Walsingham

I actually skimread a copy of that a while back. I know what you mean. Is it not also massively outdated?

I agree, but I'm not sure how we can fix it. A start would be to improve the slightly abstract skill of critical reasoning in the voting populace. I say that because I think it's just possible one could foster that skill without getting directly political. It's a life skill so the benefits would be felt all over the damn place. However, I do sometimes wonder (in the twilight hours) whether it's just too easy for politicians to keep people dumb. I'm not saying they plan it. I'm just saying it's far far too easy to say it's far too difficult to do anything about.

Mother of God. You need to get old testament on your pets, man. I'm talking scourging floods. Possibly of fire.

Now there's a man who can rest easy.

I'm not saying that losing Suffolk wouldn't be inadvisable. I'm smply observing that the complexity of what constitutes our nation is huge and distributed over very disparate geographic regions. The crisis in the eurozone is a pretty mild example of this. Ask yourself where we get our food and energy from, and how long we could exist as a nation if those supplies were interrupted.

I've been pondering the recent furore over our Minister in charge of Defence, Liam Fox, and reached a hypothesis: No worthwhile politician or indeed person has a cupboard free of skeletons. It further occurs to me, reading this thread, that the US system is now a parlour game of 'who has the least skeletons' and is thereby rendered an exercise in selecting pasteboard simpletons.

Judging by the consistency I'd have to say that it's either a natural talent or the result of years of painstaking hard training.

Barbarians! @Guard Dog: Different lines of work, yet parts of it sounds strikingly familiar. High risk interesting projects versus the less glamorous ones that ensures you can pay rent in any foreseeable future. I like the first ones better, my employer the latter High risk sounds awesome until it doesn't pay off. Thats part of the fun. If you screw up, you're royally screwed (been there, done that) and if you succeed, you feel so very much alive (been there, done that too) Someone todl me the other day that an entrepreneur is a man who will cheerfully work 16 hours a day to avoid working 8 hours a day for someone else.

I don't think that we should be at all surprised by attacks on Wall Street. If the dog craps on the carpet, you reach for the rolled up newspaper! However, I don't see this spasm translating into an effective change in the political landscape of voting America. So long as the people vote for the guy with the best PR, they are going to be voting for the guy who sells himself best to big business. And that means no shift in the relationship between Congress and business. I don't see that as a failing of the system, so much as a failing of the people.

Barbarians! @Guard Dog: Different lines of work, yet parts of it sounds strikingly familiar. High risk interesting projects versus the less glamorous ones that ensures you can pay rent in any foreseeable future. I like the first ones better, my employer the latter High risk sounds awesome until it doesn't pay off.

I think I'm pretty consistent in arguing that kids don't reason effectively, due to a combination of factors, including susceptibility to peer pressure/advertising as much as raw mental immaturity.

I know you're exaggerating, but that's... a bit off even as an exaggeration. Losing Suffolk implies enemies a few quick and jaunty hours from downtown London. Actually this is precisely my point. Modern warfare doesn't move at the speed of tanks any more than WW2 moved at the speed of the horse. With pretty cheap missiles (as it goes) launching at 800 miles, and speeds up to around mach 4, a lot of places are "a few quick and jaunty hours" from London. Warfare - ad by direct inference statehood - has _always_ been about systems not geography. It's just that in the past the nature of system dynamics was synonymous with geography because geography was the prime enabling factor.

Today's comedy mistype: "I am familiar with your ork through the national press"

I did assume that. But not because I think you're a moron. The key here is that whenever I look at game reveiws there's a _very_ harsh assessment of graphics. You are either in that top 3%, graphically speaking, or you get canned. Now, I could easily be wrong. I don't own a top flight graphics processor and personally I couldn't care less about the graphics. But the bulk of game buyers are not enlightened. They go with the "94%!" on the box. i still think that this could be directly addressed if there was some numerical method of rating game complexity/realism. Nerds love numbers.

I know geography's not your strong suit, but wouldn't they have to annex Belarus or Ukraine first?

It's a defensive alliance, anyone who attacks one NATO member attacks all. That is about as close to insurance as you can get in international relations and there's no reason to believe it wouldn't be honoured. But that does mean there's as little obligation to support other members in elective wars as there is for Laos, Paraguay or Belize to. I follow your logic. But this isn't the 19th century. I've been arguing for some time that real present existential threats to national security are systemic in this day and age. To make the point exaggeratedly clear, we can afford to lose Suffolk more than we can afford to lose our bases in Cyprus. Because the two have very different contributions to our ability to function as an independent nation.

Can't find a simple way of presenting this. Nearly burst a lung laughing at the Tata steel company website. http://tatanagar.com/ There are some pics which slideshow around on this page. One of them says "Architecture is a visual art, and the buildings speak for themselves." I don't think I've ever seen such hideous buildings.

Surely it is the lady behind the boob that matters. Speaking as a man who's seen far more man-mammaries real and augmented than he should.

Well, we are Euro-sceptic, because traditionally the solitary guiding principle of British foreign policy for about a tohusand years has been to try and avoid a single power dominating europe. Eastern Europe should be very wary of Germany looking east because Germany appears (under Merkel at least) to be aiming to link hands with Russia. If I were running the Czech Republic, or Poland, that would make me bloody nervous. And I don't say that out of some maudlin 'don't mention the war' instinct. Those ations cannot expect any significant indpeendence if Russia and Germany become opposite points on a new axis.

Replayed Stalker: shadow of Chernobyl today. I've got to say that the combat AI, the animal AI, the maps, and the last couple of story levels put New Vegas to shame. And they make Far Cry 2 look like a drooling imbecile. I'm not kidding. How _the ****_ have games got _less clever_ in the last few years?

Story about a young woman who got herself made police chief to fight drugs.

The problem with ALL the apllied sciences is twofold, and you've touched on both aspects: 1. No coherent statement of intent - in this case what 'healthy' looks like, and what we are prepared to do to get it 2. No coherent architecture for organising, collating, sifting all the thousands of technical papers and lab results. I wouldn't be surprised if a million worthwhile results each years are simply thrown away like trash because of the above. It's something which even happens inside big organisations. I know a particular engineering firm who spent three years trying to find an answer to a question which had already been solved by another department five minute's walk away.

As an insurance company. Nobody likes the premiums and you think you are never going to need it. When storm hits the roof, you suddenly realize it is good to have others helping pay the bill. It probably does more to prevent war between member states than any other organization in recent history. Well, I sure as hell don't want to see any more wars in Europe in my lifetime. However, I'm not sure 'insurance' really cuts it. To be an effective military alliance NATO members have to be able to really rely on one another or they begin thinking about insurance within the block. But Europe as it currently stands has too diverse a range of interests to be invested in any common actions. The really worrying thing for me is that Germany appears to be aligning with Eastern Europe and ignoring anything 'over the water'. Although I'm quite encouraged by the way France seems keen to pair up with Britain on various actions, equipment, and training.

I've been reading your comments with interest. I'd suggest the theory that democracy is simply a mechanism. The energy which powers that mechanism is the underlying political culture. Or to put it another way, democracy is the lense through which the light of political culture shines. A key problem (in my opinion) is that many forms of democracy cripple government with constraints and invariably get corrupted by agile and ruthless sub-groups. A further point must be that I can't think of very many countries without serious corruption problems. And the ones where it's not so bad still have problems.

You're wandering off argument, I feel. At least I hope so, because it sounds as if there's a limitless array of 'nastiness' you want to tax like a red-headed country and western singer.