News Alert...The Tide just scored again...But seriously. I was shocked when this match up came about. First of all, I like ND, but they really didn't play anyone all year. They played a good schedule, but not a killer schedule. Just more proof that college footbal needs a playoff system. I would have much rather had Oregon in the game, but it is what it is. Oh...what was that...Alabama just scored again..

sauromatian wrote:Okay all gun issues aside, is this going to start happening everyday?
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/ ... 0H20130110

It already was, we just didn't have the media saturation back in the day we had now. There were serial killers, kids disappearing, and brutal murders long before rock and roll, heavy metal, violent video games, Dungeons and Dragons, or arguments over gun ownership.

When I was a kid in the 70s, someone brought a rifle to the local high school and shot the principal and a few others (killed the principal). I don't remember any copycats or anything but do remember hightened security at the local high school until the end of the school year (the shooting happened in May, I believe).

The famous "I don't like Mondays" case happened in the 70s.  There were several other school shootings in the 60s, 70s and 80s (and probably before, I'm just not aware of them).

An entire school in Bath, Michigan was blown up by some nut in the 1920s....didn't even need a gun to kill lots of kids and others.  Imagine the field day the media would have if something like this happened today.  How many of you had ever heard of this? At the time and afterwords it was downplayed or ignored by the media, and survivors rarely did interviews until the last decade or so.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_School_disaster

Oddly enough, any study of violence in America will show that violent crime has decreased drastically in the last 20 years, and is nowhere near the sky-high figures of the 60s and 70s.

Mike B.

Badmike wrote:Oddly enough, any study of violence in America will show that violent crime has decreased drastically in the last 20 years, and is nowhere near the sky-high figures of the 60s and 70s.
Mike B.

War amongst nations has also declined considerably:

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2 ... _again_war

Even our tolerance for collateral damage in wars has also declined considerably.  Not that there isn't a lot of collateral damage, but we still don't like the idea of civilians dying, especially women and children.

As Mike correctly pointed out, today's media is a major factor, and I believe has changed perceptions and probably reality.  

red_bus wrote:Went to see Les Miserables yesterday... not a dry eye in the cinema and a spontaneous round of applause at the end !!  :D  8O

I really hate to admit this, but I saw a Les Miserable preview last night, and I started crying.     The movie I saw was Lincoln.  I liked it, and my wife hated it.  I didn't see that coming.  

I haven't seen both. Here is the review from the Guardian's chief film correspondent who compares the two - and he reckons the film is amazing.  

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2013/jan ... tom-hooper

...I was a bit cynical in advance going in (was not my 1st choice). We watched it in the Chelsea Cinema, and I went in making jokes about watching a film which features a proletarian uprising while sitting amongst the bourgeoisie, but it was completely gripping. And you would have to have a heart of flint not to tear up during half the scenes.  < weeping emoticon >

Hi,

maybe I'm being hard-hearted here, but why would you want to go to watch a film that you know is going to make you sad?

Cheers,
KAL

he's not the only one!

Keith the Thief wrote:

ashmire13 wrote:Thanks KtT

I've got the ipad and the PDFs of my collection look fantastic on the iBooks app, with them being easy to read and no problem with pictures or spacing etc

I was just curious of they might work on kindle as a conversion via calibre or some other tool to convert to epub or mobi

I found it to be very hit or miss (converting to mobi).
Even relatively normal material (e.g., our family genealogy book) doesn't convert very consistently.
It's readable, of course, but there will be w eird t ypos like   this that drive me bonkers, and that's just text conversion.

I've just run the DMG PHB and T1-4 through calibre into Mobi and they look ok so far, the text is faint, but that may just be the PDF scan that I've used, but I'll try and see what I can do with that. They're great in iBooks, so this was just an experiment really, just to see if they'll work on a kindle.

Been hyper-busy and quiet lately. Off to Baku tomorrow. Home of last year's Eurovision extravaganza!!!