Raithe

I think the general historical viewpoint that people in the US take... Is that to break the law in defence of liberty and freedom for yourself or others is viewed as American. But to break the law on the basis of ensuring your "freedom" to prevent others having liberty or freedom is un-American. Of course, that's always subject to re-interpretation every 20-30 years (possibly shorter).

Eh, do enough of the story missions to get access to the.. Thunderpoon!

Part of the trouble is when you have large waves of refugees or immigrants in this manner, is that when they do get to the country they want to settle in they naturally localise together. It forms what I hate to call ghettos or little suburbs of that group. So in a short space of time, everyone in that area is from a different culture, they continue to use the language of their previous home as the primary language, and again, naturally, they close ranks against people from outside that group as a means of protection. You then get the calls of multi-culturalism that the surrounding groups then bend to help this group out, that potentially local laws flow to them because they are now a minority group. All of this gets in the way of practical assimilation between this new cultural group and the native cultural group. Then ten or twenty years down the line you'll find that there's now cultural/racial tension on both sides because rather than merging together they've stayed apart and both view the "other" group as having benefits for one reason or another that "they" don't.

This made me want to go hunt up Sky High and re-watch it for the amusement value... io9 - Sky High Really needs to be a tv show

Well I'm currently sleep deprived so I probably won't hit the mark in that accurate or coherent a manner, so I'll try to make a brief point on it. The EU as such has evolved out of several treaties, and amendments over time. It isn't really an elected form of government, its a bureaucracy that's grown, sprawled, and twisted itself around more and more over the years. The idea of the EU has developed and changed over the decades - which I have no problem with. What I think is one of the issues with it, is that in many ways its trying to do a top down forcing of control onto a wide group of people. Just for an example, the way the legal systems work, not only from a strictly legal standpoint, but from the very cultural approach is insanely different between the separate countries in the EU. A huge chunk of European countries are inspired or based on the Napoleonic codes, but the UK uses a completely different system. The German's have another, although that still uses some elements of the Napoleonic (I think). But it's not just in the technical aspects, but look at the cultural. For example, the French have a habit of making a point over how they have higher motoring standards in their frame of law. They have tighter legal codes on whole lot of things. But.. they don't try to enforce those codes at that standard. A few years back the UK inspired the French truck drivers to go on a massive strike, because the UK insisted on giving their trucks mechanical tests according to our "lower" standards, and most of the trucks failed and were deemed "unsafe". Because, culturally the UK sets the laws at a level they can enforce. Hell, look at the Italian court system, they allow people to be tried for the same crime multiple times, and they still have a large chunk of the culture looking at "who is the defendant related to" in just how stiff prosecutions are. There's a lot of nudge nudge, wink wink to it all. But it's culturally acceptable to them. You can't take groups that disparate, force a point of view on them, and expect it to actually mesh that well in real life. Yet , according to the morass of treaties.. "Under the principle of supremacy, national courts are required to enforce the treaties that their member states have ratified, and thus the laws enacted under them, even if doing so requires them to ignore conflicting national law, and (within limits) even constitutional provisions.". Now point of thing, you get a lot of these amendments get slid through without public awareness. No-one I got to vote for was involved in the process. The bureaucratic level of the EU pushes things back and forth, it gets signed into being, and before you know it the things that a group of people who have completely different cultural perspectives and viewpoints, who have no experience with my country have created a situation where my laws don't matter. I mean, sure there's the whole thing with the European Parliament.. but again, that wasn't designed as a form of government. That started out as a .. common assembly of the old European Steel and Coal Community and has been morphed and warped and added to over the years. Now it has all of these legislative and executive powers that I, as a joyful member of the EU, have bugger all say in. It has bizarre levels and redundancy, its complex, there is little real transparency to it. There are over 20,000 civil servants forming the administrative body of the EU commission, and, in all fairness, civil servants of all stripes have a distinct tendency to build empires in any bureaucracy, and evolve into that "this is how things work, regardless of what the politicians do". Now make this a bureaucracy where a ridiculous amount of money flows and there's no real transparency or question of how or why that money gets spent... But where EU politicians and Civil Servants seem to live incredibly well. That seems to be the general perspective from around me.

Bruce, I think one of the key issues here that you might not be understanding... To a lot of people over here, the EU isn't seen as a form of democratic government. It's pretty much a bureaucracy we didn't elect, that we have no direct representation to, but still gets to have power over us. It's a bureaucracy that keeps expanding itself, keeps inserting further and further into our lives, and seems to have it's own professional career bureaucrats keeping it going in ways that feather their own nests. Now, I'm perfectly willing to admit that that might not be the reality. But that happens to be the rather common perception of it. And frankly, that's the way it seems to ACT to the people who are inside it. You might have this rosy view of what the idea is meant to be, but the perception of how it acts within it.. is where a lot of us are coming from.

From a BBC radio advert for a debate on the migration crisis.. And for the further elements.. BBC - EU Migration in Graphics Although I do note that these seem to have a lot more statistics for those who apply for asylum, not necessarily those who don't apply and just attempt to move illegally into various countries....

To compress it down: Critics look at things from one point of view. Users look at it from another. A lot of critics get games free. Users value for what they spend money on. Neither group is inherently wrong, it's a matter of perspective. Examples of comfort vs innovation. Comparison with Transformers movies between critics and people who still paid money to see it. Why trailers still have spoilers and user psychology. Also, you should always engage in subscribing to wide range of information, not just ones that automatically agree with you. If you only read / listen to people who agree with you, you encourage your own ignorance. Assigning scores is stupid, it works better when you give a reason why you like dislike something and what it is that works or doesn't work for you. Critics or Users who announce their opinions as the be-all and end-all are prideful idiots. Scores are inherently stupid. (Basically) Edit: And before anyone mentions it, yes, scores are deliberately mentioned twice. Because it's one of his prime annoyances.

Just to throw in the metaphorical looksee here.. If you see the guy in the house next to you beating up his wife, are you morally obliged to interfere in some way? Whether by calling the police or going over yourself to try and calm the situation down or put a stop to it? If your answer is yes, does that change if that neighbour just happens to be in a house across the border and thus in another country? Does it change if its a group of men beating up their wives, or shooting people who disagree with them, or say.. using chemical weapons on civilians? Of course, if you then happen to make it a question of if its actions being committed that you deem immoral for one reason or another so you have to smite them to stop it.. That's the same reasoning a bunch of terrorist groups give for conducting attacks on the imperialist and immoral western world. It's a fun slippery slope isn't it? It becomes a wonderful matter of perspective, opinion, armchair quarterbacking, and political ravings of left wing and right wing back and forth. The simple answer is, there is never a simple answer to that discussion, and there's always going to be too many emotions involved and a heavy weight of history on all sides.

For those who don't want to read the assorted books for the new canon.,.. The collected "history" so far of what is known about what's happened in the Star Wars universe between RotJ and the new film... io9 - Everything We Know About Star Wars Post Return Of The Jedi Future

Remember, it's all about hanging out like a Wookie...

I just find it hard to take most nutrition advice. Every 5-10 years, it changes. Oh, too much salt is bad for you. Wait 10 years and they'll turn around and admit they got it wrong and its okay. Specific ingredients, specific types of food, specific types of fat.... One decade all the food nutrition experts have identified it as awful and life threatening and the cause of all these illnesses.. and the next decade its "well, it's not as serious as we thought" "Actually it was something else..". It comes down to eating everything in moderation and having some form of exercise in your life. Beyond that, the science seems to make it a crapshoot because it's ever changing.

It seems to be working. There's just that slightly worrying smell that could either be extremely burnt croissant.. or burnt wiring. I can't quite figure which...

I agreed to dog sit for my sister. What I ended up with was an overlarge, rambunctious german shepard that decided to whine, paw me, and do the jiggy-jiggy dance to go out in the garden roughly every 30-40 minutes through the night. And of course he actually needed to pee every time, so it's not like I could easily ignore him from then on. Of course, that had me somewhat stumble-minded in the morning, so I put the kettle on for a cup of tea, decided to nuke a croissant, went to the toilet..and came back to find I'd put the croissant in for 2 minutes instead of 20 seconds..and I'd grabbed one of the plates with the metal rim to put it on.....

For that slight look back... GamesRadar - Hitman's Most Memorable Mission

And for the not so serious... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QajyNRnyPMs

Okay then... North Carolina High School Quaterback and Girlfriend charged as Adults for exchanging nude photos

Well, frankly the whole thing is set up by several variant cultures from quite different backgrounds that have a few hundred years of history driving the various elements. Okay, to be fair, it's more like a millennia and some loose change of history driving it all. Sure, the last 20 years of global politics are much more distinct in shaping it, but a lot of the slow, grinding, driving forces have been laid down for a whole heap of time.

Hitman Agent 47 It was surprisingly good for a game-to-movie adaption. As a stand alone action flick I'd rate it. It has some fairly well done characters, a bit of tension, and some nicely choreographed action sequences, plus a couple of small twists just to add to it.

I once read a Star Wars novel set after the original trilogy. They killed Chewbacca, and I threw it in the trash after that. Yes, the whole.. New Order setting and the Yuuzhan Vong was very.. offputting. They had some interesting ideas, but as a whole that part of the EU got very warped and messy. Frankly, the Thrawn Trilogy, some of the Jedi Academy related series, and a few others were pretty damn good. Just there were a lot more flawed than polished gems that did turn up.