I am in favour of capital punishment. With proper safeguards, it really should be possible in this day and age to ensure that mistakes are not made. My contention is that there are people who are just not fit to live in accordance with the standards necessary in this violent and over-crowded world.
However, I would not like to see executions made into public entertainment.
Bit of a black dog today I fear. Still, that is with small lower case b and d so it is nothing severe. I was drinking gin last night at wifey's birthday celebration and it seems that my powers of consumption have limited themselves. So, a night full of really severe dreams and a loss of confidence about today. At least I know what is up so that makes dealing with it that much easier.
As for today, I'm taking the easy route out. Read the guest blog - with links - and then imagine me saying "Yeah - that's what I reckon as well" On one front I will amplify. The Iranians want to have an atomic capability. We used to go around Muscat and Oman showing the locals what they would be up against if they took on the British forces. These were called fire power demonstrations. I reckon we need to show Iran what atomic power is really all about. Leave the place in the sort of condition that it matters not what depth their facilities may be below ground. Turn the sand into glass and they won't be able to get down there anyway.
John's lazy way out of an opinion.
Is this how the "Liberation of Baghdad" was meant to be?
So, where did it all go so wrong.
The wonderful increases in medicine - especially the treatment of head injuries - means that many more wounded soldiers are kept alive following injuries that even in the recent past would have led to their death. In Iraq, the use of explosive devices have challenged this rising threshold but many live on.
The advances in treatment have not been matched by any great increase in the facilities for caring for these broken bodies and damaged minds. This is where far greater attention is required. Little point in saving a life if it then lingers on as a living hell.
Whatever else the Iraq war has done, it has certainly led to many new software applications. This one by the BBC very graphically illustrates (is that tautology - graphically and illustrates?) the way in whih violence has increased. Use the slider at the bottom of the view to move through the time scale.
Also bear in mind that this is just one area.
It seems that nothing is sacred when it comes to warning labels. Still, they seem to have missed out "May contain nuts"I am sure that I do not have to rehearse the pro and con of global warning. Is it as a result of how we are treating the planet or is is a cyclical thing? What do we need to do - if anything? I am prepared to admit that my only concern is selfish. I cannot see why man has spent all that time and money making nice vehicles, gadgets to amuse, cheap air travel, world wide food available all the year round etc. etc. only for me to get onto the mobile but erratic flowing sewer that is public transport whilst smelling of organic lentil soup and wearing shoes made of Indian car tyres. My conscience is eased by the thought that man's creativity has always come up with very many solutions to other problems and will no doubt crack this one before we all sink under melted ice water.
However. I read an article yesterday that got to where the other words have failed. Putting the argument into just what alternatives involve seems to destroy the idea of producing alternatives. Way back when I was 'an oil man' it had been calculated that the area needed for grain to convert into alternative fuel sufficient to serve America alone was one and a half times the area of the USA. That left no room to grow food crops.
Co-incidence at work. I had just posted this and started to look at my blog feeds and saw reference to this ethanol Pro and Con item. Damned if you do and damned if you don't I suppose.
Doubtless for travellers on the Mexico route.
Apparently, it would hold 175 pounds of sh, er, um, politican's by-produce.
B.Liar would need two.
I imagine that the FBI is covering it's ar*e when it issues a warning that terrorists might drive school buses. Shame that when challenged, they could not say why they had issued such a notice and knew of no such threat other than a generalised "It could happen".
Back in the days when I had a brain, I used to be accused of too much sarcasm. That is why I find the comments here so amusing when it too goes into what terrorists might plan.
I wrote that I had not discovered who achieved the very realistic police routines and argot.
Now have a result
Tyler's politically correct approach to policing is in stark contrast to the attitudes of his new colleagues, in particular the tough talking Det Ch Insp Gene Hunt, played by Philip Glenister.
Tyler is horrified as he watches officers plant evidence on witnesses, beat up suspects and brawl with colleagues. His attempts to come to terms with the different attitudes of police officers in 1973, however, provide a rich source of humour. In one scene he asks colleagues where he can get access to a PC terminal. A bemused receptionist replies that they don't have an officer by that name.
The series is particularly popular with police officers. DCI Steve Crimmins, of Greater Manchester Police, who acts as script adviser, said that while the show's portrayal of 1970s officers was "a bit like a caricature" most of what is shown on screen was "pretty honest".
Is is just my sense of humour or is there something fundamentally wrong here? Gives the depressed a choice - end it all or get ASBOd.
My days of first class air travel are in the past and I nowadays travel comfortably dressed such that I'll never be upgraded. Given the risk of having inappropriate companions by being up front, I don't think I'd be too bothered.
Bless my soul. I was doing a discrete Google to see what the spiders had on Welcome to MY world and discovered that the Wayne Rooney girlfriend had appropriated the title for her new book.
Be interesting to establish where she got the title from. Bit of a joke if she is a secret follower of this blog. Have to have a sly peek inside it when I see one on the bookshelf in Smiffs or Border Books. At least, I'll know not to use that title when I publish excerpts from this guff.
I read an enormous number of blogs. From all sorts of people, From all around the world.
Benefit to me is that amongst this sea of syllables, one sometimes finds pearls
Didn't they ever make you take a couple of bullshit philosophy courses and didn't you study Buddhism in one of them? Life is suffering – it's as simple as that. The only release from suffering comes from escaping the wheel of life.Of course we initially get depressed as we age. We lose muscle tone. Gravity pulls down that which used to remain erect. We get fatter and flabby. We have to work harder to get fewer results and we have less energy to do the work in the first place. Both sexes begin to grow hair in places where we previously never had it – for women it is their upper lips, for men it is inside their ears.But then we get older and wiser. We realize there is no going back and death – glorious death – is waiting ahead to take us away from it all.
