Vapymid

Ah - Helio - you are right about the dust mites having the same purpose, roughly as you. But they have a different function and different responsibilities. Amoebae and bacteria and viruses - the same thing. All work towards the same goal in the end but their roles are very diffferent. You as a much more expensive and complex entity has much greater responsibility and power than the little ones down the pyramid of life, so - you can't compare your importance directly. Regards

Awww... darling... you'll make me melt... or explode or something Thank you... But - I have a very similar reason for my high hopes for humanity, only I see it in you, of course. Regards

Oh, there are 3.5 billion women in the world... Assume just 20% of them are of the age suitable for you - that's 700 million... Do you think there won't be one or two your heart wouldn't melt to? Regards

Oh, sorry - I must have caught your quote before the edit... But, anyway - you are just thinking too much about this. When the time comes - you will let her into your heart and there will be nothing to think about - it will all be done for you by your hormones and instincts... Suddenly, all your self-flagellant doubts will seem to disappear and your whole world will reorient itself... Regards

Not yet... But you will be - and that's not such a bad thing, really Regards

@Jeb - ah, darling, don't worry! It's alright and it's going to be alright here... The troubling thing for me is that the decision to leave was obtained by basically false advertisement and misrepresentation. After the initial drunken euphoria the inevitable hangover will come and there will be a lot of anger on the streets. Those "leaders" who celebrate tonight will be looking for a good place to hide before too long. As for the EU - paradoxically, but this may (and probably will) strengthen and stabilise the organisation. It removes the source of constant discord and tension and also shows to the ruling elite the real danger of populism. They may yet close their ranks and concentrate on making their union work. We'll see... Regards

Hehe... welcome to the club! I'll buy you a beer whenever we meet, man... You will find that - when you meet that special woman in your life - your feelings will outweigh and sweep away any self-servient illusions you may have had of that asexuality were somehow superior to what most of us mere mortals live with... Regards

We are doing just fine. As we become aware of problems, we are solving them mostly satisfactorily - so we have an excellent chance of fulfilling our role and spread the Earth's version of life at least into the nearby part of the galaxy. Then... well... all bets are off when we meet some badass aliens, angry at our trespassing into their territory. Regards

Don't be silly, my dear - dealing with you is a pleasure and a privilege. Nah, your writing is good. Your stories are good - the ideas, the storytelling... You probably need to practice writing in past tense, though. It gives so much more flexibility and lets you avoid having to go into too many descriptive details. But - if some people are better at writing than you, so what? Doesn't mean your writing is bad. And as Rarity said - just keep working. Don't let the little snags stop you. But - I know you won't stop... you are way too stubborn and resilient for that Regards

There is no question that the immigration in Europe was a subject of mishandling by the authorities for decades on end. But it has absolutely nothing to do with Britain either staying or leaving the EU. Muslim immigrants have been coming to England for ages. Most EU migrants are not even Muslims at all. The UK is outside of the Schengen Area and people from outsisde EU have been and will be required to get visas or there will be visa waiver regime. People from the EU must still travel to the UK with passports and are subject to border checks, which will remain exactly the same even if the UK will leave. So - whatever the causes of the cultural segregation between the immigrants and locals in the UK - the membership in the EU has nothing to do with them. Regards

Everything that's been said about the immigration issues so far is complete bollocks. There are drawbacks in the EU membership but the immigration has absolutely nothing to do with it. I first visited London way before there even was Schengen Agreement and in every restaurants the waiters were either Poles or Yugoslavians. I spoke to a few and they all were saying - "British people don't want these jobs" Now - you will never find a local as a strawberry picker on a farm here. All are Poles or Bulgarians or Romanians. So - if they go, who will get the freaking strawberries to the supermarket? The locals are just grumbling that the Poles are willing to work for less - that's why the locals prefer to just sip their beers and watch footy on their council-provided huge TV screens and get the benefits without doing diddley squat to deserve all that. If the immigrants will go - this country will be screwed. And - no, no Aurstalian points based system will help. So, whatever the deciding issues may be - the immigration is not one of them. Regards

I think I still have a disc somewhere... Just need to find it... Regards

Black and White then Regards

Hehe, but they are gun-free because otherwise you will have hundreds of drunk, excited and emotional people with guns pent up in one place. It's a recipe for disaster in the best of times Regards

South America is a special case. The criminality there is institutional and is supported by the US, in particular, and the rest of the "first" world countries' drugs policies. Any "strictness" in any law is fictional there... Better look at Western Europe for an example... Regards

Ah, no... no generalisation - just by way of example. Could have used any ideology as an excuse to justify his own inability to understand the complexity of the world... @Heliocentrical - I don't want to slide into discussion of gun control here as there is a thread for that, but... There is the simple fact that in none of the mass shootings in the history of the US ever did any lawfully arms-bearing citizen manage to prevent or stop the incident or even appear on the scene in time to influence the outcome. So, the idea that universal possession of firearms by the public somehow makes the society safer from such an attack is a delusion. On the other hand - it is also clear that in the developed coutries with strict gun controls the rates of gun crime are an order of magnitude lower than in the US. I am not saying that declaring gun ownership illegal overnight is a solution - if only because it is simply unenforceable, given the amount of firearms in circulation. It is a matter of common sense, though, to make the barriers for lawful possession of offensive weapons as high as to prevent at least 80% of the population from obtaning one. Regards

Ah, okay - that gives me more idea about the context... Still, I think that the actual use of the word is at issue here, rather than the word or its concept itself. If it is used with contempt - then it just becomes a part of an ad hominem attack... I was thinking of its use in a rational argument... Regards

But what about things like popular medicines, economic policies, brands, stocks, financial instruments? Everywhere there may be a subjective element to that, a crowd hysteria effect... And what about "underrated"? - For example, movies like "Starship Troopers", which are universally misunderstood and so "liked" much less than they deserve to be... There need to be words to describe all that... Regards

IMHO "Overrated" means "you like it more than it objectively qualifies for", implying you are wrong in liking it that much and your opinion is skewed by extraneous factors and does not reflect the intrinsic worthiness of the object itself. "I didn't like it" is simply not sufficient for that all... Regards

Hmm... in the place where I live we are not allowed to cut children in half... No matter how badly the little brats behave themselves... Otherwise, sounds like a decent burger Regards

This has very little to do with a particular religion... He might have easily been some right-winger... Like in the attack on a gay pub in London a couple of decade ago... He was a moron above all - any religious or idiological aspect is just incidental. But giving weapons to morons susceptible to extremist propaganda - no matter which kind - is not a good idea. Regards

There aren't many alternatives though, no? Overvalued... Overestimated... that's about it... I'm okay with the use of "cancerous" but only if it really is a fitting analogy. Something that subverts and corrodes something from the inside without it being noticed until too late, kind of thing... Regards

F-35 is a typical military procurement disaster - overspecified and underfunded, they wanted it to be a be all, end all - the last fighter which is ever built. The one that flies faster and higher and hovers like a bumble bee and is not seen by the enemy and can perform any mission from tank busting to stealthy assassination to dogfight to shooting down alien spaceships. And the inevitable result - something that barely flies, barely shoots, barely lands, is late and way over budget. Well, it's not that such things are unique to the US military... Reminds me a lot of the R-38 debacle. The history repeats itself only, hopefully, with fewer casualties... Regards

Comparing yourself to Nazis is premature and unnecessary... None of us is a perfect alrtuist and there is a degree of selfishness in everything we are doing. Be it in seeking approval and recognition for your good deeds or in self-satisafaction and pride or in something else. Sometimes - quite often - people get carried away and then usually something happens that puts them down to earth - the saying "pride comes before a fall" is there for a reason. But sometimes people are capable of checking their pride on their own - by recognising it in themselves, like you did. And when you do recognise your pride - you can fight it. So, the next time you catch yourself thinking of your superiority whlile helping others - just remind yourself how ridiculous such thoughts are and how pathetic a human being who lets himself believe in that would appear to others. Think about the things you yourself cannot do and where you would need to rely on someone else's help. That will quickly humble you down. So - no need to stop your volunteering work. Regards

She may have wanted to aks you to go to bed but didn't want to say it directly, so she turned it into a hint referring to herself... She is your mother - you will always be her little child for her - even when you're 50... Regards