renton

Depends, do you believe it's ok for punters in the stand to level personal abuse at an employee of a football club?

Don't, you'll have me swooning soon....

If you were a real fan you would have sold the bairn for spare parts on the South American illegal donor organ circuit.

I thought we were skint? have to be pleased about this though, it gives us the big fast presence up front that we've been lacking. The problem is still further back however, and nothing Baird, Graham, Reynolds or Clarke have tried can make up for the fact that Alan Walker has been depressingly off form, Davidson more often injured than not and Hammil lacking in pace and dig. Obviously speculation will exist as to whether or not this signing means Baird is leaving. I tend to think the silly money runours - first the Pars, now St Mirren, are just that. It's not a lack of strikers that are dogging the Pars just now and surely if St Mirren wanted him they would wait six months - as ICT did with Tade. If we do keep all three it would be interesting to see a front line of Casa and Clarke with Baird further back - but we can all dream....

What's the matter, the pars not giving you the appropriate ego boost the now? Fact is you said never, then you changed to recent history (and depending on your idea of recent, Calderon's teams were not sore on the eye) the others weren't getting defensive aobut your second post - but rather the first one. In reality pretty much most teams in the SFL - pretty much most teams everywhere could be said to play relatively unnatractive football - such is the epoch we live in. That Mcglynn has got by with a form of the sport that emphasises an almost Vince Lombardi-esque obsession with discipline, of playing percentages of balls into boxes, of essentially griding down the opposition attritionally says far more about the oppositon than it ever will about John McGlynn. and besides, while we are all playing nice and not getting defensive, I know enough Pars fans who would happily admit to the Pars being brutal to watch for large parts of 'recent history'. Such is the nature of things.

The climate is changing, that at least is not in dispute.

In point of fact, calling it global warming was the worst possible name for the effect, it solidified in people's minds such that any time it was mentioned, the knee jerk response was to note how cold it was in the winter, as if that were a handsome rebuttal of the blaance of scientific opinion. Localised warming and cooling is in fact consistent with a global rise in CO2 emissions. Whether or not it is man made is up for debate, as has been noted there are a great number of unaccounted factors that could effect greenhouse gas retention in the atmosphere. One thing is clear though, if it is man made, we should try and restrict carbon emissions now. If it is a natural occurence, we should still try and stop it. Either way, the solution lies with the human race to try and avoid a global outcome that would be catastrophic for our species.

Watching South park just now, the one where they try to build a ladder to heaven, the US general who turns up looks the dead spit for soon to be ex-Scottish labour leader Iain Gray:

Yep, loved watching the lead actor from Lexx haming it up as only he can as the bad guy.

Was watching Hobo with a shotgun the other day. Thought the tune over the end credits was familiar, a quick perusal through youtube revealed it to be the old theme song from the racoons: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLVe1NkQA78 A couple of points. That theme song is actually a pretty good 80s rock ballad effort on it's own merits. I also recall that you had to be up really fucking early to catch the racoons, back in the day when you still had the BBC test card! But mainly, a quick swatch at the video brings the following observation - you have all these animals, racoons, pigs, aardvarks (I think) interacting, walking, talking, fighting over the forest etc, etc. There was even a sheepdog dad and his kid, and the thing is, right - the dad like the other animals is an anthropomorthic personification yeah, but the kid dog is just, well, a dog - all fours, barking, yapping - is he just slow, or are human attributes only something that happens at puberty in the racoon world - and why is their a clip in that youtube video of ralph racoon in a night shirt when he is content to wonder about naked apart from a scarf, eh, eh?

So anyway, Dennis Prychynenko, midfielder - where abouts in midfield does he play, pacy wide player, or cover for davo so we don't have to put Murray in the middle?

Just wanted to say on this thread, on this fine saturday morning that LIVING IN THE SOUTH OF ENGLAND IS DOING MA FUCKING HEID IN I know some guys have commented on the state of Rovers form lately making them apathetic, but I tell you, I'd take any Rovers right now, bad or no - I just miss going to the games. I suppose I could go a game down here, but what's the point in spending gate money when I won't watch the game, I'll be too wrapped up in the text updates from TFS. Saturdays are fucking ruined by living down here the now. Anyway, mon the Rovers.

I think that's something he can learn to a degree, adn there is no denying that he does lack for confidence. Like Williamson there is a decent player in there.

When you stop to think about it McGlynn's teams have never been all that pacy. There is usually one or two pacy guys in his teams but overall you couldn't look at any of McGlynn's rovers teams and say they were quick. Probably the quickest rovers team of McG's would be the one where you had Pelosi and Wilson bombing from full back, Carcary and Weir up top - and that team was pretty much pish. What is lacking this year is the quick outball at fullback - for the first time since 2006 we don't have a lightning fast full back, last year the pace was concentrated in Wilson, Baird and above all Tade, now the team is slower, but really, Baird still has it and mcBride isn't slow. Believe it or not he might be the short term answer to the wide out ball.

Actually it's mostly the team from last year. Considering it has 3 quarters of our statistically strongest defence from last year, largely the same central midfield - and certainly the central midfield that amny for a long time wanted but didn't get with Walker being pushed wide - it has at least one wide player in Williamson who has improved over last year and a strike force that still includes Baird. Campbell and Simmons were by and large replaced. Only Tade wasn't and was by and large irreplacable anyway. squad wise you have guys like Callachan and Reynolds instead of Ferry and Weir. Granted I haven't seen that much of the Rovers, being stranded 400 miles away in fucking Berkshire, but the games I did see, Falkirk and Morton at home, we looked more than alright.

Saves money on buying in all those fortnightly mail order magazines and 3 for twos at Waterstones, eventually that shit must add up.

Everywhere else had better things to spend their money on I guess.....

Forced to reside there until a handsome prince climbs up your skaggy repunsalesque baw hairs to set you free in the realm of reality where elephants get to keep their tusks and towers are built of better materials than ivory.

Being serious for a moment, the idea that engineering is not of academic merit is laughable. It's basically the applied arm of physics. Critical analysis, independent thinking, the development of structured experimentation.... it's all there, and engineering has been the main driver of those mental disciplines for a long time now. The fact is that quite simply the sheer volume of academic data required to work in engineering, the required mental flexibility it teaches means that if anything is worth academic merit, it's engineering.

I probably use as many critical faculties in choosing my sandwich filling as you will in all your entire academic career.

You are Finlay, right? Engineers pretty much designed the world you live in, and did it all with a wrench! Ahhhh, the historian's creed....

Did Finlay's textbooks instruct you to say that? Yes, it's really amazing how versatile a wrench is. Right now you are communicating in a medium held together by very hard wrenching.

Not really, all you have to do is buy the fornightly mail order magazine and the £9.99 book (will the budget stretch to that!), strike a pose between the two viewpoints and hey presto, a new line of historical thought is born! As for the intellectual laziness, engineers are given a complex toolkit of ideas and disciplines from which we use our imaginations to invent the world around you. Your mob lost that argument logn ago when you threw in your lot with modern studies to become a 'social science', basically trying to ape real science.

Reputation is subjective, relative , constantly shifting and subject to trends. So with the mail order once fortnightly magazine about the English civil war, it's more than possible to find yourself espousing a historical viewpoint more in vogue, and therefore deemed more relevent than Finlay, or even yourself!

Well, if said pleb fancied getting the £21 hardback penguin edition, and had a whole weekend to spare, I guess they could call themselves a qualified doctor of history.