Interesting Links for 26-10-2015

[andrewducker]

• Things Not To Do In Bed
  • (tags: sex advice funny )
• The cost of replacing Trident is really £167bn, new figures suggest
  • (tags: nuclearweapons UK )
• I am now officially terrified of Mississippi
  • (tags: usa republicans poverty religion )
• I agree with this review of Crimson Peak (Good, pretty, could have been so much better)
  • (tags: review movies

Comments

[steer]

"Write Like You Talk" this person has never spent any time with academics. His examples of sentences that would raise eyebrows seem like they come from a guide to writing plain English.

[steer]

I think the guy's campaign is going completely the wrong way. We should talk like the quoted people write. Imagine how brilliant that would be. It would be like living in a Jack Vance novel.

To take a quote from wikiquote

You must save yourselves,” Rogol Domedonfors told them. “You have ignored the ancient wisdom, you have been too indolent to learn, you have sought easy complacence from religion, rather than facing manfully to the world.”

What a world it would be to live in.

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jack_Vance

[steer]

Oh, and that page includes one of my favourite bits of Vance:

"What are your fees?" inquired Guyal cautiously.

"I respond to three questions," stated the augur. "For twenty terces I phrase the answer in clear and actionable language; for ten I use the language of cant, which occasionally admits of ambiguity; for five, I speak a parable which you must interpret as you will; and for one terce, I babble in an unknown tongue."

[andrewducker]

That's fantastic!

[gonzo21]

Well okay, trident is complete indefensible at that cost. That essentially means over the next 10 years the UK's defence can consist of two useless aircraft carriers with no aeroplanes on them, and some submarines with doomsday weapons that we can't actually use either. And virtually nothing else. We have a stark choice between having a military, or having a trough for piggies to gobble down taxpayers money from.

I think we all know what our parliament will decide to do though.

[steer]

indefensible

Pun intended? :-)

[gonzo21]

Gubment ain't done nothin' for me!

BUT YOU GET FOODSTAMPS!

Well ah desurve them.

... I'm reminded of a girl I used to know who worked as a camgirl in Mississippi, paying for her nursing school education. She wanted to work at the family planning clinic. I said oh cool, which one. She paused, and said there was only one family planning clinic in the State of Mississippi.

[gwendysmile]

oh god.

[gonzo21]

Sad isn't it. I lost contact with her sadly, she disappeared. I hope she's well. She seemed to be having a very hard time living in such a State.

Trident

[danieldwilliam]

Trident is very expensive for a weapons system we probably can't use without US permission, very expensive for a weapons system that we might only use in circumstances that don't current exist and which only potentially exist in the future and very expensive for a weapons system which at least 50% of the current candidates for Prime Minister have said they probably wouldn't use under any circumstances.

Which, in order to pay for we're going to have to cut military capabilites of the type we are currently actually using every day, or cut collective services like health and education or cut transfer payments or cut private spending through increased taxation.

This does not sound like a great deal to me.

Re: Trident

[octopoid_horror]

If by "use without US permission" you mean that we physically couldn't utilise the system, that's not accurate as far as I'm aware and it's probably less physically controlled than you think it is. British nuclear weapons are not kept secure by any kind of transmitted codes that allow them to be used. The Royal Navy actually objected to such an idea on the grounds that none of their officers would do anything so dishonourable as to go ahead with a nuclear launch without proper authorisation.

If you mean that those responsible in government for doing so wouldn't give a launch order unless the US said "No it's ok, we're all doing it, go right ahead" then you are probably right.

Re: Trident

[danieldwilliam]

The latter in the short term. I don't see us using our nuclear weapons without the diplomatic go-ahead of the US and over the longer term I believe we are dependent on the US for the upkeep of the missles, so that if the US decided that in ten years time they didnt' want us to have an effective nuclear missle they could refuse to maintain them.

[danieldwilliam]

I am genuinely in two minds as to whether Cameron is seeking Lords Reform (along side federalism) and therefore his stance on tax credits and EVEL should be interpreted as an attempt to expose current constitutional nonsense in order to gain support for change or if he's just a fool who doesn't know what he's doing.

[ggreig]

Occam's razor suggests the latter.