Mr. Oliver is by far my favorite [wish I could afford HBO!]. I find Seth to be on the snarky side in his delivery ... which is something that has always tickled my fancy for some unknown reason. [my mean streak is showing]

You're correct about the jokes writing themselves. There's been more than a few times I've had an obscure retort pop into my head after seeing something on the news. I'll even repeat it to a few close friends and, sure as shootin', it appears in a monologue or in some discussion within a day or two. Blows me away every time. Well, sigh, at least I can laugh again ... most days

I don't personally have an issue with hijabs,niqabs, or burkas. I do object to women being forced to wear them in countries that practice Sharia or if the husband is forcing them to.

I do think that for identification purposes, you should at least be able to see the face. This would be on an official document proving identity (license,passport) and, if detained, the law enforcement official should be allowed to match the identification. This would really only apply to the burka/niqab, since those obscure the face heavily.

The hockey puck glow was a bit weird, but actually pretty good for a few scenarios:

It is rather difficult for people who haven't seen much hockey to follow the puck. As you watch more of the sport, you figure out cues that help you track it, but I think that is a legitimate barrier that presents some difficulty in getting new fans of the sport. I think the blue glow helped a lot with that; would be nice if individual viewers could opt in our out of it on the fly. That would have been impossible (or prohibitively expensive) before, but with streaming video looking like the future rather than set channels it will be more workable.

When the puck travels close to the boards on the near side of the rink, it gets obscured and out of sight. The blue glow clipped right through that, so you could still figure out where the puck was. If two or more players were in a scrum for a puck stuck along the boards, you could see if it was moving and therefore know if a ref/linesman was going to whistle the play dead. That was quite a handy feature also.

Overall, the implementation / resolution of the puck highlighting in hockey was a bit non ideal, but it did have some real upsides. I don't think it deserved *quite* as much flak as it got...

Funny story, out of my own stupidity I made my WIFI vulnerable and somebody used my connection without my knowledge to download some obscure swedish war movie. A few weeks later I get mail from a bunch of lawyers and ended up paying 300 bucks for that shit.
You want my WIFI password? No, but if it's a real emergency you could use my computer while I watch.
Not an emergency? You can always go home if you're bored by me.

There's a reason that shit is password protected. I'll lend you ten bucks but I won't tell you my credit card's PIN. I'll give you a lift but I won't give you my car.

The muslim world? Is that like a less wacky Disneyland? Do you have any idea how many different types of muslim there are in the world?

The notion that they collectively have one agreed view on the west is a pretty big indicator that someone hasn't a fecking clue about the subject. For example, do you think every Catholic has the same views as the pope? Why should muslims be any different?

Do you expect the 'head' muslim to call a press conference?

"Ladies and gentlemen, thanks for attending. As you know I have been appointed spokesperson for all 1.6 billion muslims. I had a chat with all of them this morning and here's what we all think."

And for Peter's sake, if you're going to criticise the example for being unrepresentative of the average muslim meeting a rich celebrity, don't choose fucking Mosul as your counter balance. Occupied as it is by the most fringe religious extremists in the world who think nothing of killing people who agree with them. The overwhelming majority of people in Saudi on the other hand are normal, every day folk going about their lives in pretty much the same way you or i do. Like the overwhelming majority of Americans do.

It's like contrasting someone who believes in social justice with an ultra left wing terrorist. One is an average person with an average person's reactions to, say, meeting celebrities. The other is a lunatic who might do anything to make some obscure point that only makes sense to them. Bullshit argument.

I was thinking something similar, but did you catch the caltrops in the smoke? That would be the most ideal time to deploy since it would obscure them.

There is actually an argument that our brains are three due to the way the frontal cortex works. (not the "triune brain" which is a different idea)

The frontal part can exercise control over the two hemispheres and is about as close as we have gotten to identifying where free will comes from. Certainly, in people who have had frontal brain damage there appears to be a direct link to lack of impulse control.
Almost every serial killer in history appears to have had some manner of frontal brain trauma at some stage in their lives and the link to delinquency is fairly well documented by this stage.

The latest research suggests consciousness itself is a fractal programme running co-operatively across the brain, but it remains pretty obscure none the less. The frontal cortex is split between left and right hemispheres, but it certain appears to behave as one in healthy brains.

The best way I could describe it is that the left and right represent the animistic unconsidered side of our behaviour and desires as we see in most animals (interacting via the corpus callosum that connects them). With the frontal cortex seeming to represent the higher functions that allow us to harness the rest of our brain in more considered and abstract ways (presumably also split into left and right).

I think of it like the foreman directing the other divisions of the factory but staying largely hands off when considered decisions don't need to be made.

All of the above is a gross oversimplification though. We can guess at the basis for free will, but it remains elusive.

The music kind of obscured it, but does it rawr when the mouth is opened?

I think that the GOP is in full-on panic mode, and doesn't care about legitimacy / shot at winning for this election.

They (the party elites) will do absolutely everything they can to prevent Trump from getting enough delegates to lock up the nomination. Hence Colorado and Wyoming. Those actions make it seem like they prefer Cruz, but actually they dislike him close to as much as they hate Trump.

Although it is still mathematically possible for Cruz (559 delegates) to get enough delegates to lock up the nomination (1237 needed), realistically it is out of reach (826 still available). Trump (756 delegates), on the other hand, could well manage it. So, the GOP strategy is to avoid that at all costs by encouraging people to vote for Cruz or Kasich in primaries, or even better to encourage more state GOP offices to hold a smoke-filled room convention that grants all the delegates to #NeverTrump instead of even bothering to let people vote.

If they manage that, the contested national convention will get ugly. They (GOP elites) would turn on Cruz instantly -- cast aside. In any other election cycle they would have turned on him already, but with juggernaut Trump, they have to use him to get to the contested convention.

So the question becomes who if not Trump or Cruz? Who will the GOP try to push in? I think that right now, they aren't as worried about answering that question as they are about trying to get there. That being said, they have some options:

Mitt Romney was their first thought. He took some tentative steps towards playing along with the GOP plans, failed to generate any excitement, and has since faded back into relative obscurity. But he remains an option.

Next up was Paul Ryan. A lot of the GOP see him as the future of the party; the "great white hope". There was a flurry of activity making it seem like he was going to take up the flag, but has since denied that he would be interested in or even accept getting the nod. However, he was cagey and close to as vocal against getting the nod to be speaker of the house, and then accepted that. You never know.

Kasich would be another option. He's relatively benign, and wouldn't offend many more of the republican base than the GOP is already ready and willing to offend in order to prevent Trump (and to a lesser extent Cruz).


Of those, I tend to think that Romney is the most likely choice for the GOP in the end. I think it would be extremely stupid to foist "future of the party" Ryan into this election, which would certainly taint his political future. Kasich makes a lot of sense, but on the other hand, "in for a penny, in for a pound" -- as long as the GOP is willing to go to these great lengths to keep Trump out they might as well just own the illegitimacy of it, shoot the moon, and hand pick someone that a) they have complete control over, and b) has nothing to lose in terms of political future. Voila, Mitt Romney.


I also don't think that the GOP will just throw in the towel if Trump locks down the number of delegates needed for the nomination. I'm sure they already have some last-ditch, scorched earth preliminary plans in place for that contingency.

However, I think that they essentially already have thrown in the towel with regards to the election in general. At least to a sufficient degree that they don't give a rats ass about the chances for whoever is the republican nominee winning. That's a *distant* priority behind NOT TRUMP, among other things. Which is pretty stupid, because the likely nomination of Hillary on the democrat side gives them what should be a *golden* opportunity to steal the election. IF they could come up with a vaguely tolerable candidate ... which they won't.

Nah, it was always the same. The lack of overtaking is commonly blamed on high downforce, carbon brakes, and super short braking distances, but it actually wasn't any better before they put wings on cars. Same thing: the rich, fast teams qualify and start at the front and stay at the front and get richer and faster...with the occasional fall from grace (Mclaren) or rise from obscurity (Brawn->Mercedes). As cool as they are technologically, development series like F1 tends to result in boring races.

ed: Oh, and using ground effect has been banned since 81(?). Interestingly, Indycars use the ground effect (though without the skirts so it's not as effective as the F1 ground effect cars), and by virtue of being a (mostly) spec series, has much better races.

Wait what? Is it automatically ok if the skewed / whitewashed role is written into the script? You do know that this kind of skew doesn't come about by the kkk kidnapping black actors at gunpoint in the middle of filming and replacing them with white ones?

If a Japanese director were to make a movie about the civil war, but chose to make it about a Japanese fighter who comes to the US, becomes the most kickass soldier of the Union, makes personal friends with Lincoln, and convinces him to stay the course on emancipation... that would be pretty weird, even if the argument went that this was the only way a Japanese audience could identify with this obscure historic time.

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