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Picture terrain like this. The hedges make it hard to travel through, and give cover to defending machine gunners.

What's so bad about a big fat cock? I can understand how it might be inappropriate to present one in an office environment, but is it so bad to describe or even show a picture of a big fat cock?

Sort of. Lukla (airport village forming one of the entrances to the Everest region) has a "Starbucks" but it's not really the same as the ones you expect. It *does* have WiFi though.

http://www.travelpod.com/travel-photo/bfayolle/4/1257519913/lhukla.jpg/tpod.html
http://www.bing.com/search?q=starbucks+lukla (Yes, I used Bing, it even got me what I was looking for :-)

I don't usually complain about the summaries (because I know they're all bad) but this one was a real disappointment to me. Carnivorous swamp beast?? I'm looking for this bad boy. But no, it's just a little cute furry guy, a little irate because someone is holding him by the throat. I would be irate too. OK, I know it's news, but such a disappointment.

If it was a slashdotter vs that cute little guy, I'd put money on the beaver like thing. You're forgetting what years of living in a basement does to muscle. To most of us that is a BEAST.

I don't usually complain about the summaries (because I know they're all bad) but this one was a real disappointment to me. Carnivorous swamp beast?? I'm looking for this bad boy. But no, it's just a little cute furry guy, a little irate because someone is holding him by the throat. I would be irate too. OK, I know it's news, but such a disappointment.

Understood. My apologies. Here are my sources:

The costs of certain elements vary greatly, so I went by this site, which adds the fees/costs using averages.

The quality of a nations public transportation system is, of course, a matter of opinion. But here are several sites that put German cities in the 'one of the best in the world' (or as the the best in Europe) category:

TravelPod.com: Hamberg listed as having ..."one of the best public transportation systems in the world..."
The book Germany: Unraveling an Enigma (Greg Ness - copyright 2000) list Germany as having "...one of the worlds's best public transportation systems..."
AskMen.com: rates the U-Bahn as #9 in the world
HelpGlobe.com: rates the U-Bahn as #11 in the world
USA Today: "Munich has Europe's best public transportation
VirtualTourist.com: "Munich has one of the best...public transport systems in Europe"
Plus countless Germany sites saying how superior it is (not exactly non-bias, so I didn't list them).

I think you are confusing it with this.

I think you have to be clear as to whether you're teaching facts or concepts.

For example, the World Traveler IQ Challenge

seems largely fact-based. Where is X -- click on it -- get feedback -- improve at an incredible rate. But you're actually learning "concepts", because you build up a map rather than just "X is the capital of Y" etc. The map gives you an implicit understanding of geography, so you don't have to memorise a list to know all the countries neighbouring Eritrea, for example.

Then there's Slime Forest Adventure. Again, it looks as though you're learning facts (Symbol X is sound Y), but you're actually making a deeper mental association as it's the quickest way.

Or take Typing of the Dead. They don't tell you how to type, they make you do it. A few pointers, and then they rely on you tuning in to touch-typing because it's the most efficient way -- hence you need to do it to win.

So if we're talking concepts, we can actually liberate ourselves from the old boring model of answer-a-question-to-get-to-the-next-stage because that's just facts, and facts are rarely the goal. If you look at Lunar Lander and its successors (particularly Thrust), you have to get an intuitive feel for momentum to win the game. Take this on to E-Motion, and you've got a game that is built around conservation of momentum and elastic forces. These games teach you the concept without you ever learning a single fact. These can be the basis for later learning -- once you've got a concept to hang it on, learning facts is easy, because you can picture it and thus understand it.

The hard point is selling the notion to the sponsors. Sadly, too many people think education is all about facts....

HAL.

Your comment appears to say that haloes were widely used in pre-Christian religious depictions. That is not established in your quoted source. [...]

Just because you looked in the wrong place doesn't mean they don't exist.

I looked at the source you mentioned first, it didn't support your statement, I asked for expansion. Nor did I say they didn't exist, nor even that I'd looked in the right places. I've been trawling around lots of sites looking for pre-Christian images of haloes as everyone says they were widely used by everybody in depictions all over before CE. Yours is the first hint of actually imagery.

The pictures from Taq-e Bostan (eg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taq-e_Bostan, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithra, http://static.newworldencyclopedia.org/1/10/ArdashirII_.jpg) are either Ardashir I or II. I again can't find a better image but if you notice each of the old-king, new-king and priest wear crowns/helms with what appears to be a fabric band (ribbon) extending down, on the right 2 images this comes down in drapes from the central crown on the left images it appears to hang from the ray-like crown (reminiscent of Aztec headdresses, http://images.travelpod.com/users/mebiner/2.1230803220.elaborate-aztec-headdress.jpg). In the other images Ardashir's crown appears to have an ostrich feather or similar. It seems a leap to suppose that only one of the crowns depicted is an artistic device.

The fabric pieces can be seen best in images like http://flickr.com/photos/37514330@N00/3202629664 [or http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/16084455.jpg%5D which unfortunately doesn't include the priest (Izad Mithra, or in the Taq-e Bostan page it's said to be Izad Bahram; Izad being the Zoroastrian form of Yazata which means "worshipful" and some render as "god").

It's the best I've seen however, a good find, dating from 300BCE around Persia. I'd want to see other instances of "haloes" in the Persian culture of the time to be convinced on this, as like I said I think it's just a picture of a headpiece.

And you suck at reading too, if you didn't even follow the link [http://home.comcast.net/~taoistresource/art_halo.html] in the "quoted source" you complain about.

You did say "according to this page" and not "according to links on this page". Obviously being an illiterate makes it hard for me to check your post to be sure, perhaps you could do that?

Buddhist art and writings don't appear to exist from before about 100-200AD the canon of Buddhist lore being passed down orally since 400BCE. Whilst that link shows images it doesn't date the images, so establishing a date from them is impossible. They appear mainly to be Thangka which date from a Nepalese influence in 600AD.

The greek image of apollo is one I know, it's about 200AD IIRC (certainly post-Christian). The others look like standard depictions of Helios, being the sun after all, they're more than likely CE. The naive image at the bottom is similar in showing gods of the Sun, Dawn and Morning Star, that they should be shining is not necessarily a depiction of deity/holiness but a simple reflection of their purpose - but they'd be relevant if dated early.

Hindu art is full of haloes, eg http://www.hindu.com/fline/fl2503/stories/20080215250306500.htm the end of that page shows a Jaina shrine from 900AD. "Hindu art" by T. Richard Blurton states that imagery of Vishnu appeared in the "early centuries AD

Don't be silly, of course you can.