Great choice. Definitely a new sound. Hip hop with a little bit of MIA and a lot of grime. I like it.

Yes! I was hoping somebody would post this. The future of music is in slums of Durban, Sao Paolo and Mumbai. (I realise Die Antwoord aren't exactly slum-born, but their inspiration is)

This is actually sort of "new" unlike most of what people post. I don't particularly like it though.

It's an original piece of music only in the sense that it is an interpretation. But this piece was written by Grieg. And I don't know what La Serenissima you are talking about? It's either a genre or a period ensemble - or the San Marino football team.

And are you sure it wasn't LES Grossman?

Great write up Dave. How lucky we are to have someone like you to explain this stuff to us!

Hmm OK. I guess it makes sense in a country with large expanses with almost no population. But if the firefighters are getting paid by the city, why is the argument made that they are refusing to put out the fire as an incentive to pay the yearly fee - because without those fees they wouldn't be able to run the fire…

Maybe you haven't had a house burned down BECAUSE there is a professional firefighting squad at alert at all times? Do you listen to the police scanner every night? A lot of fires never get reported because they never get serious - because the fire department puts it out before it gets serious. And are they really…

Yes. This. Why is this not even suggested by most Americans here? The fear of taxes extends even to liberal blogs it seems. Why is this any different than public healthcare?

Because it is a god damn fire? I mean come ON!? It is so incredibly small an amount. And do you really have a problem with it being a requirement to pay to have fires put out? What is the reasoning behind something like that being optional? Some kind of distorted and misunderstood freedom ideal? Wake up people and…

Or firefighters could be hired and paid by the government. I mean, WHY would you want something like firefighting, policing etc. run like this? I just don't get the American mindset on this. What would the downsides to public firefighters be? (A lot of countries have them...) You would pay a minuscule amount through…

Yup: [en.wikipedia.org]

Agreed. I just think that specific genre definition is bollocks. I predict that Frank Herbert would have scoffed at having Dune categorized as planetary romance. But let's let it lie.

But I genuinely think Dune IS better than the Gor, Pern etc. books. The sub genre planetary romance is in my mind a construct to contain a vast array of works - spanning from the banal to the complex, and I honestely don't think it is needed. In my mind it is all literature - but not all of it is good.

I recognise that it contains elements of a planetary romance, but to heap it in with Gor, Pern, Tom Swift, Flash and Buck Rogers is neither correct nor fair. The complexity of Dunes characters, politics and religion greatly overshadow the romantic base plot - in my opinion at least. Nobody agrees?? I is sad.

Dune? Planetary romance? It's set on a planet alright but other than that I think you are WAY off.

Done. And bought as a gift as well. Two copies are better than one.

Oh there is definitely an immediate salinisation, but in the long term it would be beneficial.

I see no reason not to heed the advice of the Generation IV International Forum. And their prime candidate has to be the molten salt reactor - preferably the thorium version. Thorium is abundant and ALL thorium will do - not the measly 0,7 percent of viable uranium.

China have just started building a Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor or LFTR: [www.telegraph.co.uk] and India is building a Seed and Blanket Thorium Reactor which is a combination reactor that uses mainly Thorium.