US senators scandalised by Pakistan's jailing of a doctor for helping the CIA track down Osama bin Laden have voted to cut aid to Islamabad by $33mn - one million for each year in the doctor's sentence.

Pukkelpop · 2012-05-25T03:51:21.590414+00:00

Considering Pakistan is basically at war with USA, I think a token cut of $33mn is a small gesture.

It must be incredibly frustrating trying to deal with Pakistan on a diplomatic level, as it can't in any way be thought of as a single entity. It's part enemy, part ally, part neutral.

I don't normally have many good words to say about US foreign policy, but they're showing incredible restraint here, and that's encouraging.

BelgoCanadian · 2012-05-24T20:30:03.692730-07:00

No question about it: Wolf Suite, Danny Elfman

thesupermutant · 1 day

The only thing I would add to what's already been said is:

You don't have to take the absolute quickest route to your destination. Instead, I stick to the cycle path as much as possible and when I'm right in the city, I just get off on walk (there's lots of traffic lights / hills anyway so I don't lose much time).

Another one, obvious as it sounds, is to try to stick to familiar routes - or if you're taking on a new route, be extra aware of your surroundings.

There's almost always a safer route than one that takes you by main roads.

FarKingCnut · 1 day

Nah I dunno I think you need to be a bit more partisan and offensive, you're just too wishy-washy.

Icherus · 1 day

I think it's pronounced Qwghlm

rusty_blumpkin · 1 day

Russia and China are probably responsible for far more human deaths. The West fixates on Germany because they were a direct economic rival to us at the time, but unfortunately there have been worse genocides.

bleepsystems · 1 day

Man... how can a 40-hour week and 20 days of holiday put me right at the top of hours worked? I thought that was pretty cushy?

I'm guessing they're including part-time workers as well.

wee_woo · 2 days

The word NEET has been in common use in the UK for about 5 years or so; some other examples are DINK(s)

wvwvwvwvwvwvwvwvwvwv · 2 days

I think you mean douché

Reviri · 2 days

"The man told the person with the gun to go away and he ran off across Gwynne Park."

This man has massive testicles.

DynastySS · 3 days

I'd resist temptation, personally. Everything you add is something that can break and is extra weight. There are some safety essentials (bright front light, rear light, reflective vest ideally, spare tube, small repair kit) but you can quite happily leave off mudguards, rear rack, baskets, panniers etc.

brothamo · 3 days

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding, but the quote from Hazel Blears was fair enough (even though I do have an irrational hatred of her for looking like an annoying little squirrel).

The term 'social mobility' does seem to imply that working class people need to 'move upwards' to become more like the middle classes. And that's what I think the author is implying.

Since 1997, the middle class in the UK has been held up as the ideal that we should all worship (or gently tease for their love of Jamie Oliver and Coldplay). At least Hazel Blears is standing up for the fact that being working class is ok as a culture.

Despite myself being a textbook definition of middle-class, I've had a lot of friends who are working class but have done really well in life (excellent education, career and social life), but they certainly never want to move from working class to middle class.

Everyone has a different interpretation of class, with both negatives and positives. The positive sides of working class culture are robust honesty, a sense of fairness, hard work, thrift and lack of pretension. Implying that 'middle class' is a step up from 'working class' can be quite offensive to someone who considers themselves working class.

Metaphoricalsimile · 3 days

My girlfriend's way too smart for that shit. Whenever I do some extra housework she wasn't expecting, she says a really nice thank you, gives me a hug or a kiss and praises me for a good job well done. It feels good.

...so I do more housework because I enjoy the positive reaction I get.

Clever girl!

apriloneil · 3 days

What shocked me about the Professor David Nutt issue was how the government got away with complete factual inaccuracy and the papers never called them on it. The line trotted out by Alan Johnson at the time was that Prof Nutt 'undermined the government policy' whereas what Prof Nutt actually said had nothing to do with policy.

None of the papers seemed to pick up on the fact that it is a completely different thing to say "some drugs are more harmful than others" and to say "the government policy is wrong".

It was a pretty depressing display by government and media huh.

ProductiveVeteran · 3 days

Don't get a board game fan started on how rubbish TV is ;)

TestZero · 4 days

There's a hill in New College, Oxford University where if you stand in front of it and clap, the echo comes back as a duck's quack.

anchored41 · 4 days

It's gumtree's sexy younger sister.

I hardly ever get excited about new websites that aren't drastically different from old websites, but this is a shitload better than gumtree, so I'd be semi-tempted. Looks pretty easy to use.

You might want to make sure listings are actually listed in a valid location though. I appreciate it's new, but I did a search in 2000km from Perth and nothing came up. The first ad I found was located in the Atlantic Ocean.

Mendicant_Bias · 4 days

Holy crap - after being very confused on happymeeple.com I just found out I've been playing the rules to Lost Cities wrongly for ages!

I always used to apply the investment bonus (x2, x3, x4) BEFORE subtracting 20 points. Turns out you're meant to do it the other way round.

Completely changes things... playing with the proper rules is going to change things a lot!!!

kaoset616 · 4 days

Simply heading to Amazon was always my best bet. Then I moved to Australia, and it's cheaper to order it all the way from the US...

curiouslystrongmints · 4 days

Your powers of deduction exceed my own, I avert my gaze at your brilliance, good sir. Indeed, I may have to be so impertinent as to kindly request you lend me your sunnies.

curiouslystrongmints · 5 days

Bored, pretty gamer girls all over the country are having this conversation right now:

"Hey, have we got any apple juice left?"

"Nah we're fresh out... and the Halo tournament's coming up. How are we going to maintain our competitive edge without the sugar and vitamins our nubile bodies need?"

"You thinking what I'm thinking?"

"To Gumtree!"

undercurrents · 5 days

If you've got no ears or nose, you probably shouldn't go to the world's most image-obsessed country.

737900ER · 5 days

It's a pretty sick kind of thinking, but it is wonderfully simple how much damage can be done if you think about things in the right way.

I work in oil and gas - although it's not so true of the USA, the UK only has a few really big gas pipelines. I think you just need about 4 well-timed bombs in the middle of winter to freeze all the UK's grannies and grandads to death.

Also - bombs are pretty difficult to make, but fires are easy. A few litres of petrol and you're away. Good for tall buildings and tube trains/stations.

And if you're more interested in terror, per se, rather than number of casualties, then just kidnap a child and find a very public place where you can draw a crowd and threaten to kill the child in public (doesn't matter whether you kill the kid or not so long as there's a crowd). Make sure the child is adorably blond-haired with blue eyes and has rich parents though, otherwise the media won't turn up. Also ensure the cameras can get a clear shot of the child at all times (stage management is the key).

As you rightly point out, it has to turn something mundane and boring (taking your kid out to the park) into something frightening.

Train tracks are a great one because you can sabotage all the points between 1am and 4am, then the first morning trains all get derailed simultaneously before the authorities can spread the word and stop the other trains.

The best places to do terrorism, of course, are where the upper middle classes live, but where everyone can relate to. Somewhere like Oxford or Cambridge would be perfect.

crushie · 6 days

Think about your behaviour online. Would you do it in real life? If not, then you should start to think about changing it.

Would you like to spend time with someone who behaved like you?

curiouslystrongmints

TROPHY CASE

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