Re: a comment on There by Dovina	6-Mar-06/4:46 PM
God is the biggest load of guff to have hit the human race since monkey-times. If you believe in Him, an important part of your brain is beyond demented.
Re: a comment on There by Dovina	5-Mar-06/3:37 PM
Did you know that when the mob caught Jesu in Gethsemane, He was hiding in a burrow? Numerous eye witness counts testify to this fact, but they have been airbrushed from history because early Christians found the concept of a subterranean deity undignifying. My own view is that burrows can provide excellent cover if you're about to be crucified for the sins of mankind.
Re: a comment on There by Dovina	5-Mar-06/3:29 PM
He should subject both of them to an elaborate series of physical and mental trials, quite like the ones Indiana Jones has to pass to get to the Holy Grail. The whole affair should be conducted like an episode of The Crystal Maze. If they pass, they get to go to Heaven, and they also win an adventure holiday in the Lake District. If they fail, they have to hand their badges back to the commissioner, then sit in the corner and think about what they've done.
Re: a comment on There by Dovina	5-Mar-06/9:24 AM
I too have felt His presence, even though I know He's a made up person. The last time it happened, I was putting on my cummerbund when I felt a low frequency vibration in my midst. It coincided with a faint rumbling noise, closely followed by cacophonous trumpeting, which I took to be the Trumpets of God. There was also a strong smell of dung, but I don't know what that was.
Re: a comment on Harp Song of the Prawne Men by -=Dark_Angel=-, P.I.	4-Mar-06/2:36 AM
You've solved it then? Excellent work! But don't reveal the secret here. Hand in your paper to captainshoehorn at hotmail dot com, where it shall receive a stern going-over.
Re: a comment on Harp Song of the Prawne Men by -=Dark_Angel=-, P.I.	3-Mar-06/5:19 PM
100 reversible black/white counters are in a darkened room. Call a counter White if its white side is facing up. Call it Black if its black side is facing up. You know that 90 of the 100 counters are Black and 10 are White. Arrange the counters into two distinct piles, each with the same number of Whites. (Obviously you cannot see the counters, merely fondle them. And flip them if you want.) [10 marks]
Re: a comment on =, <>, & . . . by Dovina	3-Mar-06/5:03 PM
Skimming through this thread gave me a headache. By A do you mean "200 people will be saved, and 400 will die"? Perhaps I'm nitpicking, but suppose I save 600 people with program X. It's still the case that program X saved 200 people (it's just that it saved some more that aren't mentioned). Do you see my point? The same thing holds for C. Presumably it's meant to say "If C is adopted 400 people will die, and 200 will be saved" Given that natural interpretation, I'd choose A (equivalently C) because A and B have the same expected lives saved, but B has higher volatility. A has 0 volatility. A Gentleman does not play dice with the universe.
Re: a comment on Harp Song of the Prawne Men by -=Dark_Angel=-, P.I.	3-Mar-06/4:24 PM
No, but I can opine at length about the dangers of Islamofascism, and about how the dogs who printed those cartoons should be hunted down and punished for their crimes.
Re: a comment on Harp Song of the Prawne Men by -=Dark_Angel=-, P.I.	25-Feb-06/4:55 PM
Rudyard Q. Prawne
Re: On Looking Back by Dovina	24-Feb-06/4:54 PM
Racism 5 by Dovina I once had a friend who was black. I stabbed him eight times in the back. He fell to the floor And I stabbed him some more Then pummelled his head with a jack.
Re: a comment on A young Man’s Demise by Dovina	20-Feb-06/4:32 PM
I thought the meaning you intended was the name of the white clothes worn by people who play bowls. Now I'm even more confused. If you want it to mean 'innocent and pure, unsullied' then the sentence makes even less sense, because you're using 'lily-white' as an adjective. You cannot stand around in an adjective. Even if you revert back to the noun form (which must be an invention of yours, or some technical bowls usage that I've never heard of) the sentence is still unparsable without punctuation, e.g. 'All they have is a squashed black egg which they stand around, in lily-whites, telling each other how genteel they are.'
Re: a comment on A young Man’s Demise by Dovina	20-Feb-06/12:56 PM
"Furthermore, your extrapolation of an implied circle in my perfectly understandable sentence is absurd." Originally, I had written 'wearing lily-whites', because I thought you might be referring to cricket clothes (which are actually called 'Whites'.) But I changed it because I'd never heard of anyone referring to them as 'lily-whites', and because when I looked up lily-white in the dictionary I found this: "Lily-white adj. Excluding or seeking to exclude Black people" If you want a prize for knowing more about bowls than me you can have one. But given that it's a rather obscure game that only incredibly old people (and weirdos) play, and given that when all else had failed I had rather sensibly resorted to the dictionary definition of the word (you know, the book containing the ACTUAL definitions of words according to leading wordsmiths), and given that your original sentence WAS unparsable, I don't think my interpretation was particularly absurd. What IS absurd is that you still think your sentence was perfectly understandable. Even to a nobel prize winner in bowls and bowls accessories, it was massively tits-up.
Re: a comment on To drnick by amanda_dcosta	19-Feb-06/3:57 PM
Because you're only doing it for the bonus points, obviously. Look, either you believe God will help the person you're praying for BECAUSE you are praying for them, or you don't. If you don't, then you're obviously only praying for them because you think it will get you into heaven. That isn't going to fool a Jesu. If you do, then you've got to accept that you believe in a pretty bizarre sort of benevolent God. The sort of God who would forsake someone simply because nobody happened to be praying for them. It just doesn't make any sense. The whole explanation Christians have for sufferring is that God doesn't intervene because He wants us to have free will. The second you bring prayer into it, you're talking about an interventionist God. If He's willing to intervene to alleviate the suffering of so-and-so because such-and-such prayed for him, why doesn't He just do that all the time? It can't be because doing so would make so-and-so run out of free will. Nine times out of ten, so-and-so has no knowledge or control over who prays for him.
Re: a comment on A young Man’s Demise by Dovina	19-Feb-06/3:53 PM
The thing is that 'lily-white' is an adjective, not a noun. Even if it were punctuated, we'd still be talking about one prime bollock of a sentence.
Re: a comment on To drnick by amanda_dcosta	19-Feb-06/11:19 AM
When you pray for somebody, what do you think happens? Do you think God says "Well I wasn't actually going to help such-and-such, but now that you've prayed for him I will."? At Church people are always praying for the poor, or praying for the sick, or praying for the people who've been pulped by an earthquake. What the hell do they think they're doing? I mean, is the power of a prayer directly proportional to the number of people who pray that prayer? And if we didn't pray, would God just watch T.V. instead? Think about it. For once in your life, think about it.
Re: a comment on A young Man’s Demise by Dovina	19-Feb-06/10:58 AM
'All they have is a squashed black egg which they stand around in lily-whites and tell each other how genteel they are.' That sentence is unparsable. Try using some punctuation. Here's what I think you meant to say, but it's just a guess because the original was so garbled-beyond-belief. 'All they have is a squashed black egg. They stand around it, in a lily-white circle, telling each other how genteel they are.'
Re: Journeyman by Glasseyez	15-Feb-06/2:25 PM
Excuse me, no gypsies. - No vote -
Re: a comment on A tribute to our most precious Pearl by amanda_dcosta	18-Jan-06/2:52 PM
Clearly Dovina thinks all poemes should be deposited in the Arena of Gladiatorial Combat. I, for one, am less belligerent. I have always sought refuge in the Arenas of Constructive Criticism and Ritualistic Funeral Poetry, which is where we find ourselves now... ...but this dumpling leaves a sour taste in my mouth. There isn't a single poeme alive that couldn't be made better by referring to The Holy Spirit as The Holy Ghost. The King James Version learnt this lesson long ago, and amanda would do well to follow its example. The Holy Ghost is a Ghost. It haunts things. That is the definition of Ghost. Why would Bibles refer to it as a Ghost if it was some sort of special 'Ghost' that wasn't actually a ghost at all because it didn't really haunt things? The two defining characteristics of a ghost are: (1) Haunting things (2) Walking through walls The Holy Ghost does both.
Re: a comment on It's Time by PoeticXTC	31-Dec-05/8:18 AM
I'm not as English as you think. I was born in Africa, left when I was four, but still return regularly to see how the old place is getting along now that the British Empire has gracefully withdrawn. I might even have more claim to being legally (as opposed to ethnically) African than you, despite not being black. As for my Englishness, it's true I live in England, was educated there, speak with an English accent, drink tea, have a butler, approve of the Gold Standard, and abhor ethnics of all kinds, but you have to go back a couple of generations to find an Englishman in my family. My mother's side is Irish to the 10th Century, with a few unfortunate dollops of French and German aristocracy, and my father's family is Scottish. Above all, I consider myself a Gentleman. As for the tale of how Africans came to have black skin and white palms, I heard it in South Africa, needless to say, from a white Afrikaner.
Re: a comment on AIDS in a van by -=Dark_Angel=-, P.I.	31-Dec-05/5:20 AM
It is you who needs to grow up. Honestly, your reaction to this poeme was the default 10-year-old-girl reaction to anything they know mummy wouldn't approve of. I can't bear to imagine the look on your face as you knowingly informed me about your uplifting and educational AIDS presentations. My God don't I look silly now? Here I am poking fun at AIDS, while people like you are out there confronting the realities of this terrible disease: martyring yourselves at the local hospice, confronting AIDS prejudice wherever it rears its ugly head, handing out AIDS fun-packs to all the kids, telling people that "gays aren't the only people who get the AIDS!" You're an incredibly babyish person.