Chindie

An Iranian nuclear scientist was killed in a bombing today. Reports suggest a motorbike drew up along side his car and attached a bomb to it. This is just the latest thing to hit the nuclear ambition of Iran - recently there have been 2 explosions at it's facilities, one of which was quite large and killed a number of people, and a virus was set on it's computer system a while back. How much more does Iran accept before it retaliates I wonder.

In our house it was always just nan. But thats because my grandad was dead.

On that note, receiving £250 odd of tax back, which has taken me out of my overdraft 18 months of arse end work and the dole it's taken. Phew.

Argh! No! Take it away! Please!

It's not about spying. The Kermodian answer I think thats half right. The film is inescapably about spying, the plot revolves around spying and subterfuge and the like, but the film is more interested in the relationship between these men, that none of them live in a world where they can trust one another or be unguarded - something that makes Cumberbatch's character probably the most obvious nod to that theme.

I love Tinker Tailor. Steelbook already preordered :oops:

...would.

I wasn't that impressed by First Class. The whole film felt like something codged together (surprise surprise really, because it was - it's the result of 2 ideas being slammed together, an X-Men prequel coupled to a Magneto: Origins film). The Magneto bits had legs and were the greatest successes of the film, even if Fassbender couldn't hold his accent and by the end Magneto had become fully fledged Irish. The associated Xavier stuff worked fairly well too. But the stuff concerning the beginning of the mutant school was bobbins. The characters they chose were mad - why would you choose to pick characters like Banshee for an X-Men prequel? Nobody knows who Banshee is and nobody cares to know either. Why pick a character who in canon is Cyclops' brother? Just do Cyclops. Only Beast really worked. It didn't help that these poorly chosen characters were then poorly played, and ultimately didn't really do much in the film. They were like really bad window dressing. It's a fun film and it has it's moments, certainly it's a fun watch but I couldn't escape feeling that you could have done a lot more with this. I actually thought a Magneto: Origins film with opportunity given to explore Xavier's relationship with him (and an associated origin, really) would be a great watch, especially if we got to see more Magneto Nazi hunting... but alas that was decided to not be enough.

It's the first time in ages my mates have all been around and also the first time in a while I've not had to work Saturday, so I've been thinking yeah we can all go out for the first time in ages, everyones said over this period we need to have a night out. So I text people and discover tonight's frivolities are on! We're going to my mates sister's empty house with some deck chairs and a heater and going to play poker. Since he's driving I guess we won't even have any drinks. ...ugh. EDIT - the water might not even be on. Christ.

I agree on the kids thing, as I've said before now. On the non-cuddly pets, I dunno. I like dogs, dislike cats (a feeling that is mutual it appears), hate horses. I'd like to keep more exotic animals, I love reptiles and amphibians (I aim to own one of some type eventually). I find them interesting, and I suppose because they're a bit more high maintenance than a dog they become more of a hobby than a pet per se. I never got spiders however. My cousin kept tarantulas until he had kids, and went through other odd animals too - he once swapped some of his spiders for some scorpions, which in turn got swapped for (rather more likable) geckos. One of his tarantulas escaped once, never did find it.

I think you'll find it's Asperger's, Mike

Roger Ebert Ronnie Biggs (can't rumble on for much longer, surely?) Joan Didion (I actually don't know much about her apart from her being on the Review Show a couple of months back and looked like Death incarnate, honestly looked like she could keel over there and then in the interview).

Richard Attenborough Muhammad Ali Gore Vidal Michael Douglas Lindsay Lohan Robin Gibb George Michael Bashar al-Assad Jacques Chirac Zsa Zsa Gabor (who is a probably a lock. Sadly, of course)

There was a cavalry charge in opening days of Operation Enduring Freedom.

This is one of those points of debate I honestly struggle to get worked up about. I can't say I've particularly thought about the project. Everytime I've seen it on the telly the 'against' group seems to have largely disagreed with it because it'll spoil their view, or make some noise, and then at the end they drop in some rhetoric about it not working, which I guess may or may not be accurate. I agree with LondonLax too. Big projects are usually a good idea in a poor economy, getting people working or at least just pushing money around into the economy is a good thing. I guess the money could be put to better use in the rail network at large, but meh.

His original incarnation in the comics had him be South American, a kind of Cuban/general Caribbean background. I don't get that in his accent in this. It still sounds all over the shop, theres a hint of German and Russian, more than a little Dutch, some kind of generic Scandinavian stuff going on, and then of course the Darth Vader edge the mask gives him. One thing it certainly doesn't sound is the kind of South American Spanish thing you'd probably expect if you knew the character's original basis. But his origin in the comics is beyond dumb, so it's perhaps a good idea to distance things.

There is something primally enjoyable about tearing into a chicken. IF only our house could sustain chucking chicken legs over my shoulder and throwing beer into my face. Veggies are missing out.

It's a fair point, Awol

I'm no fan of horses either to be fair. That an ex was a huge horse-y person was not good. They're too **** big and too **** stupid. Was terrified stood next to the bastard thing. As for the film, you can look at the trailer with a check list of 'worthy big budget tear jerker for the family' tropes. Even the cinematography has that family afternoon heartwarmer glow to it, every shot seems to exude cynicism. Ugh. The trailer popped up while we were waiting for the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo to start. You could hear the cinema groan.

I often get confused which, I went for that one first but was unsure.

Are we using this as the general tit for tat party line toeing (thank you Mike) thread? Because... Link

If the trailer is anything to go by, it's one of the most cynically sentimental things ever consigned to film.

Won't happen. If (some may argue when) Nintendo gets out of the console game, they'll do a Sega. There's little benefit for a company going into partnerships these days, unless the company is a smaller one showing promise that a big manufacturer effectively cuts a bargain with - we give you the leg up, you work for us. In the case of Nintendo, they could go it alone easily. Thats what they've done since the beginning (barring the SNES CD thing that brought Sony into the game), and they've done it pretty well.

The latest dash tells you everything you need to know about where Microsoft wants to take it's games consoles. Anywho, Rev is imo bang on the money for a release date. The 360 continues to sell like mad, and Microsoft would be foolish to curtail those sales by making an announcement soon.I expect it out by the end of 2013 and announced earlier that year. It's been no secret that Microsoft has been working on the 360's replacement for a while - there was talk of the chipset design being finalised last year and they'd hired what amounts to a 'project manager' for the whole endeavour last year too. I don't think they care about Nintendo either. In this console cycle they've rarely considered them a competitor, something that Nintendo's strategy of essentially not playing the hardware one-upmanship game has helped, so the Wii U holds few worries for them. Both companies hold different markets these days. So Microsoft will hold off an announcement for as long as they can. They've a console which, while showing it's age, continues to sell silly numbers and continues to hold a massive market share as well as considerable critical clout with each release. Their main competitor is in no hurry to get out a new console (and arguably is little position to just yet either), and the only other entity in the games world is one that Microsoft doesn't care about. The new Xbox is still a way away, despite the more hardcore games market wanting it now and despite this generation already having outlasted the regular lifespan. I think Rev is bang on the money with what Microsoft will aim for as well - a gaming PC in a console box again, pinching ideas from Steam on how to do a serious store/community fusion with Xbox Live (which in it's iterations particularly recently has increasignly done this), and some form of motion control in the box (Though we can hope it goes away ).

It's hard to make a judgement on whether 'joint enterprise' comes into play without knowing rather more about the case than we might have available to us here (mostly because none of us are likely to have examined the entire case and also, because to my knowledge, none of us are lawyers...), but it could. Joint enterprise comes into play when a groups actions lead to a result that none may have necessarily planned for but arose from their activity. So a simple example that could apply to the Lawrence case would be if the group had gone out intent on violence and in turn that lead to one of them murdering Lawrence, they would all be guilty of murder. In essence, the group becomes guilty of murder, not just the individual who struck the killing blow. We have to assume, I guess, that the trial has reason to assume that that, or something close to that, is the case in this case - as I'm fairly sure that it's never been ascertained who actually murdered Lawrence.