GwynO

That makes sense! Reading these boards at work, college and so on usually gets a "ohh Ace Combat, I used to love that game" from more console oriented buddies. Methinks the OP may well have discovered something much greater than the answer to their original question! If you like Ace Combat, you will Love Third Wire Games! There must be someone here who still plays Ace Combat as well, if I had a console still I think I would.

Doh!! I was thinking of Pink Cadillac! Right, so far Rescue Dawn has failed to impress, it's unmistakeably Herzog and for that reason alone I'd watch it in future simply for aesthetics and not to think about the glaring mistakes. ST FTW.

I'm veering that way myself, just something about Cadillac Man, even though I haven't seen it and am a huge Clint Eastwood fan, there's something subliminal telling me it's a s**te film

What game are you playing?

The man is a legend! One day he should run for PM, he'd get my vote.

ARGHHHH!!!! I hate chavs so much!!!! They seem to have the monopoly on balls in our society too so while most people get out of their way in fear of their violent and anti social behaviour, they need fear no one, not even the police because none dare touch them for fear of being sued. It's about time decent people took a zero tolerance approach and whacked these idiots square in the chops at the slightest justifiable opportunity.

<hijack> So you mean it wasn't that the weather was more consistent and came in four seasons years ago, it's just my memory that's fooled me to think about this climate change stuff?

And many happy returns of the day!

Tomatoes are poisonous?

Yes! Not many people have heard of them, fascinating little creatures. I learnt about them through an article in Fortean Times about the Genaprugwirion lizard of Wales. My cousins used to go searching for them every summer and swear they found them in an old farm building that had long since fallen into disuse, there the creatures would climb the walls and sun themselves. When I was old enough to go out there myself, most of the building had gone and the traffic from the surrounding roads had increased. I'd like to think though, that somewhere in the Anglesey marshes, there might still be a few Genaprugwirion, or Tuatara left. The Tuatara identification was first suggested by Karl Shuker, perhaps the most famous cryptozoolgist since Bernard Heuvellmans link I'm loving that crab! Imagine the meat you'd get from those claws! Then again, I'm sure the Navy doctors have seen worse

That's a fascinating story! What a tragic end for a legend, still you can be very proud of him and one day if you haven't already done so, perhaps you could visit the pass and mountain named in his honour.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/10302946.stm If this is true, and coming from such an institution as the LSE I have no reason to think it isn't, how the hell do governments justify the billions in aid given to Pakistan, we might as well just supply the Taliban direct and cut out the the middle man.

Amen

I'm not going to say the Pakistan Army did a deliberately poor job of fighting the Taleban such as giving the leaders time to exit before commencing the shelling which hit real villagers, as I have no evidence to prove definitively that was the case, but I do have first hand experience of Pakistani politics (long story) and they have everything to gain from the Taleban in Afghanistan. After the victory of the various rebel groups over the Soviets in Afghanistan, the Pakistani ISI realised they had the perfect opportunity to gain major leverage in that country through the Pasthun refugees that had fled from the Pasthun tribal lands in Southern Afghanistan to Pasthun lands in Northern Pakistan. By training, funding, and arming these into what became known as the Taleban, Pakistan effectively had direct rule over Afghanistan via the ISI links to the Taleban. For a decade, the Taleban conducted an experiment in extreme Islamic rule in Afghanistan, keenly watched by Pakistan. If they ever needed a steady stream of warriors to help in proxy wars against India, then Pakistan had them in the shape of grateful Pasthun leaders more than eager to send foot soldiers to fight and train others in Kashmir, no Army uniforms so totally deniable and due to the fanatical regime in which they had been raised under the Taleban, far meaner than any soldiers in their army anyway. The experiment started to turn sour when the Taleban started targeting "decadence" in Pakistan such as lo and behold, women doctors, schools for girls, the existence of a Shia community, Suffi shrines. Some elements of the Taleban started to get too bolshy for the Pakistani authorities not when they started blowing themselves up around Shia communities, not when they implemented Sharia law accross vast swathes of the country, not when they started conscripting villages and raising taxes, but when they refused to get out of the way of Army patrols meant to reassure the international community that Pakistan wasn't hiding the Taleban. Once the Taleban attacked Pakistani soldiers, the Army started taking things up a notch, but ultimately there is still a lot of support for the Taleban across all of Pakistani society including the Army, many ordinary Pakistanis look up to the Taleban as examples of committed individuals willing to make the sacrifices that they can't or won't in order to live virtuous lives, and this is why the government of Pakistan can't really bring themselves to fight the Taleban.

Well if there's one thing about Celts, it's bravery! Bravery and staying power! And if you've seen some of the women in Celtic countries, you'll see why those two things are essential for anyone planning to marry one! I sometimes wonder if the Greeks have the same because that's what my partner is and she's just as tough as any Celtic warrior woman, although I have heard many good things about the Corsicans too, famous fighters and lovers! The "nigger of France" quote pretty much sums up how the Celts have been discussed in the past, it used to be common in the UK to have signs on houses to rent saying "No dogs, no blacks, no Irish" and that was only 50 years ago! I like the folk remedy Gr.Viper, the only trouble when the invaders come in boats is you've nowhere to push them back to but the sea, and we wouldn't have them drown because they are quite a nice bunch at times and some very good characters amongst them, there's bound to be friction when new kids move into the neighbourhood, but with a bit of mutual respect on both sides things get sorted out for the better, for example, I can't think of any people more friendly and in common with Welsh people than the people of Liverpool, Merseyside and the Wirral, except maybe the Irish. But if it was 1600 years ago, then I would have been right there on the east coast that became England with a pitchfork ready to set some ground rules for the new visitors to abide by! Such as treat others as you wish to be treated yourself, don't steal anyone's land, and don't invite your whole family from over the water to come join you because we'll end up overcrowded and create ghettos. Now what does that remind me of?

Of course! Where would Gaul be without their Celtic peoples? One of the nicest things for me about working in a school in Cornwall was meeting a Breton girl who was helping out to teach French and finding just how similar Breton is to Welsh and Cornish! In fact, Breton in some ways was even closer to Welsh, especially pronunciation. Counting one to 10 for example, is almost identical between the three languages, but so is how we treat numbers in sets of 20 and the special place of 15, so the number 17 is translated as 2 and 15, 16 as one and 15, 40 becomes 2 20s and so on. The colours, days of the week, months of the year, weather words and so much more are virtually identical. She was telling me how the experience in France is very bad for Breton people as they are bullied by other kids in schools and generally thought of as being unpatriotic nuisance by the majority of people. It's everywhere the same for Celtic people it seems. But on the positive side, again, the Breton people and language survived! I heard that there were many, many regional languages in France, but that most of these are now severely restricted. Do they still speak Alsatian, Occitan, Catalan, Gallo and so many others? My fear is that these languages as well as the people will become extinct and the history wiped under the carpet so that future generations grow up thinking how wonderful the old Empire must have been to get everyone speaking the same language all so peacefully, all because everyone agreed to it, an no one was ever hurt.

The comparison with North America would make the Welsh more like the Native Americans if anyone, as they are descendants of a largely peaceful assimilation of Bronze age and Iron age people, no evidence of large scale violent conquest from the Celtic settlement of Britain has ever been found with most scholars proposing the theory that it was foremost a two way spread of ideas, technology, language and people. Compare that with all the people who came after and see how total conquest was central to them, the Romans, the Saxons, the Normans, they all wanted us to stop being different and be what they wanted us to be instead, believe their religions of choice, speak their language, adopt their law and customs. Maybe it's because by our different identity we remind later arrivals that they were uninvited and this might be an understandably uncomfortable thought, but it's the truth and the Welsh aren't going to pretend that we invited the whole world to come and take our land, claim it as theirs and rule over us for hundreds of years! We didn't invite that. But what the hey, I can, as most Welsh people, live with the situation so long as we get respect, that's all we ask for is a bit of respect, I'm not calling for English people to be removed, or for their language to be banned, it's not the current generation's fault for the crimes of the past.. but it is their duty to acknowledge the past for what it was and to respect our identity, language, and people. I'm aware of the regional languages in the Iberian peninsula as well, and it is very similar to the British Isles in so many ways because all across what later became Spain and Portugal there lived a mixture of Celtic and other people in remarkable tolerance of each other. The Basque language for example, cannot be traced to any other known language either spoken or extinct, it is entirely unique and elements could date as far back as the the Neanderthal population, absolutely fascinating that this language survived side by side with later Celtic languages but it did. The Roman, Latin influence on Iberia came to dominate, but the regional identities and languages still remain. I don't for one minute support the heavy handed barbarity that groups like ETA or the IRA use to further their ideas about nationalism, but that is because they are just as bad as the actions of the past that pushed the Celtic people into ever smaller and dominated populations, in this instance two wrongs does not make a right, but nothing can take away the right of a people to speak their language and have their identity. In the bad old days of colonialism, all across the world various groups of people tried to "assimilate" their newly conquered lands. Native religions were restricted, native customs and hierarchy restricted, clothing modified, land ownership and usage re modelled, education controlled, and language separated into private (native) and public (conqueror). When resistance was heavy, a much more pronounced form of ethnic cleansing was to ban all aspects of the native identity even in private, but as we can see, luckily this failed for the Welsh people, Native Americans, Aborigines, and Iberians as well as others because we are still here to say "we survived". When my grandfather went to school in the 1920s and 1930s, his schooling was very different from his grandfather before him because only in 1888 did the British government see to banning the use of the "Welsh not" in schools. This was a piece of wood, or lead on a string with the letters WN written on it, any child caught speaking Welsh in school would have this instrument of shame strung around their neck and it would stay there until the next child had been caught speaking Welsh, then the last child to be wearing the "Not" at the end of the school day would receive a heavy lashing. So maybe you can see why my grandfather's generation taught me the importance of never, ever, ever forgetting my language and identity? This experience did not stop him from fighting in the Second World War for the British Army, he remained a proud supporter of Britain his entire life as do I. However, the past should not be erased or denied just because it might be uncomfortable for the descendants of victors, at the same time there is no need to keep beating people up about it or use it as an excuse for lazy behaviour and victim mentality, all that's needed is for the story to be heard and for people to be understood and respected. \rant

With a pretty big difference Uncleal, the Welsh were there first, so you'd think the English would learn the lingo, but instead they tried very hard to eliminate it completely so having double written signs is much more than about being practical, it's a celebration that after so many years that we are still here even if hardly anyone has heard of us and most people seem to think that England = UK and Celtic countries are just some deviation of English. We were there first, our language was there first, and we did learn English but we sure as hell won't abandon our language as it's about the only thing left we have that's still ours. Those mistakes are ridiculous, and all too often, one sign said in English for cyclists to dismount here, but in Welsh said something about bladder weakness! Makes me wonder if some aren't done on purpose as a kind of fifth column action by resentful monoglot officials as I don't know of a single council office in Wales where there isn't at least someone with Welsh as their first language, then again it was in the south and that region was much more heavily colonised during the industrial revolution.

Since being bumped off a teacher training program for all sorts of unsavoury reasons best not to dwell on, I have been searching high and low for a new career. Sometimes thinking I may be punching above my weight, still I applied with a thought in the back of my mind of "who dares wins my son" as Del Boy would say. One such application I sent off only this afternoon, for a position with a legal firm specialising in selling will and probate services, offering a starting salary of between £35,000 and £100,000 a year and the further prospect of uncapped commission based bonuses. Might I add at this point that the most I have ever been on previously is around £1,400 a month from working inhumanly long hours, and this job I applied for today offered all that for only 40 hours a week. I didn't really expect a response, despite there being nothing in the advertisement's description of the ideal candidate that I could not fully live up to, very glib statements which I suspected masked an unspoken assumption of previous experience in that line of work. The phone rang about half an hour ago asking if I was the Gwyn Owen who had sent his CV and cover letter via email that afternoon, imagine my surprise when the caller, a representative of a prestigious financial company expressed his intentions to get me in for interview! He was so impressed with the details in my CV and email that he saw great potential for me in the advertised role and wished to proceed post haste in getting me acquainted with their product at the nearest opportunity. My heart at this point felt as though it would burst out of my chest, when along came a somewhat rhetorical question from my interlocutor, "you do drive of course? And own your own vehicle?" There is no smiley that conveys my feeling at that point, nor the speed with which my heart proceeded to leave my chest for some unfathomable abyss someplace beneath my feet and hell, for I have never learnt to drive, neither do I own my own car or a driving license, and I am not in the habit of lying convincingly in such tight circumstances. No sooner my prospective career appeared as a bolt of sunshine in an otherwise tumultuous fugue of financial woe that has become of my days than it evaporated as quickly as the steam from a fresh laid dog's egg on a frosty winter's night. At least I managed to redeem some attempt at dignity through assuring the gentleman that getting on the road was all along my top priority after gaining suitable employment, and that I had considered the remuneration ample in order to allay the cost of taxi fares in the meantime, precipitating a polite if not entirely credible offer to "feel free to contact (me) again when you own your own vehicle". I really wish I could find a crawls into a hole to die smiley. How long does it take to go from no license, to license in the UK? And roughly how much does it cost? I couldn't care less what the car is, so long as I never have to go through one of those cardiac gymnastic sessions ever again. Then again, what was never mine to begin with cannot have been lost. I still have my health, I think.

Thanks! That's awesome! G.

They should bring back a degree of physical punishments in school to teach these idiots about consequences far earlier in their school life, i.e. when they first started picking on this kid, a swift ass paddling might have brought them back in line. As young adults in the general prison population they could well learn a new meaning for poop dick soon, but more likely they will just learn new tricks from older criminals, get themselves indebted to gangs who fix them up inside and generally continue being idiots. Pessimistic, prejudiced? Maybe, but it's from my experience (it's a long story) of young offenders when they come out, usually being more criminal than when they went in. Of course, the same thing applies to prison as it does to school based punishments, being that if the consequences are harsh enough to make receiving punishment undesirable only then it can be effective in turning an idiots attitude and behaviour around. Maybe some people just need a gentle reproach to get back on track, but this is not going to work on so many more people that I know personally, it leaves me wondering if the playstations in prison mentality for young offenders especially as well as adults, is actually only effective for a tiny proportion of the population.

au contraire old chap! You make a lot of sense! Ambulance chasers That's pretty much what they'd want me to do no doubt, I'm not the kind of person to try and rip old people off into taking the most expensive option, that's not who I am. I'm proud of what I have achieved so far in teaching even if the latest venture was cut short, I want to carry on in the educational stream I think, it suits me if I'm honest as what I love best is explaining things, bringing new knowledge and sharing in peoples discovery, there's no better feeling than when you see the moment when the penny drops for a student and they suddenly grasp something new. Far better to live a happy pauper than a miserable baron. Cheers to you my mate! I'm similarly imbibing, although it is only White Star, what it lacks in quality it more than makes up for in alcoholic volume, sheer quantity and absurdly cheap pricetag!

Na, it's all blown out of proportion by the news. January and February '09 were pretty hairy by Athens standards when I was there, gun and grenade attacks on police stations, the sting of tear gas was noticeable as soon as we strolled down Eksarxia and Ommonia Square but Ommonia Square just stinks anyway (a mix of stray cats, skanks, junkies, Al*****s, excrement and coconut raft). A police officer was shot with an AK-47 in broad daylight, that one was pretty unsettling because we crossed that street earlier in the day and all was normal then a few hours later it was cordoned off and we got back and saw it on TV. The thing about Athens is the violence is really more noticeable when it's on TV, otherwise you just tend to get on with your daily business as best you can, and if you stay out of trouble spots which are usually well known and or broadcast in advance, then you should be fine. If however, you want to throw petrol bombs at police, then expect to get a pounding. It will blow over soon enough. Greece has had a tough time for centuries, but a lot of the current situation is a legacy from the houda, the military dictatorship in the late 60s early 70s, because of the way that the more politically minded students led the resistance and were brutally massacred by the military on their campus grounds, there is a law that forbids the police or the army from entering college grounds to pursue student activists, needless to say the students of today use this to their advantage, as do the older generations of communists, anarchists and other missfits, they feed the impressionable youths with this image of them as perpetual freedom fighters and this is what you see on the streets of Athens, it isn't even the normal trade unions doing the bombings, it's a loud minority that have been milking the memory of the genuine (i.e. 60s 70s generation when they were actually fighting a dictatorship) freedom fighters for far too long. Due to the houda, and the 400 years of Ottoman Islamic suppression over Greece, the people are naturally wary of any form of state control or bureaucracy, it is the irony of Greece that red tape is absolutely everywhere, yet it is universally despised even by those that are supposedly enforcing it! Hardly anyone gives a hoot if someone pays tax or declares their earnings, the so called black economy is enormous! It's a simple fact of life in Greece that there are two prices, one with a tax receipt (high) or one with no receipt hence no tax need be declared (cheap).. what would you choose? The trouble is the governments over the years have been far too weak and embarrassed to confront the situation and demand that everyone pay tax, the rich will complain and say why should they pay for the poor while the poor will say why should they pay if the rich don't, the result has been that for generations, the Greek government has had to borrow more and more to keep on providing public services that should really have been bought with tax revenue. The way out is simple, a huge dose of reality, strong consequences for tax evasion, and the end of the idea of the black economy as some sort of noble resistance seen as a sort of cultural norm. I can see this happening already, but the lunatic fringe will demand their five minutes of television reports, they will demand the attention of the masses, but soon enough the normal trade unions will be back to work with a more sober outlook and the lunatics will fade away. As with the violence, the TV and news papers make the financial situation seem a lot worse than it actually is, Greece has money, the people are very hard working and the economy is capable of pulling through this, all that needs to happen is for people in Greece and outside to keep calm and carry on and ignore the scaremongers. Sheesh! I rant tooo much