Entropy

What do we think of her predictions? Do we know what she predicted for 2005? That might give a clue to whether she's just making it up as she goes along.

Bloody hell. What a delightful prospect.

Happy new year and all that good stuff. We'll be taking our Christmas decorations down on Friday (and probably for several weeks after that).

So the Queen forgot to knight you again, did she, Windsor? And here's me thinking it was going to be Sir Windsor from now on.

One can easily do that by trolling. I didn't think that being banned from a site would be sufficient to have the "page cannot be displayed" notice come up. Wouldn't you be able to access the front page of the site but just not log in?

So is everybody going to enjoy Christmas even if there aren't any more deaths? Or will all this good health ruin the holidays for anyone?

Or Ena Sharples without the hairnet. Rupert Murdoch would be proud of Rolf, defacing the Queen like that.

Some of them are, yes. There was an article in Time a couple of years ago about the Left Behind book series and all the people in the Bible Belt who were sitting waiting for the Rapture. Unfortunately some of them are trying to hurry it along in various ways. I just hope that none of them are sitting in or near the White House, but I think there may be some religious extremists there. At least Ashcroft is no longer among them.

They are, of course. This is an excuse for the Religious Right to make a fuss about how the Bad Guys are destroying the country. Some shops have been instructing their employees to say "happy holidays" rather than "merry Christmas" and have been playing secular songs rather than Christian carols in the stores, and some schools have tried to be inclusive and refer to the holidays rather than Christmas - recognising the fact that there are people other than Christians who visit shops and attend schools - and the Religious Right has its knickers in a twists about it again. Happens every year, but this year they're being particularly loud about it.

Nah - you can keep Windsor. I'll settle for some books.

Thanatology.

That'll really help to make the rest of the neighbourhood sympathise with them... I thought all this stuff about the so-called war on Christmas was confined to the USA, where the Christian 85% majority are doing their "we're the persecuted underdog" act. I gather it's going on in the UK as well?

Happy belated birthday! Just emerged from a deadline at work, so I'm catching up on things. I hope you get separate presents for your birthday and Christmas.

The site went online in late 1996 - but I have just realised the counter is badly flawed as it only records hits on the home page. The full site (including the forum) itself gets about 300,000 page views each month from about 40,000 unique visitors. 2005 so far for - 3.5 million page views from 481,000 unique visitors Those are impressive figures, it's good to know that DeathList is even more popular than the Site Meter indicates. I wonder how the numbers compare to the Royal Forums, perhaps Elspeth can enlighten us. This is the Royal Forums tracker thingy; I'm not sure if it's got the data you're looking for, but there do seem to be numbers of unique visitors and so on; it's just that I don't seen anything where the numbers have been tracked since the site opened. http://extremetracking.com/open?login=royalfor

Isn't it cheating to put someone on the 2006 list who's known to be terminally ill by the end of 2005? Or is it a case of "they all count"?

Considering that she was in a more serious relationship with an Arab for several years before meeting Dodi Fayed, it's surprising that a few weeks' acquaintanceship with Fayed would have bothered the Secret Service more than years of an affair with Hasnat Khan.

Yes - it does make my Royal Forums avatar look fairly benign, doesn't it?

Depends if they're Democrats or Republicans. These days most things seem to be seen through the bias of one's political position: for Republicans Karl Rove is a scapegoat, and for Democrats he's a criminal.

Sir! Please! The Queen Mary is alive and well and berthed at Long Beach Harbor. Seen her there myself.

Blimey. I didn't know you cared. It's the international radiation-warning sign. Plenty of entropy in radioactive materials you know. And most of them are fairly lethal. Mandy very kindly made me one. You overestimate my abilities around computers if you think I'm capable of uploading it without help. Just be patient. Well, there's the little matter of the Atlantic Ocean to contend with, so it had better be a deep hypnosis cos it's a long swim.

Thank you, dear.

I don't know about George Bush, but Dick Cheney is becoming increasingly despised, as is Donald Rumsfeld. People are beginning to see who's really behind some of the more malevolent idiocies of the current Administration, and it ain't Dubya.

It isn't only royal children who have their destiny determined at birth. Children (especially sons) born into mega-rich families (Maxwells, Murdochs, Kennedys etc) are expected to carry on the family business when the "old man" is no longer around. And Prince Charles could, in theory at least, have removed himself from the line of succession at any time in the past, eg by marrying a Catholic woman. I believe there is a Japanese princess who did exactly that recently (and no, I don't mean marrying a Catholic woman). The Japanese princess became a commoner automatically by marrying a commoner; it didn't have to do with religion, just status.

Trouble is, the people in power usually manage to exempt themselves from some of the more annoying stuff they impose on the rest of us.

Thank you. I see you're an entire order of magnitude ahead of me in post count here.