DodgyPhil

I think an earlier post summed this whole thread up quite nicely: there is no such thing as right and wrong. Religious people follow the word of their God/s either because they seek reward in the afterlife, or because they trust them. Very little in the bible has to do with right/wrong, but how to lead a better life/appease God. That's why most people today are shocked by certain verses in the Quran and the old testament (and to a certain extent, the new) because many teachings go against our fundamental beliefs as people of the West. Mohammed tells us to murder Kafirs, God tells us to murder non-believers, certain Hindu Gods seem sadistically violent..etcSaying Homosexuality isn't wrong because it's natural is like saying murder isn't wrong because it's in-built into humans. Neither are wrong, and yet neither of those phrases are right. It's certainly a head scratcher..

I usually can't come on Xisto at any time during the week because of school and work. I've just moved up into Sixth Form so the workload has suddenly tripled. Plus the longer I spend on here the less I have dancing to this. Also, I have noticed a large proportion of the topics here have become stultifyingly uninteresting or completely irreverent spam. I really thought we'd gotten past the "What's your favourite colour" stage. p.S. I don't care what your favourite colour is. I may have to go around starting really subversive topics just to get people flaming. Flaming is natural and healthy.

Definately read. I'm not suggesting books are dull, but the action of slowly moving your eyes across a page while lying on your back or side will make you feel tired regardless of how good the book is. Of course, there's also the suggestion that reading improves your vocabulary, makes you more coherent the next day, and generally makes you more inquisitive. Read man..

Brian Eno - Ascent THIS SONG IS DEPRESSING

I'm still annoyed that a forum about music (potentially one of the most important subjects) has no Post Count, but.. Meh, nevermind. Quite often you'll hear the phrase "WOMG, greatest song ever!!" But there are few occasions when people genuinely mean it. I feel differently about this song. Objectively "Energy 52 - Cafe Del Mar (Three-N-One Mix)" can be considered the greatest dance music track. The melody is completely unique and beautiful as it was taken from a classical composition. 'Wim Mertens' wrote 'Struggle for pleasure' in the 1980s in Belgium. The original score has a beautiful piano arpeggio that intensifies and becomes more layered during the song. It's quite a simple composition that was transferred to dance music flawlessly. Many people cite 'Tiesto - Adagio for Strings' as the greatest trance track ever, but upon hearing 'Samuel Barber - Adagio for strings', you'll realize the trance song bears little resemblance to the original in terms of atmosphere and feeling. "Energy 52 - Cafe Del Mar (Three-N-One Mix)" is not only careful in its copying of Wim Mertens but stays true to the original track's atmosphere and slow-burning intensity. It's ace. I'd also like to bring this track to the attention of those who decry Dance music for being 'generic' and 'artificial'. In my personal belief, Dance music has produced some of the most beautiful, moving tunes in existence. I simply don't get the same vibe from Rock or Rap (as much as I love both). The only other style of music capable of evoking the same emotions is classical. Few people will admit it, but Classical music is always transferable to Dance/Trance, even more so than Classical to Rock. Anyone who says the Germans (Energy 52 in this case) are unable to make soulful music are idiots. I believe there are a few nations on this planet who have a perfect/symbiotic relationship with music: the Germans are one of them. (Oh, and the British, but that could just be national pride). Cafe Del Mar: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ Original by Wim Mertens: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ Another song I'd like to mention is "William Orbit - Ogive". William Orbit is an English electronic composer, most famed for his work on Madonna's album 'Ray of Light'. When Orbit isn't producing pop, he works on creating blisteringly amazing Ambient pieces. For his track 'Ogive', he used the melody from Erik Satie's (a French composer from the 1900s) 'Ogive'. Both tracks, classical and Ambient/electronic are beautiful in their own ways- and I think respect should be given to Orbit for such a truthful, beautiful rendition. William Orbit: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ Original by Erik Satie: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

I know it's a risky point to raise, but there is a reason for it: I feel we are allowing too many people to live. I don't want to get too downbeat, and I promise my other points will be far more entertaining but...Every year the west pumps millions of pounds worth of aid into Africa, and each year the populations of Third World countries grow and the extent of problems like famine and war become worse. Of course African women are going to try and birth as many children as possible when the rates of infant mortality are as much as 80% in some areas. These African families also need to birth strong children who'll be able to look after them in the future as most African governments do little to disperse aid or set up any form of public well fare system. And yet we in the west are convinced the main problems in the Third World are things like famine and disease. Most of these problems arise from over population and the fact that the governments simply don't care. In the future I would like to see less emphasis placed on 'Preserving lives' and more on improving them. It's not worth saving thousands of starving Ethiopians if we're only extending their unimaginable suffering for about 5 years. The situation in Africa will go two ways- either more reasonable leaders will be elected (which unfortunately failed to happen in Zimbabwe) and Western aid will be dispersed more intelligently, or we'll continue to ignore the roots of the problem just so a few aging rock stars can get their rocks off to the thought "I'm saving lives". Thanks Bob Geldof, statistically your aid has killed more people than its saved. I'm a huge fan of Swedish design. Some people call it sterile, but it's never ugly. It's weird, in the 60s all these manic Architects created horrific buildings like this. Most of the modern tower blocks being built in London actually look quite good. Minimal is probably the cheapest way to make a good looking building, so I hope there's more to come! Ha, nice idea. There are quite a few conspiracy theorists and loons who keep going on about how Robots are going to destroy us because we're "inferior". I'd seriously like to hear Apple's defence case for creating any kind of household appliance with the ability to kill people! At the moment it would take about a square mile of Supercomputers to store all the possible functions of the human brain, so it's a long way off until we can build it into robots.

I assume you've had the displeasure of sitting through both of the aforementioned programmes then.. I've always imagined the BBC trying to do a 'Best of Religious Bloopers' clip show, interspersed with 'hilarious' material from Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer. It does seem like they're incapable of handling a debate. The whole reason for the hysteria surrounding the Wooton Bassett protestors is because the BBC gave undue air-time to the leaders of Islam4UK (a petty organisation of no real importance in comparison to other, far more sinister fundamentalists). They then backed up the idea that all Muslims are rabid west-haters by only interviewing ONE female Iranian (who opposed the protests) and about 20 random punters on the street who were either incredibly thick British folk from all-white areas or hysterical muslims (all under the age of 19 and with no education).

I don't want to attack your area or anything, but isn't getting lost in the wrong part of a Californian city slightly dangerous?! Also yeah, I'm kinda desperate to travel away from Britain more- only because I haven't left the country in two years. Which doesn't help when I'm a complete Culture-addict. I really love going abroad and finding out about the people who live there, but I'm stuck in England while the majority of my school come back after a 1 week half term and say "Oh yah, Daddy just took my stateside to see my relatives in San Francisco, and then we travelled the Amazon rainforest- but only because there was nothing else to do". I love it when.. I spend ages trying to figure out a website-related problem, only to find out it was my own stupidity. I don't know why, but even if I've spent an hour raging- like the time I couldn't figure out why images weren't uploading properly via Ftp- I always like to laugh at myself later- like when I figured out the images weren't uploading because I'd set everything to upload in ASCII format.. Silly me, what am I like? I know.. I know, I live the life of a wildchild.

In preparation for revamping my site, I decided I should probably write some content.. Being a person who ends up watching a lot of tacky morning television, I have had a great deal of experience in 'Religious Television'. I decided to write an article about it. Keep in mind I've only just finished my English GCSE, so am slightly writing-averse at the moment.. Also, I've had to edit out some cuss-words, but if I've missed any, I'll have to rely of KS's trustworthy word-filter.

I swear, I would do all manner of devious things to get the game that has that loading screen! A game that not only contains African Militia with AK47s, but a spider-man controlled top hat wearing BattleMech dinosaur, a nuclear explosion, the Russian Military attempting to invade, two of the finest Nintendo characters AND A BUTTERFLY! And to think they even bothered making a sixth Call of Duty..

Ha, that's awesome. It's just a shame that by removing the blue background you've successfully highlighted my inability to cut out pictures using the magic wand tool.

I don't know why, but I think that'd really annoy me. Of course, I wouldn't know because I have yet to feel an emotion other than contempt and blissful joy. I love it when... Someone invites me on holiday to another country so I can be free of my parents and Britain for about a week.

So this means middle-aged house wives who already have little spare time, can continue wasting it on an entirely pointless pursuit. I've got no problem with people playing games to unwind, and I think it's great that FarmVille has made a game accessible to people of every age and gender; but the amount of time people put into this game! A friend of mine and I were just chillin' out, maxin', relaxin' all cool while watching YouTube videos, when said friend's mum burst into the room and demanded we cede control over the PC so she could level up on FarmVille. She was 59 and spent about two hours a day playing the damn game. Now, if she'd been playing Counterstrike or WOW (Yuck) I could understand if she wanted some alone time, but I swear the whole premise of Farmville is that players only need to play for about five minutes a day: hence the game's appeal to the older professionals with less free time.

I didn't know you were a lady OpaQue?! Jk, Bacardi has a bad image problem where I come from.. Personally I love beer. Being 16 I don't have access to pub's where I can sample many drinks at a time, but from what I have tasted I'd say Grolsch is my favourite. Strangely enough I also like Stella Artois, which is incredibly cheap- but with a really good taste. If the aim of the game was to get drunk, then I'd go for White Ace. It's a super-strength white cider that has added wine yeast (to make it more alcoholic). It's dangerous stuff, two cans will get you very VERY drunk and it only costs 59p a can.

Fear mongers and readers of tabloid newspapers can pretty much create a bad image for anything. I know there's a campaign on the internet that says people shouldn't drink milk because it gives you bowel cancer (???) and there seems to be loads of government funded scientific research labs that publish weekly reports condemning various meats.Pretty much any food or drink-stuff that is accused of being bad for your health is harmless. Sure, Coca Cola will cause your teeth to rot- if you happen to be holding a mouthful of the drink for about 30 minutes a day. Cigarettes and Coffee stain the teeth about a thousand times worse..Coca Cola contains some caffeine and quite a lot of sugar, but in comparison to most candy on the market and the average espresso it's nothing.In terms of harmful chemicals, definitely not. Coca Cola is acidic and sugary, but most of it is natural. If you're really averse to chemicals, you should check out: Pepsi Raw. They've just introduced it to England, and while it tastes like crap, it's made with pure Cane Sugar.I wouldn't worry about drinking Coca Cola, or any other product that's legally and openly sold (I'm excluding Alcohol and Tobacco for obvious reasons). Most of the research that condemns products like this doesn't really give a fair comparison. Your mouth is in greater danger when you're eating acidic fruit like lemons and oranges than artificially flavoured treats like Coke and Chocolate Cakes. Have fun, and drink up!

Ha nice! DeadMad keeps things classy and simple. I'll do the opposite and claim this land for Russia!

I felt the image didn't have enough Liberian gangsters in it, so I edited some in. I don't want to boast, but I'm really pleased with the bullet effects on the lower gangster..