Posts by Roger
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This Utopia would seem to present a dilema for those people who enjoy fantasy about the forbidden?
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Hard News: Belief Media, in reply to Lilith __,
It's always perplexed me that Dawkins gets called militant or strident or aggressive .
Actually Lilith it is a description that he uses himself a number of times. See for example the TED lecture.
"Richard Dawkins urges all atheists to openly state their position -- and to fight the incursion of the church into politics and science. A fiery, funny, powerful talk."
See the video Richard Dawkins on militant atheism here.
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Isn't it great that we can have an intelligent discussion of these issues, in this country?
I look at the USA and the rapidly deteriorating train wreck that is their Republican Primary (and Party) and I am very thankful for being able to live here in mild-mannered NZ. This makes me very resentful of folk like Family First and all the religious fundamentalists hangers on who seem to want to bring that disfunctional culture here, and to try and force everyone to live by their warped concept of values.
I did my school years in a series of religious education facilities that turned out to be very effective at turning me off religion and for many year I choose to just not think about this part of my life. However, a recent discovery of people like Richard Dawkins really rang true to me and I have an increasing sympathy for his form of militant atheism!
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Well apart from having a peculiar affliction to anything from Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan…
The holidays after high school I worked in a shearing gang and was cruely subjected to this for 12 hours a day. I believe that it certainly falls within the definition of torture!!
I still shudder at the thought.
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Hard News: The Huawei Question, in reply to Russell Brown,
Got a note to say that high-speed broadband will be passing by our house within days.
Lucky bugger. Still no word on when it gets to my suburb in Auckland.
Don't hold your breath! I got my fibre-sticking-out-of-yellow-conduit at the end of my drive in early December. It is still not possible to get a connection yet though, as I am informed that none of the ISPs have managed to get a contract with Chorus.
Or at least that is what I am being told.
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Hard News: A storm in any port, in reply to Steve Barnes,
Oh dear, I meant to write groyne, naturally…
I missed a line in my MSc thesis... "the river is stabilized by a groin on either side of its mouth".
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No it is certainly not legal, but unfortunately the guy (who came from the town) did not want to rock the boat
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Up Front: Safety Net, in reply to Emma Hart,
Shouldn't doctors just do doctoring and shut the fuck up with judgey bullshit?
A colleague a few (not too many) years back went to a GP in a NZ provincial town for a medical. In the course of this he admitted recreational drug use. The GP 'failed' him the medical and then rang both his employer and the local Police Senior Sergeant, both of whom went to the GPs church.
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Hard News: A storm in any port, in reply to Andre,
99.9% of those I spoke to had no idea about the proposals...
‘There’s no point acting all surprised about it. All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display in your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for fifty of your Earth years, so you’ve had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaint and it’s far too late to start making a fuss about it now.’
'What do you mean you’ve never been to Alpha Centauri? For heaven’s sake mankind, it’s only four light years away you know. I’m sorry, but if you can’t be bothered to take an interest in local affairs that’s your own lookout.
‘Energize the demolition beams.’
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So do people adjust their behaviour to a “level of risk” depending on the environment
There is a very interesting book by Gerald Wilde called Target Risk, which talks about this at length and calls it 'risk homeostasis'. Amongst a number of examples it presents a study where half a fleet of Munich taxis had anti-lock brakes while the other half did not. The study found that the accident rate was the same because the drivers adjusted their behaviour to compensate for the extra safety aforded by the ABS. In another traffic related example the book discusses how numerous studies have found that the installation of traffic lights has no affect on the accident frequency at the intersections concerned.