Walsingham

Lies! Monte runs a snack franchise called Fast Food, that specialises in things like turtles, sloths, and snails. Don't send him your cash unless you want a hoi sin hibernating bear in a bap.

Today I have been mostly getting riled. It turns out that being angry helps my creative side, and makes me much more efficient work-wise.

Actually, it occurs to me that the guidance system has to fucntion for a period corresponding to the travel time. So really what we need is both a networked guidance system for these damn turtles, plus freaking rockets. I don't know much about sexy tortoises, but I don't see how momma tortoise is going to react badly if poppa tortoise hoofs up in a scything wake of rocket powered turbulence, and thundering George .

But its misuse won't affect the charter of human rights itself, clearly put: they won't change the human rights charter by misusing it. Besides is not like they want to do something wrong, you seem to have an obvious bias against it though. Don't know why. Although if the courts feel like you do, maybe it won't happen. So cheer up mate, there is going to be future generations of undergraduates but the human rights remain pure and sacred. That's all that matters, ain't it? *sigh* Legislation of all kinds only gets really defined when it is put through the system of the courts. So you are completely off beam. If they successfully claim using the human rights act at a high court level then that is what the Act becomes. A charter for demanding government sponsorship. I'm no legal expert, but we've got some lawyers on here. Anyone care to chip in?

I'll have you know that I'm official tortoise horn czar, heading the Offtorthorn quango, set up under Gordon Brown because he fancied benefiting from its efforts.

I'm actually quite annoyed now, because giving you the benefit of the doubt I went back and REread the links you posted. All they are is evidence that governments and some publicity-conscious organisations are buying or legally mandating solar. This is EXACTLY what I said. If the potential was really there than there would be buy-in from companies who currently are extremely vulnerable to price fluctuations in oil. Agribusiness and (weirdly) oil refining are both examples. Governments buying into solar is just an example of governments being ****ing retarded. Industry is a far better barometer of technical readiness than government will ever be. At least in the three to eight year bracket, which is what we are talking about.

Basically, a bride that is sold through the mail to a man. Often from less economically successful countries. For some, the end result is the 21st century equivalent of slavery and for others the end result is the express queue to visa/citizenship in more affluent countries (where they dump their "spouses" right after the mandatory duration of the partnership to acquire such papers). When you put it that way, it's just an extremely inefficient form of state sponsored prostitution!

Um, do you even understand what autism is? There's every chance this guy well and truly does have an ASD. And certainly the IT industry in general has a disproportionately large number of people with ASD (especially Asperger's). It also has lots of people with ADHD curiously, but that's not relevant here. There's also 'every chance' that this is a cynical attempt to dodge responsibilty by claiming that 'aspergers' is in fact 'just feckless arrogant t***' syndrome.

Inspired by mkreku's recent efforts in mail-order-briding I had an idea for endangered species, and particularly the tortoises of the Indian ocean. Could one fit tortoises with a bionic, network enabled love-seeking module? Or, alternatively, somehow enhance their love-generating signals? And of course by love I mean hot sweaty tortoise sex.

Wow, Wals you really have taken this thing an ran with it. Isn't it a bit of hyperbole? Before the scenario you describe could happen, don't they need to have a whole bunch of trials based on the precedent and people behind it? Plus there is a difference between alienable rights and privileges, what you describe are the privileges of the rich. It is entirely possible I'm running in mental circles by this point, waving my hypothalamus out my ear like a naked arse from the window of a sunlit chevy. But I don't think so. The thing is that human rights legislation is designed to be super-powerful and transnational. It's designed (or so I thought) to get genocidal gokking bastards into jail, and peaceful protesters out of the torture chamber. Not to mandate every aspect of society. I still think that using it in this way demeans and dilutes the power of the very important point of the legislation. And it does it so students can avoid running up 27k debt, rather than the 100k debt they do in other countries.

Krezack, I've said before that investing billions in something doesn't make it magically happen. If anything, the billions invested simply underline the fact that it won't work. Look at Eurofighter.

God damn you all to hell. I was supposed to go to bed two hours ago. Filthy lists...

You know when you order shoes online, and when they turn up they are surprisingly scuffed, and smell faintly of formaldehyde?

I don't see how it's appropriate for the 'A-Team' to publish names of relatives of Lulzsec hackers. Lord knows, you can't choose your relatives...

She does have a pretty mouth...

A bit...

I just love the way the British mind works. Thousands, if not tens of tousands of Britons have placidly and calmly launched incendiaries into the air with no more reassurance than that everyone else is doing it. May God bless my halfwit countrymen.

Good man.

I can't link to people not doing something. You can do the reverse.

What a moronic thing to say. In what way?

1) Pursuit of happiness is something we can all get behind in theory. But it's like 'fairness'. What does it actually mean and more importantly where does it stop? This is important because with limited resources in attention if not assets we have to enact policy to push it forward. Personally I cannot regard a 'fair' access to higher education as a human right in the same way as a right to life and liberty. yet this precdent will make it a legal imperative for the government. 2) We discussed the 'construct' of human rights with LoF/Cycloneman a while back, when he was defending Sendero Luminoso. I think I was a little bit sick in my mouth, as they say. His argument was that since human rights were a social construct then society could easily and legitimately deconstruct them to suit its needs. The result being arbitrary rape, murder, and slavery. 3) This is really the point. Enshrining 'fairness' as a human right will make government policy socialist on pain of criminal prosecution. Everyone gets to go to University. Everyone should be near a job so the government has to move people and house people who live in destitute regions. Ugly people and short people deserve plastic surgery since neither feature serves their social engagement. Poor people don't experience as much of the world on rich people's gap years so the government should subsidise holidays. This is not a straw man. This is how legal precedent works.

Story. Anyone else not the least surprised?

Arse. If that were genuinely true you'd have craptonnes of industry gearing up for it to avoid oil price fluctuations alone.

Is that thing covered in rattan? Surely it'd be impossible to clean!