Zombie

Sounds grim

"I built a fire in the fire pit, and burned things that needed to be burned, limbs, ... etc." Limbs?? Burned??? What a waste!

Interesting article. Linz was right about failure of democracy being "driven more by constitutional structure than by culture or economics." The way I see it, living in a free society that respects and supports minority views and ways of life is not the result of having a "democratic government". Absolutely not. Having a successful democratic government is the end result of a process that has evolved and embedded individual rights and freedoms within the national structures and national institutions - not "government". Things like the legal system [actually, the legal system is the most important one here], and the police "service" - yes, that's right, the police are there to serve the public, not the State. There are many others too. Which is why starting "from scratch" and cobbling together a "democratic government" just doesn't work [Exhibit A:Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Egypt etc etc] Because for "democratic government" to work it has to sit on top of all those embedded individual rights and freedoms. So it's no surprise when you look at countries where "democratic government" has failed - because there was nothing underneath to support it. It's like building a house on sand. The problem is time. It takes time for individual rights and freedoms to evolve and develop within the national structures. In the case of Britain that process took around 1,000 years. That's just too long. But I've not seen an alternative that works well and has been sustained over the long term.

This is from a UK govt website 1. What is parental responsibility? All mothers and most fathers have legal ... responsibilities as a parent - known as ‘parental responsibility’. If you have parental responsibility, your most important roles are to: provide a home for the child protect and maintain the child 2. Who has parental responsibility A mother automatically has parental responsibility for her child from birth. A father usually has parental responsibility if he is: married to the child’s mother listed on the birth certificate (after a certain date, depending on which part of the UK the child was born in) Like everything else, people don't always do what they should do. So there are lots of legal mechanisms in place where parents fail to meet their responsibilities. No system is perfect but the law is on the child's side. Seems pretty obvious to me that this should be so. https://www.gov.uk/parental-rights-responsibilities/what-is-parental-responsibility

Go Granddad!! Two things puzzle me - aren't parents in the US legally obligated to nurture and provide for their children irrespective? Surely they'd be criminally and civilly liable if they "kicked out", "disowned" (favourite staples of gay fiction ) or failed to to nurture and provide for them? Also don't see why the Huff corrected his grammar ["sic"] - seems fine to me.

Douglas Bader the famous WW2 fighter pilot who'd lost both his legs said: "Rules are for the guidance of wise men and the obedience of fools". In his case there's a delicious irony because it was breaking rules [on low flying aerobatics] that caused him to have the accident that cost him his legs but, still, there's an important truth in what he said. And I firmly believe this applies equally to writing. What is important is to find your own style or "voice". Yes, to be inspired but not to slavishly copy what other people - often dead people - have done before. Applies to life generally too

R.I.P.

"He is mexican, maybe black-haired, handsome, catlike, cruel, compact, lithe, muscular; quick and graceful on his feet." Nothing wrong with multiple adjectives if used appropriately, for example: "I bought a beautiful, antique, red, Italian, silk tie ...". Five adjectives! But this is economical writing - it conveys a lot of information with the minimum words. I've not read any Christopher Isherwood - shame on me - so I can't comment on his overall writing style, but I'm guessing this use of multiple adjectives is not typical of his writing style - which would make for a tiresome read So I have no problem with the sentence you quoted because it too is economical writing, conveying much information about the character in a single sentence with the minimum words. It's also distinctive and memorable - you picked it out - and therefore interesting. These are welcome attributes of effective writing. The problem with uniform adherence to prescriptive rules is that they make everything ... uniform. Do we really want every novel to read like Stephen King? I like variety - variety is the spice of life as they say As for A Single Man, widely recognised as his finest novel, I'd be happy to receive a fraction of the acclaim this has received from literary critics And who would not be happy to produce writing of this distinctive quality: The creature we are watching will struggle on and on until it drops. Not because it is heroic. It can imagine no alternative. Staring and staring into the mirror, it sees many faces within its face – the face of the child, the boy, the young man, the not-so-young man – all present still, preserved like fossils on superimposed layers, and, like fossils, dead. Their message to this live dying creature is: Look at us – we have died – what is there to be afraid of?

You've shown real strength to do what you did. When you are ill it's very difficult to fight your corner so well done you and hope you're soon fully recovered

TLBO knows too much

Welcome IAN - never too late to say hi

One thing I'd like to confirm once and for all is that Richard III murdered the Princes in the Tower. But then I'd want to save them And that would change all history and today would be a very different world - maybe better, maybe much worse That's the problem, try to make one thing better and it has all kinds of unpredictable consequences I'm a sucker for time travel and alternate reality / parallel dimension stories. The Beeb did one based on an old John Wyndham story called "Random Quest" about a sad nuclear physics geek - Sam West - whose experiment goes wrong and he wakes up in the body of his much-more-successful self in an alternate but very similar universe and what happens. It's in 6 parts on Youtube if you like this kind of story

Zombies are deeply misunderstood - we just want to be loved But no-one wants to read about that so you go ahead, W_L, and give 'em what they want

Score: 0 Gender: Male Age Range: 35-39 I'm good at packing too. And at stacking the dishwasher Vision and colour perception is interesting. BBC's "Horizon" did a great science doc on vision and how we see with our brains not our eyes ["Seeing Is Believing" - it's on Youtube]. Because we "see" with our brains, our language also affects how we perceive colour. The Himba, an African nomadic tribe in Namibia have just four words for colour: zuzu = dark shades of blue, red, green and purple; vapa = white and some shades of yellow; buru = some shades of green and blue; and dambu = some other shades of green, red and brown. Colour perception tests with this tribe showed their limited vocabulary means it takes the Himba longer to distinguish between colours within each of these 4 categories compared with, say, English speakers with a much bigger range of words to describe all the colours of the rainbow and more. They'd probably do pretty crap at Foopy's test You still think the eye's just a camera? OK, open up this link. You'll see a circle of 12 purple dots, each dot disappearing, then the next. Follow it round with your eyes and you'll see the only colour is purple. Now stare at the cross in the middle - you will see a GREEN dot going around. But there is no green - you've just seen there isn't - your brain put it there. But it gets better - you'll see the green dot eat up all the other purple dots Pacman-style! We don't see the world as it is, only as our brains interpret it http://www.planetperplex.com/en/item/pacman-illusion/

Yes, it was nice when they started talking English too Examples: dog breeding by evil humans = genetic problems in various breeds In "nature" it seems to happen with some species such as bonobos, lions, some fish - there's loads on the web like this link if this is your "special interest" http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Sex/story?id=4612467&page=1 Another point - there are already problems with adopted siblings marrying, unaware, and the development of the sperm donor "industry" over the last 40 years means that more siblings / half siblings are going to marry, unaware, with potentially disastrous results. There are no effective controls in place to prevent this http://www.livescience.com/2226-incest-taboo-nature.html .

Fair enough. But I don 't see how meaningful data could be obtained on single occurrences - which begs the question how you could have an informed opinion either way.

Not according to this Marriage between first cousins doubles the risk of children being born with birth defects, according to a study seeking answers to the higher than expected rates of deaths and congenital abnormalities in the babies of the Pakistani community. http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/jul/04/marriage-first-cousins-birth-defects

The Fosse Way. It's an old Roman road. The Romans hated going round things so their roads are very straight - which means they go up and down a lot, which means lots of brows and hidden dips. Not so good on a single carriageway with overtaking drivers determined to cash in their life insurance policies before they get to their destination ...

Yikes, death penalty?? For perpetrators, writers, readers ... or all of 'em? .

Herbie Hancock 01 Cantaloupe Island 00:00 02 Watermelon Man 05:30 03 Driftin' 12:42 04 Blind Man, Blind Man 19:40 .

Yeah, another "family" friendly rapper to reject the vile hip-hop hating stuff. It's a cool song and vid with quality production

Maybe wouldn't go down so well in Oslo today ...

Try this on Youtube, Bill It's cool, but projection mapping's nothing new, it's been around a while. London-based Drive Productions’ 4D TV projection-mapping did David Guetta's gig on the Graham Norton show last year, the Jubilee projection for Madness on Buck House and loads of other outdoor events

Well done you!

Excellent blog, brink. Loved the mermaid's tale, the sadness and longing, the betrayal and the consequences and your beautiful translation. Children enjoy and learn from tales like this which educate about truth and morality but in a subtle and engaging way. Children can cope with sadness and bad things happening. Disney is great entertainment but it doesn't help children to understand the real world. Mimei's tale has the same characteristics as the rich oral tradition in Europe with tales such as the Pied Piper and those written down by the Brothers Grimm. People often focus on differences between cultures, but underneath those differences we have so much in common