Tannhauser

Not to mention his pottery-baking uncle, Val Kilner; his GP brother, Val Kildare; his other brother on Death Row, Vile Killmore; and - at a stretch - his norwegian mythological sister Val Kyriemer.

Some interesting comments on the pros and cons of 'one world government.' Overall, I don't believe globalisation is a force for good, at least in its current form, and moves towards eroding national sovereignty is massively problematic. But I disagree with Penguin on the Bilderberg thing. I think they are reported on, they're up-front about their purposes, and aren't particularly shadowy.

No, what the Google search shows is that your initial claim about 'this is the first time it's been reported on in mainstream media' is 100% wrong. Here's another report from 2001:http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2001/mar/10/extract1( It's worth a read as it's a candid interview with Lord Healey). So now you're backpedalling to say that it's only been reported on 'a handful of times.' But that's not right either. Take a look at http://www.bilderberg.org/1998.htm. This seems to be a kind ofpro-conspiracy site and it helpfully lists the extensive discussion the group gets in national newspapers. Plenty of articles in the first page I clicked on - 1998. Your last line is a logical nonsense. Everyone outside of a lunatic asylum accepts as true some things they are told. If this wasn't the case then we would be entirely limited to our own direct experience. I wouldn't believe in Costa Rica because I've never been there, and can only rely on the testimony of others that claim they have (and their faked photographs). You accept certain things you are told just as much as anyone, otherwise you wouldn't believe The Bilderberg Group existed. You just trust different sources.

But they're not meeting secretly, are they? Here's their not-so-secret website: http://www.bilderbergmeetings.org/index.php Except when it was reported before: 2004 BBC report on Bilderberg group, 5th highest result on Google search for 'Bilderberg group.'

Very good.

Not read that - I don't really read sci-fi any more but I could give it a go. I read Do Androids dream...?, The Man Who Japed, The World Jones Made, Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said and another one I can't remember.

Interesting. I've had a go at his stuff several times over the years and I just cannot get on with him. I enjoyed 'Blade Runner' much more than 'Do androids dream...?' I quite liked that one of his that was filmed in Rotoscope that had Keanu 'The Plank' Reeves. I think it was 'A Scanner Darkly.'

Some great suggestions on here. Agreed. Pitch perfect performances from everyone and Christopher Lloyd (??) looks as mad as toast. I watched John Wayne in 'The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance' and 'True Grit' recently and was blown away -just forgotten how good he can be. I like Hitchcock but some of them are looking a bit creaky, imo. Oh yes. Love 'Unforgiven', and 'The Beguiled' as well. For me, it's probably 'Singin' in the Rain' or 'Amelie.' Boundlessly charming and optimistic.

Is that a reference to Michael or me? Or both? Just curious, as I am an angry murderer with a high-powered rifle

Aw shucks. Thanks for the comments. I sold the supra a year ago, so I've kind of lost interest in the car-related threads. I still pop in every so often.

Scores 900 out of 10 on the punometer. God-like punning.

Like a confused bingo caller. Or put his head in the juicer? Or cut his hair off and put it in the juicer? We need to know.

Agree , Agree Disagree. For most people, total snake oil, hyped up by the health industry. Look at the big American cancer study into multivits abandoned because even moderate doses were increasing rates of cancer.

I have to say I'm not hugely confident about my view. I used the example of olympic weightlifters, but what about professional cyclists? There you've got training that is totally opposite. It involves really low loads (because they can do thousands of "reps"), but huge amounts of time under tension. Yet they have ginormous thighs too. Getting a bit off the original discussion, but interesting.

Scott, As far as I'm aware, the usual thinking from sports scientists goes like this: motor units are recruited in size order. For lower weights, you only recruit the smaller slow-twitch units. When you up the weight, the bigger fast-twitch units are recruited. These are really only needed for near maximal efforts. So the question is, can you ever get to the big units by using a relatively light weight and exhausting all the little motor units first? I presume this is the thinking behind time-under-tension, which says that the size of the load doesn't matter - you just need to keep the muscle under tension (load) until its exhausted. Or do you need to use heavy weights? It's a bit of a debate. My own view is that you don't need significant amounts of time under tension to build muscle. For example, olympic lifters try to reduce the time under tension to the absolute minimum - it's all explosive lifts at very low reps. Yet over the years they build absolutely colossal thighs. And they don't train to exhaustion, either. Specifically for building muscle, putting the muscle under tension during the eccentric (lowering) part of the movement can create more microfibril damage, which promotes hypertrohy, but it doesn't do much for strength. In my opinion, in your scenario, Guy 1 will have arms like a marathon runner and Guy 2 will have increased in size and strength. Only a genetic freak is going to get to 50kg DB curls, though. And he would have done better on 5 X 5.

Matt, Muscles are organised into bundles of fibres, each of which has a neuron to activate it. They're referred to as motor units. Motor units do operate on an all-or-nothing basis. They either contract if they get a signal beyond the necessary threshold - or they don't. They are very much like light bulbs. So an attempt to move a weight (a stress) will either 'recruit' a motor unit or it won't. Having said this, muscles are made up of large numbers of motor units, and the units are different sizes with different thresholds. You only recruit as many motor untis as are needed to cope with the resistance (relative to how many units are available, due to current levels of fatigue). So yes, motor units are all-or-nothing, but whole muscles aren't.

The English couple were intending to throw the same deckchair, but the German passenger got there first and already had his towel on it. Etc, etc.

Mrs. T recently sliced the top of her finger off when using a mandolin - again, not the instrument kind. A momentary failure in finger/potato differentiation. It was hugely messy.

I can't see how you can be sure of that intention to kill seeing as, like the rest of us, you weren't there. We only have a sketchy idea of the precise situation the soldiers were facing. You may turn out to be right, but it's only speculation and guess work, nothing more. And Sadam wasn't executed on the spot.

A bit of scepticism is a healthy thing. However, the default position for some seems to be to distrust absolutely everything from a government or a mainstream media source, leaving them adrift in an ocean of Cartesian doubt. Somewhere between blind acceptance and paranoiac distrust lies the truth. For what it's worth, only last month, bin Laden was trapped under the seat cushions on my sofa. I think he had been attracted by the fluff and pen lids. He was definitely alive then, because we had to get the council.

It saddens me when I see grown-ups who broadcast their opinions as if they are indisputible facts, without any attempt at forming a reasoned argument. As an atheist, it annoys me when fellow atheists imagine that they have some sort of monopoly on logic, ignoring every theist argument from Iraneaus to Keith Ward. Stay off my side. And it infuriates me when someone reduces the breadth of religious experience and motivation down to 'comfort for the weak.' I mean, where do you start with that one? I say grow a pair of cerebral hemispheres. There are countries that ban religion. Invariably, it's replaced with some secular ideology that performs the same functions, but not as well.

I think you might be confusing 'The Earth' and 'Narnia.'

Where did your moral-ethical system that makes you into a lovely person came from? Did you invent it yourself? Is it genetic? Or could it be related to 1700 years of western belief (since Constantine adopted Christianity and thus disseminated it through Europe) in the Beardy Bloke? The secular humanism that many of us learned from our parents is pretty new on the scene - a generation or two at the most - and has its roots in what went before.

Fantastic.

Careful, not everyone on the site 'gets' satire. (http://www.theonion.com/video/proposed-classified-bill-will-defend-against-flesh,14175/)