Walsingham

I tell you what, buddy. I have a good friend with a PhD in structural engineering. I asked him about the 9/11 conspiracy theory. He just stared at me in disbelief and said: "They flew. Two passenger jet planes. Into a building. It fell over. Show me that happening and the building DOESN'T fall over, and I'll believe a conspiracy."

Question: if you have a Mac, and like gaming, are you not likely to already own a console? If you already own a console, will you buy the game for Mac on a port, or stick to your console?

I blame our restrictive word filter. [Dratted thing. Gosh darn it, oh how it irks me.] Edited by SteveThaiBinh for the sake of propriety.

Check this: World of Darkness, set in modern day Pakistan. Jihadist vampires, werewolf mujaheddin from back in the day, CIA, Indian thaumaturges, boats, planes, mountains, and nuclear weapons. A Hindu God of armageddon trapped inside the Bamiyan buddha...

I bet you have awesome shoes.

Yeah, he is one guy. One guy from a VERY plural society. So you can pretend like he's speaking for all Iraqis if you like, but I'll take my view on what Iraqis want from their freely elected leaders.

Hungry but not hungry. Bad news about my mom. Cancer has now spread to the lower lobes of her lungs. This is the first time a 'mission critical' organ has had the cancer, and morale is low all round.

Most traditions insist on petrol, but a good substitute is overproof rum.

Hold on, fellah. A lot of people lost relatives in the war. Surely they're entirely appropriate people to have along to a press conference in a free country? I personally don't think it's appropriate to hurl shoes, but it's not much worse than the egging of politicians which happens in this country all the time.

I only draw the line at tripe. I've tried many times, and I've only ever been able to eat it twice. Thinks I suppose tripe MIGHT work if you turned it into some sort of meatball and heavily spiced it. But seriously, what's the point?

I think Sluggo's right about a spear. A boar spear would be ideal. A strong haft which is planted in the ground for support, and the other end has a crosssbar to prevent a boar/zombie from sliding down the haft towards you. Once teh zombie is impaled, a colleague can dash forward and safely remove zed's head.

I think the obvious next step is to point out it's rude to throw shoes, and let him go. Would certainly make a big improvement over Saddam's Iraq. Actually, it makes me laugh to think how many fascist thugs the world over are going "Shoes! You mean it's that easy? Gawd, Steve, how come you didn't use shoes in the plan?" And they sweep all the bomb parts into the bin, and whap down the sandals.

The ants were well animated, but they were bloody annoying. Used up heaps of ammo.

I need a good cookie recipe. I watched Supersize Me for the first time tonight, and went out for a meal. I was reflecting on how many foods besides MacDs are fat, sugar, and salt saturated.

theslug is right about the 'need' for a prolonged infectious period without symptoms. Smallpox has this feature. I don't see a taser being particularly useful. If my theory is correct you're talking about the surface flesh being mostly dead tissue. I don't know how conductive that would be. Gfted1, I understand that splicing two viruses is pretty straightforward. Splicing three would be bloody difficult. Also, acquiring rabies and smallpox (or at least one of the family of smallpox type diseases) would be straightforward. Haemorraghic fevers are not.

taks may be right. I mean look at Kevin Bacon.

My phone went nuts today with people ringing, but I decided I'd rather work, so very rudely blanked all calls. Fascinating job on, with the science etc. I also updated the zombies thread with my latest research on the virus.

Happy birthday, ye bastard.

I've been playing GTA San Andreas all day. I'm going to therefore assume that all you need to do is go to the gym, buy a gold watch, and turn up at her house in a stolen car before taking her to a fast food restaurant.

THE NATURE OF THE THREAT, PART 1 THE VIRUS After spending many minutes looking into it today, I have decided that the nature of the zombies is viral infection. Specifically I tried to square a few symptoms of the phenomenon as a whole: 1. Small but pronounced survival rate 2. Widespread nature of the infection (suggesting prolonged infectious incubatino) 3. Victim perambulation, confusion and hostility, combined with apparent dimability of the senses. 4. Decomposition of the subjects combined with apparent muscle vigour I believe that all three symptoms can be accounted for by a hybrid of the rabies and smallpox viruses. Rabies of course is transmitted in blood and saliva, and results predominantly in a fear of water and aggressive tendencies. These aggressive tendencies often fluctuate between lethargy and mania, again matching teh behavioural profile. Smallpox is transmitted through infectious matter, shed from infected flesh. In most common forms of the virus this occurs by tissue leaving the infected lesions which are the most distinctive form of the disease. These lesions are vesicles containing dead tissue, rather than pus. Most typically they are white/translucent, and quite pronounced. They occur all throughout the body in small blood vessels, as in the skin, cornea, and throat. Victims have been known to be driven crazy by the pain, and to stumble around in the middle stages of infection. The concept of hybrid viruses is perfectly straightforward, and a mapping of these two matches many of the known features of infection. It does not directly answer the apparent decomposition of the subjects. This may be a result of a change in the way the body or the virus forms the infectious sites which normally result in surface vesicles. Such variation is known to exist, with known exampels being subsurface haemorrhage and suppressed lesions. If we assume that the zombie virus does not form vesicles in the traditional sense, because the body is unable to contain it, then an advanced subsurface haemorrhage would over time quickly give the appearance of dead flesh. Thoughts?

Three seasonal ideas: 1) Pickled carrots: [no cooking skill required besides chopping] Take a large jar (1 litre plus), and place into it coarsely chopped red cabbage, red onion, and sticks of carrot. Also put in a generous sprinkle of dill, parsely, black peppercorns and one dried chili. Feel free to add some salt and sugar but this is not essential. Next pour over enough vinegar to cover all. Leave to sit for one week. This produces a rich red pickle with tremendous bite that sits very well with white meat and cheese. 2) Chutney [some skill, chopping and boiling] Take more red onions, and an equal quantity of apples. Dried up apples are fine. Chop both coarsely and place in a pan with a large glugg of vinegar. I put in enough to half cover the fruit and onions, and used more pickling vinegar. Begin boiling the bejaysus out of it. While this is going on, root around in your spice rack for any flavours you enjoy. I added a little mustard seed, coriander seed, cinnamon and nutmeg. Then add salt. Keep boiling. Finally add a big punch of sugar. I used a third volume. The whole should be going mushy by now, so reduce the heat and let it boil for a while. Cook for about an hour all told, and food process to a nice smooth consistency. Will work as chutney or a good lumpy ketchup. 3) Orange and Goji berry jam [moderate skill, knowledge of jam making] Too many oranges and a bag of revolting dried goji berries. What to do? Take the flesh of the oranges, and the goji berries. Place in a pan with some water, boil it like crazy. The oranges will break up of their own accord, and the berries will rehydrate. Add enough jam sugar (large granule sugar with pectin in it) to qualify this as jam, and boil some more. Food process to make it smooth. Transfer to jars and allow to cool. It won't really work so well because it's too watery, but it's delicious, and spreads really easily. I suppose you cuold keep the peel of the oranges in a bag and scent your house, but frankly why bother?

I agree. Even lone individuals have agendas, supporting their own psychological order and 'ruling memes'.

I can see him sitting down in front of the television witha bib on, when Steven Fry appears.

Some time this week I'm going to have to find time to do a simple systems dynamics model of recession proof jobs. I guess the main thing would be jobs which depend directly on basic human needs as much as possible, and on other industries as little as possible. Hmmm... Pimping?