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He was nothing 'till I edited his ass!'

In fairness, Moore agrees somewhat with that sentiment.  

He was nothing 'till I edited his ass!'

In fairness, Moore agrees somewhat with that sentiment.  

... I always thought Tom across as a bit fascist.

Agreed, but the genius of Moore means that even this aspect is both explored and subverted by various storylines and characters (Tom Stone etc.).  Even though Tom Strong is supposed to be a light fun Doc Savage type romp, Moore gives his clean-cut hero enough layers to be much more satisfying without being grim'n'gritty - his bizarre relationship with his father, the tragedy of his mother's life, his odd values.  

Perhaps cadet Beeny will get a revalation and turn on old stoney face.

I live for the day.  If Dredd has to go one day, it oughta be America Beeny that does the deed.

The child of the Sov Vin Diesel that Vienna had transplanted?

I don't like the Cooper Dredds much at all, but his current stuff is really great, and Johnny Red was just brilliant.  Interview would be great.

I'm still convinced that Batson is an algorithm undergoing an elaborate Turing Test, with our responses being used to evaluate a Weak AI hypothesis.  I can just see this question being randomly generated.  Which is my way of saying, no idea mate.

carbon footprint

Cor, it didn't take long for that phrase to get irritating!

You wonder how many importants sites have been hurriedly bulldozed by a contractor who has had experience of this kind of thing in the past.

Lots.  And they're not shy about sharing the fact when they find out your profession.

Who makes the distinction between grave robbers and archaeology? Do it in ten years - the jail, wait 500 years fat research grant.

If you only saw the mountains of paper wasted on that debate... I would personally be happy if I never saw another dead body of any type, never mind dug one up.  The ability to double-think and the utter lack of respect for other peoples' beliefs in the archaeological community is actually profoundly depressing, even with regard to bodies of one's "own culture", never mind the dead of others.  

Just one example, of many:   Last year i had attend a site where a Children's Burial Ground (okay, a ditch outside a convent wall  for unbaptised or still-born kids, in use up to the 1960's, I'd guess) had been disturbed during levelling for an extension to a school carpark.  The situation hadn't been helped by the arrival of the cops, who further mangled things and carried off a random assortment of bones for what reason I can't imagine.

It was a heart-breaking scene, with little egg-thin skulls and twiglike ribs everywhere, parts of little unfused pelvises looking like tiny bone ears.  I tidied things up as best I could, fenced the area off, and told the contractors to piss off home (they were supposed to have had an archaeologist (me) present because we had suspected there might be something like this so close to a convent, but had decided to go ahead regardless - so fuck them).

I contacted the school and told them they'd have to leave that bit of the carpark out (about five spaces), and got an earful from the Principal demanding that I hoof out all the bodies and let them get on with it.  A Catholic school, I might add, and the bodies almost certainly belong to the brothers and sisters or uncles and aunts of living local residents, maybe even their children.  Dig 'em out for a few car parking spaces.  At least I held that line, by explaining how unbelievably expensive that would be - money at least has power to shock.

I then rang the National Museum, as I'm legally required to, and told them that as the site was of no scientific interest, I was going to  get the ground reinstated, and I would gather all the disturbed bones up (apart from the ones the cops had nicked, that is) and re-inter them as best I could.  No dice.  These were important archaeological objects, apparently, and had to be examined by a specialist osteo-archaeologist and permanently stored in the Museum.  Further, the cops needed a forensic analysis carried out of the bones they'd recovered.  Of some randomly selected 19th/20th century bones that their roving plods had scooped up.

I ended up very, very angry.  The human misery that these short lives had been at the centre of, denied even a burial place in consecrated ground beside their relatives, buried in hole scooped in a ditch probably at night by their shattered parents in the belief that their limbo-bound souls would have some peace because they were at least close to the holiness of the nuns within the convent, and no-one could see their way to preventing yet more indignities being heaped on their tiny remains.  Disgusting.

I have no religious beliefs whatsoever, but I like to think I can respect those of others.  

I wouldn't want to be cremated, knowing how it's done just doesn't sound good.

I dig up bodies for a living, both inhumed and cremated, and I'm insisting on being cremated, no question (although not quite yet, please).  I've never been to an archaeological colleague's funeral where they weren't cremated, even older quite strict Catholics for whom cremation is a bit of a novelty.  Trust me on this, it's clean and it's final.

By the way, most chapels are not directly connected to the crematorium furnace, and when the coffin goes through the curtains, there's usually a short journey to the actual furnace (even by van, in places), and resultant delay.  it's very unlikely that mourners are ever going to be in the building long enough to be warmed by heat from the cremation of their own loved ones.

dont know if any one else oop t'north saw this but a church in tameside wants to use the heat fromthe crematorium to heat the church.

My better half used to work in a poorly heated Death Records office attached to a major urban crematorium, and when it was cold they regularly used to head down to the furnace room to keep warm.  She points out (correctly) that human bodies are bloody hard to burn, and huge amounts of heat have to added to the process, not least through the coffin wood.  Even then the bones have to be powdered mechanically afterwards.  So most of the 'heat' isn't being produced by the burning body at all, but by the gas furnace and coffin wood.  Seems a shame to waste it.

Oh dear Grud no.  Bring back the Cleveland Indians, sez I!

WHT to the awesome boob-exposing shenanigans of Tiger Sun/Dragon Moon?  I was enjoying that tenuously-Dredd-related thing, I was.

...each installment was done by a different writer, Rennie (1390), Wagner (1475), and Edginton (1551)..

No way!  That can't be right, can it?  It has Edginton all over it (difficult stain to get out, I hear).