Walsingham

i don't even like the case anymore. the buttons on the side are in terrible locations. the phone is hard to hold, and it fits into your pocket funny. fortunately, i got it free after rebate. i may just suffer and buy a new one, something like my old samsung. oh, the "selling point" they gave me was "this phone has great reception." outright lie that was. much worse than my samsung. maybe they meant "this phone has great reception if you ignore every other phone on the market"? taks I just had a thought. Why not have a phone shaped like a pen? Purely for making calls on. You dial by turning the 'lid' like a safe lock.

*Walsingham peers at Wistrik like a caveman being shown how to field-strip an MP5*

Sir, if we you can patent a design for such a device, I'll sell it and make us millions.

Reading the other comments it occurred to me that a further refinement may be wise. Fantasy, being ungoverned by rules descends firmly upon the whim of the author. To give it form the author's preconscious desires/prejudices come through. Thus some fantasy reflects a world in which heroism and truth justice blah blah blah make you win. They give you miraculous strength or supernatural aid or what have you. Similarly, the supernatural races like Tolkein's dwarves and elves arrive in this way. The popularity of these races and these themes derive from a slightly childish desire to believe such things are real. I don't mean to be critical. I like the Gaunt's Ghosts novels becaus it is nice to journey to a universe in which war may be hell but occurs for good reasons. The desire some people have to believe there are wholly good artsy damned irritating creatures must come from a similar source. This is really what I mean. Fantasy is about indulgence without hinderance. In short Star Wars may be fantasy with lasers. But only if we concede fantasy is Mills and Boon with swords.

*Fails save*

Honestly, it's not as if I'm not going to get a SOCOM II if I could afford one. I just got the G22 right now because of the price. I apologise, good sir. I retract my needless slur on your character. It is not your fault you possess insufficient funds to rise above being a gentleman. The Geneva convetions btw only apply to co-signatories in armed conflict. Hence would be ludicrous to apply them to civilians or the police, unless the criminal was also a signatory.

*resists urge to lock topic on grounds of weak comedy*

My dad saves a can from something that went in with whatever he's cooking and pours the fat in that; lets it solidify and throws it in the waste bin. For a second there I thought you were going to finish with "...and that's your momma".

I can't afford a telescope. I shall have to use laudanum.

.22 equals gentlemanly pursuit in my book. Good on you.

taks, I'm no expert on aberrant psychology, but I did do a bunch of crime stuff a long while back. My recollection is that really loony tunes types such as paedophiles who abduct kids long term or who kill generally don't hide it consistently. There's usually a trail that can be found, even if it's usualy only with the benefit of hindsight.

You may not have heard, but I've got a lung infection at present, so I'd be grateful if you would refrain from making me laugh so much. Dissent in the intelligence community is like bitchiness in the movie industry. Intel is the art of drawing conclusions from imperfect data. Hell, you get dissent in the scientific commmunity where people can watch the data gathering under controlled conditions. As taks points out, Saddam had UN proven stocks of thousands of litres of gas alone. They never stated plausibly what happened to those stocks. You don't just casually pour VX nerve gas down the sink like fat from the Sunday roast. Come to think of it, even that is a bad idea. Blocks the plughole. I digress. Nopw, maybe the comparison is more apt than I thought. The CIA is known to have taken a whole bunch of people. What has happened to them? Or does the UN have to send in inspectors to determine offcoially that abuse is occurring? Oh, wait, unless the US refuses to let them into certain areas, like Iraq did. Then the UN can pass resolution after resolution asking for investigative access, and wasting years and years. Sounds like a passel o' fun. We can put Hans Blix on it.

I'm sorry, but aren't we drifting a little off topic?

They have so far. This goes back to my argument against gun control. If you are will armed and everyone knows it, nobody will mess with you! You mean like Afghanistan, the worlds most messed with country (bar Poland)?

actually, it's a slippery slope argument though the way you posed it isn't really correct. the argument is actually if you provide a reason, there will be more than there already are. assuming the abortion method of creating stem cells, you will find some opportunists getting pregnant and aborting to make money. capitalism at its finest. the slippery slope kicks in when they make the assumption it will be a dramatic increase, which is unlikely. the same goes for when abortion was not necessarily legal. they still happened, though not very often. the argument was that there would be some huge jump, with abortions happening on tailgates, etc. everyone will use abortion as birth control, etc. (probably exaggerated). in any event, the number increased, but not by nearly as much as the early proponents would have had you believe. taks taks, I don't know if I was being unclear or whatever, but I was deriding the viewpoint, not expounding it. I was saying that it's proven nonsense to assume that extremely weird stuff starts happening if you don't institute massive laws against it. Law enforcement being what it is, most things that are extreme marginal behaviours likely to happen are happening already.

That does look cool. Besides which I always feel I have to support the wee fellah because he gets so much hate.

I'm not being funny, but isn't it a bit daft to be so heavily armed, and clearly in good shape, for no purpose?

For me it's simple systems theory. anything above a certain size becomes unweildy. I'm not in favour of the EU for any reason besides stopping us Europeans from shooting at each other. Since you New Worlders seem to have that under control (on the national scale) I can see little reason for it. In fact I think the USA should consider breaking into smaller chunks.

I have to say you couldn't pay me enough money to invade Switzerland. It's a country-sized fortress.

We need some kind of game-show type klaxon every time someone says this. For dramatic effect. I'll grant you that it makes intuitive sense to assume that poorly supervised organisations in this sort of environment are likely to be indulging in abuse. But that is no different to saying that an individual witha history of violence and criminality is more likely to have committed a violent and criminal act. In any event it's interesting that you bring up the comparison with WMD. Do you not think that a brutal dictator unsupervised by ANYONE who has previously built WMD, wants WMD, and retains the industrial capabilities to produce WMD wil probably have them?

I was under the impression that most child abusers DO have a leadup criminal history. They don't tend to go straight in at the deep end. Similarly most serial killers have a history of clinical weirdness, that just never gets diagnosed/subjected to law. Like hurting dogs.

Funniest. People. Ever. My understanding is that most of them had their feelings hurt when they were forcibly deployed in suspiciously strategic sites.

I think this highlights the real issue. If by fantasy you mean the fantastical then yes anything from the imagination is fantasy. However, I think it's valid to narrow it down. I guess when I think of fiction it is '...imagine a world governed by X instead of Y' For science fiction X replaces Y by virtue of some scientific advance like cheap fusion power or true AI. Thus some new X becomes pre-eminent. It is science fiction because typically we can bring to the transformation the first stirring of how the science will work. Mechanics, ethics, etc etc. For romantic fiction (at present) X is the power of love over Y, the power of necessity. The young couple overcome boundaries of class, gum disease, etc etc because of some irrational force. This requires the changing of the world at large. Trains must leave at the correct times, restaurants must not leave you with dysentery, and a thousand human frailties must suspend their incidence. In like vein, fantasy is not fantasy because of elves and goblins. It is fantasy because X is the human imagination, unfettered by science or practicality, fudging the rules of reality, Y. People can shape the universe by willpower/wearing a dress alone. New species and cultures spring up at a whim, for their mere curiosity value. If I'm writing scifi and i want the sun to disappear I have to comme up with some scientific explanation of how it might. If I'm writing fantasy I can just say "The sun's name is Steve and he gets bored and wanders off"

Only since 1985. noob [/quote} We'll all play ogryns. Happy now?