metadigital

I think the English fans have a bad rap. Sure, there is a criminal xenophobic underclass element, but this is an extreme minority. Certainly now, when the authorities use CCTV and preventative measures to ensure that anyone even remotely suspected of thinking about some perpetrated violence that happened near to where they might have thought about attending a match are banned for life and forbidden from travelling to overseas destinations that are due to hold a match in the next millennia.

Probably near the "mount" button ... "

... Or don't like the sport enough to play it in a gimped form. Really, you have to be quite dedicated to stare at a glorified spreadsheet. I can do it for Civ, but not for Sims or sports games.

I think the precise part of speech is the glottal stops, which are elongated, in the Southern Hermisphereans. Also, there is a tendency amongst Aussies (especially females) to add a rising inflection to all their sentences, which is used in normal conversational English to denote both a questoin and some sort of urgency or stress. Except in Welsh, who add a deepening inflection to denote urgency or stress.

I have over half the players of OBS-2 not submit orders this week. I am seriously considering abandoning the game, due to lack of interest.

Yeah, there is not much point in playing if no-one is playing. I've got better things to do than sail the Marie Celeste ...

I've only ever enjoyed playing two sports games, and both were in the arcade: Super Punchout! and 10 Yard Fight (oh, okay, and Rallly X, if that counts). They all had strategies to discover and modify.

I always preferred Civ2, personally. The only downside to Civ2 was how ugly the railroads looked, especially when they covered the entire landmass ...

Not a big fan of foreign films then, GoA? Pity, the French make some brilliant ones, for example.

Well, in the film he just hugs them ...

But they all use the same few NPC character models.

Don't forget Sting Gordon and his ugly wife. No point in ridding the world of Bono Paul and leaving that chode.

Kiwis say "sex fesh un' cheps", Aussies say "si-ix fi-ish ind chi-ips". Yarpies (South Africans) say "Ya, sux f'sh 'n ch'ps". Just like Canadians say "oot und aboot".

tragic consequences of terrorism

and your twin too.... I've noticed that parents are much easier to deal with when you don't live in the same building. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> EVERYONE is much easier to deal with when they don't live in the same building.

The Kurds how a powerbase in the north. This is because they are motivated (by decades of oppression and exploitation and genocide by their three landlords: Turkey, Iran and Iraq), so they have made the Kurdish part of Iraq almost totally self-sufficient and a de facto country. I would expect they are quite happy to succeed, given the chance. And I think it wouldn't be terrible if they did, providing they permitted the persecuted Kurdish populations in Turkey and Iran to migrate (which I couldn't see them not doing). I can't see anyone, not Sunnis or Shi'ites, from stopping them. It's only the requests of the US and Britin that are keeping them part of the country, so I don't think anything except a Federalist system will keep them. I am also optimistic that the Federated territories might end up being a lot closer than initally set out. It is a good point, though, that if there is a bland initial constitutional statement, this might help prevent violence as the parties believe they have more to lose by not being a part of the diplomatic process. OTOH any intial line in the sand made by a progressive constituition can sometimes be the furtherest a constitution gets, with subsequent negotiations just tweaking the existing status quo. And it is quite posible that the Sunni extremists won't adopt even the mildest and blandest constitution, prefering to cause anarchy in an attempt to wrest more control over the entire country. Tough call.

Women can be adroit users of all forms of argument. Specifically, they generally do not adhere to the constraints of logic (this is not a failing, any more than a dog thinks the cat has an obedience failing that will cause the owner's displeasure). I have argued with women who can destroy propositions with logic, when required, and then flip into Surreal Attack Mode and demolish perfectly logical arguments, for an encore. Men are typically completely unable to master the Surreal Attack, and therefore are left under-armed and over-exposed.

Read The Richest Man in Babylon before you do anything else.

Yeah, it looks likely that the State / City infrastructure is what failed: no tested Disaster Mitigation and Recovery plan.

Metadigital meta has an attack of one point five (and special) meta has a defense of one point five (and special) Metadigital is a "Philosphical Babbler with ligatures" type of card When encountering meta, other players must save sanity versus philosobabble or run screaming from the forum for ten turns. Save at -50% penalty if meta started the thread. For every three hundred words collect a single philosobabble token. For every three hundred philosobabble tokens, collect one each of a political, theological ,socio-economic, historical, ancient geek or supercillious parent tokens of skeptical observation. (These tokens are meaningless in and of themselves, but it gives people something to do rather than actually drown in all the text.) Special Powers: [*]Enters an existing flame war, make highly combustible man

Well, the criminal charge of assault is any verbal threat that a person makes, which they can possible carry out. So if a husband screams "Get out of my way, or I'll push you down the stairs!" in the middle of an argument, that is technically (and legally prosecutable as) ASSAULT. (Battery and Grevous Bodily Harm are actual contact and physical assault, going on up the scale.)

1. This proves that DL has the nettiquette to lurk and search before posting. An example to all! 2. The only other comment to be made is that some people have more time to spend on navel contemplation than others. " PS Eru: I am Most active in : Way Off-Topic (2337 posts / 29% of this member's active posts).

I'm flattered, but I do not swing that way. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> True to (officially sanctioned card) form.

This assumes that caring for a high-risk individual is more expensive than a longer-lived low risk individual. Is it more expensive to pay for the medical costs of a 50-year life that ends in lung cancer or a 90-year life that ends in Alzheimers? An open question. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Except that lung cancer brought on by smoking is a preventable disease. Alzheimers is not. I don't think it is wise or necessary to create an arbitrary cost-of-care ceiling. If a person is ill, I don't think the cost of the treatment should even enter the decision making process (of course, it does: but it shouldn't). The best method I can see at the moment for managing healthcare long-term is to make accurate assessments of people's lifestyles now, and adjust their cover and premiums appropriately. Of course this then opens the can of worms about the poor little imbeciles that reach old age and are insufficiently covered after their high-risk early lifestyle, and what to do with them ... let them pay their own way, with subsequent generations picking up any excess, let them die even if they are able to be saved treat them anyway, which necessarily penalises those who have paid their correct dues and / or lived a low-risk life. This might be an acceptable cost if it is decided that: not everyone will live a high-risk lifestyle, if given the option, and there is some benefit to society in encouraging those who would take risks to take them. Nice to sit on a forum and debate, but these ethical dilemmas tend to be warped out of all reasonable debate when discussing the immediate fate of sick and elderly.

Repealing seat-belt (or motor cycle crash helmet) obligations of vehicluar drivers is only acceptable if there is some sort of mandatory health insurance. Otherwise, others have to pay for the idiot that spils his brains on the pavement and has neither health insurance nor a helmet. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Welcome to government. Plenty of people have to pay for plenty of stupid stuff they'd prefer not to. Plenty of people spill their brains on the pavement by not wearing their seat belt or a helmet despite the laws. If you want to argue that people ought to have to pay for their choices, fine, I'm all for that. Don't give medical treatment to the guy with the spilled brains if he doesn't have insurance. But can we please, please, please, as a global society, agree that it's a bad idea for the government to regulate personal choices/morality/et al? And I say this with Bush getting to appoint not one, but two Supreme Court justices. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Ah, I don't mind that alternative. Problem is then you have to determine the helath insurance status of the patient at the time of the accident, which is not the best time to do it. I am all for leaving them to fertilise the median strip. We need to update the Info Tech available to hospital staff; perhaps an id chip with the person's Social Security number for an index? "