DISQUS

And to you Gossip.

I've heard that, except in the version I've heard it's a couple of beers not coffee.

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I can’t wait to see what he does with pure earthen materials.

Maybe a neoprene gopher suit.
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Shhssss. No one tell Jam.

OMG! That's gotta be the funniest thing I've seen in ages.

???

Everything okay Gossip?

Well now you've named him and given his position I'd be inclined to trust him more than an Army man on such matters. And not just because he's from the British Museum, but because he is an expert in his field and the Army man is not.

Also the Army, any army, isn't known for hiring 'experts' who use the 'no' word a lot.

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I'd trust a US miltary officer being quoted by name far over any reporter's opinion or anonymous source
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Which isn't the same as saying he's unbiased.

Although I'd tend to agree with Terps. Military Officers tend to be a darn site more straight with the truth than Journilaists with an axe to grind.

The problem with the US and UK military these days is telling the real officers from the PR reps in uniform :(

Well I think anyone with a brain knew that George would take the election results as an attaboy. But woah. That is some scary, scary shit.

That's exactly the market they are aiming for. Someone with an aging late 90's early 2000's vintage PC by the likes of Dell or Gateway who bought an iPod and are now interested in Apple.

And who want a PC that just works

I never really thought that a Mini was for you tbh (you are more of a PowerMac person) but I'm just so bouncy about the whole concept I had to throw it in :D

Question is single or dual G5s?

Mini Mac! One for every room in the house :D

Congratulations Mrs. Gossip :) Hope your job switch plans pan out as well Gossip.

Some of us do that already and we're only 24 :D

Good luck on the whole job front this year Gossip, you deserve a break.

Tee hee,

Surreal, but funny. Brightened my day :)

Oh, and another thing while I am about it.

My Grandmother is an 86 year old Italian. She lived in Italy in the years preceeding WWII and witnessed first hand Mussolini's rise to power and his closeness to Hitler.

They also thought they were doing 'the right thing'. They also thought they were doing the world a favour. And not one of the citizens of Germany or Italy seriously realised what was happening to them until it was far too late to do anything about it. IN fact a lot of them thought that what they (their leaders) were doing was a really good thing and was doing wonders for their respective countries.

A couple of weeks ago I was discussing the current war in Iraq with my grandmother, just as something to talk about really. I made the comment that while I disagreed strongly with what Mr Blair had done in Iraq he really did have a rather good domestic track record. She replied that that's exaclty what everyone said about Mussolini before WW II started.

Made me think.

I'm not claiming that the US is going to turn into Nazi Germany (there goes Godwins law again). In fact I think that is highly unlikely to happen (I personal find it more likely that the US would tear itself apart in a civil war first). However there are some lines that a country wanting to call itself civilised cannot be allowed to cross.

Invading another soverign nation that has made no direct attack on your country nor poses a crediable threat is one of them.

You see the problem is once you invade one you'll ineveitably have to invade another, and then another and another and another. It's catching. You have to keep moving forwards to show the people back home that you're keeping the momentum up and not getting mired in a local guriella war.

Iraq is not, now, a free nation. It's an occupided territory of the United States of America. It may well become a free country in the future but I strongly suspect that it will be in spite of, not because of, the US's attemtempts to free it.

Right now Iraq is the largest recruiting banner for radical muslim terrorists that the radical leaders could ever have wished for. And it will stay that way because the US patently doesn't know how to win the peace in Iraq without resorting to massive levels of violence taht will just fan the flames higher.

If you don't believe me just watch the situation in Falluigha over the next few weeks now Bush doesn't have to worry about the election.

The US cannot win in Iraq because it does not know how to win. All it knows is how to hit people with a very big stick (as a side note I don't know how to win either, but then I'm not the one with the big stick).

So the US will be forced into invading somewhere else (possibly Iran, maybe not), in order to proove that it is actually going somewhere and not just getting American soliders killed for no good reason. Then things really will start to go all to hell.

The irony here, for me at least, is that I hope, nay I very nearly pray, that I'm wrong. Nothing would make me happier than to come back here in 4 years and have to say to Terp that he was right and I was wrong.

Anyone care to take odds on that happening? Anyone?

I saw a quote that described watching the US from abroad at the moment as 'like watching a good friend go totally batshit crazy'. I find it to be a rather good quote all told.

Amen to that Mr G.

Time to start digging those bomb shelters.

You're quite right that the very worst part of the whole thing is that to Bush and co it will look like they've just got a massive 'thumbs up' from the American people. Hell they have! Which means more of the same, probably with greater fervour that last time. If I were in Iran or N. Korea, or anywhere else on Americas shit list for that matter, I would be very, very scared right now.

Elections roll around next year in the UK. I sincerly hope that we can replace Mr Blair with someone not quite so ready to bow to Bush's every whim.

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The rest of the world, however, is finally learning how to stand on their own. We don't need a single super power anymore, the world is too diverse for that.
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I think that hits the nail on the head. For the last 50/60 years we've been living in the shadow of WW2, one result of which was that the rest of the world looked to the US for leadership and support.

With the cold war over and several generations between us and WW2 the world is starting to learn to stand on its own again.

Another sign of this is the way Israel is viewed and treated by the international community. Once upon a time the critisim that Israel faces today on a regular basis would have been unthinkable. The memory of the horrors of WW2 were too close in our minds and people were simply too afraid to say anything. Now that is no longer true and people are beginning to wake up to the fact.

It's also one of the reasons I think that a more integrated EU is not only desireable but a requirement if Europe is going to stand in the future. The only way we are going to be able to deal with emerging powers like China, Asia and the probable re-emergence of Russia is together and without the US.

I think the next 50 years are going to be interesting because we are the first generation to grow up without the shadow of the Cold war or WW2 over our heads. We haven't grown up viewing the Americans as saviours who keep us free and safe and we've made peace with out past. As we grow older and move slowly into the positions of power in the world our outlook will be radically different to that of generations before us.

We'll do what we always do. We'll keep putting it off until a crisis happens then we'll have a jolly big war over it.

Oh...wait, we've already started doing that :p

lb is only for weight Zhan. The symbol is £ and the letters are GBP.

This is all to the best of my knowledge as I am not a tax accountant.

Fuel tax in the UK comprises of two components, Fuel duty and VAT.

Duty is (I think, I'm not clear on this point) fixed per litre by the goverment each budget and used to go up by about 3% above the rate of inflation a year under the fuel esclator introduced by the tories. This was scrapped in 2000 by Labour and duty is now set depending on what Mr Brown calls 'due budget process'.

VAT is charged on the combined price of fuel + duty at 17.5%

A typical litre of unleaded fuel in the UK will cost, on average, about 81p ish.

Of that 59.3p is tax (duty + VAT), about 18p goes to the refinery and the rest goes to the retailer.

Looking at it in gallons the cost is 371.9p per gallon which at current prices is roughly $6.70 USD. Of that $4.86 is tax which is by no means insignificant.

Here in the UK Diesel is usually around 2-3p more expensive than petrol per litre. However Diesel cars are becomming more and more common due to the introduction of new high performance turbo diesels that still return better mileage than petrol cars. However you need to be doing around 15,000 miles p.a. for the better mileage to even out the higher cost of Diesel vs Petrol.

aww that sucks Gossip :(

You're job hunting right now, right?

Gossip!! I can't look at things like that at work! Why didn't you _warn_ me :P

Nice though :D

Sounds like a good idea Gossip, like enid one that I'd be interested in following.

In some ways your situation sounds a bit like the one I'm leaving behind at my (soon to be ex) employer. I hope things work out for you.

o_O

Oh dear :(

Well you have to look at what you need just to fly a ship and what you need to be effective in it.

You could probably fly a batttle ship with maybe 2 million skill points. But if you want to be any more use than a fart in a hurricane in it then you're talking six to eight million SPs.

Still, glad to hear you're enjoying it :)

Problem with EVE, for me, is that once the shineyness and novelty has worn off it gets dull real quick.

Your screenie says you have 27k skillpoints. Want to get out of that frigate into a cruiser so you can make some real money? You're going to need 800k ~ 1 million Skill points. Want a battleship? 6 million skill points plus.

It takes months to get those kind of skill levels. Litterally months. A single skill to level five can take three weeks or more even with all the learning skills maxed out (which in itself can take a month or more the achieve). In the mean time you're stuck doing the same old mission grind or mining. You can't effectively trade because you don't have the ISK. You can't fight because you don't have the skills to use the equipment. All you can do is mine and run agent missions and after the seven hundreth time of picking up some lazy bastards shopping and running it home for them you're about ready to throw your monitor out of the window.