tpholland

OK. There's not much antisemitism in London though. It's a major world city.

It will be fine. Most Brits are comfortable with the poor quality of Orwell commentary from over the pond. American Orwell fans mostly don't even read his key novels like Keep the Aspadistra Flying, just his juvenile science fiction stuff.

And the word "suspenders" in British English means what Americans would call a garter belt, hence it sounding particularly odd over here.

Hi! It sounds like you may have misunderstood the TV license as you seem to be describing it as a recent thing whereas it was introduced 80 years ago in 1946. The point of the license was always to fund broadcast content--not sure how this could apply to VPN use. I think the discussion of VPNs relates to how, if we decided it was appropriate to block foreign sites, you'd accomplish this. As somebody who grew up in the heady days of the early internet this who conversation saddens me, but when you hear for example interviews with the folks running Roblox you can see where these ideas come from....

OK, you probably have a point. As they say, once you've seen the La Tène cultural package....

I quite agree. It's a diversity of peoples who have developed an umbrella identity that dates back a long time. And it's been very successful!

They have a successful federal structure; much more so than more recent confederacies referred to by others in this thread (Belgium, Canada).

Ah, a generally homogenous Western European metaculture then, like that Canada! Thanks for engaging with the specifics of the Swiss Enlightenment you can keep the change

Sorry if cultural history and facts are a bit dull. I don't really want to argue about *something else* though; let's leave that to the *something else*ists.

Absolutely agree, and of course I would never argue that "diversity" explains Switzerland's wealth. It occupied a pretty unique and interesting place during the Reformation, and maybe there is something there. But the idea that either diversity or homogeneity can explain economic performance is obviously not bourne out by any serious examples. I was thinking about Belgium (and also thinking about Harry Lime) whilst typing away--it seems a bit of a counterexample to Switzerland where the same linguistic and cultural diversity within a country can lead to very different outcomes and senses. Nobody would ever write "Il n'y a pas de Suisse" as Destrée wrote "Il n'y a pas de Belges"--long history vs short history and as always the Reformation upheavals explain it perhaps

Absolutely! Although I would have thought it was common knowledge. 62% of the Swiss population have German as their main language, 22.7% French, 8% Italian, and 0.5% Romansch. This is an extraordinary level of diversity for a European country, and as other commentators have noted it isn't like there's a lingua franca: a large proportion of Swiss do not speak the languages used by other groups fluently--for example, 85-87% of Swiss don't speak French at all!

This should be quite straightforward evidence regardless of your cultural assumptions, but many people may not be aware of the impact and cultural importance of the Reformation in Europe, which in general meant that nations ended up with a state religion that was either Catholic or Protestant. Switzerland was pretty exceptional and in the 16th Century (which is the important period here) the population was split pretty much 50/50. This religious diversity is pretty important to its history as well as to wider European history.

What did you mean when you said homogenous, given the reality of Switzerland, its history, its civil structure, its languages, and its culture?

Then they should say white. I'm prepared to give a lot of leeway when conversing with non-native speakers but as somebody who has grown up within a culture that understands that the concept of cultural homogeneity cannot refer to native speakers of non-mutually-comprehensible languages or historically antithetical religious positions, if they choose to use the word in novel ways that's their problem not mine!

But Switzerland emphatically does not have a homogenous population. It has an exceptionally diverse population, linguistically, religiously and culturally. And yet as you say it has an exceptional record when it comes to cohesion and social trust. Living the dream!

Switzerland does not have a homogenous population, and to a reasonable person who has travelled in Switzerland I think this is an insane thing to be defending. A significant proportion of the population (certainly for Europe) do not even share a common first language. Significant proportions sit on different sides of the reformation which is again a big deal for Europe. etc

> Karrimor Jaguar

Nice. Karrimor backpacks (or rucksacks/daypacks as we called them back then) were the high water mark--I worked in the industry in the 80s and, in the tone of the article, it's very sad to see what's happened to Karrimor and Berghaus today, but back then they drove one another to new heights. I was always a fan or Lowe's stuff, who were the other UK giant.

All three brands were let down by the waterproof layers whcih after about ten years would degrade in horrible ways. Prior to the 90s this was less of a problem.

Aiguille are great. Probably the best bags around now. They will also make them to fit. When I was selling bags, fit was a big issue and if you made out that one size fitted all that would be seen as a sign of cheapness/cost cutting/lack of attention to detail. Karrimor and Berghaus both did their flagship bags in different back lengths, and companies competed hard on the diffent fitting systems.

...but you're often lucky to travel even a metre or so on the M25 in two seconds when it looks like that!

I read all Baudrillard's books, back when he was relevant in the day. You've not missed much. In fact you seem more insightful than those who do have them all to set.

Don't worry, that one has the energy of <i>the guy that was fired for buying IBM</i>

Thanks a lot for the feedback--we'll change the rather lame screenshot at the bottom into something that does a better job of showing off the different showcase templates as a quick fix. I'm looking at restructuring the homepage to tell more of a story, so I'll try and do a better job of showing how the outputs justify the effort as part of that.

I take the London-Edinburgh sleeper fairly regularly, and have only ever had good experiences.

That said, although in theory standard-class passengers have to share, this has only ever happened to me once. I can imagine that if you drew the short straw it could be terrible.

The other big down-side is that you can't have a proper wash on the train; luckily there are some pretty good public swimming baths between Waverley station and our client's offices.

An interesting post looking in detail at the methodology and implications of this study on Language Log: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=7715