costard

Thinking in moulds isn't helpful, no, but neither is ignoring historical data sets. Most often a government regresses on a revolution, we might be a bit worried about what sort of regression we're looking at here.

Michael has it right there. Read Churchill's "History of the English Speaking Peoples" for a good, concise account of the processes running before and in conjunction with the adoption of democracy in the west. Mostly it's about gradual change and a long term view. As far as stability goes, I'd say that now would be a good time to be hoping for anything but instability. The meaning of "revolution" is "makes a full circle" - I suspect it found it's usage as a discription for the overthrow of a government to have been coined by someone with a fairly dark sense of humour. Being good at doing something you've never done? Every child manages this process, I don't see that it needs to be impossible to do with human institutions of government. A predictable future makes it a lot easier to plan long term and lets the investment in the change needed return value to the commitment of capital: it would seem that our current leadership is incapable of implementing the changes necessary, or having a clue about which changes are necessary, or even of seeing that there will be a large set of difficult problems to solve in the future. No, I diminish their true value with the last: it must seem like there is no place where there are no problems to solve, present or future. It's just that the hopelessness they feel and the incompetence they display is imperfectly emulated by their constituency.

I use kangaroos to pull the sleigh - the pouches sure handy for stashing the loot. Not that I'd get anything worth keeping from Boo's. Although the bio-tech outfits here would pay a premium for the new and wondrous diseases I could isolate there. Hmm.... Santa's going to be wearing a biohazard suit this year Boo. Leave beer and a chop instead of milk and cookies and you won't wake up with your hand in a bucket of tepid... well, tepid, anyway.

The thought of you chasing after Australian tail with which to prove your prowess... ho ho ho.

Egypt enjoys the position of sitting on one of the major strategic sea routes in the world - it can't just be let go to do it's own thing. Stability is the requirement - something they had with Mubarak until the recent hikes in food prices. Aff, I was being kind and imagining that Egypt had a functional opposition party. It doesn't, that's the result of having a dictatorship in place for the last thirty years. What we saw was Mubarak being sacrificed to placate the mob and buy time. Sure he was corrupt, but he held the Middle East in relative stability with the support of the US (and Israel) - something that isn't easy to do. On the plus side: CMSF:The Suez will provide some stunning backdrops to the action.

Yeah, control went to the army. yay. I mean, would you be happy with this outcome if you cared about democracy or transparent processes of gummint? An opposition that has sat it out for the last thirty years is unlikey to be able to form any sort of functioning cabal, reinstalling the present gummint is unpalatable to the "I confuse emotions with thoughts" mob informed by the world press: the military has the game stitched up. What a **** up.

Yes. Yes, he did. Everyone does. Go figure.

Landing's eeeasy! Ctrl-E and watch the plane plough through your aerodrome: same result without dying and you get to watch the show. Pfft - landings are for sheep fakers.

Nah, you eat the spare ears left lying around after the scrum. That's why most rugby forwards have their remaining ear taped up.

Nah, you were all high - on creativity and the groove. Which the modern poppers miss out on. Sad, y'know?

A must read if you're at all concerned with the direction of the US (and world) economy. It's about 30 pages, but the writing is good and the author doesn't miss a step. By the way, zerohedge is great fun to read ('specially the comments) but isn't suited to the paranoid or willfully ignorant. You've been warned. Diesel, it'd appear I was way optimisic in giving us two years. http://www.zerohedge.com/article/atlantic-capital-management-cooke-hoover-bernanke

On the other hand, you have to grow a lot of medicine to get a goodly number of seeds (and a therapeutic dose of omega-3.) It only gets better with medicine like that...

A teaspoon of cod liver oil, every day.... sounds like a depressing sort of cure, really.

They managed to break a track, the rest was pure witchcraft. Gonna hold those toes to the fire, oh yeah. Lend me your ears - actually, to hell with it, gimme, or I'll take 'em anyway.

... you do is because it is. Can you name the original?

Meh, $20000 would barely have covered the cost of flights, accomodation, etc for the woman and her entourage. The WU students missed a good opportunity here: to show up a hypocrite. Demonstrates a lack of strategic thinking ability.

I guess if your courses in self esteem don't include study on the worth of achieving academic competency you aren't doing anyone any favours. That said, your dominant culture reveres the ability to make money - sportspeople, gamblers and dissemblers are all at the top of that tree. Intellectuals, phht.

Mark, thanks for the invite but I won't be there. I'm definitely interested in the screen share option, 'though. More than happy to abide by the NDA. Cheers.

Boo has discovered the truth of holding a position in the middle of the map: he only has flanks and awaits obliteration. And I've 25 minutes of manouver time. Sweet! His chicken-rustling, cow-tipping infantry are busy searching for something white to wave.

Oi - Booster! 'sup with your game?! Stop flirting with the Lord of Light and send me my turn!

The man with the software calls the shots, methinks. Love to get up to Sin City, but very unlikely to happen. How about Albury - none of us is local to the area, so misbehaviour won't haunt us, and it's a compromise (i.e. third rate solution) for all? Or Wagga? Aff is going to be pissed about the timing of this.

"Industry on Donaldson Rd, Rocklea" - the sewage farm went under, eh? Yeah, big, but not as big as when the Mississippi flooded in 93. And Pakistan copped it much, much worse not very long ago. And we needed the rain - what's the big deal? Oh, right, yeah, a media organisation with a story to tell and people in place to sell, sorry, tell it.

Sounds good, Mace.

Great work Elvis - thanks. Maybe the tank could just unbutton to have the "rescue" effect?