
and apparently offered to pretend to be Axl Rose for £40
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 13:57,
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(I actually love that song and thing she's got a great Rock Voice - so there.)

and that song does stand out
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Mon 24 May 2010, 13:59,
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it's all good.
The youchoob videos show Sen Dogg recording with them, but it's not on the album... I think there might be a second album in the pipeline.
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 14:03,
archived)
The youchoob videos show Sen Dogg recording with them, but it's not on the album... I think there might be a second album in the pipeline.

It just sounds like Maroon 5 too much
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Mon 24 May 2010, 14:06,
archived)

edit:
Does all the News of the World's investigative journalism consist of a hack with a hidden camcorder offering a big wad of cash for dubious activities from mildly famous people?
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 13:59,
archived)
Does all the News of the World's investigative journalism consist of a hack with a hidden camcorder offering a big wad of cash for dubious activities from mildly famous people?

Let's predict the next NotW BIG SCOOP!!!
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 14:06,
archived)

oh wait...
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 14:09,
archived)


As seen on my recent trip to Guernsey... (not sure who the other three are or if they had the collectable Nazi pony showjumping caravan set...)

but Benito may have it nailed with Rudolf Heß
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Mon 24 May 2010, 13:54,
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He looks as camp as him anyway :)
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Mon 24 May 2010, 13:44,
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Left I'm guessing is Goering, far right end I'm thinking is Rudolf Hess. 2nd from left looks like Ronald Reagan but I'm pretty sure I'm wrong about that....
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Mon 24 May 2010, 13:45,
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Great comedy timing pause...
I was just sat here wondering how you'd managed to shop out all the workmen so well, and why, when the cute lil fellah starts high kicking :-)
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Mon 24 May 2010, 15:04,
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I was just sat here wondering how you'd managed to shop out all the workmen so well, and why, when the cute lil fellah starts high kicking :-)

although Goering's been on a diet
and Hess looks like the 'baby' alien in Alien Resurrection
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Mon 24 May 2010, 13:51,
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and Hess looks like the 'baby' alien in Alien Resurrection

Man, that's freaky..
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Mon 24 May 2010, 13:51,
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perfect for recreating crimes against humanity
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 13:52,
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a prawn Goebbels, a Herman Goering and four Colditz salads....no, wait a minute...I got confused because everyone keeps mentioning the war.
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 14:09,
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or are you using some kind of top end rendering station?
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Mon 24 May 2010, 14:13,
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Click for bigger and 300+ more doofers.
*covers nose*

I wish him a long and successful solo career
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Mon 24 May 2010, 13:12,
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eighth
rizlas
clipper lighter
20 Superkings
battenberg
monkey beer
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Mon 24 May 2010, 13:28,
archived)
rizlas
clipper lighter
20 Superkings
battenberg
monkey beer

not a phrase I get to use often enough
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Mon 24 May 2010, 12:58,
archived)

she wasn't expecting me at that particular time so she said "If I'd known you were coming I'd have baked a cake".
Oh how we chortled when I reminded her that not only was her oven broken but that she was also fucking shit at cooking anything.
Trufax!
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Mon 24 May 2010, 13:10,
archived)
Oh how we chortled when I reminded her that not only was her oven broken but that she was also fucking shit at cooking anything.
Trufax!


Click for bigger (297 kb)
Have a helping of Something Wonderful. Hope everyone had a great weekend!

Someone on here taught me the phrase "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence", which was nice.
Your style for some reason reminds me a little of Transmetropolitan.
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Mon 24 May 2010, 12:23,
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Your style for some reason reminds me a little of Transmetropolitan.

I really like Darrick Art, especially on THE BOYS.
I actually have been told that before, but not for drawing in this style, more for my other comics.
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Mon 24 May 2010, 12:25,
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I actually have been told that before, but not for drawing in this style, more for my other comics.

My hands are shaking; it's as if Kurosawa did a Transformers comic
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Mon 24 May 2010, 12:29,
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But the mere fact that there's not been evidence of absence produced doesn't mean that there's any entitlement to believe in stuff: if you had to wait for evidence of absence before ditching a belief, you'd have a very cluttered mind.
cf Russell's Teapot...
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Mon 24 May 2010, 12:29,
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cf Russell's Teapot...

Just because there's no proof of absence of something doesn't mean I believe in it, either.
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Mon 24 May 2010, 12:32,
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Intellectual good taste demands that, to the greatest extent possible, we ought only to believe that which we have a sufficient reason to believe. There is no such reason to believe in the existence of a deity.
Occam's razor, and all that. (Except that Occam was a bit blunt on that front.)
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Mon 24 May 2010, 12:35,
archived)
Occam's razor, and all that. (Except that Occam was a bit blunt on that front.)

and now we're back to square one
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Mon 24 May 2010, 12:36,
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I don't need to produce evidence that there's no teapot orbiting between Earth and Mars; I don't need to be able to produce evidence of the absence of pixies from my back yard.
If you want to entertain the possibility of a thing's existence, then the burden of proof lies on you.
(Consider an analogy with a courtroom: it isn't that the prosecution has to demonstrate guilt and the defence has to demonstrate innocence - rather, all the defence has to do is show that the case hasn't been made. Something similar applies here.)
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Mon 24 May 2010, 12:41,
archived)
If you want to entertain the possibility of a thing's existence, then the burden of proof lies on you.
(Consider an analogy with a courtroom: it isn't that the prosecution has to demonstrate guilt and the defence has to demonstrate innocence - rather, all the defence has to do is show that the case hasn't been made. Something similar applies here.)

Entertaining the possibilty is something every scientist must be able to do in order to progress.
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Mon 24 May 2010, 12:59,
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So I tend to agree with you - but there has to be a plausibility criterion. A scientist at CERN who entertained the possibility that mass arises because of a fight between red and blue pixies would be a strange creature indeed, just because there's no reason even to entertain the (merely logical) possibility.
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Mon 24 May 2010, 13:11,
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We come down once again to a matter of taste. And as you know, everyone except me has awful taste.
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Mon 24 May 2010, 13:14,
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can provide testable predictions, and so on, he can call them what the hell he likes. But that's not the same as picking any old toss from the back of his mind and insisting that we take the possibility seriously.
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Mon 24 May 2010, 13:18,
archived)

there is no burden of anything on anyone until you start trying to get others to believe?
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Mon 24 May 2010, 13:03,
archived)

In my more belligerent moods, I think that there's a duty to avoid false beliefs; but even in my more concessive moods, I'd deny that there's a right to hold false ones. And this means that I think we ought to be prepared to ditch any and all our current beliefs if the evidence and arguments head that way.
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Mon 24 May 2010, 13:08,
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I see.
Who are the guardians of what is and what isn't "good taste", and how do they make their decisions?
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Mon 24 May 2010, 12:37,
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Who are the guardians of what is and what isn't "good taste", and how do they make their decisions?

people who spend their whole professional lives thinking about the world around them and how it works.
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Mon 24 May 2010, 12:45,
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It's a matter of keeping things tidy, in terms of metaphysical parsimony and explanatory efficiency (which I take to be related) - that is, not believing in factors for which there is no independent evidence, and choosing the less complicated explanation of observed phenomena over the more complicated.
It's really not unusual to hear scientists talking in terms of beauty or elegance when it comes to explaining phenomena: I'm talking in the same sort of way.
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Mon 24 May 2010, 12:45,
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It's really not unusual to hear scientists talking in terms of beauty or elegance when it comes to explaining phenomena: I'm talking in the same sort of way.

For sure, that a simply hypothesis is better than a complicated one might be thought of as unargued; but I think it's more of an axiom. If you abandon it, science very quickly becomes impossible. I think you're therefore entititled to accept it; it's possible that you're even obliged to do so, on pain of no longer being a scientist.
That still doesn't indicate anything like equivalence with supernaturalism.
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Mon 24 May 2010, 13:21,
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That still doesn't indicate anything like equivalence with supernaturalism.

"Theribald-Johnson & co 1937 study of predictive skin disorder concluding that dermatitis leads to engorged neuralgia, from which we can extrapolate thusly ... "
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Mon 24 May 2010, 13:26,
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then there might be some mileage to the idea.
But I have a hunch that the overwhelming majority of people who use the term "God's will" think that that's all there is to it; they don't, after all, have a great reputation for making use of respected dermatological journals...
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Mon 24 May 2010, 13:29,
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But I have a hunch that the overwhelming majority of people who use the term "God's will" think that that's all there is to it; they don't, after all, have a great reputation for making use of respected dermatological journals...


Perhaps kill people who don't worship the teapot or worship it in a slightly different way?
Perhaps knock on a few doors and spread the word of the teapot?
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Mon 24 May 2010, 12:37,
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Perhaps knock on a few doors and spread the word of the teapot?

It's ironic because the red guy turns out the be the strawman.
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Mon 24 May 2010, 12:38,
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1: I'm always right
2: Any sniff of religious debate sends b3tans in a state akin to blood-lust
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Mon 24 May 2010, 12:40,
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2: Any sniff of religious debate sends b3tans in a state akin to blood-lust

there's certainly no evidence of an absence of idiocy
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Mon 24 May 2010, 13:14,
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*profits*
*buys a pony*
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Mon 24 May 2010, 13:06,
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*buys a pony*

And by "unique", I do, of course, mean "childishly implausible".
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Mon 24 May 2010, 12:27,
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It's not so ridiculous - just a question of picking your team's colours.
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Mon 24 May 2010, 12:30,
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The various permutations of quantum weirdness are based on predictions that derive from observed phenomena. Moreover, they're testable in principle, and - increasingly - in practice. The important point is that they aren't plucked out of thin air, and are not self-supporting. They're a part of the best - most predictively reliable, most metaphysically parsimonious, most efficient - currently available synthesis of the way the world seems to work.
There's a world of difference between the two accounts.
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Mon 24 May 2010, 12:38,
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There's a world of difference between the two accounts.

"Is a little blind-faith too much to ask for?"
I gave up arguing against blind faith years ago.
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Mon 24 May 2010, 12:44,
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I gave up arguing against blind faith years ago.

one could equally credit oneself for predicting god's work.
The issue is that the two are two very different questions: science asks "How?", and religion asks "Why?"
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 13:01,
archived)
The issue is that the two are two very different questions: science asks "How?", and religion asks "Why?"

One is that they simply are not different language to explain the unknown: religious claims make no predictions, are not independently testable, and introduce not just new entities, but whole new kinds of being to the story.
As for the how/ why distinction - well, that might be true. But, to that extent, religion and science are simply incommensurable; moreover, there's no reason to suppose that there's a "why" anyway - it's probably a non-question.
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Mon 24 May 2010, 13:05,
archived)
As for the how/ why distinction - well, that might be true. But, to that extent, religion and science are simply incommensurable; moreover, there's no reason to suppose that there's a "why" anyway - it's probably a non-question.

Sounds like a belief system to me.
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Mon 24 May 2010, 13:11,
archived)

Religiousists believe god does exist.
Fight.
I say that we can't say one way or another at the moment, because we don't know. This is not to say we can't know, but that we don't at the moment.
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Mon 24 May 2010, 13:20,
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Fight.
I say that we can't say one way or another at the moment, because we don't know. This is not to say we can't know, but that we don't at the moment.



And, correlatively, what would count as a falsification of a believer's claim?
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Mon 24 May 2010, 13:31,
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How does my questioning your claim mean that I'm in a cul-de-sac?
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Mon 24 May 2010, 13:46,
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Because you have made the claim to be right (ie science), you must then prove yourself to be.
I'm just claiming not to know, which I believe is all anyone can do over the matter of god, precisely because the concept itself is by definition unprovable.
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Mon 24 May 2010, 13:49,
archived)
I'm just claiming not to know, which I believe is all anyone can do over the matter of god, precisely because the concept itself is by definition unprovable.

I don't believe that god doesn't exist. I think that there's no evidence for his existence, and I don't think that there could be; but I have no positive claim on the matter either way.
I'm sympathetic to Jonathan Miller here: he refuses to call himself an atheist for the same reason that he refuses to call himself an a-unicornist - for him, there's just nothing worth saying in the label, because the god-hypothesis is so obviously without foundation that there's no real point wasting energy fighting it.
There seems to be a lot of wisdom in that attitude.
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Mon 24 May 2010, 13:27,
archived)
I'm sympathetic to Jonathan Miller here: he refuses to call himself an atheist for the same reason that he refuses to call himself an a-unicornist - for him, there's just nothing worth saying in the label, because the god-hypothesis is so obviously without foundation that there's no real point wasting energy fighting it.
There seems to be a lot of wisdom in that attitude.

Now I don't know where you stand on the matter!
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Mon 24 May 2010, 13:31,
archived)

Well, you might have me on that...
Hmmmm...
I think that the atheists are right to the extent that they don't invoke - and are resistant to invoking - the supernatural. That seems like obviously the correct strategy.
And - oh, all right then: whether or not I would class myself as an atheist or reject even that label is something about which I'm not wholly decided. In most situations, the two descriptions amount to the same, though...
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Mon 24 May 2010, 13:43,
archived)
Hmmmm...
I think that the atheists are right to the extent that they don't invoke - and are resistant to invoking - the supernatural. That seems like obviously the correct strategy.
And - oh, all right then: whether or not I would class myself as an atheist or reject even that label is something about which I'm not wholly decided. In most situations, the two descriptions amount to the same, though...

nature can't be a complete and consistent system.
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Mon 24 May 2010, 14:27,
archived)

But now state how different they are when being called up on it. What was the original point again?
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Mon 24 May 2010, 13:10,
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While I accept that the scientific method requires an atheistic approach, atheism is not an answer in itself.
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Mon 24 May 2010, 13:12,
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It has no weight to it. I'd love someone to use that in court and for it to be taken seriously. Maybe we could lock up more innocent people that way.
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Mon 24 May 2010, 13:19,
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Thank goodness.
The commonest way I can think it comes up is, for example, "The fact that we didn't find semen on her pants doesn't mean the rape never happened, it just means there's no semen on her pants".
You would then discuss other possible/likely explanations based on your experience and expertise. And unless you're a numpty, you would include "the rape never happened" as one of the possible explanations.
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Mon 24 May 2010, 16:41,
archived)
The commonest way I can think it comes up is, for example, "The fact that we didn't find semen on her pants doesn't mean the rape never happened, it just means there's no semen on her pants".
You would then discuss other possible/likely explanations based on your experience and expertise. And unless you're a numpty, you would include "the rape never happened" as one of the possible explanations.

It requires the ability to make an observation of a system -- of whatever form, be it mathematical or of nature around us or of an experiment -- formulate an explanation and then, and this is the most important part, make predictions for the behaviour in other situations.
That's it. That's the whole lot. You can do that while believing in lares and penates, you can do that while believing in Allah and you can do that while believing we all live in the belly of Gharak the Great White Wale if you like, just so long as that's what you do and you don't cloud it with your personal beliefs.
If you view that as an "atheistic approach" then fair enough -- but religion doesn't actually enter into it. It's in the *interpretation* that it comes in, but already the interpretation of some theory is veering into philosophy. At its heart, the "scientific method" and "science" are literally just ways of building algorithms. We make an observation, we make a model, then we put in different initial data and predict what will come out, then we compare that prediction with reality. That's science. Everything else is philosophy.
Edit: Of course, this is all just my belief.
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 14:03,
archived)
That's it. That's the whole lot. You can do that while believing in lares and penates, you can do that while believing in Allah and you can do that while believing we all live in the belly of Gharak the Great White Wale if you like, just so long as that's what you do and you don't cloud it with your personal beliefs.
If you view that as an "atheistic approach" then fair enough -- but religion doesn't actually enter into it. It's in the *interpretation* that it comes in, but already the interpretation of some theory is veering into philosophy. At its heart, the "scientific method" and "science" are literally just ways of building algorithms. We make an observation, we make a model, then we put in different initial data and predict what will come out, then we compare that prediction with reality. That's science. Everything else is philosophy.
Edit: Of course, this is all just my belief.

Hence my point about science and religion being two different questions.
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Mon 24 May 2010, 14:20,
archived)

But everyone else was saying stuff so I wanted a part of it :) (Also it's an old hobby horse of mine.)
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Mon 24 May 2010, 14:22,
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Could you direct me to whichever crackpot referred to them, for I wish to shake their hand.
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 13:52,
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I still need to read that book -- but I'd also say that no-one I know of in the field would actually take anything like that seriously for a variety of tedious reasons, the most important of which would boil down to
* There is no evidence for particles smaller than quarks and electrons, which in present theories are fundamental point particles (or strings if you believe string theory, which personally I don't)
* The forces are totally out of whack for a universe. Gravity is extraordinarily weak. At the level of an atom and below the electromagnetic, weak nuclear and then strong nuclear forces all come into play and they're all staggeringly strong compared to gravity. Without gravity there's no chance of anything resembling a universe even if there *are* extra fundamental particles. Gravity only comes of roughly equivalent strength at absurdly high energies (way, way higher than anything we will ever produce on Earth, higher than are reached in the sun and higher even in supernovae -- by a very long way), after which you still wouldn't get anything like a universe because then all the four forces *should* be unified. But may not be.
Maybe we're all wrong... but I wouldn't treat suggestions of universes inside atoms particularly seriously.
/loss of sense of humour through nerdish interest blog :)
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 14:33,
archived)
* There is no evidence for particles smaller than quarks and electrons, which in present theories are fundamental point particles (or strings if you believe string theory, which personally I don't)
* The forces are totally out of whack for a universe. Gravity is extraordinarily weak. At the level of an atom and below the electromagnetic, weak nuclear and then strong nuclear forces all come into play and they're all staggeringly strong compared to gravity. Without gravity there's no chance of anything resembling a universe even if there *are* extra fundamental particles. Gravity only comes of roughly equivalent strength at absurdly high energies (way, way higher than anything we will ever produce on Earth, higher than are reached in the sun and higher even in supernovae -- by a very long way), after which you still wouldn't get anything like a universe because then all the four forces *should* be unified. But may not be.
Maybe we're all wrong... but I wouldn't treat suggestions of universes inside atoms particularly seriously.
/loss of sense of humour through nerdish interest blog :)

I'm not to be taken too seriously today, I'm in too good a mood.
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Mon 24 May 2010, 15:48,
archived)

so we can't immediately take any predictions of GR, including black holes. The concept as defined from actual photons may not even make any sense on those scales, so we'd have to take a firmer definition based on the causal structure surrounding the point particle. But the causal structure is based on the null geodesics around the point particle... and that very concept makes assumptions about the continuous, differentiable nature of spacetime. And that notion almost certainly contradicts a quantum theory of gravity. So the concept of a "black hole" might not even be valid.
Basically without a QM theory of gravity we've no idea what happens to point particles. If you believe string theory there *are* no point particles and everyone's happy. If you don't believe string theory then maybe you believe loop quantum gravity, where no-one's got a serious clue how to add in particles but they won't be points anyway because spacetime is intrinsically granular. If you believe neither... take your pick.
In any event, we need a quantum theory of gravity to answer that. Maybe the answer is even "they are", but that would immediately raise the question "So why don't they obliterate themselves in an instant dose of Hawking radiation?", the answer possibly being "Because we find that Hawking radiation is also quantised and the point particles are in a ground state". Maybe all of that is bullshit. That's the beauty of fundamental physics -- we still don't know so there's loads to learn :)
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Mon 24 May 2010, 15:47,
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Basically without a QM theory of gravity we've no idea what happens to point particles. If you believe string theory there *are* no point particles and everyone's happy. If you don't believe string theory then maybe you believe loop quantum gravity, where no-one's got a serious clue how to add in particles but they won't be points anyway because spacetime is intrinsically granular. If you believe neither... take your pick.
In any event, we need a quantum theory of gravity to answer that. Maybe the answer is even "they are", but that would immediately raise the question "So why don't they obliterate themselves in an instant dose of Hawking radiation?", the answer possibly being "Because we find that Hawking radiation is also quantised and the point particles are in a ground state". Maybe all of that is bullshit. That's the beauty of fundamental physics -- we still don't know so there's loads to learn :)

it's a cunning mental exercise but QM already answers it. There's no such thing as a point particle because the idea of the "size" of a wavefunction doesn't even make any sense. An electron doesn't have a position, it has a quantum state. Four-dimensional space-time is a convenient transform that suits us, but only Hilbert space is real. It's all the legacy of the enlightenment era materialists.
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Mon 24 May 2010, 15:59,
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and Schroedinger QM doesn't really apply here. For one thing it's non-relativistic (and so observationally wrong at high energies) and it's single quantised. QFT doesn't really rely on wavefunctions in the same way. In QFT (QED, say) it makes about as much sense to talk about a point particle as not talk about a point particle -- or that's my view of it, from my rusty memories of actually doing any QFT.
Anyway, regardless, I don't know of a theory that can actually make predictions (or many that don't, including string theory) that don't implicitly or explicitly employ a spacetime. Typically it's set as Minkowski (like in QED, QCD etc) or Minkowski + perturbations (like in string theory). Trying to extend the predictions of such theories -- regardless of whether you can employ a wavefunction interpretation or not -- to arbitrarily small scales or high energies is therefore going to grow problematic without a quantum theory of gravity.
(Also I'm philosophically ill-inclined to look at a Fock space and say "that's the reality". It's not, it's just a Fock space.)
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 16:18,
archived)
Anyway, regardless, I don't know of a theory that can actually make predictions (or many that don't, including string theory) that don't implicitly or explicitly employ a spacetime. Typically it's set as Minkowski (like in QED, QCD etc) or Minkowski + perturbations (like in string theory). Trying to extend the predictions of such theories -- regardless of whether you can employ a wavefunction interpretation or not -- to arbitrarily small scales or high energies is therefore going to grow problematic without a quantum theory of gravity.
(Also I'm philosophically ill-inclined to look at a Fock space and say "that's the reality". It's not, it's just a Fock space.)

but not for explaining why electrons aren't black holes! That's just a funny idea to introduce to the unwary.
I'm not just thinking of the Schrodinger wavefunction here, although it suffices for the explanation. The relativistic Dirac equation has a wavefunction - a Spinor wavefunction. Maxwell's Equations have a wavefunction in the form of the vector potential. "Particles", if it makes sense to call them that (but it's the nomenclature we're stuck with), can only be described as excitations of the field; as such they are dimensionless, but in no sense is it meaningful to say that they are points. That would be pointless.
Maybe I'm jumping the gun to say Hilbert space is "real", but one thing is for certain, space-time isn't fundamental, it's a basis set transform.
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 16:27,
archived)
I'm not just thinking of the Schrodinger wavefunction here, although it suffices for the explanation. The relativistic Dirac equation has a wavefunction - a Spinor wavefunction. Maxwell's Equations have a wavefunction in the form of the vector potential. "Particles", if it makes sense to call them that (but it's the nomenclature we're stuck with), can only be described as excitations of the field; as such they are dimensionless, but in no sense is it meaningful to say that they are points. That would be pointless.
Maybe I'm jumping the gun to say Hilbert space is "real", but one thing is for certain, space-time isn't fundamental, it's a basis set transform.

i still think that without a theory that includes both, say, electrons and gravity we can't actually comment on anything gravitational on such scales. anything else is extending a current theory severely past its range of applicability. "it's not, because a schroedinger wavefunction has no position!" isn't really an answer, that's basically saying "it's not, because in a theory that only applies on much larger scales and at much lower energies an electron can -- in a given interpretation -- be described as a wavefunction, therefore when we push the energy up by about 100 orders of magnitude and explicitly include gravity it will *still* be described as a wavefunction!".
can you see my objection to that...?
basically i may well say "OK, gravity is probably emergent" because i feel that actually it is (and in a way which isn't yet popular -- i actually think that a "fundamental" theory is more likely to be found by *removing* symmetries and working in a system in which all the symmetries emerge when excited. volovik's shown that this occurs in superfluid helium iia; perturb it and you get basically the entire standard model + massless spin 2 quasiparticles. the dynamics are totally wrong but the kinematics of the entirity of modern science are all there. there are other models too, some of which pick up the dynamics as well.) but i can equally say "what makes you so sure that electrons aren't emergent? what makes you think that the wavefunction isn't emergent?"
similarly i could point to, say, bohmian qm. the wavefunction here is identical to the schroedinger wavefunction but it's emergent (closely related to the classical action) and the theory is totally deterministic. aesthetically ugly, but still...
we simply have no idea what form a theory applicable at the kind of energies and on those kind of scales will take. sure, spacetime may be emergent in some sense, but so may wavefunctions, whatever they would be. so might all the various spaces on which our "particles" are defined, and all the symmetry groups between them.
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 16:47,
archived)
can you see my objection to that...?
basically i may well say "OK, gravity is probably emergent" because i feel that actually it is (and in a way which isn't yet popular -- i actually think that a "fundamental" theory is more likely to be found by *removing* symmetries and working in a system in which all the symmetries emerge when excited. volovik's shown that this occurs in superfluid helium iia; perturb it and you get basically the entire standard model + massless spin 2 quasiparticles. the dynamics are totally wrong but the kinematics of the entirity of modern science are all there. there are other models too, some of which pick up the dynamics as well.) but i can equally say "what makes you so sure that electrons aren't emergent? what makes you think that the wavefunction isn't emergent?"
similarly i could point to, say, bohmian qm. the wavefunction here is identical to the schroedinger wavefunction but it's emergent (closely related to the classical action) and the theory is totally deterministic. aesthetically ugly, but still...
we simply have no idea what form a theory applicable at the kind of energies and on those kind of scales will take. sure, spacetime may be emergent in some sense, but so may wavefunctions, whatever they would be. so might all the various spaces on which our "particles" are defined, and all the symmetry groups between them.

because I think you are thinking about it in a very general sense. My point is simply that the question of why electrons aren't black holes simply doesn't come up unless you assume to begin with that electrons are point particles, and there is no reason to assume that, and every reason not to. It's merely the last vestiges of our intuitive grasp of how "matter" behaves at human scales.
I think everything is emergent, fermions are "twisting space" somehow, EM is just a special case of gravity. I can't prove nothin' but I'm absolutely convinced that our sense perceptions don't directly tell us what's really going on. There is a reason that the Universe appears to exist in four dimensional space-time, and I reckon the Gamma matrices have something to do with it.
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 16:57,
archived)
I think everything is emergent, fermions are "twisting space" somehow, EM is just a special case of gravity. I can't prove nothin' but I'm absolutely convinced that our sense perceptions don't directly tell us what's really going on. There is a reason that the Universe appears to exist in four dimensional space-time, and I reckon the Gamma matrices have something to do with it.

I'm really tired for some reason. And I've just found that the reason my codes have been crashing for the last few days (causing me to work over the weekend and today, which is a bank holiday here) is that I didn't compile the libraries up with the Intel fortran compiler but used gfortran instead. Fuck's sake.... But it works now :)
I think my point ultimately might be that the question of why electrons aren't black holes doesn't come up unless you have a sound theory to work with in the first place -- which would be in some respects a theory of quantum gravity. Put that way, we seem to be arguing about exactly the same point, in totally different ways.
(Likewise that everything is emergent. But I'm not convinced about EM being a special case of gravity, attempts to do that pretty much always produce a dilaton and I don't like dilatons. But I believe the two of them are subsets of something else. There's a fair bit of focus on 3-forms at the minute, and a theory built on 3-forms automatically includes what are basically Maxwell tensors along with what are basically Ricci tensors, unless I've got totally the wrong end of the stick which I probably have. Something like that might be the way to unite the two without bogging ourselves down in string theory...)
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 17:04,
archived)
I think my point ultimately might be that the question of why electrons aren't black holes doesn't come up unless you have a sound theory to work with in the first place -- which would be in some respects a theory of quantum gravity. Put that way, we seem to be arguing about exactly the same point, in totally different ways.
(Likewise that everything is emergent. But I'm not convinced about EM being a special case of gravity, attempts to do that pretty much always produce a dilaton and I don't like dilatons. But I believe the two of them are subsets of something else. There's a fair bit of focus on 3-forms at the minute, and a theory built on 3-forms automatically includes what are basically Maxwell tensors along with what are basically Ricci tensors, unless I've got totally the wrong end of the stick which I probably have. Something like that might be the way to unite the two without bogging ourselves down in string theory...)

I'd call the superset "gravity", still, gravity is rank-2 tensor so there's definitely scope for some quite complex behaviour, and going up to rank 3 intuitively would cause more problems than it solves.
There was some guy I read about a while ago who was working on a gauge theory based on the exceptional group G2, don't know if anything ever came of that.
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 17:11,
archived)
There was some guy I read about a while ago who was working on a gauge theory based on the exceptional group G2, don't know if anything ever came of that.

unless that was the surfer dude who used straight e8 to get everything out. last i heard no-one was actually convinced in the end.
i keep meaning to read through mcelrath's papers, he's currently convinced he's got out the standard model + neutrino masses + gravitons + a small cosmological constant + the correct dynamics from a cloud of interacting neutrinoes and anti-neutrinoes. but i don't even understand the setup since he preassumes the existence of neutrinoes and then finds what i can only assume are neutrino-like quasiparticles. but he's absolutely convinced and he knows a lot more particle theory than i do.
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 17:15,
archived)
i keep meaning to read through mcelrath's papers, he's currently convinced he's got out the standard model + neutrino masses + gravitons + a small cosmological constant + the correct dynamics from a cloud of interacting neutrinoes and anti-neutrinoes. but i don't even understand the setup since he preassumes the existence of neutrinoes and then finds what i can only assume are neutrino-like quasiparticles. but he's absolutely convinced and he knows a lot more particle theory than i do.

Garrett Lisi, I think he still has a small minority following. I don't like superstring theory much though so I hope someone comes up with something better that works.
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 17:32,
archived)

or at least along the right lines. but then i did do my masters in analogue gravity so i'm not quite unbiased on this... :)
i don't like string theory much either. it probably shows. but i'm not really sold on loop quantum either. i prefer their *intentions* -- they just want to quantise gravity, they're not shooting for the top right from the start -- but the theory itself is somehow unpersuasive.
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 17:37,
archived)
i don't like string theory much either. it probably shows. but i'm not really sold on loop quantum either. i prefer their *intentions* -- they just want to quantise gravity, they're not shooting for the top right from the start -- but the theory itself is somehow unpersuasive.

while still talking utter shite
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 12:28,
archived)

I AM THE ONLY PERSON WITH A VALID OPINION ON RELIGION!
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 12:29,
archived)

everyone else apart from me is a total spastic
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 12:31,
archived)

that she'd left the room to go and watch television.
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 12:33,
archived)

it's the only way they'll learn!
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 12:35,
archived)

And my girlfriends eyes start to glaze over.
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 12:36,
archived)

"I can't wait for the day when I don't have to ask for you to pass my hand-bag before we get out of the car... you just do it"
I replied
"but that would mean you've won!"
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 12:38,
archived)
I replied
"but that would mean you've won!"

They can be true or false. Only arguments can be valid or invalid.
/pedant blog
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 12:46,
archived)
/pedant blog

A claim is true or false, irrespective of whether or not its truth has been established.
"There is intelligent life on other planets" is either true or false. I don't know which, but that's beside the point.
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 12:56,
archived)
"There is intelligent life on other planets" is either true or false. I don't know which, but that's beside the point.

I built a catapult and flung a colony of woodlice to Venus on Thursday. They should be there by now.
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 13:11,
archived)

While I like this I can't help but feel that part of the joke is the arguing about "reasonable" that you knew would come up on this thread :)
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 13:53,
archived)

What a fucking douche.
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 15:46,
archived)

salvation is by grace of God, not by works.
Although that kind of misses the point of the comic.
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 16:05,
archived)
Although that kind of misses the point of the comic.

*glowers*
That would make me lose all faith in humanity
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 12:25,
archived)
That would make me lose all faith in humanity

lolololllolol!!!!!!!!!!!!!111!!!!1!!!!
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 12:15,
archived)

Marvellous!
But Jeremy is far, far better than that awful sin of a human being.
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 11:29,
archived)
But Jeremy is far, far better than that awful sin of a human being.

( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 12:02,
archived)

That fat prick is this annoying-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
100% Sciens!
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 11:32,
archived)
100% Sciens!

....NOT JEREMY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :D
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 11:36,
archived)

But not the fat fuck... Him, I can do without...
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 11:45,
archived)

But then maybe that's the point.
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 12:03,
archived)

is to check if there's a new Jeremy picture out.
When's the website coming?!?! I've had it on my favs for weeks now, waiting....
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 19:45,
archived)
When's the website coming?!?! I've had it on my favs for weeks now, waiting....

Nice one!
And hello B3ta, how is everyone this fine morning? Should I go to the zoo today?
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 11:23,
archived)
And hello B3ta, how is everyone this fine morning? Should I go to the zoo today?


Steak, bacon, pork........ And so one with the rest of this joke. :-)
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 11:29,
archived)

Have you first checked your zoo's policies on animal welfare and biodiversity conservation?
/taking all the fun out of it blog
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 11:25,
archived)
/taking all the fun out of it blog

I'm a friend of ZSL, Its kinda like being a friend of Dorothy, but with less bumming and more free animals.
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 11:30,
archived)

Walk around shouting JAHLED! JAHLED! COME OUT COME OUT WHEREVER YOU ARE! It is the only way to make him appear, trufax!
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 11:49,
archived)

or just grab everyone I see and scream ARE YOU JAHLED??!?!???! in their face!
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 12:00,
archived)


and I know they take pride in being one of the best and do great things for animals :)
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 11:36,
archived)

Always a good sign, also good to see some Aye ayes!
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 11:59,
archived)

Read all of G. Durrell's books growing up, and getting to see his zoo was great :D
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 12:03,
archived)

luckily, I live there, so I can go up whenever I can. Especially when I hear about new babies :)
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 12:12,
archived)

hate the bloody sunshine and my train was horribly delayed so right now I'm sulking at home when I should be in an interview.
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 11:30,
archived)

Just long enough for it to get nice and frosty :)
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 11:37,
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But all the miliband pictures are colour and sharp, all the kray ones are grainy and black and white, what with them being erm...dead and all.
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 11:12,
archived)

It's like deciding which bollock you'd rather have cut off. There is no winner.
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 11:20,
archived)

( , Mon 24 May 2010, 11:04, archived)

On the subject of which, from an initial evening's play, Red Dead Redemption seems pretty damn awesome.
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 11:06,
archived)

No, no, no. The fact that he's a third son and has worked in musical theatre is merely a coincidence.
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 11:11,
archived)

"in the family of performing arts I've always regarded musical theatre as being like the slightly suspect uncle who makes all the small children sit on his lap and play horsey"
Charlie Brooker (I think)
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 11:14,
archived)
Charlie Brooker (I think)

I accidentally went to see Blood Brothers with Joe Scaramanga once. It was actually quite good, but I still hate them.
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 11:17,
archived)

But it didn't happen.
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 11:19,
archived)

My uncle did a year or so in Phantom, so we trundled along to see that, and a friend persuaded me to go to see Sunday in the Park with George a little while ago.
I have to admit that that latter surprised me pleasantly, at least for the first half. But my expectations were very low, so a pleasant surprise doesn't actually amount to all that much...
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 11:19,
archived)
I have to admit that that latter surprised me pleasantly, at least for the first half. But my expectations were very low, so a pleasant surprise doesn't actually amount to all that much...

"a pleasant surprise doesn't actually amount to all that much" - there's some milage to be gained with a Marvin TPA-type there.
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 11:25,
archived)


I say that to myself whenever I hang out the washing.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 10:33,
archived)
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!

Everything smelled fresh and the birds were singing, the squirrels were stealing the bird food... Lovely
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 10:42,
archived)

We are complete chav neighbours and we have to stagger our laundry so that nothing long hangs over the enormous pile of crap in our back garden.
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 10:46,
archived)

Need to cut the grass tonight.
Spent ages digging out dandelions from lawn #1 yesterday.. still not finished
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 10:52,
archived)
Spent ages digging out dandelions from lawn #1 yesterday.. still not finished

3 holes patched, and the wretched thing still deflates in about 2 hours *facepalm*
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 10:58,
archived)

our cats decided to jump in the pool, perhaps thinking it was a solid surface. They punctured it scrambling out
£3 for a paddling pool repair kit on ebay - free P&P!
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 11:03,
archived)
£3 for a paddling pool repair kit on ebay - free P&P!


...which is where the other holes were.
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 11:17,
archived)

... I could throw my paddling pool away because it's shit, maybe.
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 11:23,
archived)

one side deflated, but I think that was because the plug came out.. Kids thought the water was too cold!
used the water to to water the garden
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 11:27,
archived)
used the water to to water the garden

I'm not going to chuck it away until I've covered every sodding inch in repair plasters!
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 11:30,
archived)

:)
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 11:33,
archived)

I suspect this position will shift slightly when I begin sprogging, but for now that is their raison d'etre.
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 11:31,
archived)

Or is it some basic html script that's always worked and I'm being thick about?
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 10:58,
archived)

It's been this way for a while. I don't know why.
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 11:00,
archived)

I thought you were gonna make a "Make it snow!" pun :D
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 10:40,
archived)

( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 10:47,
archived)

*clickety*
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 10:58,
archived)

outside in the Sun.
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 10:11,
archived)

all the ladies are showing off their tans in little tops.
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 10:15,
archived)

Hello Steve
I'm in shorts today - but it's cooler than yesterday and slightly overcast.
Yesterday was a scorcher.
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 10:23,
archived)
I'm in shorts today - but it's cooler than yesterday and slightly overcast.
Yesterday was a scorcher.

it's baking hot here.... not a cloud in the sky
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 10:29,
archived)

merely state how far away Bath, Marlborough and Cirencester are
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 10:18,
archived)


ok, at a guess, the most popular destinations out of the UK are France and Spain, so, for the process of elimination, somewhere in either of those?
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 10:25,
archived)


Click for bigger (43 kb)
Geeky references? Check!
Sweary? Check!
Stupid and really bad joke? Check!
Edit: The hairy bloke is Jesus, and the one in the water is Prince Namor... Never a good sign when you need to explain your joke, think I shall stop doing this kind of thing now :)

Stephen Merchant went to the pub,
"a bottle of Magners, please"
Barman says,"what can I get you?"
Stephen says "thanks barkeep"
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 9:48,
archived)
"a bottle of Magners, please"
Barman says,"what can I get you?"
Stephen says "thanks barkeep"

( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 10:00,
archived)

I like it
I like it
I like it
I la-la like it
la-la-li
here we go risin' all over the world
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 10:04,
archived)
I like it
I like it
I la-la like it
la-la-li
here we go risin' all over the world

except i thought it was aquaman. but same thing really
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 10:39,
archived)

they seem to be out most nights, pissing the civil list against a wall
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 9:45,
archived)

morning all
edit. beaten to it..
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 8:31,
archived)
edit. beaten to it..

but you'd think she'd finally crack a smile now she's allowed the odd cream cake.
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 1:55,
archived)

SHIT JUST GOT REAL, PEOPLE!
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 0:48,
archived)


You'll be objecting to the garlic sausage and the curried beans next.
( ,
Mon 24 May 2010, 1:01,
archived)
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