Walsingham

*singing* No-one knows what it's like to be a dustbin... In Shaftesbury, selling SPAAAAAM....

So... involuntary spasm -> perversion -> anime. yup seems pretty sensible to me.

So you don't have any time for the notion that people with very little tend to value pride more than others? It's a very serious thing for some people.

I was going to say that it seemed bloody odd to go stirring up the yeast.

It wasn't nature that was hitting you. Dammit! Someone get that bullwhip away from her.

Maybe I'm a splinter of your mind and you don't even know it. But seriously, what gave him that idea, I don't even have my Spider avatar anymore. Well, I hope that if you are a splinter of my mind you are loyal to the motherland to the extent of trying to destroy self with booze.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6766569.stm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Satanic_V...ption:_Timeline HM Liz has just recently knighted Salman Rushdie. It seems this has annoyed people abroad who feel this is the British Government insulting Islam. My own feeing is that 1. Salman Rushdie exercised his democratic right to free speech in a country which guaranteed him that right in 1988. 2. The Ayatollah Khomeini picked on this poor hapless fool to whip up a storm of controversy in 1989 to cement his hold on power after admitting to a humiliating peace with Iraq in 1988. 3. Rushdie's status in the Uk has been borne solely from his reasonably brave reaction to that death threat. 4. Rushdie's knighthood is recognition of his status in the UK. I see no reason why aa man who stands up to extremist intimidation should not be honoured. However, I do think the Palace dropped the ball slightly by letting this go through at such a delicate time in negotiations with Iran. Thoughts?

You know how on windows there's a '<' button? As I understand it this thing is suposed to be clicked, and then the menu to the right of it will expand. On MY PC it will do this, but only after three or four attempts, as it will expand then contract with lighning speed, not staying open. Oh, hey, wait. Cool! I turned off the language bar and the problem is now fixed.

I have had my life saved three times by the NHS for free! And had neurosurgery to correct a severed digit. Free I tells ya! However i'd be lying if I said it was always that good. Moore could have made a shocking film about the NHS. Maybe he should next. I recently re-watched a couple of films from the Pedro Almodovar collection. Talk to Her, and LIve Flesh. That's some messed up sexy filmage, right there.

I think interracial charisma should be lowered. It's just a fact of life that it's slightly harder to get on with peopel from very different backgrounds.

After extensive testing for ten seconds I deduce that there's no reason you shouldn't breathe in through your mouth and nose at the same time. However, this due to the opening in your moth being more than adequate for inhaling. Your lungs just don't produce enough suction to warrant air going in through your nose as well. Meta, that was exactly our feeling. It's nonsense of course, since you have sphincters internally that would stop this happening.

*buzzer* You're dragging the religion debate in here, then? My answer is the same. Political leadership that uses religion to replace the democratic mandate is obviously nothing better than a dictatorship. However, equally, a moral government requires a degree of intangible ever-present oversight that the people cannot provide. This is why they need some religious/mystical inspiration. And having friends who are Iranian, an having tracked the sitaution there as one of my top ten, I feel confident saying that there is a lot of unrest within Iran. nor are they being quietly restless. There are many groups and persons working against the ayatollahs. However, the greatest danger at present is not so much the ayatollahs, as the unelected and corrupt officials in the Revolutionary Guards and other paramilitary organisations. If the people move too fast against the ayatollahs (who are not uniformly bad) then they may miss the NEXT dictatorship, which would be military. My hope is that they will move sufficiently slowly to permit good ayatollahs to remain afloat, inducing change gradually. Do not forget that Iran, too is due for a humbling experience in Iraq. They believe they can do there what they have always done in Afghanistan. Keep it docile by proxy groups weakening the state. But a meltdown in Iraq will not leave them untouched.

Wow, some pretty good stuff, if I may say so. I disagree with Meta in saying we've got off track. We seem to be quite tightly focussed, but on different facets of the same question. Nor should we be alarmed by failing to form a unified view. Einstein himself had contradictory views on the matter, believing on the one hand in a mystical inspiration caused by religion, and on the other in a rigid empirical scientific methodology. "But science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration toward truth and understanding. This source of feeling, however, springs from the sphere of religion. To this there also belongs the faith in the possibility that the regulations valid for the world of existence are rational, that is, comprehensible to reason. I cannot conceive of a genuine scientist without that profound faith. The situation may be expressed by an image: science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." (Albert Einstein, 1941) To respond to Cant and WITHTEETH, I have quite strong feelings. The selfish gene can tell me that my strategic imperative towards genetic survival is best served by a 'moral' outlook as a rule of thumb. Honesty, collaboration, courage etc. However, while it will tell me this is true for 95-99% of cases, it will remain mute on those most important occasions, when we can be absolutely certain that our actions will never be discovered, and we will never pay a price for our advancement or self-gratification. At such times, the only impediments can be regarded as on the one hand consistency, and on the other hand as this fragment of irrational belief, that we always stand before some higher witness. At the same time as I would not have a life of science without religion, I would equally fight against a life of religion without science. Incorporating, utilising, and wondering at scientific advance is more than just possible. It is a feature of many profoundly holy men and women. The only one I have any experience of personally is Archbishop Desmond Tutu. But I've also read some of the works of Krishnamurti, and he often references science.

A friend of mine, who knows I'm on ths forum, but not my user name, decided I was Fenghuang. Curiously unsettling.

I do blessings. They confer +1 to sanity checks and barbeque lighting for 3d4 rounds per alcohol level.

WITHTEETH, genuine question: you say that you should worry about another's feelings? Why is that? I don't see that that is based on scientific reasoning.

I went to school with a guy who farted, sneezed, and burped at the same time. There was this totally awed silence in class which we later established was everyone waiting to see if he prolapsed.

I think that means you're going to die. Oh, OK. Just so long as I know.

No, I mean standard nose sneezing. I have no diea why my arms would hurt. I do know that my great uncle once halted a test match by sneezing. He turned around and stared hard at the man behind him.

I just sneezed so hard that my arms ache.

Empriical Irrationalist? If I decode that correctly this would mean you like to establish firmly what the facts are and then contradict them. We had some monks like that near where I grew up. They were called the Holy Brothers of the Wilful St Cretinous.

Sierra is very nice. My last drink of significance was a Simonsig 2005 Pinotage. So much damn flavour it was like having a cat wake up in your mouth.

I beg your pardon. Reformed baptist cthulhite.

Ultimately things like right and wrong are not scientific. This is my real point. They are usually axiomatic/based on simple faith. Again it seems strange that I should have to point this out to you when you - atheisms poster boy - consistently argue against (for example) helping people. With your scientific dialectic whirring away at full power your over-riding amibition appears to be sitting in a shack in Montana, eating beans from a tin while the nukes fly past. Religions do teach morality. Yes, the people doing the teaching do sometimes teach the morality that it is groovy to dash around smacking heretics/kaffirs. But, and it pains me to keep reminding you, there are millions of faith based do-gooders dashing around as well.

True. But I do wonder about Nature displaying such specificity. Hit three times on the right buttock has to be more than coincidence.