Messages

Floyd: Fearless.

None of the rest have ever penned a decent tune.

Great post BC. Insight.

I am looking forward to Indianas, playing in front of 300,000 people

Unless you've played in front of 70,000 you couldn't possibly know what it's like. Since most people here have only played at club level it should be confined to those parameters . That's basic logic in my view . Unfortunately that's lacking in a lot of posters here .

Did you play with your flute in front of 70k? In the artane boys band of course 😂

Nice handle for that post... 

Krugman's take; cautiously optimistic

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/08/opinion/when-china-stumbles.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region&region=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region&_r=0

Time ye went back to being real men- murdering Native Americans, putting Blacks, Damn Mexicans, Micks and women in their rightful places.....

....Italians, Jews, Germans, Scots-Irish, Pilgrims all got a bit of discrimination when they arrived...its a right of passage you must go thru to enable your descendants to keep up the tradition.

Please tell me this is just a really poorly judged attempt at irony.   Please tell me that.

Are you concocting umbrage to induce yourself into outrage?

So it wasn't irony at all. 

Your response to a post referencing the genocide perpetuated on native americans and the experience of slaves and their descendants is to pass it off as  "a bit of discrimination"  which is merely a "rite of passage" and a tradition to be kept up.

No, no umbrage or outrage on my part, just disappointment.

[Rejected Churchill's offer of unity in the 1940s]

The South.(Just a few examples).

1.Accepted partition in the early 20th Century

2.Doing and has done nothing to end partition.

3.Rejected Churchill's offer of unity in the 1940s

4.Deals with the North of Ireland under its Foreign Affairs dept

5.Bertie Ahern addressed a (mainly nationalist) audience in Newry a few weeks ago,describing himself as a "good neighbour" no doubt reflecting the limit of the South's aspirations as far as the North goes.


Equally the UK does not want us either,I would readily concede.

Why on earth would you trust an "offer" from Churchill?  I mean seriously, an offer from the ever-tursthworthy British government?  Not to mention from a man who was prepared to use poison gas on ireland during WW2?


"By May 1941 it was clear that the British were prepared to use poison gas anywhere on the British archipelago - including neutral Eire. ''The use of gas in Ireland (including Eire) would be ordered and controlled by the General Officer commanding British troops in Ireland '' one top-secret memorandum declares. In other words, if the Germans had tried to use Eire as a back door into Britain the RAF would have sprayed the beaches of Ireland with mustard gas and/or phosgene."

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/12251410.Memo__From_Winston_Churchill_________To__General_Ismay_________Date__July_6__1944__It_may_be_several_weeks_before_I_ask_you_to_drench_Germany_with_poison_gas__and_if_we__do_it__let_us_do_it_one_hundred_per_cent/

Time ye went back to being real men- murdering Native Americans, putting Blacks, Damn Mexicans, Micks and women in their rightful places.....

....Italians, Jews, Germans, Scots-Irish, Pilgrims all got a bit of discrimination when they arrived...its a right of passage you must go thru to enable your descendants to keep up the tradition.

Please tell me this is just a really poorly judged attempt at irony.   Please tell me that.

Tutti Frutti - New Order. Exceptional.

Stuck it on for the first time today after rooting through some "best of 2015" lists.  Pretty poor fare, I thought.

If you want to put the document on an iPad, so you can use it on the go, I recommend: http://www.goodreader.com

A really great app, that takes a little getting used to. Take a photo of your document and then convert it to a PDF. Good reader can edit any PDF using typing and it also allows handwriting with your finger, so can tick boxes and even sign a document.

It can store large documents, e.g. manuals and has a great search function and bookmarking facility as well.

Have you by any chance used it for documents containing mathematical/logical symbols?  I've had to convert a lot of documents of this sort to PDF, and find that mathematical symbols are regularly misconverted, and have to be reentered by hand.

Never. I am not sure what range of symbols are available. You can 'handwrite' whatever you like onto the document with your finger but it depends what quality of document you need obviously. I have a keyboard with my iPad so I presume anything the keyboard can output can go into GoodReader and thus onto the document. But I am not certain.

Thanks. 

If you want to put the document on an iPad, so you can use it on the go, I recommend: http://www.goodreader.com

A really great app, that takes a little getting used to. Take a photo of your document and then convert it to a PDF. Good reader can edit any PDF using typing and it also allows handwriting with your finger, so can tick boxes and even sign a document.

It can store large documents, e.g. manuals and has a great search function and bookmarking facility as well.

Have you by any chance used it for documents containing mathematical/logical symbols?  I've had to convert a lot of documents of this sort to PDF, and find that mathematical symbols are regularly misconverted, and have to be reentered by hand. 

For myself, Plastikman "Ex";  the last one downloaded at all was for the missus: Thee Oh Sees "Floating Coffin." 

No fans on here? Anyone seen/goin to see it?

New one getting some serious positive reviews

I'd rather nail my dick to the table.

And I'd rather watch you do it. 

No fans on here? Anyone seen/goin to see it?

New one getting some serious positive reviews

Saw the first one when it came out, in 77 or 78.  I was 7 years old or so.  Even then I was bored by it.  Tried again in my early 20's, figuring it had just been over my head, but still found it pretty dull.   Like an earlier poster above, I just don't get the whole Star Wars thing.

[However, if it the only reason it happened was to save a characters life (for no apparent reason) then it would go a long way to ruining it for me.]

Really? I've throughly enjoyed it so far but that was a surreal, am I missing something?

If you're talking about what I think you are, you've been missing quite a bit if you didn't see something like that coming.  It's been foreshadowed from the very first episode, and in quite a few others.   Still a crap idea though.

Have seen every episode and didn't see that coming, nor did it make an ounce of sense. I do recall something in the first episode that hinted at such a thing alright but can't recall anything subsequently. If they don't explain it in thinnest episode I'd be very disappointed as it saved the life of one important character and cost another theirs so it had a major impact on the story and how it can conclude. Good show all the same and much better than the first series for me.

Right, there's the thing in the first episode, around the time the brother stumbles onto the road.  There are a number of references in subsequent episodes to ...um... (trying not to spoil)... the kind of thing that happens in the most recent episode.  For example, there are stickers on a cash register (or a bathroom, I forget which) in one episode, there's the crazy writing in the older cop's office, and there are a few more.  The missus and I made a point of watching out for subsequent hints after the first episode, and they show up in many of the episodes. 

Oh, and there's also a hint at the end of the episode "Before the Law."

Now I'm not claiming to have predicted exactly what was coming, but it seemed clear to me that they were going to do something with it.

Ah right, I wouldn't really be keeping an eye for that type of thing but now that you mention it there have been a few things like that. However, if it the only reason it happened was to save a characters life (for no apparent reason) then it would go a long way to ruining it for me.

Yeah, I'd agree with that, and like I said above, the whole incident seems ridiculous anyway.  But it would have been easy enough to save the character's life another way, so I don't think that's why they introduced this theme.   Seems to me like they wanted that stuff in there anyway, and then used it in a few places. 

[The GOP is in chaos.]

Time to turn the mirth up to 11. Paul Krugman has an entertaining take on the Trump phenomenon that has the bonus of coming from Paul Krugman who always makes certain GOP types go into complete meltdown.

The Donald and the Chump Factor

DECEMBER 15, 2015 4:12 AM December 15, 2015 4:12 am

I suppose there are still some people waiting for Trump's bubble to burst — any day now! But it keeps not happening. And it's becoming increasingly plausible that he will go all the way. Why?

One answer — probably the most important — is what Greg Sargent has been emphasizing: the majority of Republican voters actually support Trump's policy positions. After all, he's just saying outright what mainstream candidates have implied through innuendo; how are voters supposed to know that this isn't what you do?

I would, however, add a casual observation: at this point Trump has been the front-runner for long enough that it's very hard to imagine his supporters suddenly losing faith, because it would be too embarrassing.

Bear in mind that embarrassment, and the desire to avoid it, are enormously important sources of motivation. Consider, as a weird, self-aggrandizing, but I think relevant observation, what has happened to supposedly smart guys who predicted soaring interest rates and runaway inflation 6 or 7 years ago. Almost none of them have conceded that they were wrong, and should have done more homework. Instead, many of them — especially the academics — have become ever more obsessed with claiming that they were somehow right, and/or trying to tear down the reputations of those of us who were in fact right. Nobody likes looking like a chump, and most people will go to great lengths to convince themselves that they weren't.

Now think about someone who has been supporting Trump since the summer. For the Trump bubble to burst, many people like that would have to slap their foreheads and say, "Wow, he's not a serious person! What was I thinking?"

And very few people ever do that sort of thing. Someone who has spent months supporting Trump despite establishment denunciations — which means something like a third of Republicans — will go to great lengths to avoid conceding that he has been foolish. At this point such people will insist that any negative reports about Trump are the product of hostile mainstream media; Trump's very durability so far is likely to make him highly resilient looking forward.

To make another analogy, it's a "When Prophecy Fails" sort of situation.

And this also suggests that even if Trump does finally decline, his support is likely to flow not to an establishment candidate but to another outsider figure. Everyone who knows Ted Cruz well hates him; in this environment that probably enhances his appeal.

The general election will, of course, be quite different. But it's getting really hard to see how the GOP establishment reasserts control.

"its getting really hard to see how the GOP establishment reasserts control". That is the big kahuna. The GOP is in chaos.
Oh happy days.
They need to move away from NRA style positioning and move back towards the centre , where the voters are. Moderate Republicans are almost extinct.

Is it really though?  They are comfortably in control of both houses and are pushing for a legal change to how populations in voting districts are counted (currently districts count the whole population, and have representation based on that; the Republicans are trying to get this changed so that only voters--not kids, not non-citizens etc...--are counted).  If they succeed in this, that will mean less representation for urban districts, which tend to be Democratic, and more for rural districts, which tend to be Republican.   And that would mean more power at local and state levels for Republicans.

Really? I've throughly enjoyed it so far but that was a surreal, am I missing something?

If you're talking about what I think you are, you've been missing quite a bit if you didn't see something like that coming.  It's been foreshadowed from the very first episode, and in quite a few others.   Still a crap idea though.

Have seen every episode and didn't see that coming, nor did it make an ounce of sense. I do recall something in the first episode that hinted at such a thing alright but can't recall anything subsequently. If they don't explain it in thinnest episode I'd be very disappointed as it saved the life of one important character and cost another theirs so it had a major impact on the story and how it can conclude. Good show all the same and much better than the first series for me.

Right, there's the thing in the first episode, around the time the brother stumbles onto the road.  There are a number of references in subsequent episodes to ...um... (trying not to spoil)... the kind of thing that happens in the most recent episode.  For example, there are stickers on a cash register (or a bathroom, I forget which) in one episode, there's the crazy writing in the older cop's office, and there are a few more.  The missus and I made a point of watching out for subsequent hints after the first episode, and they show up in many of the episodes. 

Oh, and there's also a hint at the end of the episode "Before the Law."

Now I'm not claiming to have predicted exactly what was coming, but it seemed clear to me that they were going to do something with it.