Walsingham

I love hate to sound like Moff Tarkin, but I grow tired of saying this: We will win by a long term process, matching military security with economic development, galvanised through a dynamic political movement. Like the wood, oxygen, and the spark. Of course we refuse to deliver on the economic development, and Msr. Karzai seems to lack a certain dynamism so far as actual Afghans are concerned.

Long overdue. Nice one.

Unfortunately I have a pretty low opinion of the New Scientist. Whenever they talk about anything I actually know about they are almost invariably about four years behind the times. And I've had many friends and colleagues say the same. So for the time being I'm sticking to the initial assessment.

Not another attempt to whitewash the entire British Empire as a fiendish exercise in brutality. The simplest possible rebuttal is that if it HAD been it would never have existed in the first place. Britain never possessed sufficient military power to exert its will by pure force of arms. Whether we like it or not they maintained control by a mix of methods which included making life better for many whose lives previously (and since) consisted of eternal tribal violence. Although the relevance to a modern question of corporate accountability totally escapes me. You have no doubt chosen to believe I'm being terribly patriotic about BP, but beyond the question of pensions it's nonsensical to be patriotic about this. I'm also just as motivated to see people's lives protected as you seem to be. I'm just not so stupid as to kill off the very entity I'm trying to get compensation from. Nor so stupid as to ban exploitation of oil wealth which is an important component of both US jobs, and US security. If BP cut corners to achieve a few extra bucks profit then they are as a corporation bloody stupid, but I believe the answer is personal individual accountability under criminal law. Punishing the whole body and expecting shareholders to be the agents of control in such serious and technical matters is a nonsense. It betrays a complete lack of understanding of how corporations actually function.

Not judging by the videos I've been sitting through. Some unspeakable bastard has made videos of the ****ing public lifts, ad flagged them as 'car' or something because they're made by honda. Also there are a lot of trainspotters. I mean a LOT.

It certainly is hard to see a good outcome. But I come from a background of not treating a tough situation as an excuse to quit. I sometimes think the hardest thing about Afghan is that we expect the blooody Afghans to have to make all the compromises. By which I mean we expect them to 'bing' and be a 21st century western democracy overnight. Whereas it seems perfectly obvious that what is needed is a transitional democracy like we had in teh UK, which acknowledged the importance of the rich and practically powerful through the house of lords. Whereas instead we are doing exactly teh same thing Britain did when it was in charge last time, and try to replace woring pwoer structures with a purely elected power structure that is naturally neither as cohesive or as well armed as the one it is replacing.

Wouldn't stoned people laugh their arses off? This was supposed to have been quiet.

I know I'm a massive Obsidz fanboi, but that all sounded good to me. The main criticism seemed to be 1. He hates being forced to live with the consequences of over-specialising. 2. He hates being a bit thick and not being able to follow the plot. To which I respond: YOU ARE GETTING OLD, MATE. LIVE WITH IT.

Hiring a new member of staff to do nothing but type them up? Unless, I suppose you might get a temp who could transfer them in from the original Fallout or something. You're still talking about many many many days of work.

If you look up Westmorland Road, Swindon then Savernake Road on Google then you can see the two points are quite a ways away from each, and Westmorland road is downhill (I went and looked). I also asked and assuming you went from a pub via both incidents they had to go westmoreland first, as there's no pubs southwest of savernake. However, if it was kids, then you've got a graffitti park/chav magnet to the east of savernake and another big park near westmorland. Which kind of reinforces the notion of kids. Although that also makes no sense, unless they lived southwest of savernake because the car was behind the house. Argh. This is all the fault of me watching Poirot this morning. Otherwise I'd have dropped it days ago. EDIT: I've been skimming through youtube to see if any drunk fool video'd it. And as if by hand of divine encouragement I found a video of some girl learning to be . Which I assume is a sort of dog treat for this hound.

Car's in the linked story. I think it's a Ford Sierra.

It'll happen anyway, just watch. Karzai is already trying to cut a deal with the Taliban. I'm not sure anyone knows what the hell Karzai is playing at. He seems to be hell bent on pursuing grubby familial nest lining when he's been handed an opportunity to become legendary by forging a nation out of a thousand valleys. Cutting a deal with the Taliban isn't as daft as you make it sound. The Taliban aren't Ba'athists. They don't have a central authority or membership lists. It is a long standing tradition in Afghanistan - and I'd wager in most very weak states - that ideology takes a distant second seat to pragmatics. Negotiation isn't a distraction from the war. It IS the war.* To paraphrase Lincoln: destroying your enemies by making them your friends. Personally I think this means instituting very direct very local democracy. Democracy which pre-industrial people can get their heads around; and which appeals to the Afghan virtue of personal pride, and tradition of communal debate. But this is different from the situation in Pakistan, which I don't understand. *Which isn't to say that the opposition won't use negotiation to avoid us capitalising on military success. This happened repeatedly during the Soviet-Afghan war.

Appreciate the input. It's apropos a friend of a friend: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/wiltshire/10293629.stm Had his car flipped for no reason he can think of besides idle amusment. I'm trying to get a feel for how large a group had to be involved. The space is relatively small, and when I went down last week I noticed that the opposite wall was not scratched. Meaning it didn't roll very far before coming to rest. Implies to me quite a bit of control, which implies excess strength to the task. I know the cops think it is 'youths' but I can't picture four scraggy chavs doing it. I'm thinking rugby or some other sporst team. Certainly there's a degree of implied coordination in doing it so quietly and in so small a space. BREAK: There's also a video, which I just found. You can see the car in far more detail. It clearly wasn't rolled completely and must have been flipped. Judging by the lack of damage to side windows. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/10295414.stm

Great. Just the man. What went wrong?

I was going to take issue with this, then I had a horrible thought: what if I only thought the people in the game were too good looking because I'm from England...

Man I'd love to be as good as Josh at doing presentations.

Has anyone on the forum ever participated in an attempt to flip a car onto its roof? By hand, that is.

It's taken me three days to see this one.

Proper belly laugh from me.

Good idea WoD. If we walk away whistling and not looking back I'm sure the entire region will fold up in on itself and we'l never hear from it again.

As usual when I'm sad I keep seeing humour all over the place. Just spent about five minutes giggling because I realised one of my major clients is an amalgam of David Suchet, and MC Hammer.

Presumably it would be possible to 'down tools' and switch off the grid if we saw a large flare emerge. ****ing insanely disruptive, but possible. With lower energy already in the system wouldn't that help? Also, what would happen if you did have a faraday cage around your PC, for example? What concerns me is that the 'few months' of disruption could occur, but be enough to halt automotive traffic on land and sea. Britain is about a week away from starvation at any given moment. What happens to shipping? A LNG tanker hit by a large electric buildup could be little more than a handy kilonuke.

Did we read the same previews? I think so. I read all the ones linked to. Twice. I may be over-reacting slightly. It will probably be quite fun. But I despair of seeing anything which can't be controlled via an up-down left-right interface; which is what it really comes down to. They've cut any of the complex managerial side because it doesn't work on console.

Good question. I was assuming it was like EMP. EMP affects modern electronics more than old fashioned valves because the [i'm going to regret not checking this on Wikipedia] modern systems are of a smaller size, which acts as a better antenna for the... ah nuts. I should look it up. Too sleepy now tho.

Have you ever heard of seizing the assets of a company to pay its debts? Or do you believe that when companies go bankrupt, their assets fade into nothingness? You're beginning to sound awfully like some proto Mugabe. This line of reasoning asserts that a business concern is copmrised of its assets. Whereas it is the concert of those assets, in full flow and harmony that renders wealth. What you are describing is the shooting of a donkey on the grounds that most of the donkey will still be there, and obviously worth just as much.