Posts by Keir Leslie
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x = y makes x be y (assignment operator) while
x == y asks if x is y (testing equality; don't ask what kind of equality).Horrible horrible syntactical fuck up from the depths of nasty procedural languages. It is in my opinion a truly daft idiom to use in any other context.
(And
Is the meaning really not absolutely evident there?
it really really isn't. Sorry, but yeah.)
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But who actually thinks that the issue is between us and the good folk of Wellington city? I think the meaning is well established in this context, and quite clear.
Eh, some people really do seem to think that -- the arts and culcha thing above f'rinstance.
It does annoy me, and I don't even live in Wellington.
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But for anything that's being depleted (coal for instance, or Gerry's deleted unobtainium) the value is likely to increase faster than inflation.
Just to indulge in pendantry, it's the rate of interest you care about, not inflation.
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But what if one of the cars is a plane? I mean, that's a serious question. Which is the faster of the two objects is less subjective question but I am still suspicious.
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But (as you admit) the fastest car in the context given is.
Well no, because car is itself a subjective term. That object mightn't be a car.
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Sure, but that doesn't stop us putting a time period around our "fastest drag car" fact.
But it does mean that the idea of `drag car' changes over time and place based on subjective issues. Hardly a rock solid objective fact now.
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It is if has been defined in advance, although practically it will still need to be actually evaluated by some human judge, so accusations of bias can still creep in.
& in practice rules change over time, and things which were legal become illegal, and illegal things legal, based essentially on subjective feelings about what a car should be like.
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Call it what you like, but which car is fastest in the context given is an objective truth.
But what is a legal car to use in a drag race? That's hardly objective.
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I didn't see the point in suggesting he might move on from interest in drag racing; it doesn’t refute anything in the argument. Which of the two cars is fastest over a short race in a straight line remains an object fact – actual best, regardless of anyone’s personal taste in cars.
Ha. No, in fact, it doesn't. That's not what drag racing is; drag racing is about which car can go fastest while satisfying an essentially subjective and arbitrary set of rules.
One the essential bits about drag racing (any racing, really) is the personal taste of the rule maker in cars.
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'Art' is a big tent, attempts to exclude people from it (particularly with quasi snobbery like people who make works for entertainment shouldn't also make public art works) are silly.
It isn't snobbery. I wouldn't suggest that Bill Hammond make a sculpture on the basis of his paintings, because painting and sculpture are different.
I mean, of course things like set design can be art, see the current show at the Canterbury SOFA Gallery.
(It's a different argument from the one about fine arts degrees, which is merely that one can have one and not make art.)