Posts by HORansome
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Well, I'm sincerely hoping Iain M. Banks provides us with another Culture novel this year so I'm still in a holding pattern until then.
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As we know from Bjorn Lomborg, I agree with Steve.
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I like this line from James:
And as we know from Bjorn Lomberg, many environemntal indicators are improving, not spinning out of control.
Ladies and gentleman, because Russell has already linked to me in this thread on citing appropriate authorities, I'll just say that adding "as we know from Bjorn Lomberg" to any sentence is both fun and not informative.
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Whilst I consider Pertwee to be my first, I keep changing who my favourite classic Doctor is. For a long time it was Pertwee, then McCoy (who really captured the menace of being the Doctor better than anyone else) and then Hartnell (because, frankly, the show only exists because of him) and finally Troughton (who, I suspect, is the model for Doctors five and eleven).
Of the new Doctors... Matt Smith. Eccleston I loved whilst Tennant I simply... liked? With the right script he was very strong in the role but, tellingly I feel, when he was given an average script he was only ever an average actor.
And Tennant never had to deal with a script like 'The Horns of Nimon' or 'The Creature from the Pit,' which were terrible and yet still had strong performances from Tom Baker and Lalla Ward.
Perhaps it is too early to sign myself way to Matt Smith, but he captured the essence of the Doctor in that first episode. Tennant didn't have a decent dig at the part until story three.
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Might I suggest getting a large cardboard cutout of him to appear in studio in place of his actual person? José or Sarah could play in his stock responses and it would make for a great performance art piece.
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It's not a new issue, either, the old 'cover may not resemble content;' the adage 'Never judge a book by its cover' has been in use since, at least, the late 1920s.
I must admit, I share Whoops slight moment of incredulity about inviting McVicar on a media commentary show. Not sure how you get around talking about McVicar without talking to McVicar, though...
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Ah, but Rich, if you're concerned with the Harm Principle then you can't really just say:
Censorship should be confined to works where someone was actually abused in making the piece.
because we are, surely, concerned with cases where the work will certainly (or almost certainly) lead to someone being abused now or in the future.
Now, there's a slippery slope there, I realise, but limiting censorship to past injustices and not factoring in the very real possibility of a work leading to an injustice now is, I think, a problem for any society that believes itself to be civilised.
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Let me step in and answer Ben:
If you pass comment on the material without knowing what the material is, then, yes, such ignorance is bad. If, on the other hand, you decide to not just ignore the material but also not pass comment on it, then your ignorance of the material really is fine/immaterial.
The worry, I think, is about people who condemn or praise something without actually knowing firsthand what they are condemning or praising.
(It's slightly tricky, of course; you might be able to claim, for example, that your trust in person X's judgement is so reliable that you can legitimately inherit their praising or condemning stance, but, even then, you will always leave yourself open to the argument that you could do one better and still examine the matter personally.)
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You can suggest they are permanently confused to your heart's content; I couldn't possibly comment...
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Russell, this is a classic case of the SST not understanding context; at the moment Eden Park is not considered a potential target (of any kind, I presume) so has minimal security. When the Cup is underway, well, let's see them try again.
Curiously enough, what they've done plays into the conspiracy theorist's mindset; a lot of conspiracy theorists think that 9/11 can't have been an outside job (I'm trying to popularise this term for reasons that will hopefully become clear next year) because you'd couldn't, now, fly a commercial jetliner into a building in continental USA. They confuse the situation now with the situation then and assume that, all things being equal, it had to be an inside job. They forget that the situation now only exists because the lax security systems pre-September 2001 were exploited by the hijackers. In the same way, the SST is assuming the current security situation Eden Park will remain the same in eighteen months. It's the same category of error.