El Pibe

"Nowadays someone who sticks old agricultural implements on the wall of a Los Angeles motel regards himself as on a par with Michelangelo; moreover, since all their friends are dickheads, too, no one is about to disabuse them. Hell, on Planet Dickhead just turning up the trip-hop can be a work of unalloyed genius" Will Self in entertaining grumpy old man form. http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2014/09/will-self-awful-cult-talentless-hipster-has-taken-over

I've been to the fares to pay window a million times. Once I got a penalty fare, usually they're content to charge the journey. I don't have a criminal record, well except you know, you live a fine upstanding life and you kill *one* person.....

the standard 'upright' representation is at quite a slant as you can see. still looks like cardiff pips it on that map, though google he say no 3.1833? W vs 3.1889? W Though i guess as cardiff is further south that would make it further west in terms of physical distance from 0, he said pedantically.

You can't say that, you get told to stop being a misery, especially if you use the word hipsters, students, commies or ironicprotestoomuchjohhniecomlatelies ;)

Can't speak for this season, I saw a couple of cracking encounters last season and a couple of horrors, so i guess like all things there are ups and downs. They've certainly been heading the right direction though and glad to see the crowds are on the up too.

This ones very cool too. Why people died in the 20th century, the car almost as deadly as world war 2, neither nearly as danagrous as the shits!! http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/20th-century-death/

http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/the-middle-east-key-players-notable-relationships/ col infographic if you've ever wanted to tease apart the crazily complex web of relationships in the middle east. mind you it's a complex infographic naturally ;)

to be fair snorky may have got banned, i'm not sure any other aliases have, possibly from the lounge. i thin khe just retires out of frustration from time to time and then gets sucked back and enjoys the 15 or 20 minutes beofre someone twigs ;) *Dons kevlar full head helmet*

THe whole genetic history thing is early doors really, and a bit like trying to tease apart linguistic development, alot of it will remain conjecture until the science gets better, but i have to say the early conclusions make a great deal more sense to me than the stuff I was taught when I was at school and university. I thoroughly recommend Origins of the British by Stephen Oppenheimer for an intimidatingly comprehensive work on this. http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/stephenoppenheimer/origins_of_the_british.php

That brings stuff to mind, we read any numbre of times about man x in the states shooting some poor non wasp cub scout on their door step, or putting shiny coins out whilst waiting in the shadows with a shotgun, do they generally get off?

We could call it Goldfordshire?

I think that's just their name for manslaughter isn't it?

ah, i didn't realise no jury. it's alright dave, i wasn't getting ideas ;) Just found it curious that she more or less said he can't be done for murder because because his story which she seemed to acknowledge were a pack of lies, were plausible enough, and lying doesn't make you guilty, if i understood? Is this what amounts to 'reasonable doubt'? eta - and i guess i should have said everyone in SA

i've no idea how you murder a wave now i read back.

I guess in the scheme of things, given ew have free movement of labour and capital (ish) within the EU, I don't suppose it ought to make that much difference. And given we have contradictory 'evidence' of whether scotland is a net contributor or consumer of the treasury, i guess that remains to be seen. As i've said best of luck and i can't wait for London to secede in a careful what you wish for sort of fashion.

So I've generally avoided the whole pistorius thing, but i have to say i'm finding whatever bit of the trial this is, with the judge giving some sort of guidelines to the jury, quite interesting. She's more or less said whether he knew Reeva was in there or not is irrelevant because we can never know, any evidence being circumstantial, all he can be done on is what we do know, that he thought a human being was in there and he unloaded on them. I'm no lawyer and I've no idea how precendent works legally speaking, but is that a green light for everyone to murder their waves in locked toilets as long as noone else is around if you're prepared to do the time for manslaughter (a fine to 15 years by all accounts)?

its alright i understood that, hence why i was going off on a pedantic point, which I'm wont to do. One that more or less says its very hard to conclude who migrated where, especially when the genetic stock is so similar that you can't use genetics as definitive proof of migration within something like the British Isles and their very close neighbours. The more popular modern theory of long term cross pollenation, movement of elites and of course ideas and language is generally preferred to migrations of peoples, in which case we have to conclude that Brittany's britainness is because of those 'celtic' cultural markers coming up from spain as far as scotland and that they tended to interact outwardly on the sea more than they did inwardly to those nasty belgae, franks and norsemen (who in turn were a transference of elites, not people) rather than a bunch of greater britons upped sticks and made brittany our first foray into french* conquests. For instance barring some known transference of elites from ireland to scotland, its INCREDIBLY hard to ascertain the levels of migration and transplantation of people to and fro between scotland and ireland, because there are no mutations to mark them apart. All we know of poor old pictish is that it died in a pincer movement of english ,irish gaelic and norse. Of the Picts we can probably conclude that they're all still there and some live in Ireland and Northern Britain**, but that we kind of have to go with our gut on that one. *for want of a better term **actually they all hang around kings cross drinking Super Tennants to briefly nick Stuart Lee's line ;)

Kenny Anderson's more honest take (King Creosote) on Westminster's role for Scotland. ""I'm definitely in the no camp because I don't think there's an argument for independence. "Glasgow or Edinburgh can't be a Scottish London. London is a portal for the world, and Glasgow or Edinburgh isn't. All it will do is create another level of bureaucracy and that's not going to change anything. It's dangerous. "The Scots are pretty good at being the reserve team - all five million of us. And Scots don't get behind our own. We don't accept our failures. We need someone to blame and if that's not Westminster, who is it? If Scotland is going to be an oasis in a UK hell, why can't we share it?" He adds: "In an ocean of sharks, we don't need to be a smaller shoal. I really despair at it."" Did we ever get an unflippant vgrant take on it? I'm curious.....

can i just say that that floating/bouncing 'update predictions' button may be the single most irritating web concept i'vve come across for a long time.

ooh cross post John. Yeah I think it's important to rescue this idea of national tribal difference that underpins our divisive sense of who we are, when in fact we're all close cousins. The saxons changed some of the culture in the south east, but then the scots were hugely influenced by the vikings until conquered (and theeir language crushed) by the irish. It was really the normans that made the political split of us and them, though even they took Ireland then got sort of culturally subsumed. Aaanyway, i think it'd be great if we all focussed more on our huge comonality rather than ill perceived seperation. Except in the rugby, cos that's good fun!!!!

If I'm going to get all pedantic, 'celtic' is a bit of a misnomer. The inhabitants of the both isles and our near neighbours are very close genetically across the board, mainly from original immigrations plus lots of cross pollenation, but more trade and communication than migration. They had lots of names for themselves of which briton (priton? touch to say, not much written record except from the romans) was one. But none of them called themselves celts. The reason for the 'celtic' fringe is thanks to common cultural markers spreading up the seaboard channels of trade up the atlantic, and most of those emanate from Spain (and the northern tribes actually DID refer to themselves as celtae), but are cultural ideas rather than migrations (though I'm sure the sailors had the odd tryst with a lovely local lass). The application of 'celtic' as an idea of seperate identity from the nasty saxon english is the work of a Welsh nationalist historian who basically got most of it wrong, though it accorded with a post reformation english redefined narrative as good protestant germans, but wrong things often stick ;)

gigirl seconded. if she said it, it's gospel!