DodgyPhil

Oh yeah, I'm all for tolerance, not automatic respect. Feel free to laugh at any organisation, it's important to keep everyone in their place. I was just more concerned about the media and some of the more hardcore atheists doing the standard thing of lumping in an entire group with a few mental cases.

You're right; I think a lot of it comes down to national pride. Here in the west the prevalence of national pride is decreasing, mostly due to our obsession with 'roots' (for example, Irish Americans who celebrate St. Patricks day like no tomorrow but wouldn't be able to point out Ireland on a map) and the fact our governments are eager to promote multi-culturalism (unlike multi-racialism, which I think is great, multi-culturalism always makes national pride a taboo and stops immigrants from integrating into society). A lot of us also don't realize how lucky we are. So many teenagers think the grass is greener on the other side (while messing around with their iPads on the way to their private schools). I am a wealthy English teenager but I realize what I have and thank my parents every day, even the government. I don't laugh at my country's history because I realize how crucial it was for our development. I read about British philanthropists from the 1800s and think, dang, we've always had a good streak and now that we do have widespread racial tolerance and a much smaller gap between the rich and the poor, we complain. People from less economically developed countries don't have the same stigmas. They may come from low income neighbourhoods and suffer from horrendous crimes (from gangsters and police) yet they're proud of their country because that's where they were born and it's never going to change. It's why you'll always here chants of "pakistan zindabad!!" during political unrest in Pakistan, but when it starts raining in Britain people start saying "I want to get off this island as soon as possible". Ah, soz. My bad. Also the fact that the original ban on homosexuality was put in place by us British.

Hmmm.. I always find people so eager to laugh at rapture-believers and creationists. The media loves it, but they always seem to make the assumption that all Christians believe in this kind of stuff. I know a lot of these hardcore athiests (the kinds who pick fights over YouTube and think of themselves as vigilantes, saving the world with their Renaissance ideas) will have woken up on the day of the rapture and thought: HA, take that organized religion! But in all honesty, this kind of stuff is believed by less than 5% of Christians and other religious folk. With that said, yeah. It's stupid, but people are entitled to their own beliefs (not something I say a lot).

The French are (as much as I, as an Englishman, dislike them) pretty damned good with food. All their weirder sounding dishes always turn out to be pretty mild. Frog legs just tasted like chicken, and snail was actually delicious (although most of that was down to the relish). Weirdest thing I eat regularly... Probably smoked fish paste (pink goo in a tube that tastes like mackerel x 1000). I smear it on bread. It's just mashed up fish (I presume) but I get a lot of it because I have a Norwegian family. I eat fish at least twice a day. Other English stuff is renowned for being weird but I actually find it pretty normal. Pork pies are probably my favourite food ever but I tried giving one to my German exchange a couple of months ago and he almost wretched. It's just mashed up pork (compressed to the point it has the same texture as steak and filled with gristle), smeared in jelly (flavourless lubrication) and encased in a ridiculously thick, floury pie dish. The things look small but weigh as much as lead and contain about 500 calories each. Were simple folk us English.

Ha, well I?m a bona fide caffeine addict (as in, if I don?t have any all day I get a headache and the inescapable urge to pass out). Because of this I?m usually pretty functional with it, start the day off with a massive 4-cups worth pot of Espresso. Then during the day I usually just drink Boost or Tesco?s brand ?Kx Stimulation? because they?re both very cheap. The best tasting energy drink is either Rockstar Energy Drink or Monster (I can see why everyone raves about it) but they?re too expensive.. Occasionally I just take Pro Plus capsules to bypass the whole obstacle of opening a can and drinking it (effort).

Nice to see someone who isn't me or a friend of mine who studied Latin (but then, I do go to a British public school). At the moment I'm studying German and potentially want to do a degree at University. In GCSE (16+ British exams) I did both Greek and Latin. I got an A* for Latin (booyah!) but a C for Greek (Homer's Odyssey was easy to learn, but I didn't know enough vocab for the translation).