Crocefisso

I think this is a good effort, but I found the writing quite clumsy and not particularly evocative. I take no issue with the dialogue, but the following sentence, already quoted, really sums up my thoughts The sentence structure here feels wrong and the whole flow of the writing to me seems dull and uninspired; it amounts to little more than a sequential telling of events, without flowing or particularly grabbing my attention. Just my opinion.

As always, Jslayer999, you did a wonderful job of relating an outside intellectual concept into one of RS' longer term problems - namely, whether or not the addition of greater amounts of spectacle ad infinitum and sustain itself. I look forward to the promised article resolving the dilemma. :P

@ Range about Joe Biden: Exactly. Biden is the Berlusconi of American politics.

London prices are geared towards the largely affluent people from the South East that visit most often. I imagine that visiting from other parts of the UK must be a culture shock.

Tuberculosis?

I must admit I don't think Serpent Eye was bashing. Rather, it seems he was expressing a degree of incredulity over what seems to me a rather bizarre and arbitrary division. Perhaps it's because I've never read young adult or 'new adult' fiction, but I cannot see how any of these age-based divisions constitute a 'genre'. To use film as an example of what I mean, if we were to have to give the genre of a film, we would answer based on thematic indicators, which would lead us to answers such as 'comedy' or 'action', rather than the age-rating given to it by some central board. Moving on from this slight pedantry, I can't see what purpose any of these age-based divisions serve. Is there that much of a difference between a 21 and a 26 year old that the former will not be able to pick up a book considered adult? As I said, the divisions seem rather arbitrary.

Bought Turkish Letters in an amazing bookshop in Istanbul and was so enamoured I was finished by dawn the next day. Essentially, it's an account of an embassy by an ambassador of the Habsburg monarchy - Ogier de Busbecq - to the Ottoman Empire in the days of Suleiman the Magnificent, a combination of travel and history, with a fair amount of gossipy political portrayals of the workings of 16th century Ottoman court and a wonderful psychological profile of Suleiman. The unfortunate sod spent a few years in the 1550s and 60s trying to negotiate a peace - given that this coincided with the Ottomans' massive victory at Djerba, you can imagine they weren't very flexible. For a 16th century book it's surprisingly modern in its focus and mindset. Of all the book, however, my favourite scene comes from the journey to Constantinople for the first time, described in great historical detail: Busbecq is travelling on a boat, manned by Turks, to Belgrade because it is faster than going by road, and is shocked by the recklessness of his Turkish escorts. At one point, as they sailed downriver in the dead of night at quite a high speed, Busbecq is awoken by a loud noise and goes out to find that, in the pitch black, a tree has smashed part of the boat's deck. The Turks respond to his fear and anger with a laconic "Allah will protect us". I've put it badly, but the way he writes it is hilarious.

Perhaps I'm reading this wrong, but who is spited by your doing pushups?

You have hit upon the dilemma I faced when considering the issue, Kimberly. Ideally, I would love to see people educated on how to properly discuss issues and so forth on the internet, but I could not think how it is that forum Mods such as yourself could actually educate people, and I think you seem to have implicitly recognised this by not giving specifics on how to go about this. Stickies, perhaps, though I doubt they would have a lasting impact. Other than this, out of desperation I decided that censorship would be a form of forced education which would bring about the desired effect. decebal, I would be interested to hear in more detail where your interpretation on the use of 'troll' differs, as I am aware that to an extent claiming 'misuse' depends on my own experience.

Going to be eating baklawa in under 24 hours.

My mother is an expert at making packing for holidays into the most stressful thing in the world. She's just about finished crying and shouting about it.

Very funny post. I'll be sure to check your blog from now on.

I think taking revenge only leads to regret if one makes a habit of it. I once took revenge and have never regretted it. In response to what did you do it? A moron son of a parents' friend, my age, who smashed a valuable jade Buddha which I treasured on a joint family holiday in the Adriatic. How? Threw them into the sea later that day, from some rocks, and onto a shallow bit of water with rocks underneath. When? At age 11-12 Do/did you regret it? No When did the guilt kick in? Never In any case, on a scale of one to ten, ten being very hurtful and one being not hurtful at all, how would you rate the injury and the revenge? 7 - they cut their legs on the rocks and got stung by urchins in the water. Did the person with whom you evened things out reciprocate? No, I never saw them again Also, have you ever been on the receiving end? Did this make you want to reciprocate? Did you? I've never been on the receiving end.

This alcohol education reminds me of the PSHE lessons they have in English schools, and which I could not abide; firstly for the moralising tone of the classes, but also because the same issues were repeated year on year for five years - alcohol, cigarettes, taxes, drugs, credit cards and disabled people - without any variation or respite. The only highlight was a particularly witty boy in my old class, who made the following joke: TEACHER: I hope nobody here smokes cigarettes because - (shouting) BOY: I prefer cigars! (stunned silence, Boy grins smugly)

There's a very good short story called Dragon: The Old Potter's Tale which summarises perfectly my view of religion, and where I think your interpretation is wrong. In the story, a man erects a signboard saying that a dragon will ascend to heaven from a pond, in order to trick the townspeople for mocking his large nose. In short, all of the townspeople are utterly duped on the day written on the board, to the extent that the man who erected the sign is taken in and believes he saw a dragon. The view of religion presented here differs markedly from yours. Of course there will have been times when God or a deity would have been used as a hastily devised excuse, but when we look at the Crusades and other wars of religion, were they undertaken because the Pope wanted a war or because he firmly believed in the cause he fought for? The Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II, who conquered Constantinople, wrote a famous poem in which he professed he conquered as he did as his Islamic imperative to wage jihad. Barring cynical examples like the Borgias, I believe more often than not that these religious men believed in what they fought for. I also do not believe that, somewhere in the ancient world, a few devious and highly superior minds "created" religion in order to control others. Religion held sway over the hearts of the rulers and the ruled, in almost equal measure, until the first Enlightened monarchs of the 18th century. Rather, I see religion as being rooted in an ignorance to goings on present in all ancient men, in the inherently human wish for answers which, in those more basic times, the rudiments of science possessed even in Greece or Rome couldn't come close to answering. Miracles are a particularly good example; an unexplained phenomenon which creates the sort of mass hysteria that allows religion to flourish (as we see in the aforementioned story), and for which religion offers 'explanations', they naturally serve a key role in justifying most religions, be it Moses parting the Red Sea, Jesus coming back to life, or Buddha repeatedly escaping assassination attempts - perhaps there was an earthquake that displaced water in the Red Sea, some people suffering from psychosis saw a hallucination of Jesus, and Buddha's assassin was highly dyspraxic. Once these miracles are witnessed, the instinctive group hysteria might easily lead the uninformed men of old to believe in some sort of divine bestowing of power, and from here people in need of 'answers' look to this person to satisfy their need; the miracle-makers, convinced of their own powers by group reinforcement, proceed in their prophetic role to give these answers out of belief in themselves and their deity. The last point of the above paragraph is best reinforced by the Prophet Muhammad. Unlike most religious founders, Muhammad attracted followers by being a military genius - an oft forgotten member of the top class of military man, equal in talent to Scipio Africanus, Timur, Napoleon etc - and attributing this to Allah, hence building up his religious authority and, over the course of his life, creating Islam. Why would Muhammad downplay his role in his victories by attributing his success to Allah? Because he truly believed that he was bestowed with a divine mission, and no doubt the hype around him created and reinforced this belief. Islam is unique among religions for taking as its starting miracle the acts of a man rather than natural phenomena, but nevertheless the concept is the same: religion as a form of group hysteria, used to explain certain miraculous events and then extended to the wider world. I am really describing in historical terms the thought process behind the fallacious logic, seen in this thread and still common in the world today, that leads people to go 'Look at the wonders of the world: there must be a God'. Paley's argument was not so much a justification of theism as a sort of articulation of how it arose, I tend to think. In conclusion, religion is not a consciously created social control mechanism with some tyrannical aim, but a human phenomenon originating in group hysteria over some purported miracle and extended to explain all things, which over the centuries became so ingrained in our way of thinking that the world came to be viewed, even in polytheistic Greek and Roman times, in religious terms first and foremost. Once institutionalised, it became the lens through which we all viewed things, such that, as previously mentioned, the Pope called Crusades not to control people and exert political influence, but because of the control Catholicism had over him.

I've recently discovered a French singer by the name of Jacques Brel. More than anything else, what I love is the poetry of his lyrics, which in my mind stand head and shoulders above most. This is my favourite of his songs, with English subs. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=za_6A0XnMyw To those that perhaps don't see why, I love Brel's lyrics here because: they follow a rhyme-scheme but there is no arbitrary rhyming; they are coherent (more than can be said for most), and there are a lot of poetic images and phrases (for example, the pearls of rain being in reality tears). In another song, Brel uses double entendre to allude constantly to prostitution (not the best to post here). People often say to me that they realise lyrics are often a bit pants but 'don't listen to the music for the lyrics'. In these cases, I wonder why they don't just listen to music without lyrics if they're not listening to the words. I just wondered where other people stand on lyrics, whether they make a difference to their enjoyment of a song, and whether I'm the only one who finds most lyrics utterly devoid of meaning.

Banner ads are very, very clever. I've just seen an amazon banner here on Tip.It advertising the books I was looking to buy yesterday morning. I always knew they were like this, but this is the first time I've noticed it.

I feel very lucky to have watched Jess Ennis begin her heptathlon victory on Friday at the hurdling. By far the best of the sports I saw at four hours at the Olympic Stadium - shot put and hammer throw are rather boring to watch in a stadium, and some of the longer races tend to drag on. Other than that, the 400m sprints and hurdles were equally enjoyable. Saw Ohorugu (or however it's spelt), too, in her heat. I completely forgot to post this at the time.

Yet another brilliantly focussed and concise article from Jslayer999; a pertinent observation well put forward in a brief article.

Ah - this is not so in Europe. The further south you go, the cheaper and less formal eating in a restaurant becomes.

I don't see why restaurants being a part of everyday life is a bad thing.

^ Going to a restaurant is formal? That's an interesting cultural difference between the USA and continental Europe.

The best bad fanfiction is on the RSOF. I recall reading one story a few years ago that contained the immortal phrase "They lived in Triangle City; it was shaped like a triangle." Also, I don't see the appeal of My Immortal. It's terrible but not funny, in my opinion.

^ Please do tell me what you think of de Maupassant. For some reason, he and a few other Frenchies (Flaubert, Léon Bloy etc) are on my mental 'to read' list but are always relegated to the bottom in favour of others. Update: still reading Akutagawa, who I would recommend to anyone interest in modernist literature (not in a pretentious Ezra Pound way, either). I've moved on to his autobiographical stories, which included things such as a pathological hatred for those lucky enough to be raised on their mother's milk, rather than that of a cow (the reason being that the adolescent Akutagawa blamed his being fed cow's milk on his oversized head and scrawny body). Very entertaining and psychologically insightful, especially given that he killed himself in his mid thirties.

Rebecca Adlington it was indeed. Thank you. Off to the Olympic Stadium for some athletics event tomorrow, and saw badminton on Monday, which essentially consisted of Chinese players beating Occidental players of Chinese descent (and a few others). One-sided is an understatement.