Walsingham

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!

You chaps seem to have misinterpreted my basic point. Having had breaks from a very poor start myself I understand that it can be a good thing. What I am objecting to is the notion that one has a human right to the best cultivation of your abilities.

I'm damned if I'm writing this script. That's why I thought I'd kick it across to the forum!

Bacteria eats bongzilllion tonnes of methane. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/01/07/de...etane_bacteria/

I'd echo vault overseer's observation that we have neglected vocational training thanks to New Labour's middle class imperialist view that everyone should go to university and drink small amounts of good quality wine at bad parties. Going back a bit, I think my original objection was that: 1. It's fair enough to wonder why there aren't more poor students in higher education, and to want to see a healthy (whatever that means) number of students coming through from that background. Talent and determination do not solely arise from mummy and daddy. 2. The great failure is not university. The failure is schooling at secondary level. Children who go through government schools have wildly diverging standards of education and support. Improve this level and there's no reason why university intakes wouldn't go up. 3. I know and work with a lot of bloody clever people from poor backgrounds. But equally you have to admit that some people are poor because they're stupid or lazy or both. In that respect the system 'works'. The children of stupid lazy people tend to absorb the same values and standards. I really am becoming dreadfully right wing. I blame cycloneman. I used to be all woolly and a bit lefty before I was forced to confront it head on.

You also lose out if you can't afford good food, you lose out if you don't take additional classes in things like mathematics... music... You need to have money to meet people, to be social, to... it goes on indefinitely. I understand the logic of seeing someone through basic education, and making sure they get a healthy start in life. But you can't _engineer_ someone's whole life!

Righto. No problem there. One advantage of paranoia is not re-using passwords.

Be fair, Raithe. The EU wastes a great deal more money than we spend on universities. With no democratic means of arresting that waste.

Two words: bowel disruptor.

Wandered out, drunk, to get an ice-cream and accidentally volunteered myself to do a charity thing involving a lot of running. Can't decide if this is an example of booze being awesome or me being a t***.

Could you develop that point, Gorgo?

Any mods to nerf the ai being jedi-aware?

I suspect the effect will be to reduce gibs, like that rental service did with their own cut of Saving Private Ryan. I wonder why the people behind this push are not worried that cleaning up the aesthetics of the violence will make it more easy for people to become desensitized, not less. Saving private Ryan had a rental service special edition? That's just... I'm not sure I wnt to be less hungover now. But I am certain that I want to be more heavily armed. And strategically mobile.

I've got no problem with someone making a normal case in Parliament for improving access to education. But tacking it onto the Human Rights stuff simply turns same into a socialist charter, and in doing so diminishes the entire concept of what I'd call proper human rights. It's pretty revolting, IMO.

Can anyone tell me if bioware stored any payment details. I don't recall putting anything like that on the system.

If i understand this article correctly, and I may well not, then two students are going to challenge HM government's plan to allow universities to charge

I may be horribly hungover and stupid, but I'd like to suggest a Brave New World alternative of removing children from their parents entirely, and only subjecting them to wholesome video games where they kill communists and salute a virtual 300 foot high American flag.

An excess of ego and beer yesterday saw me wandering around town like some sort of undergraduate t***, waving my arms and declaiming theories of human superiority. Finally wound up insisting that a doner kebab was the perfect symbol of human civilisation and ate my way through 3/4 before realising my face was covered in sticky thick grease and threw the offending article into a hedge. Slept 2 hours, and have woken up unable to sleep in. Guts feel like a plate of spaghetti. With live snakes. On a plane.

I believe he is demonstrating the newt equivalent of