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Jimmy Edney. I saw your sign on the link above and just wanted to say how I feel. I lived in your fine country last year and returned to the UK determined to dispel the stereotype most Brits have of Americans, that they're all blissfully ignorant and actively stupid. Among many of my friends, at least, I felt like I was getting somewhere.

That sign makes me feel ashamed on your behalf, even if you don't know why and probably resent my pity. I'm not telling how to vote. I'm sure once you peel away the blatant lies and big oil corruption McCain is basically a fine American. We could use a lot more of his type and a lot less of you.

I shudder to think how overburdened your mail box has become since this first appeared on-line, so I won't expect a reply, but if you do find the time I'd be only too happy to argue in your corner if by some miracle you manage to convince me there is any justification, first amendment or otherwise, for your blatantly racist ignorance. It's called tolerance for the views of others - it happens a lot in those funny to pronounce places across the Atlantic - you know - those countries you can't point to on a map, where they know what real democracy is? Check it out sometime. Cunt face.

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Why is American bacon..

..thin, fatty and streaky? While British bacon is..

..thick, meaty and om nom nom?

American bacon is definitely tasty, but there's a lot of added salt - almost like there's a different kind of processing at the butchers, than there is with a Brit rasher, which tends to be thicker cut and with an ear of round meat at the end of the fattier length.

When I first realised this, I just assumed I'd been looking at the wrong section in the Safeway, but then I realised that, along with Thick Pork Sausages, US supermarkets just don't "do" breakfast meats like we do here - and I can't think why.

You guys would LOVE real bacon with fried egg and brown sauce - but there's no HP or Daddy's on the menu stateside. I'm sure black pudding and tinned plum tomatoes would go down just as well too! Maybe I should open one of those specialist stores on eBay?

I've no doubt those days are gone forever. ITV recently announced a series of job cuts, in an attempt to salvage what's left of the network which once threatened to rival the BBC for quality regional news and current affairs.

The man in the clip is called Neville Wanless, by the way. He once read out my birthday card. He also used to do the continuity announcing on Tyne Tees television, the regional ITV company in my part of the UK. Just hearing his voice again reminds me of plonking myself down in front of the box on no-school days, watching Knight Rider, The Fall Guy, The A Team and then flicking over to the BBC for Doctor Who, Ask the Family and Jim'll Fix It.

I'm also reminded that "Uncle Neville" wasn't exactly what you'd call smooth. You'd know it was his time to appear on your screen when the closing titles of the program you were watching, were interrupted with a CLUNK as he dropped his own microphone into the audio stream, overriding the national feed, only to just as clumsily cross fade himself into vision on what was obviously an antiquated potentiometer, that would noticeably squeak. Hmm, maybe some things are better through rose tinted glasses after-all?

Do you have links to regional television from a bygone era in your part of the world? Please share them in the comments

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When I joined the pro-life cause 14 years ago, I thought it was simple.  Being Pro-life meant that I valued life, and opposed elective abortion.  Since that time the issue has been clouded on many fronts.

Now I have found that some within the Pro-life community oppose organ donation because they believe the idea of brain death to be a "hoax".  What I've found shared around the internet is a lot of misinformation on organ donation and brain death and I wanted to take this opportunity to correct it.  You see, with organ donation one persons death, though tragic, can save the lives of others.  And I believe that it's pro-life to see several lives continue instead of end.

Brain death is not a hoax.  It isn't something that doctors guess at.

Declaring someone brain dead involves no subjective or arbitrary judgments. Brain death is a clinical, measurable condition whose formal definition emerged after the President's Commission for the Study of Ethical Issues in Medicine embraced brain death in 1981, when Ronald Reagan was president.

The electroencephalogram (EEG) of someone who is brain dead shows no electrical activity, and an injection of mild radioactive isotopes into the brain reveals the absolute absence of blood flow. People who are brain dead also have no gag response. Their pupils do not respond to light and they do not blink when a swab is run across their eyeballs. They do not respond to pain, and in the absence of signals from the brain, their lungs have stopped working—only the ventilator keeps them "breathing."

Source

A DNR/DNI order is not obtained to make it easier to kill people and take their organs.  Even in the population I work with I encourage people to remain a "full code" unless they are certain about their feelings on the subject.  A DNR/DNI means Do Not Resuscitate/Do Not Intubate.  Perhaps people have an issue with this because they are unaware of how traumatic it is to the body to be resuscitated or intubated.  It's not pretty.  For someone who is very old or very injured resuscitation and intubation will often do nothing more than buy a little time, and it's often not worth it.  And I don't say that to be cold at all.  I say that because if someone is going to die, it is a far more peaceful death if their ribs aren't broken and their body not battered by what had to be done to bring them back from their last death.  And truly, that's when one uses a DRN/DNI.  At death.  When they stop breathing and their heart stops beating.  Having a DNR/DNI does not hasten death.

The idea that a beating heart is equal to life may make things very easy and black and white for some.  But it ignores reality and can sometimes serve to thwart the very principle it seeks to serve.  Babies and their mother's dying is not pro-life.  Having the accident victim and the person hoping for a new heart die is not pro-life.  Certainly medical ethics must be observed.  But, speaking as a medical professional (even though I don't work in this particular area), we are not in the business of ending lives.  And if someone somewhere was not totally ethical, that should not reflect on the process of organ donation as a whole.

I am an organ donor.  I would hope that if I were to die unexpectedly, that my death would have meaning in the lives I might save.  And I'm a donor because I know that if my child needed a heart, lung or kidney, cornea, etc.  I'd pray that someone would donate to them.

Whether or not you wish to be a donor, please educate yourself.  It's worth it.

The thing which turns me off the most about banking and finance in general, is the elephant in the room making itself all too known in the last few months. Non of the money in our system actually exists. To understand this - and with apologies to readers who already do - I've never heard a better explination than the one given here by the author of 'The Creature from Jekyll Island' G. Edward Griffin.

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The truth is, of course, that Sarah Palin doesn't really have a world-view. The reason she can't or won't name one particular publication is that the bloggers and columnists in the candidate's RSS feed are more likely people she would prefer to protect from the immediate media glare which would descend upon their every word, which every real journalist in the world lining up after the next, chicken scratching for a headline like the one above, would rummage among the archive of material they might have written, which the vice-presidential nominee might have read and regurgitated in a speech of her own.

What kind of blogs and agenda journalism might Sarah Palin be most keen for people not to know she reads, one wonders? Given that in an earlier part of the Couric interview, she refers to her best friend's homosexuality as a lifestyle choice, I would imagine it unlikely that her reticence to name any one magazine is born of a fear that people might learn of her closet libertarian attitudes.

We'll wait and see who this "best friend" actually is and whether or not her "decision" to be born gay is something she regrets.

Interessante leggere quante castronerie dobbiamo accettare per poter usare una copia di Windows Vista. Sarebbe interessante leggere la licenza di Mac OS X (giusto per par-condicio), qualcuno che lo fa per me? (Dopo l'esame di fisica, la voglia di leggere qualsiasi cosa di impegnativo è pressoché 0! :F)

Mine arrived in the post today. Here's a review.

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