Posts by Kracklite
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Hard News: Dropping the Bomber, in reply to Biobbs,
“Everest: just a mountain”.
Bah. Olympus Mons - now there's a mountain.
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Hard News: Dropping the Bomber, in reply to Kumara Republic,
Actually, TVtropes could reduce crime kinda like this.
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Hard News: Dropping the Bomber, in reply to insider,
regulars at the Stranded seriously calling him a psychopath, a sociopath, and an alcoholic. Seriously bizarre.
They’ve been doing that for some time now. I might be inclined to say that Key presents (that’s counsellor-speak) psychopathic behaviour,* but as Babiak and Hare point out in Snakes in Suits, corporate environments compel that sort of behaviour, as do media advisors. It’s hardly the basis for a diagnosis.
The sinister side is the latent authoritarianism of so many Standard commentators and moderators that is never far beneath the surface. OK, so you’re going to call Key a psychopath, but that goes beyond a personal ad hominem attack; it becomes an implied judgement on all people with that specific disorder, making it synonymous with evil. Those who have it are not worthy of consideration and are a ‘safe’ minority to be persecuted.
If you define someone as pathological in some way, it seems to become safe to discount all who fall into that category at The Standard. For example, one of their regulars, Brendan Mills, has elsewhere advocated the purging of the genes for autism from the human gene pool either by selective abortion or genetic engineering, because it’s an undesirable condition or “corrupt code” as he put it.
Turn over a rock at that blog and you’ll find some very unpleasant creatures exposed to the sunlight.
*The same can be said of Goff, except that he does it so ineptly.
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Hard News: Dropping the Bomber, in reply to Rich Lock,
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Hard News: The Politics of Absence, in reply to Sacha,
I wish so very much that we had our equivalent of the Buffalo Beast’s list of the 50 Most Loathsome Americans. Of course it’s ad hominem, but that’s the point, and it’s done with such fire it’s admirable – something to stir the fretful sleepers, one hopes.
(God, I hope T' Standard doesn't do a version of it: "@12: Gerry Brownlee. He's fat! Like Mister Creosote! Look, see what I can do with Photoshop! Hahahahaha!!!")
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Jobs' commencement address at TED Talks.
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Hard News: Thanks, Steve. For everything., in reply to Ian Dalziel,
Brill!
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Hard News: The Politics of Absence, in reply to 3410,
It can be found here at T' Standard.
See post 11, and 11.2 for timing. See Bradbury's own blog for the words, as his rant was essentially a repeat of that material word-for-word. It's worth noting the reactions of Jim Mora and the other guest, Wosshisname: "What about cats, because people like cats...?" Oh intercourse-not-necessarily-resulting-in-reproduction oh dear.
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Hard News: Thanks, Steve. For everything., in reply to Sacha,
Can't... resist... any... longer!
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Hard News: Thanks, Steve. For everything., in reply to Bart Janssen,
Yes. For once, I think that historical analogies might be interesting and useful. Hero of Alexandria invented the steam engine, but it took James Watt to make it a practical, efficient and widely-used machine, and Brunel certainly didn't invent rail, tunnels or bridges, but he's no less significant for that. It's interesting to imagine how Jobs will be seen in a few centuries in context with them and their like.
Jobs' innovation is of the more subtle and insidious (in a positive sense) kind compared to outright invention; a kind of social, psychological and cultural invention that made processing power as ubiquitous as electricity.