Jamie123

Sounds horri...oh wait a minute. I'm a fan of Rush. (Though after 6 hours I daresay even Rush would become a tiresome topic!) I really need to write something about the Fountain of Lamneth - what I think it's about (or at least what it means to me). It's haunted my thoughts since I first heard it at age 15.

Looking at the footage again it's hard to be sure exactly what is going on because there are things piled up on the counter in the way. When I first saw it I thought she must have put the pot down while she was saying "I rebuke you in the name of Jesus Christ" - especially because some reports said she had her hands up when they shot her. (You can't hold a pot of water and at the same time hold your hands up.) So maybe she was still holding the pot when they shot her, and maybe they did think that she might throw it at them. Several things stand out though: The police told her to go and deal with the boiling pot. They had already suspected she was unstable when they asked about her mental health. If they thought she was unstable and was likely to do something violent, why did they let her anywhere near boiling water? They could easily have dealt with the boiling pot themselves. She was on one side of the counter and Greyson was on the other. He had plenty of space behind him to retreat into. He didn't because retreat would have made him look weak. He preferred to be the tough no-nonsense guy, barking orders and pointing guns. (And oh yeah - he looks really tough barking orders and pointing guns at a middle-aged lady, doesn't he?) Barking orders and pointing guns at a (possibly) unstable woman was not going to deescalate the situation was it? Even if she had no intention of throwing the water, what was more likely to make her panic and do so than that? Greyson was himself creating (or at least worsening) the danger he perceived himself to be in. I'm not a cop. I live in a country where cops are very rarely armed, because criminals are also very rarely armed. So I'm not an expert. But in my layman's opinion, lethal force should be used as a last resort, not a first response. Certainly not to avoid retreating from a perceived threat that was unlikely to be lethal anyway. Grayson knew the dangers of being a police officer. He knew that he was likely to face unstable people, and he knew he had a duty of care towards them. He had responsibilities beyond protecting himself from a potential scalding by nasty-splashy-hurty-boily-hot water. (Which he could almost certainly have escaped anyway, had he not been so eager to play Mr. Tough Cop.) What he did might have been (somewhat) excusable from an inexperienced civilian, but not from a trained law enforcer. "Grossly-over-charged-for-political-reasons" nothing. First degree murder is exactly the right charge. I hope the jury and the subsequent appeal judges will see it that way too.

Time for a victory dance! Don't you just hate it when drivers of "fast cars" overtake all the other "slow cars" who are waiting in a traffic queue and cut in and out weaving their way past everyone as if they were ambulances or fire trucks on their way to an emergency. All because they're special "fast car" people who don't have to wait their turn like us ordinary plebs. Even most BMW drivers aren't this bad! I'd suggest the following additional punishments: 1. Being thrown in the "gunk tank". And make it especially nasty gunk that's impossible to get out of your hair! 2. Having to wear a sign on his back saying "kick me" for the next six months (on pain of being thrown in the gunk tank again every time he's caught not wearing it). 3. Having to change his name officially to "Crap Bag" for the next six months. (Yes...yes...I got that from Friends.) And if he's caught signing himself anything other than Crap Bag, it's the gunk tank again! Anyone care to add more?

He had some dignity did Bill Watterson. There is the infamous bumper sticker in which Calvin appears to be urinating with an evil grin on his face, but that is an unauthorised rip-off of a drawing by Watterson where Calvin is filling water balloons - from a tap! So aside from the compilation books (I have several and love them all) you won't find a single piece of genuine C&H merchandise anywhere!

License suspended for not paying child support? That sounds bonkers. How does not paying child support make him not safe to drive? I know I know - it's like parent grounding their child for not doing his chores. It's a way of making life difficult and unpleasant for him until he pays up. But all the same... to us it seems weird.

https://www.illinoistimes.com/news-opinion/union-for-sheriffs-deputies-wants-grayson-reinstated-18845161 I get that a trades union has a duty first and foremost to its members. (We saw recently a case where this was forgotten - where the National Federation of Subpostmasters threw its own members under the bus and stood foursquare behind the employers.) I also get that any person is innocent until proven guilty, and until a jury rules otherwise Sean Grayson is technically innocent. However the whole thing is on camera. He shot dead an unarmed mother of two (I don't care that she was black - that's irrelevant) in her own home, cowering behind a kitchen counter, with her hands up, on the pretext that she could have picked up a nearby pot of boiling water and thrown it at him. And even if she had, it would have given him nothing worse than treatable burns. He, on the other hand, deprived her of every remaining hour of her life. Just imagine the life she might have had in all her remaining years - being there for her children and grandchildren - growing old with her family around her. All that was taken away in an instant because one public official "felt threatened" - and not even by anything fatal - just something that would have given him temporary hurties. Not only that, but the police initially tried to cover it up by blaming the shooting on "intruders". If Greyson was so convinced he was in the right, why didn't he tell the truth in the first place instead of trying to lie his way out of it? And does the Fraternal Order of Police give one word of condolance to the family? Not a bit of it. They think the worst tragedy is that Grayson has lost a few days' wages, and wants him reinstated and reimbursed - along with all his "benefits" and "appropriate relief". I hope that "greivance" goes straight in the bin.

Calvin and Hobbes started appearing in the Daily Express when I was in my early 20s. I had bought the Mail for years but I changed to the Express mainly because of Calvin. The first storyline I can remember was the "duplicator". And yes I went through the same confusion everyone does about whether Hobbes is magic, or whether he is only in Calvin's imagination. I understand Waterston himself refused ever to answer that question.

Named after the philosopher or the stuffed tiger?

Ellie the Wombat's birthday party

A common theory is that 666 is an encrypted reference to the Roman emperor Nero. And we know what yer man Tacitus said about his persecution of the Christians: The name "Nero Caesar", transliterated into Hebrew is something like "Nron Qsrn" which when interpreted as a number (so I've read at least - I know nothing of Hebrew numerology) comes to 666. It was a way of refering to the emperor without arousing suspicion. *I have somewhere a Penguin Classics edition of Tacitus' Annals, which has a footnote here saying the original Latin "odio humani generis" could equally be read as "because the human race detested them". Doesn't that make you think of Matthew 10:22 - "All men will hate you because of me"?

Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking are each supposed to have had an IQ around 160, which places them at the bottom of the "genius" category. Richard Feynmann is reported to be at 124, which according to the charts makes him merely "bright". Marilyn vos Savant (supposedly the most intelligent person ever) has an IQ of 214. But did she discover the theory of relativity or quantum electrodynamics? No, I don't think she did. (Though the Monty Hall episode is well worth reading up on!) I refuse to have my IQ tested. If I am stupid then I'd rather not know about it. I don't want my confidence (what there is of it) destroyed any further. I'd rather just try to be as clever as I can and leave it at that!

I finally got an email from my good friend. (I'm so happy, I'm not even going to give her a hard time for worrying me! 😅) She's doing fine, so I guess God was looking out for her!

I read Roald Dahl's "The Twits" to my daughter when she was still in the womb! It was a wonderful magical time.

I have never heard anyone suggest otherwise. It's a long time since I read about this, but I don't think so. A quick and lazy Googling of "book of Abraham papyrus" doesn't seem to reveal either of the others.

I believe the originals (or at least some of them) were not in fact destroyed, but were rediscovered in a museum in New York some time in the 1960s. They were returned to the Church, and were studied by LDS scholars including Hugh Nibley. I read a book about it some years ago, by an ex-LDS called Charles Larson. I found it quite interesting, but I was not totally convinced. For example, Larson claims that the Egyptian characters written alongside the translation "prove" that Smith was making it up. I wondered at the time whether perhaps those characters were added later, perhaps by some well-meaning but hopelessly misguided person, trying to "pretty up" the documents. Recovered original: Joseph Smith's facsimile: PS: That second image, the facsimile, was shown to me by the missionaries the first time they visited. They didn't seem to know much about it though: when I asked them where it came from, one of them told me it might have come from a museum - which is sort-of true. Smith bought the original papyri from a guy called Michael Chandler, who was a travelling antiquities dealer. He also ran a kind of "travelling museum" using whatever he happened to have in stock at the time.

Brings back memories for me too!

It usually takes a week or two. You'll probably notice that when the little kitten gets lippy (as kids are wont to do!) the older cat will nip the back of his neck to try to put him in his place. The operative word being "try". Kittens - like most kids - don't always take notice of their elders!

I've just dug a bit deeper. It seems that Mary Goodnight did appear in the original Bond novels by Ian Fleming, including The Man With The Golden Gun, but she was not a major character. (She was a secretary and a friend of Miss Moneypenny.) So my cynical suspicions still hold!

Which in turn reminds me of this piece of very politically incorrect humour from a few years ago: Warwick Davis gets away with it because he's a dwarf. There's a girl who works in my local optician's who has dwarfism. Whenever I go in there and see her, "the tune" starts up in my head (you know the tune I mean) and I have to fight the urge to hum it. I told my wife this once, and she said words to the effect that I'm "a very bad person". What??? Like I can help what tunes the little DJ in my head chooses to play! I think I'm a very good person for not humming along! Though if I ever did I'd probably be looking for a new optician! Edit: I've just watched it again and Warwick Davis says "dwarves" and not "dwarfs".

I don't know what this is all about but it sounds very interesting. "Isn't it true that you said blah blah blah?" "Yes, it is." "So what have you got to say about it?" "Nothing." "Oh...erm...well, isn't it also true that you said blum blum blum?" Etc, till he runs out of time.

Haha...I remember those ads! The Indian fella at my local store was totally confused by the "Not for Girls" on the Yorkie label. He could not understand when I told him it was "a joke" and kept asking me why it was funny. That was twenty years ago. Ten years ago it would have been condemned by feminists. Today feminists are out, and it's the trans rights people you need to be careful of. Where will we go next?

Could We Build 'Star Trek's' Starship Enterprise? | Space It obviously wouldn't be an actual starship (in the sense of a ship that it could travel to other stars) but it could go to the Moon, and other planets in the Solar System. Only an idiot would build it though; if you wanted an actual spaceship to travel other planets, there would be way more efficient ways of doing it than building a Star Trek replica. But it's interesting that it could be done.

I know what you meant Traveler - I'm joking. There is nothing more "stereotypically soccer" than a big argument about offside. Kids boo-hooing because the other side was allegedly "offside" and the ref allowed the goal, and the harassed ref telling them to "stop crying and get on with the game". Or the men getting frustrated trying to explain to women the meaning of "offside", and the women resolutely not understanding.

It's "soccer" - from "association football". What???? And take away hours of enjoyable arguing about what was or wasn't "offside" - and whether or not the ref was an idiot???

Think about what the Church used to sell! Pardons and plenary indulgences! That was how St. Peter's Basilica was paid for! (Though Luther didn't approve.) I read somewhere that if you "steal" a Gideons Bible from a hotel room, the Gideons Society don't mind at all. They just replace it for free and thank God that someone new has a Bible!