Messages

http://www.vox.com/2015/1/10/7524731/french-muslims-attacks-charlie-hebdo

Speaking of a backlash...

Force commander and Rogue squadron were great fun, though they haven't aged well. They were huge games in my childhood though so they automatically become 50 times better

DD: The current SNP plan is to call another referendum as soon as they get an excuse to, with an EU exit being seen as their best chance of a good excuse.

Yeah it's being referred to as the neverendum by some commentators. They went on and on about how they'd respect the result, but clearly campaigning to do it again is respecting it somehow.

I've looked up my current seats results from 2010, Norwich North. Con gain from lab with only about 10% of the vote going to the lib dems. So although I agree most with the Lib Dems it seems like I'd be better off aiming for a Labour candidate to attempt to stop the tories.

As for what I actually expect to happen, I think Jub's potentially over-estimated the Lib Dem seats at the expense of the greens. I wouldn't be surprised if they manage to gain some more seats, young left wing people seem to be moving to them when they previously would have gone lib dem.

As for who'll be in power, not a clue, the SNP have said they'll never do a deal with the Tories, though I suspect if they promise another referendum as part of a coalition agreement they might take it. If Jub is right then a lib:lab coalition could be a majority, which I'd be a fan of.

It's kind of like Father Christmas - but we've always got a couple of extra presents - from 'Father Time' - just after midnight on New Year's Eve/Day

Not heard of that, perhaps it's a local thing with your family roots?

Happy arbitrary change of calendar day

Welcome to nerdom, it's a happy place. If you avoid Penty, he's our resident grump.

Love in the time of Cholera on a Llama farm

So more things seem to be happening on this front.

Firstly, 2 officers murdered in New York, apparently in retaliation for the recent killings http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-30566232

To me, this shows that the US has a violence problem rather than simply a race problem.

Secondly, back to St. Louis, a black man was shot after apparently pointing a loaded handgun at a police officer http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-30596531

I honestly don't know what the protesters would have had the policeman do. If someone threatens your life, such as by pointing a gun at you, it's reasonable to strike pre-emptively with lethal force.

I've heard some claim that there was no gun, but I can't see how the police could expect to get away with making up something like that. Some say the confrontation shouldn't have happened, but the police should be able to question anyone without having their lives threatened.

What's peoples take on this?

I'm imagining the legal mess if every scientific lab with monkeys in it was faced with attempts to push through Habeas Corpus writs.

I'm quite confident something like this will happen. The extreme animal rights groups are still quite strong, around 3 times a year they'd mount a noisy protest outside the some of the faculties back at uni. They never cared about plant sciences using bees or aphids in their work, but of course the cute fluffy mice and rats they cared deeply about.

I was pleasantly surprised, I was worried the battle was going to just be focused mostly on the main characters killing an obscene number of things rather than how the wider battle played out, and since kind of the whole point was the different groups playing different alliances it would have annoyed me if we didn't see that.

Slight annoyance, elves jumping over the dwarven phalanx, just why, it made no sense.

Though it did make me reinstall battle for middle earth, which middle earth things always seem to do!

I'm sure I've heard about this before somewhere, it definitely felt familiar, caught the double bill last night and decided I'll continue with it, enjoyable so far

Another piece of good news (in my opinion): a court in Buenos Aires has decided that an orangutan, though not human, is sentient enough to be entitled to certain basic rights. More in a BBC News article.

They say that it paves the way for other sentient creatures to be freed. The main issue that I see here is that people tend to empathise more with mammals than with other groups of animals, so how are we going to define what is sentient and what isn't?

it turns out to look just like it did in the previous monochrome pictures - i.e. it's a very uniform grey.

I feel for the people who'd been working on that. Yeah it's a result and gives interesting data, but when you get a negative result like that there's always a feeling of 'ah nuts'

So Russian Tolkien fans were planning will no longer be raising the eye of sauron over Moscow to celebrate the new hobbit film because of objections by the orthodox church. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/10/russia-scraps-eye-of-sauron-art-installation

"Such a symbol of the triumph of evil is rising up over the city, becoming practically the highest object in the city. Is that good or bad? I'm afraid it's more likely bad. Just don't be surprised later if something goes wrong with the city."

I reckon they were just worried a dragon would rock up and swipe all their gold.