Posts by Andrew Stevenson
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I used to be a blood donor too; but having kids in two different plague pits (small person educational institutions) has meant there has never been a time in the past few years when one or more members of the family has not been coming down, or recovering from an illness - which is another no-no for donating blood.
They even used to take blood when I was a malarial risk, they'd plug me into the autopherosis centrifuge whatsit machine that would suck out some blood then split out the white cells and reinject the red stuff.
Between that an being a human test subject for drug trials I've got some fairly dubious looking scar tissue over the sample point on the inside of the elbow.
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My winter coat is, by several miles of daylight, the most complimented thing I have. If you added together all the aesthetic praise I've received for my cat, my games cabinet and my breasts, it still wouldn't come close
Are you looking for more praise?
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XKCD funny
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Can we get a consensus that 'funny' is the most misleading link descriptor by quite some way?
Oh yes, but it goes beyond link descriptors to cover its application in the rest of the world too.
So we all have people/sites that we trust to point us at things we'll find interesting or useful. Think of Russell as your native guide
It's not just the links, its the whole package of presentation, disscetion and discussion of ideas that occurs (there could be a degree of cognitive bias going on though). As you said the internet is a big place and the effort required to keep up with our native guides and check they don't lead us into the quicksands of kool-aid can be significant (I think Ian D referred to binge thinking in a thread some time back). I'd hate to have an amazon type ranking system for native guides, but is a guide for guides or some other system feasible to warn us should Russell start to channel Garth George?
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Paint me ignorant, but what is the point of defacing the ballot?
It doesn't get counted and just adds to the cost of the operation, so why? -
So what Emma is saying is essentially "trust me, I know what I'm doing"; and by and large we, as PAS members, do trust* her. We also trust Russell and the rest of the blogging crew and, to various degrees, those who comment in the threads.
Russell once talked about a gatekeeper role on the internet (I think it was a Kim Hill interview), and Emma recently discussed thread moderation (with worked examples). So by combining these themes with the full and frank discussion in the threads a community is being built/grown with its own rules and mores. Emma has explicitly states some of those rules; what are the others, to what extent do we as users shape them or are shaped by them? What are the limits of the collective trust we have here?*Trust is not equal to slavish devotion or falling into ideological lockstep - might not be the right term, but we already have a game of hunt the word running.
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a basic assumption that you're all adults and you can make your own decisions. That you have functioning fingers and eyelids and can choose not to look at something you find disturbing or offensive.
I recall from the hinterlands of my upbringing something along the lines of "if your eye offends you, pluck it out"
I think I prefer Emma's version. -
Great antennae, no compass.
I imagine that he is relaxed about this.
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I like to have random outbreaks of decency every now and then. It keeps people on their toes.
So you use your decency for nefarious purposes...
Point to Ms Hart -
Heh, I kept trying to make a 'reversing the polarity of the toaster oven' joke work, and then thinking I probably shouldn't.
And why did this stop you?