nvn1

Perhaps I should embark on a start-up that sells strengthened chambers capable of withstanding explosives to replace traditional seating that the attendants lock you in before take-off.

EDIT: Or redesign the seating layout to turn the cabin into some kind of panopticon where all passengers can watch out for any suspicious behaviour. They can have a voting system which detains a passenger if the number of concerned fellow passengers passes a threshold...

'Listening to her Dutch friends, she assumed that Americans were fat, loutish, naive and sexually repressed. “But then I came here and found it was all false,” she smiles.'

So very true. The same would apply to British attitudes towards the US. Spending a short time travelling around the US cleared away all my misconceptions, thankfully.

As a side note, I suspect that attitudes might be equally uninformed the other way around, that is about Europe from the US. Europe is incredibly diverse yet I often read opinions from the US treating the continent as a whole.

Neither can I.

EDIT: Doh! I wasn't clicking on myself first. Never underestimate the stupidity of users.

Not sure how accurate it is but I enjoyed Thirteen Days: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0146309/

Fog of War also features the subject and is excellent: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0317910/

EDIT: Falcon and the Snowman is also great and it's kind of related so it's worth a mention: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087231/

It's more of a 'link-bait-and-switch' title.

' while the more educated ones come up with elaborate rationalizations' - one or all of which might be correct?

Seriously, it ain't that bad! But I wouldn't complain about an update if you feel so inclined :)

Thanks, that's a great appraisal of the two and sums up most of what I've read so far nicely.

I thought it was a recent fork of the project - I stand corrected. Kohana certainly does look good. I'm just getting to grips with CI now. Authentication has been a matter of bolting on a 3rd party library. Would you recommend a switch to Kohana? I'm mostly concerned by the long-term support and development for each of them.

EDIT: Just realised that I'm asking you to sum up a lot to recommend one over the other. I'm currently looking at both in detail, cheers.

That's based on Codeigniter, right? How do the two compare?

Coming from having done a Bioinformatics PhD and Post-Doc, I reckon getting in touch speculatively with people in Bioinformatics should work. You might get a lot of knock-backs but there's definitely a need for people with IT skills and a genuine interest in Biology. I'd also say that a strong grounding in statistics would be the biggest selling point - probably greater than a knowledge of biology. Good luck, I hope it works out for you.

Wow, the economist link just gave me a 503 error with a 'Guru Meditation' message. Not something I would have expected from that site. It actually made me chuckle.

Error 503 Service Unavailable

Service Unavailable Guru Meditation:

XID: 1498369715

At the risk of getting downmodded because people disagree with me, it's hackneyed dull crap. Hey, my opinion's as valid as yours, right?

Is there an equivalent library for PHP? It might save me a lot of time.

The Bladerunner soundtrack has worked wonders for focusing my mind since about the age of 15. Gastr del Sol's Camoufleur LP also performed admirably during my arduous PhD write-up.

Thanks. I also found this whilst hunting around, which I found utterly fascinating: http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2002/sep/22/featuresre...

Thanks, I'll check these out.

Could you elaborate about the 'business revelations'? I'm really intrigued.

Perhaps the causes or whatever drives people to be religious or criminal are not the same? Perhaps removing criminals from British society was enough to 'reform' a lot of them.The puritans chose to go to the US, I believe.

If we had sent all the criminals to the US and all the puritans to Australia then perhaps the results would have been switched.

I wouldn't be happy if, say, objections to an unpopular scientific theory were simply expressed by scientists down-voting and burying it. Unless the idea's completely insane or facetious, I'd want them to respond to it with a measured discussion for many reasons, one of them being that ground-breaking ideas don't always meet with widespread acceptance as soon as they're introduced. I know from personal experience that I've slowly changed my mind after hearing someone argue against my opinion, no matter how much I wanted them to shut up and accept my views!