I thought his first novel about the mirror masters was more depressing actually.

Oh Make room was a depressing one. Where even the hope that this is the end is chrushed. Misery without end.

I would say only partly true. Most of Chopin's work sounds more or less the same to me but I dislike the piano in classical music, prefer oboe and Albinoni. But furthermore what classical music we have today is what has survived the ages. In most cases the best of the best. The same can probably be said for 20th century music in two three hundred years.
And if I recall correctly the classical composers produced lots more music per week than what most pop artists today do. I'm betting that a lot of that music sounded the same.

Modesty Blaise has already been made into a movie in 1966 and oh my God and all his angels was that a bad movie.
They totaly trashed the character and when I say that I'm not even thinking of the "POWS" and "POFFS" displayed when she was hitting someone.

That said I would love to see a well made Modesty Blaise move. A strong woman character who doesn't need to be rescued all the time. Hollywood seems to have trouble treating female characters with respect though.
There has been a rumor of a movie by Tarantino written by Gaiman, that would have been sweet.

What you have is anecdotes, the research doesn't support it. Look at this for instance: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility#Country_comparison
You can always find persons who managed despite a difficult upbringing. What you say about avoid getting into gang and other trouble might be right but here's the difference between the rich and the poor: Rich boy screws up and he's just being a boy, poor boy screws up and he is a criminal and fucked for life.

Oh and when all your rednecks finally find out that the dream of the american pie and land of possibilities has been stolen and replaced with "might makes right" the risk is that all those guns will tear the country apart. I hope that won't happen but you as a country are so off the track at the moment that it's scary. Your image of yourself doesn't nearly match the reality anymore.

Oh and don't forget that we are pirates if get tired of the whole things and stop watching it.
Please don't ask me to explain the logic...

I must do that myself, might be worth a laugh or two. :)

Like your analogy but just to nitpick, slut in swedish doesn't mean stop. It actually means "end" as in "the end" or that you are out of something like "We are out of milk" - "Vi har slut på mjölk".
Sluta on the other hand does mean to stop doing something "Now it's time to stop for the day" - "Nu är det dags att sluta för dagen".
If you mean stop as in stopping the cars forward motion though, we probably would use "stanna" or if braking "bromsa". We also have the wrord "stopp" but that is mostly used as exclamation or as an order.

A bit off topic but I have a hard time stopping myself when it comes to words. Grammar on the other hand can go hang it self ;)

Because some people need to eat and if the choice is to show your email or not having food on the table many would choose to give up their email. A law against it might help in that case.

You know, most of the ones working in this line of work is not happy about it. Most of them also work on comssion so the kindest you can do is to politly hang up as fast as you can. Sure if they won't give you a chance to talk or won't back down then harass away.

I got that here in Sweden. Costs me around 10 dollars...

Wish I had some mod-points. I agree, pigeons truly are rats with wings and they spread lots of diseases. So what would be the alternative to shooting them? Poison? Yes let them die slowly...
More birds of prey could be an alternative but that would probably be a more slow method than getting shot plus that everyone with small dogs getting snatched would start complaining :)

Unfortunately you actually do:
"In 2006 the directive on the right to move freely (2004/38/EC) was implemented, meaning that passportless travel is allowed in the entire European Union, if having a national identity card from an EU country. For some a passport is necessary anyway, since not all countries issue such cards for their citizens, and because Sweden requires a passport when travelling from that country to EU countries outside Schengen."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_Agreement

So we traded away the need for a passport when traveling in exchange for needing an ID in our own countries. Congratulations...
Now the police in Finland is probably not checking the ID of everyone but the rules are there if they would like to.

That is because people don't know their history regarding EU. When it first started it was an economic union. The target was to help companies, not the people. Since then it has changed it's name but I belive that its root values are still there. There are people who try to change it though.

Actually, in Sweden we have partialy solved this problem. Gifts from clients may only cost at max a certain value and this is in effect for anyone who is in the employment of the state or the city and not just politicians. Makes things easy, if the gift is above a certain value then it's a bribe. We have other problems though that you don't. There is a non disclosure law in effect for party donations. So we may know that the party Moderaterna got a couple of millions in donations but we can't tell if MacDonalds payed for the recent lowering of taxes for restuarants.