It's actually a pretty serious issue in the South China Sea, where several nations are competing for resources, and where the issue of "fortifying" tiny atolls and other semi-islands to try to extend the economic zone and other territorial claims will soon come to a head. But let's be clear here, whatever the decision ends up being, these are claims by extant nations. No one out there recognizes Sealand as a nation. Absolutely no one. Not the UK, not the EU, not the UN, not any body whose recognition would in any way be important recognizes Sealand. If the Met decided to raid Sealand because there were Wikileaks servers there holding information deemed by the British Crown to be protected by national security laws, no one is going to pay any attention to any "official" from Sealand, and it's so improbable that any body, like the UN General Assembly, would give such an official the time to defend themselves.
At the end of the day, Sealand's status is a fabrication, tolerated because the British government has better things to do then muck about with some guy living on an abandoned WWII sea platform. But if they start doing things like hosting Wikileaks servers or anything else that potentially violates UK law or causes problems for the UK or its allies, that fiction will disappear in a moment, Sealand will be reoccupied (or however you prefer to call it), and all this nonsense will end, and no one, not anyone who counts will give a damn.
I think that depends on what you mean by "figure things out." I'm fairly confident that in much less than a million years we'll have a profound understanding of the basic laws of physics, of the basic ordering of the universe. Does that mean that we will have solved every single problem? Probably not. Just because you understand the underlying mechanisms of any system does not mean you can immediately work out every solution that stems from it. Take the problem of solving Newtonian equations for a large number of bodies. It can become insanely complex. So just knowing the basic formulas is not enough.
This is the kind of article that gets dreamed up when some fucktards smoke some hash and then think they're having original thoughts, when all they're doing is rehashing arguments that are already a few centuries stale.
Here's a tip to this particular fucktard. Take a philosophy class so at least you can formulate fallacious arguments in a fashion that shows you're even vaguely aware of where Western thought has been.
Indeed. Just making land does not extend territory, and certainly there's nothing on the books about trying to insist a completely artificial structure can make any claim to sovereignty.
All these examples of airports and reclaiming land from the sea don't help Sealand at all, as in all these cases, these projects are well within territorial waters.
Anyone who wants to know about the intricacies of this should look into the Spratly Islands dispute in the South China Sea, which involve serious issues about control and access of resources.
You're overinterpreting the decision. No one recognizes Sealand as sovereign. No nation would, because of the potential it would have for some crazy asshole trying it on them. At best invading it would be seen as an act of piracy, not an invasion.
Can you show me any decision in domestic courts or international tribunals that recognizes man-made structures as extensions of territory? We have disputes about whether even building up islands against natural erosion as legitimate territorial claims, and you think some fucking derrick well within UK territorial waters that has no recognition from anyone other than a few crackpots who printed up some faux passports somehow constitutes a legitimate claim of sovereignty? They can't even decide on the ultimate fate of Western Sahara, and you think there's some reasonable interpretation of International Law that allows a completely man-made structure to be seen as territory?
You don't even need a platoon. A Sea King helicopter would probably be sufficient. Hell, one torpedo from a British sub and the whole thing goes to the bottom. Sealand is tolerated because it's just some morons with comprehension problems. But if it starts committing acts that might be viewed as criminal, such as, say, violating the national security of the United Kingdom, then the whole farce will come to an end in short order.
Don't need to bomb it. It's a tiny man-made structure in the sea. A couple of cruisers could blockade it. Without food, fuel and freshwater, Sealand would be done in a few weeks. The thing was always a fiction, all this would do is force to the British government to finally do something about it.
A nation by definition must have territory. No interpretation of International Law I've ever seen allows a steel man-made structure to be considered territory. Thus Sealand, whatever it may be, is not a nation, and thus while it may not be within Britain's sovereignty, if the Royal Navy decided tomorrow to blockade it or sink it, there is no lawful means by which the owner could hope to prevent it, save by appealing to a British court, which means the owner recognizes the sovereignty of Britain.
Behind Python Dave Allen was my favorite (though he's Irish, does that count?) The man was almost the wittiest man that ever lived. His monologues alone were quite brilliant. To some extent I consider Craig Ferguson to be his heir (and certainly the most interesting person on late night).
Be glad he admits at all. Most bastards in the record industry don't seem to think it exists at all.
Fuck 'em all, I say. I hope pirating puts the entire entertainment industry out of business. Then maybe, once the ground is scorched, we can have a rational discussion.
Still, the decision is baffling. Twitter got huge amounts of good publicity during the Arab Spring, and now they've decided they'll censor based on country? WTF?
I think the movies might be the wrong way to introduce Python to a new audience. I think that Flying Circus is a far better way, in large part because they weren't trying to carry an entire film plot. As much as I love the films, I still think the first three series of Flying Circus are superior.
The explanation I read was that writing proved quite laborious and that Cleese vetoed a final rewrite, which probably would have cleaned up the unevenness. I have a hard time believing that spending time on location helped Grail at all, as everyone spent most of the time absolutely miserable and Chapman spent much of the time suffering through severe alcohol withdrawal. On top of that, everyone found the co-directing of Gilliam and Jones quite unbearable, as Jones directed things in a fashion compatible to the Pythons but they found Gilliam's methods far more tedious (this is why the next two films were directed by Jones alone).
My favorite sketch is, however, a Chapman sketch, and that's the still very shocking Undertaker Sketch, which Chapman deliberately wrote to be as appalling as possible. During his alcoholic years he was indeed far too unreliable to ever take the lead, and in fact according to Cleese it got so bad that that was why left and did the first Fawlty Towers series.
But it was very much Chapman's sense of the bizarre that was used so effectively. He may not have been the out-and-out creative force that the others were, but I doubt the Python's would have seemed very much like the Python's without him. He was of the same kind of anarchic breed as the Python's idol, Spike Milligan (another brilliant comedian and writer who had his own terrible demons).
They all served their function, and that's what makes any potential reunions seem somewhat underwhelming to me. If Idle's not involved, then you lose that element of it, and if Gilliam isn't involved, then you lose that sort of hallucinatory visual style. Python really is a very good example of how the sum is greater than the parts. They've all gone one and done some rather good things (yes, I even enjoyed Yellow Beard), but only Gilliam has ever managed to achieve things that came close to equaling his brilliance in Python.
The Python's (with the exception of Gilliam) started out as writers, not as performers, so as long as the writing edge is still there, then they've got it. I know Palin and Jones have at least tried over the years to keep their own writing partnership going, and Cleese and Gilliam have always seemed to work with Palin when they could. Idle has always been the lone wolf who did most of his writing on his own. For a time Cleese seemed to be greatly reduced; all that psychotherapy had made him happy, but maybe, after the last divorce and the big payout he had to make, he's sufficiently hungry and bitter to put on that semi-anal, semi-mad persona he mined in Python and on Fawlty Towers (and even in his work in A Fish Called Wanda, which really is an exquisitely well-written film).
Frankly the one that has disappointed me the most over the years has been Idle. He came out of the gate with some pretty good work; the Ruttles and Rutland Weekend Television, but by the 1990s his work soured, and then he just started looting the Python past for his stage shows and for Spamalot and the like. I think there may have even been a bit of a falling out with Gilliam, who apparently wasn't overly impressed with Spamalot.
The one I still really watch for these days is Gilliam. I've loved almost all his films, and I think he's a greatly underappreciated talent, a very unique visionary in the history of cinema. Everyone loves Time Bandits and Brazil, and I haven't met a geek who didn't have a soft spot for Munchhausen, but I even like Tidelands, which is a pretty strange film even for Gilliam. To my mind, he is the one that has kept the torch alight far more than Idle's attempted resurrections of Python's larger works. I think after watching all his films that his influence on the troupe has probably been understated, that Gilliam has the conceptual aesthetic that sits underneath the surface of his own work and the Pythons, a certain visual style that, whether it was his cartoons, or his set work in Brian and Meaning of Life or in his own films which is so recognizable and so original that I'm not sure that the Pythons would ever have been quite what they are without him.
Of course, the one thing none of these articles actually mentions is whether Gilliam's involved or not. Without Gilliam, there's a certain of anarchy that wouldn't be present.
What's with trying to make Rambus sound like a hardworking bunch. Yes, in the day they did practical things, but then they stole an entire group's process. Now, fortunately, they're reaching the end of the tether. If there was justice, their principles would be taken out and shot.
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It's actually a pretty serious issue in the South China Sea, where several nations are competing for resources, and where the issue of "fortifying" tiny atolls and other semi-islands to try to extend the economic zone and other territorial claims will soon come to a head. But let's be clear here, whatever the decision ends up being, these are claims by extant nations. No one out there recognizes Sealand as a nation. Absolutely no one. Not the UK, not the EU, not the UN, not any body whose recognition would in any way be important recognizes Sealand. If the Met decided to raid Sealand because there were Wikileaks servers there holding information deemed by the British Crown to be protected by national security laws, no one is going to pay any attention to any "official" from Sealand, and it's so improbable that any body, like the UN General Assembly, would give such an official the time to defend themselves.
At the end of the day, Sealand's status is a fabrication, tolerated because the British government has better things to do then muck about with some guy living on an abandoned WWII sea platform. But if they start doing things like hosting Wikileaks servers or anything else that potentially violates UK law or causes problems for the UK or its allies, that fiction will disappear in a moment, Sealand will be reoccupied (or however you prefer to call it), and all this nonsense will end, and no one, not anyone who counts will give a damn.
I think that depends on what you mean by "figure things out." I'm fairly confident that in much less than a million years we'll have a profound understanding of the basic laws of physics, of the basic ordering of the universe. Does that mean that we will have solved every single problem? Probably not. Just because you understand the underlying mechanisms of any system does not mean you can immediately work out every solution that stems from it. Take the problem of solving Newtonian equations for a large number of bodies. It can become insanely complex. So just knowing the basic formulas is not enough.
This is the kind of article that gets dreamed up when some fucktards smoke some hash and then think they're having original thoughts, when all they're doing is rehashing arguments that are already a few centuries stale.
Here's a tip to this particular fucktard. Take a philosophy class so at least you can formulate fallacious arguments in a fashion that shows you're even vaguely aware of where Western thought has been.
Wired Magazine has an article espousing epistemiological nihilism, demonstrating ever more clearly how pointless it has become.
Indeed. Just making land does not extend territory, and certainly there's nothing on the books about trying to insist a completely artificial structure can make any claim to sovereignty.
All these examples of airports and reclaiming land from the sea don't help Sealand at all, as in all these cases, these projects are well within territorial waters.
Anyone who wants to know about the intricacies of this should look into the Spratly Islands dispute in the South China Sea, which involve serious issues about control and access of resources.
No one recognizes Sealand as a sovereign state.
Have you seen him lately? I think it would take at least two Churck Norrises nowadays.
There's still the issue that Sealand is not actually a territory. A man-made structure is not territory. Period.
You're overinterpreting the decision. No one recognizes Sealand as sovereign. No nation would, because of the potential it would have for some crazy asshole trying it on them. At best invading it would be seen as an act of piracy, not an invasion.
Can you show me any decision in domestic courts or international tribunals that recognizes man-made structures as extensions of territory? We have disputes about whether even building up islands against natural erosion as legitimate territorial claims, and you think some fucking derrick well within UK territorial waters that has no recognition from anyone other than a few crackpots who printed up some faux passports somehow constitutes a legitimate claim of sovereignty? They can't even decide on the ultimate fate of Western Sahara, and you think there's some reasonable interpretation of International Law that allows a completely man-made structure to be seen as territory?
No one that counts recognizes Sealand's sovereignty. It is within the UK's territorial waters, it belongs to the UK.
You don't even need a platoon. A Sea King helicopter would probably be sufficient. Hell, one torpedo from a British sub and the whole thing goes to the bottom. Sealand is tolerated because it's just some morons with comprehension problems. But if it starts committing acts that might be viewed as criminal, such as, say, violating the national security of the United Kingdom, then the whole farce will come to an end in short order.
Don't need to bomb it. It's a tiny man-made structure in the sea. A couple of cruisers could blockade it. Without food, fuel and freshwater, Sealand would be done in a few weeks. The thing was always a fiction, all this would do is force to the British government to finally do something about it.
A nation by definition must have territory. No interpretation of International Law I've ever seen allows a steel man-made structure to be considered territory. Thus Sealand, whatever it may be, is not a nation, and thus while it may not be within Britain's sovereignty, if the Royal Navy decided tomorrow to blockade it or sink it, there is no lawful means by which the owner could hope to prevent it, save by appealing to a British court, which means the owner recognizes the sovereignty of Britain.
Behind Python Dave Allen was my favorite (though he's Irish, does that count?) The man was almost the wittiest man that ever lived. His monologues alone were quite brilliant. To some extent I consider Craig Ferguson to be his heir (and certainly the most interesting person on late night).
If they have a copyright on the mask, then you know copyright has gone insane. The image has been around for centuries.
Be glad he admits at all. Most bastards in the record industry don't seem to think it exists at all.
Fuck 'em all, I say. I hope pirating puts the entire entertainment industry out of business. Then maybe, once the ground is scorched, we can have a rational discussion.
Still, the decision is baffling. Twitter got huge amounts of good publicity during the Arab Spring, and now they've decided they'll censor based on country? WTF?
I think the movies might be the wrong way to introduce Python to a new audience. I think that Flying Circus is a far better way, in large part because they weren't trying to carry an entire film plot. As much as I love the films, I still think the first three series of Flying Circus are superior.
Heh, two of those are Terry Gilliam films. He was very good in The Fisher King.
The explanation I read was that writing proved quite laborious and that Cleese vetoed a final rewrite, which probably would have cleaned up the unevenness. I have a hard time believing that spending time on location helped Grail at all, as everyone spent most of the time absolutely miserable and Chapman spent much of the time suffering through severe alcohol withdrawal. On top of that, everyone found the co-directing of Gilliam and Jones quite unbearable, as Jones directed things in a fashion compatible to the Pythons but they found Gilliam's methods far more tedious (this is why the next two films were directed by Jones alone).
My favorite sketch is, however, a Chapman sketch, and that's the still very shocking Undertaker Sketch, which Chapman deliberately wrote to be as appalling as possible. During his alcoholic years he was indeed far too unreliable to ever take the lead, and in fact according to Cleese it got so bad that that was why left and did the first Fawlty Towers series.
But it was very much Chapman's sense of the bizarre that was used so effectively. He may not have been the out-and-out creative force that the others were, but I doubt the Python's would have seemed very much like the Python's without him. He was of the same kind of anarchic breed as the Python's idol, Spike Milligan (another brilliant comedian and writer who had his own terrible demons).
They all served their function, and that's what makes any potential reunions seem somewhat underwhelming to me. If Idle's not involved, then you lose that element of it, and if Gilliam isn't involved, then you lose that sort of hallucinatory visual style. Python really is a very good example of how the sum is greater than the parts. They've all gone one and done some rather good things (yes, I even enjoyed Yellow Beard), but only Gilliam has ever managed to achieve things that came close to equaling his brilliance in Python.
The Python's (with the exception of Gilliam) started out as writers, not as performers, so as long as the writing edge is still there, then they've got it. I know Palin and Jones have at least tried over the years to keep their own writing partnership going, and Cleese and Gilliam have always seemed to work with Palin when they could. Idle has always been the lone wolf who did most of his writing on his own. For a time Cleese seemed to be greatly reduced; all that psychotherapy had made him happy, but maybe, after the last divorce and the big payout he had to make, he's sufficiently hungry and bitter to put on that semi-anal, semi-mad persona he mined in Python and on Fawlty Towers (and even in his work in A Fish Called Wanda, which really is an exquisitely well-written film).
Frankly the one that has disappointed me the most over the years has been Idle. He came out of the gate with some pretty good work; the Ruttles and Rutland Weekend Television, but by the 1990s his work soured, and then he just started looting the Python past for his stage shows and for Spamalot and the like. I think there may have even been a bit of a falling out with Gilliam, who apparently wasn't overly impressed with Spamalot.
The one I still really watch for these days is Gilliam. I've loved almost all his films, and I think he's a greatly underappreciated talent, a very unique visionary in the history of cinema. Everyone loves Time Bandits and Brazil, and I haven't met a geek who didn't have a soft spot for Munchhausen, but I even like Tidelands, which is a pretty strange film even for Gilliam. To my mind, he is the one that has kept the torch alight far more than Idle's attempted resurrections of Python's larger works. I think after watching all his films that his influence on the troupe has probably been understated, that Gilliam has the conceptual aesthetic that sits underneath the surface of his own work and the Pythons, a certain visual style that, whether it was his cartoons, or his set work in Brian and Meaning of Life or in his own films which is so recognizable and so original that I'm not sure that the Pythons would ever have been quite what they are without him.
Of course, the one thing none of these articles actually mentions is whether Gilliam's involved or not. Without Gilliam, there's a certain of anarchy that wouldn't be present.
I'm amazed. A Rambus astroturfer. The SCO checks bouncing now?
What's with trying to make Rambus sound like a hardworking bunch. Yes, in the day they did practical things, but then they stole an entire group's process. Now, fortunately, they're reaching the end of the tether. If there was justice, their principles would be taken out and shot.