caroljane

Pretty good - but Byron was better, even my wife Mary on a good night! -Percy

Thank you Tony. It tears me up to see the torment of these people so coolly detachedly assessed, as if our theories and political analyses were more important than their lives.

It is not the gassing, that is just a pr point. Assad has been doing this for months, for years to opponents before war broke out. I cannot see is as "Side to support", it is simply about stopping carnage, stopping it somehow. Inevitably I am influenced by being Canadian, our military have been UN" peacekeepers" for 50 years and have become as good at it as they have been allowed to be. Just put out the damn fire. the lily-livered Russia-cowed UN should already be in there.

aCon describes himself as a classical liberal and believes he was born in the wrong age. He is a proponent of Great Man Theory and a Napoleon admirer. I have a certain sympathy for him. I read a great scifi story years ago, wish I could remember the author. It is a deathbed scene of a French colonel, on Corsica, reliving frustratedly the disasters of 1757 in India, when his stupid generals would not listen to his tactics, and the defeat in Canada in 1763, ditto. His loving ineffectual wife, stern mother and hapless brothers (afraid of the future without him) try to comfort him. But of course they cannot, it is Napoleon, born too soon.

You sure write a lot about things you don't care about.

This happened in Canada decades ago, it was not the state but the private employer who put the employee pension fund into his company's asset column and in effect confiscated it. Conrad Black, he went to prison later although not for this. The "bozos in the warehouse", to his mind, deserved nothing but derision and despoliation.

Bashar "no more Mr Nice Guy" Assad has become a Hitler analog, willing to murder every non-Alawite Syrian until he conquers or dies. No après le deluge. The Islamists are his Communists and the West would be grateful to him for eliminating them - the rest are various quarrelling Muslim sects - not our business - not in our interest - just endless future corpses of individual children and women and men, collateral damage of history.

Jesus was probably married anyway. It would have been so unusual for a man of his age in his culture to be unmarried that surely it would have been noticed and mentioned as a mark of his uniqueness.

Well, it must have been hell on Mary and the matchmakers to find a nice Jewish girl who would put up with his lifestyle.

I'm really looking forward to this, Ellen. Glad you are so organized. If I had such a doc it would probably be stuffed in an old envelope "Toronto Hydro final notice" or "NHL All-Star Calendar 1983|".

They are not fat anymore Baal, get with the programme! Opera was the last musical artform I learned to like. At first I only responded to symphonic music or concerti. Then oratorio, then opera. Even now I do not thrill to sheer voice except in pre-modern pieces.

"The rich become richer and the poor become poorer; and the vessel of the state is driven between the Scylla and Charybdis of anarchy and despotism." -PB Shelley 1821

Maybe you have some professional knowledge to support my anecdotal impressions. You do divorce mediation?

The time frame is indicative. Every divorced person I know has said that five years was the point where they wanted out. Some held on longer, tried counselling etc., but by five or six years they knew they were hopelessly incompatible. No abuse or adultery involved. By contrast most luckily married people, including me, were even happier with their partner at that point than when first married.

There is no implication of moral high ground at all. She asked for a divorce, not him, implying that she is tired of him - that does not make her moral or him immoral. As I said, maybe he is equally tired of her. I thought divorces were less contentious these days, you don't have to prove yourself an injured party or the ex a monster.

Of course not! Divorce is not about moral high ground usually is it?

Oh, come on. She is the one who filed. For all we know he is as fed up with her as she is with him.

Guys, I know Zimmerman has come to symbolize your deeply held values, but nobody has pretended that in himself he is any kind of hero. I am certainly willing to believe that even if he had never killed anybody, he was not a satisfactory husband for the woman he married.

Yes, it is. I suppose it could be proved whether or not she was in the house at that time. Anyway the divorce doesn't shed any new light on the Martin case. And didn't George also lie in an effort to conceal his defence money from the court ? I agree that he was probablylegally advised not to attend her hearing; she probably agreed with his absence. Divorce is all he said she said anyway. Mikee, I don't see any big bucks here. Maybe she will write a tell-all though.

Guardian article. It said she had left the house after a fight with him, the day before the shooting.

????? Where does she blame the media attention? She said they were having problems before the arrest.

That is kind of thrilling. She knew about worship and awe, for sure. Touched by some god, and forever seeking to know its nature.

Please elucidate, Dennis, For those of us stranded on Earth,what does the helium shortage mean?

What about the helium though? Is this not a real problem ?

It is possible I suppose, that if Churchill had delivered his immortal wartime speeches in a guttural shriek, like Hitler's, that the Allies might still have won the war.But how fine that that did not need to be so.,