Sheaf Saint

Or you could also look at the negative effects it has on people with less... A guy I know runs a charity in Nigeria that was on Channel 4's Dispatches program a few years ago. He and his colleagues run a shelter for children that have been abandoned by their families because of 'Exorcists' who go into villages and identify children as witches so they can charge a huge sum to 'cure' them - a process which often involves some form of mutilation that will leave the child scarred for life (physically and emotionally). These people are poor and have no real education, and all they know is what has been rammed down their throats by Christian preachers all their lives, so in their fear of god they believe these evil men and cast their own children out of their village because they believe they are witches and cannot afford the fee for the 'exorcism'. Either that or they simply murder them and burn the bodies. For centuries the idea that a judgemental father figure is watching our every move has been perpetuated as a form of population control... Be a good citizen and you will get everlasting peace in the garden of Eden, but misbehave and you will burn in the eternal fires of hell. Really convenient that isn't it? That authorities can get people to conform out of fear that they will spend an eternity in unspeakable pain if they don't. If people can't see through that which is so obvious and want to carry on talking to their invisible friend for comfort then that's fine. But when religious organisations start wanting public acceptance of their deranged ideas and even including them in government policy then that is when atheists must speak out and fight back against it. If religious people are allowed to publicly state they believe that god does exist, then why should atheists not be given an equal platform to argue that he doesn't?

I have often wondered what the outcome would be if the Jesus story happened in England this day and age... Some bloke from Basingstoke instead of Bethlehem claims to be the son of god who will die for all our sins and be resurrected to save humanity. Would he spawn an international following that would last thousands of years and be the cause of countless wars? Or would people rightly just consider him a bit of a nutter and ignore him?

It's not really odd is it. Sane minded people need to speak out in defiance of the irrational, hypocritical bigotry that spouts forth from many vocal religious types. The delusion of god has hindered the progress mankind for many centuries, so it's important that people can put forward an alternative, balanced view to combat religious extremism and consign these cults (let's face it - that's all they are) to the history books so we can move forward.

I don't think it's available on Steam. I bought it on DVD and it installed this uplay thing, which is basically Ubisoft's rip-off of Steam, to manage your game profiles etc...

No, that's the point. There's loads of different missions and trials etc...

I was going to keep it on hold until I can upgrade my graphics card to one that will do it justice, but I couldn't help myself. What an awesome game. Ubisoft have combined all the best elements from the first two games and come up with something really special. There is much more of an ongoing story to it than the second one, but it still has the vast open landscape that you can go and explore and pick up little money-making missions here and there to distract you from the main storyline. Much smarter than your average FPS and the attention to detail is phenomenal. Highly recommended.

So because their parents may or may not hold left-wing political views, the kids deserved to die? On the official EDL account as well - just doing their bit to convince everyone that they are just a peace-loving, patriotic organisation as always I see.

I've not seen anything more about this, but it has been confirmed by Egosoft that the latest chapter in their X universe series will be released in 2013 (no actual date yet)....

What if we are not the first level though? Think about it... If we are living in a simulation, and we are close to discovering how to generate our own simulations, how many layers back does this go? We could be living in a simulation of a simulation of a simulation... ad infinitum. Neuroscientists have identified areas of the brain that fire a tiny fraction of a second before we make conscious decisions, which brings into question the whole idea of free will. Do you think I could successfully argue against a speeding ticket if I can demonstrate that my car doesn't actually exist as matter and is in fact just pixels in a computer program over which I have no control?

http://www.washington.edu/news/2012/12/10/do-we-live-in-a-computer-simulation-uw-researchers-say-idea-can-be-tested/ The matrix has you

I was listening on Solent (before the days of live commentary and they would interrupt the music with that jingle that made you sh1t yourself in anticipation of which way the goal had gone!) and I honestly thought Grant Coleman had made a mistake when he announced the goalscorer.

Oh dear. Album sales dropping again are they Morrissey? I've never made any secret of my distaste for the concept of monarchy, but he is catastrophically off the mark with this one. Still, gotta hand it to him... he knows how to get people talking about him despite not being musically relevant any more.

This cartoon sums up this thread perfectly...

I was actually reading this somewhere very recently and can't find the exact source I was looking at. But climatologists (in many cases volunteers) have gone to great lengths to ensure an even distribution of recording stations all over the globe - from the deserts of Africa, to the rainforests of South America and even the frozen wastelands of the Arctic / Antarctic.

By taking monthly readings from thousands of recording stations all over the world, in all different kinds of environments, and taking into account external factors such as the urban heat island effect... http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/

I'm still not convinced it is. Other members of the cast have publicly said it they can't say who it is but it definitely isn't Khan, and it seems to me like the Mail have just picked up some rumours from somewhere and printed it as fact (Not like them at all - I know)

Or perhaps we could just ditch all of the religious aspects altogether and go with LGTL's suggestion of using the solstice as a reason to spend some quality time with family and friends.

I'm all for this idea actually, and I've been trying to convince my family and friends over the last few years that we should make an effort seeing as most people are off work for it anyway. I'm all in favour of sticking two fingers up to the Catholic Church and their over-inflated claims about a Jewish kid who (if he even existed) wasn't born in December, and reclaim the old pagan winter solstice festival to celebrate the returning of the sun and the start of longer days.

I think they are both still a little out of my price range. I'm looking to spend no more than about £150 really. Might wait til january to see if there are any good deals on, but just really want to know whether a AMD or NVIDIA card will be better with my existing setup.

I'm thinking of treating myself to an upgrade cos the one I have, although not that old, isn't very high spec and I really want to be able to enjoy Far Cry 3 to it's absolute best. I have a ASrock n68 c-s mobo, that uses an NVIDIA chipset, with AMD Phenom II quad core processor, and I was wondering if anyone can tell me whether I would be better off getting an AMD or a NVIDIA graphics card to compliment it. I'm currently using an ATI Radeon HD5670 which was about the best I could afford at the time, but my system struggles with the really resource-hungry games like Crysis 2.

Yeah, agree with this. Far too many episodes in the early series seemed like it was just another soap opera that happened to be set on a space station in the future. But as it got going and the ongoing story arc of the war with the Dominion became the predominant aspect, it improved a great deal. Would have been so much better without the self-righteous, whiny and generally irritating Captain Janeway.

Lucky it wasn't more than 1-0 in the end. Players looked very tired and weary from our recent run of games. Poor concentration, and totally devoid of any ideas or quality. When you're not playing well you rely on a little bit of luck, but nothing ran for us today either. Every 50-50 always seemed to somehow land at the feet of a Liverpool player. Oh well - I didn't expect us to get anything out of this game, but we did improve a little in the second half and contain them a bit better, and our last-ditch defending was good enough today - and it took a top-quality header to breach the goal. Looking at the table, we are still only one win away from 14th, so onwards and upwards hopefully.

Cos the guy who's coming on instead cost £7m, perhaps?