Graeme

Happy 21st Birthday, Jovian! :music: :music: I hope you have an absolutely fantastic day!

Happy Birthday, Steve! :king: :king: :king: :king: :king: Don't even think about trying to catch up to me

:wub: Happy Birthday, James! :wub: Best wishes and good luck with everything!

The open-top double-decker bus tour isn't too bad, but you're probably better off going to specific places. The Fisherman's wharf area is definitely worth a visit. We had a look at the WWII armed merchantship and submarine that are docked there, and then to the arcade 'museum' nearby. A harbor boat trip is worth doing, if you can afford it. Lombard Street is worth a photo or two (the crookedest street -- it appears in lots of movies set in San Francisco). That's about all I can remember from our trip there, but then we had a different age group to cater for (getting our two boys away from the arcade 'museum' was a real challenge....)

I'm pretty bad when in comes to writing mysteries, but I believe the key to keeping a secret is to lead the readers into making an incorrect assumption. If you can lead them to believe, for example, that a particular character hates the protagonist, then they won't suspect that that character is only doing what he is doing to help the protagonist, but has personal (or other) reasons why they just can't come out and say so. I can't really give concrete examples, because that would spoil those stories for anyone who hasn't read them yet, but hopefully that's clear enough. The trick is to hide from the reader the fact that they are making that incorrect assumption....

G'day, Steve! Hang in there and thank you very much for the update

Interesting, but I can't think of any marsupials that possess spines. Echidna's are monotremes, not marsupials...

Happy Birthday!

Firstly... a disclaimer: I've seen an early draft of chapter 46. Having said that, I have to agree with MikeL -- this is beyond a mere cliffhanger, as even the cliffs are falling.... The term "cliffhanger" derives from old TV dramas, where a damsel in distress would be left hanging from a cliff at the end of an episode. This is more like a few seconds later, after the damsel's grip has slipped and she's started to fall. As an aside, after CJ sent me chapter 45 to beta-read, he sent me another email saying he had forgotten to put two words at the end of the chapter: The End. However, he later decided that the story probably shouldn't end at this point, so he's written some more. There are some clues as to what's going on in this and earlier chapters. When I read through, I picked up on some of them, but not others. I'd be interested in seeing who can work out what happens next.

It's rare, but known. I remember a documentary on TV many years ago that looked at one particular gay guy in New York City (I think) whose friends had been dying around him, but he never contracted HIV, despite doing the same thing as them. Unfortunately, I don't believe they ever managed to work out why....

Reading the text with youtube clip, it indicates that they were outtakes from an ad campaign shoot. In other words, he was asked to dance in underwear as part of an advertising campaign -- blame the advertising executives if you think it's weird

Personally, I haven't seen either Borat or Bruno, and I'm not really interested. I've seen enough to know that Cohen's sense of humour doesn't agree with me, regardless of what he's trying to lampoon.

Can we please keep the thread on topic -- a discussion as to whether the movie is worth seeing. Everyone is an individual. Our sense of humour is a derivative of our experiences. Some people will find offensive what others find funny -- that's a fact of life. We do not need to discuss in this thread what is or is not funny, and why. If you want to do that (and I, personally, would find that interesting), please do so in The Soapbox, because the discussion is likely to get very lively (read: heated).

G'day! Welcome to the GA forums and if you've got any questions, please don't hesitate to ask.

Let's keep politics out of this discussion, if possible, or Conner is right and the thread will be moved to The Soapbox, and I personally think it's better here in The Lounge. Hoskins is right about people seeing the past through rose-coloured glasses -- they remember the good times and often forget the bad. Also, they were, almost universally younger in the 'good old days' and most of us would like to be young again. However, moving to what Thirdeye has ask, where people use the phrase of 'the good old days' from a societal point of view, rather than an individual point of view, I think the same issue applies. People think that in those days life was simpler, and hence 'nicer', but they are still remembering things through rose-coloured glasses. Several posters have pointed out the bad things that occurred during those years. The people using the phrase are remembering the good things and forgetting the bad. Often the phrase is used in the context of something specific. For example, employment, education, interest rates, crime rates, etc. A person may lament about the 'good old days' when you could let your kids walk to the local park without being afraid that they would be attacked by the local hoodlums, but ignore the other aspects of life at the time (when you were afraid that a nuclear attack could occur at any time, for example). A person may lament the 'good old days' when education standards 'were higher', but ignore the fact that kids nowadays have a much broader informal education through things like the Internet.

Chat is one of the outstanding bug items listed in Myr's last update. I think it would be best to wait until all the issues are resolved and THEN check to see if the list of who is in chat is available.

It also appears to be popular in Australia. The station is repeating last week's episode on Sunday afternoon, then the new episode on Sunday night. Last week, they also had a half-hour special about the show before the new episode, and it appears that that special was done for Australia (there were a few places where the actors explicitly mentioned the interest in Australia). The American networks may decide not to show it, but I think the show itself should continue, at least for a while. I, for one, intend to get a copy of the first season on DVD when it becomes available, and I normally don't buy DVDs.

Happy Birthday to one of my favourite authors! :music: :music: May your socks always be mismatched

This is an easy one -- J'Shon from dkstories's The Rider's Pride. Being a dragonrider on Pern is a dangerous job, but I've wanted to be a dragonrider since I read the first of the Pern stories.

I read something interesting (the story is on all the major newspaper sites I visit), that the High Court had originally rejected the appeal, but the Supreme Court told them to have another look. This is the outcome of that second look. So, if it goes to the Supreme Court, there is a significant probably that it will let the ruling stand. However, one article says that the High Court has recommended that the Government make the appropriate changes to section 377, but the government is lukewarm on the idea. It is possible that, rather than change section 377, that the government will change the definition of 'equality' that was used in the courts decision, similar in concept to what proposition 8 did in California. So many possibilities.... :wacko:

I read through the comments on the NY Times article and some seem to indicate that it does NOT just affect New Dehli. Unless it's appealed to the Supreme Court, the ruling that it's unconstitutional will, I think, apply to the whole country. But it's not clear. I think we'll have to wait for one of the Indian members to weigh in as to the detail.

Indian court overturns gay sex ban (article from the New York Times) Congratulations to our Indian members -- homosexuality has been decriminalised! There's still a lot of effort required to reduce discrimination, as mentioned in the article, but this is a step in the right direction.

I was aware of this, and MikeL gave an example above where, out of a $400M prize, he would end up with $65M (though that did include giving away half of the $400M to charity for tax reasons). It's why I made a point of saying that lottery prizes in Australia are not taxed. The prize money ended up being AUD$106M. The main prize in the lotteries here is defined as being a percentage of the total pool, which is based on how many tickets are sold, though they are allowed to advertise a guaranteed minimum 1st division prize. Because there was so much interest, the prize pool ended up being larger than expected, and so the 1st division prize was increased to $106M. Alas, I didn't win. Two people, one in Queensland and one in South Australia, have shared that prize, winning $53M each. Still a lot of money....

Okay, that's a lot more expensive than Melbourne. There are regions of Melbourne where buying a home will set you back $2M, but the vast majority of homes are less than $1M and I think the median price across the whole city is between $300K and $400K Even a harbourside building in Sydney would generally be less than $10M. Of course, if you're buying 640 acres near Melbourne, in an area zoned for development, you'd probably be approaching that $55M figure you mentioned, so that's comparable, but if you moved further out it wouldn't be anywhere near that much.

Out of $90M, funding GA and a few other sites that I like would come out of the loose change. I had assumed that was a given. It's the big expenses that I'm thinking about (though maybe GA needs a new headquarters building... somewhere on Pennsylvania Ave in DC, maybe. A big white building would be appropriate, if the price was right).