Sure looked like Nutella... years ago, started a post-doc at UQ in Brisbane, temporarily rooming at Gatton College. 1st morning, jet lagged at breakfast in dining hall, lathered it on white toast and laid into it. Managed to keep it down, but the gag reflex was winning. Students howled, all in good fun though. When I checked out 2 weeks later, they gave me a gift of a giant jar of it and a homemade booklet "How to Eat Vegemite"... good memories, but could never stomach it again.

Eärendil was a mariner
that tarried in Arvernien;
he built a boat of timber felled
in Nimbrethil to journey in;
her sails he wove of silver fair,
of silver were her lanterns made,
her prow was fashioned like a swan,
and light upon her banners laid.

In panoply of ancient kings,
in chainéd rings he armoured him;
his shining shield was scored with runes
to ward all wounds and harm from him;
his bow was made of dragon-horn,
his arrows shorn of ebony,
of silver was his habergeon,
his scabbard of chalcedony;
his sword of steel was valiant,
of adamant his helmet tall,
an eagle-plume upon his crest,
upon his breast an emerald.

Beneath the Moon and under star
he wandered far from northern strands,
bewildered on enchanted ways
beyond the days of mortal lands.
From gnashing of the Narrow Ice
where shadow lies on frozen hills,
from nether heats and burning waste
he turned in haste, and roving still
on starless waters far astray
at last he came to Night of Naught,
and passed, and never sight he saw
of shining shore nor light he sought.
The winds of wrath came driving him,
and blindly in the foam he fled
from west to east and errandless,
unheralded he homeward sped.

There flying Elwing came to him,
and flame was in the darkness lit;
more bright than light of diamond
the fire upon her carcanet.
The Silmaril she bound on him
and crowned him with the living light
and dauntless then with burning brow
he turned his prow; and in the night
from Otherworld beyond the Sea
there strong and free a storm arose,
a wind of power in Tarmenel;
by paths that seldom mortal goes
his boat it bore with biting breath
as might of death across the grey
and long-forsaken seas distressed:
from east to west he passed away.

Through Evernight he back was borne
on black and roaring waves that ran
o'er leagues unlit and foundered shores
that drowned before the Days began,
until he heard on strands of pearl
where ends the world the music long,
where ever-foaming billows roll
the yellow gold and jewels wan.
He saw the Mountain silent rise
where twilight lies upon the knees
of Valinor, and Eldamar
beheld afar beyond the seas.
A wanderer escaped from night
to haven white he came at last,
to Elvenhome the green and fair
where keen the air, where pale as glass
beneath the Hill of Ilmarin
a-glimmer in a valley sheer
the lamplit towers of Tirion
are mirrored on the Shadowmere.

He tarried there from errantry,
and melodies they taught to him,
and sages old him marvels told,
and harps of gold they brought to him.
They clothed him then in elven-white,
and seven lights before him sent,
as through the Calacirian
to hidden land forlorn he went.
He came unto the timeless halls
where shining fall the countless years,
and endless reigns the Elder King
in Ilmarin on Mountain sheer;
and words unheard were spoken then
of folk of Men and Elven-kin,
beyond the world were visions showed
forbid to those that dwell therein.

A ship then new they built for him
of mithril and of elven-glass
with shining prow; no shaven oar
nor sail she bore on silver mast:
the Silmaril as lantern light
and banner bright with living flame
to gleam thereon by Elbereth
herself was set, who thither came
and wings immortal made for him,
and laid on him undying doom,
to sail the shoreless skies and come
behind the Sun and light of Moon.

From Evereven's lofty hills
where softly silver fountains fall
his wings him bore, a wandering light,
beyond the mighty Mountain Wall.
From World's End then he turned away,
and yearned again to find afar
his home through shadow journeying,
and burning as an island star
on high above the mists he came,
a distant flame before the Sun,
a wonder ere the waking dawn
where grey the Norland waters run.

And over Middle-earth he passed
and heard at last the weeping sore
of women and of elven-maids
in Elder Days, in years of yore.
But on him mighty doom was laid,
till Moon should fade, an orbéd star
to pass, and tarry never more
on Hither Shores where mortals are;
for ever still a herald on
an errand that should never rest
to bear his shining lamp afar,
the Flammifer of Westernesse.

OK, had a chance to watch the start of the video again to remind me of the context, and thought of some other ways to look at it.

1. You could, if you were particularly heartless, look at it as the individual failures of the people who borrowed money they had no hope of repaying. That I consider this a rather unfair way of looking at it is unlikely to stop the usual suspects from actually voicing this opinion.

2. You could look at it as a failure of risk management. Each individual player understood that there were risks involved, but each thought that passing the risk along to the next person would avoid the risk being their own! Nobody understood that they were creating a risk to the entire system.

3. You could also look at it as a failure of regulation. I am quite astounded that, amidst the sea of fraudulent activity by banks and their agents, there were no charges laid against anybody for the activities that brought about the GFC. The regulations also, in some cases, prevented banks from taking sensible steps to avoid default. Once the loans were bundled together, rules 'protecting' investors by preventing discounting were actually what caused the investors to lose their shirts.

4. You could look at it as a failure of business: In many cases, the folks who had been encouraged to take out these dodgy loans were actually going along just fine until the banks increased the interest rates. There was, therefore, a huge missed opportunity for someone to buy these loans in default at a discount, and let the homeowners keep paying the introductory rates that they quite clearly had been managing quite well.

I have money laid down with friends that there's an after credits scene with a blue-faced, white-uniformed man standing on the bridge of a super star destroyer, accompanied by one or two obviously predatory cat or dog-like creatures.

They're a lot more laid back than neo-nazis in the US.

No man, that body armour, those boots...I'd harvest the bones of a thousand murdered infants to build our bed if that's what it took. Do you think that's what she wants?

I had to go rewatch this. It's practically perfect. Not an origin story, no romance subplot, no compromise. Just a day in the life of Judge Dredd. Love it, but my favourite Dredd story was told in rhyme:

They'd been waiting there since nightfall for the Sharks to come along,
They knew they'd have to pass this stretch of street.
So they'd sharpened up their stickers and they'd brought along their bars,
And they were wearing steel-tipped stompers on their feet.

There was Big Frank Zit and Faceache, Crazy Joseph with his spear,
The Dixon Boys were there and Billy Rat.
Ike the Spike had brought his sister with her homemade ghetto blaster,
And the Ghoul had put new rivets in his bat.

Now it wasn't nothin' personal that they had against the Sharks,
Any bunch of dead-end spugs would do.
'Cos there was nothing they liked better than to mash and bash and stomp,
Same as any normal Mega-City juves.

"A-rumbling! A-rumbling! We love to go A-rumbling!
("AAAH!")
We love to lay in ambush in the night!
("AAAA!")
A-rumbling! A-rumbling! The Zits were born for rumbling!
(SMAK!)
There's nothing we like better than a fight!"
(KRAK!)

Then a headlight pierced the darkness - a rider gaunt and grim,
Daystick drawn and ready in his hand.
     The chin belonged to Dredd,
     And the voice as well, which said:
"You creeps can do your rumbling in the can!"

"It's just one judge!" cried Cindy Spike and opened with her blaster -
"I'll send him back to Central in a sack!"
(SPOING! "AAAAAAA!")
But Dredd's bike absorbed the blast and laid her on the street,
With tyre marks running right across her back.

Then the judge got down to business and his daystick rose and fell,
Striking out at every head he saw.
For though the Zits launched the attack, the Sharks were fighting back -
And self defence is no defence in law!

As the heap of bodies mounted, Big Zit could see his Waterloo,
Waiting just one station down the line.
Oh, sure, he loved to rumble - but he preferred to be on top...
"Let's scram and live to fight another time!"

("Dredd to Control! We got forty-plus juve rumblers fleeing east through Bernstein. Zits and Sharks, back-up required."
"Wilco, Dredd!"
"Med squads and meat wagons to Moreng Alley. Estimate twenty casualties, more to follow."
"Control to all units area Bernstein. YPs on the run."
VRMMMM!
"Pick 'em up!")

In the space of sixty seconds there was a judge on every street.
From watching bays others scanned the slab -
"We got two Zits runnin' fast though the Tamblin Underpass!"
"Krupke here! I got 'em in the bag!"
(THUNK! THUNK!)

They cut them off at Sondheim and they mopped them up on Wood,
On Pedway 12 they corned Crazy Joseph.
He tried to make a stand - but a spear's not worth a damn,
When it's up against a judge's high explosive.

The Ghoul surrendered quietly, he didn't have much choice -
Ike the Spike tried to scale the sector wall -
("Save your bullet, he'll never make it." "Oh no! AAAAAAAAAAAAH!" SPLATT!)
The Dixon Boys all copped it when they tried to hitch a ride,
On the 2020 Zoom to Bernstein Halt.

Big Zit thought he'd play it clever, the law was everywhere,
The safest thing for him to do was hide -
Dredd tracked him down on infrared - "Don't bother to come out!"
"The best place for trash like you is inside!"

In minutes flat they'd caught them, every Shark and every Zit.
To Dredd it fell to ladle out the years -
"Twenty years apiece for Cindy Spike, Billy Rat and Ghoul."
An extra ten left Big Frank Zit in tears.

For Faceache minus half his face, for the hapless Dixon Boys,
For Ike impaled so cruelly on his spike,
For Crazy Joe with his gaping hole, there'd be one final rumble,
Along the last conveyor belt at Resyk.

A-rumbling! A-rumbling! They loved to go A-rumbling!
But the Zits will go A-rumbling no more!
A-rumbling! A-rumbling! They loved to go A-rumbling!
But they should've known they couldn't buck the law!

I agree. I love all of them! Kudos for keeping the laid off MythBusters too (dang Discovery!)!

*nsfw *science *scifi *music *wtf

Behind the Scenes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2rlqBlzGN0

The powhah! *quality
We've been going about this all wrong. This Mr. Stay Puft's okay! He's a sailor, he's in New York; we get this guy laid, we won't have any trouble!

Somebody needs to get laid.

When you take into account that Austin is a pretty laid back place, having two neanderthals like this policing in my hometown make me wonder how bad it is in other parts of the country.

I think it's more like if they would stop redistributing the wealth to themselves from their workers.

If they would stop being greedy f'tards, then more people would have money to buy the things that move the economy and nobody would need government aid in the form of food stamps and welfare (save those who are honestly mentally or physically unable to work).If you want to build an economy the keyword is "build". You don't build a house by building the attic first magically floating there, then the foundation and walls to get up to it, you start with a foundation, then walls. If the people at the bottom have money to do more than barely survive, they buy things that actually move the economy, they buy things at retailers, who need to hire more people; those people buy things which results in transportation and warehouses hiring more people, those people buy things; manufacturing starts hiring (if the rich f'tard didn't send those jobs overseas, which the conservatives blame on the government rather than the rich guy who sent the job overseas for some reason, it's not like the price of that shirt went down when they sent it overseas, they just pocketed the extra wealth for themselves) and those people buy even more expensive things.

Our right wing economy favors investors and large business over the needs of the vast majority. It doesn't matter how much GM stock investors buy and trade, GM won't make more cars and hire more people until enough people can buy cars.

As we slide more and more money from the people who actually spend money in the economy and make it move, to people who just horde and invest, the economy will continue to spiral down. More and more people will require food stamps and welfare due to the actions of the rich, but the conservative right will blame the workers and former workers rather than pushing blame onto the people who are refusing to pay living wages, who push jobs overseas so they can personally pocket more wealth, and complain about the people they aren't giving living wages to and the people they laid off need government assistance, and the conservative voters go right along because the pulpit and Fox News has brainwashed them into believing that a party that disobey's everything their Jesus taught them is the Christian party.

The growing wealth and income gap is the biggest challenge facing our nation, and indeed much of the world. Of course most of the rest of the world does a better job of caring for the work force than the US does, paid maternity leave in all but 4 nations, paid vacation time in most of the world by law, paid sick time in most developed economies, minimum wages tied to inflation in much of those countries, a minimum level of health insurance for every man woman and child without having to buy from for-profit corporations (most actually use a single payer, which sort of ignores the fact that our individual mandate that we have now was invented by the Republican party, and is financed the same way they wanted to do it and the tax penalty for not participating is the same...the other nations that use individual mandates do so via not-for-profit insurance)... We do so much to protect the rich and investor class in this nation... sickening really.

Or the money laid for such a useless thing. I swear my neighborhood would be having a lot of suspicious power outages if I had a neighbor like this.

The website may be biased, but the polls listed are world recognized polls that are mostly above reproach. Christianity is not at the table on this, nobody is saying that there aren't wackos involved in any religion, but realistically how many christian holy war incidents can you list in the last 20 years? I mean real incidents, not just some random guy doing one thing to a doctor or clinic, but a group of holy christian fighters blowing up swathes of people or beheading them. It's not in the same ballpark, in fact it isn't the same league, or sport.

As far as US international policy goes, we do stupid shit a lot of the time. Other times we get dragged into shit because people complain if we don't. Personally I wish we would cut our defense budget in half and tell the rest of the world to go pound sand when they ask for help, but again it is not the issue of discussion we are looking at.

The issue is whether or not Islam, due to the nature of it's teachings, promotes certain things that lead to war and/or brutal acts. The fact is that it does, assuming you follow the tenets laid forth in the Koran and other works, such as the Sunnah and the anecdotes of the 12 Imams.

What other religion currently follows these tenets in it's religious laws?

- Leaving Islam is a sin and a religious crime. Once any man or woman is officially classified as Muslim, because of birth or religious conversion, he or she will be subject to the death penalty if he or she becomes an apostate, that is, abandons his or her faith in Islam in order to become an atheist, agnostic or to convert to another religion.
- If a person has never been a Muslim, he or she can live in an Islamic state by accepting to be a dhimmi and pay a Jizyah tax. They cannot practice their religions openly and they also do not have the same rights and legal protections as Muslims.
- Death penalty for Homosexuals
- Numerous women's rights violations and restrictions
- Child marriage
- Jihad is an important religious duty for Muslims. It is only very recently that it has started to be redefined by a small amount of Muslims as being possible to be non-violent in nature.

As it stands, Islam is not a religion of peace but of strife. Unless you are a casual follower, you will be trying to promote tenets of this religion either through non-violent or violent ways. As we can see around the world and even through the events of the Arab Spring, the violent ways are far more likely.

Fair enough, I should have expected to be laid in to for expressing a political opinion. Fair play to you -- It is the internet, after all

I spend quite a bit of time in the north and like it there, but most of my time is in the midlands so I'm not going to pretend to know what it's like to live there permanently. The only 2 Scots (only 1 of which could vote due to living there) that I'm in touch with regularly both supported staying unified but are looking forward to the greater powers that Scotland deserve and will get.

The difference between the parties, at least in England, seems pretty minimal to me. Blair didn't seem any better (or worse really, other than ditching the gold reserves all in one go at a rather low price) than Cameron.

Driving in Oahu was awesome, seemed to be very polite and laid back. California... Not so much...