Dr John Dee

If you're using that word 'dog' as an insult I've got a couple of border collies who'd like to talk to you.

If you think these objectives existed in a vacuum, then fine, there's no point arguing with your reductive view of history.

You raise a lot of really useful points Crompton. As a godless heathen I wouldn't presume to offer an opinion on all of them, but I think raising the issue of the Irish 'troubles' (a nice example of understatement, while the 'war on terror' sometimes lurches into hyperbole) is important. We're inclined to forget that the last religious war in Europe only ground to a halt a few decades ago. The first time I went to Britain was in 1998 and in Manchester they still hadn't finished working on the facade to the last building bombed there by the IRA. For quite a while before then the Ra had recognised the political cost of bombing civilians and provided warnings so sites could be evacuated, and the bombings had become more a reminder of how many they could kill if they wanted to ... a subtlety that the jihadist idiots won't ever think of I suspect. It might not answer your fundamental questions about Islam, but this is worth having a look at: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/10/charlie-hebdo-policeman-murder-ahmed-merabet The only thing I'd add is that what's easy to forget at moments like this is that, like Christianity, there are many Islams. It cuts across too many geographical and ethnic and cultural boundaries to say it's a coherent set of beliefs/practices even if it's presented as such both by proponents and opponents ... then there's the whole Sunni/Shi'a thing. No amount of simplifying it is going to come up with a version that explains everything, or answers your question about whether it's a religion of peace. Like Christianity again, it probably both is and isn't. Sorry DC, I'd have to disagree: religion wasn't just coincidental in the IRA/Loyalist struggles. The IRA's campaign was, of course, primarily political, but religion and politics had been bound up in Irish history from the moment the English started resettling Scots protestants in the country. And of course you'll find plenty of people who'll tell you something similar about Muslim terrorism, casting it as political and a response to historical injuries accumulated during the colonisation of the Middle East and/or its recolonisation in George W's invasion of Iraq. That the Ra never bothered with theological niceties or proclaimed to be following any particular doctrine isn't all that relevant: what they relied on was catholic identity. Acting in the name of 'their (catholic) god' was implicit in acting in the name of catholics (they could leave it to the priests to tell everyone about their god anyway, since that was one of the key points on which the catholics resisted the Reformation) ... and even when there were plenty of catholics who objected to being invoked in the bombings, murders etc, just like Ahmed Merabet's brother's opinion of the jihadists* now. Not sure I should be dignifying them with any word other than 'murderers' but that would only confuse things further in an already confused sentence.

I was told to get back in my place when I'd logged around 30 posts, but I haven't seen much of it since then. Indeed there have been a few first posts that have attracted all sorts of positive responses and lit up the 'like' button. Posters who launch into gratuitous insults because they've got nothing else are much more likely to put the casual reader off joining. Just because Hannibal has taken his elephants elsewhere doesn't mean the habit has gone too.

This struck me too. Maybe we're just shrinking. Thanks Sixes. Some excellent shots but what I appreciate most is the narratives that your sequences provide. Really helpful for the distantly-challenged.

(i) maybe he should have stopped listening before he left the band (ii) agree, although this points to something else that might be important: what you describe might just be called skill errors, but they might also be improvisations, depending on the situation. And improvisation is a skill in itself (Stevie J probably being the current master), but not one that's easy to teach especially through the sort of routine and repeated practice that's involved in developing other skills (foot, hand, speed etc). Given how much training you get to witness, Devil, do you see any emphasis on improvisation/praise for the unexpected?

What is it about 'colour-themed' that passes understanding? Never mind. It was just a flippancy.

Well, reductios don't necessarily make an argument. But more to another point altogether, I want to know what's going on with this GWS colour-themed avatar thumbnail you're now using. Does this mean you've forgiven Scully or are you just hoping that some gesture of friendship might help lure a defector or two away at the end of the year?

Never heard of these. Where can I join one?

Maybe they're presenting the same non-evidence 34 times.

Good question. In fact, several good questions.

No, no Old Dee. You need to get in step with George Brandis's meta-language. It's the secret trial of the secret drug trial.

A bit difficult to know whether I like something until I've read it.

Umm, I'm entirely neutral on the question of Jimmy Toumpas, being happy to wait for him to be whatever he will be. The way I read it though, and I suspect plenty of others do, is that you take every opportunity (to the point of complete tedium) to stick whatever nails you can find into his tyres. Trying to use Mitchell White as another pointed object is, quite frankly, as offensive to the kid as it is to Jimmy T. As BBO suggests, sober up ... metaphorically if not literally.

I think there's probably only one certainty in all of this, which is that whatever Dank says he'll do he won't do. An open hearing isn't going to guarantee that any 'evidence' Dank might be able to provide will be truthful anyway, just that he'll finally have a public stage on which to posture without the usual constraints and obligations of the witness box. But presumably since whatever decisions the tribunal makes are subject to appeal (including by WADA) the evidence they rely on can be opened to more general scrutiny at some stage?

Not Fletcher, surely.

And given that you haven't read one word of that contract your speculations remain no more than that and not particularly useful ground on which to try to assemble such byzantine arguments.

^ +1 from further away

Anybody who's kicked Eastlake's butt like that is fine by me.

I'm glad you trust your feelings. I've been sifting through chicken entrails for weeks now and still can't get a fix on what's going to happen.

Congratulations.

Danny Placebo? Played for Essendon in the eighties and later went on to be a GP? Can cure anything, obviously.

This is a bit strange when in the Robinson interview (sorry, puff piece) Little refers to a 'Chinese wall' between Essendon and the AFLPA. Seems like the wall might be more porous than it's supposed to be.

Except at that stage it became WADA's call. None of us knows nearly enough about how the settlement was reached in the Cronulla case but the fact that the players coughed up (no matter how reluctantly) was probably the ... or at least a circuit-breaker. What also came out of it was the eminently satisfactory ruling by the NRL to ban Dank. Given Dank's apparent capacity to mislead all and sundry about what is or isn't in brown or clear or any other bottles, his involvement at Essendon may well end up being seen as a mitigating factor in determining penalties. Whatever else happens he ought to be warned off permanently ... and sued by as many people as possible (maybe he can get his mate Hardie to sign up for 10 years worth of pro bono work).