Posts by Kracklite
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But the big problem for the rest of us is too much 'science knows best' talk which feeds a spiral of disengagement from scientific knowledge.
Agree and disagree, Donald. It's often a case of Feinman versus Lysenko, with Lysenko losing, or rather, as Richard Feinman put ti in the press conference announcing the Challenger enquiry findings, "nature cannot be fooled." Science doesn't necessarily know best, but it is a self-correcting system designed to find out what nature knows whereas the Stalinist geneticist Trofin Lysenko decided that nature must plainly suit ideological preconceptions. Guess who's in the history books as an infamous fuckwit?
On the other hand, after his death, the scientific community is finding that it really misses Carl Sagan after he was denied a position in the American Academy of Sciences - he was a good planetary scientist in his own right, but above all he was a great communicator and right now they have to contend with W and his flat-earther and creationist followers when votes come up for funding...
Scientists can, sometimes be their own worst enemies.
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I think you'll find that Aro Valley in Wellington is home to both the Hippys (ies?) AND the socialists.
Both of whom vote Green.And:
Which would relate if 'lived in Aro Valley' and 'members of the Green Party' were the same set.
In recent years the place has become thoroughly infested with the FUV-driving, doing-lunch set.
One facet of socialism is a tendency toward centralised decision-making, and this clearly goes against the Appropriate Decision-making Green Party charter principle
Mikaere Curtis, thank you for making that distinction. I am sooo bored with people who still insist on fighting the Cold War. Forget the Guelphs and Ghibelines, fer Cthulhu’s sake, there’s a damn bigger picture than that!
You've still got Bill English.
Much as I dislike the man and his attitudes, I do respect him as someone of integrity. Key strikes me as a… never mind, he’s banality personified (except that banality by its nature is without personality), and that in my mind is evil enough.
very, very smart and capable person but can be prone to a common failing among very, very smart and capable people -- intellectual arrogance.
My favourite sin,a part from alcoholism. It’s just so much damned fun.
but I have a pretty big problem when proportion, good taste, good humour or even regard for basic matters of fact go down the toilets to be replaced with outright hackery
Something Orwell said about the most compelling arguments against socialism or christianity being their followers…
A very little more seriously, I think that I’m a liberal for exactly the same reasons that Craig’s a conservative (lack of faith in human nature and utopian reform and all that). Depressingly, I’m probably going to have to vote Green, despite their lets-all-eat-organically-grown-cold-lentils-in-the-dark-while-wearing-hair-shirts anti-science Luddism because I am so pissed off with Labour’s visionless micromanagerialism.
In 2008, there are National MPs I think will be good value in government,
Groser for example.
and some I don't really look forward to having back.
Ryall, Smith, Smith… sigh.
As for Hagar, I never trust anyone who pouts. Speaking as an academic (“speaking as a-” is a cue to start adding the sodium chloride BTW), his willingness to see the immanent truthfulness in something simply because he realised it himself makes me clench all over. Hello, it’s Doctor Popper on the line…
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- Every Kiwi should be entitled to a bach on the coast
Excellent! Make mine J. S. Sunset, sand, claret and "The Well Tempered Clavier" - what more could I ask for (well, lots, actually)?
Sorry, someone had to make that pun. Just doing an onerous duty.
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As devilish satire of the media discourse, it sure ain't Jonathan Swift.
No having seen it, I'll comment on the concept anyway in relation to the discussion of the other television journalists, wossname and his mini-me: I was wondering if postmodernism has vanished up its own fundament, or perhaps reached its fulfilment, so that we have now reached a stage that it does not matter if anything is ironic or not as it is indistinguishable from that which it parodies on form, content and consumption.
After all, something can be presented with ironic intent, but death-of-the-author yadda yadda, the reader/viewer can say, "Yeah, so? One thinks journalistic craft is about telling a 'story' while another is telling me a story about journalism. Both ultimately - insofar as there is an ultimate - are refering solipsitically to their own discourse. Baudrillard, I believe, says that it is the nature of the simulacrum that there is no longer - or never was - any original for it to simulate. The only difference is taste, and de gustibus non disputandum est etcetera."
Yes, elements of parody there, but...
... and then again, it might not be the end of the world, just bad, inept, satire.
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My flabber is ghasted.
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Alan Sokal
Ohhh yes, that definitely - so to speak, for example, I might say [aaargh, I can't stop, please help me!] um... yeah, whatever!
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Hmmm, I am definitely less and less knurd now, so the inspiration is coming thick and fast and thus another idea has come to me which might be pertinent to this dicsussion is that there is yet another trick that may be applicable under discursive circumstances in order to facilitate the stated or at least implicit gratificatory (neologisms, I might add, are allowable - and indeed very useful as tools of befuddlement when directed against one's interlocutors) project of argumentative pre-eminence is to construct an inordinately long sentence, which has the multi-faceted advantage of both creating a 'wall of words', as it were, that disallows easy interjection by leaving perpetually hanging the latter stages of the descriptive and elaborative sentence so that anyone who does interject would appear not only rude in doing so but also intellectually deficient in being unable to hold in their mind all of the various facts, data and propositions embodied - ot, I should say, encapsulated in the original sentence (remind me, please, to describe to you later the symptoms of Korsakov's Syndrome, which is caused by brain damage preventing the formation of long-term memory, as as memorably - haha - presented in an artistic narrative form in the film, Memento, directed by Christopher Nolan, I believe - he later went on to direct Batman Begins and I must say that I am looking forward to the sequel, The Dark Knight, featuring Heath Ledger as the Joker, not only because it will be his - sadly - final film appearance {he is - or was - a very fine and underrated actor}, but because it appears - from the trailers at least - to be an interesting interpreation of the role, quite different to Jack Nicholson's in Burton's film and which seems to allude to the performance of Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange not to mention the dark and quite disturbing presentation in Miller's classic graphic novel The Dark Knight Returns - that oc course was published in nineteen eighty-six, which was, I must say, a watershed year for graphic nobvels as it also saw the publication of Moore's Watchmen - though I gather that the film adaptation of that work has been and probably will be problematic, considering Moore's extremely complex narrative, despite the fact that it has frequently been described as "cinematic") , for example, Margaret Thatcher's media handlers - or should I say, 'advisors' or 'consultants'? - pointed out to her that in television interviews, where editing reduced statements to complete sentences and that therefore if one continued to speak over the interviewer, then their - even legitimate - queries would be cut or ignored in the minds of the audience at least (and it is of course to them that one is speaking); this is, of course (forgive me for the repetition of that phrase, but I must assert that it is suitable) enhanced by sudden and random digressions within the original monologue (and at all times use English spelling, as the American 'monolog' is far too abbreviated) allow one to use at any convenient time the devastating criticism on one's opponent in the gladatorial contest of rhetoric, "Ah, of course you have addressed issue X, but you have also completely - and I must say, perhaps not deliberately, but certainly significantly and tellingly (redundancy being another useful and efficacious method of padding out an otherwise far simpler and more succinct statement), failled to address the other elements of my argument, which are, I must say, vis a vis the central issue under discussion here, are extremely pertinent to the conceptual aprehension of the fundamental issues at stake here at this moment in time... and, excuse me, but what is it that we were talking about?
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Then there's "Allow me, for a moment, to deconstruct the premises of that argument: to begin with, you assume that the definite article, 'the' applies in this case - as it might - but as Lacan has shown, there is an inherent phallicism in the very concept of logos expressed by the application of the said article..."
All too horribly familiar.
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Drink Liquor.
Currently Johnnie Walker Black Label - on special at T' Mill (definitely no trouble there). However, I am a very mellow drunk. I'm much more opinionated and argumentative when I'm knurd.
As for the rest, completely fucking brilliant and not at all idiotic.
I might add ammendments along the lines of "excuse me, but I have letters after my name" or hints at some spurious and fictional educational or professional experience, preferably involving acronyms (acronyms are cool), ie. eg., so to speak, "Actually, when we conducted research on this at JPL, we found that the right consistency of custard was in fact 14.7 Kelvins."
Note the institional "we". That is essential.
Another useful phrase is "Yes, but what exactly do you mean by [insert random word here], exactly?" A common variant is "Ah yes, but of course that depends on the commonly accepted interpretation of [whatever], when in fact..." The latter is arguably tactically superior as it allows one to plough on without interjection, but on the other hand, there is the option of the simultaneously accepting and dismissive "Of course that is true under certain given circumstances, but on the other hand..."
Then there is the casual name-dropping: "Of course we had terrific fun when we turbocharged Steve's wheelchair without informing him, and then reprogrammed his voice synthesiser so that it had a Cornish accent... 'and so, when the virtual particle pairs appear at the event horizon, ooh-aarh' it would say, and then there was that time he came to the office fancy dress party as Davros - ah, what larks!"
And of course there's the perennial "speaking as a [insert completely implausible and irrelevant minority or area of professional expertise here]", ie, eg., for the purposes of demonstration or illustration of my argument, so to speak, as it were, "Speaking as a professionally qualified gay whale working in the field of obstretrics, I must say that Kirk would in fact be superior to Piccard in dealing with the Borg because..."
In academia, you learn all of these tricks.