Walsingham

Firstly I was being a bit patronising, and generally a **** so I apologise for that. I'm sure it will happen again, by apologies anyway... All I'm saying on the subject of danger is that asserting marijuana (dope to me) has no negative effects is factually incorrect, and alienates perfectly reasonable people away from the legalisation argument. It's factually incorrect because there are studies which sugegst there are associated problems, and you can SEE with your own eyes people with a dependency on marijuana. Getting smoked up is a comon feature of those funsome murdersome militias one see around the world. It deadens your intellect, and some variants contain high levels of simulants that can make you hallucinate and exhibit extreme agitation. I believe that legalisation is essential if we are to stand a chance of excising or mitigating the impact of drugs on our society. It's too important to indulge in comforting platitudes about how the use of the drug has no impact on anything. It does. It just doesn't have the kind of impact which should be fought by overstretched law enforcement.

LOL@ Monte. Been talking to a customer service department or something? The profit motive doesn't necessitate being a royal ****. Benevolence might be stretching things. But there are such things as business models based on full disclosure, worker empowerment, and sustained customer relationships. They are complex, and need good people in charge of them. But they can and do exist, because they make money, and the people playing their game enjoy it.

Politicians play to the crowd, and the right wing vote reliably.

It's arrived, it's hooked up, and by God does it shift! I have all my work up, Shameless on 4OD, plus napster, plus Mass Effect and Firefox running. Not a stutter. Slowest thing atm is downloading all my steam games...

I've thought about your point and I'm going to turn that around. I know a very very wide section of people who dope up, from the obvious students and techies to army officers and nurses. Low to high achievers. But at the end of the day it's about putting stuf in your brain which is more complex than ethanol. For ****'s sake its two active components. Not even one. So I think you are the one who is letting their personal experience cloud their judgement. The zulus use dope for fighting on. How does that fit with your cosy white 1960s view?

Having said all this, I think it's a wee bit sad that we can't have the innocent anonymous personae that we want. It just shows gow the supposed emphasis on the consumer comes unstick when you consider more advanced business models.

You may not agree - well, you DON'T agree - but getting stoned is all about pushing your brain chemistry in ways it wouldn't normally move. It moves people and not always in good ways. Rather like alcohol its effects depend on who is taking it, when they take it, and why. It can interfere with work itself, it can affect motivation, it can lead to over-relaxation and neglect of important functions... like bloody showering if memory of university serves. I find it relatively easy to relax so I don't touch the stuff. I mainline coffee to work, and inhale the ale to socialise. These things balance, and I think in other people dope helps them balance. But if you use anything inappropriately then you become imbalanced and that CAN be problematic. Again, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, we don't need to establish marijuana's absolute innocuousness. It merely has to be confidently below comparative levels with much more serious problems. I don't think anyone seriously suggests it is worse than methamphetamine or heroin. And we have insufficient resources to adequately tackle those drugs.

Loads of freinds turned up more or less unexpectedly last night. Since we had a roleplaying session planned I roepd everyone in and we had a huge laugh. Especially the guys who hadn't played in years. This was fortunate as it turns out one of them just found out his ex is pregnant, and is going aahead but planing on keeping him out of the equation. So the roleplaying totally distracted him. Up this morning, and I continued the theme buy having the survivors of last night have a crack at some of my work for today. I always find having completely fresh people on a job is refreshing and effective. Definite advances made. Now just waiting for my new PC to arrive. Gorgeous weather.

Two points: 1. I don't belong to facebook. I spotted the privacy issue staright away. And boy do I feel smug. 2. If you want to **** them up, simply trying to keep quiet won't help. That's the point about networks. To **** them up you need to feed in as much false data as possible, and encourage everyone you know to confuse the signal as well. Flood the network with false contacts, false preferences, and inaccurate statements about birthdays, marriages etc etc.

You will recall that our last session ended with the players astride horses and heading in to the city of Magritta, it's large and badly maintained curtain wall looming before them like a thirsty... something. Entering the city required a cursory inspection from some clearly poor quality guards in what woudl later turn out to be the colours of the Prince of Magritta. Once inside the gates the players were entranced by views of a large and vibrant city state. Carts of grain, barrels of olives, men carry baskets of fish. Camels. Peasants of every stripe idling, and talking. Note that this was because they came in through the Nadye gate near the old market. But they soon headed off into side streets and up the slope to the Casa Gorthoba. Here the were introduced to the architecture a little. A stone walled building centred on a medium sized courtyard containing mainly room for stabling and forming up expeditions. It has three levels above ground, surmounted by an octagonal tower with terrace. Dismounting, Joaquin stormed off and established that his master (Matxin) was not present. This posed a problem for Matxin, who decided he would rather not leave the players alone, but who was also royally bored after the long journey. Pacing up and down like an animal he pondered this out loud then announced that as it was the last day of the shows at the Kovostella they would all go to the circus. So, changing his doublet and acquiring a fresh pair of guards Matxin lead them straight back out again and down the hill to the large round edifice. Walking through the streets was an opportunity to stress the nature of the city to the players. The main impression was that every class of person, even the vagrants, appeared entirely self-possessed and at their ease. Rough working men and women strolled along bearing tools or goods in their hands, and shouting greetings. Young bravos strutted along in groups, with ridiculous capes and flimsy looking blades at their sides. Young women, aspiring to courtly values, walked or rode in sedan chairs, in ornate gowns with daringly bare forearms and colourful fans. They only saw the Kovostella as they got close to it, because the streets were narrow and the buildings tall. But the swelling crowds anounced its presence long before. The Kovostella is a massive sandstone edifice, looming five stories above the streets around it. Colourful awnings hang from its arches, shading the interior and multiplying the sense of spectacle. Crowds jostle at the base, and rowdies on the upper floors urinate in the direction of men carrying trays of charcoal on which vegetables and meat and fish are grillling. The players escort push and pummel their way through the crowd, diving beneath the echoing outerwork and re-emerging into the blazing sunlight of the central stands. Here they acquired an area of standing space, and acquired wine and fruit. The spectacles of the day were already under way, and strutting about the centre was a young boy of around 14 years of age. Tall, and got up in a very showy outfit of green, red and brocade. He had a red scarf around one arm, and a pair of spears in the other. Having accepted the cheers of the crowd, he marched to the centre of the arena and planted one spear in the ground. To his front a gate opened, and a huge bull emerged... (more later when I have time)

Both useful and interesting, all. My concern for these things comes from living in the Far East for a while. I woke in the middle of the night to see a warm glow, as of the dawning sun. It turned out on closer inspection to be one of the wall outlets glowing. Of course that in turn appeared to arise from someone having used a six inch nail as part of the circuit. It made me quite nervous. So as I understand it, proceed without fear, but have an electrician check the overall layout asap.

Not that govts don't waste money in other interesting ways. Viz this shocking scandal of the former government paying Serco

With my shiny new PC arriving tomorrow I've got a question about power supply. To white: how many items can I reliably/safely run from a single UK wall socket? In the long term I'm having a guy come in next week and fit more plugs, but right now I have my desktop, monitor, printer, scanner, internet hub, speakers, and external hard drive all running off the one point. So tomorrow I'm planning on running in an extension cable from another room, which (since no one else is around at present) will only hazard my face if I fall over it. But how careful ought I to be?

I've had a think and I can't see anything obvious. You've already seen at least one cutscene by then, haven't you?

I don't like to prejudicially knock things (much) but LA just don't give a **** about the brand any more. In many ways might it not be best to have an MMO where a lot of the background is provided by actual fans? Note: i'm deliberately ignoring what the fans are like.

If you have a name, and any kind of personal history it's pretty easy to build a frighteningly detailed picture. *shrugs* Our ancestors had to worry about Visigoths. Plus ca change...

Screw it, I'm leaving everything and moving to Portugal. You don't have bimbos in Finland?

I should add that I've spoken to more cops and customs guys than I can remember over the years and this always comes up and they always feel legalisation is the only sensible move. Some don't like it, but they all recognise it's a waste of resources.

Yeah, sadly I can't see Africa being that different. What about Paris? In terms of the people things happening in the '50s that would rule. On the other hand, the UK/London would have far more creepy infrastructure. All the different architectures, and there would be the equivalent to the Enclave, and god knows what that would be like. I'm thinking the Armitage strips from 2000AD. Quatermass and the Pit... Sherlock Holmes... Could work.

Like Lord of the Flies really just being Feargus Urquhart in disguise? Man, would that **** with my head.

On balance I'd trade my anonymity for knowing who a few 'certain' folk were on here. I can comfortably stand by everything I've said, if I had to. I doubt the same is true for all.

Can I just applaud the decision to show us a gorgeous smiling woman. I was feeling good already. Now I feel almost beatific. I don't agree that legalisation means more tax. It means SOME tax from the legal sources, but it would be naive to suggest everyone's going to go commercial. What it does mean is that unless org. crime lowers its prices to the level of legal dope then people will just buy legal. This means lower profits for the ****ers who are systematically subverting our societies. ~~ But again, this is a nonsense debate. Marijuana is illegal, but it isn't remotely prohibited in any meaningful sense. To continue insisting on diverting resources from policing physical violence, fraud, sex crimes etc etc is beyond belief. In fact I'd go further and suggest that the entire effort to prohibit dope has done tremendous damage to the credibility of proper anti-drug information ops. People get told dope is terrible, then they try it and it isn't. So they inevitably doubt the sincerity of anti-coke and anti-heroin info ops. ~ Thinking about it this whole thing makes me furious. The blood and treasure spent on this is far from insignificant. That blood and treasure could do so much good if applied elsewhere.

System is on its way, with a new keyboard and win7 professional pre-installed. Can I get a BUAHAHAH! ?

Overcast today. Quite a nice change of pace, although I'll be missing the sunshine by this evening.

Mama told me not to come - Randy Newman.