Posts by TracyMac
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Also, Hanlon's Razor is another favourite: "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."
Much of what is ascribed to government/capitalist/you name it conspiracies can be put down to this particular principle, I feel.
Actually, I'm reminded of Naomi Klein's last opus, The Shock Doctrine, which seemed to get a bit conspiracy-theorist about "disaster capitalism", as she calls it. Is there a term that covers off opportunistic cashing-in? I don't think FEMA and their corporate buddy-buds concocted Katrina, but certainly some organisations made a ton of money from the fuck-up and the clean-up. They certainly didn't hold back from squeezing cash out of whatever agencies they could out of "charidee" - but it doesn't seem to be malice, just rapacious opportunism.
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Oh, and to return to the theme of Occam's Razor, since I brought it up, I totally agree that it's not an argument unto itself. I do think it's a useful principle to keep in mind as ONE way of weighing various arguments/theories.
I also like Holmes' theorem: "when one has eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however unlikely, must be the solution".
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@stephen walker
Please do tell me what was the ad hominem remark in my comments on your post. Because there wasn't one. But perhaps I have an Agenda to deny that I was making such an attack.
(Avoiding discussing the original issue, which was covered off in the article I linked)
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Not to dogpile on Giovanni, since I do actually agree that the interchange with Lhaws went on beyond where it needed to (I think the "jerk jerk jerk said it all!), but this:
...let's face it, NZ on the whole *is* pretty conservative
Really? In comparison to where? I agree that NZ certainly has a conservative streak, and I'm quite glad I'm not there with the current gubmint, but internationally speaking, I think we're not too bad, actually. Scandinavian countries are leading the pack, but we're not in the US league. Although we are starting to slip behind Australia, even after the depredations of Howard and his cronies.
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Oh PLEASE. Let's not all get 9/11 conspiracy-nutcasish here. I put up with that kind of thing at work all day from my conspiracy-theorist boss.
Other than logically thinking about the destabilising weight of a large plane crashing into the building, the pancake effect of floors crashing down on each other, and a fire weakening some of the structure, Popular Mechanics has a good run-down on the most likely explanations (Occam's razor, engineers and eye-witness accounts) for all kinds of 9/11 events.
It's certainly a lot more plausible than any conspiracy theory I've seen (as soon as conspiracists open their mouths about airplanes and air traffic control, for starters, they FAIL).
[Edit edit edit edit]
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While I pimped the universal healthcare FB supporters' group recently, I totally forgot to link the LiveJournal thread where hundreds of US citizens talk about their healthcare experiences. Frightening is really the only word for it.
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Chipping in on London coffee. Yes, kudos to Monmouth - consistently good for the last decade. Although I wish they'd get their shit together on soy milk. I like espresso, but sometimes I fancy a latte.
I never managed to get a decent coffee at Bar Italia. Perhaps just bad luck, or perhaps it got the raves because it is better than Costa Crap.
A newish chain in London is AMT. Not quite artisan-quality, but Fair Trade (which I actually don't think of as an optimal solution, but it's something) and decent coffee that's much better than Gloria Jeans/Starbucks (and not run by fundie Xtians, as GJs is).
Also, Bullet Cafe on the top floor of Snow and Rock in Mercer St in Covent Garden is a wee treasure. Free internet, Anzac biscuits to die for, and bloody good coffee.
Didn't make it to Flat White last time I was over, alas!
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Just to rewind the derailing a bit...
I increasingly feel that many Gen X & Y women feel entitled to everything without having to give up years of partying and travel to have babies in their 20's or early 30's.
Yes, as others have pointed out, because us h0rz who might have liked "partying" certainly can't make sane decisions about our life's priorities, can we? Ok, you have those nutters who want to have babies in their 50s, but seriously, how many of those are there really? Women are still mostly having their babies in their 20s and early 30s, FFS. And many are trying to achieve some kind of financial and relationship stability first, rather than "career development" per se.
And, wow, there are some of us in our 40s who haven't have babeez and never intend to, and are quite happy with our withered-up wombs, thank you. Of course, I'm a deviant dyke, what do I know about natural womanly feelings?
Getting back to the more recent tangent, I understand what Morgan was getting at, but it was the tone of "but if you don't have babies when you're younger, it's harder, DUH!" that was fairly irritating, in a Captain Obvious kind of way. Amazingly, most women have a reasonable understanding of their likely fertility at various ages. But yeah, a remark at the more clueless end of the scale rather than malicious, although the subsequent defence didn't help much.
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I *heart* Jon Stewart. Wonderful juxtapositioning.
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Here's another vote for Zotero as a reference manager. It fucking rocks, and is one of my top 10 pieces of software, full stop.
I totally agree that most library software sucks big time. I suspect because the heaviest users are public institutions, and there's not a heck of a lot of dosh to go around. Leaving aside the fact that public institutions don't have a lot of cash to acquire something in the first place, they generally have loooong upgrade cycles as well.
One thing about retail users is that the profits they generate do go back into R&D of various software suites. Library systems are like other specialist industry packages - expensive and clunky because there simply isn't the economies of scale and investment.
I am just hoping that the open source movement (packages like Koha/Evergreen) will fill some of those gaps and/or provide sufficient competition for the other vendors to raise their game.