Verbal

Could be. Or they imagine they are the entrepreneurial beating heart of the country, when in fact their business is doing a paper round or some such.

Common sense prevails.

I have an ology, and what you say is false. Kind of. The debate with the deniers reminds me a lot of the debate in the US in the seventies and eighties over car emissions. When progressive states like California proposed tighter emissions standards, US car companies lines up to block any and every move. In Europe and Japan, by contrast, engine technology was given a substantial push, and emissions were cut without compromising performance. Consequently, American car companies produced ever more uncompetitive gas guzzlers, which found fewer and fewer export markets, and were swept aside by the subsequent and inevitable fad for imports in the US. This all played out in 2008, when virtually every US car manufacturer was all but bankrupt. Oil companies are doing the same thing. Instead of investing more than token amounts into diversifying into green fuels, they pump funds into the climate denial 'science'. What's happening now is that internet entrepreneurs and others, having seen the future, are investing heavily in green. And after all, why wouldn't they? The best of green technologies, if successful, also cut costs. (Ask Wal-Mart why it's gone green. It's economics, stupid, not moral flag waving.) The oil companies will eventually go the same way that the US car companies did - unless they wake up. Maybe what happened to BP will be a wake-up call. So: you wouldn't have to subtract from your list, but add to it, as new cost-cutting, green technologies come along. Some will be entirely new; some will render existing power generation (like coal) greener.

Can I un-nominate you? Eleven to go.

True, of course. But have you said that to avoid the red button?

More hysterical conspiracy guff regurgitated for the hopelessly gullible. There IS a dispute about whether Gallo or a French scientist first identified the HIV virus. And it's been demonstrated by scientific analysis that Gallo's first sample must to some extent have originated in the French lab. Therefore credit for the discovery is now shared between the two. This means, however, that the virus was out there well before Gallo came along. Gallo did not 'create' AIDS.

Ah, okay. Well, I think my broader point still stands.

It's a little worrying that things may change because of a vocal but unpleasant-seeming minority. I can't speak for anyone else, but the moderation on here seems broadly fine (It's a difficult balancing act; always will be.) The one nuisance mod was removed ages ago. If what happens next is driven by the harpings-on of posters like 1976 baby, or whatever his name is, we're heading for the buffers. I hope that's not the case.

Ah good, thanks. I wouldn't have wanted that piece of tasteless nonsense to have been easily lost.

No it isn't. So is anyone going to say what's really going on? The impression is that StL, for one, has left unhappily - and he was never one to really seem ruffled by the abuse that appears from time to time on here.

And now it's gone! http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/oct/02/1010-richard-curtis-climate-change Shame. Was a work of art (for those who didn't see it.)

Yes, when there's someone in mind.

No, it just applies in special cases, as outlined above. If you were a reading man, I might recommend The Imp of the Perverse, by Edgar Allan Poe.

Absolutely correct, yes. That would be the logical conclusion.

There is a theory - only a theory, mind - that those who are strongest in their condemnation of a particular practice are themselves subject to the very urges they condemn. The most recent evidence was the American, ferociously anti-gay TV evangelist who turned out to be...guess what? Just saying.

Oh trousers, where to start?

More like Pl*nker Central. 'Full members' locking horns. What a terrible image.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UHN3zHoYA0&feature=player_embedded Personally, this seems a little OTT...but maybe necessary. Good to see Gillian Anderson back to her explosive best though.

I was referring to your comical idea about 'good education and upbringing'. The 'geek' conversation was with someone else.

True, but different orders of magnitude.

Never in the history of humankind has a religion been so soaked in blood as Roman Catholicism. Although it now has serious competition, Roman Catholicism is way out there in the campaign to spread human misery through reckless prohibitions that encourage the destruction of people and families, especially in the developing world. Scientology is a barely registered annoyance by comparison.

For all that scientology is truly loathsome, nothing - but nothing - can compete with the Catholic Church. Or to be more precise, the Roman interpretation of Christianity - which has imposed brutal, mindless authoritarianism, dressed up in the garb of impenetrable ritual. No wonder Blair was such a devotee. The list of the Roman church's crimes are way too long to mention. The Roman diktats about what constituted the Bible - the forced removal of the 'secret' Book of John (a peaen to original Christian values) and the inclusion of several monstrosities in the Old Testament - are reason enough for reasonable people to disregard its message. But the sheer, horrific, often misogynistic violence of its past, and the casual, condoned abuse of the vulnerable in the present, render it beyond the pale. Any notion that Travolta et al, for all their sinister weirdness, can come close is preposterous. I speak, of course, as a lapsed Catholic.

Idiots and offensive people are the reason I enjoy reading the guff here - even if it is at the expense of knowing that the owners have secret bank accounts in the Bahamas and sun themselves every other week in Cap D'Antibes. Actually, we could do with more idiots. I'd pay for that.

Then I am officially mortified.

This is a much bigger issue in the US, where it has become all wrapped up in the touchy subject of race. Bill Cosby has famously led a campaign for years now, trying to get young black Americans from disappearing into the limiting patois of urban-speak. Even though - as Ali G pastiched - it's taken up widely in youth culture, it is actually, says Cosby, speech-poor, and therefore a means of reinforcing all kinds of inequalities.