Chindie

Too Long; Didn't Read. It's used to prefix summaries for people with the concentration levels of a chaffinch. I would also like to know if ozvillafan is a devils advocate here.

I watched Fellowship of the Ring earlier, first time I've seen the theatrical cut in a very long time. Felt chopped up and knocked around all ends up. The Extendeds have officially spoiled me.

I would be very wary of investing in the XBLA iteration of Minecraft without cast iron guarentees on it having proper updates as is expected of Minecraft - as the build is already one thats about a year behind and XBLA titles have been notoriously crap with any forms of proper add on content or major updates.

Well the thread's finally delivered some intelligent design crackpottery so I guess it's on some level succeeded.

Marriage is simply a contract allowing 2 individuals to be treated in some circumstances as one. I don't really give a shit who engages in such a contract provided both are able to knowingly consent to it and it's connotations. And nor should anyone else.

Just been out for a meal, I ordered the beer battered haddock. When it arrived there were 2 large beet battered haddock fillets on my plate. And it was bloody nice. Winner.

Some of that is entirely accurate. However, it's always tinged with the knowledge that helping someone else come up, in some way threatens your standing no matter the benefits that may come from doing that too. All activities in the realm of international relations are never altruistic, and they're never done without thinking about the risk it represents to you. As for what a government's remit is... well it's to protect it's citizens at it's heart. For better and worse, that has been interpreted wider and wider, and forgotten in some (many?) cases.

Honest question - what's the difference between the two? (evangelicalism and fundamentalism) The evangelical seeks to convert - the very basis of it is to shout from the rooftops to attract new followers. The fundamentalist doesn't necessarily want to convert people, they just incredibly embedded into a very serious and often full interpretation of their faith. The obvious examples I can think of of the difference might be the Jehovahs as evangelicals - they are quite fundamental Christians, they interpret the Bible in many ways in very very straight, literal terms (or twist reality to match the scripture... maddeningly). They're definitively evangelical, and quite fundamental. The Taliban, on the other hand, are very very fundamentalist Muslims. They look at the Qur'an and interpret it hard and fast to the word. But they don't necessarily seek to convert people - they just want to live life to the letter suggested by the Qur'an (and Islams other scriptures), and may want all the other people in the world too.. but they're not actively out preaching to convert. An Evangelical doesn't need to be a fundamentalist (a great many Christian evangelicals aren't particularly fundamental in their beliefs in all honesty), and a fundamentalist doesn't need to be evangelical... but they're often related and overlap a little.

I'm staggered that there are whole cults dedicated to reading scripture and twisting it and moulding it and wedging it into scenarios to prove it's value. And yet there are. As some of us know first hand.

I don't think it's an impossible task. But it'd be an insanely long winded and often unpopular one. You would need to basically target a generation to begin with, and eradicate it in education. Immediately you'd force the effort of passing on 'faith' to outside of school. Given the modern world's requirements, how many people are going to go out of their way to get their kids well taught in the ways of their faith? You'd be left with the remnants of it's cultural basis - the traditions and the like... but traditions do slowly change as tastes and life change. This is happening to religion already - churches have to advertise, nobody visits sunday services and most people only marry there because it's pretty (or the done thing... but even that is waning as people are put off by cost, or even just avoiding matrimony). It's certainly doable in the modern first world. It's away from 'the West' that you would struggle to kill it, but hopefully with other advancements and giving the rest of the world social mobility (trickle down from the West, if you will) it'll wane. We'll all be long dead before it happens... but it could happen and that would be a good thing. Even if it just makes it harder for our descendants to justify and dress up their hate for one another, it'll have been worth it.

I think this is the way forward. I could quite understand someone being a "secular Christian", for example. Someone whose stance is: "I grew up in a Christian community, I'm comfortable with the cultural norms surrounding it, I like the message of peace that is traditionally associated with Jesus, and I try and live my life by those precepts. But I don't believe that Jesus was God, or the son of God, or even that there IS a God". Same for secular Jews and secular Muslims. They must exist in some numbers, surely? I can't believe that THAT many people are THAT gullible, to buy into the superstitious magical elements of their religions so unthinkingly. It can't be a way forward. It somewhat legitimises the faith, says it's alright... but because it has a basis in writings and beliefs that reach far beyond this (demand it even), by allowing the lax end of the spectrum, you encourage the insane end. By allowing for 'secular Christian', you allow for creationist nutters, and worse (far worse across the other faiths). Even encourage it imo. You have to rank and file remove it. You cannot make sops to it under any circumstances, you can't allow the spectrum of faith to exist if you wish to kill off the bad stuff. For what it's worth though I do believe most 'religious' people (or perhaps it's better to say 'People who identify with a faith'?) nowadays probably come under this banner. I'd guess taking Brum for example, a vast majority of those 'faithful' people will be 'secularly' or 'culturally' associated with that religion rather than actively living to the book. Obviously that would go up and down - Christianity I'd imagine to have barely any true followers in modern Brum, Islam having more but even then, amongst younger populations, Muslims don't seem to be much more pious than their Christian buddies imo.

It'll be a shame if Bolton went down not to have them continue their run of 'worst kit in the league by a mile'.

I do think a lot of people who would claim to have a religion are now what you'd probably call 'culturally religious'. They don't really do the temple/church/special house for fairy believing thing, ignore a lot of the guidelines, don't really care about it all all that much... but would still have some leaning towards to the culture/traditions of the faith to the point they still consider themselves Christian/Muslim/Sikh/whatever. Which would be more or less fine if it were possible for them to trim away that last semblance of 'Oh I believe in the Bible/Qur'an/whatever' and just go with whatever their culture defines. Unfortunately they can't and that seems to encourage the nutters. Part of the radical end of Islam is being brought about by the 'rage' at an awful lot of people calling themselves Muslim but not following the (rather grim bits included) Qur'an to the letter.

They've always just put CofE as their faith - as far as I'm aware neither believes a word but they won't put down 'None' or whatever. The last census I, however, did put the 'without faith' option.

Possibly. At the moment I'd lean towards no but, dependant on the price on the next consoles and quite how well this does (given how limited it seems to have been, you can only get one from a Microsoft store, it's hamstrung from the word go...), maybe. If the next gen is coming out at big money, thats a hard sell at the moment, especially if, as expected, it's not going to be the huge leap forward many might have hoped for. It might be an easier sell to people with a one off down payment and a much smaller running contract. It's certainly an option worth exploring for MS. A considerable part of this is Microsoft trying to get people on board with Live, they offer this thing with a Live subscription to get people to take to it as despite the 360 selling incredibly well over it's lifetime, theres still quite a small amount of Live users, which means theres a vast resource of customers Microsoft needs to grab.

I feel somewhat privileged that I never had 'faith'. My family isn't religious (though would still put CofE on a census, because thats just 'Right'), we didn't do church, and the nonsense spoonfed at school I understood from a very young age were just that, stories. I used to watch a lot of natural history shows when I was a kid and loved animals, and that I think gave me a grounding in understanding that what was in the Bible was probably wrong, with it's basic teaching of how some species were related and how some species had arisen from others, and how dinosaurs had ruled the earth and gone but left behind clues. By the time I was able to really think about why things why how they were, I understood that science was much more likely to give me answers than a terribly written piece of much translated fiction was. I got to that level of understanding, that the Bible (and all the others, Qur'an Torah, all the non-Abrahamic ones) was almost certainly wrong and just stories, in primary school. I think thats why I find it quite so galling that grown men and women, who have had as good an education if not better than mine, believe in fairy stories. But then you have to realise that even just looking at old religious discussions here and elsewhere you find absolutely obscene levels of ignorance, stupidity, wilful obfuscation... I would dearly love a wave of enlightenment to wash over the world.

Oosh. I had heard about the racial abuse thing but this is the first I've seen of the retribution. I suppose if you are going to kick someone in the balls you may as well have a good reason and give it your all...

Well I finally finished Perdido Street Station. That last 200 pages was a slog. It feels like someone world building rather than telling a plot throughout it's 800 odd pages and I think it's that makes it so tedious. Mieville writes it in such a manner that, for example, no-one ever just walks down a street, it's always a specific street with a specific history and theres detailed description of whats going on and theres constant reference to the world he's made and it's systems and so on. It doesn't help that it's a world that has aspects that are intriguing, and aspects that make you go 'Oh **** off', or are hackneyed 'weird' - Scarab headed women, yeah no tah. I've moved onto another Iain M Banks, Inversions. The first hundred pages are good, it follows 2 narratives that appear to tell, so far, stories of 2 regimes on the same medieval-esque planet that, no doubt, are going to come together soon enough somehow. It's also rather obviously a Culture book, despite not explicitly saying so. The book has hinted even in the first 100 pages at it being a book about how the Culture deals with societies it encounters that are outside it's influence. The 2 major characters in the narrative are obviously members of the Culture's organisation that deal with problems it encounters, in often shady or underhand ways, Special Circumstances. It's basically a Culture novel seen from the other side, from the society that the Culture is investigating as to how it should deal with. Should be good. Got his new straight fiction book, Stonemouth, waiting as well.

Confirmed for the US market.

The FM tuner things are incredibly iffy, and more often than not **** terrible. Completely pot luck whether you have a good experience or not, even with a rated model. If the radio has an autochanger they often have what amounts to an aux in the back of them. You cna also get iPod/iPhone car kits from a few places, that fit to stock radio models (both my dads and my brothers cars have done this with stock radios) but it's a bit awkward to do and requires you to muck about with the car interior, as well as not being cheap. Google the car model, radio model, and whatever iPhone model you have plus car kit.

Religion has given me a slight giggle today, I must admit. The church not far from we're saying has an advert outside, a bit like those 'MILLENIUM - CHRISTS 2000th BIRTHDAY' signs. Except this one just says 'Church - Something for everyone'

There was a godbotherer in Inverness city centre this afternoon. I had to turn away in disdain as he chatted to a severely disabled woman in a wheelchair, I caught the end of the conversation. God'll be with you, he loves you. Clearly. The woman was paralysed. I was reminded of the song by A Perfect Circle (NSFW). Religion is a disease.

I've gone on holiday. First holiday in 4 years. I'm sat about a 100 yards from the shores of Loch Ness, and the place we're staying in is fantastic. Sadly, it also wasn't cheap and we've had to turn it a bit into an 'extended family holiday'. We're up here because it's in the middle of both my parents turning 60 and they wanted a big family holiday to celebrate. Unfortunately my sister can't afford it so she and her family pulled out, so we had to turn to my brothers wife's family, in the end getting her brother, his partner and their baby in tow. It's turned out to be a terrible idea. The existance of the baby dominates everything. On the way up here we met up a services - everything revolved around the baby, the conversation, the food, everything. We went for a meal out as we were knackered from the trip up (we got in to the house about 10 hours after we left Brum, stops for this and that adding on to the time), and of course the baby plays up and again, everything is the baby. We've not even been here a day and it's taking it's toll with myself, my mom and my dad. None of us can relax, you're always on tenterhooks. It's made worse by the fact that my brother and his wife are expecting so she's all about the baby, and is obviously close with her brother's partner anyway, so you can already tell that, in all honesty, myself and my parents may as well not be here. It kinda feels like we're interlopers on a holiday with two couples who are close. We went shopping to get stuff for the week, everything was decided by the 2 couples. Just sat around in the kitchen last night and this morning my dad's trying to make conversation and they're just paying him lip service, or straight up ignoring him.

Indeed she's an embarrassment. She's put her foot in it twice already. UKIP = BNP, and now putting Labour estimates way, way way over the top (either her being a moron or making the worst attempt at damage limitation since Comical Ali 'Look, Labour were expected to win 1000, they only won 300!'). I'm almost at a loss as to how she's still in that role. Almost.

Based on the shots... I agree with you.