Posts by Kracklite
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On starfish and teaspoons...
There's a nice saying from Voltaire - "The greatest crime is to do nothing because we can only do a little."
Well, actually, he didn't say that. He said something in French that meant that.
Anyway, I think it's a worthy retort to critics who fling about terms like "hypocritical" or "faux" because the application of one's virtues does not appear - to them - to be all-encompassing to the point of practical absurdity.
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And I might add, what an unenviable space to be.
Blogs: at worst, an electronic tar baby.
Indeed, it is Saturday. The whisky and the DVD are far more attractive alternatives to having a life.
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Don't bother arguing, I could refute all of your silly arguements but, like most here, can't be bothered.
Not that you're being left out in the cold, Steve, but a word of advice (and this is not original):
Never wrestle with a pig - you assume undignified positions, you get covered in mud and you're left with the suspicion that the pig enjoyed it.
Most trolls, I think, are not the master manipulators they imagine themselves to be, but narcissists looking for confirmation, however negative it may be.
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Pish posh. I bet any of us with experience in either could do both at the same time!
There is that joke that goes: "Beige - I think I'll paint the ceiling beige..."
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I'm reminded of Alexei Sayle: "The Sperm Whale grows up to sixty feet - which it uses to walk along the ocean floor."
Re Wiki refs: Possibly the silliest bibliography I ever saw was one with just one reference - google. No more, no less. Can't be bothered searching at the moment (busy avoiding marking, funnily enough, and my fingers are about to succumb to the Aro Valley chill), but there was a paper in Nature a while back showing that Wiki was pretty close to the Encyclopaedia Britannica in terms of accuracy. EB's lawyers spat tacks over that one, thinking somehow that lawsuits decided facts...
Generally, an essay stuffed with wiki references indicates at least a student too lazy to bother searching any further. Personally, I tell them that it's a great start - but you don't get marks for only starting.
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<pedantry>OK, just another correction, NASA is not part of the DoD, I was making a comparisson between separate organisations.</pedantry>
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Oh yeah -- the space stuff is awesome. Or possibly pathological.
<pedantry>Maybe in the context of this particular report it may be looniness (can't be bothered looking at it for the particular spin given), but distinct Space Forces has been long mooted. The actual spending on military space assets by all the armed services - spysats, communications etc - is already considerably larger than NASA's budget (which is only about 5-6% of the whole Department of Defense's). This isn't Starship Troopers stuff in essence, but an acknowledgment of realities.
The US Air Force, remember, did not actually exist as a distinct entity until after WWII - it was instead the US Army Air Force.
The thing stifling it creation of a US Space Force is rivalry between the Army, Navy, Air Force, NSA, NRO etc that all have a heavy stake in current space spending and won't surrender it to a new branch.
However, if you want some real Strangelovean stuff, you can look up projects like Orion (there's an excellent book by George Dyson) and some early plans for nuclear missile basing on the Moon, and of course Reagan's SDI (Strategic Defence Initiative) that morphed into BMDO (Ballistic Missile Defense Organization) - but even these are by no means the whole of milspace (as Pentagon jargon puts it. OK, I'll cut down on the acronyms ASAP before the whole discourse is FUBARed and everyone says OMG WTF.</pedantry>
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Talking about glorious train wrecks, for once I wish Sean Plunket had gone feral on Winston Peters. While I do try and avoid parlour psychoanalysis
Aw, go on! It's fun.
Purely speculatively, I am not a psychiatrist and neither do I play one on TV yadda yadda, but my money's on Sociopathy of some form. Dissocial personality disorder looks like a possibility.
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Alas, it sits on my shelf, inspiring the odd thought of "Damnit!, I must get around to finishing it!" I expect it to be good, as I've enjoyed Gray's other works, especially the gargantuan Lanark. An increasingly attenuated PhD means that I've hardly read a book purely for pleasure in years, so it may have to wait a bit longer. Snivelling excuse, I know...
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Ah, but more pretentious!
The real epicureans advocated a form of restraint and evenness of temperament and indulgence actually - neurosis and hangovers are definitely not pleasurable. Personally, I believe in all things in moderation - including moderation.