Crocefisso

Alg, you beat me to it.

The good thing about being from Sicily and living in England - I never come close to burning. :razz:

The same thing happens to me since the update (at least, I never noticed it before). Glad to see it's being fixed.

To whoever pointed out that censoring the name is only going to make people talk about Insight more: you are correct.

The Carnilean quest looks promising. Enjoyed that other quest i did years ago involving their family. Other than that, the rest looks useless.

Everybody loves a 'quote' - or what used to be called the aphorism - whether it's your typical inspirational "You go get 'em" or La Rochefoucauld's cynicism. If this gets popular enough, might it be worth having a 'fishing for likes' type ranking thingy I wonder? I'll start: “Pride is an established conviction of one’s own paramount worth in some particular respect, while vanity is the desire of rousing such a conviction in others, and it is generally accompanied by the secret hope of ultimately coming to the same conviction oneself. Pride works from within; it is the direct appreciation of oneself. Vanity is the desire to arrive at this appreciation indirectly, from without.” -Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) “Preemptive war is like committing suicide for fear of death.” -Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898) “Most people flock to where there is a crowd; they go because they see others going.” “Fame’s trumpet heralds one person’s immortality and announces another’s death – sentenced to hang by envy’s anxious rope.” -Baltasar Gracián (1601-1658) “More and more all that is behind me is what I long for; how I envy the returning waves.” -Ariwara no Narihira (825-880)

Being at home during the day. I always end up watching terrible daytime tv.

Returned to the Shahnameh again, after a few months reading other stuff.

^ Interesting. Might I ask how you conditioned yourself to make this change?

Sorry, but that was a 2/10. Repetitive, with a poor singer singing poor lyrics - doesn't really meet any of my criteria. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKNNdrcYpt8

Just went and did the most horrible thing that could possibly be done: my six-monthly clothes shop. Took just over 35 mins.

I have to say I agree with this. It's all a marketing ploy that detracts from the fact that reading a book should be about the book.

I quite like Hitchens, but I warn you against taking him too seriosly - he's very entertaining, but lacks any real rigour beyond the largely historical angle he takes (if I remember, that is - it's been 5 years since I read the book). I agree with his views, but I really don't think he was a serious man - more of a verbose agitator.

The Divan of Muhammad Edhem (3rd. ed., 1758): (I will be adding to this post slowly over time - do check back, say weekly, if interested) To my family I am son and brother, Amongst my friends I am just another. Which am I? If God can have ninety-nine, Can I not I choose which name is truly mine? * Vainly and in vain, men try to steer Life’s boat, in aid of those lives they hold dear. Men cannot choose if the Nile breaks its banks – All they can do is offer it their thanks. * Even the reddest roses are bedecked in thorns To catch the wine-filled drunks, trampling at dawn. Even the most delicious fish has bones To choke those careless and greedy old crones. * This wine, fragrant as a rose, is for me. In Quttrabul, do the vines grow for me? Are the grapes pressed solely to my tastes By little feet of slaves, working with haste? * Stop me, God, right this instant, where I stand, And guide me back to you with your firm hand. I am tarnished, a rug exposed to the desert sand, Treading this wayward path from your command, Still seeking you, God, in this distant land; A clue, a star – these are all I demand. Ridvan guards the gates to the promise land, But who holds me down before I can stand? I gallop in circles, a horse unmanned: Muhammad begs that he may understand.

Muhammad Edhem (1680-1757) Muhammad Edhem is a creation of mine, a poetic persona I have created for my own amusement. I have created for him an alternate place in history, in order that I can have him inhabit a world altogether similar to ours but free of circumstantial details that might be limiting; I have in my spare time rewritten the history of the Ottoman Empire from the treaty of Karlowitz in 1699, and have thus far got up to 1769. For the purposes of Edhem, this is already twelve years after his death. There are reasons I wanted to create a character in a tradition that has been established- ie, the Islamic world - but in his own timeline, but they are many and too dull to be of interest to most. As far as concerns the long biography of him I have devised for his 77 year life, you need not know much. Muhammed Edhem was born in Jerusalem in 1680, the son of the Turkish trader Imameddin Edhem (1653-1725), who would served as the governor of Palestine from 1693 to 1707, and whose brother Abdurrahman (1651-1727) served as the Grand Vizier to the Ottoman Sultan for a quarter of a century (1701-1726). Muhammad avoided being called to arms to fight the Habsburgs and their allies in the war of 1683-99, though he was eligible in its latter stages, but after an abortive career in the bureaucracy he enrolled in 1701. After a distinguished performance as the head of an artillery regiment in the war with the Safavids (1708-12), Muhammed was promoted to orgeneral in 1713. The only time he saw service was in the Ottoman-Mameluke War (1722-1724), when he led the Ottoman invasion force into Egypt, subduing it within a year and a half. Egypt had been lost when the British threatened war over control of the region in 1702, using their large navy, harbouring an invasion force, to force the Sultan into major concessions; yet in 1712, after having lost vast sums of money, men and resources in abortive attempts to take Cyrenaica, Tripolitania and Tunisia, all of which failed, the weakened British were ejected from Egypt by a popular uprising led by an octogenerian former military officer who promptly proclaimed himself Sultan. It was this small and impoverished state that the Ottomans targeted in their expansionist war. Edhem spent the rest of his life between Cairo and Alexandria, acting as the governor of Egypt until retiring in 1739, finally dying in Alexandria at 77 years of age. In 1735, the occasional poet published a divan of his life's work. A decade on, his innovation within the spiritual and aesthetic restrictions of Islamic poetry was starting to gain attention. A second edition, with a large amount of new material and a preface by Edhem, appared in 1749. By the time of his death in 1757, Edhem was recognised as an important figure in the Ottoman literary canon. A third, definitive divan was published in 1758. It is my aim to slowly upload the poems I write as Edhem over time, starting tomorrow.

I am actually quite irritated that CA couldn't do something new. Rome was good, but basic compared to games like Empire or Napoleon. And they have by no means covered a very large area of military history in their games, and often treat them in a generic sort of way, and as such I can't see why they've taken to rehashing older games.

If you're going to go for the whole modernist vibe, and I think this is a solid effort, then you need to find a way to maintain the coherence of the poem. In the first poem, the only thing I would say that would not involve infringing upon your creativity is that it needs punctuation - this goes for all three. Other little changes to the first poem might be things like changing 'troubling mind' to 'troubled mind', or changing 'reaching hand', either by making it plural or adding an article. I think the second poem is massively hindered by the random and highly artificial rhyme scheme. I think you should rewrite the poem to express whatever you're trying to express (I'm not quite sure) without a rhyme scheme and, again, with better use of punctuation. Really, this sort of brevity only works well if it is punctuated - just read anything by William Carlos Williams (The Red Wheelbarrow being a very good example) - which can of course include changing where stanzas are to create breaks. My criticisms of poem three are much the same, only with the added view that I find the last line incredibly weak. Perhaps it's because I know Horace quite well (used to read him in Latin quite often), but his style of poetry is not suited to pithy little statements and the use of 'carpe diem' generally is incredibly clichéd. I think using your own words would make your poem richer and, likely, more expressive. Ultimately, I do not want to discourage you from writing poetry and, though I may be completely wrong in everything I've just said, my goal was merely to provide some useful, constructive help in the way I used to on RSOF to aspiring poets. :)

I've just written no fewer than 7 Tip.It Times articles in one sitting (actually, one is still in progress). It would be funny if I then went on to miss a deadline at some point in the next many months.

Very good point about the use of the word 'tax' by the American right. It's always used in an emotionally charged rather than a sensible way, and the greatest crime of all is that they get away with it on Fox etc.

Our care sucks so bad that wealthy foreigners in socialized healthcare nations come over here for treatment. While most of the American populace would kill to come over to Europe or Canda for socialised healthcare. American good healthcare is great, but for most of the country it's far worse than other rich countries (hence the lower life expectancy by a few years - the fat people myth is irrelevant now that Europe is as fat as the US and yet Europeans seem somehow to be living longer).

Can't believe Italy lost. :(

Reading Il Gattopardo by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa. Poignant, very well written, and a wonderfully flawed protagonist.

All I can say is that you're very lucky.

Are there any Slavoj Zizek fans on this forum? If so, then look at this. http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2012/jun/10/slavoj-zizek-humanity-ok-people-boring