If the next doctor was a woman, would you embrace it? Who should play the female doctor?

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Of course, in a way there's already been a female Doctor: DoctorDonna.

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The "go to Hell if you don't know Jesus" people I've met have indeed all been evangelical types. It's a Catholic country, and they grew up as Catholics, but gravitated towards evangelical churches over time.

Surprisingly, very few of the Catholics I know appear to believe in much of anything. It's like a gym membership, something they feel they should have but don't like using too often.

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I'm in Europe too, also in a Catholic country, and I've known several evangelical Christians who believe anyone who doesn't accept Jesus will go to Hell. This includes good people and people from other religions. They don't gloat about it or anything, and I have the impression they're genuinely saddened by the idea. This fuels their missionary zeal in "spreading the word", believing they're saving good people from the fires of Hell.

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Mmm... a young black bear... better keep an eye out for this guy then. (NSFW ads behind the link)

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Anyone using Ubuntu has absolutely no excuse to use Hotmail.

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Le Carre is excellent if you're after the authentic spy experience, clever people manoeuvring around a giant chess board of their own making. If you're looking for a more action-packed idealised spy world, you would probably be better off with Ian Flemming and Robert Ludlum.

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A spammer and ambulance chaser and debt collector... can this guy sink any lower?

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Ooh, I would give a testicle to see Paul Riekert play live. Unfortunately, the testicle-based economy isn't very practical.

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I always imagine rainy weather, heavy traffic, following distance not what it should be, and suddenly a billboard sporting a child with anime eyes looms next to the road. Just the second it takes to scan the billboard and register that it's a public service warning would be enough for the driver in front of you to slam on the brakes.

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I remember someone being interviewed about this on radio a while ago (WNYC's Radiolab, possibly?), saying that driving involves an internal narrative. The driver is actually thinking, "I need to prepare to make a turn ahead, I'm going to move into the left lane now, checking for traffic behind me, gripping the wheel to make the change, and changing." This internal conversation (which we don't consciously think about) gets mangled by regular conversations.

Having a conversation with a passenger is distracting as well, but the nature of a cellphone conversation (and the concentration required to keep it going) means the effect is amplified. You lose the thread of your driving narrative, and it takes a second or two to get it going again.

Yeah, [citation needed], I know.

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I know. I didn't mean that ad in particular, but road safety billboards in general. Simply the idea of putting something mentally engaging next to a highway where drivers will be distracted for a second or two sounds contradictory to road safety to me.

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Are there any statistics on accidents caused by people reading increasingly elaborate road safety billboards? I've seen road safety adverts posted on Belgian highways that require several seconds to read the text, identify the various visual elements, and finally grok the (often punny) safety message.

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Battery 9 - Protskrog

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Ravi Shankar - Portrait of Genius

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Tom Lehrer - An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer

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You're right, they have as much religious mumbo-jumbo as any proper religion.

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Any last-minute change to a project that starts with, "Google does it, so I know it can be done".

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Can - Tago Mago

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The inclusion of Freemasons makes sense in the context of historical Belgian power structures. In a country where the Catholic church traditionally held extreme political and social power (often represented by Christian and conservative political parties), the Freemasons were the secular counter-weight (often represented by socialist and liberal parties). As a counter to the great (and very Catholic) Belgian universities, masons also founded the Université Libre de Bruxelles. And among the hundreds of churches and cathedrals littering Brussels, don't be surprised to find masonic symbols carefully integrated into the landscape.

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A monkey for the pig and tomatoes, but hold the cucumbers.

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9,000 members? Biggest cult ever! Is there a spaceship waiting to rescue us before the earth is recycled?

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Or one twenty-fifth of a pony, roughly equal to a nicker.

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Once again I'm assuming, but I thing barnard33 meant it in the sense of being speechless. The "people without God cannot be good or moral" argument is one a lot of religious people like to throw around, and those of us who hear it a lot usually react by being speechless or doing a facepalm.

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TROPHY CASE

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