Gorgon

It's a little worrying if this is the extent of the knowledge among young Russians about how their own country used to be run.

This is what they call the 'otherness' of Japan, that everything is so different that we couldn't possibly understand with our inadequate western POV. It's a load of nonsense. One of my old teachers told me that the groping problem with the rowdy weekend crowd was so bad that they had to institute women only train cars. It excites the pervs because it's out in the public. The notion of Japanese women just standing there being paralysed by shame is part of the perv fantasy, it does not correspond in any way with reality.

I'll venture a guess : it's because psychologically you still believed that another 'strong man' could save you all. You were so used to having a Pater Familias at the head of the country you couldn't do without one, you needed to be reassured.

Why are you people still caught up on the fact that this is about something Japanese. Yes they have nasty wrong hentai, and they have lots of nice things as well, can we get past it, I mean who cares.

Surely it's a lot worse. Pornography, whatever you think about how women are portrayed in 99% of it, does not show 'real' rape or come across with the message that it is acceptable, or indeed make the rapist into the hero of the story. Well maybe it does but then it probably is illegal most places. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rapeman I dunno, I just think the thought process behind something like the above disgusts me more than the circus act that is pornography ever could. And as always reality triumphs fiction : http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_...icle1019963.ece Does one cause the other, well that's really hard to say but there seems to have developed a very unhealthy culture which has not been sufficiency challenged, whether legally or otherwise. These jokers got away with it for a long time.

My tolerance for never ending impossible plots has been reached and surpassed anyway I think.

Maybe it's about the censorship. The idea is that they never really got to grips with porn because they aren't allowed to show any 'bits', and they compensate with over the top weirdness.

Commentators some times stress the emasculation of the Japanese man following the humiliation of WW2, or more to the point the empowerment of the Japanese woman to explain away the extreme end of the manga offerings. Rape is about power they say, and these cases constitute a rather pathetic attempt to reclaim it.

Why exactly do people expect the government to have been able to prevent the attack. A few well trained terrorist can cause a lot of trouble and the chance of stopping them beforehand is relatively minimal.

If there is no history of Democracy, no view that it represents an evolution in human society, but instead a series of 'strong men' who make dissenters disappear the people aren't going to be removing any yokes.

Accept no substitutes, for your pillow humping pleasure.

While we may think that Democracy is preferable to totalitarianism, and with good reason, that doesn't give us the right to decide when to fight for it, and how many casualties are acceptable. I like how LoF can't wipe his own arse without first formulating the consequences according to Marxist theory.

Who did it

Volounteers make the best soldiers, you don't need conscripts unless you are already royally screwed, or live next to a genuine threat like South Korea or Israel.

Well there's not supposed to be any excess only a very thin layer. The heating 'pads' that are already on the heatsink, if you are talking about those made out of a dough-like material, are instead of the thermal paste. Both won't help you. In any case a new cooler better than a stock cooler is a dirt cheap investment if you don't get caugh up in the hype.

Castro isn't in charge anymore, or won't be before too long. I guess we were wrong when we thought he would outlive us all.

Actually you're just a little off on this one point. The rest was correct. ID is based on the lack of evidence of an evolutionary path from single cell to complex organisims. As Oblarg correctly pointed out it is a "God in the Gaps" argument that presumes there is no such a path, not that it is just unknown. The idea that complex life was seeded here by aliens also explains the "missing link". Still I really don't see the issue with presenting the idea as an unproven hypothosis with the caveat that it is a hypothesis. Natual Selection does fine explaining the progession of life over hundreds of generations, but it is mute on the origin of compex life. I have to say I find the hostility on this board to the idea to be pretty remakable. By the tone of his posts I'd say Oblarg was foaming at the mouth and slapping his keyboard in his anxiety to get his words out. Others too. You know, 100 years ago you could be thrown in prision for teaching Natual Selection (look up the Scopes Monkey trial). 300 years ago they would excecute you for it. In Iran they still would. By the sound of most of you I think you would be in favor of similar treatment to anyone who presents an alternative idea like ID. Like I said, it's funny how the shoe is on the other foot now. The point is still that creationism is not science, and yet it has been shoehorned into the science curriculum. There is good reason to be foaming at the mouth. If learning has to be the whipping boy for political agendas you lot are really in trouble.

First step is to find out the heat tolerances of your CPU. You can find those at intel with a little patience. If it's well below, don't worry, if it's near, worry.

Well those things aside, what the hell is the US doing sanctioning Cuba and not China. Not even the pretense of principle remains. Sanctioning Cuba is simply affordable, while doing it to China is not. 'Engagement' is just a piss poor excuse, after all if it actually worked why not try it on Cuba.

I was contemplating posting something about coke and hookers but my last remaing shred of decency appears to have won out.

Chavez is paranoid with good reason. What's next, a 'thought police', mass arrest and internment camps for known Capitalists and associates, lulz.

Being defeated by a 1 foot obstacle and having to backtrack was certainly not very fun.

'Chief Moderator' That's interesting, I never noticed that Fio was Capo di tutti capi in the mod squad. Figures really, I've never seen him be passionate about anything. On the intarwebs that is.

I dunno, I liked the Slavic flavour. 'Viedzmin' even sounds cooler than 'Witcher'. I would hate to be completely without ham fisted heavily accented English in S.T.A.L.K.E.R, as a forinstance.

Looks promising