need to have more of this sort of comment, but you should always try to make a passing mention of Ninjas and Pirates. I just happened to mention Michael Foucault the other day too, by complete coincidence (I was in the pub of course and someone had already mentioned Hemingway) but Susan Sonntag will always do in a pinch. Especially on the subject of Anne Summers publicity stunts....
at least it makes the whole thing almost as exciting as the pirates v ninjas posts on the treasure ship story and it reminds me of this helpful explanation of the offside rule: (citizens of countries where football is called soccer should stop reading at this point.) http://www.boreme.com/boreme/funny-2006/offside-4- girls-p1.php
Ladies and gentlemen, in order to provide for your comfort and protection during this guided tour of the Great Hall of Trolls you should take heed of the following safety instructions.
Here be monsters.
Wear a tin foil skull cap. Preferably aluminium. Pronunciation is not as important as the element.
Bring adequate supplies of your own salt and be ready to take a pinch of it with each Trollish entry.
Be aware, be very aware - THERE IS NO SCIENCE HERE. The absence of Majik cannot be guaranteed. All visits at your own risk
You should carry an Occams Razor at all times
If you did not have enough common sense to bring extra common sense with you, handy sized packets are available from our Trolls R Us store.
The purpose of the Great Hall of Trolls is to offer up tribute to the demi-gods of Clickthrough and Clickon and their denizens.
Only the mighty AdBlocker spell, turned on, can defeat the loathsome conspiracy behind this topic.
In the Great Hall of Trolls, no one can hear you scream evidence.
During your visit please, please, please don't utter the name James Randi... D'oh!
The OCD level of this forum topic and the degree of detailed information is so so self-obssessed - and informative - that it reminds me of those ubiquitous letters to Playboy about stereo - sorry Hi Fi systems in the days before pubic hair, Jerry Falwell and Hustler. Oh, halcyon days. Next: how to make the perfect salsa.
one thing is certain. This is the year of an over-heated media interest in Global Warming. In many ways media overheating is similar to the cycles of the sun and this planet. Global warming is the latest black magic that the media can write about without objectively addressing the scientific evidence either way. They don't need to because, just like all those shampoo commercials the science part is just plain old magic that requires no peer review or rigorous experimental duplication and falsifiability. The basis of this comes from the classic questions of journalism that can be applied to all situations and to all people, namely:
How bad is it?
Will it get any worse?
What are you going to do about it?
Whatever the answers are to these questions, they will produce all the great copy you ever needed and the various special interest groups will throw "evidence" at each other until the cows come home. None of this is a proper examination of the facts or the science, in the main it is nothing more than the self serving point scoring found in the old fashioned grammar school debating society where scientific objectivity takes second place to the gladitorial combat of the debating chamber, the eloquence of the speakers and the choice of the mob. The media, however is not some autonomous bogeyman concocting these features out of thin air, the media is an industry employing a large number of people who are just ordinary individuals susceptible to the vagaries and fashion that are the wont of their friends, family and neighbours. They reflect in general the values and prejudices of their audiences and, though it should not come as a surprise to anyone, they use these as the basis of their copy because they are fairly representative of their own demographic. Slashdot readers, editors and moderators are part of a particular demographic - mythically 18 year virginal boygeeks but probably more realistically somewhat older men with families who work in the industry. People like Bill O'Reilly watch Bill O'Reilly. People like Rosie O'Donnell watch Rosie O'Donnell. Just over 100 years ago the argument was about evolution, missing links, the origin of the universe and a similar level of topical heat was generated. This fairly regular re-telling of the GW tale which takes places here on slashdot in a now familiar cycle is part of the self same Topical Media Interest - because - and I hope this doesn't come as a surprise - slashdot is a media outlet. In rather typical debating chamber cliche it goes without saying, but I will, slashdot is very much the model of the grammar school debating society and in many cases the topic is an opinion and the point scoring highly amusing and the sense of common community (whether we agree with each other or not) is something that I consider adds value to my "media experience" - there are only so many re-runs of Stargate that I can watch. But a certain staleness is creeping into this topic and, maybe we could let it stew a bit, or shift over to a lengthy and heated debate on Global Dimming which should be next year's big thing and of course we should all be able to say "Oh yeah, we were discussing that on slashdot last year - it's so Second Life". Alternatively we could all agree to blame it on President George W.Bush for the moment and that way I can stay on message with the friendly emails Michael Moore regularly sends me - but of course sadly, not in a personal context.
formerlyhttp://www.yourdictionary.com/ahd/f/f0265300.html being the operational word in that definition. This mythical notion is similar to the one my German students believe in "Oxford English". I usually tell them it is particular to Hobbiton-on-the-Rye. Perhaps this series of exchanges could come to a reasonable closure if you simply visited London or listened to some of the Beeb's output. Only people in "Monty Python" sketches speak BBC English. Real English (you appreciate that I am not English?) people speak a variety of different dialects. Similar in many ways (but of course different) to the Americans - Californians even.
The BBC has twenty regional United Kingdom stations broadcasting TV and Radio programs in each of the regional accent. The main BBC news show on Radio Fourhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/ has John Humphries (Welsh - that's the country on the left hand side of the bottom part of the island) and James McNaughtie (Scottish- that's the country at the top of the island). So how the BBC will implement its plan to rule the world with "their dialect of the English language" will be worth observing. Will the subjugated peoples sound like the cast of Upstairs & Downstairs on Nembutal or perhaps they will all talk in Gordonstoun, that funny version of the Scots dialect that the Royal Family (HRH Prince Charles, HRH his mom The Queen and their various relatives) uses? I watch Fox News and I still can't get that Bill O'Reilly accent down pat. Weird.
This is so cool, all that boring ice in Antartica will melt and now we'll all be able to find those fabulous temples hidden for thousands of years that only Lara Croft and those dudes from AVP were able to find. Can't wait! And I don't care what anyone says, when Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were running the planet - the summers were much warmer and we were all just so much leaner and fitter.
yeah I am surprised by this sort of post. If you happened to live here as I do you would know how ridiculous the implied sentiment of your comment is. South Germany is a rather quite place where people have rather liberal views about sex and sexuality, violence in media and games is considered unhealthy and child Pr0n is illegal. Brothels and prostitution are perfectly legal, controlled by the same regulations that apply to all other industries. People aren't obsessed with sex, it is just treated as a normal element of human behaviour. Nor do Germans have an interest in coprophagia as is often suggested, in fact the only two occassions I have ever heard this mentioned was by an English author (on German TV) much to the great insult of my German family and friends, who expected me to defend the fellow until I reminded them that I am of course Scottish and I course I heard it here today on slashdot. Nor is Germany a dark rainy place full of people dressed in black clothes and clasping 1.5 litre glasses of beer (eine Mass) to their chests. It is a nation comprising of a vast number of the various people whose parents were completely displaced during the war and relocated all over Germany. South Germany is very tolerant society where, in general people of different races have the same access to education and employment My students are German, my family here is German, my friends are German and no, there isn't an excess of crimes against children compared to any other part of the West. When Justin Timberlake whipped off JJ's "wardrobe" during the Superbowl spectacular malfunction people were queuing up to ask me why the US was going so crazy.
I used to be manager in the World Famous Barnton Bar & Bistro - as featured on Irvine Welsh's cups - http://www.thebistro.co.uk/index.htm (Pure rubbish website now). From Thursday through to Saturday staff general carded people who they suspected were under 18 years old - that's the legal drinking age in Scotland and the UK. We didn't systematically card everyone because with over 400 people throught the doors in the space of a few hours it just isn't practical. It is illegal in Scotland for a member of staff to serve alcohol to anyone under-age and they can be fined. It is easy to spot the under age drinkers, here are just six red flags:
1 They don't look around - regular punters always check out the pub because surprising as it is, most people come to the pub for the social aspect and like to see who is in. It is not unusual for a group of woman to come in look around and then immediately leave because there is a lack of male totty.
2. They try to find a seat immediately, preferably down the back or as far away from the bar as people. This is so the youngest of them can attempt to hide in the dark and they can have a committee meeting to decide who looks the oldest and is going for the round (for non-UK residents this is the special social custom of buying all the drinks in rotation). Most regular punters usually try to get served first (well, that's the third reason they came in!) and prefer to worry about a seat afterwards and anyway - you can always just stand near the bar, that's how you meet people!
3. Before smoking was made illegal they always either smoked at the bar or lit a cigarette as they were about to be served. Regular punters simply never did this, even the lowest drunken old bum never did this, they waited until they had secured their drink and then they lit cigarette. Regular punters who actually had a cigarette in their hand when they went to buy their round (to fulfill the complex anthropological necessities of doing this sometimes you have to quickly buy an extra drink for a new arrival just as you are settling down.) would make a great effort to hide the cigarette - not blow it in your face.
4. Behave as if you had roundly insulted them when you ask for their id. Real people who are the legal age are always very amused and smug whenever they are asked for their id and give it willingly and with great enthusiasm. One particulary short and baby-faced student who was actually 25 was always amused when asked for his ID - and boy did he have ID!
5. Avoid eye contact or use inappropriate eye contact. Under agers are always tempted to address their inner child during this stressful trial and find it difficult not to look down or in attempt to overcome this desire, stare straight at you like a mad wookie.
6. Pick the wrong gender of staff for the wrong reasons on the wrong night. Friday night is the end of the week and the traditional night for most customers to be engaged in the search for a sexual partner (...eh your all still with me...? Okay.) This means that women want to be served by the most attractive man behind the bar and men want to be served by the most attractive woman, at the very least you understand, it's practice. Gay men and women do the same thing but obviously with the same sex and if you are wondering how to tell the difference, perhaps you need to get out more. Saturday is for getting drunk, since you may as well console yourself at not having sex the previous evening, so you are not interested in which member of staff serves you.
So Ashley Heyer failed on number 4. And now she's the talk of slashdot. Paris Hilton, eat your heart out... at least until 5th June!
stopped her from experiencing years of unadulterated misery as it gradually dawned on her that a) school is prison and b) those who are condemned to live shall have their heads stuffed.
Universities should do this on a grand scale - helping to eliminate this sort of thinking in a single generation. Next target will be people who "walked on the cracks in the pavement", people who look "funny"and anyone who says "bottom".
for 15 minutes of server time (minus their own bandwith of course).
What would really be news about 2ndL would be if anything remotely interesting every occurred there other than the opportunity to fulfil Andy Warhol's prediction.
2ndL has reached critical popular media mass and is now the bench mark for any pile of crap broadcast or written about a group of idiosyncratic individuals.
Imagine, if you can, way back in the pre-digital era, what you would have thought if someone claimed to be living a "second life" in the Monopoly Board World where you had your own wee little car and a silver shoe.
There's a lot more rubbish to be written about 2ndL - when it is involved in murder or is discovered to be a conduit for drugs or when something so unbelievable happens that the word "Circus" will not be strong enough. It hasn't happened yet, but it will.
It has been mentioned before many times on slashdot but it always remains worth repeating go:
http://www.getafirstlife.com/
Perhaps this silver bullet will enlarge upon how Howard Florey involved the US military in the development of penicillin manufacture: http://www.mcatmaster.com/medicine&war/penicilli n.htm
is based on the fundamental capitalist principal of MAKING MONEY. The Pharmaceutical industries business model does not involve producing medicines to cure illness and disease. It is engaged in the research and development of drugs which will be used to treat acute conditions (acute = continuing illness that is not cured) over a long period that produces vast profits. This is why there has been no development by any Pharmaceutical company of a new anti-bacterial agent.
The American Military almost single-handedly worked on strategies to tackle the problem of malaria and the development of the antibiotic pencillin, was conceived as having a strategic advantage during WWII when the very first batch of it was used to treat soldiers with STD's and almost instantly restored them to full battle readiness. The Pharmaceutical industry has a long history of encouraging people to believe that they research cures - the truth is that they do not.
A very large part of the industry produces belief-based products such as homeopathy and herbal medicines. Belief based "medical products" are the industry's equivalent of the Holy Relics that were produced on an industrial scale by the Catholic Church during the middle ages. They have no scientific basis, the do not cure any one of anything and they are merely cult of objects comparable to the flayed skin of Aztec sacrificial victims stretched over the face of the priests. Herbal medicines (to paraphrase the Skeptical Society) are dirty drugs on par with a cigarette.
The barriers constructed through the patenting of medicines creates an artificial market where the cost/benefits and profits are found in the sole ownership of something really essential - such as sildenafil citrate. Compare this to the amount of effort that went into not mentioning the fact that in 1979 two Australian doctors, Robin Warren and Barry Marshall re-discovered(!) the cause and treatment of stomach ulcers was a) the bacterium Helicobacter pylori, and b) low cost generic anti-biotics.
The Pharmaceutical industry had never even attempted to produce a single anti-viral agent beofre the appearance of HIV and most of the really succesful pharma products - sildenafil citrate for one - were discovered by accident.
It was only a matter of time before the mob seized the intiative and demonstrated that the concept of patents (and copyright) is part of a social agreement far more than it is any traditional example of arbitage. Their is no true barrier to maintaining the artificial concept of "patents" when the social agreement is broken - as it has been by the fairly cynical approach of making as much money as is possible through the explotation of the poor.
The saddest fact of this entire affair is that the UN was far to busy buying football teams for Kofi Annan's son and making money out of Oil for food in Iraq when they should have bought the patent outright with the full support of, wait, let me think for a second - every single government on the planet. But oh no they were bleeding their hearts out over all the other far more important issues such as doing nothing in the Balkans, Africa or anywhere else for that matter.
believe that a fine set of traditional practices that arise in an organic manner from the social group interacting is the glue that holds a community together. Always funny too.
Well, present company very respectfully excepted, the rest of us are either waiting for/or want to be The Dixie Flatline or that incredibly romantic (in the 18th century meaning of the word) Bobby Newmark.
Interupt Decrement to zero.
Actually with all due deference to Wham, the Sex Pistols said it quite best to when they sang the immortal: "Throwing the baby, out with the bathwater" Oh dash and fiddlesticks, that was of course Eddie Ten-Pole Tudor. What I meant to say was "God Save The Queen, it's a facist regime, made you moron, a potential H-Bomb... and I guess that's more than enough completely off-topic heavily formatted surrealism on this Ubuntu day of days.
It's a bargain. Lyndon B Johnston thought nothing of agreeing to spend $29Bn ($135 Bn at today's prices) on the Apollo mission when it was observed to him that the US gained a complete global network of ground stations and reconnaisance satellites plus strategic superiority over the USSR into the bargain.
Historically all of the great engineer projects that produced infrastructure have had fantastic benefit for society, from the Roman roads, the trans-ocean phone cables and the vast network of communications technology.
LBJ is of course no longer with is nor is the USSR and the strategic advantage turned out to have had a lot less effect than Ronald Reagan's bank busting SDI. However, the benefits of the Apollo mission and the creation of satellite launching conglomerates financed the cost -effective marvellous multi-media internet connected society that we have today. The physical connection between the UK and Europe is one of the best things ever to happen on this side of the Atlanic and the possibility of a connection between Russia and the Americas can only bring benefits. So that's all the easy stuff out of the way. brNow... could some one turn their attention to Africa
Total number of classes since 2003 = 2 semesters per year.
Average number of students per semester = 26
Average number of students with measurable social skills (ie eat with mouth closed and use non imperatives) = 3 (per semester)
Average number of students who wear the same clothes each week = 18
Average number of students who smell as if a cat died in their underwear many weeks ago = 6
Average number of students who are a serious bio-hazard = 1 (per semester).
Average number of students who comb their hair = 8 (okay some intentionally!)
Average number of students who brush their teeth or are unaware they have ketone breath (from staying awake all night playing Lord only knows what idiotic game that is not Halo) = 8
Average number of students who can explain how to set file visibility in MS Win XP =26 (that is so weird, huh?)
Average number of students who can explain what all those laundry symbols mean on the label of their metallica t-shirt = 0
Average number of students who attend the statistics class = 13
Average number of students who attend the Christmas class on how to attract the opposite sex = 36 (they bring friends)
Total number of students in the past four years who were women = 1
[Jules shoots the guy on the couch during Brett's interrogation]
Jules: Oh, I'm sorry, did I break your concentration?
The BBC page: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/herefor d/worcs/6565079.stm is quite clear that residents called the police because this man had screened off the windows of his car with cardboard but the light from his laptop was still visible in the early hours of the morning.
Goodness only knows what he could possibly have being doing in there but I guess the local constabulary decided to charge him with a crime that they had evidence of.
So less a story about those brave wardrivers liberating the net from the bourgeoisie and more a story about someone wierdo having a wank.
Slashdot Mirror
need to have more of this sort of comment, but you should always try to make a passing mention of Ninjas and Pirates.
I just happened to mention Michael Foucault the other day too, by complete coincidence (I was in the pub of course and someone had already mentioned Hemingway) but Susan Sonntag will always do in a pinch.
Especially on the subject of Anne Summers publicity stunts....
Damn!
at least it makes the whole thing almost as exciting as the pirates v ninjas posts on the treasure ship story and it reminds me of this helpful explanation of the offside rule: (citizens of countries where football is called soccer should stop reading at this point.) http://www.boreme.com/boreme/funny-2006/offside-4- girls-p1.php
The OCD level of this forum topic and the degree of detailed information is so so self-obssessed - and informative - that it reminds me of those ubiquitous letters to Playboy about stereo - sorry Hi Fi systems in the days before pubic hair, Jerry Falwell and Hustler.
Oh, halcyon days. Next: how to make the perfect salsa.
one thing is certain. This is the year of an over-heated media interest in Global Warming. In many ways media overheating is similar to the cycles of the sun and this planet. Global warming is the latest black magic that the media can write about without objectively addressing the scientific evidence either way. They don't need to because, just like all those shampoo commercials the science part is just plain old magic that requires no peer review or rigorous experimental duplication and falsifiability. The basis of this comes from the classic questions of journalism that can be applied to all situations and to all people, namely:
How bad is it?
Will it get any worse?
What are you going to do about it?
Whatever the answers are to these questions, they will produce all the great copy you ever needed and the various special interest groups will throw "evidence" at each other until the cows come home. None of this is a proper examination of the facts or the science, in the main it is nothing more than the self serving point scoring found in the old fashioned grammar school debating society where scientific objectivity takes second place to the gladitorial combat of the debating chamber, the eloquence of the speakers and the choice of the mob.
The media, however is not some autonomous bogeyman concocting these features out of thin air, the media is an industry employing a large number of people who are just ordinary individuals susceptible to the vagaries and fashion that are the wont of their friends, family and neighbours.
They reflect in general the values and prejudices of their audiences and, though it should not come as a surprise to anyone, they use these as the basis of their copy because they are fairly representative of their own demographic. Slashdot readers, editors and moderators are part of a particular demographic - mythically 18 year virginal boygeeks but probably more realistically somewhat older men with families who work in the industry. People like Bill O'Reilly watch Bill O'Reilly. People like Rosie O'Donnell watch Rosie O'Donnell.
Just over 100 years ago the argument was about evolution, missing links, the origin of the universe and a similar level of topical heat was generated.
This fairly regular re-telling of the GW tale which takes places here on slashdot in a now familiar cycle is part of the self same Topical Media Interest - because - and I hope this doesn't come as a surprise - slashdot is a media outlet.
In rather typical debating chamber cliche it goes without saying, but I will, slashdot is very much the model of the grammar school debating society and in many cases the topic is an opinion and the point scoring highly amusing and the sense of common community (whether we agree with each other or not) is something that I consider adds value to my "media experience" - there are only so many re-runs of Stargate that I can watch. But a certain staleness is creeping into this topic and, maybe we could let it stew a bit, or shift over to a lengthy and heated debate on Global Dimming which should be next year's big thing and of course we should all be able to say "Oh yeah, we were discussing that on slashdot last year - it's so Second Life".
Alternatively we could all agree to blame it on President George W.Bush for the moment and that way I can stay on message with the friendly emails Michael Moore regularly sends me - but of course sadly, not in a personal context.
formerly http://www.yourdictionary.com/ahd/f/f0265300.html being the operational word in that definition. This mythical notion is similar to the one my German students believe in "Oxford English". I usually tell them it is particular to Hobbiton-on-the-Rye. Perhaps this series of exchanges could come to a reasonable closure if you simply visited London or listened to some of the Beeb's output. Only people in "Monty Python" sketches speak BBC English. Real English (you appreciate that I am not English?) people speak a variety of different dialects. Similar in many ways (but of course different) to the Americans - Californians even.
The BBC has twenty regional United Kingdom stations broadcasting TV and Radio programs in each of the regional accent. The main BBC news show on Radio Four http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/ has John Humphries (Welsh - that's the country on the left hand side of the bottom part of the island) and James McNaughtie (Scottish- that's the country at the top of the island). So how the BBC will implement its plan to rule the world with "their dialect of the English language" will be worth observing. Will the subjugated peoples sound like the cast of Upstairs & Downstairs on Nembutal or perhaps they will all talk in Gordonstoun, that funny version of the Scots dialect that the Royal Family (HRH Prince Charles, HRH his mom The Queen and their various relatives) uses? I watch Fox News and I still can't get that Bill O'Reilly accent down pat. Weird.
Wait 'til Uri Geller hears about this! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJSxsbToLeE&mode=re lated&search=
This is so cool, all that boring ice in Antartica will melt and now we'll all be able to find those fabulous temples hidden for thousands of years that only Lara Croft and those dudes from AVP were able to find.
Can't wait!
And I don't care what anyone says, when Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were running the planet - the summers were much warmer and we were all just so much leaner and fitter.
every time he predicts a team will win or asks you to touch his famous orange dot to help a team to win - they inevitably lose! Now that is talent.
yeah I am surprised by this sort of post. If you happened to live here as I do you would know how ridiculous the implied sentiment of your comment is.
South Germany is a rather quite place where people have rather liberal views about sex and sexuality, violence in media and games is considered unhealthy and child Pr0n is illegal.
Brothels and prostitution are perfectly legal, controlled by the same regulations that apply to all other industries. People aren't obsessed with sex, it is just treated as a normal element of human behaviour.
Nor do Germans have an interest in coprophagia as is often suggested, in fact the only two occassions I have ever heard this mentioned was by an English author (on German TV) much to the great insult of my German family and friends, who expected me to defend the fellow until I reminded them that I am of course Scottish and I course I heard it here today on slashdot.
Nor is Germany a dark rainy place full of people dressed in black clothes and clasping 1.5 litre glasses of beer (eine Mass) to their chests.
It is a nation comprising of a vast number of the various people whose parents were completely displaced during the war and relocated all over Germany.
South Germany is very tolerant society where, in general people of different races have the same access to education and employment My students are German, my family here is German, my friends are German and no, there isn't an excess of crimes against children compared to any other part of the West. When Justin Timberlake whipped off JJ's "wardrobe" during the Superbowl spectacular malfunction people were queuing up to ask me why the US was going so crazy.
Snowboarding in the Alps.
I used to be manager in the World Famous Barnton Bar & Bistro - as featured on Irvine Welsh's cups - http://www.thebistro.co.uk/index.htm (Pure rubbish website now). From Thursday through to Saturday staff general carded people who they suspected were under 18 years old - that's the legal drinking age in Scotland and the UK. We didn't systematically card everyone because with over 400 people throught the doors in the space of a few hours it just isn't practical. It is illegal in Scotland for a member of staff to serve alcohol to anyone under-age and they can be fined.
It is easy to spot the under age drinkers, here are just six red flags:
1 They don't look around - regular punters always check out the pub because surprising as it is, most people come to the pub for the social aspect and like to see who is in. It is not unusual for a group of woman to come in look around and then immediately leave because there is a lack of male totty.
2. They try to find a seat immediately, preferably down the back or as far away from the bar as people. This is so the youngest of them can attempt to hide in the dark and they can have a committee meeting to decide who looks the oldest and is going for the round (for non-UK residents this is the special social custom of buying all the drinks in rotation). Most regular punters usually try to get served first (well, that's the third reason they came in!) and prefer to worry about a seat afterwards and anyway - you can always just stand near the bar, that's how you meet people!
3. Before smoking was made illegal they always either smoked at the bar or lit a cigarette as they were about to be served. Regular punters simply never did this, even the lowest drunken old bum never did this, they waited until they had secured their drink and then they lit cigarette. Regular punters who actually had a cigarette in their hand when they went to buy their round (to fulfill the complex anthropological necessities of doing this sometimes you have to quickly buy an extra drink for a new arrival just as you are settling down.) would make a great effort to hide the cigarette - not blow it in your face.
4. Behave as if you had roundly insulted them when you ask for their id. Real people who are the legal age are always very amused and smug whenever they are asked for their id and give it willingly and with great enthusiasm. One particulary short and baby-faced student who was actually 25 was always amused when asked for his ID - and boy did he have ID!
5. Avoid eye contact or use inappropriate eye contact. Under agers are always tempted to address their inner child during this stressful trial and find it difficult not to look down or in attempt to overcome this desire, stare straight at you like a mad wookie.
6. Pick the wrong gender of staff for the wrong reasons on the wrong night. Friday night is the end of the week and the traditional night for most customers to be engaged in the search for a sexual partner (...eh your all still with me...? Okay.) This means that women want to be served by the most attractive man behind the bar and men want to be served by the most attractive woman, at the very least you understand, it's practice. Gay men and women do the same thing but obviously with the same sex and if you are wondering how to tell the difference, perhaps you need to get out more. Saturday is for getting drunk, since you may as well console yourself at not having sex the previous evening, so you are not interested in which member of staff serves you.
So Ashley Heyer failed on number 4. And now she's the talk of slashdot. Paris Hilton, eat your heart out... at least until 5th June!
stopped her from experiencing years of unadulterated misery as it gradually dawned on her that a) school is prison and b) those who are condemned to live shall have their heads stuffed.
Universities should do this on a grand scale - helping to eliminate this sort of thinking in a single generation. Next target will be people who "walked on the cracks in the pavement", people who look "funny"and anyone who says "bottom".
for 15 minutes of server time (minus their own bandwith of course).
What would really be news about 2ndL would be if anything remotely interesting every occurred there other than the opportunity to fulfil Andy Warhol's prediction.
2ndL has reached critical popular media mass and is now the bench mark for any pile of crap broadcast or written about a group of idiosyncratic individuals.
Imagine, if you can, way back in the pre-digital era, what you would have thought if someone claimed to be living a "second life" in the Monopoly Board World where you had your own wee little car and a silver shoe.
There's a lot more rubbish to be written about 2ndL - when it is involved in murder or is discovered to be a conduit for drugs or when something so unbelievable happens that the word "Circus" will not be strong enough. It hasn't happened yet, but it will.
It has been mentioned before many times on slashdot but it always remains worth repeating go: http://www.getafirstlife.com/
Perhaps this silver bullet will enlarge upon how Howard Florey involved the US military in the development of penicillin manufacture:i n.htm
http://www.mcatmaster.com/medicine&war/penicill
Sure.
I was acutely drunk at the time of writing.
is based on the fundamental capitalist principal of MAKING MONEY. The Pharmaceutical industries business model does not involve producing medicines to cure illness and disease. It is engaged in the research and development of drugs which will be used to treat acute conditions (acute = continuing illness that is not cured) over a long period that produces vast profits. This is why there has been no development by any Pharmaceutical company of a new anti-bacterial agent.
The American Military almost single-handedly worked on strategies to tackle the problem of malaria and the development of the antibiotic pencillin, was conceived as having a strategic advantage during WWII when the very first batch of it was used to treat soldiers with STD's and almost instantly restored them to full battle readiness.
The Pharmaceutical industry has a long history of encouraging people to believe that they research cures - the truth is that they do not.
A very large part of the industry produces belief-based products such as homeopathy and herbal medicines. Belief based "medical products" are the industry's equivalent of the Holy Relics that were produced on an industrial scale by the Catholic Church during the middle ages. They have no scientific basis, the do not cure any one of anything and they are merely cult of objects comparable to the flayed skin of Aztec sacrificial victims stretched over the face of the priests. Herbal medicines (to paraphrase the Skeptical Society) are dirty drugs on par with a cigarette.
The barriers constructed through the patenting of medicines creates an artificial market where the cost/benefits and profits are found in the sole ownership of something really essential - such as sildenafil citrate. Compare this to the amount of effort that went into not mentioning the fact that in 1979 two Australian doctors, Robin Warren and Barry Marshall re-discovered(!) the cause and treatment of stomach ulcers was a) the bacterium Helicobacter pylori, and b) low cost generic anti-biotics.
The Pharmaceutical industry had never even attempted to produce a single anti-viral agent beofre the appearance of HIV and most of the really succesful pharma products - sildenafil citrate for one - were discovered by accident.
It was only a matter of time before the mob seized the intiative and demonstrated that the concept of patents (and copyright) is part of a social agreement far more than it is any traditional example of arbitage. Their is no true barrier to maintaining the artificial concept of "patents" when the social agreement is broken - as it has been by the fairly cynical approach of making as much money as is possible through the explotation of the poor.
The saddest fact of this entire affair is that the UN was far to busy buying football teams for Kofi Annan's son and making money out of Oil for food in Iraq when they should have bought the patent outright with the full support of, wait, let me think for a second - every single government on the planet. But oh no they were bleeding their hearts out over all the other far more important issues such as doing nothing in the Balkans, Africa or anywhere else for that matter.
And is in cahoots with Intel? (Registered Trademark)
Far out!
Bless you ad blocker (probably also a Registered Trademark), bless you.
believe that a fine set of traditional practices that arise in an organic manner from the social group interacting is the glue that holds a community together. Always funny too.
Well, present company very respectfully excepted, the rest of us are either waiting for/or want to be The Dixie Flatline or that incredibly romantic (in the 18th century meaning of the word) Bobby Newmark.
Interupt
Decrement to zero.
Actually with all due deference to Wham, the Sex Pistols said it quite best to when they sang the immortal:
"Throwing the baby, out with the bathwater"
Oh dash and fiddlesticks, that was of course Eddie Ten-Pole Tudor.
What I meant to say was
"God Save The Queen, it's a facist regime, made you moron, a potential H-Bomb...
and I guess that's more than enough completely off-topic heavily formatted surrealism on this Ubuntu day of days.
It's a bargain. Lyndon B Johnston thought nothing of agreeing to spend $29Bn ($135 Bn at today's prices) on the Apollo mission when it was observed to him that the US gained a complete global network of ground stations and reconnaisance satellites plus strategic superiority over the USSR into the bargain.
Historically all of the great engineer projects that produced infrastructure have had fantastic benefit for society, from the Roman roads, the trans-ocean phone cables and the vast network of communications technology.
LBJ is of course no longer with is nor is the USSR and the strategic advantage turned out to have had a lot less effect than Ronald Reagan's bank busting SDI. However, the benefits of the Apollo mission and the creation of satellite launching conglomerates financed the cost -effective marvellous multi-media internet connected society that we have today. The physical connection between the UK and Europe is one of the best things ever to happen on this side of the Atlanic and the possibility of a connection between Russia and the Americas can only bring benefits. So that's all the easy stuff out of the way. brNow... could some one turn their attention to Africa
Total number of classes since 2003 = 2 semesters per year.
Average number of students per semester = 26
Average number of students with measurable social skills (ie eat with mouth closed and use non imperatives) = 3 (per semester)
Average number of students who wear the same clothes each week = 18
Average number of students who smell as if a cat died in their underwear many weeks ago = 6
Average number of students who are a serious bio-hazard = 1 (per semester).
Average number of students who comb their hair = 8 (okay some intentionally!)
Average number of students who brush their teeth or are unaware they have ketone breath (from staying awake all night playing Lord only knows what idiotic game that is not Halo) = 8
Average number of students who can explain how to set file visibility in MS Win XP =26 (that is so weird, huh?)
Average number of students who can explain what all those laundry symbols mean on the label of their metallica t-shirt = 0
Average number of students who attend the statistics class = 13
Average number of students who attend the Christmas class on how to attract the opposite sex = 36 (they bring friends)
Total number of students in the past four years who were women = 1
[Jules shoots the guy on the couch during Brett's interrogation]
Jules: Oh, I'm sorry, did I break your concentration?
The BBC page: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/herefor d/worcs/6565079.stm is quite clear that residents called the police because this man had screened off the windows of his car with cardboard but the light from his laptop was still visible in the early hours of the morning.
Goodness only knows what he could possibly have being doing in there but I guess the local constabulary decided to charge him with a crime that they had evidence of.
So less a story about those brave wardrivers liberating the net from the bourgeoisie and more a story about someone wierdo having a wank.
If that's a slashdot word.