costard

Words fail me. Stunned and amazed I am. Should have been a "Beware - bat**** crazy" rating on that one SO.

So what's your excuse, Michael? Drugs? Failed infanticide attempt on the part of your parents? In further news, my M10s are holing Boo's StuHs at 1900m. He still hasn't scored a scratch.

If China pushes the value of another nation's currency down, it makes the industries in that country more competitive in the market. The only way China can keep the value of foreign currencies high is to keep buying them, which means they require a return on those currencies - they can't afford to have the value disappear altogether or they'll have severe problems paying their pensions, etc. So, unlike the West, which still believes in a laissez-faire market and the law of the jungle, China needs to manage the world economy in a way that benefits all parties: it is only by doing this that they can guarantee their own rising standard of living and long-term survival. I wouldn't worry about it, it's about as fantastic as the threat of nuclear war in that no rational entity can seriously consider instigating it. China is already too expensive for lower end manufacturing. You can pay $1.49/hr in China or move next door and pay the Vietnamese $0.75/hr. The difference is pure profit! How can it go wrong? In a couple of decades the poms will be back to having a competitive manufacturing environment - if they can fund their education system that long. The yanks, well, who can predict what they'll do? Workers of the world, back to your chains! Marx must be spinning in his grave.

The US had a better record than most at putting white collar criminals behind bars - and I suspect it'll maintain that record. In Australia you can defraud to the tune of billions, tell the judge you "can't remember", fake illness to avoid court... I'd like to see more judges jailing people for contempt and perjury. Smart-ass lawyers, too. When Stern Hu (Rio Tinto, iron ore, etc) was jailed in China for corruption, our gummint declared that the sentence was harsh. Given that they'd just released a corrupt Labour buddy with a stern warning (for his fifth offence), you can follow their logic, but the general populace is applauding the Chinese and wondering if Mr Hu got off lightly. People who have money to invest get quite annoyed if the company they invest in goes belly-up DT. Just ask Ms Bettancourt's ex-accountant.

Tiger's rated at 4.2 and Firefly at 3.7. Elephant will beat them both.

I was thinking more along along the lines of "People are stupid." If the law is in place but not being enforced, no law will do the job (that's the last decade for you). If someone tells you lies in the knowledge that you'll listen and believe (because you haven't the mental capacity or will to analyse what they're saying), you've only yourself to blame (that's our leadership). Someone recently challenged me to explain why the law of the jungle is an intellectually bankrupt philosophical position: the fact is that no-one who espouses that belief grows their own food, makes their own clothes or fights their own wars. Every single time they have someone else (frequently, a group of someone elses) do the work. Humans are social animals: kill the society and you kill the human. Expect the organism to purge itself of parasites if it can, suffer or die if it can't.

Privatise the profit, socialise the risk. It's a practise that came out in to the open twenty years ago. The real risk to the privates is that there'll be bloody revolution and all their assets will be confiscated by the state. Before you scoff (which is what the privates are doing), note that it's happened recently in Bolivia, and more or less with monotonous regularity down the ages throughout the world. It nearly happened to the banks and it might even now happen to BP. What lesson can we take from these observations?

Hey, someone's using their brain! Like the way China is having a go at reducing waste and inefficiency in their energy use: forget about the feel-good politics of the green-than-thou west, how about having a manufacturing industry that can produce at twenty percent less cost because the political process isn't tied to outdated and inefficient infrastructure and the profits generated therefrom. I can't see the Yanks speaking Mandarin. Spanish, however, or Portugese... there's something to be said for the Vatican's ban on contraception: they'll outbreed, and in the long term that's all that matters.

Boo's Panthers are eating AP courtesy of my hull down M10s at 1k+ range. His pussycats can't get a shot within 50m. Gotta hate those "frequent flaws". His footsloggers are still 500m away from the flags, where my guys are already dug in and waiting in clasic reverse slope defensive positions. I figure he's going to throw in the towel early and blame the map. OGSF has managed to field the deadliest 20mm in history and is ablating my assault. I'm cursing the scenario designer who didn't include mortars as part of my kit.

Yeah, what the Lady said; it's cobbler, dude. In Stuka's case, peach cobbler. And his clobber was all nicked from the swaggies he ran over in his rex. That's why he's so stylish and smells oh so good.

Do you make your own powder dalem? I've got an 1864 Greener. If only it could talk....

I think Israel is just another example of proof that the divorce of church and state is a necessary one. While your leadership is required to believe in fairy tales (chosen people, one true God, that the rules were written some three thousand years ago and are inviolable, etc) your nation stands little chance of finding and developing solutions to problems that threaten its existence. The most recent developments in PR disasters are a follow on from a deliberate policy of telling direct lies and expecting the rest of the world to believe anything said in the future - the snubbing of the US President re: the settlements rankled with everyone: only a nutcase seeks to trap the most powerful man in the world and expects that everything will turn out right afterwards. The slide from strategic asset to strategic liability can be viewed as the US repositioning its sympathies, but only by a mob that believes in fairy tales. The smarter Israelis are leaving, or have already left.

I've had a little thinky about this over the last couple of days: it seems to me that if our internet use is going to be monitored in any case (as it is everywhere, and if you believe otherwise you have a happy and unjaundiced view of reality; the best of luck to you.) it might be best if a) the corporate body responsible for our society's wellbeing (to wit, the gubmint) has some say in the fashion in which the monitoring takes place, and laws ought be created that provide for penalties for the abuse or inappropriate exploitation of such information garnered in the process. I note that most legislation dealing with mobile phones and the content carried on them omitted the requirement for a writ to be issued by a judge before "tapping": I'm reasonably sure the same is true for information on a network of computers. Law enforcement agencies worldwide happily admit to spending large amounts of taxpayers' money on bettering their capture and monitoring of this information: occasionally it so happens that the public's wish for protection (from scammers, spammers and other digital undesirables) coincides with the capabilities of systems already put in place by these same agencies, and lo, a politician is seen to be doing something to earn his daily suckle at the public tit. It's just possible that these (proposed) laws and procedures aren't the brainchild of Fred the Stupid; I'd still put money on an incompetent, overly complex and over-budget attempt being made in the implemetation of the legislation. But then, my liver hasn't been the same since I turned thirty and woke up.

...not to mention a real cultural bias in favour of not being told how to raise our kids.

Thanks diesel. Of course, Australia was founded as a police state. The problem is that the police had to be increasingly hired from the local populace, really local becasue of the difficulties with distances and communications: around about now they tend to represent and behave as the majority of the populace wishes. They even employ women. Should the power structures change so that the police gain control, we might be shafted - but we rely on the old standby "She'll be right, mate." That and the fact that our army is a volunteer organisation with no great love for power mad loons. In the meantime, we can only decry the waste of taxes that is going into giving the service provider (the company that wins the tender to track our forays into teh intertens) with the means to hold and trade information about us. meh. Stupid politicians are nothing new. Stupid laws neither.

In the interests of consistancy, perhaps I should add that I think all the guilty should die too. And they will. Sadly, so will the innocent. Where's the justice, God?

I think that's supposed to be "silt of the earth" Joe. Or "effluent" if you prefer. If we can't fight amongst ourselves, we can hardly claim to be members of the same family, can we?

Yeah, well. The definition of a weed plant is any plant that is defined as a weed, I expect the same is true of pest insects. Where an ecological niche is opened up (through the use of herbicides/pesticides) you'll find non-target species rushing to exploit the advantage. Who'd a thunk?

..whilst holding the opinion that a sovereign state has the right to end the life of those individuals that act against the state's interests.

Stuka has no ilk - he is ilkless, a sport, a mutation, an abominable splot on the snowy escutcheon of humanity's genetic history. Hey now, that makes him second cousin to the Emrys creature! (or maybe even his progeny! Nightmares beckon...)

Carts, pissoirs, dolmens. Haystacks is a good one.

Romanian sheedog repellant indeed. An axe handle should do the trick. And practise your fearsome yells - if you can bluff them you're home and hosed. I think a very strong solution of ammonia would work better than capsicum spray - it attacks the nose. Good luck, have fun.

It's past tense, oh Boo. As in "Boo's armour."

Perhaps a little OT - does the level of command present affect the carrying out of AI plans? So if there was a red colonel turned up, suddenly your junior red officers are doing things, like attacking.

This might possibly be true. Stuka, I would beg you to resend your superior setup that my paltry email junk your missive, again. (truly, I saw not hide nor hair of the bloody thing). Meanwhile, Boo was blessed with the sort of map that I have only ever dreamed of: covered approaches to superbly defensible positions. A flag rush has never been in it - at least I shan't be chewed up and ptooied. By Boo no less. bad image! bad image! quick, get it away from meeee!