Walsingham

Heh... If you think that's bad, wait until she finds out that she had sloppy drunken sex with a guy who talks about his love life on an online forum for video game nerds. You know that noise where you kind of snort, then cackle laughwith bitter furious joy? I just did that.

With respect to China, yeah. But since when did any country want other countries to be strategically and operationally active within their borders? I meant active full stop.

fixed

Replace the word 'dead' with 'in a state of strategic and operational passivity' and we're cooking, tho? Stratfor's angle on Tibet, which I just got round to reading:

I don't have time to go fielding both sides of the argument. That's just bloody lazy! Shall we dance?

Then I salute your courage, sir!

Go to sea in a storm. That'll make up your mind, mate.

You should have seen the trouble I had explaining Christmas to the foreigners I used to teach. In the end I reluctantly agreed their version was more fun. It had explosions.

Nice. I really need to make some time to do that sort of thing.

Dammit! I'm sure the Queen would let you look at it. She is far too well-mannered to refuse. Use proxies!

People who eat pancakes. Oh, and the hundreds of millions of people who've benefited from Canadian aid and peacekeepers since the second world war. And the people who benefited from the tens of thousands of Canadians sacrificed in WW2. And bears. And me.

being a soldier takes more than pulling a trigger You also have to be able to pose in front of a mirror and take pictures?

What the glitter-coated primate has that got to do with people nailing themselves to wood this weekend?

I completely misread this as 'on my face'. The image was hilarious.

I woke up from a very deep sleep. I thought this was closer to the festivalness than, as tlg Bill Hicks said "A giant bunny rabbit came and left chocolate eggs in the night."

This sounds as much like propaganda as the Chinese claim that no rioters were killed. Are you suggesting that a totalitarian regime can be held in place by only a large moustache and firm admonishments? "You there! You democrats! Put that down and go home!" I'm prepared to accept we have a skewed vision of China, but I won't accept they're sweetums. In essence I'd say walkerguy was essentially correct.

Gods and monsters! Can we go five freaking minutes without yapping on about how all spiritual people have to be dungheaps with moose for brains? It's getting pretty tedious.

Nonsense! *he continues affably* If you are sick with fever, and I kick a stone into a lake, that would be neutral.

I've not seen these (or similar) displays, but the people who enact them are 100% committed. Moreover they heal remarkably afterwards. My grandmother witnessed them in Bali, as did my great Aunt in Thailand.

Performance anxiety? GOD IS WATCHING YOU! Thanks, Cat. I do believe in 'positive vibes'. irrespective of where they come from and how. The prayers of a good man must count for something.

Results back on my mother's cancer. It seems like Jesus it has risen to fight once again. Like in that film.

I don't believe it is reasonable to describe an action as 'grey' or mildly good. Because acts are composed of discrete concomitants. If I move a mountain, and thereby ease one village and throw another into darkness then you could argue this is neutral. However, it is good and bad at once. The importance of this is that it leaves clear the fact that my act could be better if I were able to prevent one village being too shady. If we call teh act merely neutral then we diminish the evil and the good needlessly.

In Kosovo was the parliament who decided the independence, a parlament EMPTY of serbians You mean like the Quebecois assembly was empty of other Canadians? I don't know much about the period. Nop, Walsingham, I'm saying the Quebecois independentists could win the independence if the other decide not go to the elections and haven't anyone to talk for them in the parlament That's a rather mathematical view. If Quebec voted for independence Canada, being a keen democracy, would be sure to give it serious consideration. It's not teh case that there need be none against in Parliament. Look at the United Kingdom's regional assemblies.

If the Dems do beat McCain I guess I'd prefer Obama. At least there would be some chance of a change of culture at the top.

You'd be mostly correct. But you'd also be misleading. Why do people agree/disagree with an act? I think you'll find that the reasoning is startlingly uniform, which suggests something higher than human whim or selfishness. *nods sagely*