Secular Café Archive

Lol, but it isn't actually nostalgia for me. I didn't ever do Meccano as a kid.

Lego doesn't really appeal to me in the same way. I can see the attraction for those who like it, but I prefer the more engineered feel of Meccano.

Bought myself some vintage Meccano from eBay a couple of months ago. A set 6, if anyone knows what that is, plus some other bits and bobs. I've enjoyed it, so I've just bought a bigger collection that approximates to a set 9. Can't believe how expensive it can be - the ultimate set, no 10, goes for ...

I just finished the novel last week, inspired to read it by having seen the publicity for the TV series.

I enjoyed it for the most part, and I may well pick up the DVD of the series when it comes out.

[quote=""sohy""]Is anyone here interested in taking over the Talkfreethought board? If nobody is willing and qualified, the board will soon be closing. I know many of you are or were once posters there and perhaps a few of you are qualified for the job and have the time to manage...

Is it really just up to Trump at this point when there is no imminent threat? If he watches Fox News and gets himself in to a frenzy could he literally walk down the corridor and order a nuclear strike?

If so, that's frightening. Because I could imagine him doing it.

Ok, Trump is the last person you want in charge of this, but given that it seems likely that North Korea will have a working nuclear weapon reasonably shortly, what should he actually do? He could just accept the situation and do nothing in terms of an attack, which seems to me the most likely actio...

It can help with mortgage repayments - if the mortgage was arranged on say 90% loan to value on purchase then it would now be less than 50% loan to value, and the remortgage would be at a decently lower rate because of that. You can get the benefit of that just by remortgaging without having to move.

Companies that offer quick sales aren't really there for the mass market who are looking to move home in the normal fashion. They are for people who can't afford to wait, for whatever reason. I bought houses from people in difficulty with their finances who were about to be repossessed, people going...

I was a franchisee of a company called 'A Quick Sale' about 8 years ago which operated on exactly this model. I bought about a dozen houses through it before the financial crash happened and the model stopped working. Full market value is a lie. It's about buying houses as cheap as you can get them,...

A close friend of mine is in hospital with shrapnel wounds from this attack. Bastards.

I would imagine that part of the agreement was that the amount remained confidential. It wouldn't surprise me if this was in the millions. They wouldn't want the publicity that a long, drawn out legal saga would bring on them. It isn't about compensating the passenger, it's about preventing future r...

Trump is clearly a conspiracy theory nutjob, so I wonder what he thinks actually happened to JFK. If he believes that the CIA were responsible for his assassination, that might explain why he isn't that keen on them. It is still hard to believe that this man is President. Some day soon I am going to...

Dan Carlin's latest Hardcore History podcast is about nuclear weapons and culminates with an account of the Cuban missile crisis. It's 6 hours long, but worth the time investment. This happened a few years before I was born, so I don't personally recall it. I am interested in what those who were aro...

Given the mess he made of the executive order on immigration, I could imagine Trump ordering the military to act without a lot of regard for whether he had the appropriate authority or not.

Even if Trump had been a massively competent businessman, that still isn't preparation or qualification for being the President. The two jobs are not that comparable. The responsibility of a CEO is to maximise profit for shareholders. The responsibility of the President is to govern for the good of ...

Donald Trump considers using national guard to round up immigrants, memo suggests The Trump administration considered a proposal to mobilize as many as 100,000 national guard troops to round up unauthorized immigrants, including millions living nowhere near the Mexico border, according to a draft m...

For the time being at least my VR experience is limited to what my Samsung S7 can do in a headset.

I have no doubt the cost will come down over the next year or two.

What's next at least looks like it might be virtual reality.

I wonder how many more people wish the US harm now than did so a couple of days ago. Last week it was the US v a few thousand jihadists. Now it's turning in to the US v a few billion Muslims, all on account of Trump's actions. Not that the vast, vast majority of them will actually carry out any atta...

Obama commutes Chelsea Manning sentence

Good. I don't actually approve of what Manning did, but the sentence length was ludicrous.

I can't imagine that Trump would have made this decision. Is it possible for him to reverse it when he gets in to office, or is it a done deal?

In principle I am against the death penalty, and would have voted against it in this case if I had any say in the matter. Still, it is hard to get too worked up about it. It's a long way down the list of things that upset me. Anyway, given the difficulties of actually implementing a death penalty no...

Doesn't have quite the same ring to it, does it?

We're going to be stuffed for naming them when a country comes along that doesn't have an 'r' for the second letter. So far we've been able to talk about Grexit, Brexit and Frexit, but what will we call it if Italy goes?

For my small business as a car transporter, I use my android phone a lot to send text messages to confirm bookings and the like. A lot of these messages are standard and vary only in terms of the specifics of the particular job. For example, this is the standard text I would send to a contact when a...

Dune (novel) I'm revisiting an old friend. I read the original trilogy as a teenager, and now I'm returning to it 30 years later. I still pretty much remember the concepts without massively remembering the plot, so looking forward to rediscovering the adventures of Muad'Dib again. As I recall the f...