- isn't it astounding

.. what a master stroke of genius

.. Osama has managed to set himself on a path to controlling the US

.. by the simple trick of changing one letter in his name !

- .. not that it will make any difference to us wife-beaters cause more harm and kill many more people any George Bush

- I see it's Cheltenham Science Festival... I see one scientist lectured about the science of vibrators

- During night 12 stars come up one by one ... that's why night has 12 hours.

- Theres not enough quinine in modern tonic to have any effect.

- My BB shares were worth 400p 2 months ago, now they are worth 60p, thankyou BB executives.

- surely their debts can't be so bad they might have a few bad loans so have to reposess the properties , but they only lose 10-20% on them and they must have heaps of assets. So the BB shares seem good, I would bet that they will rebound same way Corus did. However I wouldn't risk much, but I think some people could make good money.
- It seems that cos they are a small bank they made a number of unwise decisions .. they made a deal with GM capital that they would take on so many GM mortgages each year. They can't back out of this deal and it appears that GM might not have been as cautious at checking risk of the loans as BB is with it's own customers so BB maybe saddled with more bad debts than it expected. But surely if it wrote the contract in such a way that BB is responsible or bad debts and not GM then someone is negligent ?

- 23/7/2008 update So to increase liquidity there's a rights issue, except it just emerged that one of the underwriting banks has bought short (bet on the future share price going down) .. this is the equivalent of the horse trainer betting on another horse in a race and not the one he is training. This very betting pushes the price down.

• mosts animals can sythesise their own Vitamin C humans and other apes cannot. ( ABC science )
• Eat more than 3g per day and you'll damage your kidneys
• The night has 12 hours cos early astromers would see 12 different stars appear as it progressed
• Michael Crichton believes in paranormal so that really dents his credibility in science
• Theres not enough quinine in modern tonic to have any effect
• Greater Kuala Lumpur, also known as Klang Valley, is an urban agglomeration of 7.2 million people. gov minister said
• 100s of years ago some astronomers found that their observations and calculations contradicted their holy books assertions that the Sun orbits the Earth
• It's quite a surprise that France has 75 regional languages. That's actual languages not dialects. I suppose the UK has 6 non foreign languages besides English 1. Welsh 2. Irish Gaelic 3. Scots Gaelic 4. Manx 5. Romany 6. Cornish. My grandmother could speak some Irish Gaelic I can't.
• common cold after 5 days your antibodies are ontop of the virus so you are no longer contagious
• Paul Dukes - key spy could have stopped Bolshevik revolution if the govt had acted

- Look - it maybe fashionable to hug everybody you meet these days, but don't try it with me. I don't like it, I don't even like to shake hands. We should respect people & their personal space.

- To my cultural values it's very clear :
- 1. when you don't know someone you stay out of their personal space.
- 2. Even when you are introduced to someone you don't have to touch them to acknowledge them : Thais point their pressed palms, Japanese bow, I just nod my head and make eye contact.
- 3. You can break into someones space in an emergency or when you know them very well, like you can touch your own child or stop someone falling, but other people you shouldn't touch them without their permission and even then it should be restricted to the extremities like elbow or shoulder.
- 4. With your boyfriend / girlfriend you can touch as you wish and touching frequently and intimately is important, but in public be restricted to hands, face and waist.

- The idea if personal space is becoming devalued in the way that the word friend has become on Facebook profiles, to mean someone you met once for 1 minute. People behave like they have a right to touch me just cos they are introducing themselves.

- from pc432t Saturday I found it disturbing that at 2 points we were asked to hug the person next to us .. er fine .. but I'd rather not that's your culture not mine. It may be fashionable, but I don't like it.

- I believe you should hug your boyfriend / girlfriend / partner that's natural. A beautiful woman yes I want to touch, I'm sure the closeness causes the pheremones to interact so it is undeniably sexual. So to me touching and hugging are sexual, how can they not be ?

-I don't want to hug some ugly smelly person, do you ? Some might say they are not prejudiced that they would hug anyone .. would they ? well then what's the point as it ceases to be special then.

- I don't feel comfortable to touch somebody I am not sexually involved with

- Sleazy - It's noticeable that those people who want to hug people are the fat motherly women or gay blokes, presumably the slim and beautiful women get enough hugs from boyfriends. Sometimes foreign women say "well other British men hug me", yes I know these guys, I know how they think .. being sex starved they don't get to touch a woman so they jump at the chance to press their genitals against some foreign woman...yuk it's so sleazy.

- I'm with Michael Jackson on shaking hands.
- I don't even want to shakes someones hand. Take that thing at the CS party when people walked around the room as they entered shaking every man's and woman's hand. Look it pisses me off at different levels
- 1. People have no right to enter my personal space and start touching me.
- 2. It reminds me of those fake salemens training seminars where they teach you the science of "anchoring" with people ... shake their hand pat them on the back then you are supposed to have achieved some kind of relationship with them. F- off ! .. form some kind of relationship by saying something important, teaching or amusing me .. not with cheap bloody tricks .. it just like a cheap chat-up line .. you do it to everyone so it doesn't mean anything.
- 3. Look I'm not Michael Jackson, but have just washed your hands ? no you haven't three seconds ago you shook hands with a girl who had just sneezed on her hand .. thanks tomorrow I'll have a cold. Jackson is right it's unhygienic.
- 4. .. it's time wasted .. it's better to have a proper conversation with 5 people .. than to "touch" 40. (not that I can remember the names of the 5 people I talk to anyway.)

- Again I say "don't touch me" .. just something interesting to me.
- Your own personal culture might be different, but for me touching and hugging is an absolutely great experience .. but should be reserved for lovers otherwise it's not special.