Jump to content

bonzo

Members
  • Posts

    95
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by bonzo

  1. Just checked the Share Liverpool website - they say that 'nearly 40,000' fans have registered their interest so far, out of 100,000 needed to launch a bid.

     

    Suggests to me that the interest is there, and it could work...

     

    ...in theory anyway, but I don't think that it's realistic to think it'll happen in practice as the Dubai guys can move so much quicker and it looks like the cowboys are going to be tarred and feathered and run out of town sooner rather than later*. A DIC in the hand is worth two in the bush and all that.

     

    If the project could only have got going a few years ago, while Moores was still in charge, it might have had a realistic chance - he'd have jumped at an offer like that, especially if the pot was sweetened for him a bit.

     

    But then again it has taken the cowboys to show a lot of fans just how bad things can get with the wrong owners.

     

    Having said all that, I've signed myself up and it's one £5,000 I would love to have to part with some day.

     

     

    *please fucking Jesus

  2. Spot on. Talent is nothing without application.
    Is absolutely right.

    As AWS and Dirk have said, EM is saying that you have to have talent and technique to even be looked at seriously as a possible signing - if you're in the mix, they then try to make sure you've got the mental strength to keep working and improving.

     

    A couple of people have said that it's easier to coach mental strength than technique. I have to say I disagree 100%. The Quaresma interview posted a few days ago actually gave an good insight into this -

    Quaresma: He did talk to me, we spoke about many things but his business is his business and we view our profession in a slightly different light.

     

    Alberto de Silva: Ronaldo is seen as the more enthusiastic, your more into designer gear and partying aren't you?

     

    Quaresma: Not atall, I don’t understand why you and half the world seem to see me in this light, I very rarely go out 'clubbing' or 'partying' I just like to have a good time as I have worked hard my whole life to afford this lifestyle.

    Maldini hit the nail on the head when he said

    The reason Ronaldo has been so effective is he learnt to fit into United's system ie: work when you're not on the ball. Quaresma will never be a great player because he can't sacrifice his ego for the greater good.
    It's true in football, it's true in any walk of life - as Thomas Edison said, genius is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration. To take another example, I teach piano to a few kids, there's 2 brothers aged 12 and 9 who are about equally talented, but the 9 year old is going to overtake the 12 year old within a few months even though he's been playing for about 2 years less, because he wants to get better and he actually does some fucking practice in between his lessons.
  3. Good luck Paul, that sounds like a great bike.

     

    I spent about £400 on mine 2 years ago (no tax back scheme though) and I've never regretted spending that much - the less you spend, the cheaper the parts and the more trouble you'll have, eg gears that constantly slip. Mine's been very reliable so far, it's a Specialzed hybrid.

     

    I want to get one of these conversions though

     

    300px-Xtracycle.jpgXtracycle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - apparently you can get 2 people on the back and carry up to 200lb. cool.

  4. Over the past few months I've read more and more interviews with Dirk about goings on inside the club regarding the team, possible signings and the progress of the squad. He seems to be the one who is interacting with the media more and I think this reflects his stature amongst the other lads.

     

    He comes across as honest, very intelligent and a very nice lad. Considering some of the stick he took at times last season, Dirk has come a very long way is sort of a club figurehead now.

     

    Top, top fella.

    Good post. I was thinking the same thing when I read today's Echo article (it's in the Robbie Keane thread) - Kuyt sounds genuinely happy Keane is likely to come to Liverpool as he knows it would be good for the club, even though he's (pretty much) direct competition for his place on the team.

     

    Great human being and actually not a bad football player.

  5. I think we're "hardwired" with both a sense of altruism (society) and an instinct for survival (self-interest) Sometimes they conflict and sometimes they don't. Religion can be a force in favour of choosing altruism when there is a conflict.
    Good post - that's part of what I was trying to get at.

     

    We're all subject to a variety of innate impulses - some good, some bad - and we also have a conscious mind which interacts with those impulses and can to some extent control them.

     

    As the song says, you've just gotta accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative, and don't mess with kids under 16 or you'll be Banged Up.*

     

     

     

     

     

     

    *I might be a bit confused on those lyrics now that I look at them

  6. Love the story of Madonna getting one of her first acting breaks in New York as Anne Frank in a stage version of her story.

    Madonna was allegedly that bad in it that members of the audience were shouting out to the Gestapo telling them where she was hiding.

    Is that Julie Benz from Buffy/Angel and Dexter in your avatar? Exceptionally hot.
  7. There's been some really high quality stuff posted in this debate. Also, possibly some of the longest posts ever. Here's my medium length thoughts anyway.

     

    Dirk laid out very clearly the evolutionary basis for altruism and morality. The evidence is overwhelming that these are universal in our species, shared by all societies.

     

    One thing that can differ hugely between cultures, however, is who people feel are the 'us' that these moral feelings should extend to. For people in a small tribe, 'us' might be only the other tribe members; the Nazis worked very hard to get Germans to redefine Jewish, Roma, Slav, disabled and handicapped people as a subhuman 'them'.

     

    But one key insight that was shared by the founders and key thinkers of the great Axial Age religions and philosophies - Buddhism, Platonism, Confucianism, Taoism, Jainism - and later by Rabbi Hillel, Jesus, Muhammad, and so on is that 'us' must be universal.

     

    The Golden Rule which Paul quoted - 'love your neighbour as yourself' can be found in some form in all those movements. (This common ground was exactly the basis for understanding and dialogue identified by Muslim religious leaders in their open letter last year to Christian leaders.)

     

    But it's easy to say and not at all easy to live.

     

    We are all born with a range of instincts - for walking, for running, for throwing, for learning languages, for altruism and compassion. I believe that, just as we can with concentration and practice get better at running or throwing or using language, in the same way we can exercise and improve our capacity for compassion.

     

    And this is what great religious/philosophical leaders did - the Buddha said that the way to enlightenment is not to be comfortable, building up a wall against other people's suffering, but to work hard to open yourself fully to others' points of view, to the most painful aspects of reality. And if you are in this open state, it is the most natural thing in the world to see everyone as 'us', for your thoughts to be with anyone you meet and your actions to be for them.

     

    For me, the big problem with organised religions throughout history is that it's hard to work on developing universal compassion, but it's easy to be part of a group, fit in with its structures and revert to thinking of anyone outside the group as 'them'.

     

    Having said all that, my current beliefs about actual religion are best summed up by Father Dougal...

    Bishop Facks: So, Father. Do you ever have any doubts about the religious life? Is your faith ever tested? Anything you would be worried about? Any doubts you've been having about any aspects of belief? Anything like that?

    Father Dougal: Well, you know the way God made us all, right? And he's looking down at us from heaven and everything?

    Bishop Facks: Uh-huh.

    Father Dougal: And then his son came down and saved everyone and all that?

    Bishop Facks: Yes.

    Father Dougal: And when we die we're all going to go to heaven?

    Bishop Facks: Yes. What about it?

    Father Dougal: Well, that's the bit I have trouble with.

  8. Seeing footage from Cairo 30 years ago, where no women were veiled, to footage from the same city today, where most women wear this humiliating garment, reminded one of a particularly aggressive form of cancer, consuming secular society. It'll take one hell of a chemo session to clear that up.
    I went to visit a friend of mine who was living in Syria last year, and I was a bit depressed to see a lot of veiled women (as in the full tent, not just a headscarf) - more in Aleppo than Damascus or smaller towns oddly enough. I said this to my friend (an atheist Irish leftist, by the way), and he told me he'd discussed it with Syrian friends of his (who were mainly atheist Syrian leftists) - apparently they agreed there are a lot more headscarfs and full veils around now than there were 20 years ago, but they made the point that there are, in total, a lot more women out on public streets - whether veiled or not - than there were back then as well. (Apparently the tradition in conservative families was that men would do all the shopping, etc, and women essentially never left the home.)

     

    So at least some of the veiled women were actually being liberated by the veil.

     

    I'd love to see some statistics on this, but it's very interesting if true.

  9. Alright, I've been registered on here since Nov 2005 and in the 32 months since then there's been an FA cup win, a CL final, the arrival of the world's best striker and the takeover of LFC by two American gentlemen who coincidentally there is a rapidly disintegrating photo of stuck to the back of my toilet bowl.

     

    Not to mention AC Slatering, the departure of the Count, Rashid getting banned :wallbutt::wallbutt::wallbutt: and unbanned :wallbutt::wallbutt::wallbutt:, the legendary humiliation of a certain fat S*n hat wearing cunt ™, important discussions on contemporary moral and aesthetic issues (eg, Titwank or Wank) and the recent rise of comedy negging.

     

    I've learned a lot on here (not only in the FF), and I've done my best to pass on the important stuff (eg ownership, SOS) to other Reds I know that don't go online.

     

    But in all that time I've managed a pathetic 72 posts, which works out at 2 1/4 posts every month.

     

    And that's not even including the year and a half I full time lurked on here before I joined.

     

    You know that guy who sits in the corner of a big group of lads down the pub, knocking back 10 pints and having a laugh at all the jokes but never saying a word? That's me on TLW that is.*

     

    At various times I've been too pissed, too numb with anger at G******* and H****, too aware that there's people on here who know a lot more about LFC than I do, or just too far away from a computer to post.

     

    But now, the site has got a new look, and it seems like a good time to issue a challenge to myself and any other long time lurkers out there.

     

    It's simple - at least 3 posts per day, in any forum, every day for 2 weeks. The only other rule is that each post has got to have some actual usefulness or relevance to whatever thread it's on, and it can't be just randomly abusive (unless it's really, really funny).

     

    So, fellow lurkers, who's with me?

    .

    .

    .

    .

    .

    .

    .

    (waits)

    .

    .

    .

    .

    .

    .

    .

    .

    tumbleweed_small.jpg

    .

    .

    .

    .

    .

    well I'm doing it anyway

     

     

    *not in real life though, honest. For a start I'm mainly drinking whiskey these days. And cider for some reason

  10. it was the fucking glee in his shortarse Scottish voice when he kept saying 'Chelsea are the only team in this', 'Chelsea have had all the chances' etc - it was bad enough when they had us under the cosh for a bit in the 1st half but he kept on going even when we were clearly turning things around. When we scored he just said we'd done nothing all match and it was totally against the run of play.

     

    As an Irish Liverpool fan, if you'd said to me after Stuttgart '88 and Giants Stadium '94 that I'd end up wanting to slap the bitter little fucker I'd have laughed at you. I reckon he's never got over being shown the door by Souness.

     

     

    George Hamilton (RTÉ commentator) was worse, by the way.

  11. I'd second that about Delia Smith, she really does know how to cook, and how to explain stuff.

     

    Also good call on Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, forget the name, he's really into his food. I've got his River Cottage Meat Book and it's great. As well as being a good cookbook (for stuff with meat in, obviously) he lays out why it's worthwhile looking for better quality meat - tastes better and you feel better eating it.

     

    For Indian food, Madhur Jaffrey will never let you down.

×
×
  • Create New...