Posts by tumbleworld 21 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Nov 2009
I guess we'll see if there's anything to his accusations when he either does or does not end up as a guest of Uncle Sam. He's clearly a barmy sod, and a bit of a weasel besides, but that doesn't necessarily mean he's wrong. Doesn't mean he's not lying through his teeth either, of course.
Time will tell, but there's one thing for certain -- I'll be chucking bags of salt around at all sides, all through his sordid little Saga.
Despite the righteously indignant frothing of all our devout Atheist chums here, claiming Jedi-hood absolutely does _not_ bolster the ranks of the religious.
This is directly from the notes of the 2001 census's Religious Populations analysis, posted back in 2004:
"No religion includes people who ticked 'None' at the religion question plus those who wrote in Jedi Knight, Agnostic, Atheist and Heathen and those who ticked 'Other' but did not write in any religion."
So to be absolutely clear: atheists, agnostics, Jedis and unreadable Others are all in exactly the same category. So please, stop the damned ranting, and if people want to play Jedi Knights with the gubmint, let them be childish in peace.
The details of the census data also note that: "... many people chose to write in their own religion. _Some_ of these religions were reassigned to one of the main religions offered" (my emphasis). Also, "151,000 people belonged to religious groups which did not fall into any of the main religions. The largest of these were Spiritualists (32,000) and Pagans (31,000), followed by Jain (15,000), Wicca (7,000), Rastafarian (5,000), Bahà'ì (5,000) and Zoroastrian (4,000)."
I'm a bit depressed to see Voudessaints, Cthulhu Cultists and Discordians so poorly represented, but hey, you can't have everything.
The data can be studied here:
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=954
I believe CERN's finances exist in vast numbers. _Vast_.
They can afford to employ one measley portal scientist skilled in xenomartial guerilla warfare. I'd go so far as to say it's a duty. If he just so happens to be a slim, dark-haired chap with close-cropped hair, glasses and a goatee, so much the better. I think we'd all sleep better at night.
I for one am horrified -- horrified, I say -- that none of the excellent tags attached to this article have been used anywhere else in El Reg's storybase. I was looking forward to an entertaining Friday Afternoon browsing other "# What Did You Think This Story Was About You Silly" entries.
It's very sad.
I loathe Glider; not because I meanly want to deny the lazy or incompetent the chance to level, but because it's so useful to the gold-farmers, who make swathes of the game difficult to play with their constant predation.
But I really dislike the idea that modding a game is in violation of DCMA. I think that's a grossly retrograde step that will do a lot of damage to the industry. And the idea that it might be a matter of copyright is laughable.
So, much as I dislike the defendant, I'm glad the judgment isn't worse, and I hope he manages to overturn the DCMA portion. I just wish he'd stop spamming WoW with his auto-pilot spammers.
Wonderful response, and all too plausible. I have a pal involved in the security industry, and he just walks around nervously nowadays, shaking his head and muttering about zombie apocalypses -- and about taking to the canals to get out of London when the balloon goes up.
My impression from drunken nuggets he's let slip, is that in instances of severe civil unrest -- death by flumageddon*, economic collapse, &c -- the plan is to just ring-fence the big cities and let them eat Doom. They're too big to control. The best place to be, assuming that staying close to the shards of law and order is desirable -- is a town big enough to have a hospital or two, that has a reasonable amount of agriculture in the district. Ideally, one near an army base. Oxford has always seemed a particularly ideal choice.
* I seem to recall him suggesting that if just 5% of the working adult population is incapacitated, we lose power, food delivery, and so on.
Well, it's a good job that 4% of the workforce being slung into poverty won't impact any other economic sector, because that could have a bit of knock-on effect, and that would be bad. I sure am glad our Lords and Masters have their fingers on the pulse.
By the way, anyone else notice that Wall St. posted a new record high earnings total this afternoon? $144 billion this year, if Disinfo is to be believed. I'm glad that the bankers and financiers are doing so well out of ensuring that the mega-rich keep all their wealth in these troubled times. Gives us all something to aspire to, eh?
Do you need some sharpened pitchforks, Trevor_Pott?
The downside is that the wealth that people have saved decreases. This is a particular issue for the rich, who find themselves automatically losing large chunks of money every month, but no-one really likes to see their nest-egg steadily vanishing. Besides, there's a high overlap between wealth and political power -- on both sides of the floor -- so it's never going to happen.
Boring only works as anti-strange if you think strange things are interesting, surely?
According to dear old reference.com, the proper antonym for strange is familiar, as suggested by the AC above. "Familiar antihypermatter" just doesn't quite cut it though, unless Lewis wants to come over as all blazé. So devils take proper English, I'm with MadonnaC.
Egnarts FTW.
@23, although it's true that there weren't any rogered cabin boys or stained seamen aboard the Black Pig, frankly the whole of Pugwash had a vaguely filthy air to it. Just the name 'Pugwash' sounds like a horrible deviancy. I recently watched -- Great God! -- a whole DVD of Cap'n Pugwash episodes, and I can assure you that you'd need to be young and innocent indeed not to see anything suspicious in it.
Besides, Pugwash repeatedly mis-pronounces Master Mate as masturbate.
The only conclusion I can come to is that MS can think of absolutely nothing positive to say about Windows 7, so they're trying to build it a (horribly malformed) Happy Fun Vibe. It's like they're saying "Oh, don't worry about the details: we have Dancing Bears!"
The poor staff look traumatized to be involved. There's a great shot at 1:14 with a couple of the guys just looking suicidal to be there. Three cheers for Shoplifter Woman at 2:10-ish.
I'm not a Mac Fanboi. I use XP, and actually don't mind it. I had been hoping that Windows 7 might be good enough to upgrade to, but this hideous piece of crap shilling convinced me that I need to keep it in the same cognitive "abomination" box that Vista is in, until sensible tech sources convince me otherwise.
Unless this is really a very, very clever piece of work by Apple, designed to sink Win 7 by utterly appaling the infosphere...
Good to see Microsoft putting the world's children to work, and paying them less than even the most crazed Victorian industrialist's wet dreams would have pictured. Get the little bastards working productively. We don't want them having any chance to exercise their creativities or free wills; get them used to the yoke of corporate predation nice and early. Spend your life in a cubicle! You can earn badges! Work, little Monkey. WORK!
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