Raithe

It can depend on the lines they draw. There's a big difference between willing to allow the occasional "collateral damage" to occur.. and going out of your way to target schools and "innocent" civilian casualties. The lines of when military/political/economic targets blur with the rest... The ethics and morality of warfare are one of the hardest things to sit down and make sense. Just how capable of justifying "x civilian dead now will prevent/stop a war/oppression that could potentially kill x many more" or balancing key principles... If a "corrupt" government is in power, do you blame the civilian populace for not removing it and thereby feel free to target the civilians? Should you put liberty above everything else? At what point will the ends corrupt the ideal? If "liberty" is the key principle, should you place it above common decency and honor and the way you interact with the rest of humanity? Or if you have "religious faith" as the key principle should that override all other concerns? At a certain point some things can get a touch silly to the outside observer.

Yeah, but that's like a typical weekend for you guys. Step on out, kill a king, go for a swim. What can we say.. we take our politics a little more seriously over here...

A filmed around the stage version of Pirates of Penzance.. The Essgee Pirates of Australian fame... And Jon English as the Pirate King really pulled out the stops enjoying himself on stage, really playing up to the audience.. and then the conductor has fun making him go through 6 encores for "With Catlike Tread".... If you like Gilbert & Sullivan, it'll amuse and entertain. If you don't.. shame on you uncultured heathens.

"The Bill of Rights. Too freaking long to actually read. So I'll just misquote it to support whatever I want it to..." Someone had to say it...

Just for the general SyFy cheese factor.. The Immortal Voyage of Captain Drake. Adrian Paul (of Highlander the tv series fame) playing Captain Francis Drake dragooned into a "hunt for the tree of life" quest by the kidnapping of his daughter.. (and for the random here, I have to say, for a guy who turned 50 last year, he still looks like he did in Highlander...) with Temuera Morrison (prequel Jango Fet/Clonetrooper fame) having fun as the evil spaniard chasing him... Throw in some cgi ship fighting, and a dose of "monsters" .. cheesy fun if you can deal with the budgetness of it all...

Actual beliefs, or just a pr spin to attract sympathy/support? What are the odds?

A proper Victorian era -pulp adventure style RPG could be fun.. Depending on just how much you wanted to push the boundaries of the fantastical with it.. it could cover a lot of areas.. The victorian interests in spiritualism/mysticism.. the sudden crank of science (the hint of steampunk), the possibilities of exploring "lost/hidden" worlds ...

UK teen banned from US travel for calling Obama names in an email... So for being rude and generally uncivil I can understand the need for a slapdown... and if he was actually "threatening" I could see why they might decide to follow up and check out the emailee to be on the safe side. But for calling Obama names in a drunken email, the law enforcement agencies in America and the UK were stirred into action..and he's been banned for life of ever travelling to the US? Does seem a little overkill. I always thought the american love of free speech technically included the right to call someone names?

Just to put it in relevance (and I'll admit it's going to be rough because I'm remembering it from a political talk show a couple of months back) but back in '95, the budget for the "quango" side of things, was somewhere around 18.7 million. 2010 and we're talking 80 billion. Something has to be seriously wrong to say that in 15 years, our unelected officials have grown by that much. Or are you just saying that they decided to change the definition of quango's while labour was running the government?

What was that old quote.. "air power matters, but if you can't park an 18 year old infantryman with a rifle on the ground, you can't control it." Or something along those lines...

Run through Lair of the Shadowbroker a couple of times now... But just can't get a feel for any other games a the moment...

At the moment I'm somewhat tempted by the upcoming Civ V.. after the amount of hours/days/weeks that I know I've lost to the Civ series over the last decade+ there's always that curiousity to see what the next iteration will bring. Tron Evolution... I'm excited because I'm a Tron-Geek and I want to see what they've done to it .. but all of the game-demo's I've seen so far have looked a little messy rather then smooth demonstrations so I can't make up my mind on it... On the far side of the year.. Deus Ex HR, now that's on definite pre-order. And of course I'm having that side-bet for how long before it's anounced that Rockstar will do the pc version of Red Dead Redemption.

Not at all. I was greatly shaped by a copy of Other Men's Flowers, which was a collection of poetry including Kipling and Chesterton. Mine was published in 1944, and was thereby imbued with all sorts of resonance. "...The skies I saw, the trees I saw After no eye shall see. Tonight I die the death of God The stars go out with me..." I've always been partial to pharoah and the sergeant.. "...It was not a Duke nor Earl, nor yet a Viscount -- It was not a big brass General that came; But a man in khaki kit who could handle men a bit, With his bedding labelled Sergeant Whatisname..."

And to think about 15 years ago the budget for those non-elected officials was somewhere in the millions. There are times I really do feel that all the non-english members of the Labour party were going out of their way to screw over the country. But then I have moments of severe paranoia and extreme cynicism.

I'm not a huge mmo fan, but I'm looking forward to see what happens with The Old Republic.. What I find amusing is that the ToR boards have some serious arguments going back and forth over things such as whether the game should let the pc's have custom lightsaber colors so that jedi could have red and sith could be using blue/green/whatever.. Internet arguments can really start up over some bizarre things..

For something slightly different... I "watched" Doctor Who at the Proms. There's some very nice orcehstral music they've done over the last few years... and seeing the full orchestra playing it in the Albert Hall with lights flashing around is kind of funky...

Picked up a slightly tattered "Collected Verse of Rudyard Kipling" that was published in 1912 from a charity shop. There's something about reading Kipling from faded, yellowing pages that are practically falling out of the binding that makes it feel more.. solid almost. As bizzare as that might sound.

After a week of no gaming, I just did a quick run through of the Lair of the Shadow Broker dlc for ME2.. Firmly on the well-written side of the ME universe.

Shephard : "Remember the days when you could just slap omni-gel on anything to get it to open?" Liara : "Yeah, that security upgrade annoyed an awful lot of people...." It's nice to get little shout-outs to make you smile..

They did it with Ron Hubbard. But he did start with a following of his own anyway....

Well had the wakeup of a neighbour mowing the lawn with a serious petrol lawnmower.. it's something like the 5th day in a row I've found a headache to be rolling in and out.. I'm guessing something with the weather changes is doing nice pressure fluctuations.. Sorted out a little banking, laundry and general tasks around the house. Tis a grey and very windy day here, psyching myself up to go out and get some prescriptions picked up and filled out for my mother before the weather turns nasty. Hm, although does seem to have the feel of one of those slightly depressing, bang head against the wall sort of days. But we'll have to see how it goes...

Hey, it did do quite well at providing that.. star wars space opera atmosphere. And while we can look back and see some of the flaws, at the time.. it was a fun game. It's still worth the odd playaround when you're in the right mood. And frankly, the ending cinematic if you go dark side is quite good..

And hey, sometimes it's fun to sit back and watch a film that's light family entertainment..even if it's geared to kids. I mean, who hasn't gone back and re-watched The Goonies or the like, even if they're heading off into the far side of "adulthood"? Which was something I saw a little bit ago, and had the dvd commentary going for it.. which was entertaining. They actually had video of the gathered group of goonies and director chatting away up in the corner of the screen as the film played and there was some amusing chat and rememberances over it all...

6 actually. 18 actually, if you count the history of middle earth. But it was published as three volumes.. just each volume was a couple of 'books'.

One thing that you might have missed if you hadn't played the first one.. The drive out to the suburbs, say a line, and shoot the old geezer?