Posts by Kracklite

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  • Hard News: Thanks, Steve. For everything., in reply to Russell Brown,

    From The Onion: Last American Who Knew What The Fuck He Was Doing Dies

    Elon Musk also seems to know what he's doing.

    The Library of Babel • Since Nov 2007 • 982 posts Report

  • Hard News: The Politics of Absence, in reply to Joe Wylie,

    whatever afflicts Brash has been publicly misinterpreted to the point where he's been accorded shaman-like status

    See yurodivy.

    The Library of Babel • Since Nov 2007 • 982 posts Report

  • Hard News: The Minister's Brain Has Exploded, in reply to Ian Dalziel,

    Yes, you're right on the money with the Low character - just having a bit of a rib.

    Do see the film if you have the chance; Blimp (though he's never called that in the script) becomes quite a lovable, well-intentioned character.

    The Library of Babel • Since Nov 2007 • 982 posts Report

  • Hard News: The Minister's Brain Has Exploded,

    Nice Blimp Joe – Colonel Brownlee makes a great bloated floater…

    I have to say that The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp is one of my favourite films, and the comparison of the honorable Clive Wynne-Candy with the irredeemably oafish and vulgar Gerry Brownlee is galling.

    The Library of Babel • Since Nov 2007 • 982 posts Report

  • Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education,

    OK, Bowie... er, Gaiman and the wonderful Amanda Palmer.

    The Library of Babel • Since Nov 2007 • 982 posts Report

  • Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education,

    Ahem… (NSFW of course…)

    The Onion "Children Exposed To Porn May Expect Sex To Be Enjoyable"

    http://www.youtube.com/verify_age?next_url=http%3A//www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DY4kwk5jV2nU

    The Library of Babel • Since Nov 2007 • 982 posts Report

  • OnPoint: Sock-Puppeting Big Tobacco to…, in reply to BenWilson,

    Argumentum ad hominem ... and even less than that, because it's based on assumption or projection. Exactly how much have I been drinking tonight? Do tell.

    Ah, but of course, your post is explicitly a pretext for a withdrawal.

    The Library of Babel • Since Nov 2007 • 982 posts Report

  • OnPoint: Sock-Puppeting Big Tobacco to…,

    generally it is broken by choice, if it is broken at all.

    Not without help... and over a long time. "Choice" is a very simplistic concept as you present it.

    The Library of Babel • Since Nov 2007 • 982 posts Report

  • OnPoint: Sock-Puppeting Big Tobacco to…, in reply to BenWilson,

    Find where I said what you accuse me of here

    Already done. I won’t redundantly elaborate.

    I haven’t even spoken about people who have had to deal with loved ones who are dying!

    Indeed you haven’t, because it has not even occurred to you. It’s all very well to talk of abstract ideologies and abstract principles, but the world is not made of abstract ideologies and principles, it is made of the confrontation with uncomfortable, random facts, and the fact that they don’t fit those abstract ideologies is not mere observational error, that is in fact reality itself; hard, brutal and irreducible.

    The fact that you have not spoken of it is irrelevant. All that means is that you have chosen to exclude it from your argument, but real life is not so tidy.

    like some kind of bullet point from a slide we wrote years earlier and can’t remember the details of.

    This is completely incoherent. I cannot respond.

    Riddles are for wimps.

    I can give you the dimensions of my penis in inches or centimetres, but I fail to see the relevance of this.

    The Library of Babel • Since Nov 2007 • 982 posts Report

  • OnPoint: Sock-Puppeting Big Tobacco to…,

    Wrong. Most of the harms I experience from smokers come from sharing a publicly-funded health system with them. Not because they offend my nose or pollute my lungs.

    This shows an ignorance of probability.

    Granted, smoking increases the probability of cancer substantially, but that does not mean that all cancer sufferers, even those who have cancers that correlate with smoking most strongly, necessarily contracted their cancer as a result of their smoking. Someone who has a cancer, any cancer, may well have got it due to a supernova in a galaxy, far, far away. An insurance company is free, even obliged in deference to its stockholders, to calculate its premiums based on probabilities, but is a a society obliged to draw an absolute line between those cancers that may, most probably, be due to smoking and those that may (but not certainly), most probably (but not certainly), may not?

    The question is, then, whether you can determine whether someone’s cancer is due to their “choice” to smoke and continue smoking (disregarding the actual facts of how addiction really works) or a supernova somewhere. Good luck, and let’s see how that becomes the basis for policy.

    make me go back through this thread and prove that I never, ever said that that the economic arguments for or against smoking are compelling to me in the slightest?

    I don't care in the slightest where you started. I care where you ended.

    The Library of Babel • Since Nov 2007 • 982 posts Report

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