shurlock

Rose is such a dirty little bast*rd.

She must be on pretty good pay the rest of the year too? Does she work everyday? The shift to agency work must have a lot to do with the state's pension obligations/liabilities -whether you're on the inside or outside does make a material difference, even if contractors do not see an increase in job insecurity etc.

No subject per se should be off the table; but those in power are fairer game than minorities -religious or otherwise- who may already feel themselves embattled or persecuted.

Edit

Bless her.

To be fair, our time would only be spent playing games if utopia -or indeed heaven existed. http://www.broadviewpress.com/product.php?productid=1857

It was always the context that did it for me - for international games, it usually followed a period of ragged, disjointed England possession. Up would pop Crouch or Carroll with a simple layoff that actually found its man....."that's better, much better".

You only need to look at the entire history of the Nazi state to realise that it's aim was racial purity - from its prejudices towards not only Jews but also Sinti and Roma to the degree to which it drew on pseudo-scientific and intellectual trends in eugenics. Remember traditional religious persecution gave people an out-card through the opportunity to convert; Nazism by biologising religion made this impossible.

Calling MLG, calling MLG To tell us all that there's no such thing as race.

In most other walks of life, organisations are able to navigate such ambiguity -firing an employee for poor performance, for instance, raises exactly the same, thorny questions around definition and degree; yet it happens everyday without people batting an eye. Rather the assumption is that due process has been respected and all relevant considerations have been taken into account. And it largely works. Of course, it's worth considering the consequences of doing nothing which are not trivial. Often when the law or any other rule is seen as grossly deficient, mob justice steps in to compensate. Ideally these matters would be settled in a rational, orderly way -hence the need for rules- rather than be left to the whims of the Twittersphere and hectoring journos. For what it's worth, the issue should have never got to this stage -and if people feel strongly about this issue, then the proper target for reform should be rape sentencing, not the HR decisions of a third division club or the FA's code of conduct. See Marina Hyde's article http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2015/jan/06/ched-evans-law-marina-hyde. But to the extent that the big decisions are bottled, the dirty work will continue to be outsourced and delegated -first to the likes of the FA and individual football clubs and ultimately to the mob.

You know exactly what I mean - the suggestion that the only alternative to doing nothing is blanket criminalisation and overreach. Hence all or nothing.

There is no area of law or human activity that is free from ambiguity. None. Yet judges and lawmakers have done a pretty good job of resisting dimwitted, slippery slope arguments. Of course, law changes; new exceptions are made as unforeseen circumstances test the old boundaries. It's invariably messy but it's never all or nothing.

Cherrypicking says the simpleton who ignores a rich history of hermeneutics Are you surprised that nobody takes you seriously and can be bothered to respond when you reappear unrepentant from your last hiding.

Agree - you preempt some of what I say in my follow-up post.

They do so but its a question of motivation. Am sure there are many true believers (not all of whom are murderously violent, mind you). But am equally sure that much rule-following -the type you mention, "following Halal or Kosher"- is simply a commitment device, a way to ground a community and secure the benefits of cooperation. Many zealots will be the first to point out that religious observance and religiosity are not the same thing -indeed some go so far as say that one interferes with the other. Needless to say, for every community -unless we are are talking about a truly cosmopolitan world (not on the horizon anytime soon)- there will be insiders and outsiders -and therein lies the problem. In this respect, it's debatable whether secular communities -the nation state being the obvious example- have a fantastically superior record to religious communities in managing the relationship between insiders and outsiders over the last century; but I agree they draw the boundaries of the community more inclusively, albeit perhaps with declining levels of commitment. As far as political Islam (and fundamentalism more generally) is concerned, it would be much more constructive to view it as a modern phenonomenon (and no I dont simply mean geopolitical, Papesque causes). Rehearsing hoary, Enlightenment debates about the backwardness of religion captures only a small part of what it is, what drives it and what can be done to combat it. Olivier Roy's "Globalised Islam: The Search for a New Ummah" is very convincing in this regard.

You genuinely think that's how people view religion - I'd say it's often a cultural phenomenon with practices that help sustain a community. That can serve some pretty useful functions - notably, allowing individuals to cooperate and come to each other's assistance where mutual distrust might otherwise be the norm.

Hernandez play in the hole when he's never shown any ability or desire to??? That's hilarious pal

By one of the suspect's own admission, it was the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib that motivated him to fight in jihad. Who knows whether it was a necessary or sufficient condition or simply a pretext for a preexisting bloodlust; but to contemptuously sweep such biographical details under the carpet smacks of the same mindless, mechanical reasoning that Verbal is taking others to task for.

Edit

Without wishing to be pedantic, the attacks are largely about a novel rather than the cartoons, one that has attracted quite a bit of controversy. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/11329625/Islamophobic-Michel-Houellebecq-book-featured-by-Charlie-Hebdo-published-today.html

As far as I understand, self-induced or voluntary intoxication is disregarded by the law for rape (as a crime of basic intent). The threshold is that the defendant does not reasonably believe that the victim consents -and reasonable grounds for a belief are grounds that would be reasonable to a sober man. On the other hand, issues of intoxication get more complex for crimes of specific intent and where the victim is involuntarily intoxicated. There are some great cases e.g. Lipman in the area of criminal law and intoxication (Majewski is the seminal case).

Can't think of a worse country for this to happen in that extreme views on both sides are much closer to the mainstream.

Definitely recommended. V.intriguing list. Not just willfully obtuse choices and arthouse for arthouse's sake, it seems.

Recently watched the Chinese film "A Touch of Sin" - not Hollywood fare but certainly recommended with plenty of stunning and disorienting imagery. Maybe file alongside the "What is Wrong with America" thread.

Melissa McCarthy is a pretty funny fat bird comedic actress. And still think Roseanne is the best of the lot.