued. Which is - unless I'm mistaken - your point about them being good to have invested in. Raw material prices are a subject to overpricing due to artificial or temporary shortages. Australian companies still face grave questions about whether Australia is a good location for production in a world of rising transport prices. Just to name a couple of arguments. ~~ Ench, I see your point about Fate etc etc. Personally I'm hoping that the larger problems can be averted simply by the transition occurring at a slow enough speed. If various financial institutaions can watch the changes occurring and have time to pre-empt the hits maybe just maybe they can mitigate the damage through frenetic self-seeking cowardice.

Ay! How d'ya like THIS heavenly host?!

*chuckles* Well, maybe you are right and frustrated tweens will quit. However, let me take devil's developer for a moment. Tweens may, for biological reasons, be forever tied mainly to shooty stabby games. But the young gamers become older gamers. Gamers with substantially more disposable income. Perhaps a richer adversarial system would attract them more. Maybe not. It would be interesting to trail something like this, in an experimental fashion, by having a 'Wizard of Oz' setup where players think they are facing a super clever AI, but are actually facing a refereed team of human baddies.

So then, by your analysis - and unreserved apologies if I've misunderstood - we are destined for some sort of crash. Because the politicos are gambling on economic resurgence. Which won't happen. So what happens then? How bad will it get?

I call Volo.

I'll take that and ante up: If this is the dusk of our economic establishment, why organise ourselves on national grounds at all? If not national, then what? Arguably the very rich have been doing this for ages. They're nomadic.

I honestly just misread this: "Who will ruin Post-Gaddafi Libya?" instead of the correct "run"

I know sentencing has t obe consistent for justice to be done. But I was under the impression that the purpose of a judge is to take all factors into consideration. Taking 100 bucks and then turning yourself in does not seem an efficient use of a jail cell.

That's pretty **** up. I'm with Lewis Black on this. People who wreck economies so they can have marble toilets shouldn't be given 40 months in an open prison. They should be given life in mental institutions next to the gape-mouthed fellahs who write in their own poop.

Giving official history the benefit of the doubt and assuming that this was an evil mass murdering dictator who oppresed his people for generations... can we cut them a little slack?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/10/21/camping_warning/ Apparently we missed it, again. EDIT: I missed this on my first read.

You'd think a communication company could at least reduce the obvious "cut n paste" effect.. True. But then you'd think that Virgin trains wouldn't want to move people around the country in tubes that smell of sh**. Branson really should go incognito on one of his bloody trains some time.

Sorry, gentlemen, but we were talking about the debt crisis. I know it _might_ be down to politics. But to move the conversation on, surely there are other perspectives?

Stop being childish and learn to beat the system at its own game. http://www.amazon.com/Game-Player-Miles-Co...9814&sr=8-1 I'm not kidding around. I've known a lot of techies who felt invulnerable because they were good at thier jobs, but wound up getting ditched for not being team players. And we've got enough bad news without you being let go in a downsizing.

Th ereally weird thing is that in the Uk we have locally directly elected Members of Parliament. Almost anyone has the opportunity to meet their MP really really easily. And with the election of that MP usually turning on a couple of thousand people the MP pays attention to what you say/ask. Yet no bastard takes advantage of this. Anyway, haven't eaten so much as a biscuit today. getting a bit scatty. Should go out and get some food.

Raul is my favourite character in New Vegas. Others are more functionally useful, but none have Raul's backstory and comments.

Mate, I'm not being funny. You're an interesting character. But now is NOT the time to get fired. maybe you should play the game a little, just as a game.

Again, so long as free people vote for the politician with the most expensive ad campaign, politicians will chase money. Those are the rules of the game AS WE DEFINE THEM.

A trial like Milosevich? I sympathise with your problems with the mainstream media coverage. The problem is the 'one size fits all' analysis. It can't be clever and it can't be simple, and it can rarely presuppose any given morality. Is it any wonder it's mulched insanity?

What would be the _point_ of this federalised Europe? Economic? We used to have an economic union, without political bilge thrown in. My view of federations is that as oon as money starts heading to the central authority, political power chases after it. You get a one way slide, at varying speeds towards the US situation, where states cannot exert any serious independence. I hope GD, who has spent more time studying this, will back me up.

As you say, I've no desire to watch snuff. However, you must recall all the squealing that went on over Bin Laden...

I am anti EU as it happens. But economically speaking a collapse of one or more European states is so bad it should be self-evident.

Starters for ten: 1) On our current course what will happen? 2) What action options do we have?

RPG kaboom tank.