Verbal

There does seem to be a strong suspicion that this is personal. If so, pursuing vendettas in this petty way doesn't exactly cover the powers that be in glory. Losing any poster is depressing - but losing one of the most entertaining ones 'permanently' is self-defeating.

Not the smartest move.

New moisturiser?

Thank you. At least I won't have to sue you.

Awful. Rooney must have been pulling his hair out.

A Saints fan long before that unfortunate spermatazoic collision resulting in you.

My cv is like a novel you can't put down.

It was what the funnily enough referred to.

West Africans don't.

No I don't. This is a particularly odd idea. It's true that men and women of African descent tend to win 100 metres etc. Is that genetic? If so, why is it that today's West Africans - from whom African Americans and Afro Caribbeans are almost all descended - don't also win 100 metres? Slavery was a process of selection. Only the fittest were of high value, survived the journey, and then survived years in the plantations. Their descendants are the fast runners of today. So no, not genetic but environmental. And nothing whatsoever to do with race.

As is a headline in the Daily Mail

This is of course true.

This isn't true. Sickle-cell anaemia affects peoples who've historically developed resistance to malaria. So those for example of West African descent, including many Afro-Carribbean people as well as black Americans, suffer from it in greater proportions than others. But so do people from the Mediterranean (Cypriots notably) and Indians. Every time someone tries to pin something on 'race' it quickly turns to dust. Sickle-cell anaemia, like many 'heritable' diseases, has its origins in environmental conditions.

In that case, perhaps he can explain why the new theory of quantum certainty is wrong.

It may make no difference at all. The Arab Spring has made Al Qaeda look irrelevant. Its cynical murder mostly of Muslims had already discredited it widely in the Middle East and had already undermined any popular appeal. I suspect the real danger is the rift between Pakistan and the US growing to the point where Pakistan is left to its own devices and becomes a pitched battleground between secularists and resurgent Islamists.

Sort of true, except that the ISI trained the Pakistani Taliban, not the Afghan one, for the purpose of waging a proxy war against India in Kashmir. And then things got out of hand - the Pakistani Taliban has for some years now been taking the fight to Afghanistan.

Sergei is the lab rat for Lord Tender's hypothesis. So yes.

It's possible, but Pakistan is gossipsville in my experience. Secrets are very hard to keep. FWIW I always doubted he was in the tribal areas, and thought he was more likely to be somewhere like Swat Valley, where rich drug lords' houses are plentiful, and a comfortable existence was possible. I was wrong, but not by that much.

And every serious climate scientist you've ever read or talked to (!) is wrong.

Dune would look fetching in an orange jumpsuit, I think. My two trips through Abbottabad were in 2007. There are quite a few expensive houses there and further north, mostly owned by a combination of drug lords, living off profits from the trade in Afghanistan, and senior army personnel (bear in mind that the Pakistani army is the largest landowner, by far, in the country, and routinely rewards its senior staff with large swathes of property). So it wouldn't necessarily mean anyone in the Pakistani high command knew. But I bet they did.

Clearly a fake, and clearly NOT released by the US military after yesterday's action.

I've been through Abbottabad. It's a HUGE military town - several barracks and military schools. Very odd.

It's your lookout. I'd be amazed if those sites weren't being closely watched right now.

Not a good idea to post that link dune. It'll look to MI5 that you and dozens of other Saintswebbers are Southampton jihadists