costard

This is weird: the study identifies a direct relationship between an environmental condition and the study results - and attributes this to genetics? Has it positively identified the absent parent as more sexually active, and that behaviour attributable to genetic makeup (perhaps providing the identifier for incidence of "broken homes")? No father in the household leads to more predation by outsiders and less control over family members' behaviour.

How did the rest of that speech go? "treachery..yadayadayada..bleep... \#4kin senate...Caesar..KILL!" "Taxes on the rise, an' it's all for your own good. Trust me." amici, Romani, comparii, vos aures desirare.? Written in the sixteens by the flea bitten bard. Not by the Shaw. Who'd want to clean him out of their tyres anyway, his insignificance rendered the economic honour of being valued at less? with a wit of sorts, it is said by the witless; anything isn't nothing.

If the ring fits.... Allowing the gnome to use your account to post has its drawbacks, obviously.

And you wouldn't be putting up with an enemy helicopter hanging around.

Do you enjoy mashing your ring with that big hammer?

The theatre change is a big, BIG, difference. You also get a number of minor nationalities to play - Rumanians anyone? A large number of different units, and King Tigers. My advice - grab it. As for CMSF - I didn't get the game until Marines, and I'm not at all unhappy with it.

Crud, I thought that'd work. Do you have the same anti-virus on both machines? Could be that the call to loading a file is triggering an alarm in the a-v program. Then I'm completely out of ideas and I'll leave it to the professionals.

"I do think there are (sic) a shortage of people like that in New Zealand." Hmm, I wonder why? SO - why hide NZ's light under a bushel? You all speak like that, all the time.

Nice linky, nice pics. No mast so that hypothesis is no good.

A piece of rope? The only way I can see it keeping the boat in trim is by hanging a large weight over the side to counter some weird mis-stowage problem. If, however, the "hawser" was the back stay for the mast (if the boat had a mast, etc.), and it broke, it is possible the the movement of the bottom of the mast following could split the (old) hull. It'd have to take out the keel though, wouldn't it?

Then call the cops and tell 'em we know who dunnit. Not that I object to the crime at all (three cheers for Boo!), but I'd like to hear about his night spent "assisting the police with their enquiries".

Yep, that's where you're getting results. If the law is a rubber stamp for corruption and political murder then you can expect it not to have the support of the populace. Modern western law, Diesel, isn't about justice (as I've been reminded here before) - it's about winning. When your leadership (corporate, military or political) starts believing this to be the case, the reasons for following the law become less obvious to the general populace and they are less likely to hold it in any respect - because they have to believe they are part of a society that treats them justly before they will willingly contribute to the commonwealth of that society. If they don't then you're on the road to systemic and ingrained corruption, your economy stagnates because very few opportunities for gaining status or wealth exist and there is no reason to strive, no reason to fund investment in education or research. This is where the wealth of western society came from - the Protestant ethic that allowed for the industrial revolution and the continuing advances in technology following on. Whilst your information and propaganda systems are strong you can fairly easily convince the majority of your populace on any line of reasoning you care to choose. Over time, the costs of maintaining these information systems become more than the state can afford - particularly when previously held lines of reasoning are shown to be spurious, stupid or willfully misleading - as the general economy declines. We're getting to the point where the control of information in modern western society belongs to very few people and they are beginning to believe that there is no harm in their telling the rest of us what to do - what to eat, whether to smoke, who to associate with, what to think and what to believe. quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

...and they were done for "punitive damages" (something like $350 million?). But it didn't sink the company. Shareholders own the bloody company. If they can't fire, and hold people responsible, who can? They get to vote on a change to a company's constitution, they could vote to change it back to the way it was before the crooks took charge. And then pass a motion to wipe out the crooks. Good luck to them. Our democracies have shied from holding decision makers responsible because we've found we only ever get bureaucrats running for election if we do (a notable shift in the late nineties over here). Oh, wait... no, that didn't work either. It turns out we're all complicit for actions taken under our nation's flag. Best to have good leaders.

Seriously funny. I'd say point proved.

I'd expect the stockholders will be having words with their executive. Sombre, serious words. And I would expect to see an inquiry on what confidential information (intellectual property of the company, remember) was given in exchange for not pressing on with filing charges. Get 'em on failure of duty to the shareholders. They'll have an expensive time of it, for sure.

Nice point Michael. I guess hollywood is finding out about our boredom with their stock characters. Too bad they sacked all their writers.

As a social experiment, this attempt at changing Afghan society takes the lessons learned from past successes and tries to effect the same changes without some of the key components. In the olden' days, those of successful colonisation by empire, the legal system of the conquerors was tranplanted wholesale to the new territory. A civil government - with a civil governor appointed by the parliament or crown of the home country in general command - was established with the transfer to the territories of career civil servants. At times the transplanted law finds itself unable to cope with a different set of reasonable behaviours and expectations to those it is based on - generally the interpretation was adapted to suit the conditions, e.g. a country in insurrection would find itself subject to martial law, and harsh judgements handed down in an effort to demonstrate the power of the law. We can see this taking place to day with the Taliban interpretation of Sharia Law in Afghanistan and Swat vs. the interpretation in more liberal Moslem states. The fact that there is rule of law, any law is appreciated by the populace. Modern Western societies will not condone the carrying out of harsh sentences in these circumstances: graphic photography, informed commentary and the mass communications market divide the populace and stifle the effort. Islamic populations, perhaps subject to less liberal media regulation but more probably through an understanding of a different reality that is their experience, are prepared to have their colonisers succeed through harsh punishment of law breakers. So the law you put in place has to work: given the dynamics of the law in western nations over the last decade, *laissez faire an' all that *****, it's hardly surprising that the attempt has failed to grab the hearts and minds of a populace that, for all it's problems and woes, actually has a choice about what sort of law they would have, and know that the quality of their lives depends on that choice.

How 'bout a mini-map a la Close Combat? It could just be the state of information in play in C2 (i.e. own units plus generally spotted stuff represented as high vis dots on a small low detail map).

Now I do admit to a certain dilatoriness (it has nothing to do with size Emrys, so keep your filthy, filthy mind to yourself please. Yes, I know you like it slack-jawed and drooling, we all know.) - where was I, oh yes - a certain dilatoriness in responding to instructions delivered by my putative Lord, Rune, he of the ur-house: I plead incapacitation due to a missing muse. Statement: Eggs come out of chickens' bums, chickens' bums come out of eggs. Discussion: The one coming out of the other, and yet coming out of itself removed in time, mayhap we are describing a cycle of events unchanging since the first four legged creature crawled out of the swamp and kicked proto-Emrys: only Joe Shaw could tell us, could he but remember, and talk. An observation: were you to take a time-lapse film of egg-from-chicken-from-egg-from-chicken, and played that film backwards, you would have a true example of a creature disappearing up it's own fundament. (I have it on good authority that stoat is the only living being capable of accomplishing this feat in real time.) Conclusion: the Klein Bottle came first. Gird your loin, truss your unmentionables like a turkey fit for roasting stoat! I will eat!

Stukes, thanks, awesome. Pizza Dude will know someone cares when his pie-hole is full of good a Cuban. He keeps telling me he only wants the tip.

Oh dear. Reference to thingies is frowned upon whilst the side affects of flatulence is lauded. We give thanks to the Uber-Gnome for providing us with some class. sigh... Ok, here's the thing: if you were buying cigars for a gift, which would you buy? Obviously, for Joe or Boo you'd get some rolls of bark from the back yard and stuff it with wombat dung, but for someone you genuinely admired and liked?

Ok, here's the thing: fructose is not dangerous. It's a natural sugar occurring in food we've been eating since, well, forever. Here's the bit of the argument that needs analysis: RL: "But the question is what about our physiology allows this to happen, we have some built-in negative feedback mechanisms that are supposed to stop us from gaining too much weight but clearly they are not working." There are very few people that have metabolisms that allow them to eat more calories than they burn and don't store the excess as fat. These people are not only physiologically abnormal, they usually have an existing pathology: systemic illness, pancreatic insufficiencies, parasitic infestations, etc. The rest of us store excess calories as fat. I'd argue that the "built-in negative feedback mechanisms" have never been truly successful at preventing weight gain when the calories have been available for consumption. Gluttony is recognised as one of the seven deadly sins, leading me to surmise that it has been around as a human behaviour for quite a long time, it isn't something that appeared with modern western affluence. Rather, the feedback mechanisms exist to provide a lessening of the discomfort felt when the human body is trying to survive on a subsistence diet. Leptin isn't there to stop us from eating (this is not a survival trait; to survive where food is generally scarce, you eat when you can) - it is there to stop us moaning about the fact that we don't have enough to eat. (Interestingly, studies on the correlation between low calorie diets and longevity have shown that we are built to function "best" on minimal calorie intake. So not only was life not meant to be easy, it is supposed to be a miserable experience.) If leptin had such an important role in the regulation of appetite as is being claimed, I would expect it to be used (successfully) in the management of diseases such anorexia nervosa. As it is, I see simple arguments being made for systems that require complex level of understanding.

Well yes - but what you see is what you get: rotted cow, sheep and goat juice. There's no way of prettying that concept up. They need a "scratch and sniff" approach to sell more of these cakes.

Because you seek the truth, Kugel. It's a disease of the young, but don't worry, it's not socially deleterious. As for caring about what idiots think or do - there are much better uses for your time, believe me. He (the doc) could also have talked about the understanding that it is excess glucose intake that leads to Type 2 (Acquired) Diabetes, therefore fructose was seen as the great saviour for the sweetened drinks industry back in the nineties - extra sweetness (just what the customer ordered! yay!) for no unhealthy comebacks (pats on the back and stock options all round). Of course, no-one had done long term studies of excess fructose intake... It does seem that apart from the excess formation of adipose tissue (i.e. people get fat from eating excessive amounts of sugar) there is a whole other problem here, which is where the claim of poisoning comes from. I still think it's going to be a problem with the manufacturing process rather than the product (based on very little data, but using a stochastic methodology ). Wicky, great find thanks.

Well and truly aware of these - and the corrupt fashion in which the contracts were managed. There's no way I could claim that Australian business is any way better managed than that of the US or UK. Of course, we know who we're owned by.... One of the biggest parts of the deal that got Australia into the "Coalition of the Willing" was the hint of a promise of rebuilding contracts (this was openly sought by our PM and reported in our press). It didn't turn out to be such a wealth generator because the security situation never got better than "****ing nightmare man - you'd have to be completely nuts to go there". We were also giving meaningful thanks for some ultra heavy-weight support during the East Timor invasion, and, well, to be frank, our sympathies did lie with the US after 9/11. As Margaret Thatcher said at the time "These are our people."