costard

It's good policy to be nice to old ladies.

That'll do it: 0-60 in a little under two minutes and you really don't want to lose any speed. Mine was an automatic Corolla (two forward gears and about 900cc).

Wot, no indiscriminate faeces flinging? No public onanistic display? Ptui! - I spit on your Gibbering Peng!

Damn fine question. Any info on this one?

The right to arm bears?

OK, time for some defining creeds: Capitalism - To each according to his ability. Communism - To each according to his need. Socialism - He who does not work, neither does he eat. These are the defining creeds as they were coined at the time of the creation of the political movements - the revisionist hysteries of the past two decades have done nothing for the debate.

I thought that for vehicles the screen on the left shows stuff available to acquire. Certainly I've had no success getting hold of ammo for a Hummer-mounted weapon. The acquired stuff stays in the left screen and doesn't migrate across to the right.

My heart bleeds for you Berli. Meanwhile, some lucky Australians will be celebrating a horse race with a four day weekend. Compare and contrast...

Diesel's are fun to drive - you just have to learn not to slow down to go through corners. Landcruisers manage a respectable power slide on dry bitumen.

Just youthful high spirits - my Kiwi pixeltruppen are celebrating the fact that they're not Boo's, and dead. You could move the trucks, Boo, before they're hotwired and torched by hordes of marauding Maoris. Or you could leave them sitting around, twiddling their..thumbs... As for the buildings, yeah, they're empty now. 'cept for the spirits.

Mmmm, nice chum. Quote: “We all too often mistake the nature of those negotiations in Copenhagen,” remarked professor Flannery. “We think of them as being concerned with some sort of environmental treaty. That is far from the case. The negotiations now ongoing toward the Copenhagen agreement are in effect diplomacy at the most profound global level. They deal with every aspect of our life and they will influence every aspect of our life, our economy, our society.” So we have a bunch of pollies getting together around a table, telling stories about how they have been incapable of effecting any sort of change or competent management, but from now on they will be the instigators of profound, planet saving change. Yep, sounds like politicians to me. This highlights the problem with any conspiracy theory - they require the finding of a group of like-minded human beings, who are capable and intelligent and willing to work together. The odds against this are big enough to make the likelyhood of a successful conspiracy somewhat less than the odds of my winning the lottery tomoroow.

nox, I see this as a faithful modelling of reality. The frustration is a true enough reaction to plans not working as they should and the world is an imperfect place. Expect frustration to be the norm and be pleasantly surprised when things happen the way you'd like them to. The terrain might not be graphically represented as having ant-bear holes and large logs lying all over the place, but they're there. (Ant-bears live in Africa, but you get my drift?)

And funnily enough, the advice boils down to - "Don't." There's three minutes of my life I won't get back.

Sleeping ought be somewhere near the top of the list of things to do then.I might go read that link - oh, and welcome back John.

Damn typo - that should have read "spod".

It's true - he now has many spirits to defend his villas. Or the ruins of his villas. Writhing with glee. As for Noba, I believe the correct word is "smep".

Fair enough - I sit corrected. Thanks Thomm.

That Wikipedia article is factually incorrect: glass wasn't made by spinning the melt, it was floated on molten tin or lead. Spinning the melt is a relatively new idea used in the manufacture of parabolic lenses.

University of Queensland has an experiment going on in one of the Engineering buidlings - one part is pitch making its way through a funnel, the other is a glass rod held horizontally in a vice. Both experiments have been going for more than fifty years. Both show the fluid nature of the materials.

That pricing structure by the power companies has to have government collusion factored in - are we looking at a decay of the Eurozone as the population realises they've been sold a pup? Tero, tax-farming has never benn held in high regard by any populace subjected to it: you'd conclude that only history challenged legislators would consider it. Having said that, the morons in charge over here in Australia re-introduced it about ten years ago, setting up a private company with legislative protection (for it's monopoly) to collect speeding fines from the populace for the gummint. So reliable has the income been that the Victorian State Government has had a $500 million shortfall (that's a hell of a lot of money from a population of 3 million, particularly if its all profit) this year when the populace decided that speeding past fixed (and inadequately camouflaged) cameras makes no sense. There's a growing trend of tax payers around the world getting dirty on their bureaucracies - California had a pretty public meltdown earlier this year when it's populace gave the finger to it's elected representatives. For economies like the UK, a lack of tax revenue is a disaster - too much of the workforce is paid for by taxation. I cannot see the political will to cut public sector wages in an effort to maintain jobs (in most developed economies the wages haven't increased over the last decade anyway - except for the highly skilled policy makers and leadership clique): one alternative is to print enough money in order to effect the same result. And so, the price of commodities increases and inflation with it. This in a time of wage freezes and increasing unemployment.

Nah - the more time the kid spends in front of the box, the less time s/he spends interacting (and learning) with a family member. The TV is being used as a nanny, a job for which it isn't suited. It works for busy or lazy parents, though.

Glass is a fluid - if you are prepared to wait long enough, it will slump and/or bend.

Tero, anyone believing that the US will take orders from anyone else is not cognisant of anything relating to reality as it is experienced by anyone else living on this planet. The sad truth is that the gas-guzzling way of life and the profit margins being generated by way of easy access to cheap oil are on their way out anyway - it will suit some people to complain that this is someone's fault (mostly Americans, funnily enough, but also anyone else who is going to lose real wealth). The carbon trading scham is merely a way of spending taxation largess that, five years ago, was being touted as likely to continue for ever with a never ending boom in the market. With the funding gone, and funding for the basics of government likely to be somewhat scarce over the next ten to fifteen years (no more wars guys, we can't afford them), this idea of a new bureaucracy with global reach will die. Give it another six months for the reality of the money situation to sink in - the policy makers will only be two years behind reality, a bit better than par.

Indeed.

It's not much more than the establishment of another bureaucracy - like we need another hole to throw money into. If the treaty doesn't mention the establishment of an executive arm to enforce the laws, it's nothing more than hot air. I'd like to see the inclusion of a chapter dealing with the levying of an international para-military force to ensure that the Facility's wishes are adhered to. The funding and command structure discussions should make for interesting reading.