Zombie

Of course you're entitled to your opinion, but the references you've cited hardly indicate an informed opinion never mind the "dispos(al) of another tired hack". If you believe all this stuff then you should put it in a blog and allow it to be tested by others - show the courage of your convictions - instead of sneaking it in here where no-one can reply.

Breathless, Shankar Mahadevan try singing along with him...

just remember, today's trash can become tomorrow's lost treasure

*note to self - avoid gentle humour...*

Happy birthday James

Old Bill certainly came up with one of the most scathing rebukes against humankind But we've been looking, now, for over 50 years and not a squeak. Well, apart from the "Wow!" signal in 1977. Maybe the Russian billionaire Yuri Milner's $100m project will find something. He's got all the key guys on board, including Stephen Hawking, Martin Reece and Frank Drake - the guy who came up with the equation to calculate the possibility that there might be some intelligent life in our universe...

You're right but it works both ways. The US has clung on to gotten while the UK now prefers got - though we still use the old word in the form "ill-gotten" - while the US has evidently moved away from "that" for people whereas in the UK we're quite happy retaining it You overlooked one, Mike... "Jeeze that guy's well hung."

that / who May help to clarify that this is about the relative pronoun - "the guy that served me" v "the guy who served me" Fact is both are fine in these examples. Like so much else in English, rather than "rules" of grammar this is about usage and preference. The idea that it's demeaning to use "that" for a person is probably a modern sensibility that it might be perceived as causing offence. But "that" has long established historical usage going right back to the 11th century - that's before Chaucer To bring things up to date, the OED's definition of "that" is very clear - it includes "denoting a thing or person"

Yesterday I was tipped off about a Youtube vid. The innocent little blue one anonymous source who doesn't want to be named had to take a shower immediately afterwards. But I'm wondering if this was wise. If you listen carefully you can hear the sound of running water, so it's very possible this happened in or near a bathroom... Now there will be those who say I'm just trying to make people run, screaming, to the nearest insane asylum. Or gouge their own eyes out with a spoon so they never again have to see images of such unmitigated horror. But they're just mischief makers because, as regular readers will know, this thread is merely an information resource to help people understand the world around them. Something that folks can browse, in comfort, in their La-Z-Boy recliners, secure in the knowledge that they're safe from these crawling nightmares. Unless, of course, there really is a spiders nest inside their chair. The one they're sitting in. Right now. But, hey, relax! No need to get all alarmed and worked up, because that's most unlikely. Probably... Remember, what you see below can't harm you. It can't crawl into your mind and drive you crazy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZE66D3ZY7sQ

Option 1. amazing new invention - rubber gloves Option 2. (if at home) leave for Mom to deal with Option 3. leave it / deny knowledge / await Option 2 process / break bathroom window and blame it on incontinent intruder .

ah, to be 21 again...

congratz Went to see the number and it's no more Not even 10001, which is also great being reversible, but 10002 *sighs* Oh well, I guess 20000 won't be too long coming

I like black pudding. It's made by pouring fresh blood with added fatty bits into a long sausage tube. Then it's boiled. So basically it's a giant blood clot with lumps of fat in it *licks lips*

if you've done something wrong to another person then just apologize. It's easy to do Just like admitting to yourself you're gay What gives us grief is dealing with all the internal stuff - the crap that screws us all up - to be able to do that... .

Bet there are some folks would want second helpings...

"the penguins..."

looks like I was a week early with my last one Anyways, Puppilull's just reminded me that my bro had a lovely black labrador bitch. I don't recall she was a punk bitch but she was another greedy dog. Then my bro got a BL puppy. He was amazed that it was perfectly house trained - no mess anywhere ...until he spotted the puppy doing its worst on the kitchen floor... which was immediately gobbled up... still warm and fresh... *is feeling unwell* .

Well I missed it. Clearly it was in extremely bad taste but all folks have to do us walk away. In fact, unless it's illegal - which I doubt this was - that's what we should do, not revoke belief in FOS. Otherwise we're heading towards big trouble. Drew seems to have conflated defending the right with defending the content. It's perfectly possible to uphold the former and despise the latter. No need for any compromise or soul searching

Never saw your blog so I've no opinion. Although I'm very surprised it could have been so bad as to make one staunch FOS advocate do a 180 Especially as this is sacrosanct to the American psyche. That being said a good rule of thumb is to stick to your own tribe when joking. So African Americans can joke about niggas, Jews about Israel, paraplegics about wheelchairs... you get the idea. And I can joke about crazy Americans coz we're cousins

Is puzzled - what set of facts could make you do a 180 on your conviction principle?

Here's how it worked Member A - Opening Post asking a question or giving a point of view Often this was to get views and maybe increase knowledge and understanding. Or it might be intentionally inflammatory Now and again it was deliberately calculated to stamp on as many buttons as the member was able to What happened next usually followed a predictable pattern.... Member B - replies with something adjacent to the OP Member C - challenges something in Member B's post Member B - objects to Member C's challenge Member D - butts in with fresh allegations completely irrelevant to the OP or previous posts ...then all Hell lets loose The big difference in Soapbox was that threads had a very long life. Even when you thought they were completely and absolutely stone cold dead, they could suddenly spring back to life with fresh fighting debating. Contrast with the blogs which just fade away and die and are soon forgotten True. But if you admire them as people then, as someone else said in a related thread, you have to admire their "sins" as well. And politicians are full of "sin". I may admire certain actions of politicians but I can't think of a single prominent politician I wholly admire as a person. Even Churchill was deeply flawed - he just happened to be right on the one thing that mattered at the time. As for Lincoln he was a lawyer - I could leave it at that So he was highly skilled at manipulating language. We don't know a lot about him as a person, pretty much all there is are records of his actions, his correspondence and his speeches. It's entirely legitimate to call him out on his words "...government of the people, by the people, for the people..." because, though they may well be noble words that we all endorse, in Mr Lincoln's GA it was cant. Politicians do it all the time. Because Mr Lincoln's agenda was keeping the union. At all costs - including the continuance of slavery. Which would have to mean blacks excluded altogether from those fine words "...government of the people, by the people, for the people..." If you still don't believe Mr Lincoln's use of the word "people" excluded black slaves in the GA, he had made this very clear the previous year in his letter to the editor, New York Tribune 22 Aug 1862 My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. Being a lawyer, Mr Lincoln would have known full well he was being dishonest with these fine words. But he wasn't just being dishonest about "people". The USA believes in democracy and in the right to self-determination. But, as H L Menken noted, "The Union... fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves." Now consider this. The UK is also a union. Part of it tried to break away last year. No-one fought each other. No-one was killed. A legal process was put in place for a referendum. As it happens... nothing happened. Seems to me the UK exemplifies American values more than Mr Lincoln did. 'lead, follow, or get out of the way' is the cause of much grief throughout history. It's toxic and potentially lethal. Examples include potential homicide as demonstrated in the Milgram Experiment, in various air accident reports where co-pilots "followed" the Captain's decisions and failed to challenge, and "group think" by boards and management teams such as NASA which contributed to the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster. And just look at the so-called Islamic State which is thriving on having strong leaders, indoctrinating and radicalizing "followers" and everyone else is "got out of the way" - generally with a bullet. A healthy modern democracy, society and business can only flourish if there are also people prepared to challenge, to call out politicians and overbearing leaders. I wasn't acting "as if Europe is any better at race/ethnic relations than the US" because, first of all, Europe is not one country just as the US is not one state and so I have no influence over or responsibility for what happens in other European countries. And second, my contribution was not about "who's better / worse" - what I did do was call out some hollow words of a long dead politician as cant. It's the duty of citizens in any democracy to challenge - as explained in my response to Carlos. Likewise the ethnic mix of London "compared to New York or Philadelphia" is not relevant - it's not a competition, and the migration history of London is entirely different from US cities for good reasons to do with a 2000 year history and geographic location, so to accuse London of being "whitewashed" is inappropriate and erroneous.. Likewise the generalized swipes "You treat Arabs far worse in Europe than Americans treat blacks" and "Europeans are often far more blatant about their racism then most Americans".

Happy Independence Day to all our cousins across the pond

Some merit in your comments about the C of E, but I'd just point out first that the House of Lords bishops - the "Lords Spiritual" - are not part of government so the constitutional significance is immaterial, and second this aspect of "institutional racism" is a sideshow compared to the deliberate continuing disenfranchisement of black Americans 100 years and more after Mr Lincoln's fine sounding words

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The "sound bite" comment was perhaps, what we call in UK, "tongue in cheek" But Lincoln was nothing if not a very astute politician and he was very skilled at polishing his speeches for maximum impact on his audiences. He knew full well that his important speeches would be widely reported and would thus become a permanent printed record. My issue with politicians - and that's what Lincoln was - is they always have an agenda that rarely coincides with the speeches they make. Worse, their speeches rarely reflect the actual facts and realities at the time those speeches are made. And despite the reverence shown by many Americans to Lincoln in general and to this speech in particular, the same holds true of the GA. It's worth remembering that another great American, Martin Luther King, made particular reference to the shameful fact that universal sufferage still did not apply to all American "blacks" when he made his I Have A Dream speech in 1963 - 100 years later! (from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial)