[cpbell0033944]

One pretty hot Brazilian reporter chick pokes buff hotbod on her "Bumbum".  Wow – is this Brazilian soft porn or is it a news feature report?  If it's the latter, then all I can say is that Brazil looks like paradise!  Perhaps Refaal can enlighten us?  In the meantime, thanks to Lingster for unearthing this gem. 😉 8)

[cpbell0033944]

More evidence of British perfidy.  When will it stop!?

British food companies have been doing this to British consumers for years – one major crisp (potato chip) manufacturer has a habit of keeping the bag the same size, but putting fewer crisps in. >:(  I try not to eat too much chocolate (bad for my waistline  ;), but this begs the question – are the creme eggs made for the home market also shrinking?  Kulli?  Fett?  Any thoughts? 

[cpbell0033944]

I managed to accidentally delete myself ( 😮 ;D) a while back, so I can sympathise (not saying it was your fault, just that I've had to start from scratch myself).

[cpbell0033944]

Cool!

[cpbell0033944]

Skelton not luge. She went down head first. Mad enough for yah?

Heh. Heh. Ooooohhh the imagery. I have quite a dirty mind.

Skeleton bob is even more loopy than luge – one of our female skeleton competitors got bronze at the Turin Olympics, and suddenly, English sports fans became experts in sliding headfirst down what's almost a tunnel of ice on a glorified tea-tray (do you have tea-trays in the States?*)
Oh, and just to say; I too have a dirty mind. ;D

P.S  Here's a table of her results in skeleton bob competitions:

http://www.skeletonsport.com/results/?ContactID=28

* I've just found out that the US English term is 'serving tray'.

[cpbell0033944]

thank you for the qhick problem solving Ling! 🙂
great admin 😀

Yes, kudos to you sir – well recovered!

[cpbell0033944]

Thanks for your considered and enlightening comments, Lingster and I'm sorry for causing offence: I certainly did not mean to do so.  It's through reading news stories from the US point of view and these sorts of debates here on Amaz0ns that I've realised that the US is very different to Europe in how it runs its own affairs.  To my European eyes, the idea of having, a Lingster described, the people, the States, the Executive, Judicial and Legislative all pulling in different directions sounds like it should be a recipe for deadlock and stagnation.  The fact that it isn't is obviously a tribute to common sense.
As for the "cars, red meat and alcohol are dangerous" argument, I see Lingster's point, but, if someone wants to eat fatty foods, or drink vast amounts of alcohol, it's their health that's at risk, not that of 30 or so bystanders.  Cars are probably the only equivalent. Speak to any British (and I would assume American also) traffic police officer, and they'll tell you that a car is a lethal weapon – hence why thorough driving tests and driving under the influence of alcohol enforcement are very important factors.  However, the fact remains that firearms are potentially extremely dangerous to many innocent people when they get into the wrong hands, so they surely must be treated differently to Big Macs!

As for the European heatwave – yes, it was a cock-up (although manland Europe, not the UK was worst affected).  Don't forget also that northern Europe is unused to heatwaves, whereas the US Gulf Coast should be better prepared (poorly maintained levees NOT being examples of well-preparednes IMHO) for hurricanes, as they do happen more frequently.  I would not criticise the authorities for failing to prevent as many people from dying, other than their negligence with regards to the levees, but what shocks British people is to see reports from New Orleans that show the tourist revenue-earning districts back to normal, whilst the poorer areas are still wastelands strewn with debris all this time afterwards.  To the eyes of a continent that believes in Social Security and in the idea that Governments have a responsibility to help those who are least able to help themselves, the scenes from New Orleans are utterly shocking; in the UK people were horrified that the government of the richest nation on Earth could leave so many people with next to no help in their hour of need.  The fact that, to American eyes, this was unremarkable and only to be expected probably didn't help the perception of the US abroad – a country waging a war that it (along with us) started whilst doing little to help its own citizens embroiled in a massive natural disaster seems to minds on the eastern side of the Atlantic to be the behaviour of a developing nation or a country run by a despotic dictator, not "the Land of the Free" or the country that sometimes claims to be the world's only true democracy.  The ostracizing of France because it behaved over Iraq as France always behaves – digging-in its heels – also surprised Brits.  We may have a love-hate relationhip with France, but we didn't boycott their wine, and, even if we called chips 'French fries', I doubt we'd have felt need to rename them.

I do think it's good that the US doesn't pass judgement on others as readily as others do; I can see the upside to inwardness.  It does however mean that the perception in other parts of the world is that the US thinks "We're all right, so who cares about anyone else."  As Lingster says when he mentions the US's role in the Asian tsunami warning system, the US does use its power and wealth for good more often than many in the rest of the world realise, but Americans need to mention this sort of thing more – if you've got a bad reputation, the prudent course of action is to try and change perceptions, not to say "Well, the world doesn't understand us, it's not our fault that we're not popular, so let's become even more inward-looking rather than try and change people's views."  Anyway, I don't recall the UK being anything less than generous (not our stingy government, I mean the citizens themselves) when the Asian tsunami hit, neither do I recall finger-pointing about sturdier houses, either.  We understood that this was Mother Nature at her most violent, and that these people needed help.  I think that, while Europe misunderstands the US, so the US misunderstands Europe equally.

[cpbell0033944]

I'm getting a little tired of you acting all 'superior' to Americans.  In almost any post that involved the US you seem to find a way to deride, put down, insult, or laugh at the things "Americans" do, and quite frankly it's getting offensive.  You're categorizing us under the list that we're all dumbasses with your comments and it's getting a bit old.

I'm not deriding anybody – it just seems sad to me that parents, brothers, sisters, wives and husbands may well have to suffer as the loved ones of these people are now just because it's in a country's culture to allow often almost unfettered access to guns.  All I'm pointing-out is that a choice needs to be made – let me quote my post.

Either you have a country in which this sort of thing is vanishingly unlikely, but has some people grumbling about restrictions, or you let people buy one gun a month for as many months as they damn well like, and accept that this sort of thing will just keep on happening, time after time.
IT'S A NO BLOODY-BRAINER!

OK, the "no bloody-brainer" bit was perhaps taking things too far, but my point is that, if the suffering resulting from this is too great for society to bear, then difficult decisions need to be taken.  Either you restrict firearms, carry on as you are, but have these incidents happening time after weary time, or you encourage anybody over the age of 16 to pack a veritable arsenal every time they leave the house, in which case you have anarchy.  I DO NOT laugh at the US – I am very much an admirer of many aspects of US achievement – if I seriously thought that Americans were all dim, then I'd be pretty stupid myself, because biological research (in which I hope to shortly be involved) is driven by the US.  Many great minds are American, and yes, people in the UK can be every bit as dim-witted, stupid, dumb, thick, whichever word you want to use as any American. 

My "one gun per month" reference is of course relating to the state law in Virginia on firearms; my point being that it's no good restricting somebody to one gun per month when this guy (who of course was not American except by means of residency) was able to cause this much carnage with just TWO MONTHS' RATION.  You need an overall limit, rigorous licensing, and, above all, a police force that will take reports of gunfire seriously, and a university that does more than just to send out an email to students mentioning a shooting incident", which means very little other than "someone's accidentally loosed-off and air rifle and shot a sparrow, or whatever small birds would be found in Virginia.

Can you honestly, with your hand on your heart say that you'd rather be able (or rather that someone so inclined was able) to go to the backwoods and do a bit of hunting when the mood strikes rather than saving the lives of many innocent people?  Trouble is, you can't have your cake, eat it AND not have indigestion afterwards.

[cpbell0033944]

I recall that she tried out for a place on the Canadian Winter Olympics team a few years back.  Luge, maybe?

Luge? 😮  She must be mad!

[cpbell0033944]

In the U.S., about 11,000 people are murdered with a firearm each year (out of about 2.5 million total deaths).  So only a tiny fraction of deaths in the U.S. each year are murders, and spree killings make up a tiny piece of that 11,000.  So in defense of the cops, the odds are pretty small (thousands to one) that a killer is going to murder two people, then reload and massacre more people nearby.  It almost never happens, and it's probably not right to condemn someone for failing to act to prevent something that almost never happens.

Sorry Lingster, that argument doesn't wash.  I also like the way that, according to you, the Independant, one of the UK's most respected broadsheets, is anti-US (like seemingly all of the UK in your eyes) and has the nerve to suggest that US culture might be partly responsible for this.  I've just read the offending article, and found it very balanced and considered.  To my unenlightened, wishy-washy liberal eyes ( ::)), the equation is simple:

Easy availability of firearms (if not in one state, then a couple of hour's drive to take someone into a neighbouring state will find guns readily available) + a culture that still hasn't COMPLETELY left-behind the "pioneer fighting the Indians" mentality + Hollywood films with bullets flying everywhere = Columbine, the Amish schoolhouse, now Virginia Tech, and how many more?

In the UK, we had two big instances of this sort of thing happening.  In 1987 we had the Hungerford massacre.  One guy killed 16 and wounded another 15 on a sunny summer's day in a picture-postcard English village.  Then in 1996 a guy walked into a primary school in the Scottish village of Dunblane and killed 16 children and one teacher.  As a result of these tragedies, our gun laws were tightened considerably, and we haven't had anything like that since (pray to God we never do again).  How bloody hard can it be to kock some sense into people's heads?  Either you have a country in which this sort of thing is vanishingly unlikely, but has some people grumbling about restrictions, or you let people buy one gun a month for as many months as they damn well like, and accept that this sort of thing will just keep on happening, time after time. >:(
IT'S A NO BLOODY-BRAINER! ::)

[Author]

Posts