Coss

it would appear, it's easier to shoot them...

There are three forces of Power in Laos, Political, Army and Police. Police used to run Vang Vieng's, ahem, illegal aspects. Like drugs and unlicensed bars on and in the river. Also other services, like "yes he really did slip and hit his head on a boulder whilst completely sober". And "yes this really is just a good alcoholic drink with no added hallucinogens or poisons". Because numbers of tourists were starting to die, some from, shall we say, 1st world countries, which tend to think about why their youngest and brightest seen to be dying in one spot in particular, international pressure started to mount. Now withholding Aid, when a country is slaughtering their own, may or may not happen. But when the Donor's own citizens are being knocked off, the money dries up very quickly. Even so, it took about two years for the Political branch to gain enough support from within their own ranks and those of the Armed persuasion, to get the Constabular cadre to do something about it. Fortunately, in Laos, once they decide to do something, they tend to do it. So now the place is, as I say, quite lovely, where it was not before. There are buses from the Vientiane central bus station every day, early like, so check the (English) timetable on the wall the day before.. 4 hrs travel time maybe? A good guest house is Busy Bee (sorry no link, but on the main drag and just ask anyone) or there are many others. Worth going to see caves etc just out of town, swim sensibly in the cool river, even hot air balloons if you like that sort of thing... Oh, and they still show 'Friends' in the pizza places, apparently white people can't live without it...

U.S. presidential hopeful Donald Trump's support among Republicans has dropped 12 points in less than a week, marking the real estate mogul's biggest decline since he vaulted to the top of the field in July, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll. Read more at Reutershttp://www.reuters.com/article/2015/11/27/us-election-trump-idUSKBN0TG2AN20151127#iMp1Og7hdcQPI7HX.99 Continuing the tradition that you can't underestimate the lowest common denominator.

Sorry, yes, now it is a pleasant and laid-back place, the hordes of Munters have gone. I will go there again at the drop of a hat, still some young'uns but other ages as well, picturesque and lovely place. What I meant by (and didn't write - silly me) "Unless you want to go to a place full of unwashed spaced out C*nts"... was go to Ibiza or any other of the teen/20's horde destinations. Which appear to be listed here - http://www.10best.com/awards/travel/best-destination-for-teens/ If we promote these, maybe they'll forget there's a world outside 'merica

Not yet....

Which is exactly their problem, none of them have an original thought in their head, and behave only as those they've seen on the movies. We all know that once the movie is finished, you walk right out with no consequences yes?

No - now it is a pleasant and laid-back place, the hordes of Munters have gone. Unless you want to go to a place full of unwashed spaced out C*nts...

I still wonder whether or not the incidence of homosexuality has/will risen/rise in the Chinese population, this should put the nature/nurture argument in the spotlight.

Vang Vieng was 'cleaned up', last I was there, the tourists were wearing lifejackets in the river, all very sensible and civilised. The time I went, before it was cleaned up, there were hordes, of spaced out Munters, roaming the streets in the midday sun, falling down, each carrying a bottle of Beer Lao in front of them like it was a trophy, fat ladettes, oblivious that their labia, true beef curtains, had escaped their string bikinis that looked so good in the shop and on thinner women, hairy unwashed young men clad in shorts leering at everyone, shouts of Oi Oi Oi in one part, Aussie Aussie Aussie in another, locals bewildered, but taking the money anyway, feet with dirt and toenails untrimmed on the restaurant tables. A bloody mess, my Lao companions had come to see these foreigners, much as you would go to a zoo or freak show. I had thought that the cliche that these backpackers just got stoned and watched reruns of 'Friends' in the pizza restaurants was just that, a cliche, but no, it was true, at least in the 20 or so places I walked past.

Mr Jack, I'm sure not all backpackers are C*nts, if I meet one, I'll let you know, all I have encountered so far, have left a bad taste in my mouth, maybe if they washed...

The eating advantage, is that in traditional breeding, when you get a fast growing, efficient, tasty animal, it takes generations to breed those characteristics back into the breed, so that all the little'uns are of the desirable kind. With cloning that's quicker, assuming they've conquered the breeding viability issue with the clones. If they're only using cloning as a mass producing mechanism, then there's very little gain over normally pregnantised animals.

Is the ukulele really, truly, honestly here to stay this time? When the word “hipster†was recently used in a concert review to describe James Hill and his ukulele performance, he needed to look up the definition. Twenty-five years ago, when the Juno Award nominee first picked up the ukulele at the age of eight, it was considered a good starter instrument for children. As a teenager performing with the Langley Ukulele Ensemble, it wasn’t exactly as cool as, say, the guitar or the drums. But something changed, he says, in 2004, at the first Uke Fest West concert in Santa Cruz, Calif. “It was kind of Woodstock for the ukulele,†Hill says. “You started to have a sense that you weren’t alone and were maybe not as weird as you thought.†Nowadays, the ukulele seems to be finding a home with every age demographic, not just the hipster subculture stereotyped by bearded twentysomethings listening to vinyl records in their lofts. A group of Grade 5 students in Hamilton playing ukuleles toured retirement homes in May. Getting more extreme, the DIY-focused site Make Zine offered a tutorial on how to build a flame-thrower ukulele, inspired by the dystopian futuristic action movie Mad Max: Fury Road. In Saskatoon, 20-plus ukulele players known as the Glowing Embers have an average age of around 85. And Helen Levine was featured in the Ottawa Citizen earlier this year for picking up the instrument at the age of 90. In the past few months alone, news outlets from Denver to Dublin also jumped on board with word of its resurgence. But “the ukulele is back†is a narrative that’s been trumpeted in the press for more than 10 years now. The Financial Times wrote a story about the ukulele’s revival back in 2004—and again in 2009. For generations who remember Tiny Tim, there’s genuine reason to be skeptical of its current popularity. Could the ukulele—guitar’s often-teased little cousin—seriously be here to stay this time around? Over the past five years, ukulele sales in Britain have doubled to about 250,000, according to the U.K.’s Music Industries Association. American sales jumped by 54 per cent in 2013, according to the National Association of Music Merchants. Meanwhile, in Canada, “we’re selling tens of thousands of these things,†says Jeff Long, from the musical-instrument retail chain Long & McQuade. “It’s gone past the toy stage to a fun musical instrument.†With four strings, it’s easier to learn than a guitar, while the nylon strings are softer on the fingers. Its smaller size makes it more portable, not to mention cheaper. A starter ukulele might cost around $30, much more affordable than a beginner’s guitar, which could easily cost three times that amount. “A lot of them will end up in closets, because parents are always trying to expose their kids to different things to see what sticks,†Long adds. Sports equipment can easily run up a bill of over $1,000, while a guitar or drums can cost a couple of hundred. “The barrier to entry for ukulele is so low, people are willing to make that jump,†Long says. “It’s like a lunch out.†Toronto filmmaker Tony Coleman was eight when he saw the scraggly-haired Tiny Tim—with his distinctively large nose and high falsetto voice—sing Tiptoe through the Tulips on the TV show Laugh-In in the late 1960s. The audience had a good chuckle, but youngsters at home were left with the opposite impression. “It scared me,†Coleman remembers. The ukulele was so uncool, demand fell off enough for renowned instrument manufacturers such as C.F. Martin & Co.—which sold more than 11,000 ukuleles in 1950—to stop production of the instrument in the early ’70s. As the Museum of Making Music put it in its history of the ukulele: “Sadly, Tiny Tim closed the era of extreme popularity of the instrument on the mainland, without making a bridge to the future.†The ukulele went through a long lull in the 1980s, only to find new life (again) in the mid-’90s, around the time Israel Kamakawiwo’ole started strumming Over the Rainbow and What a Wonderful World on TV. Years later, when Coleman inherited his sister’s ukulele, he started taking it to practices with his rocker friends. “Before we knew it, we were all jamming with ukuleles instead of guitar, bass and drums,†he says. “It doesn’t have any of the ego attached to ‘serious’ instruments.†He soon discovered a vibrant community of ukulele players, which inspired him to direct the feature-length 2010 documentary Mighty Uke: The Amazing Comeback of a Musical Underdog. For every showing on the film’s world tour, which took place in more than 100 cities, “50, 100, 500 people would show up with their ukuleles,†Coleman says. “It was both absurd and profound.†The ability to recreate a piece of music with a simple little instrument is like reproducing The Mona Lisa with a crayon, as Coleman describes it. And, at a time when music listeners are ever more likely to don oversized headphones and tune out the rest of the world, ukulele culture offers a counter-experience. “There’s nothing quite like 500 people playing Down by the Riverside.†Coleman says. “I would never buy the record, because it sounds horrible, but the feeling when you get all these people chugging together, it’s like being in a choir.†The instrument grew up from the underground and into pop culture. A YouTube video of Zooey Deschanel—the quirky star of the TV series New Girl and the movie 500 Days of Summer—playing ukulele surpassed 16 million views. Hawaii native Jake Shimabukuro attracted more than 14 million views for his ukulele cover of George Harrison’s While My Guitar Gently Sleeps and performed Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody at a 2010 Ted Talk. “One of the things I love about being a ukulele player is that, no matter where I go in the world to play, the audience has such low expectations,†he explained. At concerts by Shimabukuro or Hill, “it’s not uncommon for people to show up with their ukes,†Hill says, as if fans are waiting for a moment when the performer asks them to strum along. “You don’t expect people to bring their oboes to the symphony concert.†Fears that another Tiny Tim-like fringe artist could ruin years of good publicity for the instrument were somewhat soothed when Eddie Vedder released his 2011 album Ukulele Songs. No longer was the ukulele automatically synonymous with Tiny Tim. “Instead, we got the cool guy from Pearl Jam,†Hill says. It was like the quirky kids at school getting picked to play soccer on the cool guy’s team at lunch hour. Vance Joy, a young, rising star of the music scene currently on tour with Taylor Swift, can’t put on a show without taking out the ukulele for his hit song Riptide. Hill’s recent album, The Old Silo, was nominated for a Juno. Even in Hawaii—well more than 100 years after the ukulele came to the island, thanks to Portuguese immigrants—they finally made the ukulele the state’s official instrument earlier this year. Yet, a nagging feeling remains that the ukulele is living on borrowed time, even though many in the community are quick to disagree. “How long can you call something a fad before you just have to admit the thing is just here, it’s hit a steady state, and it’s just going to be around?†Hill asks. “I don’t expect to see the ukulele die out any sooner than we can expect the iPhone to die out.â€

Sydney police rush to domestic abuse call, only all was not as it seemed It sounded like another domestic violence case for police in Australia after multiple calls about a Hipster shouting "I'm going to kill you, you are dead", along with high pitched screams and furniture being tossed around - however all was not as it seemed. When police arrived at the Wollstonecraft address on Sydney's North Shore, they were prepared for the worst. After banging on the door a rather out-of-breath Hipster answered. They recorded the following conversation on their Facebook page. Police: "Where's your wife." Hipster: "Umm I don't have one." Police: "Where's your girlfriend." Hipster: "Umm I don't have one." Police: "We had a report of a domestic and a women screaming, where is she?" Hipster: "I don't know what you're talking about I live alone." Police: "Come on mate people clearly heard you yelling you were going to kill her and furniture getting thrown around the unit." At this point the Hipster became very sheepish. Police: "Come on mate, what have you done to her." Hipster: "It was a spider." Police: "Sorry??" Hipster: "It was a spider, a really big one!!" Police: "What about the women screaming?" Hipster: "Yeah sorry that was me, I really, really hate spiders" The Hipster had been trying to exterminate the spider using an anti-bug spray. Police say after a look around the apartment that they were happy to report that no-one was injured... except for the spider.

You know me better than that, I was driving, he's lucky he didn't wear my radiator.

Now we're getting to something interesting. This could explain the glimpses of leather I've seen.

She's a looker in the 2nd one

That looks like Patters' on the deck of that yacht.

I'm confused. Last time I tried to lift up one of those black tents you see wandering around MBK, to have a look, I was soundly beaten by a group of young Arab gentlemen dressed as American Hip Hop stars. I've had to give that up.

Jaywick

Quite right I saw a hipster today, shooting hoops with a basketball, he had a beard that was trimmed and styled to a point, that it was obvious that it was not like any other on the planet, except for one that was a little bit different. He was by himself, he was lonely, he looked needy.

So Western women, are not adopting a construct forced on shameless women by chauvinist pigs, but imitating the noble Muslim women, whom should be held up as shining examples in the battle against the hirsute?

How did they become subject to a Western construct forced on shameless women by chauvinist pigs?

Sheik Tajidin HimiDaly is only talking about it - deport him - Catlick priests who have done as you say - grind 'em up and make them into fertiliser. Then we could aerial topdress the Vatican with the product.

A map shows the only safe place in the world to travel for American's is America. The US State department has published a map advising its citizens the only safe place to travel is the United States itself. The government agency issued a global travel alert for US citizens, following deadly militant attacks in France and Mali. Accordingly, the only territory marked on the map as "safe" to travel is America. The Independent reported the warning was a response to the increased terror threat level from groups such as Isis, al-Qaeda and Boko Haram, as well as individuals who may copy the groups' methods. It will remain in place until 24 February 2016. http://www.stuff.co.nz/travel/news/74389855/us-state-department-map-shows-us-only-safe-place-to-travel