Posts by Bart Janssen
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Hard News: 2011: The Year Of What?, in reply to Rob Stowell,
Sorry to put you on the spot- but do you have a reference for this? (I read something similar- can’t locate it.)
It was a summary I read of the research in an issue of The Atlantic, several years ago maybe 02 or 03, could even be older? Sadly I no longer have access to it. And we also don't get those journals here at work so I can't even search the original literature.
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Hard News: 2011: The Year Of What?, in reply to Sofie Bribiesca,
They have souls? Thought it was absence of, that caused this in the first place.
Of course they have souls, but they are taught to ignore them in the first year of their BCom.
Actually that isn't being facetious, they've done studies comparing BCom. students with other degrees and shown that one year of a commerce degree is enough to make people significantly more greedy and selfish. Apparently they learn that everyone else is selfish too so they should be selfish first ...
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Hard News: 2011: The Year Of What?, in reply to Russell Brown,
the existing ones probably won’t re-erupt
you forgot the weasel word
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Volcanic eruptions are sometimes preceded by frequent shallow small earthquakes, presumably as magma moves beneath ...
And sometimes there are no preceding earthquakes ...
And sometimes there are earthquakes typical of an eruption without any actual eruption ...
We are somewhat on a learning curve here :).
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It's over?
Who won?
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Field Theory: How's that working out for…, in reply to Islander,
it gives them the shits
regularity is not to be sniffed at
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Field Theory: How's that working out for…, in reply to Jackie Clark,
fit, strong, menopausal, fucking tired woman
be afraid ...
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Field Theory: How's that working out for…, in reply to Russell Brown,
So long as I’ve ridden long enough to get through the sore legs phase, I’m often full of beans after a ride
You mean long enough to stimulate endorphin production ...
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The semantic argument has, in my experience, never had a winner. The thing is "sport" is seen as good. So people who play a "sport" are seen as somehow better. Naturally that leads to a desire to have ones own favourite leisure activity defined as a sport.
That of course is the wrong solution. Instead folks should be allowed to enjoy their leisure activity and feel good about themselves. I play WoW, I don't much care if it is described as a sport, I don't believe it is, however some people can play it with a remarkable level of skill and play it competitively, even for money. Whether it is defined as a sport is actually irrelevant to how much I enjoy it. Same is true of chess or scrabble or whatever activity makes your life happier.
WoW won't improve my fitness (unless I play it while walking on a treadmill) to do that I must do some other activity that may or may not be a "sport".
The only place where I think the definition becomes relevant is when the govt funds "sport" for some reason, national pride, promoting fitness for general health. Logically if you are promoting fitness then defining a half hour walk around the block is as valuable as promoting any "real sport". So even then any definition is kind of pointless. If you are promoting national pride then what is the difference between having pride in a good Rugby team and having pride in a great orchestra?
In the end I think any definition of sport is useless, except as a topic for competitive semantics.
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So what was Ms Ryan's reaction to David's lecture?