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Ken Livingstone has crossed the line, he is now defending the Met police over their execution of Charles de Menzies. Beyond the circumstances showing gross incompetence on the Police's part. Beyond the circumstances of killing a suicide bomber (who is perfectly capable of carrying a deadman's switch). It goes to the character of our police force. Not only did they try to cover up their mistake, they then tried to imply he was wearing a bulky jacket in summer, when he was wearing a light denim jacket. Finally at court, they tried to destroy his character in court to cover their asses. Sir Ian Blair aided and helped arrange this coverup, he needs to resign for criminal incompetence.

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I was reading in the Daily Mail this morning that a young woman died as a result of refusing blood transfusions post birth due to her Jehovah's Witness beliefs. Initially i was thinking what I would have done if i'd been the attending doctor. If the woman had been conscious, i'd have probably tried to get a court order to get her declared clinically insane (or trying to commit suicide). Once she'd lapsed into unconsciousness, i would have tried to arrest the family for acting against their charge's interests. However now i'm wondering how i'd feel, if someone tried give me a procedure i didn't ethically agree with, even if it was to my own benefit. Blood transfusions are a very moral consequence free treatment, since the person who gives the blood is not harmed, and it has huge benefits, wearas organ transplants can have serious or even fatal consequences for the donors. I suppose the closest example for me would be a treatment developed by either higher primate or human experimentation. I believe we have no place experimenting on higher primates (or possibly lower primates) for our own selfish benefit. That said its a bit of an ethical dilemma for me whether use of such knowledge garnered from such in-human activities is justifiable. I think i would probably claim a form of moral superiority, because my example is actually a relevant ethical question, while the Jehovah's Witness's prohibition is based on a questionable interpretation of the bible that was written thousands of years before the possibility of blood transfusions existed. It is an act of extreme selfishness to ask doctors to stand by and do nothing while someone is dying. For the time of medicine, doctors have wrestled with "Do Not Resuscitate", and most have found this to be fair, because there are certain situations where more medical intervention is just prolonged suffering. However this was not like this, it was a young woman dying because a procedure could save her life was refused on very questionable grounds. It is barbaric to force medical staff to do nothing because of a belief, if you don't want medical help, then stay away from a hospital, because doctor's have to go through too much to have to put up with people committing senseless suicide in front of them.

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I think its time for a paranoid, racist, sexist, homophobic nutjob with all the intellectual capacity of a small concussed bee to be replaced by a man who might actually shake up the dead political landscape of this country. Stephen Colbert, even in his Colbért state would make a better president that the one at the moment. But either way if Barack Obama doesn't get the Democratic Nomination, i think its time to say goodnight to the Democratic party. Admittedly as an undesirable alien, i don't get to vote (yet), however i can see how the intelligent educated masses of America (all you out there stop hiding) are fed up with the Democrats, and would rather declare affiliation with Ron Paul (someone less qualified to be President than Bush...) than vote for a Republican. So i think a joke candidate with some integrity would actually have a chance of taking a significant portion of the vote, even if he almost certainly wouldn't win, maybe it'll be enough to put a decent stake in the heart of the democratic party.

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So far project 1 (fairly obvious) was successful, this one is a practice for project 3, codenamed "Bloomin obvious"

Anyway more details are on the way.

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I'm definitely going to remember this idea in future.

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I found this through The O-Reilly blog I was having a huge headache with the django shell, or maybe that was the flu (4 days and counting, whoever took my immune system i want it back....) but either way Apple has released a fix that makes it work again (and its now been updated, Yippeeee! The problem was no tab-completion in the ipython shell for django, and that is a terrible headache for anyone used to this wonderful feature. The fix involves a couple of lines added to your ~/.ipython/ipy_usr_conf.py file. Add these 2 lines to the end of the main method (its not totally clear on the site with the fix i'm sad to say). import readline readline.parse_and_bind ("bind ^I rl_complete") (If you don't know how to do this, you shouldn't really be editing these files) Any problems, leave a comment...(but please direct credit to the discoverer of the fix)

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Had a slight problem with the backend database, back and operational now...

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I just got round to watching the the Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, It was bittersweet, odd, fun, sad, beautiful, and worth watching for all the wackiness and awkwardness at times. I know its difficult to do something so odd, but well done that it feels like art. Movies started out as pieces of art like music, paintings, books and poetry, but now they seem to be just about money, simple plots and special effects. This is not an epic movie, and i'm sure i can come up with a few films that were more enjoyable, but this felt like a movie that someone loved making. It was totally unbelievable, like a dream, but it was one that is worth trying to remeber. I don't want to see another Steve Zissou, but i want to see films filled with more passion than sense.

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Codename "Bleeding Obvious"

Hopefully it'll be work-out-able once its complete, but still observational skills are somewhat lacking in some

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