Walsingham

With respect, sir, you appear to have become intoxicated with Newtonian hubris. Krezack is correct. There is no such thing as a 'law' of gravity. There is a force which we refer to as gravity, which operates under observation according to the theory of gravity. If there were a recognisable law of gravity we would have no need of the Hadron collider. I agree wholeheartedly with Krezack when he says that there is a public misconception about what constitutes science. I think this stems from a natural human desire for certainty. But if there is anything fundamental to science it is the spirit of testing scientific theories, and by inference, asserting they are not true.

Christ on a donkey! You weren't kidding!

I just realised this is an asinine question. They are French.

I think a strawman is when you give an example to someone's argument which no-one can reasonably agree with. For example, saying that private healthcare means your grandmother expiring silently in the snow outside a private clinic, while rich people spit on her.

Hah! I might have guessed it! Nothing like being raised by hiippies to impart a lifelong attachment to firearms, red meat, and central heating.

Journalist beaten while in custody. I think the least that should happen is a formal complaint by our governments. If true, this is a disgrace to all concerned. The perpetrators should be severely disciplined.

Surely diversity is key. You want to be using whichever browser is used by the least number of people. IE is targetted because of its market share, not because it's some weedy stripling.

That does sound bloody silly. If you have water coming through your ceiling and you don't fix it?

I find it oddly refreshing.

Manic Miner. Gauntlet.

Hey, that's my line. In any case I am spending the holidays with *gasp* family. OH! THE HUMANITY! You have a family? Sweet Jebus, I always assumed you were an agglomeration of leftover putty from the Sistene chapel. Maybe it's a family of Gelatinous Cubes. I can only imagine how they will get through the door... Like Modrons?

Not that it invalidates your point, but the most extravangant case for casualties doesn't say several hundred thousands. Which actually reminds me of something I found interesting. The anti-war lobby said hundreds of thousands would die. When they didn't die, no-one hounded them. The point now, is to my mind that the administration has (eventually) seen a transition to a freely elected democratic Iraq. It's not perfect but it has happened quicker than Germany transitioned from the Reich. Is that something to be ashamed of? If clinton, for example, had been president would we now face the same situation? Further point: according to Duncan Anderson (historian I had handy) some 300,000 Frenchmen died due to Allied attack in the liberation of France. Who can ask them if they are happy?

Hey, that's my line. In any case I am spending the holidays with *gasp* family. OH! THE HUMANITY! You have a family? Sweet Jebus, I always assumed you were an agglomeration of leftover putty from the Sistene chapel.

It does suck. BUt at least it wan't your fault. I've flooded several ceilings by virtue of stupidity. I warrant you've not done so here.

I suppose it is autoformatting. What I really want is a big lever on the side of my PC that tells every single ****ing program that I would prefer to define everything myself clearly, and hang by own errors than be straightjacketed by their assumptions.

While I appreciate you taking the trouble to link to your proofs regarding your theories I have to weigh them against my own professional judgement re engineering and explosives, plus the judgement of a doctor in structural engineering who specialises in disasters. You apply the maths, and the maths doesn't lie. 1. I'd have to see the calculations and simulation being used by anyone who wanted to convince me that you couldn't reliably expect the twin towers to collapse after you hit them with passenger planes. 2. Why would a covert team take the extraordinary risk involved in planting traceable explosives around the building? It just doesn't make any ****ing sense. They've already decided to crash planes into them. You're talking an immense potential for failure, due to the time to plant, and leave dormant. Anyone could have stumbled across them. 3. To assert that none of the terrorist attacks on the USA/UK are genuine is extraordinary if only because you're saying that either Al Qaeda doesn't exist, or they are really ****ing lazy. Either assertion is contradicted by about a bajillion pieces of evidence. Who the hell do you think was planting all the sophisticated bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Samuel Barber, Agnus Dei (choral) It's the music from the game Homeworld, if anyone remembers that. Beautiful and simple.

W. T. F? Yoghurt, surely?

Is it the militia to blame for the deaths, or George Bush who created the conditions in which the militia thrived? Is it Saddam to blame for the deaths of those children (for syphoning off UN aid to enrich himself) or the UN for creating and operating the system that allowed this to happen (and some members who actively participated in the corruption, though not all did, I think). Perhaps there's enough blame for everyone, but a substantial share does have to fall with the militia. Who would say otherwise? Again it comes down to international law, and I confess I'm no expert on that, but it feels right to say that if you invade and occupy a country (even legally) and effectively disband its police force and army, then you bear a share of the responsibility for the lawlessness that follows and for the results of that lawlessness. Negligence, not malice, but still a serious matter. Legally speaking you have a good case. An occupying power is obliged to maintain basic services, and the rule of law. The obvious counter to this would be that the USA has spent billions of dollars and hundreds of men's lives in their efforts to secure basic services. I believe the defence becomes even stronger when you consider the crucial role in the violence played by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, and Al Qaeda. Were I council for the defence I would argue that they constituted a second invasion. I think there is a definite amount of gleeful yank-bashing at times in all walks of society. It is based on prejudice, and deserves no more tolerance than attacks on Nigerians or Chinese people would.

I used to hate leaking pipes until I found my new plumber. He's an ex RAF warrant officer, and it's almost fun to see him fix stuff, when you compare the way he works to a regular plumber. Listens carefully to the problem, assesses, knows exactly how to fix it, fixes it, explains what he did, and charges about 10% less than a regular guy would. I actually started LOOKING for things to get fixed after the first job. An object lesson in excellence paying off.

You know what I think of those people? Well, I don't know how to spell it. But imagine something like an angry bull being dropped through three sheets of glass onto their exposed spleens.

I've just spent the last hour trying to work out why '2.3.1' in Openoffice calc becomes 02/03/01; and more importantly how to stop it. In the process I managed to crack my bloody desk through sheer angry frustration. Can anyone explain to me what possible ****ing good all these helpful features do? I must have spent hundreds if not thousands of hours doing data entry throughout my life, both scientific and corporate, and I'eve never known helpful features to do anything more than annoying the living **** out of me. EDIT: I can accept someone somewhere might find them useful. But if you don't know what they are, how can you exploit them properly? They are inevitably going to crop up unexpectedly and by inference annoyingly. Why, then, is the default setting to NOT use them? then expert users could enable them as necessary, and novices would never run foul of them.

As am I. And governments are indeed willing to go against strong popular opposition if they believe it to be in the national (or the government's) interest; our own Dear Tony did. I'm sure the French government factored the economic consequences of regime change into its decision, and it may even be right that it do so. I feel a balanced analysis is important. You are right, and I accept the lump implied. If I have an excuse it is that for me, all this legal and moral havering is moot. A subject for intellectual exercise, but practically irrelevant. I have a rather narrow and old fashioned perspective. Bush took decisive action. Saddam was ousted. He was ousted after years of other leaders claiming sanctions would do the job when they clearly weren't. Or should someone equally throw shoes at the leaders who stood idly by when the UN itself estimated that sanctions were killing children in their thousands every month? I consider that far more repugnant. There have been tens of thousands of people killed since the invasion. But the thing which always reduces me to total awe is that people cheerfully blame those deaths on George Bush, not the terrorists from all over the world who conducted their own invasion with the express purpose of chaos death and destruction, and who actually did the killing!

The war was opposed by eighty-five percent of the population of France. You really don't think that was a factor in a democratic country? Touche. However, I'm perfectly happy to accept there were multiple reasons. Sneaky bastard that I am. But I think if we were discussing a criminal case you'd be able to throw out the presiding judge if they were owed so much money by the defendant.

fair enough. i get the distinct impression that we're both going to be tardy in completing our respective tasks. taks lol, indeed. I've been struggling through the work today, but just nipped out to the local chinese takeaway to fetch a solid packet of fish and chips. Covered them in pepper and my homemade pickled cabbage. That,coupled with the frosty weather and a glass of Argentine malbec and I'm feeling very festive.