Tomb raider

Chest pains for Dick Cheney. Serious enough to be taken to hospital, serious enough to hope for more?

Was there a character named 'Boner' in Growing pains?!?!

Let's put it this way: I'm sure the level of health care in most of the developed western countries is outstanding. Of course, there's always plenty of room for improvement, but on the whole, we're hardly in any position to complain. The debate in this thread however, was not about which of those outstanding medical branches was the best, but about how to finance that health care system. One way or another, someone has to pay for it: countries that have fully state-funded health care don't have some anonymous philantropist paying for all the hospitals and medicins, those costs are covered by taxes and whatever other revenues the state might have. It's as much your money as if you would have paid your own bills with it. It's just not as much of it. I think sharing the costs is a moral obligation, and the only way to ensure that all of us have the same access to health care. I understand that state funding has its disadvantages, though. In the Netherlands we have privatised insurance companies, that are to some extent regulated by law to keep their prices affordable, to maintain the level of coverage and to make sure no-one is excluded. Basic insurance - compulsary for everyone - costs somewhere between 80 and 100 euros per month (110-135 USD), minors are insured for free. Low-income groups are granted a subsidy, everyone has a small own risk which I believe adds up to about 200 euros, 270 USD, per year. I believe in the benefits of more control by the state, and I fear privatised insurance companies whose sole aim is to make as much profit as possible. The Dutch system however, is a smart combination of state control (by making insurance compulsary, among other things) and free market efficiency (by the drive to keep prices down and, because of the competition, to keep services up). It's not the perfect system, but it has the best of two worlds. CarolAnn: there's no way I'd marginalize your father's sacrifices, but why should a military widow have free health care, that a fireman's widow, a plumber's widow or a teacher's widow doesn't get? There is nothing your mother should apologize for, but I think that everyone should have the same access, without fear of receiving huge bills afterwards.

Site updated. regards, Hein I have such a big smile on my face right now. February almost at an end, we have 3 hits while the DL (who have been doing this for over 20 years) only have 1. Made my day. And what's more: we're not just smarter, we're prettier as well. Or at least I am.

Vaagheid: Dutch radioman Hendrik 'Bull' Verweij, number 5 at the Dutch Dead Pool is as dead as a dodo! Yippiekayee!

Is it me or are most of the hotel deaths drugs-related? 'Live the wild life, become a rockstar, die young, vomiting or in some other embarassing pose in some cheap sh*thole motel...'

Jazz-legend Chet Baker died in a hotel. Or actually: he fell from a window and died in front of the hotel. Dutch artist, painter, drug addict, bird lover, media personality and alcoholic Herman Brood jumped off the roof of the Amsterdam Hilton Hotel. That's not in a hotel either, but it would qualify technically, wouldn't it? (His wiki mentions the way he tried to get rid of his drug addiction: ' Toward the end of his life, Brood vowed to abstain from most drugs, reducing his drug use to alcohol and a daily shot of speed ("2 grams per day").' Two grams?!?! Wow... that's some rehabilitation program...) Other famous hotel deaths I can think of are cyclist Marco Pantani and Blues Brother John Belushi.

Ferdinand Kübler, winner of the Tour de France in 1950 and nicknamed the 'pedalling madman' or 'the eagle of Adliswil', is not only the oldest Tourwinner alive, he's the oldest ever. He's now 90 years old, and as no former Tour champion has ever made it to nonagenarian status (second-oldest Lucien Buysse, the winner of 1926, made it to 87), I'd say he makes a decent DDP-pick. Kübler had been the inspiration for many strong cycling stories. He sometimes had huge amounts of mucus hanging out of his mouth, which led his fellow cyclist to the warning: 'don't come close to the madman, he might infect you with rabies!' He also had the rather strange habit of talking about himself in third person, always naming himself 'Ferdi'. Out of the 33 Tour champs that have already died, only 15 made it to 60. There seems to be some curse involved, as three of them died in WW I (Faber, Lapize, Petit-Breton), and there were several suicides (Pantani, Pottier, Ocana), some rather fishy accidents (Koblet) or even murder (Bottecchia, Pelissier) involved. Picking former Tour champions might be a good idea, that's why Kubler ánd Fignon are at my team. O, and when it comes to Fignon: his terminal pancreatic cancer played a role in that too.

You're right, of course. We should probably understand this in a more metaphorical way: the idea that controlling ones physique is the same as controlling the entire individual. Medievals understood the resurrection not as a spiritual matter, a gathering of souls, so to speak, but as actually rematerializing flesh and blood. So it is with cryonics-supporters: it would be much easier (and tidier) to place one's trust in reincarnation, but for some reason people tend to believe that their personality is inextricably bound to their bodies. No, it wouldn't. Unless, of course, you could freeze and defrost yourself over and over again... It's one of those golden food conservation rules that you oughtn't do that, though. You could argue that conquering death is not just about eternal life or defying the actual moment of dying. It's also about living on in individual or collective memory. People who choose to freeze their bodies seem to forget that this aspect is crucial if they actually want future generations to revive them. You and Josco were right to point out that we have no reason to assume that those future generations will feel obligated to do so.

I attended the inaugural speech of the new professor of Medieval History at my university last week. The theme of her lecture was cloning - the point she made was that recent attempts to withstand death (and I suppose cryogenics is another example of that) were not so different from their medieval counterparts as expressed in literature and arts. The worship of bodyparts - for example Hirst's diamond skull or the idolization of the perfect body as expressed by those undergoing plastic surgery - is more or less the same as the way medievals worshipped relics. Many medieval theologians stated that the os sacrum, between the hips at the lower end of the spine, was the bodypart from which all bodies would be reformed at the End of Days. (The Belgian physician Andreas Vesalius mentioned the big toe, however, which was probably due to a mistranslation of some kind.) All you had to do to make sure that you wouldn't miss the resurrection, was to keep your sacrum intact. Special attention had to be paid to the peculiar cases of cannibals. As parts of their bodies was constructed from the flesh of other people, to whom would that flesh be awarded? The answer to this question came closest to the modern concept of cloning. The point I'm trying to make here, is that the unwillingness to let go your physical form is not at all new. It's rooted deeply in our culture and the way we consider life and death, as well as the value of our bodies. Don't judge too early those people who intend to freeze their bodies after death, they're not as eccentric as you might think.

Chris Eubank? All my money was on al-Megrahi (2nd) or Biggs (3rd). I really don't know who turned out no. 1. Were there thát many DDP'ers who picked Rubinstein? The top 10 (according to MIB) thus far: 1. ???????????????????????? 2. Abdelbaset al-Megrahi 3. Ronnie Biggs 4. Fidel Castro 5. Sir Norman Wisdom 6. Kirk Douglas 7. Ariel Sharon 8. Billy Graham 9. Elizabeth Taylor 10. Zsa Zsa Gabor Edit: I cheated and checked on the DDP... but it's up to MIB to open the winners envelope.

Lula might die this year !!!The curse of the Squid is on him!!! . He is a thief and a trickster!!! . His son Lulinha has just sold 400 buffalos to Venezuela at 4,000 US Dollars per head. Soon there will be a new shipment totalling 1000 heads !!! the total ammount will be 4 Million US Dolllars. Lulinha´s son is The notorious Daniel Dantas´s partner in many businesses. Lulinha himself already owns 170.000 heads of cattle and the they have the seal of approval from the Brazilian government for export . Lula net worth is only 360,000 US Dollars!!! Howcome ??? Commies are so funny!!! Yes, Niemeyer please see the monster you created !!! If your Lulinha is the same as this one, I know where he got the money. (In fact, if he happens to own four million dollars, he's probably wondering what has happened to the rest of his fortune...)

MIB: we're still waiting for the top three-spots in the DDP-countdown! I placed a bet on them (and I'm too lazy to count the number of picks on the DDP itself... )

Priebke again!

My second DDP-hit!!! WOOOOOT!!!!! Provided that she will get a UK-obit, of course.

I often wonder about terms like this. It's supposed to mean something like 'this is very funny', but what's so funny about your sister having met David Attenborough? Unless that was a joke... Do I have to read 'sister' with a wink? Were you actually talking about your rather feminine brother? Or is the 'meeting' part the laughworthy thing? She 'met' him ( )...

D'oh! Can I change the excuse for not picking him to that he didn't pass the "You can't pick anyone sentenced to die" rule? As he was sentenced to death four times, he is not just dead, he's supposed to be even deader. They might have done the same to him as to Braveheart: dismemberment, decapitation and hanging. If they'd stoned the remains, that would have made four, and he would have been deadest.

We often complain about the lack of news from the (hopefully) dying celebs. If the Hoff is about to kick the bucket, we'll be able to witness it from nearby, though. If any of us is going to watch his realityshow, that is... The Hoff intends to give his adorable daughters Slutty and Nutty's showbizz-career a boost. As I very much doubt their singing and acting skills - they're very much like their father - it might be a laugh.

As mentioned elsewhere on the forum, Jean Simmons died. That's a unique DDP-pick for the team with the rather curious name 'Dead, dead and never called me mother', good for 9 points and a shared number 2 spot. Is it me, or are things moving rather slow at the DDP? By this time last year, there were three times as many hits (21 to 7). Or are we just waiting for obits?

She was even mentioned at the website of the dutch national broadcast NOS... They fell for the cool nick: "The Codmother", I suppose.

Oh well pardon me for not getting your approval first you miserable sack of sock lint. So my topic wasn't up to par for you? Just how many topics have you bothered trying to create? 2 from what your profile shows. I made a topic, I targeted a specific set of names in my own round-about way of pointing the finger of doom at Jane Fonda. The names listed were people who are in an age realm/category ripe for the picking by the Coffin Packers Association. You don't care for the topic, you have options----------1)Don't post in the topic 2)Create a topic which you feel is better 3)Bring it to the moderators, explaining your concerns and ask for it to be moved or merged. I thought silly and useless was OK around here. Besides it's not about common surnames but fairly similar women's first names, or, to be specific, as Bruno has been, those called Jane, Jayne, Jeanne, Jean and Joan. I assume a Jo, Jade, Janis or Jasmin would need to be featured elsewhere. And besides the first besides, while there may be some silliness to it, as is Bruno's wont, I can think of a lot more useless threads than this one.Besides the two besides I would add a "not only that" and that's this: it's a pretty impressive list of candidates. Far from being branded as useless, the list should be celebrated. One concession, to add to the three besides and the not only that, is that if everyone was to make first name lists, such as all the old famous Johns, for example, it could get a bit sillier. But if those lists were in this thread it would give it a kind of symmetry and justification, not that it needs either. On the other hand (to add to the besides etc), Bruno may object to his thread being hijacked in such a cavalier fashion. Or he may not. What does any of it matter? Twerps like Tomb are why Godot and others can't be bothered coming around here any more. People create topics, moderators and the staff approve or disapprove of the topic and let it stand alone or merge it with another or delete it. People like Tomb make snide remarks and snipe at the person who creates the topic and people are turned off by the antagonistic attitude and leave, never to be seen here again. I suggest that Tomb and her/his ilk go create their own site so they can delete every topic which fails to meet their desires.....of course, this would mean they'd have a site with very few if any topics. Right. You forgot to take your pills again, Bruno? But as you seem to be quite agitated by my post, I'll try to explain myself further. You're right that you have every right to create whatever thread you like and I don't have the authority to do anything about it. I do have the right to express my feelings about it, though, and so I did. If you don't want people to respond, don't even try and start. All your Janes (or anything that even vaguely sounds like that) are discussed (or at least can be discussed) elsewhere on the forum. The only reason to bring them together would be... er... I don't know? Is there any point, actually? If my 'snide remarks' were aimed at a vulnerable and insecure My Little Pony-girl, your accusation of me scaring off people would make sense. I was talking to you, however, and I reckoned you were able to take it a little bit better. Don't let my antagonism limit your (cough) creativity and brabble away.

As speedskating is the only olympic event in which the Dutch can be sure of at least a couple of medals, I wholeheartedly disagree... We can cut the number of events, though. , for example, is the most boring game ever invented - and with cricket, golf and bowls, the competition is stiff.

That has to be a ... They're tough guys (and ladies, I suppose), but they can't keep on defying the odds. Now I think about it... bobsleighing is , of course.

Forgive me, but this thread looks silly and useless to me. Of course, we could grant every common surname their own place on this forum, but what is the point?

Two DDP'ers very much hope that the rumour is true... She's worth ten points.