Walsingham

Be fair, Cal. I can't see this having happened without invading Afghan, and displacing Bin Laden. You also have to give the Bush administration credit for whacking (see above) a large number of other senior jihadists. Anyone who's been reading me for a while will know I'm not pro-Bush. I think they arsed up a lot of stuff that will be difficult to un-arse. But false credit serves no-one.

What the **** is this? You sound like some kind of deranged door to door weapons salesman. I don't know what kind of Stalinist super-skunk you're smoking. But I'd quite like to try some.

Yeah, sure thing. Voting wil be ony by those who are competent... as expressed by their faith in Marxist-Leninist ideology, since only a fool wouldn't agree. The Party is all. The Party is the state. Without any alternative power structures such as personal wealth or church the Party dominates all. All rights and freedoms are accorded by the State-Party, rather than having any inalienable basis. Disagreement is ruthlessly suppressed both to maintain ideological progress and to preserve the purity of the revolutionary society. The consequence is total abject slavery to the State-Party, and the elite social class of Marxist-Leninist apparatchiks. Mankind becomes a dumb beast of burden.

1. I think it's awesome that this has provoked such a response, and it's not pure snobbery. 2. There are multiple subclauses to the debate, but if I may focus in on the one no-one's grappled with much: The whole thrust of Buddhist thinking is that one's reaction to reality can be distinct from what reality 'wants' your reaction to be. At least I think it is. Krez, back me up here. The reason for this, I would argue, is that as humans our drives only impinge on a tiny subset of reality. Therefore to actuate our drives we might benefit from only dealing with a fractional subset of reality. Being incomplete this could be described as an illusion, but a useful one. Although I don't think that's what the monk was getting at.

I'm sure Dark Alliance will be very... moving. Please do continue.

I think I read about this one already someplace else. I suggest it;s just very effective use of soft furnishings to bring out the airiness of the space.

You've never played Fallout New Vegas? bwaHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Your reasoning might be sound if Drizzt were not an arrogant wanker, and my PC a helpful and incredibly charming bastard. Not to mention being a paladin, rather than some sort of glorified tour guide.

I think that's a wee bit unfair. Hurlshot. Moderates stand up to AlQ et al. all the time. They are then murdered.

According to a Tibetan monk I was talking to, "Time and space are real, but must be looked on as illusions" Discuss.

ROFL. Made people turn to look outside.

I would field a counter-analysis, but the Frunze academy themselves disagree on your first point. Look up combat leadership in Afghanistan. Or in fact anything at all from The Great Patriotic War. Not so sure about your unkillable murder tanks in point 4. Sounds terrifying.

I'm intrigued, Pid. Who said that the Brits were indecisive about control in Northern Ireland? To my understanding police have always had primary power, and it's been a civil controlled process. The Army have only applied investigative and defensive use of force. Plus observation, patrolling etc. I'm not suggesting there hasn't been the odd wobble, but a decade prolongation is a pretty serious allegation. Interestingly, but perhaps for another topic, 'dissident Republicans' have been conducting attacks on the police and army more and more recently. No doubt having realised that if they don't pick up the temppo then people may well realise that they are and have always been a bunch of megalomaniacal psychopaths and gangsters, and not freedom fighters.

I know a good one, but I'll have to look it up. My father read the original version - fart jokes and adultery and all - when I was a kid. It's great stuff.

I agree that it sucks to have a democratic body usurped. And there is no reason I can think of to let the administrators corruptly feth deals. HOWEVER, as Enoch says, a huge amount of govt. waste occurs. And I'd go further and suggest that if people knew that they might have democracy sezied by the repo men then they might pay a little morre ****ing attention.

I'd love to live in a world where scanning a baby really was unnecessary.

Today I have been mostly trying to understand the nature of casuality and the stock markets. the latter is a lot harder than I thought it would be. I assumed it was like going to the newsagents to buy a newspaper, but a lot more shouty.

What the **** is Oblivion doing in that list? It's got a story straight out of every Buffy season ending. Dying order, hell is coming, you are the only one who can get all the maguffins and stop disaster. At least I assume that was the story. With such weak characterisation and no dialogue worthy of the name I had trouble staying awake through the whole thing.

I don't see why. At the start of Watcher's Keep you are told emphatically that the wardstone you are given is the ONLY way to get in or out. And it's designed to hold something which terrifies even the gods. So you take your archmage (whatever the hell they think they are) and cram him into a crevice on your body so seldom seen that even the denizens of the nine hells wouldn't go near it with a nine foot rusted halberd. ~~ Gorgon, I don't care if all I took was the Drow's favourite teddy bear. I trophied it. And having his Dad turn up to get it back with super-powered nerf-me-ups is even more weaksauce than losing in the first place.

IT IS ESSENTIAL THAT YOU HAVE THRONE OF BHAAL INSTALLED Pretty simple really, and I'm pleased to say that I got the idea through roleplaying not by cheesing. I haven't found a reference to this solution elsewhere, but if so apologies. 1. Drizzt is a knob. Seriously. I didn't have the faintest idea who he was hwen I met him in BG1, but he had to die. And I was playing a good PC. It was loathing at first sight. 2. The devs seem to have had a love hate relationship with the dual-weilding t**. On the one hand he keeps appearing. On the other hand he can be killed and looted. Plus he talks like an arse. 3. If Drizzt was played by a real person, he'd be the kind of player that you'd move pubs to avoid. ~~ Problem: If you do - and you should - finely chop Drizzt like an iceberg lettuce, then all is well in BG1. You get some sweet kit. However, even if you killed him he will reappear in BG2 and start waffling on about how he recognises you. This is your cue to pulp him like the topping on a good bruschetta. However, shortly after this some sort of official ethereal Drizzt fanclub will turn up and try to steal back the stuff you took on the grounds that he's been reanimated and needs it back. All attempts to circumvent this result in you getting astrally imprisoned or something. ~~ Solution: In the past I had merely contented myself in leaving the pantywaist's kit in unpleasant places. Sewers, liche coffins, etc. But I now have the answer. Once you have blendered Mr Terminally Overconfident for the second time, make your way immediately to Watcher's Keep. Obtain entry in the normal fashion. Inside you will find a plot centric altar. Bear in mind that the altar is vital to the tower's defenses, and the defenses are underwritten by Helm himself. Stash all the kit on the altar. Complete Shadows of Amn. When you return in Throne of Bhaal you can revisit the altar and get your kit back.

It would be a pretty cool 'suicide by cop' to lay claim to a huge atrocity.

Is prozak some sort of cheap East European knockoff? It takes more than a trivial effort to sign up to the forum just to say thanks. So I approve. Stick around, take the weight off your electronic hooves.

Since I never remember any kind of anniversary except Armistice Day I find this kind of 'day' pernicious and repellent. You might as well litter a blind man's neighbourhood with fragile glass sculptures that were only ankle high and pavement mounted. I AM going to stumble past and break them.

It wasn't mother's day over here. It was mother's day in the States and Canada. Our mother's day was about a month ago..a bit before Easter. Everything is proceeding as I have foreseen it.

Tiny Little Things the Deadfly Ensemble. Creepy and weird.