I never had much time for Tolkien. Not only was Lord of the rings boring in the extreme the guy was totally arrogant. He claimed he wrote the books because England needed a mythology. Two problems in this respect, one being that England already has some pretty good mythology. I can't believe for exaple that he'd never heard of King Arthur. The second problem being that if he thought he was creating a new mythology for England why did he rip so much of it off from other countries myths?

So his reasons for his "great" work were specious and his story telling dull. Getting bogged down in pointless detail may appeal to geeks, but it isn't great story telling. The guy was totally overrated and did not deserve a Nobel prize.

How much? Not at all apart from the hair, both cranial and facial.

Looks like yet another case of somebody making money from the fact that they know a simple thing that most people don't. In the internet age with information so easilly accessible you would think this sort of thing wouldn't happen, but it's probably more common than ever.

Yes they do the proms every year, but Doctor Who has only been their twice. 2008 and 2010.

The linked videos only show 60 minutes, but there is a 90 minute version too. The actual performance was even longer. There was also a similar concert entitled Doctor Who: A Celebration in 2006 at Cardiff Millenium Centre.

Given that these concerts seem to happen every other year we can only hope there will be another this year. However I think it more likely that they will hold off another year to coincide with the 50th anniversary.

In other words the richer you are the more children you can have. There's fair for you.

It's funny how many people have told me that the plot twists in the last two series were predictable and yet nobody predicted them in advance. That's what predictable means, you're supposed to do it in advance.

Funnilly enough I thought the Christmas special was the lamest Moffat authored Who to date. Almost RTD in places, but maybe not that bad.

Erm check the date on this link

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/12/giant_pliers/

The thing about pigs and mud is particularly silly. Pigs kept in the open without access to mud tend to get sunburn. Without mud a pig with access to cover will stay undercover and thus avoid sunburn. As Darwin would have pointed out pigs have evolved to enjoy rolling in mud because it's a survival trait. So the study managed to find that pigs love mud without bothering to wonder why.

The people who carried out the pig study would probably say people love sex because they enjoy the sensation and leave it at that.

How would that work anyway? When I was at school the lecturers would have noticed if the wrong turned up to take a test. Lecturers do tend to recognize their own students. And if the lecturers aren't in attendance surely the students would be required to produce photo ID?

Yes the kid's a jerk and so are the people who hired him, but the big question here is why is the system so easy to abuse? The people in charge of the tests need to take a fair share of the blame and be punished too.

Of course this was when war was was considered by politicians to be a continuation of diplomacy by other means. And anyhow, why should you let a little thing like a war get in the way of making a profit?

@James don't forget that in 1981 Iraq were on our side. Just like the US were supplying the Taliban with arms when Russia occupied Afganistan. Allegiances change.

The parents of obese kids are almost always to blame. There are two brothers in my son's school who are very overweight. The youngest at 5 is already the fattest kid in his class, although probably not obese. The oldest at 8 is frankly huge and gets out of breath walking from the car to the school door - well it is uphill. The thing is that their mother does something that no other parent in the school does. As soon as her kids walk out of the door at 3:30 she hands them fatty snacks.

I know there are mothers who continually feed their kids because they think they are being kind and that overweight kids look healthy, but that is delusional and needs to be dealt with. If such parents were harming their kids health in almost any other way they would be in serious trouble. Imagine a mother handing her kids cigarettes or alcohol at the school gates - she would be prosecuted. Parents who over feed their kids are guilty of child abuse.

No Adam it's not genius. The fact that there is no bench does not in any way encourage people to run, it just encourages people to find somewhere else to sit. Furthermore a missing bench seat would not encourage anybody to buy a specific brand. If you believe that simply removing a bench seat and sticking a Nike logo on the remains will encourage people to get fit and to do so in Nike gear then you'll believe anything that advertisers tell you.

You work in advertising? That confirms what I always thought about people who work in advertising then.

A student that considers five dress shirts and five pairs of dress pants to be essential? Wow! I don't own that many sets and I'm an office worker.

Has it also occurred to him that the expense of all those memberships probably adds up to more than the cost of a room?

Wow, but that's been knocking around for a long time. Yeah Tennant was good, but nowhere near as good as Troughton or Tom Baker. Tennant didn't carry enough of the character traits which should be common to every doctor. I am a huge fan of Tennant's other work so being fair to him I suspect that it was RTD's control rather than Tennant's acting that was at fault. RTDs obsession with soap opera plots and over emotional acting did the show no favours at all. It's interesting that to most Whovians the stand out stories of each RTD series are the ones written by Moffat.

Although after Ecclestone anybody would have appeared good.

Don't know about the rest of the world but here in the UK KFC have achieved a really impressive feat. A blend of 11 herbs and spices which tastes of nothing more than cardboard coating chicken pieces that taste of nothing at all.

How do they do that? Have they hit on a blend of herbs and spices that cancel out each other's flavours and indeed the flavour of the chicken?

It's said of many exotic meats that they taste just like chicken. So how have KFC managed to find chicken that doesn't taste like chicken?