Monte Carlo

What's the forum consensus on The Matrix? It felt cool at the time but I saw one of them the other day and it just felt... bad.

It seems to be to be a symbolic gesture. And, given that the protagonists here are machine Democrats it's probably a bit of dog-whistle muscle flexing for their blue collar voters. The USA has life-without-parole mega prisons, federal death penalties and has dabbled with extra-judicial POW camps using soft-core torture techniques. It renders foreign nationals. It hunts down it's foes with drones armed with big rockets. These are all bad-ass sanctions of which I would not immediately disapprove of. So tearing up some terrorists passport before giving him a lethal injection, or crashing a hellfire into his pickup, seems a bit meh.

Calax, your argument is wrong on so many levels I don't know where to start.

Don't want to be deliberately contrary, but Solaris was cinematic mogadon.

I do mean the 70's original with James Caan BTW.

For the purpose of clarity, I deem sci-fi to include sub-genres (horror / war / post apoc). These are ten of my favourites in no particular order: * Mad Max 2 (much better than any of the others in the series) * Aliens 2 (ditto) * Invasion of the Bodysnatchers (the 1976 remake with Donald Sutherland) * Rollerball * Starship Troopers (on a number of levels, but the original only) * Robocop (ditto - i'd buy that for a dollar) * Blade Trilogy (am happy to argue the toss, it's sci-fi / horror imo) * Independence Day (brilliant popcorn movie take on the invasion genre) * Mars Attacks! * Bladerunner (duh)

^ No. Honestly. The overwhelming view here was that the Tories would struggle on then go for a fresh election in 12 months. I suspect the problems the unionist parties had in Northern Ireland might have caused this strategy major problems. Secondly, the Lib Dems have far more in common with the Labour Party than they do the Tories. A lot of the rank-and-file will be spitting blood. Clegg, OTOH is being offered ministerial posts for his people in a way that Labour would not. He has more to gain, but a deal with Labour could see the end of centre right politics in the UK. I still can't see it working. The Lib Dems are moonbats. Barking mad.

^ One of them is part-Hispanic. This doesn't look as simple as it appears, difficult as that might be for the school.

^ You see, the irony is I'm one of the most tolerant people you'll ever meet. And the thing that pisses me off is the left-wing abuse of tolerance as part of their kulturkampf on the rest of us. The left lost all the big arguments after the end of the cold war, so they retreated to the foothills of academia and public service to carry on their guerilla warfare from there. And what they can't and won't see is the damage they do. Because to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. I hate racism. But when someone occasionally says or does something insensitive could it be down to something else rather than racism? According to the leftie torquemadas of the 21st century the answer is NO. Always. They are causing more racism than they solve.

Excuse me? I suppose you don't get over to the East Coast much, which is fair enough. The Irish-American link is more than tangible. The Irish-American lobby has been a real force in US politics since forever. No, it's about behaving like a bit of an arse, which is something entirely different. As a teacher I suspect you have had so much subtle cultural marxist water-boarding over the years you can't see where that one was going. Just playing devil's advocate, but why must they respect it? And were they clearly looking to disrespect it? Respect has become one of the most misused words of the 21st century. Tolerate this holiday? Yes, absolutely. Respect it. Why? Maybe we could build a re-education camp somewhere.

Cameron's offer to the Libs has stunned me. Lots of Tories will be furious about it. Of course, it's strategy. Trying to do to Labour what Labour are trying to do to them: destroy them utterly as a credible electoral force. It's also a high-risk strategy - for every superficially similar area of policy alignment there is another which is pure oil-and-water. And Brown is still hiding in No.10, pretending he's in charge.

Yes, on the telly. The man is an EU-sponsored machine politico who has never had a real job in his life. And, yes, his party is full of astro-turfers. Seriously.

Look on the bright side, America's southern border flanks a rapidly-failing narco-state.

22:00 GMT official exit poll puts Conservatives winning in a hung parliament - short of only 19 seats. Let's see how accurate that is. in other news I'm 4 cans of beer down already.

In case anybody is interested I am going to live blog election nite 2010 ON THIS VERY THREAD. I have 12 x large cans of beer 4 x bottles of decent claret 1 litre of rum A large supply of Chinese food and dim sum Updates will be sporadic, although the bizarre news that the UKIP leader crashed a light aircraft towing an advertising banner this morning is an interesting development and worthy of comment. I hope Nigel and his pilot both get well soon, and sincerely hope Nigel unseats John Bercow later in Buckingham (altho' sadly he'll be in hospital). Cheers MC

^ I think the point is that this shouldn't be an issue in the first place. If the American kids want to wear American flags so what? The Mexican kids should be big enough to be cool with it. And vice versa. I lived through the politically correct 80's and 90's and went to school in the 70's (when racism was endemic) and no surprises for guessing that all the PC edicts have made things worse. Something had to happen, racism was a massive issue, but the Left couldn't let it go as a political - cultural weapon. It was the large calibre rifle that never ran out of ammo. And now we have this, these perceived slights and walking on eggshells.

I'm jealous, at least you get to see if you make a difference. Let us know how it pans out.

Wals, what constituency are you in? Would your vote make a difference?

It doesn't bode well for the future, does it? Kids refering to their national flags as 'colours' like a gang motif?

World governments! Yay. No doubt they'll have a nice uniform and camps for those who disagree.

The thing I resented in the polling booth this morning is the irrelevance of my vote. Where I live is so overwhelmingly Blue, there's no point pi**ing in the wind. Like Wals, my pencil hovered fleetingly over the UKIP box but I resisted. They're not ready for my vote. Yet. I want the Tories to win anyway, least worst option and all that. Despite my virtual irrelevance, I still prefer our way of doing it. Coalitions are nasty stitch-ups between professional politicians who will always be in office. Look at Israel, some far right nutjob gets a key government post for the sake of coalition building when his party gets less than 3% of the popular vote? No thanks. Cheers MC

More Brit super-sniper madness. More rounds down, but more baddies too.

Depends. There are several key seats, watch those fall one way or the other and the result is a given. Look at my example earlier about Tooting, will be called at about 0100 GMT. That needs a uniform swing of about 6.5% and will mean that the Tories are almost certain to win. OTOH, if it's really close the definitive result might not be out until Friday lunchtime. Look at the swing. Anything near 10% (this is, BTW, almost unprecedented for the Tories) will mean definite victory. 7-9 is good for them, anything less is a drift into hung parliament territory. Like I said, I'm staying up to see if Ed Balls gets his just desserts.

You miss my point, the anarchists are the bastard offspring of the Commies, who in turn had been crushed by reactionaries.

A cursory knowledge of our politics would reveal that the Tories will stick pins in their eyes before they do a deal with the Lib Dems. They would rather run with a minority government for a year, then go back to the polls for another GE. As it's looking this morning, the Tories might do it, or rely on the Ulster Unionists to make up the (small) difference. I expect another GE in the next 18 months in any case.