Supergrunch

Klamath appears not to allow the dropping of pronouns. This pleases me.

Which part of Cambridge are you living in? It's a hilariously quiet place anyway - it's a large town that pretends to be a city.

It always amazes me that people would want to be immortal - live for longer, sure, but immortality would be awful, for the boredom if nothing else. I'd definitely like to die eventually.

So I ended up going into hospital for a day or so because I had meningitisy symptoms which turned out to be a bad case of glandular fever. Thankfully, they accepted my pleas to be discharged, but I'm still too knocked out to do much work, and need to be getting on with my dissertation... Maybe I can apply for an extension...

Oh yeah, it totally is, although it would of course be slightly harder for another language as the mouth has been animated for the Japanese lines. But I wasn't disagreeing with you. What I do always wonder though is why people bother to make dubs fit mouth movements at all. It's not like it won't look dubbed, and it just makes the translation worse as it has to conform more to the original language.

Fun fact with respect to lip-syncing: the Japanese voice acting is traditionally recorded after the animation has been made.

I'm not sure I can comment on this debate in much detail, as I know enough Japanese to understand what's being said most of the time. And I prefer subs in other foreign films too, but then that's because I like to hear the original language even if I don't know it. For people that just want to experience the entertainment the show has to offer in the easiest way possible, I think there's more of an argument for dubs, but my main problem with them is the bad voice acting and translation when compared to the subs. This isn't always the case - Miyazaki films and things like Hellsing have good translations and voice acting. (As for the Japanese voice acting being equally bad, as I understand it's more the case that it's cheesy and unrealistic rather than actually bad. So more like the kind of dialogue you'd see in Toy Story or something - it's not the sort of thing real people would necessarily say, but it's performed well nonetheless. But then I haven't heard the opinion of all that many native speakers.) I'm not sure I agree with this, unless it's for name honourifics (which still wouldn't be appropriate for a general audience release) or things like food that don't have an English name (although this isn't always a problem - c.f. Phoenix Wright, with ramen -> hamburgers, which works fine as everything is so well Americanised). And if subbers go to far, you end up with atrocities like this:

It was the same for my undergrad. It's kind of a stupid system because it means percentages aren't out of 100, but apparently so many places do it that it's become the standard. And my master's is out of 90, so it's no better.

Mad Men is pretty cool - I've watched the first 3 seasons and enjoyed it. But I find it's all a bit one-note, and am amazed it gets held up next to things like The Wire. Still, it's good, and I also like the Peggy/Don relationship.

Technically it's the class of honours you recieve - first, second or third (or none on some courses), and second class honours is divided into two ("upper second class" or 2:1 and "lower second class" or 2:2). Usually the percentage system is designed so that first = 70%+, 2:1 = 60-69%, 2:2 = 50-59%, third = 40-49%, pass (i.e. no honours) = 30-39%, and fail = less than 30%.

The forum clearly does record the number somewhere, as it tells you how many posts you have in a particular thread if you hover over its icon.

I have mild face-blindness, so am I just being wrong when I think that the eyepatch woman looks like River Song? Anyway, I wasn't so keen on that episode, although it got better towards the end. The tension seemed a bit forced and it was too RTD-esque for my liking. And I don't think reflections worked very well as a plot device.

Many thanks all! Sadly I just have to dissertate on as usual tomorrow, but I'll hopefully have some good food/drink too. The answer to all is labia (just about, anyway).

Can I get whitelisted? I still won't be on much until July, however.

The problem with this is it would lead to loads of people just guessing/choosing at random, making the results pretty inaccurate.

All this "who's poorer?" nonsense aside, the Telegraph has this map of the AV votes by region. So the only places to vote Yes were Cambridge, Camden, Edinburgh Central, Glasgow Kelvin, Hackney, Haringey, Islington, Lambeth, Oxford, and Southwark. Unless people can spot any others.

Exactly, now that's real invisible text. Assuming people are on the right theme.

Have a look at the bottom left corner of the site. Also, you can just use spoiler tags instead of making things white (and the background of the posts on the default theme is actually #F5F5F5 rather than white, which is #FFFFFF - how different these look depend on your monitor and brightness settings etc.).

Off you go then.

Yes. Which could well have been the case in his constituency.

You're right that it's not as good as a proportional system, but I'm fairly convinced it's an improvement over FPTP. Firstly, the idea is that it encourages a lot more people to vote for smaller parties, and secondly, if you don't want your second preference to end up being your vote, you don't have to put a second preference. And as all the votes are pooled into the top two choices, AV makes safe seats much less likely, which brings us closer (but by no means all the way) to proportional representation, or at least makes it easier for smaller parties to get seats. The FPTP system only really works with a two party system, which is why having it has imposed a two party system today. Finally, from a more pragmatic perspective, if the outcome of the referendum is no, then it will likely be used to justify keeping FPTP and blocking out any electoral reform, whether proportional or otherwise. Anyway, I voted a couple of hours ago. Yes for referendum, and the Labour councillor (based on the short manifestos of the four candidates).

One example of a wasted vote is a "safe" constituency. For instance, my constituency has been safe Lib Dem for ages. Now, while the whole coalition/funding cuts mess could change this (in fact, it was a bit different in the last election), let's assume it won't, and there are plenty of other constituencies that will remain safe. In this case, if I vote for any party other than Lib Dem (with the possible exception of Labour), my vote will do nothing. So it's a wasted vote, and even if I like, say, the Green candidate, I'm better off voting Lib Dem to prevent the next major contender (Labour) from winning the seat, assuming I prefer Lib Dem. This isn't just because people are tactically rather than honestly voting - it's because there's such a massive core of genuine Lib Dem support. Now under AV, I'd be able to express Green as my first preference, to both show my support and give help in the (unlikely) chance that's it's useful, and then put down Lib Dem as my second preference for if Green gets eliminated. This is arguably even better in more marginal constituencies - the optimum outcome of tactical voting results, without people have to vote tactically at all.

The picture is actually supposed to reflect political reality, although it's slightly idealised. Coffee represents the right wing, where there are overall fewer supporters, but less of a split vote (UKIP's the only other real right-wing contender apart from Conservative). And beer is the left wing, where there are more supporters but also more parties (e.g. Labour, Lib dems, Green, Socialist Worker's Party, etc.). Most of these voters would rather a left-wing party be in power, but the vote is so split that Conservatives end up winning under FPTP. But this isn't the case under AV, even without people resorting to tactical voting. Of course in reality Labour hold a lot more votes than any other left-wing party, but a system like AV could lead to fairer swings, with other parties like the Lib Dems potentially gaining power.

Will a suspiciously young John Cleese do? He doesn't explain the actual calculation though...