Affentitten

Well it's my 10th wedding anniversary today. I guess I will always think of the Twin Towers once a year whether I want to or not.

I think that's the way most of us see it. Especially given the appalingly lengthy time and expenditure that has been involved in this tub thumping.

I think the 'objection' here is that it has been turned into a criminal charge after years of detention and potentially could get him life imprisonment. Nobody is denying that he was an enemy. But we didn't charge every Volksturm drone with war crimes for piling Panzerfausts by the front door. Given the scale of the WoT, the rhetoric and the big ideals behind it, banging some Afghan peasant up like this seems a little below proportion.

I thought the following might be of interest to paste in here. It's from a speech given by one Tim Hawkes, who is the headmaster of one of our top 5 private schools here in Australia. It appears in full in today's Sydney Morning Herald: 4. Intimacy The Western world does a poor job in preparing its students to be intimate. There are always exceptions, but in general students are required to navigate their way through the sexual swamp with minimal direction. Signposts can be vague and contradictory. The parents say this, and the school says that, but the porn site says something completely different. Where adult direction falters, peer direction takes over. The "leader of the pack" can, in strident and boastful voice, suggest the way forward to the forbidden fruit and encourage all to eat thereof. The proper people to educate students about sex are parents. Some parents are wonderful at giving their children guidelines on sex, but others are delinquent. The latter can be because of the sin of omission. The lexicon of excuses is extensive: "It's not my job - the school will deal with it"; "I'm too busy"; "It's the sort of thing you have to learn yourself"; "They probably know more about it than I do"; "I'm not quite sure what to tell them." There are plenty of excuses to choose from. For other parents, it is the sin of commission. They teach their children an attitude towards sex that is unworthy of them. They model abusive and angry relationships, unfaithful relationships, degrading relationships. The child watches it all, memorises it all and repeats it all. Schools can also fail their students. Classes will do pencilled drawings of reproductive organs, and become experts on how "tadpoles" swim upstream and how babies grow in the womb. They will be introduced to the horrors of sexually transmitted diseases in that theoretical, antiseptic way. Some of the luckier ones may get to roll a condom onto a banana and giggle their way through a lecture on dating. The mind is fed but not the heart. The questions students want to ask, they are not allowed to, as it is not in the syllabus. So answers must be sought on the net, in magazines and on the back of toilet doors - they are certainly not in text books. We must do a better job of teaching our children about sex and intimacy. They have little need to hear more about the biology of sex, for this is generally done well in schools. Nor do they need to hear about the morality of sex from adults with dehydrated loins who have no connection with the virility of a teenager. They want to know what they can, where they can, why they can, when they can, how they can, if they can. They no longer need to know how they measure up in an environment of unconditional love, but how they measure up outside, in the swamp of life where love, like and lust churn dangerously. It is not just smut and titillation that students want, for they can get these quite easily these days. What they want is something more elusive, something rare, and that is wholesome advice on how to be a man, how to be a woman.

Just to be picky, there is a bit of a difference between Ike beseeching God's help (ie. not a given), Roosevelt using a religious phrase, Obama praying and then someone saying that she is privy to God's plans and they include a gas pipeline and war in Iraq. But overall, left or right, the rest of the world looks at America's poltical and military religous zealotry and shudders.

This thread needs more Kettler.

So if a black hole opens up in Switzerland, how long will it be before myself in Sydney has to worry? Are those things sucking in stuff at light speed or what?

That's rich coming from one of the undead.

But now will anyone believe the next "storm of the century" evacuation order?

Not to mention the chance to plant some actual WMDs in Iraq.

Has anybody considered that this could cause a rift in the space-time continuum, thus allowing the Dalek and Cyberman battlefleets through to Canary Wharf or at least a quarry in Essex?

No one has seen the Higgs Boson? Well, we'll just have to be content with all the people who have seen atoms and electrons and stuff.

Erratic would be the word that comes to mind. It seems we're working on a one game on, one game off basis. I should have known better than to stay up. Every time I stay up to watch a SA game, we lose. The few that I miss, we win.

You can't have it both ways. The underarm bowling was technically not a breach of the rules. It was as unsporting as hell and had no moral right to take place though. So it is with the sweets. They are being used to create a situation that could not be obtained with natural resources. They are therefore artificial. And in a court of law, we could also talk about the intent. Trescothick's own admission is that they were artificially trying to influence the motion of the ball. Dravid was just stupid in that he took the sweet out of his mouth. Cheats. Pure and simple. And worse cheats than even the All Blacks because the English always try and maintain this holier than thou image.

The use of an artificial substance to shine the ball is cheating. Other have been fined for using sweets and sugar to shine the ball. This one is just a bit ironic given the kicking that Bracken got for making the allegation years ago. Or the whole debacle of England vs Pakistan and the forfeited test over allegations of ball tampering. When it comes down to it, the English are as cynical a pack of cheats as they always whine the Aussies are.

And Nathan Bracken was crucified by the English press for suggesting the same thing shortly after the tests. More bad English sportsmanship.

Lars you don’t have to be too sensitive about aid benefitting the supplier’s economy. That’s the way it works. When the President says that American is ending $500m of aid somewhere, they’re not shipping over a suitcase full of cash. It means they’re reimbursing American companies for $500m worth of goods or services. (I work for an Australian engineering company that makes a bucket load of cash out of AusAid and ADB aid projects in SE Asia. We’re building schools and water plants for people but we’re sure as **** not doing it for free!) The devil is sometimes in the detail though. Are the suppliers padding their costs? Is the stuff being delivered really required? Is it useable? Perhaps the worst abuse I ever saw of this was in Rwanda. Clinton had pledged $1bn of aid to help Rwandan refugees. But a lot of what arrived was useless. Like palette loads of antibiotics that had expiry dates in the late 1960s. It had been sitting round in someone’s warehouse for 3 decades until someone decided they could bill the US government for it. As it was, I watched it get bulldozed into a pit at Goma airport as soon as it arrived.

Most of the accusations I have seen made are against South Ossetian "irregulars". That word can describe a whole gamut of evils. From paramilitary reservists through to bandits and neighbours settling old scores. No need for the Russians to dirty their hands when they can just sit back and say to the irregulars "Look guys, we're not going to be watching this village over there too closely for the next 48 hours. Sure hope nobody thinks of ethnically cleansing it."

Bollocks. It has an indefinite storage life assuming it is properly sealed. Most bottled water carries an expiry date of about 2 years, but that is kind of a formality. From a quick look around it seems that the US FDA doesn't even give a shelf life for pure water.

That stuff would be sitting round by the pallet load in a USAid warehouse in Turkey, Italy or wherever, waiting for the next earthquake/tsunami/refugee crisis.

Wharf length and services also determine whether a port is accessible for a given ship.

I will save about 5 minutes on my drive to the beach with a 14m rise. Plus it would wipe out the unsightly strip of bogan hamburger shops and KFCs.

The Caspian was alive and kicking last time I saw it (from the Iranian coast). It would take a fair bit of draining. Who the hell wants to take a nuclear aircraft carrier close to the shore anyway? Just use an airport instead!

You would have been spot on if you had made this post in 2001. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_aircraft_carrier_Varyag#Towed_to_China

I would have thought the French would have sold them whatever they wanted. They've had the Clemenceau lying in Brest for two years because nobody wanted to scrap it. (But I think they have found someone now.)