Tuesday the 23rd of April is approaching, it will be the first anniversary of the assassination of SSSF by a hired hitman from the UK, on that cold grey day one of Australia’s most popular forums was callously cut down in cold blood.
We will remember the writing down of the sums, and the morphing.

Peak Warming Man said:

Tuesday the 23rd of April is approaching, it will be the first anniversary of the assassination of SSSF by a hired hitman from the UK, on that cold grey day one of Australia’s most popular forums was callously cut down in cold blood.
We will remember the writing down of the sums, and the morphing.

in memory.

Will there be drinky poos at midday for commemmoration?

Divine Angel said:

Will there be drinky poos at midday for commemmoration?

What an excellent idea!

Skeptic Pete said:

Divine Angel said:

Will there be drinky poos at midday for commemmoration?

What an excellent idea!

We could raise a glass at midday and toast SSSF and absent friends.

Peak Warming Man said:

Skeptic Pete said:

Divine Angel said:

Will there be drinky poos at midday for commemmoration?

What an excellent idea!

We could raise a glass at midday and toast SSSF and absent friends.

the absent don’t know we are raising glasses.

at the going down of the bishes, and in the mourning…

What was THE day that was said to be “a day that will in infamy?” was it the attack on Pearl Harbour?

Dropbear said:

at the going down of the bishes, and in the mourning…

We will dismember them.

bob(from black rock) said:

What was THE day that was said to be “a day that will in infamy?” was it the attack on Pearl Harbour?

yes..

“a day that will live .. pause.. in infamy”

Dropbear said:

bob(from black rock) said:

What was THE day that was said to be “a day that will in infamy?” was it the attack on Pearl Harbour?

yes..

“a day that will live .. pause.. in infamy”

Thanks Bear

Ladies and gentlemen, well may we say “God Save the Queen”, because nothing will save the Governor-General….

who’s midday?

Boris said:

who’s midday?

Mr Day?

The year before that, my dog died. Birthdays don’t seem to be working out so well for me these days. :(

morrie said:

The year before that, my dog died. Birthdays don’t seem to be working out so well for me these days. :(

happy birthday for then.

Bubblecar said:

Ladies and gentlemen, well may we say “God Save the Queen”, because nothing will save the Governor-General….

nothing saved east timor either

wookiemeister said:

Bubblecar said:

Ladies and gentlemen, well may we say “God Save the Queen”, because nothing will save the Governor-General….

nothing saved east timor either

we have Australia to worry about..

does anyone know here when the last time Australia actually declared “war” on another country?

wookiemeister said:

does anyone know here when the last time Australia actually declared “war” on another country?

Brisbane.. 1942.. on the USA. on our own territory.

roughbarked said:

wookiemeister said:

does anyone know here when the last time Australia actually declared “war” on another country?

Brisbane.. 1942.. on the USA. on our own territory.

so not Vietnam, Iraq, korea etc?

roughbarked said:

wookiemeister said:

does anyone know here when the last time Australia actually declared “war” on another country?

Brisbane.. 1942.. on the USA. on our own territory.

so not Vietnam, Iraq, korea etc?

wookiemeister said:

roughbarked said:

wookiemeister said:

does anyone know here when the last time Australia actually declared “war” on another country?

Brisbane.. 1942.. on the USA. on our own territory.

so not Vietnam, Iraq, korea etc?

no.

roughbarked said:

wookiemeister said:

roughbarked said:

Brisbane.. 1942.. on the USA. on our own territory.

so not Vietnam, Iraq, korea etc?

no.

that is all

wookiemeister said:

roughbarked said:

wookiemeister said:

so not Vietnam, Iraq, korea etc?

no.

that is all

yep

I hope I am not tempting fate, but does anyone understand why this forum does not have the same issues that SSSF developed?

The Lab’s official stance was an old server, but I don’t know the details.

Divine Angel said:

The Lab’s official stance was an old server, but I don’t know the details.

I was more referring to the “Troll Debacle”.

Oh that.

We borrowed an invisibility cloak and we treat all newbies with suspicion. How do we know it’s not you?

Divine Angel said:

Oh that.

We borrowed an invisibility cloak and we treat all newbies with suspicion. How do we know it’s not you?

I’m not me?

>>We borrowed an invisibility cloak and we treat all newbies with suspicion. How do we know it’s not you?<<

Much simpler than that. We just know how to ignore.

buffy said:

>>We borrowed an invisibility cloak and we treat all newbies with suspicion. How do we know it’s not you?<<

Much simpler than that. We just know how to ignore.

Cunning.

the only poster around here that is troublesome is sibeen but we try to be patient with him and his “problem”.

You do know I’m watching you like a hawk.

:-)

You wouldn’t hurt an angel, now would you? *smiles sweetly *

Divine Angel said:

You wouldn’t hurt an angel

Can that be achieved by making baby Jesus cry?

Both the SSSF and abc forums are dead.

Stuff ‘em.

Or as Mark Scott has stated as recently as yesterday in a series of tweets -

“And verily it came to pass that the hallowed pages of sssf were not all things to all men. There were far too many opposing stances of non-conformity and synergism.

The very nature of the SSSF resulted in the transformation of any culture it entered. The BALANCE was CRUCIAL because of the dire resulting from going too far in either direction.

If the ABC were to capitulate to the culture in the extreme then the very message and it’s eternally significant purpose would be lost. All we are left with is a syrupy scientism that soothes the consciences of people on their way to hell.

If the forum went from one extreme to the other shouting culturally offensive truth from every rooftop with no passion for or consideration of those hearers of the message then it was to be dismissed as irrelevant and loveless at best: or outright evil at worst.
Kylie was unimpressed, but she took many opportunities to repeatedly pronounce gloom and doom with the prediction that the magnificent edifice that was the SSSF would undoubtedly become a pile of rubbish.

As early as ’07 missives from the Lab warned of uncertain and dangerous times and pointed to signs in the ethenet – called on us to find the balance and warned of disregard for these predictions…

The object was to take the long view, the cold and stony view, of triumphs and catastrophes in the history of life. They study teeth, tree trunks, leaves, pollen, and other biological relics, and from it they attempted to discern the lost secrets of time.. the big patterns of stasis and change, the trends of innovation and adaptation and refinement and decline that have blown like sea winds among ancient creatures in ancient ecosystems.

Although life is their subject, death and burial supply all their data. They’re the coroners of science. This gave forumites a certain distance, a hyperopic perspective beyond the reach of anxiety over outcomes of the struggles they chronicled.

If hope is the thing with feathers, as Emily Dickinson said, then it’s good to remember that feathers don’t generally fossilize well. In lieu of hope and despair, then the forum had a highly developed sense of cyclicity.

If the temple is going to come crashing down, if false leaders, earthquakes, wars, and famines are only the beginning of our troubles, then what good are steeples and programs and nursery schools?

But, by definition, the forum was created to keep something the way it is, to keep values, beliefs, and best practice in place for generations.
We wanted to participate in the traditional scientific inquiries and activities that give meaning to the seasons of our lives. The world was full of possibility. It wasn’t limited by what we could or couldn’t do.

None of the constraints of the present world applied. Institutions didn’t house our security, our future, our forum.

Nevertheless, in the face of the end of the world as we know it, we should, as the R.E.M. song goes, feel fine…

We should feel hope. When the forum as we know it comes crashing down around us, our only hope for survival is located outside that forum we knew it.

And that, my friends, is what we should give to. We should give and live as people of hope, people who expect the forum to be more powerful than institutions, more glorious than anything we could imagine for ourselves.

People of hope don’t need to wait around for the end of the world to perceive the end of the forum as we knew it… and to live accordingly.”

Would you please be upstanding for the benediction (it’s not raining inside tonight)..

Altogether now:

SSSF has moved

This forum has now officially moved to www.abcforums.com

Thanks for all of the posts and interesting discussions. See you on the new site…

(Until the end of May 2012, you will still be able to read messages on the old forums, but they are now closed to new posts).

FUCK THE LAB

Sure. The more tears, the better.

wookiemeister said:

does anyone know here when the last time Australia actually declared “war” on another country?

My international law knowledge is both ancient (so half-forgotten) and dated, but doesn’t the UN outlaw declarations of war?

captain_spalding said:

wookiemeister said:

does anyone know here when the last time Australia actually declared “war” on another country?

My international law knowledge is both ancient (so half-forgotten) and dated, but doesn’t the UN outlaw declarations of war?

Since 1945, developments in international law such as the United Nations Charter, which prohibits both the threat and use of force in international conflicts, have made declarations of war largely obsolete in international relations. In addition to this, non-state or terrorist organisations may claim to or be described as “declaring war” when engaging in violent acts. These declarations may have no legal standing in themselves, but may still act as a call to arms for supporters of these organisations.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_war

so the UN has actually outlawed the formal declaration of war and instead we have pre-emptive strikes and “all options on the table”

wookiemeister said:

captain_spalding said:

wookiemeister said:

does anyone know here when the last time Australia actually declared “war” on another country?

My international law knowledge is both ancient (so half-forgotten) and dated, but doesn’t the UN outlaw declarations of war?

Since 1945, developments in international law such as the United Nations Charter, which prohibits both the threat and use of force in international conflicts, have made declarations of war largely obsolete in international relations. In addition to this, non-state or terrorist organisations may claim to or be described as “declaring war” when engaging in violent acts. These declarations may have no legal standing in themselves, but may still act as a call to arms for supporters of these organisations.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_war

so the UN has actually outlawed the formal declaration of war and instead we have pre-emptive strikes and “all options on the table”

Whoops, sorry about accidental ‘quote/reply’.

IIRC, there’s a couple of different categories of declaration, but their use tends to be avoided because it can be taken to mean a no-holds-barred ‘total war’ scenario. Sinking unarmed merchant ships at sea without warning and all that (although the 1907 Hague convention says ‘no’ to that).

captain_spalding said:

Whoops, sorry about accidental ‘quote/reply’.

IIRC, there’s a couple of different categories of declaration, but their use tends to be avoided because it can be taken to mean a no-holds-barred ‘total war’ scenario. Sinking unarmed merchant ships at sea without warning and all that (although the 1907 Hague convention says ‘no’ to that).

it always goes into a no holds barred situation

unarmed merchant ships are a legitimate target because they might supplying aid to the enemy, the Lusitania for example

Why was the wreck bombarded in the 1950s?

Dublin-based technical diver Des Quigley, who dived on the wreck in the 1990s, has reported that the wreck is “like Swiss cheese” and the seabed around her “is littered with unexploded hedgehog mines”. Royal Navy officials have claimed they had merely been “practicing” on the wreck, and submerged wrecks were frequently mistaken for bottomed U Boats during WW2 and attacked. Others have suggested that the Navy was deliberately trying to destroy evidence, although there is no evidence to back up this claim. Professor William Kingston of Trinity College, Dublin has said, “There’s no doubt at all about it that the Royal Navy and the British government have taken very considerable steps over the years to try to prevent whatever can be found out about the Lusitania”..

In February 2009, the Discovery Channel TV series Treasure Quest aired an episode titled “Lusitania Revealed”, in which Gregg Bemis and a team of shipwreck experts explore the wreck via a remote control unmanned submersible. At one point in the show an unexploded depth charge was found in the wreckage, in plain sight, clearly seen by the remote control submersible’s video camera. Gregg Bemis, as well as other people on the team, believe the British Royal Navy deliberately bombed the Lusitania site to “make the wreck as unattractive as possible, to prevent further salvage” and to “prevent divers from going in and finding that there was contraband cargo”. No government has ever admitted to the depth charging. The narrator says the depth charges probably crushed the upper decks of the ship, and further scattered the debris field.

Well, anyone with half a brain reasonably suspected that ‘Lusitania’ was carrying munitions of some sort. Recent research has shown this to be the case, although the small arms rounds and aluminium powder aboard would hardly seem to justify the killing of over 1,000 civilians. The British would never entirely rule out that the ship had had some kind of war materiel aboard, and this was widely held as being tantamount to admitting that they were there (which they were).

‘Lusitania’ was flying no flags, which violated the rules at the time, but then the torpedoing of the ship without warning also violated the same rules.

The sinking was no happenstance. The Germans always intended to sink the ‘Lusitania’: i’ve seen a commemorative medal, struck in Germany at the time, which gives the date of sinking as two days prior to the actual date.

People will credit the ‘Lusitania’ sinking with provoking America’s entry into the war. It’s worth noting that the sinking occurred in 1915, and America came in in 1917. Took them a while to get really worked up about it, it seems.

Why was the wreck bombed? For the same reason dozens of other wrecks were bombed – practice. After WW2, the ‘Lusitania’ wreck became accessible by jet fighters and attack planes, having previously been out of range of WW2 and pre-WW2 aircraft. It was a very good target, in which no-one had a salvage interest.

Lots of other surface-visible and shallow wrecks were similarly used as targets. I have maps around here somewhere, which plot sites of sunken ships around the British Isles from WW1 and WW2. It looks like it’s wall-to-wall iron down there.

captain_spalding said:

Well, anyone with half a brain reasonably suspected that ‘Lusitania’ was carrying munitions of some sort. Recent research has shown this to be the case, although the small arms rounds and aluminium powder aboard would hardly seem to justify the killing of over 1,000 civilians. The British would never entirely rule out that the ship had had some kind of war materiel aboard, and this was widely held as being tantamount to admitting that they were there (which they were).

‘Lusitania’ was flying no flags, which violated the rules at the time, but then the torpedoing of the ship without warning also violated the same rules.

The sinking was no happenstance. The Germans always intended to sink the ‘Lusitania’: i’ve seen a commemorative medal, struck in Germany at the time, which gives the date of sinking as two days prior to the actual date.

People will credit the ‘Lusitania’ sinking with provoking America’s entry into the war. It’s worth noting that the sinking occurred in 1915, and America came in in 1917. Took them a while to get really worked up about it, it seems.

Why was the wreck bombed? For the same reason dozens of other wrecks were bombed – practice. After WW2, the ‘Lusitania’ wreck became accessible by jet fighters and attack planes, having previously been out of range of WW2 and pre-WW2 aircraft. It was a very good target, in which no-one had a salvage interest.

Lots of other surface-visible and shallow wrecks were similarly used as targets. I have maps around here somewhere, which plot sites of sunken ships around the British Isles from WW1 and WW2. It looks like it’s wall-to-wall iron down there.

it would seem a little odd that the ship that took America into ww1 would be bombed anymore than the titanic

wookiemeister said:

it would seem a little odd that the ship that took America into ww1 would be bombed anymore than the titanic

Well, ‘Titanic’ is on the other side of the Atlantic, and about 3.8 km down.

If anyone can hit that with an aerial bomb, then i’ll shout them drinks for the rest of our lives.

>it would seem a little odd that the ship that took America into ww1 would be bombed anymore than the titanic

The Titanic was a very deep wreck which sank two years before the outbreak of war.

Anyway, all this has reminded me that ‘Lusitania’ wasn’t often used as a target for aerial bombing, as the outline of the wreck was often difficult to discern in the turgid sea..

IIRC, it was a target for anti-submarine practice. As a shallow wreck (the figure ’50 fathoms’ pops up in memory), it was a nice big metal mass at just the kind of depth where you might find a hostile submarine.

You’d know just where it was, so you could run around pinging away with sonar, getting reports from your operators which you could compare with the ‘correct answer’. Jolly good training for them.

Then, you could give your TASO (Torpedo Anti-submarine Officer) and his mob a nice ‘real’ target to fire on. More good practical training.

It wasn’t ‘bombed’ like that before WW2 because weapons like Hedgeho, Squid, and Limbo ant-submarine mortars didn’t exist before the 1940s.

… like Hedgeho…

some are ok, bushpigs are better though.

Boris said:

… like Hedgeho…

some are ok, bushpigs are better though.

Hyuk.

Should read ‘hedgehog’.

Raises glass of a popular cola libation to SSSF.

Raises glass of lemon cordial to pwm and the rest of SSSF.

Michael V said:

Raises glass of lemon cordial to pwm and the rest of SSSF.

clinks cheap but surprisingly tasty can of coke

OCDC said:

Michael V said:

Raises glass of lemon cordial to pwm and the rest of SSSF.

clinks cheap but surprisingly tasty can of coke

Coles Diet lemonade with a splash of lime cordial.

Cheers everybody.

I can’t think of a more awesome bunch of misfits to share the last 15 years tribulations with.

Skeptic Pete said:

OCDC said:

Michael V said:

Raises glass of lemon cordial to pwm and the rest of SSSF.

clinks cheap but surprisingly tasty can of coke

Coles Diet lemonade with a splash of lime cordial.

Cheers everybody.

I can’t think of a more awesome bunch of misfits to share the last 15 years tribulations with.

+1

Long may we say God save the Queen, because nothing will save Knick.

Beer o’clock. Raises beer!

:)

>>to share the last 15 years

How long have you had the boat for now Peter? 4 to 5 years I’m guessing.
You know what I’d like to see you try, I’d like you to get in to serious Gyrocopter action.
You can buy them in kit form from China pretty cheaply, you’d love it.

the way people go on about it

it was a forum run by the abc that got canned

I just made the move and forgot all about it

the abc has to spend some money on potplants , paying a few bucks a year to keep a server running is too much money

Peak Warming Man said:

>>to share the last 15 years

How long have you had the boat for now Peter? 4 to 5 years I’m guessing.
You know what I’d like to see you try, I’d like you to get in to serious Gyrocopter action.
You can buy them in kit form from China pretty cheaply, you’d love it.

Sounds a bit dangerous to me.

This time last year I was at endo clinic, sneaking some foruming between patients.

RIP SSSF

This time 12 months ago I would have been in this very same chair working and watching SSSF and environs shut down one by one.
A needless killing.

I have just two words to say on this subject.

Kenneth Williams.

INFAMY INFAMY!

they’ve all got it in for me!

Vale SSSF.

When the clock strikes midday
-We will remember

When the last forum was shut down
-We will remember

When the lifeboat forum sprang a leak and sank
-We will remember

*raises drink bottle *

Oh…the day the forum “passed over” :|

>When the lifeboat forum sprang a leak and sank

Let’s be frank. There were two forum lifeboats. One was of dodgy construction, launched in haste, and vastly overcrowded.

The other had been launched into placid seas. The mate was a mighty sailing man, the skipper brave and sure.

sibeen said:

The other had been launched into placid seas. The mate was a mighty sailing man, the skipper brave and sure.

Skeppy Weppy?

The Rev Dodgson said:

I have just two words to say on this subject.

Kenneth Williams.

Infamy! Infamy! They’ve all got it in for me!

In the words of the great man himself

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvs4bOMv5Xw

Geoff D said:

In the words of the great man himself

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvs4bOMv5Xw

For some reason I’ve always associated the phrase with Frankie Howard, rather than KW, but whether Frank nicked it from Ken, or vice versa, or I’ve just misremembered, I have no idea.

It was a long time ago.

“it was a forum run by the abc that got canned

I just made the move and forgot all about it”

Is this ‘Wookie says something calm and balanced’ Day?

“the abc has to spend some money on potplants , paying a few bucks a year to keep a server running is too much money”

Ah, that’s better, as you were.

The Rev Dodgson said:

Geoff D said:

In the words of the great man himself

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvs4bOMv5Xw

For some reason I’ve always associated the phrase with Frankie Howard, rather than KW, but whether Frank nicked it from Ken, or vice versa, or I’ve just misremembered, I have no idea.

It was a long time ago.

Carry on Cleo was released in 1964, and Up Pompeii in 1968, so it looks like Ken is indeed the originator (or Ken’s script writer, I suppose).