pmccarthy

I am rebuilding a Triumph car at the moment, will never get my money back. I just enjoy the challenge.

The Israelis are doing a great job. I hope they see it through.

I owe my existence to at least three factors: the availability of transportation as an alternative to execution an inherited ability to survive without potatoes a random ability to avoid exploding shells for several years

Yes. that looks good!

I was watching European rally crashes on YouTube. Most entertaining, particularly when those young people run out onto the track and tip them up again. Why don’t we have car rallies like that in Australia, I would go and watch. Or perhaps we do, but I have not heard of them.

I'm not sure about the English and Welsh laws valuing life. Up to the late 18th century people were still being executed for small thefts, there was a long list of capital crimes. Transportation was the alternative when available.

Depends whether you want to win and survive. The allies would not have won WW2 without destroying much of the industrial capacity of Germany, with tremendous civilian collateral damage. Ditto Japan and the atomic bombs. It is Putin's policy too, he knows what he thinks has to be done in Ukraine. The Israelis know it too, they are certainly no worse than these examples. Placing a high value on human life is a recent, possibly Western, construct. It is part of the Christian faith, but Christians have always been at the forefront of execution, torture and mass slaughter. We in Australia have the great luxury of having destroyed a majority of the previous inhabitants a long time ago, without subsequent wars on our soil. Most countries have more recent experience of war, famine and death.

I think the Israelis have about got it right.

Don't you hate it when you see used conundrums lying around in the grass?

For much of history human life has had little value. Enemies were killed in the most painful and prolonged ways. This was true for a thousand years in Constantinople, in Tudor England, in Spain during the Inquisition, and at other times and places too numerous to mention. In times of war, the policy was often for the victors to kill men, women and children, or sell them into slavery, then destroy the cities and sow salt into their fields. Pogroms in recent times, and genocides, show us that many societies have not valued human life outside their own tribe. Why do you think that our view is right and the weight of human history is wrong? If Stalin or Hitler had prevailed against the West, what would we believe today? What will our children believe in future, if our way of life falls to the Middle Eastern radicals or to Putin's schemes?

Not a single death has ever been prevented. Only postponed.

In various threads here we have vigorous discussion about car safety systems, rules of warfare and so on. Most are based on the modern idea that human lives are valuable and must be protected at great monetary and social cost. Any analysis of history before recent decades shows this was not true. Wars wasted millions of lives. Cars without complex safety systems caused more deaths. Miners died underground. People lived in cheap uninsulated houses. The current cosseted generations expect their lives to be cotton wool protected. It is nonsense. Life was better when I could drive a VW beetle, have a few beers at a pub on Sunday before driving home, enjoy cracker night, afford an asbestos house. All the expense and constraint of the modern world do not stop people dying - there is only one way out of this world.

Grape, gripe, rape, ripe, let’s call the whole thing off.

Carbide followed by a match will do it too.

When we had dead mice in the tank, the change in taste was so slow that we didn’t notice. It was only when visitors complained that we realised.

When I was a kid we used to have lamb pancakes regularly. Just leftover roast cut up small and mixed with pancake mixture. Fry and serve with tomato sauce. Delicious.

My wife has bad teeth because where grew up where they drank rainwater and she didnt get the minerals including fluoride that she needed. Everything is a poison if too much is consumed, including water itself.

Watched it tonight, a pointless load of carp and 2.4 hours I will never get back.

They put plastic points on rockets in one year, about 1961. A kid was killed when one landed on his head. Then they were banned.

We seem to have forgotten the word sectarian. Much of what is described as racism is not, it is sectarianism.

Pig without pi is g (9.8 m/s). Signed nerd.

One track you are light years ahead of me in computer knowledge. I bought a laptop less than 12 months ago, a Surface, and it has so much wrong that I can’t fix. Outlook refuses to start about three times a week and I have to ctrlaltdel then shut it down. Etc etc. I used to be good at computers, a couple of decades ago!

What a strange name she has. How many words have two z's in them? It’s a real puzzle.

They are just apeing another group.

The first COP, held in Berlin in 1995, had just under 4000 delegates. In Glasgow two years ago, 120 world leaders attended alongside 40,000 other registered participants. About 50,000 people gathered in Egypt last year. This year 100,000 are expected, nearly all will be flying.