The Hall of Fire

Oh, and she privatized the railroads. Worst Decision Ever. No. She. Did Not That was done under John Major and she was, IIRC, not in favour herself. As a regular user of the railways both pre and post privatisation my own view is that they have improved, albeit not very much. Certainly the quality ...

I saw it last night, 2D only, and pretty much agree with Alatar's [or should it now be He Who Cannot Be Named For Copyright Reasons?] review. While The Hobbit has never held the place in my heart that LOTR has, there were far fewer things that niggled me than any of the LOTR films. I didn't find Rad...

I'm taking the same approach as Alatar. Only a few more days. I'm reading the book again in preparation.

Nor is good and ill one thing for Americans, and another thing for Europeans. It is for us, and SCOTUS justices more than anyone, to discern what is good and what is ill. If they find examples in foreign decisions that help them make that determination, more power to them, so long as they don't abr...

I wonder if the problems with John Carter have put them off that set of stories and pushed them towards Star Wars?

Hopefully, as Joss Whedon is working on the Avengers they may be able to get him to do Star Wars (hopefully with a cast includgin Nathan Fillion, Morena Baccarin, Jewel Staite etc)

A friend of mine was going to be an extra in it: they were filming in Portsmouth Dockyard, but he changed his mind.

I saw it recently on blu ray and thoroughly enjoyed it: in fact it's inspired me to read the books.

My inner purist is, of course, revolted by Dejah Thoris's costume in the film

I saw the LOTR Lego sets at a Lego Show a couple of weeks ago. Rather foolishly I didn't have my camera with me. They all look good, although the Helm's Deep one looked a bit small: room for some creative addition. I wold hope that the Helm's deep one would be around £100-120 given the size of the b...

Lego.com now has a few pictures up of the minifigs. It doesn't appear to have pictures of the sets, yet.

Given the amount I've spent on Star Wars Lego, I don't think my bank manager will cope.

Annoying supporting characters, you can simply skip over, like pages of descriptions of the flora of a valley. Yeah, it's got flowers, we get it. :D Skip? With the Feegles trampling would be better. I don't find most of the Song of Ice and Fire characters annoying, only Sansa Stark. She cannot, rea...

I'm not short, not blue, and not in any way Scottish?

There are many YA books I would never read, even if stranded on a desert island with no other reading material. Any book with vampires, zombies, or a bleak dystopian future is out, too. I look at the TV guide and wonder: what the hell is this all about? The "supernatural" rules and IT SUX...

This is a stupid question, but who is "Emma?" The heroine of Emma, by Jane Austen. Austen said something along the lines of that she had created a character that only she would like. Cathy in Wuthering Heights is pretty annoying. Tom Brown in Tom Brown's schooldays is also annoying to me,...

To say that horse is considered a delicacy in France is to make it seem like a "special" food. In fact it's a routine food: go to any supermarket and you'll find packets of horsemeat in with the beef and the other meat.

"Volunteer" is the colloquial term used in capital (postconviction) practice to describe an inmate who has chosen to "volunteer" for execution before all of his appeals have been decided against him. Possibly one of the most famous examples is Timothy McVeigh. For an in-depth lo...

Without veering too far from the topic (I hope), I think, Aravar, that there is a major dissonance between our positions. I, truthfully, do not think it is 'silly' to claim that an hour of a street cleaner's life has any less value, intrinsically, than an hour of a brain surgeon's life (to take ext...

I think there are a number of reasons for a high RPI, for example quantitive easing (currency devaluation). Ultra low interest rates are... problematic. They may favour some home owners, but affect pensions adversely. They are very much a poisoned chalice; an action of last resort to try and mainta...

[The fact that today the link between benefits, that safety net for the most deprived, linked to the RPI for its raises, are under threat because RPI has hit 5%, is symptomatic of the cancer we're fighting. The poor get shafted, whilst the rich are being consistently rewarded... for being rich. Thi...

What gets me is how these salaries and bonuses end up getting approved by shareholders. It's their company, it's their money, yet they vote to pay millions of it in one year to one person. Mainly because the shares are held by large groups of institutional investors, so that the votes are bing made...