Chindie

Arsenal have, shock horror, signed Chamakh. Records hardly awe-inspiring considering it's France but we'll see.

A synthetic humanoid with powers beyond the realms of humanity wouldn't be considered human, surely? We're considered human based on what our genes and what they subsequently allow us to do - there are things beyond the means of the human body, if you engineered an organism to look and seem human but be able to do super human feats, they'd genetically not be human. But theoretically provided you could map the genome in the correct way, theres nothing to stop you making a human for scratch that could manage to do things we never could. In some cases you'd be retyping enormous amounts of the genome of course, for example if you wished to make a human that was able to jump spectacularly high, you'd end up fiddling with everything in their genes that covers stuff like skeletal strength, circulatory system, brains abaility to handle forces placed on it... etc etc, as well as just giving them leg muscles scaled up from a flea (and yes for pedants I know fleas don't actually use muscles but it was the easiest comparision to make). As for the religious angle - who gives a shit. Hopefully it'll be dead by then.

Interesting. I'm farily sure it's not anything particularly ground breaking - we've known how to do this kind of thing theoretically for donkeys IIRC. Edit - In fact, and I could be going mad here so forgive me - is there not something along a similar process that we use today to produce insulin? We 'reprogrammed', using the plasmid of an organism, a bacteria to basically produce vast amounts of insulin for us to treat diabetes with IIRC. This is simply a similar kind of idea taken to the next level. And it represents neither of the things in the poll either, necessarily. It certainly shouldn't represent another step in human evolution - it's merely another tool for ourselves to manipulate to our own benefit. End of humanity would almsot certainly be a bit far as well. All in all, interesting, not as special as the reports would have you make out. Might start to become genuinely useful in 20 years.

I think telling them to **** off should just about cover it.

Made it to the Champions League final? Going up against another enormous side in the biggest game in the European club calender? Worried the players aren't up for it? What do you, Pep Guardiola, do? Starts about a minute in and really, really is cheesey as ****.

hoho, you're all a loss to the comedic profession.

losing my phone is a proper pain in the arse.

Anyone got any idea on shrinking a 100% cotton t-shirt? I bought some from threadless a while back which have now finally turned up, first time I'd bought some in a while and I'd forgotten what their sizes where like and went safe and bought XL just in case, plus accounting for shrinking. They're enormous. But I reckon they'll shrink down a bit, whihc they will with normal washing anyway but wandered if theres a way to get them to shrink a bit more than just normal. I'd imagine washing at a higher temp would it but not sure. I could just send them back but given they're from America, thats beyond hassle.

The National - England. This really is a good album.

Only paid for 2. Kopparberg was free, Fosters bottle £1, got a pint of Grolsch off a mate's round, and paid for the other.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mf6ZA-of17Q. Oh please for McGraths sake let us not see the player of the year in a wheelie bin.

The National - Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks.

My overall degree is Political Studies, but I've focused very heavily on terrorism and conflict throughout my modules. My diss topic was on Israeli state terror, if state terror even exists and if Israel could be considered guilty of it. My issue with using my advisors own work was, well... in justifying the existence of state terror, there aren't that many scholars who study it. My advisor is one of the main names who does, and also the only one I found to give any in depth reason of why it can be said to exist, which was in a book he'd just written in the introduction. I had to use that book and his justifications and in the end it's rather like, for that section of the whole thing, I've written an abridged version of his justification. But I think he knows theres almost no-one else thats done that and I needed to justify the existance of state terror on more than just 'I know terrorism when I see it'. I referenced him a couple of other times as well, in fact he was a massive influence on the definition of terror I made up in the writing of it, he had his own quite radical idea for what constitutes terror that I agreed with and had to use in my own definition. It shouldn;t be a problem referencing your advisors and lecturers, but I always feel uneasy doing it because it seems a bit suck up-y. It shouldn't though since they are writing in these specifc fields for a reason, and generally prescribe their own works in their courses and what not. And I always felt it must be a bit odd marking the work when they sit there reading it and see, I dunno 'as Smith shows...' and they are the Smith in question.

I suspect the two are not unrelated, i.e. you set yourself high standards. Onwards and upwards old chap! Possibly... but I do genuinely think that essay was worth somewhere in the 40s/50s, not near 70s. Nowhere near enough theory, the research was massively lacking because I can't read Hebrew, wasn't particularly well written based on how I usually do. I was honestly at a loss as to how you'd manage to get less than 67 on it, because it really isn't much cop. I appear to have been given a good mark because it 'put forward interesting aspects'. Mindboggling. I had to do a seminar on the essay right before handing it in, having finished writing it about 3 hours before at 6am, and some of the other people in the group were blowing my stuff away. They must have got silly marks. 75, not bad. I think mine's about 72, I mostly end up just missing out on Firsts in them, I 've nailed a couple though, just. My department has this thing about basically saying, if you get a First it should be near publishable quality, which if you're interested in doing well academically always puts a spring in your step. I'm hoping my dissertation is my highest mark really, but I won't know til July. Wish I got some feedback on it before then. Might have to go see my advisor for it, he was hyped about me doing the topic I did and reckoned if I nailed it it'd be spectacular. Sadly I also had to reference his own work a lot because of the natur eof the topic which I always feel uneasy about.

On the results front, got 2 essays back today, the last ones I'll write hopefully. The one I expected to be absolutely awful, get a 67. The other I thought was alright, get a 65. Haha. Thats 2 and 5 points off a first respectively, and se tme up very nicely for the exams. It pisses my mate off a shitload that I can get decent marks in essays with a tiny amount of effort, and even when I think my essay was rubbish it was one of the better ones I've written.

Limited stock possibly. They'd stopped preorders before because they'd run out of available copies but managed to source some more. They most likely used those stocks up as well.

If you intertwine the pages of 2 phonebooks, the exponential force of the friction between the pages will mean it is near impossible to pull them apart.

Ennio Morricone - Un Amico (Might have mentioned that one before but it's bloody good so google it. It'll be familiar to watchers of Inglourious Basterds).

Brilliant book, but grim. He uses quite a bit of spanish in it though, so get google translate at the ready. Loved it - and a classic case in point of what I was saying upthread. A violent western - but quite definitely literature. Aye I understand it's one of the most highly acclaimed American novels. I'm trying to read wider and get back my joy of reading I used to have, and guessed that McCarthy might have some of the grit I want. I got on with No Country, and loved the story... I just not that keen on McCarthy's style, it doesn't click me. I've not grasped the conscious decision he makes to not use speechmarks for instance. It's a really minor thing, but it does for some reason make my reading of his work get knocked slightly off kilter, like I'm on unsure footing with it. I think it may be something to do with the occasional times it makes reading dialogue difficult - it can be, if your casually reading a section, sometimes difficult to quite realise we've had some speech happen, or who's beginning/ending a dialogue. It takes a second sometimes, for me anyway, in those rare instances, to quite grasp whats gone on. And its so far eluded me why he does it.

I'm a big Pratchett fan, I think the quantity of books he can knock out is partly to do with the fact he's not exactly writing worthy literature, and partly because he's managed to conjure a world that has allowed him to right about just about anything he wants in it. He's also thinking about the books he's going to right a couple ahead of where he is. To be honest he's not even really doing fantasy parody any more IMO, he's increasingly doing parodies of real world situations and items that happen to be set in a fantasy world. I mean his next book is on taxation, following in the footsteps of a character that has already done the madness of the postal service and the completely insane world of finance. I'd recommend some of his newer books to you as throw away fiction but if you've better things to read I wouldn't bother. As for myself, I got Whit finished the other night, which I think slots in at number 4 in my Iain Banks list, behind the Crow Road, Complicity and the Wasp Factory, probably about tied with Steep Approach and Transition. All very close though. An enjoyable read though and often quite funny, I was expecting more ripping on religion, he instead quietly pokes fun at it throughout, whilst also being rather kind to them really. Moved onto Blood Meridan last night. I still am not that keen on McCarthy's style of writing but I think it'll be another enjoyable one.

I'd rather Davies and Young stayed but the rest I couldn't care less about, and in one particular case I'd be vaguely happy to see him leave.

More Peroni. Might as well have something good happen tonight.

I just found the first grad opportunity on the site I'm using actually based in Birmingham. Woohoo.

I'm worried, to be frank.

Indeed, 2/3rds of the population didnt want these tw*ts and for good reason. More people voted for Conservative this year than Labour in 2005 (over 1m more) You can't trust people. People vote for the Nazis, and like the Beatles.