The United States Senate ratified the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. Galatasaray SK was formed in 1905. The Long March ended in 1935 and, boy, were Mao's feet tired. Jacqueline Kennedy married Aristotle Onassis in 1968. The Sydney Opera House opened in 1973 and tragedy struck a UEFA Cup match at Lenin Stadium in Moscow between FC Spartak and HFC Haarlem in 1983. Spartak supporters were crushed as some who had been leaving the stadium turned around to try to re-enter. The official death toll was 67, though family and witnesses placed the number at closer to 340.
Born today: Christopher Wren (1632-1723), Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891), Bela Lugosi (1882-1956), Jelly Roll Morton (1890-1941), Jomo Kenyatta (1891-1978), Empress Michiko(1934),
Tom Petty (1950), Viggo Mortensen (1958), Danii Minogue (1971) and Snoop Dogg (1971). Fo shizzle.
Bahá'is are celebrating the Birth of the Báb today.
Hmph. Yesterday's thread sure was a doozie.
ReplyDeleteAch dinna fash Montana! Doubt if the troll will be back, given his reception.
ReplyDelete'Jacqueline Kennedy married Aristotle Onassis in 1968.'
I drove into Cork the day the marriage was announced and thought a war had broken out; people were crying in the street. I heard one woman wail 'The children will be brought up Protestants'.
JFK was a god in Ireland in those days, with his pic hung on the home wall next to the Sacred Heart.
Help. John Gribbin is writing about multiverses and I'm now not sure what's going on. Comment of the thread so far from patdavers:
ReplyDelete"The thought that there is alternate universe where Richard Dawkins spends his Saturday afternoons standing on his local high street, banging a tambourine and telling us that Jesus loves us is the only thing that keeps me going sometimes."
Chuckle...
Help #2. Tanya Gold column that doesn't make me want to throw things. Maybe there's something to this 'alternate reality' after all...
ReplyDeleteYes, wierd!
ReplyDeleteTanya G on Joan Collins:
"dressed in her customary regalia of Hollywood Nazi villain meets transvestite outreach programme"
Made me laugh, and I'd just been to the doctors !
That piccy of Ms Collins at the top of the article makes me shudder with a sort of primaeval fear.
ReplyDeleteGlad to see thauma's avatar again, makes my day sunnier :-)
ReplyDeleteIn other lazy news: On a German website, a woman is exasperated about men who think women cannot see blood. She wonders how those men imagine women to change their tampons.
My answer, which I would like to share with you (translated for your convenience):
Esoteric background music, lights dimmed, a woman is sitting cross-legged in front of a burning scented candle, pulls the used tampon out her vagina and inspects the blood while chanting praises to the moon goddess, to get in closer contact with her feminin mysterium. Afterwards she puts the tampon in a casket (more about this later) and inserts a new one.
The next full moon night, she takes the casket to the woods, where she ritually buries the tampons, again invoking the moon goddess. (Typically, it is 6-12 women who partake in such burials).
Oh TG is fine - if she gets on your nerves on some rare occasion reflect that Poly Toynbee must hate her even more - 'did my gender generation die on the barricades for this~?' etc.
ReplyDeleteAs for Joan Collins, she has added to the gaiety of nations - in so many senses - for decades, leave her alone!
And I'll not have what el is having, thenk you.
Watson - that is horrifying.
ReplyDeleteelementary watson
ReplyDelete- Took me right back to the Private Eye "Wimmin" column of the 80s !!!
I'm trying to give this up. Not easy.
ReplyDelete"'so some of you have already sent money?'"
ReplyDeleteI only sent her £320 to contribute towards her new kitchen, she sent me a photo of it and everything. And the new bath towels were a snip at £80. If anyone's been conned its the mugs that Montana haggled down to such reasonable prices. More fool them.
Watson - thaums avatar makes me laugh too, every time i see it i cant stop hearing "hand-on-hip-let-me-tell-you-something-matey" finger wagging.
colin: Seriously: It helps if you talk about your urges with other people.
ReplyDeleteTongue in cheek: It doesn't help if you do so on the internet you are trying to give up.
Fireworks on the sex-trafficking pieces. Rahila Gupta is hitting back with some more devastating statistics of her own:
ReplyDelete"A recently formed group of ex-sex workers, Esso, believe that only 2% of women freely choose prostitution."
And so it goes on and on and on ......
ew.
ReplyDeleteOne is really a bit too old for this but, in reply to your first sentence, lol.
As for your second, where better?
I think we should introduce a new UT
ReplyDelete"Urges Clinic" - Discuss your Urges Anonymously, Safely, Therapeuticaly with Seasoned Professionals.
Say, every Tuesday Lunchtime ?
Stoaty - you go first.
Bitterweed,
ReplyDeleteWho the hell said anything about urges? I don't have any. e-w made that up.
Colin - stoaty - it's ok. Denial is frequently the first reaction in these groups. Relax. Listen to others. Get new ideas. I for once always fancied a long weekend in a log cabin with Ulthima and a copy of Kristeva for Dummies.
ReplyDeleteI've got the urge to slap some of my colleagues.
ReplyDeleteLast time I had an urge I passed out in Tesco. The freezer and the lady reaching into it for the peas were quite undamaged. I have tablets now.
ReplyDeleteDammit, the boss has been here all afternoon - what cheek! Has seriously restricted my skiving.
ReplyDeleteWell, well well - Cameron has just announced he's going for all women short lists in some constituencies at the next election. Who'd a thunk it...
ReplyDeletePerhaps Karzai should try it now he's got to go for another round.
Sheff - ha ha, yes, that'll get Karzai in with the conservatives!
ReplyDeletethauma - bosses are a pain - mine ticked me off today for taking my personal laptop into work - so no commenting from work for me from now on as the systems block it - no java script.
ReplyDeleteBloody ruling classes, I tell you - luckily mine almost never turns up - he works at a different site.
ReplyDeleteMalcolmY has turned up on the Anglo-Catholic buy-out thread and I am determmined not to rise to his glaze-eyed ramblings, so have just popped in here to say...
ReplyDeleteAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!
Thanks. feel better now.
Philippa - yes, and he's not the oddest character on the thread by a long chalk, which is even scarier.
ReplyDeleteAm having a lovely time wagging my finger at some twat on the Working Dads thread.
ReplyDeletePretty soon I may have to get the dagger out.
Ooh, will go over and cheer...
ReplyDeleteOh, he's no fun, thauma, just sleep-deprived and high on calpol.
ReplyDeleteEvening possums
ReplyDeleteNeed to catch up on everything.
My urge at the moment is to go to bed and sleep for at least three days, but it has been usurped by my urge to drink wine...
Well, BB, as far as I can see:
ReplyDelete1) The Pope has launched a hostile takeover of the Anglican Church
2) This universe is probably not the only universe out there
3) Which makes sense because in this universe Tanya Gold is making some sort of sense
4) Dealing with sex trafficking needs to take a back seat while everybody gets their stats A-level
5) Joanna Moorhead launches a late bid for most pointless colummnist on CIF
6) Shopping at C&A makes youa Nazi.
Think that's everything...
Also, that if there's ever another article written by Will Straw, your best pitch for the moderation spreadbetting is 20-25%. But fair play to him for actually coming BTL...
ReplyDelete'The Pope has launched a hostile takeover of the Anglican Church'
ReplyDeleteIt makes economic sense. if you combine the CoE's considerable UK assets (various property portfolios and hundreds of ill-attended rural churches on prime building land) with the global interests and liquidity/credit-worthiness of the Vatican banks, you've got a viable business model that will continue to offer attractive dividends to the shareholders for another 2,000 years.
(btw take hefty insurance out against 'The Rapture'. That'll fuck everything.)
heh heh. oddly, this bid excludes property assets, concentrating on manpower, goodwill and intellectual property and therefore would be a simple assets acquisiton rather than a TOGC. Thus, some VAT and tax implications on the sale and purchasers will not be able to roll forward losses against future capital gains.
ReplyDeleteLooks like a dumb move to me, therefore, but then I'm just a poor confused Methodist...
Blimey
ReplyDeleteUnless it is some big joke, it looks like our friend podgyhodgy is actually Nick Griffin... or else he is pretending to be him. He is certainly trying to sound like him anyway.
Egads!
Philippa - excellent summary of the day's events!
ReplyDeleteBB - surely he's joking but Griffin is podgy....
right - book calls. night all!
ReplyDeletePhilippa, you have to look beyond the narrow theological aspects. The CoE have no intellectual property rights that aren't just a post-reformation tweaking of Thomas Aquinas or Augustine. That'll never stand up in court. As regards the manpower, it's a simple matter to import Poles or South Americans to do the same pastoral job much more cheaply (BNP opposition notwithstanding). The coming Conservative government will be happy to offer tax breaks, tax holidays, pension contribution deferments and a large rent-free building in the square mile.
ReplyDeleteGet with the programme! Buy your shares now, while they're still cheap.
I'm cool with parallel universes. I'm particularly persuaded because of Kurt Godel's argument using modal logic. Unfortunately, Kurt Godel (who lays a fair claim to being the smartest guy who ever lived...even if he was a bit of freak in most respects) also used the same logic to prove the existence of God (or at least a rational omniscient, omnipotent being). Still you can't it all. (Unless you're an omniscient, omnipotent being..in which case you pretty much are 'it all')
ReplyDeleteHere's a summary...
http://www.stats.uwaterloo.ca/~cgsmall/ontology.html
This is a highly simplified version..but undoubtedly the most persuasive (though, personally, nothing like persuasive enough) argument for 'god' I know of.
I've often wondered why the 'faithful' never use it. I think the reason is: they're too dumb to understand it or at least explain it to a lay audience and so they turn to the "faith's not like that" trope..which basically means, in Andrew Brown's or Bunting's case: "I'm a bit thick really, but the Guardian pays me shitloads to keep writing this crap"
Le Dingue here (Dave), sometimes my name just appears as "Le" which is a bit too absinthe café even for me... oh, "anonymous" is it? Bugger it...
ReplyDeleteAnyway... yes I'd love to chat about that multiverse thread but I'll have to read up (there and here) first..
In the meantime... some of you lads here are cricket buffs aren't you? And also music seems to 'pop' up quite a bit (I'm a long-time lurker, usually when you're all asleep!)..
Well. I was just watching "The Music Makers" on bbc2 and it was all about Neil Hannon and his career with the Divine Comedy. Towards the end he was talking about having moved to Dublin and made an album all about cricket!
You know my first thought? I heard the words "Duckworth Lewis method" and I thought of you...
That's the kind of totally decent and just slightly batty guy I am!
You guys hear of this before?
www.myspace.com/dlmethod/
I don't know how to hyperlink here, besides not knowing how to sign in properly so my little pic appears...
Thought you chaps would be interested, if you're not *all over it* all ready!
Dave
Right multiverses... must pop in on the pope bashing first, I think I was one of only two clinically sane people on that thread for some time...
CaroleBristol sums it up for me with her question
ReplyDelete"So, if they put cats inside this Hadron Collider MacGuffin, how will that help them find the bison?"
Maths, it would seem, is the new Cistine Chapel. Limitless funds, the finest minds/artists and what do you get? A decent record cover if you're lucky.
Perhaps when they get the collider going they'll find the missing trillions of dollars that "disappeared" a year ago. Or herds of bison... or a lot of very angry cats...
*testing*
ReplyDeleteC'mon piccie, c'mon name
*testing*
Don't mind me, you're all passed out drunk on the sofa anyway... dreaming of Jackie Collins in her nazi transvestite outfit...
*Booo! No little pic... took me ages !oooB*
ReplyDeleteMalcolmY is pretty much destined for the "soft cells" and edmundberk must've drunk a pint of fresh warm bile...
Night all, let me know what you cricket lads make of Duckworth Lewis Method
Dave
"Maths, it would seem, is the new Cistine Chapel."
ReplyDeleteThat's an interesting sentence Davide (Dave) Le Dingue.
I know you've called by before but a welcome anyway - enjoy your time here. As I understand it to get you picture here you have to update your 'blogger' profile but I'm no expert on these things,
I see you have got your/Vincent's picture to load as a follower here on UT so you must have sorted the pic problem - although as I go back to bed from a an early morning post on route to the bog no pics are showing by any poster ??
ReplyDelete