Comments on: Easter weekend open thread

By: El Cid

El Cid — Sun, 16 Apr 2006 15:08:30 +0000

Jai,
I think Syed has only himself to blame for the negative publicity. He is not a people person. He is a natural born fibber, bully and self promoter. He’s also a bit repetitive with his spiel. “I really believe that this is the petrol can of the future” PA-LEEZ.
If you open up a dictionary you’ll see a picture of Syed right next to the entry “wanker”.
That said, I really like his determination, self-confidence and drive, and the fact he’s selfmade (so he says). He’s a good salesman and will never be poor. I could even work with him. But he’s not necessarily good for the long-term, as the loser rightly said — he’s too much a scolded earth general.
He definitely deserves to have got thus far. But Ansell and that Brummie bird are way superior to date. So too is the chubby white guy, although his star faded slightly in the last episode. That’s MHO anyway.
That aside, I’m disappointed you bring up race. Old Dong is also Asian and he’s criticised for more or less the opposite of Syed — i.e. he’s political and unassertive. I find it an unwelcome distraction to great TV. If I’m honest, your comments made me want to see Syed fired next time rather than given a chance to prove his worth in a more controlled environment, as Duncan suggested.
But I’m now over my initial irritation and will reserve judgement until the next installment. I’m just glad they repeat it coz it coincides with CLeague footy, which is ridiculous.

By: Jai

Jai — Sun, 16 Apr 2006 13:56:43 +0000

On a totally different note…..

Has everyone been watching the current series of “The Apprentice” ?

What do you think about the excessive negative focus on Syed ?

I do think he needs to exercise a little more mental self-discipline, but I also think that there is an element of overreaction to him both on the show itself (Alan Sugar’s behaviour towards him and also the way some of the other white candidates react to him) and also on the after-show “studio debate”. programme. Exactly the same thing happened to Saira Khan last year.

Coincidence, or a dubious (and depressingly familiar) response to strong, assertive, highly-focused Asians ?

Either way, it was good to see Duncan Bannatyne from “Dragons’ Den” sticking up for Syed this week on the studio debate show, and contradicting the other guest panelist’s foul-mouthed OTT views on him (along with simultaneously shooting down this week’s loser’s refusal to acknowledge that she screwed up and that Syed is actually a better candidate than her).

What do you all think ?

By: leon

leon — Sun, 16 Apr 2006 02:00:49 +0000

Wow, what a trip I can here Big Ben strike 3 from my flat! Anyway, how is everyone?

By: Bonnie Prince Vickie

Bonnie Prince Vickie — Sat, 15 Apr 2006 18:36:26 +0000

Happie 40… gramps.

By: El Cid

El Cid — Sat, 15 Apr 2006 17:53:47 +0000

have a good easter the both of you too

By: El Cid

El Cid — Sat, 15 Apr 2006 17:52:38 +0000

but is economic growth required for social justice and improved welfare in the mass population?

I would say a resounding yes. From neocons to Karl Marx, economic progress and social progress is seen going hand in hand. I don’t think it’s euro-centric reasoning either. Still, there is a third, green-inspired third way. I would call it naive in the broad scheme of things, but at a micro level I’m sure it has some merit. As for seeking home-grown solutions for things such as energy needs; I also see merit in that.
Autarky, though, is bunkum.

By: Sunny

Sunny — Sat, 15 Apr 2006 17:51:56 +0000

not the swinging type, if thatâ€™s what you mean!!
damn! you let me down mate….

have a good 40th anyway! I’m out for a long bout of poker tonight… let’s see if I can recover my hosting costs for this website!

By: Justforfun

Justforfun — Sat, 15 Apr 2006 17:26:29 +0000

El Cid -”but when i read but India can probably survive as a self contained market for some time
I kinda wonder what you mean by â€œsurviveâ€
surely bettering the lot of the Indian people is what matters. I understand 135 million Indians live on a dollar a day (I canâ€™t source this figure properly right now. Itâ€™s what I recall someone telling me). Is that what you mean”

Yoo say it better than me – “survive” really should read “progress forward” and I suppose I can only say that I used ‘survive’ sub-consciously because I have got just so used to thinking of the poor of India just “surviving” and like I say I feel a bit like a rabbit caught in the headlights. The sub-continent’s population explosion is just so difficult for me to get my head around.

when you asked ” … I say so-called because the question I want to posit is whether it is in fact a myth.
The idea I would like to explore is whether the strong growth weâ€™re seeing at the moment is merely the plucking of low-hanging fruit; that bureacratic inertia, rampant corruption, grotesque inequality, and a poor basic education system will ultimately kill the golden goose. ”

I presume by “Golden Goose” you mean social justice for the masses within India and that it should occur at the same time as economic growth – but is economic growth required for social justice and improved welfare in the mass population? Anyway I don’t know but removing ” bureacratic inertia, rampant corruption, grotesque inequality, and a poor basic education system” would definatly be a good start.

However I posted the link to the Thorium cycle only to illustrate that in certain areas India is actively considering its long term energy requirements and is trying to provide homegrown solutions rather than be a hostage to world events.

Anyway – have a good easter

Justforfun

By: El Cid

El Cid — Sat, 15 Apr 2006 17:18:47 +0000

a polish restaurant on the saturday for a vodka fuelled 40th bash, followed by an evening of horse racing at windsor on the monday, and an early morning trip to spain to watch a certain sporting event that cannot be mentioned according to the rules of this thread

By: El Cid

El Cid — Sat, 15 Apr 2006 17:15:52 +0000

not the swinging type, if that’s what you mean!!

By: Sunny

Sunny — Sat, 15 Apr 2006 16:34:59 +0000

I went through the validator last night, and it gave me plenty of stuff I could fix, but I probably won’t know as I’m going to overhaul the code anyway.

Aahh yes, the javascript console! completely forgot about that… thanks!

By: Sunny

Sunny — Sat, 15 Apr 2006 16:24:15 +0000

hehe! thanks Fe’reeha… bring back some sanity into this place.

By: Average White English Person

Average White English Person — Sat, 15 Apr 2006 16:23:35 +0000

Sunny,

Making your theme XHTML compliant is easy enough. Pointing your site at the W3C Validator will offer a lot of clues and most of the problems are simple to fix. The best bet is to keep the doc type as XHTML 1. If you change it to HTML 4.01 you’ll just have a new set of errors.

As for the scripting, if you have the JavaScript Console for Firefox it will also show you the errors (they are mainly in the blogads code which I guess is out of your hands).

Just shout if you need a hand.

By: Fe'reeha

Fe'reeha — Sat, 15 Apr 2006 16:02:16 +0000

Is it ok if I give some easter egg chocolate to my 5 months old little bunny, I mean baby boy?
See light hearted comment!!!!

By: Sunny

Sunny — Sat, 15 Apr 2006 15:58:48 +0000

Oh yeah, what sort of partying El Cid

AWEP – HEh, yeah I know about the bad HTML… I can’t always be asked to write strict XHTML, and will get rid of that wordpress claim.

My problem was more with a javascript error. Then I found that a recent plugin I installed to preview comments was conflicting with another small piece of javascript embedded. But both seem to be running fine so I’ve kept them…

But I’m planning an overall re-design so its not in my priority list right now TBH… thanks for the offer though!

By: El Cid

El Cid — Sat, 15 Apr 2006 15:46:54 +0000

Masochist! (I must say I emailed myself some material from work, thinking I might shape it into an article at some point. Hope I’m not caught out).
I’m saving myself for massive week of partying next week.

By: Average White English Person

Average White English Person — Sat, 15 Apr 2006 15:46:12 +0000

Sunny,

You have a ton of errors in your code. Many are simple (your line breaks, for example, are HTML 4.01 and the page is doc typed as XHTML 1.0. Email me a zip file of your theme and I’ll straighten it out for you.

By: Sunny

Sunny — Sat, 15 Apr 2006 15:34:39 +0000

Errr…. not as far as I’m aware. But saying that, I was planning to stay at home and do some more work

By: El Cid

El Cid — Sat, 15 Apr 2006 14:51:18 +0000

any suggestions on where i could go with my kids tomorrow? anything interesting happening in your neck of the smoke?

By: Sunny

Sunny — Sat, 15 Apr 2006 14:41:38 +0000

I know about the marathon, I’ve had about ten companies send me press releases so far trying to make news out of their employees running the marathon