I'm sorry, but that is an oversimplification too great to just allow you to apologise for and continue on with the point.

To suggest a narrative in which all Thatcher did was close a few factories and blame the communities for being too lazy to fend for themselves or find a new job is not only naive and ignorant of all the facts, but incredibly insulting to people from those areas.

An apology for oversimplifying? I personally think you owe one to the hard working people of northern mining towns that were not only made redundant by Thatcher (with no other jobs available), they were victimised by her and then blacklisted so that they would not be able to find work again - some have only been vindicated in the past few years.

The only redeeming aspect of your frankly disgusting ideas about deprived areas in the UK is that you are clearly not in possession of the facts. Lazyness? The miners were the backbone of this country, the WORKING class - you know? Steelworkers lazy?

To some people in this country there has been no recovery, they are more in debt than ever, they have less job and home security, they are depressed, there is no future and it doesn't even seem like their kids will be able to do any better. David Chameron appears on the TV and tells them we're all doing better and the recovery is going great and they laugh at him... THEY'RE USING FOODBANKS TO LIVE. Their families eat by the grace of generous community members who donate food... in 2016....... in the United Kingdom, ex-fifth largest economy in the world. Recovery!? That's how the recovery was FUNDED!!! By taking money from the poorest and most desperate in the form of cuts and austerity! They're using foodbanks right now so that you can claim the UK had a recovery. Disabled people committed suicide because they felt as if they were a burden, because they were scared and saw no hope, all so that people could claim we had a fucking recovery. But the average person is no better off and the debt that Osborne made such a big deal about has increased. He's missed every target he made for himself and redefined poverty so that the statistics looked better!

And that isn't BECAUSE of brexit - that was before brexit. Many people are blissfully ignorant of how some people have to live their lives in this country, especially those most influenced by the Westminster bubble. Politicians and political commentators have completely misjudged the mood of the nation; that led to brexit, that has led to Corbyn who in fact has been the ONLY man in parliament to be making these points.

And they think he's no leader? When he goes to work every day he has to deal with around 400 people spitting abuse and doubt at him. He stood in parliament with hundreds of them jeering him and faced them down and made the democratic will of hundreds of thousands of people (who were not in attendance) felt. He is the only man who looks like a leader right now, the only one who looks like he knows what the hell to do.

Actually, if this was real, (which I don't believe for a second), she'd be one of the poorer, less educated, brits that voted out rather than the educated Brits who voted remain.

I don't blame her though, she was lied to by the likes of Farage and Johnson.

smashing rebound...

http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/currency

set dates from 1st of month to today

The supreme court is in a position to take liberties because there is no court above it to which one can appeal.

Courts have a mandate to judge compliance with the law - not to redefine the law (that's the legislature's role).

If due process was followed, courts would find cases like 'yelling fire' as protected, and refer the law to the legislature to exempt-from-1st-amentment-protection any inappropriate behaviors via new written constitutional law.

As it stands, there are many judicial opinions that are enforcible via the legal system, that are never written down as law by the legislature.

Again, it's a matter of what people are willing to enforce. The courts are just people. The law is only as important to them as they will it to be. If everyone is on board with twisting the rules, then that's the norm.

(aside : Yelling fire is a stupid example. If you did it, everyone would look around, and then look at you, and would be like "wtf are you talking about?")



Words are written to convey meanings. They don't exist for their own sake. The 1791 meaning of "well regulated" is similar to today's meaning "well adjusted". It would be best summarized as "orderly" or "properly functioning". It has nothing to do with government regulation.

Similarly, "eminent domain" means "obvious domain" (obvious because republic, and every citizen (i.e. statesman) owns the country collectively, and you never actually owned your land, you only had a title to be the sole user).
Sounds weird by todays' standards, but back then the norm was that regular people had nothing and the crown (and its friends) owned everything. Republic sounded quite progressive at the time. Remember, the U.S. revolution was just prior to the French revolution. Kingdoms were the norm.

Sounds a bit different when translated from 1700's english to 2000's english.

-scheherazade

So what do we do? Leave and pretend there is more than 30 miles of water between us and France? Europe's fate will surely have of a massive impact on the UK regardless of whether we call ourselves part of it or not. No man is an island, even when that man is, err, a country that is an island...

Anyhoo. Maybe London will hold a referendum on whether it wants to be part of the UnUnited Kingdom.

"Saudi Arabia has told the Obama administration and members of Congress that it will sell off hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of American assets held by the kingdom if Congress passes a bill that would allow the Saudi government to be held responsible in American courts for any role in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks."

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/16/world/middleeast/saudi-arabia-warns-ofeconomic-fallout-if-congress-passes-9-11-bill.html

That's an interesting threat, if true. US treasury securities are the safest asset there is, and given the ginormous shortage of AAA assets worldwide, those would be vacuumed up in a split-second. Hell of a threat, really.

"Automatically ok"? Not necessarily. But in cases where it makes sense, at a stretch even "plot sense" for the character to be there; yeah, I think that is OK.

The Last Samurai isn't a documentary. But, the general historical justification for Tom Cruise's character being in Japan is pretty much valid. Meiji was interested in the West -- clothes, technology, weapons, and military. He actually did hire Westerners to train his army, although from what I read it sounds like they were German, French, and Italian rather than American. Still, the movie portrays the general situation/setting with at least *decent* broad-strokes historical accuracy. LOADS of movies deviate from even this degree of historical accuracy *way* more without drawing complaints; particularly if their main purpose is entertainment and not education / documentary.


Your hypothetical reverse movie makes some valid criticisms. Even though it would have been historically possible for a Westerner to be in Japan at the time -- even to be involved with training a Western-style military -- it would be unlikely for such a person to get captured, run into a Shogun that speaks English, become a badass (or at least passable) samurai warrior, and end up playing a major role in politics and significantly influencing Emperor Meiji.

My defense against those criticisms is that, for me at least, the movie is entertaining; which is kinda the point. Your "Union Samurai" movie might be equally entertaining and therefore given an equal pass on historical inaccuracies by me.

The whole characters as a "lens through which the audience can appreciate a culture/history outside their own" issue is (slightly) more weighty to me. I don't think those are often necessary, but I don't feel like my intelligence is being insulted if the movie maker feels that they are in order to sell tickets.

I love the Chinese historical novel "Three Kingdoms". A few years ago, John Wu made the movie "Red Cliff", mostly about one particular battle in the historical period portrayed in that book. For the Chinese audience, Wu made the movie in two parts, summed up about four and a half hours long. For the US / West, he made a version trimmed to just over two hours. Why? Because he (and a team of market researchers, I'm sure) knew that very few Westerners would go to see a 4+ hour long movie, entirely in Mandarin Chinese (with subtitles), about a piece of Chinese history from ~1800 years ago that very few in the West have ever heard of or know anything about.

I think the full 4+ hour long movie is great. In my personal top 10 favorite movies of all time, ahead of most Hollywood stuff. But I also understand that there's no way that movie would appeal to all but a tiny, tiny fraction of Western viewers in that full-on 4+ hour format. But, even though I personally think the cut-down 2 hour "US" version is drastically inferior to the full cut, I am glad that he made it because it gives a suitably accurate introduction to the subject matter to more people in the West (just like the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" and "Dynasty Warriors" videogames do), and makes that tiny, tiny fraction of Western people that know anything about it a little less tiny. While being entertaining along the way.

For other movies, sometimes the best way that a filmmaker can sell a movie to an audience that otherwise might not accept it (at least in large enough numbers to justify the production costs) may be to insert one of these "lens" characters for the audience to identify with. I don't think there is inherently anything wrong with that. It might not work for movies that are taking a more hardline approach to historical / contextual accuracy (ie., if Tom Cruise showed up in "Red Cliff" in circa 200AD China), but outside of those situations, if that is what the studio thinks it will take to sell tickets... Cool.

The Last Samurai is, like @ChaosEngine said, a movie primarily about an outsider learning a new culture (and accepting his own past). He serves as that lens character, but actually the hows and whys of his character arc are the main points of interest in the movie, at least to me.

I'm sure that an awesome, historically accurate movie could be made dealing with young Emperor Meiji, Takamori (who Katsumoto seems to be based on in The Last Samurai), and the influence of modernization on Japanese culture at the time. It could be made with no Western "lens" character, no overt influence by any particular individual Westerner, and be entirely in Japanese. But that movie wouldn't be The Last Samurai, wouldn't be attempting to serve the same purpose as The Last Samurai, and very likely wouldn't sell as many tickets (in the US) as The Last Samurai (starring Tom Cruise!) did. That wouldn't make it a worse movie, just an apple instead of an orange.

This is the BEST (doom) metal video ever produced. Fourth wall breaking and sinister! My favorite era of Candlemass.

The lyrics of the song are played out in the music video and go beyond the fourth wall into the sinister rhythm of metal music itself -- head banging and dancing in place are the effects of an entranced metalhead now "Dancing and singing to my fiddle".

Brilliant song. Brilliant video -- especially in October. *horrorshow

All hail the Messiah Marcolin!

*promote

Can't you see the devil in me
Just take a look in my eyes
I will play for you this wicked melody
It's magic will reach for your soul

It burns inside, no place to hide
This strange tune possesses your mind
It comes over you and the nightmare is true
You'll enter the realm of the dark

You are bewitched
You are bewitched

Bewitched, be delight, you'll reach the night
Dancing and singing to my fiddle
So take my hand, and understand
That no one will see you again

You are bewitched
You are bewitched

I am the master of the enchanted tune
I'll play for your joy, for your soul, for you doom
My fingers they dance upon the strings like fire
Weaving a spell of my burning desire

Sing with me, meet your destiny
Set yourself free to the magic
So come with me, my kingdom to see
Believe me you're captured my friend

You are bewitched
You are bewitched
You are bewitched
You are bewitched

Okay, there are a number of videos that relate to this subject.

*related=http://videosift.com/video/How-Instant-Runoff-Voting-works-2-0-Multiple-winners is another video highlighted on the aforementioned page.

*related=http://videosift.com/video/Politics-in-the-Animal-Kingdom-Single-Transferable-Vote which is also highlighted on the page. On that Video's page the following are also related:

*related=http://videosift.com/video/The-Problems-with-First-Past-the-Post-Voting-Explained

*related=http://videosift.com/video/The-Alternative-Vote-Explained

*related=http://videosift.com/video/Gerrymandering-Explained

*related=http://videosift.com/video/Mixed-Member-Proportional-Representation-Explained

So somewhere in all these chioces is a possible answer...

How Instant Runoff Voting works 2.0: Multiple winners has been added as a related post - related requested by RFlagg.

Politics in the Animal Kingdom: Single Transferable Vote has been added as a related post - related requested by RFlagg.

The Problems with First Past the Post Voting Explained has been added as a related post - related requested by RFlagg.

The Alternative Vote Explained has been added as a related post - related requested by RFlagg.

Gerrymandering Explained has been added as a related post - related requested by RFlagg.

Mixed-Member Proportional Representation Explained has been added as a related post - related requested by RFlagg.

Hey now...it clearly said BIO-FLOURESCENT, not bioluminescent....so not fake. Biofluorescence is a relatively unstudied feature of some sea life where their coloring fluoresces under certain wavelengths. It's being found all over the animal kingdom, but apparently this is the first reptile found to show it.
Yes, they are shining some light (likely black light) to cause the fluorescence.
It's unknown how this feature might help marine animals. In land plants, it's often used to attract certain insects with colors/patterns they recognize....perhaps the markings on turtles allow other turtles to recognize differing sub species for 'racial purity'?

Sorry to jump the thread here; not sure if dubious is the word either, but pretty amateur and more fear mongering with no supporting data.

First, the suggestion that no more reactors should be built because people use them to aid in production of nuclear weapons. Well kids, that ship has already sailed: In June 2014, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute reported that nine nations (United States, Russia, United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea) possessed approx. 16,300 nuclear weapons in total. So someone builds one or 10 more? Yeah, that will matter. Someone needs to read up on the concept of deterrence.

When talking about waste: "Germany has literally tons of the stuff just laying around" - well, that's just horseshit.

Regarding accidents and number of deaths due to nuclear reactors: "devastating disasters every 30 years" - devastating? Come on, people died, but compared to other sources of energy, according to the WHO, it is by far the safest. Consider:

Energy Source Mortality Rates; Deaths/yr/TWh

Coal - world average, 161
Coal - China, 278
Coal - USA, 15
Oil - 36
Natural Gas - 4
Biofuel/Biomass - 12
Peat - 12
Solar/rooftop - 0.44-0.83
Wind - 0.15
Hydro - world, 0.10
Hydro - world*, 1.4
Nuclear - 0.04

* Includes the 170,000 deaths from the failure of the Banquao Reservoir Dam in China in 1975

So, if not dubious, certainly cheap and pedantic.

Might be lies but an fyi:

http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2015/09/20/441457924/gulf-states-fend-off-criticism-about-doing-little-for-syrian-refugees


"The Saudi Foreign Ministry challenged the charges by issuing official numbers that are impossible to verify independently, saying "the Kingdom has received around 2.5 million Syrians since the beginning of the conflict." A Saudi scholar told the BBC that thousands of Syrians receive free health care and education in Saudi Arabia.

An op-ed in the New York Times by Yousef al-Otaiba, the UAE's ambassador in Washington, contested the widely reported statistic of "zero" refugees in the Gulf. "Since the beginning of the Syrian crisis, the U.A.E. has welcomed more than 100,000 Syrians, joining 140,000 already residing in the emirates," he wrote. "The Emirates' per capita commitment to the Syrian crisis exceeds virtually every other country's participation."

Yeah, you could say he's been keeping busy.

2016 Alice Through the Looking Glass (post-production)
2016 Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (post-production)
2015 Goosebumps (completed)
2015 Before I Wake (completed)
2015 Tulip Fever (completed)
2015 Avengers: Age of Ultron
2015 Fifty Shades of Grey
2015 The End of the Tour
2014 Tales from the Crypt (Short)
2014/I Big Eyes
2014 Mr. Peabody & Sherman (music by)
2013 American Hustle
2013 The Unknown Known (Documentary)
2013 Epic
2013 Oz the Great and Powerful
2013 Captain Sparky vs. The Flying Saucers (Short)
2012 Promised Land
2012 Hitchcock
2012 Frankenweenie
2012 Silver Linings Playbook
2012 Gun Test (Short)
2012 Men in Black 3
2012 Dark Shadows
2011 Real Steel
2011 A Conversation with Danny Elfman and Tim Burton (Documentary)
2011/I Restless
2010/III Do Not Disturb (music by)
2010 The Fight for the Last Cookie (Short)
2010 The Next Three Days
2010/I Alice in Wonderland
2010 Ooozetoons! (TV Movie)
2010 The Wolfman
2009 The Dollar (Short)
2009 Taking Woodstock
2009 Terminator Salvation
2009 Notorious
2008/I Milk
2008 Hellboy II: The Golden Army
2008 Wanted
2008 Standard Operating Procedure (Documentary)
2007 The Kingdom
2007 Meet the Robinsons
2007 Arkham Asylum Fan Film (Short) (score music)
2006 Charlotte's Web
2006 Nacho Libre
2006 Deep Sea (Documentary short)
2005 Shadows of the Bat: The Cinematic Saga of the Dark Knight - Dark Side of the Knight (Video documentary short)
2005 Corpse Bride
2005 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (music by)
2005 No Experience Needed (Short)
2004 Spider-Man 2 (music by)
2003 Big Fish
2003 Hulk (music by)
2002 Red Dragon
2002 Men in Black II (music by)
2002 Spider-Man (music by)
2001 Planet of the Apes
2001 Mazer World (Short)
2001 Spy Kids
2000 The Family Man
2000 Proof of Life
1999 Sleepy Hollow
1999 Anywhere But Here
1999 Instinct
1998 A Civil Action
1998 A Simple Plan
1997 Good Will Hunting
1997 Flubber
1997 Men in Black (music by)
1996 Mars Attacks!
1996 Extreme Measures
1996 The Frighteners
1996 Mission: Impossible (music by)
1996 Freeway
1995 Dead Presidents
1995 To Die For
1995 Dolores Claiborne
1994 Black Beauty
1993 The Nightmare Before Christmas (original score by)
1993 Sommersby
1992 Batman Returns
1992 Article 99
1990 Edward Scissorhands
1990 Darkman
1990 Dick Tracy
1990 Nightbreed
1989 Batman
1988 Scrooged (music score by)
1988 Face Like a Frog (Short)
1988 Hot to Trot
1988 Big Top Pee-wee
1988 Midnight Run
1988 Beetlejuice
1986-1987 Pee-wee's Playhouse (TV Series) (4 episodes)
1987 Summer School
1985-1987 Amazing Stories (TV Series) (2 episodes) )
1986 Wisdom
1986 Back to School
1986 Alfred Hitchcock Presents (TV Series) (1 episode)
1985 Pee-wee's Big Adventure
1980 Forbidden Zone