OK

OK so tranquillity may be a dumb name, but what was the one you were backing?

No no

Not to get bogged down in semantics, but you're both wrong. You are allowed to be homosexual all you like and be a Catholic at the same time. Yay. If you actually have sex with another man, or indeed any woman who is not your wife, you're to be stoned. Not so yay.

Also, not sure where the good old Empire comes into this. The Empire was all about commercial interests, not just caving someone's head in because you don't like their lifestyle. With Britain you may not actually have been free, but you were allowed to live pretty much as you saw fit and were protected. Even Gandhi has been quoted as saying something along the lines of 'Meh, it could be worse'.

Seconded

OK, so a doctored photo of a family member, if not actually child (abuse) porn because no abuse has taken place, is at least an invasion of privacy. You and your child, assuming they are old enough to worry about it, can suffer some degree of mental anguish because this picture exists. Plus, someone is making the mental link between your child and sex, so harassment may become an issue. Therefore you'd be right to worry and there are already laws in place to protect you from the possible consequences.

A cartoon however isn't even a picture of a real person. Bart and Lisa don't exist. It's fantasy. Making a mental link between them and sex does not _have_ to lead to a mental link between real children and sex. If someone does make that link, then they become a criminal.

Child porn is both a cause and effect of child abuse, therefore illegal. Cartoon porn is not an effect of child abuse and _may_ be a cause in a very limited number of cases. You can't go around making laws on the off chance. That way madness lies.

"both hands at once"

Ambidextrous are we?

Question of perspective

A sports scientist would regard being active as a ground state, since that's what they do, so sitting around all day is bad because it makes you less healthy than at the ground state.

A regular scientist would regard a sluggish office life as the ground state, since that's what most people do, so getting up for tea (and I suppose fag) breaks is good because it makes you healthier than at the ground state.

I would tend to take the second of those two perspectives.

Also, anyone with a degree in sports science... you have a degree in P.E. so shut up.

Blue people...

Scotland?

Yes

Yes, VTOL off of a carrier would result in it burning up most of its fuel before getting airborne. That's why the navy has been using their existing Harrier VTOL aircraft as a VSTOL for decades. Angle the nozzles for forward thrust, with a little bit of up thrust, then shoot of a ramp.

Seconded

Won't be giving my kids anything but a pay&go phone until they can pay their own bills. Pay&go is pretty limiting unless you can afford lots of credit. Once they're earning enough to pay for a contract then I think my authority to say who they can and can't talk to will be all but gone.

Some of the indignation this system is receiving over here may come from the different attitudes to what constitutes a child. As far as I'm concerned, anything above 16 might not be an adult, but since they can legally have sex and move out on their own, they're certainly not a child. They can drive at 17, which is somewhat more dangerous than using an IM client. Once they're 18 they can vote and drink, so they're adults and you have pretty much no right to interferer in their lives. Of course if your kid has shown they can't be trusted up to the age of 18, they still live under your roof, and I suppose if the phone wasn't bought with their own money, take it away.

Sticky?

Half chewed sandwiches all over your keyboard perchance?

Ehem

May I refer the right honourable Sceptical Bastard, and indeed anyone who thinks one complaint to get an add pulled is ridiculous, to the post made by one Cliff on Wednesday 16th December 2009 at 20:16 GMT.

He stated, quite correctly, that the number of complaints is irrelevant and that the only thing that matters is the ASA's judgement. If they decide the ad breaches their codes, then they pull it, end of story. In this case the ASA happened to agree with the one and only complaint they recieved. If, on the other hand, a thousand people complained and the ASA decided that the ad was not in breach of code, then the ad would have been left alone.

Rules is rules.

That's not the bloody point

Yes, fine so he may have finished his sentence by now. But only if whatever crazy, black cap wearing monster that presided over his hearing didn't throw the book at him, as the FBI want.

The point here is that he has every right to fight this, so he has.

Also it's bringing into question the fairness of our extradition treaty with the yanks. The Home Secretary says he doesn't have the power to stop his extradition. So who the hell does? I'm starting to get the feeling that the answer is no one on this side of the pond.

So

So don't go studying science then. The individual scientist's work will make bugger all money, unless you happen to working directly within R&D at a drug's company, and then only if you're department happens to working in an area that the head office wants to peruse.

Surely

Surely rather than be disgusted, you should find it grounding. If it serves any purpose, this sort of thing should remind us that regardless of the political and ideological clashes that led to 9/11, and ignoring the global shit-storm that followed it, whatever your views on Bush's war on terror, that day was a day when a lot of ordinary people lost their lives or had them irrevocably changed. Ordinary people who'd just got into work, had their coffee, maybe just started checking their emails and prepared for the daily trudge, with only the prospect of going home to their loved ones to keep them from going crazy. Suddenly, through no fault of their own, the world exploded.

Everything that has followed was a result of that day. Almost a decade later it's really easy for those who weren't there to think of it as just another event; to get blinded by the big picture and forget to look at all the little ones.

Indeed

Wasn't there an app a while back that did absolutely nothing, but nevertheless cost at least a thousand dollars. If limited utility is a disqualifying factor then how does an app with expressly no function get through the net?