Aha! A Questionnaire! Let's see how Talossan I am...

Q1. Do you have a favourite sports team? Who and why?
Sports? I've never been interested in sports... Sumo is perhaps my favourite – but that's not a team sport.

Q2. What are your favourite hobbies during your free time?
Reading, listening to music, writing music, writing books.  Highest on the list, though, is listening to music.

Q3. Pixar or Marvel?
<puzzled look> ?? what??

Q4. If you had the opportunity to live in the capital city of any sovereign nation, other than Talossa, which would it be and why?   
Oh, that's easy – Paris. It is beautiful, it I full of great art, it is elegant, I loved the food there... and it's where I first visited on my honeymoon.

Q5. How do you cut your sandwiches? Diagonally, not at all, or another shape? Maybe you take off the crust?
Probably diagonally – though on picnics they're square-ish. I don't really care how they're cut – just let me eat them!

Q6. Do you have a favourite podcast to recommend?
No one favourite, though I do listen to some of the BBC podcasts from time to time.

Q7. Apple or Android? 
Silly question <grin>: Apple, of course! Is anything else possible?

Q8. What is Talossa's most attractive feature?  What brought you here?
Its people and its eccentricity.

Q9. Which one of the Rocky movies is the best?
<another puzzled look> What? What are you talking bout? (Actually, I know what you're talking about, but – really – that's an obscene question!)

Q10. Skydiving, or deep-sea exploratory submarine?
I would love to go deep-sea.  The water on this planet teems with extraordinary life, and elegant complexity and huge emptiness and dense crowds of living creatures: it is beautiful.
Now if you had asked about outer space – ah, that would have certainly been at the top of my list.

Q11.  What is your favourite movie and why?
Not sure. Princess Bride? Coming to America? Shakespeare in Love? West Side Story?

Q12.  Do you have a favourite Avenger?
<yet another puzzled look> what?

Q13. What would be three books, articles, or other such materials that you might recommend to all of Talossa for reading?   
Three very different books: "Once On A Time", A.A.Milne; "The Faber Book of Modern Verse" (1952 edition); "Life A User's Manual" / "La vie mode d'emploi" Georges Perec.
Why? The Milne is a lovely fairy story, both adult and child, full of humour. The modern verse is precious to me, as sentimentally part of my teenage years, and beyond – my real introduction to poetry. The Perec is just like a delicate jigsaw puzzle (analogous to his own description of it), which links together different strands of narrative into one beautifully entwined whole.

Q14.  Who/what is your favourite music artist/band/genre?
Ooh – this could be a long answer! My favourite music is that of Bach – his organ works in particular – though Mozart is nearly as good. The artist(s)? I'm not sure that I have one favourite: it is the music itself that speaks. Genre? Boring, I know – but without doubt classical. And that covers everything from the 12th century to the 21st, and (in my opinion) includes jazz and Stravinsky and Ives and Vivaldi and Debussy and... <insert long list here>

Q15. Are you a reader, a writer, a speaker, or a listener?
I read a lot. I write quite a bit. I speak in public quite often – and I get a huge amount from listening.  So, all four.

Q16. What are your distinct and separate feelings on the colours of green, red, and pink?
We can see more shades of green than any other colour (I am told). When I look out of the windows where I live there is green everywhere. Red reminds me of infrared, and heat, and red shift, and danger and fire. Strong, violent. But pink? I am fed up with pink being a "girl's colour". I'm a bloke, but I have pink shirts; my wife is definitely a girl, and wears blue. My daughter is driven bonkers by the fact that boy's teeshirts have brutal logos on them, and are of "macho" colours – brown, khaki, brilliant orange with power words and heroes emblazoned on them, but girls clothes are pink and soft and have fluffy edges and pink and have no pockets and pink and don't like mud and pink... Which is a pity, because there are some very lovely pink flowers.
And girls do like mud.

Q17.  Do you have a favourite flavour of ice cream? If not, what is a favourite dessert? 
Um chocolate-ginger... or maybe rum and raisin or perhaps raspberry ripple... my wife is a wonderful cook!

Q18.  How do you feel about jam versus jelly? 
Translation, please. Jam is the sticky stuff, usually a preserved fruit with sugar, which comes in a jar. Jelly is that wobbly stuff that's transparent / translucent, sometimes is served (wobbling) on a plate, and of all sorts of (wobbling) bright colours loved by kids (including me). One of my friends says that it's impossible to find completely vegetarian jelly, but (hush) don't tell your animal-loving friends.

Q19. Do you play any video games in your free time? Which?
Not really. Sudoku occasionally.

Q20.  If you could eat an apple right now, or a pear, which would you rather?
Depends on the time of year. Right now (middle of June, northern hemisphere), an apple; but later in the year, when the pear tree in our garden is in fruit, a pear.

Quote from: Miestră Schivă, UrN on June 14, 2021, 09:05:29 PM
....
Hmmm. You know, I forgot that I put the term "Talossan values" in there, and I'm not sure I still like it, so happy to hear alternatives. I think honestly we have to go at this through a negative definition - i.e. it's far easier to declare that a Court is not "credible" or doesn't abide by our values than the other way around (i.e. it doesn't provide a fair trial in the way we would recognize it in Talossa, because of lack of judicial independence or serious bias against certain kinds of people.)
....

My personal opinion is that Talossa should accept NO other court as binding over Talossa. That is, if a citizen is convicted in some foreign court of some offence, then it is up to a Talossan Cort in the first instance to accept or ignore that foreign ruling. "Does the alleged offence contravene Talossan Law?" is the first question, and "Has the foreign court reached its opinion in a manner that seems, to Talossa, to be just?".  Thus we, in Talossa, should decide, case by case, whether to proceed under Talossan Law and jurisdiction, and are not inevitably bound by any external judgement (except, as I try always to remind us, for offences against human rights as internationally recognised).
In most cases this will be an easy decision - for example, an offence committed in and tried in California is very likely to be accepted within Talossa with no further real questioning; but an offence allegedly committed in Iran, and tried there, requires careful - very careful - inspection by us before we proceed. I have Iranian friends whose tales should not be listened to if you are at all queasy; some of my friends are refugees here in the UK on the basis of their having spoken publicly about police brutality.

Thus, I suggest, Talossa should accept the rulings of NO foreign courts, except those upholding internationally recognised human rights.  This would mean that we have no obligation to define within our Laws the meaning of "just" and "unjust" in foreign courts, but only in our own.

Quote from: Baron Alexandreu Davinescu on June 13, 2021, 12:37:06 PM

QuoteA court may order the suspension of all or part of any sentence, for a period of time not to exceed two calendar years. At the end of the period of suspension ordered by the court, the suspended punishment is rescinded if the offender has not violated any condition of the suspension.

This seems weird.   Two years is not a long time for probation, especially for serious crimes.  I'd suggest five years.

Be careful to define, within Talossan Law, the meaning of the word "probation"... I believe its meaning differs on the two sides of the Atlantic.

I have now paid $5.00 US.

I wish to stand for office in the L'Etats.

I would humbly like you to consider
storage.calculates.irksome
or, In French:
patience.verbaux.éditrice
for my homestead.  This is at the joining of several ways into, out of, and within Talossa, and also marks my infuriating nagging and expertise in computing (and writing books).

If we choose also to include any Celtic language, it would be
bwytawyr.llosgiad.maeres
(eaters, incense, mayor)

Count me in, too! It's a language I even speak (well, a little).

Quote from: Baron Alexandreu Davinescu on May 19, 2021, 09:33:23 PM...
I don't know that it's really as simple as "the longer, the more incentive," necessarily. 
...

A statement may be both simple and true: that's (partly) what good science is about. And it's (partly) what good conversation is about, too.

Many, many congratulations!

Quote from: GV on April 10, 2021, 07:51:15 AM
...Had the lifetime monarchy won out convincingly, the Compromise never would have existed.  This is not what happened.  As with Brexit in the United Kingdom, and even more than with Brexit, the people gave themselves a split-decision.  Brexit was 52-48.  The monarchy referendum of 2020 was much closer. 
...

As an aside: Brexit is a ****ing disaster. Total ****ing disaster  :( :( :(

Quote from: GV on April 13, 2021, 09:52:44 PM
...
5. If the Talossan language is not worked on, Talossa dies.  Period.
...

No, not "Period" but "Question Mark".  In England eleven hundred years ago there was no English language. There were, instead, a number of imported, and local, languages used in particular areas. Then "William The Bastard" (... that's what he was called in France: we now call him William the Conquerer) came over and imposed French as the courtly language, and language of administration.

That did not work, as "the people" were not going to drop the way they had been speaking for centuries. BUT French words and terms were added to the local languages, and because of more safe movement around the island the local languages and dialects influenced each other more and more... and English evolved (slowly) towards what it is now. All the time England, as a concept, continued to exist. England existed before English.

Now in England we have I don't know how many languages spoken: in most but not all places English is the main form of communication - for example, in parts of London you have to use Chinese, in West London you use Bengali or or Punjabi, in north London it may well be Yiddish or Turkish. In many places we use dialects of English which I, personally, find unintelligible - and I've lived here for well over seventy years.

But England is still England.  England is bigger than English.

And Talossa is bigger than the Talossan language.

Quote from: Txosuè Éiric Rôibeardescù on April 15, 2021, 04:27:44 AM

Christ, is this you trying to build a consensus? I hear honey attacks more Bees then salt.

Some of us, here in Talossa, keep bees in other lands. Any citizen who visits me personally shall, henceforth, be offered a jar of my very locally produced honey - from the beehives in my garden.  :)

Treason is an offence against the state itself ("high treason") and not internal violent dissent ("petty treason").  Most nations have dropped the concept of "petty treason" and use "treason" to mean "high treason" - which is what, I presume, we do (and shall do) here in Talossa. For that particular Crime Repugnant to Talossanity I think we have no need for the Justices to be involved in contentious deliberation: the answers to "Is this person trying to kill the monarch?" and "Is this person supporting external war against Talossa?" make the question "Is this (potentially) treason?" a clear one.

I do indeed intend to retain my position as Lord Warden.

Outside of this noble nation I personally am, in body, rather unwell - which explains much of my absence. But be assured that my wish - my strong wish - is to be an active citizen and functionary within Talossa. And it is only my body, not my mind, that is affected by illness.

I am still here, and I shall be more visible.

55RZ18 - Për