Supergrunch

Single transferable vote.

Sorry, internet joke detector fail on my part then. I'm just sick of the adverse reactions some people have, despite trying to play it down/not mention it.

I know plenty of people at other universities who finish in Juneish, but recently I've seen loads of Facebook statuses about people finishing, so was wondering why. And my course is still 9 months. There's no need to get arsey with me in every thread that I mention universities.

I want Abrams to make a Next Generation relaunch... it'd be so awesome. Does Picard etc. even happen in the new universe or does it remain unclear?

How come people all finish their courses so early? I'll be going until July...

The author is at least as British as he is Japanese, if not more so - he moved to England when he was 6 and has been a citzen for half of his life. And his writing is very culturally English - just look at The Remains of the Day if you need confirmation of this. Anyway, this is a film I'd like to see but haven't got round to, although I was never very keen on the novel. It didn't help that I got majorly spoiled before reading it, but I also found the pathos a bit forced, and the main character somewhat unconvincing.

Post-production 3D will look terrible though, especially for the originals. Which is not to say they won't do it...

There's no holiday special. I shan't be getting this.

I'm for AV after a bit of indecision, as it formally simulates the outcome of tactical voting while eliminating the guesswork, and benefits candidates with more nuanced views. The best thing I've read on this is Timothy Gowers' discussion (there's also a shorter version here). Anybody have any idea what the post is? It doesn't give you multiple votes, because your first (or whatever) candidate has already been ruled out - useless votes just get made useful. Allowing you to put your most favoured candidate first, even if you think they're unlikely to win, as you can then choose more likely candidates for your later choices. Also, that video is somewhat misleading in that the example vote distribution for AV would lead to a hung parliament in FPTP, but a different vote distribution was used for the FPTP example. Ah well, it's clear enough, although it labours away at the AV explanation so much that it adds to the myth of its complexity. Oh, and this is the best poster:

This one's probably as old as the internet, but amazing:

Gah, I hate eye tests. For me the worst thing is the light they shine in your eyes, which I'm literally unable to bear without someone physically holding my eye open, and even then it waters so much I can't see properly for the rest of the test. I never want to wear contacts...

Assuming she's a full sister, then the average shared genetic material would be 50%, but with siblings it can vary massively. Which is not to say the test is bad - there's an extremely high likelihood of some shared DNA, which would make a postive result pretty likely. In one of the news articles I saw, it said that there was a 99.9% chance it was correct, which is way above the 95% "reasonable doubt" margin.

Seems a bit pointless to me. The world is so odd sometimes...

My girlfriend said she'd play co-op with me, and she's never played a video game before. This could be amusing.

Well in that diagram, set names are in red and set members are in blue, so it's just saying that Scotland is a member of Great Britain. Why they made a smaller nameless set containing England and Wales is unclear, but it could be for the reason Moogle gave. I don't see why that defeats the point of the diagram though - they're still two entities that are put in the same set. It is kind of inconsistent though, because they treat the Channel Islands (and the Isle of Man) differently. Edit: Also United Kingdom should be in red.

To get to the nether you make a 2x3 doorway out of obsidian and light it with a flint and steel, creating this: I think the portals still do nothing in multiplayer though, although you can build them. Whoever runs the server can choose for it to be permanently nether or normal world.

Solved with a diagram (not mine, and they all disagree slightly, e.g. this may be more accurate): Anyway, I'm from England.

Yes, I'm aware that authentic food doesn't have all the artificial stuff in it, but even at the authentic places, there's a massive distinction between the English menu and the Chinese menu, with the first being a lot more bland (or at least, less spicy). It's not additives that makes the "proper" Chinese food more flavourful but spices (especially chilli!) and to some extent ingredients. This is why I made a three way distinction between "fake" takeaway stuff (full of additives), authentic stuff (spicy etc.), and what authentic places offer Westerners (food that's devoid of either). You get the same at Thai restaurants, although a lot less so - every time I've asked a Thai person what to eat at one, they always suggest beef in oyster sauce, which is usually the most boring and least Thai-like thing on the menu. I've heard about this distinction between English and Chinese menus from several different people, mostly Westerners who speak Chinese. You're right about the meat though, there's definitely a difference there. Then again, gristle seems a lot more palatable when it's well-flavoured...

The only difference is that you give infractions rather than detentions.

Wow, you've put a lot of effort into that post... Anyway, I have a few recommendations for you, although some of them might be hard to find in your local takeaway, but I there's nothing all that outlandish. In general, there are about three kinds (regions and dim sum etc. aside) of Chinese food you can get in England. The first is that of takeaways, which is pretty much inauthentic and specific to England (and America?), much like Indian takeaways. Which is not to say it's all bad - in particular, hoisin duck pancakes are pretty amazing, and I like loads of the sides like mini spring rolls, and prawn toast (although this can be a bit greasy). Lots of takeaways also have a Szechuan section, which I recommend looking into if you like spicy food - the classic red sauce beef szechuan is pretty good: It tastes far nicer than it looks - have it piled on top of a bowl of really fluffy egg fried rice for best effect. And crispy chilli beef, although note that it's sweet, chewy, and not really meaty enough to be a main: So what of the other two types of food? Well, they both come from the more authentic places, which generally means sit-in restaurants. In particular you get a load of these in Chinatowns, but they're elsewhere too. Now, sadly most of these places are under the misconception that Westerners will only like bland food, so the vast majority of the menu will be rather dull, along the lines of "rice/noodles plus weakly flavoured meat and possible sauce." This is pretty different to the standard takeaway fare, and is generally a lot worse as it's just so flavourless, and the meat is often somewhat gristly. That said, I do like the honey roast pork that lots of these places have on the English menu, although note that it often comes cold: Accessing the much better food that these places have is somewhat tricky then, as it's usually on menus they don't give you. Sometimes you can get hold of an English translation, although you'll have to ask specially e.g. for the home-cooked menu or the Szechuan menu or something. This stuff is generally all great, although can be very spicy. And in some cases the only way you can get hold of the good stuff is by ordering in Chinese, which only really works if you have someone Chinese/Chinese-speaking with you. There is this book however, which is designed for this precise problem. In general I haven't tried a lot of this stuff for obvious reasons, but I want to investigate more. One other area you could look into is dim sum, which is a kind of Chinese lunchtime food consisting of loads of different types of dumplings and similar things, my favourite being char si bao, which are big cloudy buns of pork and win: These can be hell to get hold of in England though. Some Asian supermarkets sell them frozen, and you can steam them, but I've only seen them available fresh in Chinatowns. Loads of places in the London Chinatown have them, although Ikyuusan (a Japanese/Chinese/Korean restaurant on Gerrard street) is the only place that serves them all-day, with most places only doing dim sum at lunch. Anyway, those are my suggestions...

Somewhat interested, although I have limited time and computing power.

I generally found school a bit rubbish. The only time I was properly bullied was early on in my primary school, which had a stupid "no blame" bullying scheme where you make the bully realise that they're being nasty, which somewhat fails to realise that being nasty and knowing it is the point of bullying. But once that died down things were mostly okay - I had a good group of friends, although the school was very odd, and I kept getting in trouble for all sorts of bizarre things that weren't my fault. And the vast amount of compulsory sport was rubbish. Secondary school was worse though - while I no longer got in trouble (despite acting the same as before), the atmosphere was a lot more bitchy to the extent where you could only ever really make acquaintances rather than friends. Which was okay I guess, but a bit dull, and I was never in any groups that did much outside school. Things improved in the last few years (including sixth form) when I got more interested in academia (previously my main interest was computer games), and I had one really awesome maths teacher, who taught us all sorts of stuff that was off the syllabus. Which made me a total geek, of course, and lots of people took the piss, but usually not in an awful way. But yeah, on the whole school was a bit boring, and once I went to university, everything got far more awesome, socially as well as academically.

I got this at the weekend. So addictive - I haven't played a game for 5 hours straight for a long time now. But it only runs on my dad's computer, which I can't use again until the summer, so it'll be a while before I finish. I'm up to