Posts by BenWilson
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Possibly because eating disorders and munchies are caused by different parts of the brain.
Perhaps. Or maybe it's the tendency of pot to make your pleasures seem more excellent. If you find eating a pleasure, it makes it more so. If you don't, it won't make you eat.
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Poor Arnie only smoked leaf? Someone should tell him about the flowers.
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But isn't being a Public Address reader all about the boss's bandwidth?
Don't be calling my wife that. She prefers the title 'team leader'.
I'd respectully suggest most of us wouldn't get off quite so lightly if we got into a fistfight in the workplace.
I think that one depends to what extent it was a 'fight', how one-sided and unprovoked it was, how serious it got, how the people acted afterwards, where it happened. There's lots of variables. A bit of pushing, shoving and yelling could be something requiring only very mild discipline.
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Stephen, fair enough, it was a curveball question. It would certainly matter to Omar if he was being accused of having family connections to some Palestinian terror gang and it turns out he's not the least bit Palestinian. But it does seem that his 'supporters' think he's part Palestinian - hopefully that's not just stereotyping on their part too.
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Stephen, what prejudice was I buying into now?
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Stephen, I guess that depends on whether you're living in Nazi Germany at the time.
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I mean does anyone know, or it just an assumption based on the fact that he was in 'Students Justice for Palestine', and has a middle eastern sounding name?
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The article further describes Hamed as “a Palestinian, born in Greece, but raised on the North Shore”. I’m reliably informed that Hamed has lived in New Zealand with his fifth-generation Kiwi mother (and not his Palestinian father) since the age of 12 months.
Why does everyone think his dad is Palestinian?
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steven, I'm glad you clarified. Adult Happy Meals brings to mind a milkshake, spit roast & Dirty Sanchez combo.
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I tend to think the entire debate that rages about the place of art in science and vice versa is one that boils down to using imprecise language. You use a sweeping word like Art, which carries totally different connotations to different people, different cultures etc. Similarly with Science, which is less culturally different, more of a word that scientists compete over to claim legitimacy for their research.
In the end you obviously get a lot of crossover, because they are both 'humans making stuff' and they're both dealing extensively in the world of ideas.
So you get poetic utterances like 'without Art Science is impossible' and so on. Such utterances might help you think about both art and science. Or they might delude you into thinking you know something, when really you're just a fan of dogma.
If I had to try to debate such a moot honestly, I'd say it is entirely conceivable that you could make a computer program to churn out science. Would that be art? Would the computer give a shit? It is also possible, and has been done many times, to use a computer to also churn out art. How many people think it's great art, when a computer composes Haikus, some of which, quite randomly, are really deep? Or produces a beautiful graphic in time to music? I'm not talking about the programming itself, I'm talking about the part that the computer is doing, rendering some freaky looking ever changing image in realtime, or parsing out strings of words.
The answer to such a question tells you a lot about what you think Art is. I think the word is so vague that it's only useful as a metaphor, something to get you to think. In itself it carries such imprecise meaning that debates about it can never end conclusively.
Because it is so vague I tend to think of everyone as Artists, and everything they do as Art. Some of it I like and some I don't, but it's all art, from a Big Mac (which I used to make in a very artistic way, I'll have you know) to giving change (ever paid attention to the incredible variance in people's ability to perform this task? Some people give change like it's a beautiful dance, others fumble around and fuck it up in an excruciating way all the time), to painting a masterpiece (ever noticed just how boring walking around an art gallery can get?) or discovering an incredible truth (ever discovered one? Ain't it da bomb?). I think any sentient creature can engage in it, and the more sentient, the more they seem to. How is a cat learning to walk along a fence any less artistic than a ballerina doing the same thing? Why is the way a builder drives in a nail any less deep and meaningful than the way an artist strokes his canvas?
I'm not saying all Art is equally good. I've had shocking Big Macs, real sloppy workmanship, cold, sauce everywhere, box closed cutting the edge of it, old yucky lettuce. To tell the truth, that's most Big Macs. But some are done well, within the bounds of being a Big Mac, a fairly limited scope. Most change is thrown at you, after looking at the readout, with no checking done at all. But a few cashiers will only glance at the readout to confirm the change they have already whipped out has been rung up correctly, and place it in your hand in a way where it just seems to fall into your wallet, simultaneously performing a number of other fairly minor tasks that all add up to moment of living Art. A lot of masterpieces are only notable for the amount of time it must have taken. Many people never discover a truth, because they never try. Cats and ballerinas fall, and builders hit their fingers or the wall.
It's just my opinion, no more valid than anyone else's and really only expressed for the abovesaid purpose of maybe getting people to think about what they do more, or in a different way. My art, such as it is.
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