Walsingham

Nice to see my apology was so graciously received.

Rice, onions, tinned tomatos, chillis, and belly pork or similar offcuts from the butchers. Combine at leisure. EDIT: I intend to morally suppot you by eating rich stews, stuffed hake, and medallions of veal.

If I wasn't working at home it would suck, I think. You have to pay extra to get a mobile device onto the service. But you can buy stuff from them, and then its yours. Plus I can use my account from any web browser which is quite handy for parties.

Equal parts brown vinegar and water. Old family remedy. Just sponge it on, and keep sponging.

First off, I've checked and I owe LoF an apology for accusing him of being a marxist. I got confused by all the references to colonialism and capital, and conflated someone else's comment that you were one. I therefore apologise completely. I stand completely by my comment about finishing in Afghanistan what we started. If we are going to experiment with helping a wartorn country let it be one that we helped tear! It will also help us learn some important lessons. I don't believe good intentions are what Africa requires. You can pour as much aid money as you like into the place but so long as destruction is being wrought on a daily basis by gangs of youths, groups of guerrillas, and government officials then there's sod all point. What isn't wrecked will be siphoned off to finance further violence or nice homes abroad. Unfortunately this means an armed force. If Africans are going to do this themselves then there needs to be a tectonic cultural shift away from kleptocracy and general corruption in the ruling classes who govern the armed force. I would elaborate but since LoF cavlierly disregarded my last attempt at clarity in the thread about warfare I shan't bother.

Battery weight stays with you, and they have to be charged. Oh, and making batteries is fiendishly unhealthy. Top Gear told me hydrogen is the way, and if James May is wrong then the whole world is fallen apart.

Thank you for that mental image sir, now please be so kind as to give yourself an uppercut. *biff* ow!

Don't diss the Last Boyscout.

I have a msuic subscription, and regard it as indispensable now. Music whenever I like and whatever I like. I've made huge leaps in terms of breadth and depth of music. I have no idea how anyone gets paid tho.

Give it up, Lee Dorsey Just when I thought i was at a massively low point, I hear this tune. Excuse the link

LoFler seems like my evil twin, constantly banging on the same drum. Reading the other posts, it occurs to me that the point is that when a politician dies it can mean the end of certain developments in the outside world. They give us material leadership. hence if Obama died it would mean a lot, whether you agree with him or not. I guess the point with an artist is that they form a crucial part of our personal development. Art changes what is within, rather than that which is without. So when they die, part of us dies with them, or never grows for want of them.

It would be pretty mad to assert that sharing blood makes you automatically bound together. So I'm with you there.

Meh. It's not clever until they can ADD legs, not just reattach the old ones. I'd have to steer a middle course between TrueNeutral and Gorgon. I take my family commitments seriously, but I also believe there are limits. I think this definitely springs from having to balance so many commitments these last years. You have to accept that helping some people - if they're being totally **** - means you can't help anyone else, and that can mean abandoning your friends and your professional duties. It just makes no sense to me.

I'm not going to believe you ain't a bot until you post pics of you saluting, with a hotdog on each shoulder for epaulettes.

Kids aren't dying in Africa because of people living normal lives in the USA or Europe are naturally empathetic. The biggest problem is that unlike you or me most people don't consider the problems of Africa to be simple. I've been to several african countries in relative depth and a) People do a LOT to try and help b) IMO they do the wrong things, but its not obvious why they are the wrong things You think the problems can be solved by applying marxist formulas which to me make as much as sense as arguing we should solve world hunger by learning to photosynthesise. Can't be done with a mk1 human. My top choice for helping celebrities: 1) Only celebrate people who have some substance to 'em. So they are better equipped to handle it. My top choice for helping Africa: 1) Prove that we can help a nation in real trouble by seeing through our commitments to Afghanistan.

Thank God I'm a talentless nobody.

I always wanted a life-sized model of a star destroyer, and I don't think I'd f........ wait, who am I kidding?

Dress rehearsal was a total mess. I got the wrong key, and then forgot how to sing. Completely. The band also forgot the kazoo.

It is this dull. I once saw a senator filibustering by talking about his holiday to Maui for one hour.

This just in: artistic ability does not correlate with political clarity.

Up betimes and with a sore throat. Dress rehearsals later. Tired, and depressed about the family.

Kaftan, you are a disgrace to mankind. Not only do I spurn the speedo, but I spurn all tight fitting underhammocks. Thy landing gear should be free to swing, sir. It would have been written in the bible, but even in Sodom and Gomorrha they took this wisdom for granted. And they tried to rape angels. Gorgon, I take not your defeatist outlook. I sahll retain my scalpels, hydrogen peroxide, and pain threshold. let it come back and I wil defeat it once more! Huzzah etc.

EDIT: Before I sound too pessimistic, I think I finally managed to kill the two WMD grade verrucas on my foot today. I had to invest in a surgical scalpel to do it, but by god it seems to be done.

Society also made him very very rich. Surely not the worst we've done.

Alas I am a humble destructive engineer and formerly psychologist. Not a philosopher. I'm also none too bright when the wind is northerly. To explain: you assert that it is impossible for a human to construct any logically superior moral standpoint. I allege that in itself that statement is a moral standpoint of amorality. Therefore by its own rationale it is inconclusive and self-defeating. At best it is simply no worse than any other standpoint. Therefore if you find it annoying you should abandon it. You make a good point about options. It may be the case that in the future we could come up with a better solution than execution. For example, a better solution would be 'freezing' a person in a low maintenance state. We could use them as draft-excluders. I do not support the use of the laogai (I had to look them up). Firstly, they seem unneccessary. A machine can do the same work, and it won't require 24 hour guarding. Secondly, there's no possibility of escape, which is a real problem. More than 20 serial killers are believed to be on the run in the United States having escaped custody after conviction. I might change my mind if there were some sort of cost-effective use for them. Space exploration is the most obvious thing which springs to mind. Mine-clearance is another. And I mean proper mine clearance, not just herding them around, amusing as that might seem. EDIT: It just occurred to me that we may be speaking at crossed purpose in an important respect. I don't believe there would be more than a handful of such cases in a year. Maybe no more than 20 for the UK. Only around half might be established to the correct degree of certainty. Not much forced labour you can get out of that few people.