Posts by JackElder
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I haven't heard that song for perhaps 15 years, but wait... wait... don't tell me... is the next line 'everybody happy as the dead come home'? Something like that?
Correct. I used to have extensive arguments with my flatmates over whether the earlier line was "We are not monsters/we're moral people" or "We are THE monsters".
But you've got to love the parties/maseratis line for being an all-too-rare example of zeugma in a pop song. And no, Flanders & Swann's "Have Some Madeira My Dear" isn't a pop song.
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Are bisexual women attracted to the same women to which heterosexual men are attracted?
People are people. Most people are attracted to at least some other people. The type of people who people are attracted to varies from person to person.
Which is to say: there isn't a single type of woman, "women to which heterosexual men are attracted". Everyone finds different things attractive, don't they?
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When I came back to NZ after seven years in the UK (Cambridge, mining the lodes of Silicon Fen), I was talking to a recruiter about a job. "It's at Telstraclear - that's a phone company over here," she said. "Yes, I know, I'm from Wellington," I replied. "Sorry, you're a New Zealander? You've got quite a British accent." "Well, I was over there for seven years." "Oh, did you meet many British people, then?" Which rather floored me. "Yes," I said, "I was living in Britain..." It turned out that she'd spent a year in London and had a social circle composed, quite literally, of only kiwis, Aussies, and SAfs. I was discombobulated.
I can understand wanting to socialise with people who you share stuff in common, and that a shared point of origin is a good conversation starter, but I'm always slightly taken aback when people who've been living somewhere more than a year turn out to have never actually got to know any natives.
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That's right folks -- the fact that you find something particularly ridiculous is proof that it's true!
Indeed. The syllogism is:
All (important, world-changing) truth is (initially) ridiculed.
This belief is ridiculed.
Therefore, this belief is (important, world-changing) truth. QED.Or, to put it in another way:
p, therefore q.
q.
Therefore, p. QED. -
All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident. --Arthur Schopenhauer
As I write this, I can see a plate on my desk.
Ridicule or violently oppose that. I dare you. It's true though.
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It boils down to saying that morals are like tastes - totally arbitrary, although probably shared amongst groups, but certainly without "logical" or "scientific" basis.
Actually, I basically agree with this position. Except that I tend to think of it as a variant on social contract theory - the notion that what is right and wrong is, well, what we think it is. That said, a discussion of any potential underlying principles can be useful, as most people seem to want to refer to a principle a bit deeper than "we all think this is true".
I managed to nicely time becoming a moral sceptic with finishing my MA thesis in ethics. Handy that one.
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(I am being incredulous, not urging you to leave. In case the tone was unclear.)
No, really. To paraphrase Stephen: for dull people, anywhere can be dull. And faced with SO MUCH stuff going on, some people just kind of shut down and ignore it all. And then moan about how there's nothing interesting happening, it's all so tedious, etc.
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Seconding Stephen. With the caveat that it can be harder to find interesting stuff to do in a smaller town, as the smaller population base means less stuff happens per se.
But I don't think that this is anything particularly unique. Growing up in Dunedin is probably like growing up in a medium-sized city anywhere. Or, indeed, a big city: I know several Londoners who frequently moan that there's nothing to do in London.
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It's all separate catagories, see: Foreign Affairs, Economics, Crime, Health, Social Issues, Morality.
Excellent. I'm tempted to get into politics just so I can be Minister for Morality.
Which makes me ask: could we refer to their opposition counterpart as the Spokesperson for Immorality?
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Or to manufacture especially made Inflammable Couches?
That would probably be regarded as a challenge. Remember, with enough accelerant, you can get most things to burn.
I'd also like to say that the only time I had an even vaguely close encounter with a burning couch, was when my neighbour dragged her old couch into the back garden, poured petrol on it, and set it alight. She and a group of teenage boys then danced around it. Foam rubber cushions make a hell of a lot of black smoke. But this wasn't drunk students in Dunedin, this was a 35-year old woman in Cambridge (UK, not Waikato). So clearly the problem is wider spread than you may have thought.