Zombie

I'm guessing Cia means don't publish! Writing now is fine - in fact it's best to do it while you're experiencing something because all the details are still fresh and you'll capture stuff you'd maybe otherwise forget. A diary is a good way - actual dialogue, your emotions, anything. It needn't be structured - bullets, random thoughts, interesting facts, characters you encounter. This will all be excellent source material if you do later decide to work up a story around your experiences

Andy's right Schools have banned parents from taking photos / vids of their kids at school shows because of "child protection" - er, protecting them from what, exactly? Oh, yeah, that would be from their own Mums and Dads, and others looking at pics in a family photo album. A teacher was suspended for driving home a pupil who was stranded at the end of the school day when their ride never showed up, and for giving her number to another pupil suffering bereavement in case they wanted someone they could talk to about their grief. And a new law was planned in 2009 to ban parents from giving lifts to other kids unless they were first checked and registered with a new anti-paedophile database. Vigilance is necessary. But so too is trust and common sense.

I'll take you word for it - even though according to the German food critic, Wolfgang Fassbender, "the biggest challenge when eating surströmming is to vomit only after the first bite... rather than before" .

I've just been re-reading Second Wind, by Mickey S, about a guy, Joey, who has a very young child, Connor, and a new boyfriend, Ben, who he's only known a few months: "Although I teased Ben about his ulterior motives about getting a crib for Connor, I was thrilled with the idea. I wanted some 'alone time' with Ben in his bedroom as much as he did. But I was even more pleased about what his thought meant. I had heard single parents complain about the problems of dating when you have kids. It wasn't just finding time alone. If you got into a serious relationship the other person had to love your kid nearly as much as you did. " I don't know when this story was originally written, but would someone with a new partner really feel that way today? When I was a child it was normal for adults I came into contact with at home to play with me. I loved the rough and tumble, being rolled over and tickled by relatives, uncles and family friends,and they would engage with me - talk to me, find out what I liked, what I was interested in. But move forward to the present and I find I can't do that - because that could be interpreted as potential "grooming". The unremitting news of one child abuse scandal after another has created a climate of fear and suspicion about children. In some respects rightly so, especially as we now know that many cases of child abuse involved close friends and family members. But in other respects this is toxic. It's like the shutters have been pulled down on families - inside is the immediate nuclear family unit, outside is everyone else, with those inside looking out at every one else with suspicion, questioning every approach, every contact, wondering... Tbh I just can't be done with that. Who wants to be a suspected paedophile every time they play with or just even talk to a child? So, effectively, for a long time now I've switched off all meaningful contact with anyone not "adult". It probably wasn't even a conscious choice to begin with, just an "awareness" of other people's possible fears. But over time it became a default behaviour, and maybe a defence. After all child abuse is the worst possible crime, probably ranking above multiple murder in the public mind, and the mere misinterpretation of normal and innocent behaviour would have devastating personal consequences. But the really sad thing is this has included my interactions with children of my own friends and family. It's been very business like - certainly no physical rough and tumble, nothing like the real, uninhibited and unsupervised contact I experienced with many adults and loved as a child. I hate myself for having done it - not fighting against it - and I despair at society, what it has become, and what it has lost. I see no way back to the childhood innocence and relationships with many adults that I enjoyed and learned from

Oh dearie me, justice fugitive Justin's just been spotted committing yet ANOTHER crime right outside the Toronto police station where he's just been booked for assualting his limo driver... Listen up Justin, that look is just sooo last millennium - your Dad was wearing backwards baseball caps back in the 1980s! You want to look like your Dad? Why not do the whole retro thing and model yourself on this cool dude :funny:

Kleenex / Kimberly-Clark shares are up 20%...

Two weeks ago Reaction Engines Ltd (REL) in the UK announced its first formal link-up with the US government. The company, based at Abingdon, near Oxford, has entered into a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with the Air Force Research Laboratory’s [AFRL] Aerospace Systems Directorate. The US interest follows the British government's £60 million investment to continue development of the Skylon project and the European Space Agency's [ESA] validation of the technology behind SABRE [Synergistic Air-Breathing Rocket Engine] The US is interested in how SABRE will switch in flight from air-breathing mode which takes it to Mach 5.5 - twice as fast as a jet - to that of a rocket engine, reaching Mach 25, or 7.5 km per second. The engine’s hybrid nature will allow a spacecraft to take off from a runway and fly directly into orbit. Its secret is heat exchanger technology that can can cool air entering the engine from 1,000°C to minus 150°C in just one hundredth of a second whilst preventing ice from forming within the unit. And it is all done using equipment that weighs less than a standard car to transfer as much heat - 450MW - as generated by an electricity power station. The engines would power Skylon to become a reusable replacement for the Space Shuttle, carrying cargo and crews to space stations from any airport with a long enough and strong enough runway, and with a speedy turnaround time between missions. But the SABRE engine also has the potential to power other vehicles, and could fly passengers at hypersonic speed from one side of the Earth to the other - e.g. London to Sydney - in less than four hours. Barry Hellman, for AFRL, said: “This CRADA opens the door for joint development and testing to help AFRL understand the SABRE engine’s technical details, and whether it may offer unique performance and vehicle integration advantages when compared to traditional hypersonic vehicle concepts. We look forward to exploring the engine and its lightweight heat exchangers which have the potential to enable hypersonic air-breathing rocket propulsion.” http://www.sen.com/news/rival-spaceplanes-attract-interest-abroad

Ahem, maybe time for another song? I'm not a big fan of Country. But then I'm not a big fan of pigeonholing music either - if it's good it's good, end of. And I like this I Want Crazy - Hunter Hayes

He's Captain Jack in Torchwood, a Who spin-off

Cudos to Mertens In the UK this would be equivalent to a minor league footballer (oops, "soccer" player ) - don't think it would get a mention unless as part of a bigger story about prejudice generally. Even gay politicians aren't news anymore. But coming out is probably always going to be news if someone is A list and eligible because we're in a celebrity culture where even plucked eyebrows will get attention For those guys it's about "taking them off the market" for their fans who fantasize about snagging a celebrity and having their babies... So the Tom Daley "news" will always be a story

I'm on a 70s kick at the moment "Batchelor Boy" Cliff Richard has always insisted he's straight - so what's this song all about? Wishful thinking...? Beware the Devil Woman She's gonna get you from behind... Devil Woman

Just a normal mom with a group of happy children? No! These creatures have been created by this mother of four as a business. She sells them for $1,500 a pop! Like this... and this... and these... and these... These living nightmares are now in homes across the world. Oh God, they could be anywhere!

I didn't intend to watch that but then I found I had - AND I'd clicked the Like button. How the Hell did that happen?!? The way I embed vids is simply paste the URL and then bookend it with [ media ] and [ /media ] obviously you remove all gaps and returns to get it on one line - I can't show this because when posted they just disappear - POOOFF!

Heard this on the radio - no mystery which decade this comes from, the mystery is what was Mr McCrae doing here in Holland? Although from his trouser "display" at around 6:00 it seems he was primed for some spectacular action in Amsterdam! Rock Your Baby

Nope, you're missing the point - not reviving the thread discussion, that's been done to death / flogged to destruction Just closing it off - after all Saturday was the appointed day... What he has done is actually get people talking about "what is art?" In this thread - just look at the views! - and in loads of others like this http://www.ladslads.com/blogs/view/2014/January/north_west/so_today_is_the_day_art_school_stole_his_virginity/382241 And that's a good thing. Someone in the ladslads blog made the interesting point that for something to be "art" it must provoke a reaction. Well, he's sure done that Simple concept cleverly executed. He should get an A+

because Saturday 25 Jan.... and You're right - there's absolutely nothing! ... because the "performance" was the frenzied response - his artistic input was the promotion. It's cost him bugger all and he got a worldwide response. I'd call that a result

yum yum, sounds delicious... ... compared with surströmming

maybe, but that still leaves the more serious offence of drag racing - that's the one where he is most at risk of being banged up with a sexually frustrated tat covered sweaty muscle stud and... [sTOP IT! *SMACK!*]

Today's the day!!!

Perhaps I can interest Sir in our new 2014 Catalogue... The "Leatherman" collection or, my personal favourite, "The Enforcer"

Underage pop star charged with offenses after failing field sobriety test, racing Lamborghini on city streets First offense of a drag-racing offense nets a sentence of up to six months, a fine of $500 to $1,000, and a one-year license suspension. "Do the crime do the time". Yeah, baby, boy's goin' down! Expect slash writers to be sharpening their pencils and their readers needing several changes of underwear as the excitement mounts at the prospect of JB being locked up for 6 months with a hairy horny hunk with tats... http://www.policeone.com/highway-patrol-2/articles/6760921-Bieber-arrested-for-OUI-drag-racing/Bieber arrested for OUI, drag racing

When granddads rocked...

maybe in Russia they've abolished the theory stuff and gone straight for the practical...

I agree with you. Consider the feeble accuracy of weather forecasting, say, just 30 years ago when they couldn't reliably get it right for the next 24 hours. Unbelievably vast amounts of money has been ploughed into getting it right - data gathering [satellites], analyzing and modelling [supercomputers] which now give us pretty reliable 5 day forecasts. And all this effort and money was driven by the military - Britain's Met Office is part of the MoD and it's probably the same in the US - because the military learned from D-Day just how critical understanding weather is for military operations. But there isn't a military driver for global warming because the effects aren't relevant to military objectives. So political leaders need to step up and accept their responsibility to drive this now because part of their role is managing risks for society and this risk is potentially catastrophic because even if the likelihood is rated as very low, the impact is... er... catastrophic! In the UK our political leaders have told us "we're all in this together". And they're right. If it turns out humanity has been crapping in our collective "nest" then we're all doomed to end up in deep shit. *btw I've not ignored you, Graeme - the contrary views you've raised support James's view of the need for a concerted and sane approach on research - we have to get past the current insane political deadlock and behave as the intelligent species we seem to think we are - and that means serious public funding so we can understand all we need to know and not just assume all will turn out well *

now we know why a little blue bear still needs her nappy...