выборы 2012

It's strange how the incumbent in these countries that have only the appearance of democracy, seems always to be returned to office

Is George Zimmerman racist?

George Zimmerman is actually a spanish speaking Hispanic. Though he does appear very white, so he's probably mixed race

True Blood season 4

Alan Ball has said categorically that vampires in True Blood aren't metaphorical or allegorical in any way. They exist for their own sake, not to convey a deeper meaning. So perhaps that is what the season needs. A deeper story line beyond, "Look! Here's a bunch of vampires.

Social Media

I use Opinion Patch almost exclusively, since I'm kind of known here. Occasionally I'll use twitter

I hate birds...and here's why

The latest place I lived in had a tree on the neighbors lawn right near my house. I have no idea what type of tree it was, but the birds flocked to it! And not just any birds. These were the noisiest, most heinous birds sent by the devil himself. Every morning, even before the sun came up, these noisy little fuckers went into overdrive. It was impossible to sleep! It was completely torturous.

Fortunately I've moved since then. My partner has suggested that we put a bird feeder in the back yard. You can imagine how I reacted to that

Spike Lee

The couple's attorney, Matt Morgan, announced that Spike Lee has settled out of court. Elaine and David McClain are in their 70s and say they have a son named William George Zimmerman. Of course, he's no relation to Goerge Zimmerman, Neighborhood Watch captain and killer

What is a dirigible?

A dirigible is an airship, like the Zeppelin

Your favourite book?

I haven't read that book. I think it was made into a movie. Do you like crime novels in general

The "good old days" are overrated

Some people, particularly older people, often talk about the "good old days", some generic historical period when everything was better. That's right, everything. Now I'm sure there are changes that have happened to your world that you don't like. But aren't some of the changes an improvement?

I think the "good old days" has two problems. Firstly, they don't really exist. Humans have a propensity to remember the good and forget the pain. That's why women go back and have more babies, because the pain isn't remembered intensely anymore. It's called "wearing rose coloured glasses". This means the "good old days"

Is George Zimmerman Jewish?

Lots of people are saying that he is. Is this true

Robert Pattinson

Is he the guy from Twilight

Peter Hamilton My Kitchen Rules

One of Peter Hamilton's favourite expressions was "Payback's a bitch!" as he promised to take out Carly and Emily who he perceived had voted against him in the instant restaurant round. He went up against them in the sudden death cook off where one team would be eliminated. As they were going into this final round, he once again remarked about Carly and Emily, "Payback's a bitch!"

But payback is a bitch when it's directed against yourself. Peter Hamiliton and his partner Gay were eliminated from the My Kitchen Rules competetion, beaten by Carly and Emily

I'm being bullied at school

there r sum kids at school or are bullying me. wot can i

What is Yandex?

Ah yes. YandexBot. The little bot that comes to visit but forgets to invite any of his friends.

Yandex.ru is Russias premium search engine. My understanding is that Yandex is bigger in Russia than even Google. As far as I can tell, it's not associated with any other search engine and does all its own spidering.

Many webmasters tell me that Yandex sends them no traffic. And yet YandexBot is always at their site. I think that's probably all down to the language difference. Yandex searches speak Russian. Your site is in English. So there's little wonder that they don't click on a site that they may not ever been

Whats the current opinion on Yandex

I see a lot of negatives on Yandex, but it all seems to be from back in 2010. But, things change. They now have an english speaking site, which looks legit. When I type my site name into it, I come up first -- in fact -- in the first 8 or 9 listings. So that's cool. (I just checked google, and it comes up in a similar fashion on google, even though I never see their bot visiting my site.)
I'm thinking I'll keep it. I have gotten a few Russkies on the site and I like having a #1 spot on any freakin' search engine.

Whats the prevailing opinion these days?

OpinionJournal

I think of Opinion Patch as a type of journal of the thoughts going through your head at the time, for sure

Jason Russell mind control

Jason Russell's spectacular public meltdown has officially being diagnosed as psychosis. But some punters are claiming this is a direct result of mind control techniques used on Jason by the CIA. We think that's about as likely as Kony still being in Uganda

Blocking spammers email addresses in Thunderbird

Does anyone know how to actual block mail from email addresses in Thunderbird? I'm getting constantly spammed, and all the "how to" articles I read only talk about letting them go to Junk Mail. The problem is, I check my junk mail in case something got trapped. So I end up seeing those spam messages anyway

The Colony Season 3 start date

Do we know when Season 3 of The Colony starts

Current market share of Search Engines

As of March 2012:

Google: 86.77%
Yahoo: 4.40%
Baidu: 4.67%
Bing: 2.11%
Ask.com: 0.56%
Other: 0.49%

So as you can see, it's really all about Google. The next biggest competitor only has 4% market share. You wouldn't bother optimizing your site specifically for a search engine that only has 4% of the traffic

Mirror Mirror

Mirror Mirror is a retelling of the story of Show White. The tale is led by Julia Roberts, however it is receiving look warm reviews by many critics. The movie stars Julia Roberts, Lily Collins, Armie Hammer and Nathan Lane.

Mirror Mirror scored 50% on the review site RottenTomatoes. An other critics give it an equally dubious assessment

Should voting be compulsory?

To test that claim you'd have to examine countries that have a high level of social welfare in place, such as the Scandinavian countries. Do they have compulsory voting

George Zimmerman is he Jewish

I'm reading, even here on Opinion Patch, that his father is Jewish, though. Wouldn't that make George Zimmerman half Jewish

Channel 94 Extra

Channel 94 Extra is a total waste of space! It's just ads back-to-back. I tbought we were getting some new and diverse content with the digital roll out. Advertorial channels are the scum of the earth

Gossip!

Good on you! You're just jealous that I'm already taken

Jason Russell

He sounded like he was gay to me. Just his voice and the way he dressed

New Feature Release: Patch and Opinions

Website owners can allow their readers to follow their opinions on Opinion Patch, now, in two different ways.

Your "Opinions" are all the posts that you've made. You're "Patch" is those same posts plus other people's replies to them. So on your website, when linking in, decide whether you want your readers just to see your posts or whether you want them to see replies to those posts as well.

To see how to link, follow the "your readers can follow your opinions" link at the top of the Home page.

In addition, a new "My Patch" button appears on the Menu of the Home page. This is a quick way of

Valentines day: commercial hype or genuinely important?

My partner tells me that Valentine's day is just commercial hype. And it is. But I don't tend to think that matters. It's really the only time we celebrate our relationship, so if it takes an artificial event to get us to do something together, then so be it! I think if there were a day each month that retail was trying to push romance, then we'd all feel exploited. But once a year? Bring on the roses

Kim Kardashian - Dirty video

If the pics weren't dirty enough, here's the the video showing Kim Kardashian being a dirty girl: http://www.tmz.com/2012/03/23/peta-kim-kardashian-flour-bomb

Thomas and Carla

Are Thomas and Carla from My Kitchen Rules dating now

Monitoring your website

It's well worth pulling in monitoring. The alternative is to run stats analyzer programs on your logs (usually provided by your web host)

Growing outrage over Joseph Kony film

Did you know that Joseph Kony was a former church altar boy

People who leave the bloody door open

I'm sick of people who keep leaving the door open between your heated area and the rest of the house. That heat is expensive! We don't want it vented to the rest of the house and out the toilet window

Two ways to follow us on Google+

There are now too ways to follow us on Google+.

You can follow our official Opinion Patch page at https://plus.google.com/107547512348034614575/, or for a relaxed discussion about Opinion Patch and anything else that takes his fancy, follow our Public Relations Director, Monty James, at https://plus.google.com/100952638641490106483

Apple Store

The new apple iPad, discussed extensively at Opinion Patch, arrives at store at 8am Friday. As my readers will recall, the big upgrade with the new iPad is essentially it's much higher screen resolution. So 8am in which time zone? Apple plans to release the iPad March 16th at 8AM local time

Robert Pattinson

Yes, he plays Edward Cullen

Google Play

It looks like they're trying to clone Apple's approach, that's for sure

People who let their dog lick their mouth make me sick!

I shudder every time I see it. To me it looks repulsive. Obviously they don't think so. Sure, I love my pets, but I think that's taking it a bit too far.

Although scientists do tell us that a dog's mouth contains fewer bacteria than a humans. But then, I don't let most humans lick my mouth either. And the only one I do is my partner. And we're in a romantic relationship. Are people in a romantic relationship with their dog

What's a Chat Room?

I used to love chatting on IRC. Ah, those were the days. You can have a similar real-time experience via your browser. It launches a java client, that sort of thing. Or just treat Opinion Patch has one big chat room. I always do

Magnitude 5.8 earthquake strikes China

An earthquake has hit western China, registering 5.8, in the Xinjiang region. It's reported that its epicenter was in the desert and no deaths or injuries have yet been reported

cats vs dogs

Dogs smell and are always wet, as far as I can tell from my side of the window

Discussion

I'm not sure how you'd measure that, but if I had to guess at the most popular discussion topic I'd probably say "Is Jason Russell gay". It's done the rounds at Opinion Patch a whole lot

Are Google personal Search results any good?

So Google has convinced us to log in everytime we come to Google. It promises that we'll get fully personalized search results. So what you see when you search for "tea cup" should be entirely different than what I see. But is it? I see subtle variations between being logged in or not, but I don't find the quality of the logged in results of any higher standard. And isn't that the whole point of personalization? It seems that the only thing Google cares about is collecting data to better target the ads they serve you. I don't see better results from personalized search

Do you think that teenagers should be made to do their homework?

Send her to boarding school

Current TV

Current TV has terminated the employment of Keith Olbermann. But it isn't Olbermann's first time he's been fired (and probably not his last). He was fired on On January 21, 2011 from MSNBC and the show Countdown. On October 28, 2010 he was suspended MSNBC suspended him without pay.

Keith Olbermann has had a troubled past which stems from his radical views and firey temper. Can anyone work with him

Jason Russell homosexual

That's a good take on the story, Gossip Girl. He is a fake when it comes to the video and to his sexuality. Well done tieing those two things together

Matthew Newton is just the world's biggest loser

How many times can Matthew Newson be arrested for punching somebody before he is thrown in jail?

And what a laugh that he was in the US seeking treatment for his alleged psychological problems. Other reports say he was over there trying to kickstart a Hollywood career. So, which is is? Treatment or Tinseltown?

I must have missed hearing about the new treatments that permit getting drunk at bars

Bank queues are annoying

My local bank branch seems to be very popular. Either that or someone tweets when I leave the house and then everyone decides that they have to do their banking right that instant. Sometimes the queue nearly goes out the door. Clearly they're not putting on enough staff. Sometimes they only have two girls working and about 25 people waiting. I know they're trying to cut costs, but that's really bad customer service.

I've considered switching banks, but I'm not sure if the other banks are much better. One of the other banks is open on a Saturday which my bank isn't. So that would be an advantage I guess. But I'm

What really annoys me about some websites

An uncomfortably large number of websites I visit as a result of Google searches stick a mailing list sign up in my face the second I load their page. I mean, really? I don't know your site from shit. I don't know if I even want to be here. And you're trying to force me to give you my email address? That's not going to happen!

Google is always saying that websites should be designed to be use friendly and that Google is actively seeking to bring up only user friendly sites. Why is this spamming shit being brought up on the first page of search results? Google clearly hasn't bothered putting a penalty on sites with

Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver's outburst

haaha well share notes, of course