Speed limits
(st d) The 70 limit isn't archaic and certainly not draconian. You are taking things too literally. It's there to stop people doing much over 85. A higher limit would lead to everyone going faster still and there'd be a few more accidents. 70 is fast enough, anyway. 50 miles at 70 mph takes 43 minutes, at 85 mph 35 minutes, but on the M25 several hours. You just like driving fast; so do I. But it's a bit naughty, and a bit pointless. :-)
[st d] I thought you had your tongue well and truly planted in your cheek when you wrote your original motorway exposé. Thanks for your clarification - it was your statement "I drive at about 90 most of teh time, occasionally creeping up to about 110 for brief periods or dropping to 70 if the road is clear." that led to my interpretation. In my judgement there is nothing wrong with speed itself, it's where and how and by whom it is used. These days I tend to treat everyone else on the road as incompetent, the idea being to keep alert to the fact that I am controlling a missile of significant mass and an error made by someone else could lead to an early demise - mine.
Of course we are all good drivers, of course we all have superb reactions and car control skills. Naturally all our cars are all in tip-top condition and handle like an F1 top ten machine. If you believe all that then you're a cylinder short of a block. Some of this comes from bitter experience and these days I stick to the speed limit (I cannot afford to get caught) even though there are places where said limits are really silly. Don't get me wrong, I was no angel in my younger days, I'm just thankful still to be here.
By the way, give me a bullet with wheels that will handle, a winding road and no traffic (ha!) and I'll be in seventh heaven. ;-)
Of course we are all good drivers, of course we all have superb reactions and car control skills. Naturally all our cars are all in tip-top condition and handle like an F1 top ten machine. If you believe all that then you're a cylinder short of a block. Some of this comes from bitter experience and these days I stick to the speed limit (I cannot afford to get caught) even though there are places where said limits are really silly. Don't get me wrong, I was no angel in my younger days, I'm just thankful still to be here.
By the way, give me a bullet with wheels that will handle, a winding road and no traffic (ha!) and I'll be in seventh heaven. ;-)
winding roads and no traffic
[Dujon] That would be Lincolnshire (on England's east coast) then, which has one of the highest rates of road deaths in the country. Everyone who likes going fast, especially the motorcyclists, make that mistake. When I was a reporter, I attended so many inquests into the deaths of people who make exactly the same mistake, and over-cook it on corners just as a tractor, or a pensioner, pulls out of a farm gateway. If you're going to speed, please do it on motorways.
Deathwish
(pen) So it's true, then. They say The Fens are even worse, but all sorts of things are said about The Fens and its inhabitants.
"Always be able to stop within the distance you can see"
There is no such thing as a winding road with no traffic. Even if there is no traffic, you can't see that there's no traffic.
Ah so.
[penelope, Raak] Indeed. Hence my 'ha'. Hill climbing is a great way to scratch that itch, but the inital costs are a bit steep these days with all the safety considerations. So I now confine myself to being an old plodder, ever alert to inebriates and idiots. I got rid of my clubman style machine a few years ago and puddle around in a family hatch at present. Chances are that my reactions are not as good as they used to be anyway and there's no way I'm going to test out that assumption on a public road.
Monaco may be the most glamorous Grand Prix but one of least watchable with very little to no overtaking. But persistance by the two Williams drivers finally paid off, despite the best efforts of Alonso to cheat; and I see team orders still apply at Ferrari.
Dujon reaches the top of Celebrity Mornington Crescent as DrQ returns to make it seven. I am glad ITV pulled the rug from under Celeb Wrestling and hope the the same will happen to their Celeb Love Island. Not long now till Big Brother6. I think it is looking ever increasingly like Greg Dyke leaving was one of the best things to happen to the BBC programming.
[Inkspot] It's a few years since I last watched a Monaco Grand Prix (it's the time difference, even if it is televised here) but even then I thought that the latest F1 machines have so rapid acceleration and deceleration rates that they have effectively outgrown the circuit as a competitive venue. Not that I think it will be taken off the schedule, there's probably too much money involved. Even in the days of Moss, Fangio, Brabham, Clarke and their ilk it wasn't the easiest place to navigate around a rival. It must be terrifying these days.
Greg Dyke
(Inkspot) Agreed. Good result, but wrong reason nevertheless.
Didn't we have a loverly time ...
For those that are remotely interested - Rugby II/Ratby I was a roaring success. there's a taste of some of the happenings in the Pilg Game in Orange MC.
[Rosie] So sorry you couldn't make it. Understandable. I had no idea you had pulled out and was still checking with Reception for your arrival by the time the G&T's were served ... :-)
[Rosie] So sorry you couldn't make it. Understandable. I had no idea you had pulled out and was still checking with Reception for your arrival by the time the G&T's were served ... :-)
all sorts
chalk] lovely to meet you - thanks for organising it all. Hope you got home safely. I did, then had a marvellous power snooze.
Rosie] I am not sure I agree on your "there's no point to driving fast". When I drive up to Wales to see my Mum - normally for teh weekend, the AA site tells me that that journey should take me 4h47minutes. I can do it in under 3h30minutes, including a petrolk stop. This is one hell of a difference.
Dujon] Funnily enough that wasn't tongue in cheek. If the road has cars on it I will generally try to get in front of as many as I can. This may seem like me being an idiot fast driver, but actually its because I feel safer this way - if I am overtaking I tend to just keep going because people rarely drive with a big gap between each other so I will just plow on past until either the traffis clears or there is a big gap on my left to pull over into if I feel like it. If the road is very empty indeed I will generally slow down considerably.
Raak/winding roads] There is actually an incredibly beautiful stretch of road in the alps, east of Grenoble, on the way up to Les 2 Alpes which is wondoing and yet you know is clear or not. I used to go out with a girl from there and remember being absolutely terrified once when she started overtaking all teh tourist traffic on blind corners, where the left hand side of teh road dropped off hundreds of metres as teh road was cvarved into the side of a valley, hence the twists. She assured me it was okay, and the next time we drove it she showed me that there is a point as you come onto that stretch where you can see the entire road on your left carved along the valley side, for a very long stretch, and can see any cars that are on it. There being no roads off this long stretch, when you round teh valley side and can suddenly no lonegr see around the corners, you nonetheless know that there is no traffic coming the other way. Its great if you know it, but must be scary for the tourists being overtaken by teh locals as they edge slowly along gawping at the breathtaking scenery.
Rosie] I am not sure I agree on your "there's no point to driving fast". When I drive up to Wales to see my Mum - normally for teh weekend, the AA site tells me that that journey should take me 4h47minutes. I can do it in under 3h30minutes, including a petrolk stop. This is one hell of a difference.
Dujon] Funnily enough that wasn't tongue in cheek. If the road has cars on it I will generally try to get in front of as many as I can. This may seem like me being an idiot fast driver, but actually its because I feel safer this way - if I am overtaking I tend to just keep going because people rarely drive with a big gap between each other so I will just plow on past until either the traffis clears or there is a big gap on my left to pull over into if I feel like it. If the road is very empty indeed I will generally slow down considerably.
Raak/winding roads] There is actually an incredibly beautiful stretch of road in the alps, east of Grenoble, on the way up to Les 2 Alpes which is wondoing and yet you know is clear or not. I used to go out with a girl from there and remember being absolutely terrified once when she started overtaking all teh tourist traffic on blind corners, where the left hand side of teh road dropped off hundreds of metres as teh road was cvarved into the side of a valley, hence the twists. She assured me it was okay, and the next time we drove it she showed me that there is a point as you come onto that stretch where you can see the entire road on your left carved along the valley side, for a very long stretch, and can see any cars that are on it. There being no roads off this long stretch, when you round teh valley side and can suddenly no lonegr see around the corners, you nonetheless know that there is no traffic coming the other way. Its great if you know it, but must be scary for the tourists being overtaken by teh locals as they edge slowly along gawping at the breathtaking scenery.
Wheeeee
As you might expect of me - I'm on the side of driving as fast as is sensible given the road and conditions, regardless of the speed limit on that stretch of road. This may well mean going considerably slower than the advised limit if conditions dictate. I have no qualms about breaking the law by driving at 90-odd (or more) on a good clear motorway, agreeing with those that think that 70mph on a motorway in reasonable weather conditions is a farcically low limit. Remember that's just 10mph faster than you are allowed to go on a single track winding country lane.
Rugbypilg
(Chalky) OK :-) Wish I'd been there.
pilg
rosie] Samantha told me that she had been looking forward to seeing you playig with your bone , and was most disappointed not top have a chance to blow it herself.
Slide cream
(st d) V. Good. I am tickled. I hope she realises that "Trombonists Do It In Seven Positions", as they say. Fairly routine stuff for her, no doubt. My nextdoor neighbour is called Samantha, precisely 28 years younger than me and at present heavily pregnant, not through any action on my part, which in the long term is probably a good thing.
rab'll love this...
*Cross Posted* - and a day later than usual as I was away from my inbox yesterday.
Dear I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue Mailing List Member, We bring you news of a recording of the programme that is taking place at the close of this year's Edinburgh Festival on Monday 29th August (Bank Holiday Monday) at around 6.30pm at the Pleasance Grand. It's a single recording (normally we record two programmes) so the whole event should last around an hour and a half. Tickets go on sale at the Edinburgh Fringe Box Office from Thursday 9th June. They are priced at £7 each. The venue seats 700 so there won't quite as many tickets available as for recent recordings. Again, you'll need to book early to secure a ticket. The Fringe Box Office telephone number is 0131 226 0000 and the website address is www.edfringe.com If this show is of interest, I doubt you'll be able to get through before 9th June, so make a note in the diary to call on Thursday 9th June.
Dear I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue Mailing List Member, We bring you news of a recording of the programme that is taking place at the close of this year's Edinburgh Festival on Monday 29th August (Bank Holiday Monday) at around 6.30pm at the Pleasance Grand. It's a single recording (normally we record two programmes) so the whole event should last around an hour and a half. Tickets go on sale at the Edinburgh Fringe Box Office from Thursday 9th June. They are priced at £7 each. The venue seats 700 so there won't quite as many tickets available as for recent recordings. Again, you'll need to book early to secure a ticket. The Fringe Box Office telephone number is 0131 226 0000 and the website address is www.edfringe.com If this show is of interest, I doubt you'll be able to get through before 9th June, so make a note in the diary to call on Thursday 9th June.
Law Abiding
BM] Just to carry on this discussion about law - as it is quite interesting - If the govt brings in ID Cards, and makes it compulsory to carry them, then would you think that people would carry the card only because of "practical" reasons, or do you think that people would feel a moral obligation to do so, as it was law ? Also I would imagine that there would be a large group of people who would feel a moral obligation to NOT carry the new cards, in order to register their opposition to the new law. How would these people figure ?
Living, as I do, 15 minutes walk from the Fringe Box office, I shall attempt to buy them in person on Thursday 9th rather than listen to an engaged tone for 3/4 hour. Wish me luck.
Except that, allegedly, the box office doesn't open until the following Monday. I'll pop into the society office sometime and ask them...
[St D] Well, I would feel a moral obligation to carry them as it would be the law, but clearly I don't know how widespread such a view would be. For example, in New Zealand it is illegal to drive without having your driving licence on you, so I always had it with me even though there was no "practical" advantage to this. As for the conscientious objectors, I personally don't think their position would be defensible. To my mind it is justifiable to break a law if doing so would bring about more good or cause less harm than keeping the law. But in this case, following the ID card law would obviously do no harm - it would not harm anyone if an opponent of the law did carry their card, and it would benefit no-one for them not to carry it, other than to register their protest at the law. But they can register that protest just as effectively whilst obeying it, which surely means that there is no moral argument for breaking the law, and I would like to think that most people would agree that in such a case one should obey the law rather than break it. I hadn't imagined that there would be people who would break such a law purely because they oppose it, but I don't really understand this mentality that some people seem to have that civil disobedience is the best way to change the law. They seem to think that if you personally don't agree with a law then that gives you carte blanche to break it. Often when they are interviewed on TV they make vague references to "democracy", as if that entailed libertarianism.
ID Cards and the law
(Breadmaster) Driving licences are for people who are permitted to drive. ID cards are for people who are permitted to . . . . . . (fill in as appropriate). Why should I have to carry an ID card everywhere. After all, I know who I am. Disobeying the law while harming no-one else is a very good way to get the law changed.
[Bm] What do you propose as a means to change the law? In the case of ID cards, what would appear to be a law which is unproven to fulful its primary stated purpose (combatting terrorism) and which is proposed to have its costs bourne by the unwilling individual?
Sorry, that second thing wasn't a question. I'm not sure it even qualifies as a sentence...
[Rosie] I don't see why disobeying the law, in an example such as this, would be any more effective at changing the law than not disobeying it. Why would this be more effective than writing to your MP, going on a march, and all the other legitimate means that we have? Surely in the absence of any other considerations, one should obey the law, and so if disobeying it would not achieve anything, as I doubt that it would in this case, one should obey it.
[rab] Wouldn't it make more sense to say that if the law is indeed ineffective as well as burdensome, that is an argument for changing it, not for disobeying it, and if it does indeed prove counter-productive, the government would change it themselves irrespective of whether people disobey it or not?
[rab] Wouldn't it make more sense to say that if the law is indeed ineffective as well as burdensome, that is an argument for changing it, not for disobeying it, and if it does indeed prove counter-productive, the government would change it themselves irrespective of whether people disobey it or not?
Yes but the question I asked was "What do you propose as a means to change the law?" which was not intended as an argument to disobey it. It was a question asking, erm, how you would go about getting a law you didn't like changed. I think.
BM] The poll tax comes to mind, as a law which was eventually abolished because so many people broke it.
(BM) The best strategy for someone who doesn't like the idea of ID cards (to the exclusion of all other considerations) would have been to vote for the Tories. Whatever their manifold defects they do not have the authoritarian frame of mind of New Labour. If they'd got in, of course, the taste of power may well have changed that - it happens with all governments and they need to be constantly watched. They'll try to tell you an ID card is for your benefit. It isn't. It's for theirs. Disobey this lousy pointless law if it comes in, even if just for kicks, or self-esteem.
[rab] Well, like I said, write to your MP, or to the relevant government minister, and if you feel strongly enough start a campaign and go on marches. As for the poll tax, surely that was abolished because there was such a tide of feeling against it and such massive protests, not because people disobeyed it. People disobeying it and its revocation were two effects of the one cause, namely the unpopularity of the law, rather than cause and effect, I'd say.
Sorry - I missed that part of your response to Rosie. To be clear I don't advocate disobedience as a means towards change, but I also don't advocate slavishly following ridiculous regulations laid down by someone else "just because". There has to be a good logical reason, and because "someone else said so" doesn't count.
BM] Something like 10 million people got summonsed for not paying the poll tax, though most just got fined. The credit-checking companies stopped including poll tax debts in credit-worthiness checks, because so many people had debts that it would have made their whole system unworkable. That refusal to pay and the campaigns against it were two sides of a coin - I don't see how you can seperate them out.
ID cards
fior me, the challenge will be to carry it but in such a way that it is useless for its intended purpose. Perhaps I'll have it laminated so that it doesn't get damaged. And then won't fit in any of the readers, oh dear.
Having fully identified myself, may I draw your attention to the spare games slot? What shall we have?
How about another limericks game?
More seriously, how about a revival of Carpe Diem?
More seriously, how about a revival of Carpe Diem?
Hmm, not convinced by Carpe Diem, though I can't really think of anything else. Anyone got something fresh and new?
I've got this salad.
I'd still like a game of Gallifrey Crescent.
New game
Bob the dog (or someone posing as him) seems to have seized the day with Sabogy, but the ruleset is unexplained and the opening move is, to say the least, combative.
I'd like a Headlines game... I know Stevie has just started one on Orange, but that's people-based. How have we played them before? Like Cheddar Headlines?
Sabogy
It was possibly a lurker that created the game sometime before half six this morning
[pen]I say go for it, end Sabogy and create the game.
Stop press
[pen] Haven't we got The Cheddar Valley Gazette running on Orange at present?
...more accurately known as Holmes Raided In Mystery Dawn Swoop.
[UK] Oh. I thought that was mystery-based, which is never my thing, so I hadn't looked. Something had to be done to get rid of the sweary thing though - the same game forced me to bed on Saturday night. Feel free to fold the newspaper game if you don't want it. Fold... geddit? ;o)
How about playing the Flower Game, as mooted by Bob in ...so help me God? :)
I don't think we've ever played Commie Crescent, which might be interesting. The winner is the first to redistribute Mornington Crescent to all the other players.
Practicality
BM] Your example of driving in New Zealand illustrates my point. Of course there is a practical advantage to carrying your driving license whilst driving. This practical advantage is that if stopped by the Police, you would nat have to go through the painful process that may arise from your not carrying it. This is my point with ID cards - one might carry it purely for teh "practical" reason that it is law and it is easier just to obey the lwa and thereby avoid any ridiculous consequences that may arise from not carrying it. But there is no MORAL reason why one should carry an ID card. I think what you fail to realise is that although our moral obligations often comply with legal obligations, many people do not believe that something is a moral obligation simply because it is a legal obligation. This is especially true when it comes to minor traffic violations. I must say that I find your blind obedience quite frightening, in a 1984 kind of way.
Yes but
StD] I know this is an argument where no-one will convince anyone else, but I have a problem with individuals deciding what they are and are not morally obliged to do. I'm sure Harold Shipman believed that he was morally right in relieving these old people of their suffering (and I know that's a reductio ad absurdum, but it is the other end of the same continuum). As for minor traffic offences, the roads are provided and maintained by highway authorities/the government for people to use in cars under certain conditions. Thus I would equate asking people to carry their licence with insisting that cars should be taxed and insisting on speed limits with insisting on insurance or insisting that people should not be under the influence.
On identity cards I would take the French view, that they should be provided cheaply and for all, but that it should not be obligatory to carry one (most French people do, but that's for convenience). However, the government shouldn't argue that they will be good for the country and for security and then try to recoup the entire cost of providing them in their cost.
On identity cards I would take the French view, that they should be provided cheaply and for all, but that it should not be obligatory to carry one (most French people do, but that's for convenience). However, the government shouldn't argue that they will be good for the country and for security and then try to recoup the entire cost of providing them in their cost.
[INJ] Individuals do make their own moral decisions, Shipman included. If you're suggesting a moral principle that laws ought to be obeyed, that's your principle and you're welcome to live by it, but it's still up to everyone else whether they decide to adopt that principle or not.
[INJ] "Cheap" identity cards? Whatever the upfront fee, the entire cost of introducing cards will be borne by the taxpayers. That is where governments get their money from.
[INJ] The only real problem with insisting individuals align their morals with the law is how you go about enforcing it. After all, surely that's what the law is intended to do anyway! When it comes down to it, I don't think it's possible to force someone to adopt a belief - and what are moral values if not beliefs?
[Raak] At the risk of hounding you from server to server on the topic of redistribution, they do, but not equally. :) [Darren] I think I'm happy with the law as a means of controlling behaviour more than belief. It then isn't necessary to believe wholly in the moral force of the law, but to simply act expediently or calculatedly in relation to it. If the law is any good (and sometimes it is very good), its drafters will tend to make some rough calculations about the behaviours it will provoke and try to ensure those give the moral outcome desired.
Simulposted - but still
[Raak, Darren] You're right of course, and I think I've said something that I don't really mean. I suppose I have misgivings that people (including myself), have a tendency to advance a 'moral high ground' defence for something that is really much more to do with convenience. This weakens the force of real, more important, moral stands.
[Cost of ID cards] If there are advantages in things like security, reducing benefit fraud and the like, then the cost of ID cards should be at least partly borne by those budgets. If you don't do that then in effect it's an addition to the government tax take - I'm arguing that it should be neutral or that the cost should come out of general, means-based, progressive taxation..
[Cost of ID cards] If there are advantages in things like security, reducing benefit fraud and the like, then the cost of ID cards should be at least partly borne by those budgets. If you don't do that then in effect it's an addition to the government tax take - I'm arguing that it should be neutral or that the cost should come out of general, means-based, progressive taxation..
[Projoy] I wasn't intending to depict the law as a controller of belief, so much as a set of moral values which are supposedly held by the majority of society (or, more accurately, by the government) but not necessarily by individuals. In this sense, the law's connection with belief is that it's a formal statement of the way the government and/or society believes we should behave.
By way of light relief, and with Pen in mind...
heavily UNrelieved
[Btd] What the f ...?
... and by the way
'pen' has a small 'p'
[Chalky] She should see the doctor about that.
Or at least have the decency to use the proper receptacle for it.
moral obligations
I really think its a fascinating discussion. I must say though ImNotJohn, that there si really no-one else at all who can decide what I am morally obliged to do and not do do. They can give an opinion, they can throw me in jail, they can make me a saint or a pariah, but they cannot really decide what I feel morally obliged to do or not do. Anwya - I have to rush off now, but I do think its fascinatiing - and if yo ugoogle "Moral Obligation Obey Law" you find a lot of papers written on teh subject and it appears that great minds in this area have always and no doubt will alwyas disagree on what the answer is....
CdB Btd and WtF etc
[Btd] Blimey. Thank you very much. I know we talked about CdB and LiR, but what the hell did we say? He's a scary-looking man, anyhow.
[pen] He looks very smug, doesn't he? Always very smug. I wonder what on earth he can find to be smug about.
Sabogy
It's not a bad name for a game, but I wonder what it would be?
Sabogy
attempts to bogey a sabotage come to mind, but I don't know what that is either.
[St D] I wasn't advocating "blind obedience"! On the contrary, I said that there may be times when one is morally obliged to break the law if doing so would bring about more good or prevent more harm. But I do think that if this is not the case one is morally obliged to obey the law, simply from the fact that laws are made by the society which we are part of and from which we benefit. Read Plato's Crito for a rather more extreme defence of this (Socrates argues that one should never break the law, even an unjust one, for this reason).
[Darren] I think most philosophers, at least, would say that a moral value is not a belief, because you believe a proposition (eg "There is a God" or "Tony Blair is a jolly nice chap") but moral values are not really propositions. They may look like propositions (eg "It is wrong to murder") but this is simply a linguistic quirk. The reason is that moral statements don't simply express a fact, they prescribe an obligation - they state what you should do, rather than how things are. This is why many people think that expressions of morality are basically the same as expressions of taste, so that "Murder is wrong" is no more a statement of fact - and therefore no more a belief as such - than "This picture is nice". This probably isn't really very relevant to the discussion, though. I'm just feeling pretentious. But is it objectively true that I am?
[Darren] I think most philosophers, at least, would say that a moral value is not a belief, because you believe a proposition (eg "There is a God" or "Tony Blair is a jolly nice chap") but moral values are not really propositions. They may look like propositions (eg "It is wrong to murder") but this is simply a linguistic quirk. The reason is that moral statements don't simply express a fact, they prescribe an obligation - they state what you should do, rather than how things are. This is why many people think that expressions of morality are basically the same as expressions of taste, so that "Murder is wrong" is no more a statement of fact - and therefore no more a belief as such - than "This picture is nice". This probably isn't really very relevant to the discussion, though. I'm just feeling pretentious. But is it objectively true that I am?
Sabogies
's a bogey, innit, like, summin 's up yer nose.
Call my Sabogy
I would agree with Raak in that it is a shortened phrase almost a slang, it really originates from the estates in Glasgow, in their misunderstanding of what a bidet is for. As in
young child, "Wha's tha da?"
Jimmy "Sabogy"
young child, "Wha's tha da?"
Jimmy "Sabogy"
blind obedience
BM] Fair point - sorry I missed that. I still feel that I side with teh school of thought that says we are not morally obliged to do anything really. Especially not simply obey laws because they are laws. I generally do and will obey laws, I hasten to add.
[St D] So if we are not morally obliged to do anything, would you say that if, for example, you found yourself on a desert island with an extremely annoying companion, and if (by hypothesis) there were no way for your actions ever to be discovered or punished, there would be no moral reason for you not to murder him and make kebabs? I should probably add that I'm inclined to agree that there is no such thing, really, as objective moral obligation, so when I talk about the obligation to obey laws I'm really just speaking for myself. But I'd be interested to see how you answer this one.
[BM] I don't agree with you when you say moral values are not beliefs. When they state what you should do, that's just another way of saying they state how you believe you should act. It's a matter of semantics, and at any rate I do agree that it's probably not enormously relevant. Incidentally, are you claiming that beliefs express fact? That's patently false. The difference between a belief and a fact is that, whereas a person may hold both to be true, the former need not be objectively true. Person A believes there is a god. Person B believes there is no god. How can both their beliefs equal objective fact at the same time?
Kebabs
(BreadM) The moral force behind not murdering your extremely irritating (but presumably unthreatening) companion is that you yourself would not like to be kebabbed. That is an absolute but the example you give is easy to evaluate. Not everything is quite so straightforward.
dead meat
BM] No I wouldn't say that at all. What I (think I am) saying is that there is not really, in my view, a moral imperative to obey a law simply because it is a law. I wouldn't kill someone by who was annoying for kebabs, even if I would never be found out, purely because of I suppose, the "moral reason" that you shouldn't kill people. As it so happens, there is no "practical" reason not to kill the annoying person [assuming that you aren't worried about being lonely or whatever], as the fact that there is to be no come back on it at all has removed the practical reason to not kill someone - because it is against the law and you may end up in the nick. What I think is that the moral obligations that a person feels rest pretty much the same irrespective of what laws exist or are being prepared or are being updated.
If a new law is brought in saying "You can't smoke in pubs" for example, I would not smoke in pubs because I was being asked not to by the Landlord, not because it was against the law. If I was in a pub where the landlord and all the customers were smoking, then I would smoke too. This actually happened in California a year or so ago - having slowly got used to not smoking in bars, I was in Lone Pine (nr Death Valley) and was about to light up at the bar. I stopped myself and said "Forgot I was ion California, sorry" and the barmaid laughed, pulled out an ashtray and said "This is Lone Pine, Honey".
If a new law is brought in saying "You can't smoke in pubs" for example, I would not smoke in pubs because I was being asked not to by the Landlord, not because it was against the law. If I was in a pub where the landlord and all the customers were smoking, then I would smoke too. This actually happened in California a year or so ago - having slowly got used to not smoking in bars, I was in Lone Pine (nr Death Valley) and was about to light up at the bar. I stopped myself and said "Forgot I was ion California, sorry" and the barmaid laughed, pulled out an ashtray and said "This is Lone Pine, Honey".
[Darren] I don't think Bm was suggesting that beliefs were facts, more that they are ideas about what is. Ideas about what ought to be are a whole other class. I think it's overoptimistic to hope that any system of law will be an encoding of some sort of consistent moral philosophy. This is not least because there are usually contradictory premises even where the law is set out from first principles, leaving Supreme Courts to scratch their heads and deliver hung verdicts. The law represents just an accretive set of some morals some people had at some points in history (which is not to say it's arbitrary, just tremendously compromised by the practical realities of how it is made). My naive working assumption is usually that whoever made the law did so for the general benefit, so it's better to have obedience as the default position. There are also laws (such as speed limits) where an arbitrary line was drawn which could as easily have been drawn somewhere else (there's nothing intrinsically safer about 70mph over 71mph), but the benefit for all in drawing a line is that it gives a common framework, arbitrary though it may be, that enables drivers to make consistent calculations about risk and behaviour - so the law is worth obeying on a "what if everyone broke it?" sort of basis, I think. [Bm] I'm with you: no objective force for morals. One can easily chip away any moral principle (if you're willing to take an unpopular position) by questioning the source of its authority. You can chip away at facts in this way too, usually by resorting to that undergraduate nuclear option, the epistemological question, but it does strike me as harder.
Epistemology
(Projoy) It's an awful long time since I was an undergraduate, so what is The epistemological question? And, presuming you answer, how do you know that?
The epistomological question is "Ah, but how can you know anything?" and one usually sees it used when its invoker has lost the argument. :)
[Projoy] I doubt anybody really has a consistent moral philosophy. I certainly don't. I'm not entirely sure your view of laws is any different from mine. We just worded it differently. At any rate, I also agree there is no objective force for morals. Oh, and the loser in invoking The epistemological question is probably the highbrow equivalent of Godwin's Law.
I used to think that morality was no more than personal preference, delusionally experienced (as our perceptions usually are) as external to oneself. What else could moral statements be, since they are not demonstrable matters of fact? These days I'm not so sure, mainly due to personal experience that I don't think I can describe. A third possibility is that they are indemonstrable matters of fact, which is C.S. Lewis' position in "The Abolition of Man", which I mentioned here recently. They can be learned only by certain experiences, but the experience cannot be communicated. They cannot even be demonstrated to oneself, only lived by or not.
[Darren] Projoy answered it for me really, but yes, I meant that beliefs are about propositions, which may be true or false. A proposition is the thing that, if it is true, is a fact. And I do think that moral views are not beliefs, because they are not about propositions. It may be linguistically acceptable to say "X is wrong" but I don't think that that expresses a real proposition, because it's not something that can really be true or false. It's a commonplace now that ought cannot be reduced to is, because there is something about a prescription that is not simply a factual statement - it is, in a sense, an order. Quite what that non-factual element is, though, is a matter of debate.
[Rosie] But what has what I would like got to do with it? On the contrary, one might say that my own desire to remain unkebabed is all the more reason to kebabify the other chap, for fear of his doing it to me first (since he finds me just as irritating as I do him, and no wonder). Of course, I don't know if you're supported St D's position as originally expressed that we are not morally obliged to do anything, or aiming to refute it.
[St D] So then in fact you do think we have moral obligations? I thought you meant that we don't at all - presumably you meant only with regard to obeying the law? In which case I apologise for misunderstanding you.
I almost simulposted with Raak, and it's funny because I think I'm increasingly drawn to the view he says he now doesn't share, which is odd because normally you'd think we'd be the other way around!
[Rosie] But what has what I would like got to do with it? On the contrary, one might say that my own desire to remain unkebabed is all the more reason to kebabify the other chap, for fear of his doing it to me first (since he finds me just as irritating as I do him, and no wonder). Of course, I don't know if you're supported St D's position as originally expressed that we are not morally obliged to do anything, or aiming to refute it.
[St D] So then in fact you do think we have moral obligations? I thought you meant that we don't at all - presumably you meant only with regard to obeying the law? In which case I apologise for misunderstanding you.
I almost simulposted with Raak, and it's funny because I think I'm increasingly drawn to the view he says he now doesn't share, which is odd because normally you'd think we'd be the other way around!
[Projoy] My rule of thumb is that when someone questions the possibility of knowing the truth of anything, there is some specific truth they are trying very hard to ignore.
[Bm] What view are you moving away from, if I may ask?
[BM] I understand your argument now. A belief is a proposition which must be objectively true or false, whereas a moral value is based on something subjective... I do see where you're coming from, but I'm still not entirely comfortable with it. It seems almost a logical positivist approach to belief - that something can only be a belief if its accuracy can be objectively determined. So what of the question of whether there is a god? Is there a way of determining if there is a god or not? If not, then belief in a god can't be a belief. If you disagree with this, why is it less acceptable for "X is wrong" to be a proposition than "there is a god"? If you agree with it, then is religion in general a set moral values rather than a set of beliefs?
I meant "a set of moral values" rather than "a set moral values" of course.
Ooh, it's getting gritty now...
[Raak] I didn't really have a view to move away from, to be honest. This is partly because I always found ethics by far the dullest area of philosophy and never formally did it. I suppose the view I'm moving away from is the view that there is any sense in which "X is right/wrong" is objectively true or even objectively anything. It may be possible for it to be objectively something, but I'm not sure what, and if it's not truth then I'm not really interested.
[Darren] Oh no, I'm no logical positivist, a position I think is pretty silly (for the uninitiated, this is the view that something can be true only if it can be shown to be true). I don't say that we can't know the truth value of ethical propositions, therefore they can't be true. Rather, I say that they are not propositions at all. They are not stating facts (or falsehoods) of any kind. Thus they differ from the proposition you give of "There is a God," which I certainly think (a) cannot be shown to be either true or false, but (b) is either true or false. That's an unverifiable proposition, but "X is wrong" isn't really a proposition at all, even though it looks like one. Part of the reason I think this is that I cannot imagine how a world in which "X is wrong" is true differs from a world in which "X is wrong" is false other than that one difference. But I think that if a proposition is true it must express something about actual things actually in the world - that is, facts are, as it were, parasitic upon things. So for "There is a God" to be true there would have to be an actual God, whilst for it to be false there would have to be none. But I don't know what kind of "thing" would have to be different for "X is false" to be a fact or a falsehood. Thus it's not merely that we don't know whether it's true or not, I don't think it means anything at all to say that it is true - that is, it's not the sort of thing that can be true. If you follow me.
[Raak] I didn't really have a view to move away from, to be honest. This is partly because I always found ethics by far the dullest area of philosophy and never formally did it. I suppose the view I'm moving away from is the view that there is any sense in which "X is right/wrong" is objectively true or even objectively anything. It may be possible for it to be objectively something, but I'm not sure what, and if it's not truth then I'm not really interested.
[Darren] Oh no, I'm no logical positivist, a position I think is pretty silly (for the uninitiated, this is the view that something can be true only if it can be shown to be true). I don't say that we can't know the truth value of ethical propositions, therefore they can't be true. Rather, I say that they are not propositions at all. They are not stating facts (or falsehoods) of any kind. Thus they differ from the proposition you give of "There is a God," which I certainly think (a) cannot be shown to be either true or false, but (b) is either true or false. That's an unverifiable proposition, but "X is wrong" isn't really a proposition at all, even though it looks like one. Part of the reason I think this is that I cannot imagine how a world in which "X is wrong" is true differs from a world in which "X is wrong" is false other than that one difference. But I think that if a proposition is true it must express something about actual things actually in the world - that is, facts are, as it were, parasitic upon things. So for "There is a God" to be true there would have to be an actual God, whilst for it to be false there would have to be none. But I don't know what kind of "thing" would have to be different for "X is false" to be a fact or a falsehood. Thus it's not merely that we don't know whether it's true or not, I don't think it means anything at all to say that it is true - that is, it's not the sort of thing that can be true. If you follow me.
[Bm] (I assume that your last "X is false" was a misprint for "X is wrong"?) According to the view I am suggesting without necessarily being committed to, what would be different for "X is wrong" to be a fact or a falsehood would be that those with moral insight would agree that X was or was not wrong. That doesn't advance things much, but moves the question to "How does one acquire moral insight?" And also "How can people claiming different moral insights reach agreement on moral facts?"
I just want to correct "those with moral insight would agree" to "those with moral insight would see".
[Raak] Yes, the typesetters did me wrong. I think you're going to have to elaborate somewhat on your suggestion, though. If the sole difference between "X is wrong" being true and false is whether those with moral insight think it is, then that doesn't seem to me to be a very strong claim. Are you basically saying that things are right/wrong because most people (or most appropriate people) think so? But clearly this is quite different from normal propositions - for example, "Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system" isn't true or false by majority opinion, and neither is "There is a God." Normally we think of propositions being things that people recognise the truth or falsity of, rather than things that they determine the truth or falsity of. Alternatively, if you think that those with moral insight are in fact not determining rightness/wrongness but recognising it, then that begs the question on what grounds these people see that X is right or wrong. Do they just "see" it with Enlightenment-style infallible conscience, with no further explanation? This is quite apart from the problem you suggest yourself, which is how to recognise those with authentic moral insight, and how to deal with the problem of disagreement over morality.
[Raak] I know you're not fully taking the position that there are naturally some people with greater moral authority, but it's interesting to compare with the libertarian worldview which (without knowing much about it) I would have thought would rely on the idea that morality is personal and subjective.
As you say, it doesn't advance things much to suppose there are those with moral insight, since it's basically a deferral of the question about the source of any objective morality. For "God", read "the enlightened". You thus can't move on to asking "how does one acquire moral insight?" without committing to the belief that there is such a thing, so a leap of faith would seem to be required. Definitely not one I'm prepared to make based on my experiences.
As you say, it doesn't advance things much to suppose there are those with moral insight, since it's basically a deferral of the question about the source of any objective morality. For "God", read "the enlightened". You thus can't move on to asking "how does one acquire moral insight?" without committing to the belief that there is such a thing, so a leap of faith would seem to be required. Definitely not one I'm prepared to make based on my experiences.
[Bm] Moral propositions (in the view I'm setting out) aren't true by virtue of being believed, they are true objectively, and those able to see them believe because they see them. How do they do this? Well, how do you (for example) recognise the ordinary physical objects around you? There's no "how" involved that we can say anything useful about (at least not until non-invasive brain scanning technology improves in resolution by many orders of magnitude). The same for moral perception. How people get to be able to have moral perceptions is more answerable in the here and now: upbringing, spontaneous revelation, or learning from enlightened people.
[Projoy] If there is such a thing as moral authority at all, then some people will have more of it than others. I don't know where that "naturally" comes from: if it's an elite, it's one that anyone can join, the same as authority about temporal matters. There is indeed an act of faith involved: the faith that there are objective morals. But there is also an act of faith involved in the perception of physical truths. The main difference between the two is that most people's physical senses function at a high enough level that it is easy for all to agree on simple physical statements, while the same degree of consensus is lacking in the moral realm. One difference, at any rate. Another is that people are much more attached to their moral judgements than their physical ones.
[Projoy] If there is such a thing as moral authority at all, then some people will have more of it than others. I don't know where that "naturally" comes from: if it's an elite, it's one that anyone can join, the same as authority about temporal matters. There is indeed an act of faith involved: the faith that there are objective morals. But there is also an act of faith involved in the perception of physical truths. The main difference between the two is that most people's physical senses function at a high enough level that it is easy for all to agree on simple physical statements, while the same degree of consensus is lacking in the moral realm. One difference, at any rate. Another is that people are much more attached to their moral judgements than their physical ones.
Our three chief weapons are...
Upbringing, spontaneous revelation, learning from enlightened people...or arriving at them by working them out oneself.
fundamental philosophical talk
[Raak] True, there needn't be a "naturally" although of course in the case of perception of reality there are real reasons why some people are naturally better at intuitive perception of reality than others (a minor example is perfect pitch). We don't necessarily know the nuts 'n' bolts reasons for these differences but it is something we can say with some confidence based on the level of agreement about reality and different people's success at perceiving intuitively that which we can independently verify: I sing a note. JLE says it's A, I play an A on the piano and it corroborates his statement. But crucially his doing this does not allow me to learn perfect pitch from him. If accurate perception of some kind of objective morality is a higher order skill of this type, it's then a reasonable speculation there probably is a hierarchy of people's ability to perceive moral absolutes.
In the case of morality this strikes me as considerably wilder speculation than making the same statement about perfect pitch. This might be for anthropic reasons, of course, but if so your line of reasoning becomes rather depressing for those who don't sense an objective morality, since it suggests they are missing something big and are never going to perceive it! (Slartibartfast would say, "Oh, no, that's just paranoia. Everyone in the Universe has that.")
In the case of morality this strikes me as considerably wilder speculation than making the same statement about perfect pitch. This might be for anthropic reasons, of course, but if so your line of reasoning becomes rather depressing for those who don't sense an objective morality, since it suggests they are missing something big and are never going to perceive it! (Slartibartfast would say, "Oh, no, that's just paranoia. Everyone in the Universe has that.")
addendum
...and of course something else follows from that line of reasoning, which is that if one is to have the best system of law, there are objectively people who are qualified to legislate and indeed, such a thing as government with objective moral force, whom we lesser mortals are insufficiently equipped to judge!
Absolute pitch
(Projoy) If intuitive means "knowing without thinking" then absolute pitch is intuitive. I have it, and always have had, and I can't quite understand why anybody who's had access to a musical instrument at an early age and is musical hasn't got it. It is, in my view, only a form of memory, motivated by a strong interest in the subject. Maybe its rarity is due to it having little evolutionary or survival advantage, unlike colour recognition. It's not much help, especially these days, to know that ex-GWR steam engines whistle in A flat (1st leger line above the treble).
(Projoy) Just seen your addendum. There are indeed people who are qualified to legislate, not because they have any superior sense of morality but because they understand the nuts and bolts of legislation and its effects (sometimes). Furthermore, we have asked them to do it, this being some sort of democracy.
[Projoy] But there are people who don't sense morality. They're highly exceptional: we call them psychopaths. Not sensing the objectiveness of morality or not believing in its objectiveness are different, and don't disqualify anyone from sensing morality. As for legislation, possessing sound moral judgement does not give anyone a right to order other people around. Indeed, the delusion that "if only everyone acted as I think they ought to the world would run a lot better, therefore they should be made to act like that" is a pretty clear sign of moral immaturity.
pitch black
[Rosie] I think we did this discussion before and established that color recognition isn't really analogous to pitch recognition (because we can point at something and say "yellow", even when it's in shadow in a way that lowers the frequency to something we'd normally call brown). In a similar way, I hear a note in the context of a tune and can say "submedian" even if I can't say "Bb" or whatever it happens to be. Perhaps there is a window of opportunity very early in life to acquire perfect pitch (I'd be interested to know if there's any evidence that people who learn an instrument from, say, 4, are x times more likely to have perfect pitch than those who only start at 7, say), but from my perspective, I certainly don't think it's related to level of interest. An old music teacher of mine used to talk about an academic colleague of hers who was so envious of others' perfect pitch that he tried to learn it. He would play a note on the piano at the top of the college building then walk to the basement, brushing aside all attempts to engage him in conversation, all the while humming the note under his breath until he reached the piano in the basement. I understand he never achieved his goal :). [re: legislators] Yes, but good legislators can do their job in the absence of any moral principles. If someone told them to draft a law that compels everyone to kill their neigbour they could do that just as easily as drafting an obviously moral law. What Raak and Bm and Darren and I are speculating about is whether there are people objectively better qualified to frame the moral basis of legislation.
[Projoy] I don't think that's what I'm speculating about. (For what it's worth, I don't think any one person is more qualified to frame the moral basis of legislation than any other. To err is human, after all, and it strikes me that in order to define morality one must be infallible and therefore above the reach of mere morality. Am I making any sense or just rambling incoherently?) What I'm speculating about is whether morality and belief are the same thing. I suspect I may have to agree to disagree with Bm over that, because I'm still not convinced by his argument. The thing is, I'm reminded of Hofstadter, where he was talking about how a rock smashing a space probe may seem like a waste to us, but to a sufficiently intelligent race it may seem obvious that that's the most appropriate thing that can be done to it. The point I'm making is that just because humanity can't objectively decide whether X is wrong or right morally, it doesn't mean there isn't an absolute answer to the question which could be answered definitively by an intelligence with greater insight than ours, with rock-solid logical backup and an appropriate set of side-effects. Again, maybe that makes no sense at all. Part of the reason for saying all this is to expose the underlying thoughts which are running through my mind as I write these posts just to see if anything falls apart when they're examined more closely.
The connection with logical propositions is that, as it seems to me, Bm's definition of belief as logical proposition implies that something becomes a moral value if it can't be stated as a logical proposition as far as human intelligence is aware, whereas I don't draw any distinction simply on the basis of the limit of human awareness. Perhaps that's the difference between Bm's position and mine. Perhaps I'm being needlessly mystical about the whole thing.
Can someone have a more-well-tuned moral compass than others? Certainly. But was Gandhi's sense of morality "nature", and Siddartha Guatama's sense of morality "nurture"? (That is, a matter of learned experience vs. innate sensibility.) And of course, those who are inclined to seek public office are generally the least suited to holding public office! [Rosie] I would think that perfect pitch cannot be learned, because even though the cochlea can pass along a B flat vibration, the brain still has to define the vibration. [Raak] Psycho/sociopaths are not lacking in a sense of morality. In fact, they can be highly moral people when it applies to actions against themselves. Their issue lies in the fact that they do not understand the concept of "other", as in, there are other people out there who do exist; and this lack of understanding regarding "otherness" evidences itself to the rest of us as a lack of morality. Which I think is a good argument for morality itself being a learned ability (in that it requires an observer to define Moral and Not-moral).
Morality vs Belief
dictionary.com: morality: The quality of being in accord with standards of right or good conduct. belief: Mental acceptance of and conviction in the truth, actuality, or validity of something Now, having said that, how does it apply? One must BELIEVE that one's MORAL STANDARDS are a TRUTH in order for one to have faith in one's morality. (Because if you don't have believe in the verity of your own morality, everything falls apart. "The center cannot hold!")
I should just explain that I brought Stina here.
[Stina] (Hi.) Isn't that circular? Faith in one's morality is the same thing as believing that it is true. To argue on the other side for the moment, one can lead a perfectly moral life while having no such faith in the existence of any objective standard. I have preferences about the way I want to live, and about the way I would like other people to live. But whether I regard these preferences as no more than preferences, or as perceptions of moral truths, in either case I can't prove to anyone else that they should behave the way I think they ought to. The most I can do is argue that living in such and such a way will benefit them in their terms.
[Stina] Welcome! But no - if anything, you must believe that your moral standards are normative, not that they are true. As I argue, moral standards are not the kind of things that are "true". A moral statement is like an imperative. You wouldn't say that "Go to your room!" is true any more than it is false. It just is. The point is that moral statements ultimately boil down to injunctions of that form, even if they are disguised as statements of fact. So "X is wrong" is really "Don't do X!" in disguise. Why? Because to put it another way, statements of morality are things that you can obey or disobey. You can react to a fact or a proposition in any number of ways, but you can't obey or disobey it. Moral claims aren't like that - they invite - indeed demand - obedience in some way. And an injunction like that is not the kind of thing that can be true or false. The task for the believer in objective morality is to explain in what sense an injunction can be "objective", if it is not in the same sense that a fact can be objective. This is why I disagree with Darren. I'm not saying that moral statements aren't propositions because we don't understand how they can be, and that a greater intelligence than ours could see how they are. I don't think that they are propositions at all, and it doesn't matter how transcendent you are. A hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional being wouldn't ask what the truth-value of a moral statement is, any more than it would ask how heavy a shadow is or what colour 1815 was, because it recognise that to do so is to make a category mistake, that is, to treat something of one category as if it belonged to another. I think that those who ask whether a moral statement is true or false, or assert that it is, are making just such a category mistake.
[Raak] It seems to me that the question of who can recognise moral truth, and how, is something of a distraction from the main question, which is what "moral truth" is in the first place, and how it can exist if the points I've made are valid. If a moral statement does not express a proposition at all, let alone a true one, then what does it express? Taking for granted that there are some people who can recognise it, what are they recognising, quite apart from the question of how?
[Raak] It seems to me that the question of who can recognise moral truth, and how, is something of a distraction from the main question, which is what "moral truth" is in the first place, and how it can exist if the points I've made are valid. If a moral statement does not express a proposition at all, let alone a true one, then what does it express? Taking for granted that there are some people who can recognise it, what are they recognising, quite apart from the question of how?
[Breadmaster] Well, as I said, I suspect we may have to agree to disagree on that. I see no problem with asking what colour 1815 is, or indeed with the proposition "1815 is green." There may not be many ways of reasoning with it, and certainly it might be hard to prove it one way or another (short of formalised synaesthesia!) but I don't happen to believe that those issues prevent it being true or false. If it's a category mistake, then no number/year has a property equivalent to colour, and the statement is false. It's still a proposition.
You said earlier that "ought" does not reduce to "is." Fair enough, but you then say "X is wrong" is really "Don't do X!" in disguise, or, to put it another way, "One ought not X." Surely you're self-contradicting here. At any rate, I fundamentally disagree that just because (if we allow this, which I wouldn't) "X is wrong" may be written "don't do X", that it must always be treated as "don't do X," and that the "X is wrong" form must be disregarded.
[Bm] Well, I'm arguing, or rather exploring the hypothesis, because I think there's some mileage in it, that moral statements are propositions. They are truth claims about the moral universe. The normative consequence -- you should do that which is good, and avoid doing that which is evil -- is a secondary matter. Someone who perceives the moral truth does not have to bludgeon himself with "shoulds" into acting accordingly, he will do so as an inevitable conequence of seeing the truth, the same as he will step out of the way of an onrushing car when he perceives it, and for the same reason.
Pitch and putt
(Projoy) You can't learn absolute pitch, or unlearn it either, which is one reason I play the trombone. All the other blowing instruments in a jazz band are transposing and if I read a C I don't want to hear a Bb, and certainly not an Eb (alto and baritone sax). Trombone is written in bass clef, which results in an impressive stack of leger lines for the high notes. If it's on a space and "in the stratosphere" it's a C (octave above middle C). Otherwise it's a D (hopefully a Db) which I can just about do with a following wind. Why don't they just go into treble clef? Because they don't. Maybe not all trombonists are pianists.
Lost in space....................
Never trust a Vogon when it comes to directions.I've been stuck in the plorii system for the last 8 months!!! But now I'm back...........
To answer my own question re: perfect pitch, I googled a paper which says: "we also observed a significant association between AP and the age at which an individual first began playing music. For the AP group as a whole, the mean age of starting musical activities was 5.4 ± 2.8 years, whereas, for the non-AP group, the mean age was 7.9 ± 3.2 years (P < .0001)."
Also, it says, perfect pitch is far more common in Oriental people.
[Projoy] But -- as they also point out, I'm glad to see -- the causation could easily run the other way.
[Bm, Raak, Darren, et al] This is a *great* discussion; one from which I am really learning.
[Bm, Raak, Darren, et al] This is a *great* discussion; one from which I am really learning.
Perfect pitch
I had perfect pitch as a child, but not being a musician, I've never used it, and the skill seems to have decayed. I just tried whistling a middle C, and it turned out to be a tone flat. But maybe I'm channelling Baroque pitch, concert pitch having been invented to boost the E-string industry.
[widey] But we've been here all the time :o) Good to see you back!
Whistling Middle C
I'm not surprised you can't whistle Middle C; you'd need a head the size of a space hopper to do that. Do you mean an octave higher, or maybe even two? As to baroque pitch, I once heard Handel's Messiah sung to the accompaniment of old instruments, as it turned out. "Why are these buggers in D flat?", I was muttering until the penny dropped. Baroque pitch is about 3/4 of a semitone down on concert. (A = 422 or so).
Questions, questions....
What CdM said, first of all - it's this sort of discussion, as much the games, that keeps me coing back to the Morniverse. I do have a couple of questions- probably daft ones, but I'll lob them in anyway
Raak] If moral statements are propositions - objective truths like gravity or the earth being round - then shouldn't we as a species have discovered some of them by now? And how exact are they? Do you mean general statements like the Ten Commandments, or more specific ones? And if they are objective truths, then surely they admit no exceptions? Which is somewhat problematic - the proposition likely to get the greatest assent is probably "You shall not kill", but if pushed, most people would admit to believing some caveats to even that one (just wars, self-defence, etc).
Darren] There's a convention called Pantone numbers in printing, where you tell a printer the exact shade of green you want by quoting the Pantone number. Inside that convention, the statement that "1815 is green" is objectively true or false. That convention works because everyone who uses it agrees that the rule-set exists, and that the person or people who defined the rule-set have the right to do so. What I'd question about the idea that "1815 is green" in the wider world is - how do we know that the rule-set exists, and who made it?
Lastly (and without stopping this discussion) could I advance the moral proposition that CdM has won the current round of AVMA, and that he should tell us the answer and set another one?
Raak] If moral statements are propositions - objective truths like gravity or the earth being round - then shouldn't we as a species have discovered some of them by now? And how exact are they? Do you mean general statements like the Ten Commandments, or more specific ones? And if they are objective truths, then surely they admit no exceptions? Which is somewhat problematic - the proposition likely to get the greatest assent is probably "You shall not kill", but if pushed, most people would admit to believing some caveats to even that one (just wars, self-defence, etc).
Darren] There's a convention called Pantone numbers in printing, where you tell a printer the exact shade of green you want by quoting the Pantone number. Inside that convention, the statement that "1815 is green" is objectively true or false. That convention works because everyone who uses it agrees that the rule-set exists, and that the person or people who defined the rule-set have the right to do so. What I'd question about the idea that "1815 is green" in the wider world is - how do we know that the rule-set exists, and who made it?
Lastly (and without stopping this discussion) could I advance the moral proposition that CdM has won the current round of AVMA, and that he should tell us the answer and set another one?
[Irouléguy] Here is one account of the moral Way (although I think it leaves out a significant area, one's responsibility towards oneself). Does the law of gravity admit of exceptions? Yet iron ships float, planes fly, and Voyager is escaping the solar system, and for well-understood reasons. Anyone touting a verbal formula as the truth, whether in the scientific realm or the moral realm, has already fallen into error.
[Irouléguy] Even if an objective rule-set exists, it doesn't need a maker, unless you want to be creationist about it, or you want to take the view that all mappings are abstract constructs formed by the human mind, in which case there's no such thing as a natural rule-set, but nor does there have to be a single named maker as such things can be built up over time. At any rate, there is no need for "1815 is green" as a logical proposition to say anything about the wider world (the meaning and nature of which we could debate for many centuries), because, apart from the fact that we could be talking about all kinds of symbolism, the proposition in itself is a kind of proposed mapping between 1815ness and greenness. It doesn't have to be objectively true or false, but what we do have to be able to say is, if we had enough data, we could determine whether it was true or false. In other words, we don't need a rule-set, because the proposition itself, if true, implies the existence of one. If false, however, it says nothing about the existence or non-existence of a rule-set, although if there is no rule-set, the proposition is not a proposition because it cannot be true or false. In the same way, by saying "X is wrong" as a proposed mapping from the concept of X to the concept of wrongness, we don't necessarily say there *is* an objective mapping of actions to moral evaluations, but for "X is wrong" to be objectively true there must be such a mapping. However, just because we can't tell objectively at this stage whether such a rule-set may or may not exist, that doesn't mean that "X is wrong" stops being a proposition. I think Breadmaster's position, in this sense, is that such a rule-set is impossible and so by definition no proposition which purports to use it can have meaning, because it is neither true nor false, and therefore fails to qualify as a proposition. If it can be shown that there is definitively no rule-set, then I agree with Breadmaster that such things aren't propositions. I'm just not entirely convinced that such a rule-set is impossible, even if it is beyond human knowledge. How far this gets us into the question of morality I don't know!
Actually, I said above "There is no objective force for morals," so I've contradicted myself. OK. Let me put it like this, if there is no objective force for morals (as I clearly thought a couple of days ago!) then Breadmaster is correct and my arguments have fallen apart.
The funny thing is, this discussion has made me question in myself whether I really believe there is no such thing as objective morality, and I can't really say for certain one way or the other. Within the human world, I don't think there is anyone who has in themselves, or has determined in some other way, an objective sense or code of morality. So, I suppose I'll have to fall in line with Breadmaster's view that moral values are not logical propositions. Well done Bm! Certainly made me understand my reasoning a bit more.
[CdM] So having perfect pitch makes you Oriental! I always suspected this was the case! :)
[Raak] I understand that you're suggesting your personal insights into this come from experiences which you can't describe here, so you are rather hamstrung in terms of pursuing this hypothesis of objective morality, at least in this forum. But I am inclined to ask you some skeptical, pedantic questions, such as what a "moral universe" is, how you think the whole thing might work (in just the way you can't find here). If a moral intuiter steps out of the way of immoral actions because they perceive risk to themself (as in your car analogy), that is one thing (but implies self-interest being at the heart of morality, which would make it subjective, surely?); if a moral intuiter senses moral danger, what sort of process do you speculate might be going on in their heads that doesn't appear to go on in mine? Further, if you have some experience of this, maybe - without having to talk about the experience - you could tentatively specify an example of an objective moral rule...?
[Projoy] I knew someone was going to say that.
[Darren] Yayy! Thank you. By the way, I inexplicably can't access this page (alone of all in the Morniverse) from work any more, it seems, which is why I fell silent. Bear in mind that even moral statements are not propositions, it does not necessarily follow that they are not universally applicable. "Don't murder!" could be normative for everyone even though it does not express an objective fact. Perhaps there could be "objective commands". But what those could be, and how they could be, I don't know, and explaining them is a task for someone else.
[Raak] You surely know that your gravity analogy doesn't apply! Floating ships and space probes aren't "breaking" the law of gravity any more than I am when I hold my leg in the air before taking a step. Rather, the law of gravity is simply one of many physical laws which are inter-related, or interact. But that's beside the point. More to the point is that even the list you link to contains much that is arguable. I, for example, don't set much stock by "duties to ancestors" even though the average Confucian might regard it as a central moral imperative. There is nothing that has been universally accepted as a moral imperative, and even if there were, it wouldn't prove anything other than that people all thought it was right. The most such things can show is that human beings have evolved - either biologically or socially - to think that certain things are right or wrong, presumably because those who didn't think this didn't develop stable societies. Thus most people think that murder is wrong because if they didn't they wouldn't have survived. We can therefore explain moral imperatives - or at least their basic outlines - quite adequately in a historical or evolutionary way, without needing to posit that moral views express some kind of "truth" about the world. And the sorts of questions that Projoy asks indicate that there are big problems with the view that they do. After all, there are many people who think that there are moral facts, but no-one seems able to agree what they are. Is abortion a fundamental right or is it one of the blackest crimes there is? The fact that people disagree doesn't prove that there isn't a matter of fact at dispute, of course, but it does raise the question - how, even in principle, could the dispute be settled? What "evidence" (even if in practice it could not be collected) would prove it one way or the other?
Another point that might be relevant - the Tao website states that "For those who do not perceive its rationality, even universal consent could not prove it." Well, I'm afraid I don't perceive its rationality. I may perceive its utility or practical application. But David Hume pointed out that morality isn't to do with rationality, and vice versa - he said something like "There is nothing irrational about my preferring the destruction of the entire universe to the scratching of my finger," and he was right - such a preference may be morally wrong in whatever sense you have of the word, or it may be highly unuseful, but it's not, strictly speaking, irrational.
[Raak] You surely know that your gravity analogy doesn't apply! Floating ships and space probes aren't "breaking" the law of gravity any more than I am when I hold my leg in the air before taking a step. Rather, the law of gravity is simply one of many physical laws which are inter-related, or interact. But that's beside the point. More to the point is that even the list you link to contains much that is arguable. I, for example, don't set much stock by "duties to ancestors" even though the average Confucian might regard it as a central moral imperative. There is nothing that has been universally accepted as a moral imperative, and even if there were, it wouldn't prove anything other than that people all thought it was right. The most such things can show is that human beings have evolved - either biologically or socially - to think that certain things are right or wrong, presumably because those who didn't think this didn't develop stable societies. Thus most people think that murder is wrong because if they didn't they wouldn't have survived. We can therefore explain moral imperatives - or at least their basic outlines - quite adequately in a historical or evolutionary way, without needing to posit that moral views express some kind of "truth" about the world. And the sorts of questions that Projoy asks indicate that there are big problems with the view that they do. After all, there are many people who think that there are moral facts, but no-one seems able to agree what they are. Is abortion a fundamental right or is it one of the blackest crimes there is? The fact that people disagree doesn't prove that there isn't a matter of fact at dispute, of course, but it does raise the question - how, even in principle, could the dispute be settled? What "evidence" (even if in practice it could not be collected) would prove it one way or the other?
Another point that might be relevant - the Tao website states that "For those who do not perceive its rationality, even universal consent could not prove it." Well, I'm afraid I don't perceive its rationality. I may perceive its utility or practical application. But David Hume pointed out that morality isn't to do with rationality, and vice versa - he said something like "There is nothing irrational about my preferring the destruction of the entire universe to the scratching of my finger," and he was right - such a preference may be morally wrong in whatever sense you have of the word, or it may be highly unuseful, but it's not, strictly speaking, irrational.
[Projoy] Self-interest is at work in stepping out of the path of a car, but that doesn't make it subjective in any useful sense. Everyone will step out of the way of that car, except only children who have not yet learned that it is dangerous, the drug-addled, and the suicidally depressed. This is only subjective to the degree that every thought we have is subjective. What is objective is that the car will kill you if you don't get out of the way. Opinions and wishes are irrelevant. Reality is like the Terminator: you can't reason with it, you can't argue with it. You only have power to choose your actions, not their consequences.
(Repeat earlier caveat that I'm taking this horse out for a ride to test its legs.)
Thus it is with morality. The enlightened do good and avoid evil, because, from their point of view, the first person that good acts benefit and evil acts harm is oneself, consequences as undeniable as traffic. It applies to everything from not mugging old ladies for their pension money to getting out of bed in the morning. The idea has a long pedigree, e.g. Socrates and the Buddhist canon (and in a debased form in the Religions Of The Book, where all the consequences are deferred to a supposed later life, despite the statement by one of their prophets that "the kingdom of heaven is within you"). It doesn't give instant answers to all questions, any more than the laws of physics will immediately tell you how to build a kilometer-tall skyscraper.
(Repeat earlier caveat that I'm taking this horse out for a ride to test its legs.)
Thus it is with morality. The enlightened do good and avoid evil, because, from their point of view, the first person that good acts benefit and evil acts harm is oneself, consequences as undeniable as traffic. It applies to everything from not mugging old ladies for their pension money to getting out of bed in the morning. The idea has a long pedigree, e.g. Socrates and the Buddhist canon (and in a debased form in the Religions Of The Book, where all the consequences are deferred to a supposed later life, despite the statement by one of their prophets that "the kingdom of heaven is within you"). It doesn't give instant answers to all questions, any more than the laws of physics will immediately tell you how to build a kilometer-tall skyscraper.
[Bm] You give two arguments that undercut each other: that there are no universally accepted moral principles, and that universally accepted moral principles arise for evolutionary reasons. You can't have it both ways, but I'll ride this horse over both of them anyway.
No scientific truth is universally accepted either, if you define "universally" narrowly enough. There are, nonetheless, substantial areas of agreement on moral issues that can be found throughout all civilisations. That doesn't prove they are true (as Lewis himself says), merely that they exist. Perceiving their truth is a separate matter.
I could take the evolutionary explanation as evidence on my side -- the consequences of right and wrong action are exactly your presumed evolutionary pressures. Not getting run over is also evolutionarily adaptive, but that does not mean that personal decisions and the laws of physics have nothing to do with it.
How do you perceive the utility of the Way? If it is useful to follow the Way, what is it useful for? And what in turn is that useful for? Utility offers no foundation. Likewise rationality. Look hard enough, and all attempts to find foundations lead only to an infinite regress. Ideas can only justify ideas in terms of other ideas. Morality is about actions, and actions cannot be deduced from thoughts, any more than an ought from an is.
Hume also claimed not to see causation, but he wouldn't have survived to write his books if he hadn't dodged horse-drawn carts now and then.
[Raak] Maybe Hume was just very, very lucky.
[Raak] Your supposition that evil acts harm the doer is where it all falls down for me. Sort of repeating Bm's point, but a car will run people down according to the laws of physics, which can be reliably shown to operate universally (at least as far as we can observe), but mugging someone for their pension cannot be shown universally to have negative effects for the individual (unless you start invoking some unknowable afterlife or karma or whatever). In other words, some people get away with breaking moral rules, in just the way that a car can't get away with braking the rules of physics in order to save a life. There is merely a certain probability that a system of law exists that will make mugging disadvantageous to the perpetrator. This is not 100% (in fact taking human history as a whole, I'm tempted to speculate it is less than 50%). Is there any real evidence whatsoever to the contrary?
Getting away with murder
You might come back with the argument that the fact people get away with breaking moral rules is irrelevant to the truth of those rules, but if so then the truth of those rules is irrelevant to us if we are searching for objective standards, since the rules cannot be shown to have reliable consequences, and therefore do not admit of predictions.
I also think that rational suicide is a very interesting example in the objective/subjective debate, because it's always struck me as a very interesting example of higher-order thinking successfully overruling all the lower-order evolutionary thinking with which we come pre-installed. If our sense of objective morality rests on self-preservation, why would it admit of contradiction in this way?
I also think that rational suicide is a very interesting example in the objective/subjective debate, because it's always struck me as a very interesting example of higher-order thinking successfully overruling all the lower-order evolutionary thinking with which we come pre-installed. If our sense of objective morality rests on self-preservation, why would it admit of contradiction in this way?
Raak] (Following on from Breadmaster's reply) It's also the case that all of these moral traditions arose in societies whose rulers did not follow them, yet all of these moral traditions preached acceptance of those rulers. "Thou shalt not kill" actually become "Thou shalt not kill unless thou art the state". If these are absolute moralities, shouldn't the rulers obey them? And if the rulers are immoral, shouldn't the moral organise to get rid of them and impose the rule of the moral?
My second objection is that I don't see what makes these an objective rule-set, as opposed to the many other moral precepts you could have instead (for example, sexual equality, environmentalism).
Lastly, illustrating Projoy's point, I'm reminded by the weather of the Belloc (?) poem:
The rain it falleth on the just
And on the unjust fella
But more upon the just, because
The unjust stole the just's umbrella
One of the lessons of experience (both direct and indirect) is that crime or acting immorally very often does pay.
Darren] You're right to pick me up on the creationist implication of my argument (not at all what I think). I was with your argument all the way until "In other words, we don't need a rule-set, because the proposition itself, if true, implies the existence of one." I think that's circular reasoning, because the truth or otherwise of a proposition can only be tested by reference to a rule-set.
My second objection is that I don't see what makes these an objective rule-set, as opposed to the many other moral precepts you could have instead (for example, sexual equality, environmentalism).
Lastly, illustrating Projoy's point, I'm reminded by the weather of the Belloc (?) poem:
The rain it falleth on the just
And on the unjust fella
But more upon the just, because
The unjust stole the just's umbrella
One of the lessons of experience (both direct and indirect) is that crime or acting immorally very often does pay.
Darren] You're right to pick me up on the creationist implication of my argument (not at all what I think). I was with your argument all the way until "In other words, we don't need a rule-set, because the proposition itself, if true, implies the existence of one." I think that's circular reasoning, because the truth or otherwise of a proposition can only be tested by reference to a rule-set.
[Irouléguy] Not circular, but certainly flawed. We don't need, and nor can we infer the existence of, a universal rule-set, however we do need a rule-set which covers at least the special case(s) covered by the proposition we know to be true in order to test it, as you say, but we can say (and this is what I was getting at) that if the proposition is true, then such a special-case rule-set must exist, even if its only rule is the true proposition itself. Bringing in the special-case rule-sets, a proof that there is no universal rule-set doesn't discount the possibility of a special-case one which covers only finitely many possibilities, and therefore it is possible for a proposition to be demonstratively true or false even if there is no universal rule-set.
(At this point I'm no longer talking about objectively moral rule-sets.)
(Er... by that I mean the focus of what I'm talking about has shifted away from morality into how logical propositions [can] be members of larger sets of rules mapping one class of items to another.)
[Irouléguy] The moral organising to remove unjust rulers happens now and then, for example, in Iraq. (I am not joking.) Imposing the rule of the moral, though, is a contradiction in terms. Rule can only be imposed on an unwilling populace by killing enough of them to intimidate the rest. What is moral about that? Re your second point, you see it or you don't. That is the key difference between empirical knowledge and moral knowledge: one is demonstrable and the other is not. On your third point, why didn't the just man thump the unjust when he tried to make off with his umbrella? Sometimes crime pays and sometimes it doesn't.
[Projoy] Indeed, mugging someone cannot be demonstrated to have those negative effects upon the soul that have nothing to do with the courts. The world-view I'm arguing is one that can only be held as a matter of faith. That, it occurs to me, is what religious faith really is. It is not belief in stories about empty tombs or dictating angels; it is the belief that not only are good and evil knowable, but the knowledge is closer than your own heartbeat.
But to return specifically to mugging, muggers are not notably well-off, materially successful people, are they, even if they never go to jail? There are no rich muggers.
But to return specifically to mugging, muggers are not notably well-off, materially successful people, are they, even if they never go to jail? There are no rich muggers.
Not philosophy
ISIHAC is back, and a good one too. Carry on.
Carrying on
The supposed negative consequences of sin are not some sort of consolation for the good -- "he stole my wallet, but he'll burn in hell for all eternity, so that's ok". Morality only has application to oneself. Other people will do whatever they do, whatever one thinks about what they do.
[Raak] *holds his position in the discussion while he looks online for the biography of a mugger who becomes very rich*
Per Capita
Any chance of a recap for someone who's not been able to follow this discussion closely whilst it's been ongoing? From what I can gather my thoughts are
- What's the definition of morality? I've seen a few arguments as to what it's not, but what is it?
- Without knowing what morality is, I can't decide whether there's any sense in talking about an absolute one or not.
- What I do find interesting, though, is why people seem to have converged on having similar feelings about certain things (such as killing other people to be 'bad' [which I am happy to try and define, should that be necessary]) despite having in other ways entirely different social backgrounds and upbringing. I appreciate that there are two possible explanations for this: one, a higher "moral" force. I'm more interested in the other explanation.
(within, I should say, the confines of this discussion. I'm sure this ground has been trodden more generally by many others before. But few of us, presumably, were there, so...)
[Raak] Well, you're a bit unfair to say that the points I made contradict each other - I don't think there are any universally accepted moral mores, but those which are predominantly accepted can be explained in an evolutionary way. But I don't see that this is backing for your position, or as you put it, "the consequences of right and wrong action are exactly your presumed evolutionary pressures". Seems to me more reasonable to say that "right" and "wrong" are simply words that human beings have learned to apply to actions with such consequences. But if that is so, why should we do "right" and avoid "wrong"? I think this is the problem with the position you're defending, that "right" actions help the doer and "wrong" ones harm him/her. That isn't morality, it's prudence. Prudence means doing what is sensible, essentially, from one's own point of view. Many accounts of "ethics" have really been about this, the most famous being Aristotle's, which is all about how to achieve "eudaimonia" or "happiness". But this isn't what most of us understand by "morality", for two reasons. The first is that prudence often conflicts with what most people would understand as morality. For example, a soldier who throws himself on top of a grenade to save his friends is clearly not acting prudently, but most people would want to say he acts morally. Second, prudence does not have the force of imperative that I was talking about earlier. A moral value is, in some sense, a command. "Murder is wrong" means "Don't murder people!" You can ignore it or disobey it if you want, but the command still demands a response (and this, I think, for rab's benefit, must be part of the definition of a moral statement). By contrast, "If you mug people it will redound against you" isn't a command, it's simply a statement. It's not telling you to do something. What I want from a decent account of moral statements is an explanation of that imperative, and it seems to me that appealing to consequences in this way - or indeed in any way, such as that of utilitarianism - does not do this.
To put that point a slightly different way, moral values can be transgressed, whereas ones of prudence cannot. "Do not murder people" can be obeyed or disobeyed - "Murder will ultimately harm yourself" cannot.
The wealth of muggers
[Projoy] Look at it this way: muggers are literally stealing people's pocket money. How is anyone going to get rich doing that?
[Raak] Whyever not? One mugger doesn't just mug one victim. They do it over and over again, as long as they don't get caught (that's probably the only practical limiting clause). There's also always the possibility they'll hit a minor jackpot, too, of someone who's carrying more than just "pocket money." I would imagine, for instance, that some of us going up to Rugby had a fair amount in cash. (As the guy collecting money for T-shirts, this is more than mere speculation!) Once they've got some money, there's no reason they couldn't invest their ill-gotten gains wisely, either, and make it grow a bit. True, I doubt most muggers are smart enough to know how to do that, but I don't think you can say it's inherently impossible to become rich through it.
[Raak] Oh, and I think you're also ignoring the way they tend to take other things the person has on them, such as credit cards, watches, jewellery, etc. The latter two probably aren't worth very much for most people (let's be honest, most people wear crap), but cards can lead to all kinds of nastily profitable shenanigans.
[Breadmaster] How about the sense of guilt? Doing something you know to be wrong makes you feel guilty. So, to put it another way, if something makes you feel guilty, it's something you feel to be immoral (this can be irrationally so, of course, insofar as any morality can be said to have a rational basis). Obviously, this isn't objective because different people feel guilt for different things.
[Darren] Ok, one can imagine how to make a lot of money at street crime, but I seriously doubt if anyone does. It's just not a real career option for anyone wanting to do more than just live hand to mouth.
[Bm] What is a "should"? What are commands? The moral person would no more thrust his hand into another's pocket than into a nest of vipers. Shoulds and commands are for those who lack insight and must be told what to do. I have not (yet) read Aristotle (is this the Nicomachean Ethics?), but morality as enlightened prudence sounds right to me.
[Bm] What is a "should"? What are commands? The moral person would no more thrust his hand into another's pocket than into a nest of vipers. Shoulds and commands are for those who lack insight and must be told what to do. I have not (yet) read Aristotle (is this the Nicomachean Ethics?), but morality as enlightened prudence sounds right to me.
1815 GREEN
You see - you can prove it, with one of these. You just need to know the wavelength of the light which will tell you where it is on teh spectrum which will (in most cases) be able to be proved to be a certain colour (except for those "No it's yellow" "no it's not it's orange" conversations.)
[st d] Whether you can prove it or not wasn't the point - it was whether you needed to prove it, or indeed whether you even needed to know a proof was possible.
of course - silly me.
[st d] Well done though.
You can't step into the same conversation twice...
Wow, this moves fast...
Raak] If by the case of Iraq you mean the resistance against the US/British occupation, then I'd agree that they are morally justified (without necessarily meaning that each and every one of the resitance's actions are morally justified). I suspect that's not what you mean though.
I think the core problem here is where you say "That is the key difference between empirical knowledge and moral knowledge: one is demonstrable and the other is not." If moral knowledge is not demonstrable in some way, then how do we learn it, other than by faith? And given that there are lots of possible belief systems, many of which disagree very strongly with each other, how do we distinguish between right and wrong belief systems?
Darren] I still don't see how you can know whether a proof is possible, without knowing how you are testing it.
Raak] If by the case of Iraq you mean the resistance against the US/British occupation, then I'd agree that they are morally justified (without necessarily meaning that each and every one of the resitance's actions are morally justified). I suspect that's not what you mean though.
I think the core problem here is where you say "That is the key difference between empirical knowledge and moral knowledge: one is demonstrable and the other is not." If moral knowledge is not demonstrable in some way, then how do we learn it, other than by faith? And given that there are lots of possible belief systems, many of which disagree very strongly with each other, how do we distinguish between right and wrong belief systems?
Darren] I still don't see how you can know whether a proof is possible, without knowing how you are testing it.
[Irouléguy] I think we've moved slightly from rulesets to proofs... the thing is, I don't think you need to prove a mapping is anything other then a mapping. It could be totally arbitrary, with no proof possible, but as long as you had a consistent mapping from one category to another, or, as I said above, a subset of one to a subset of the other, then that's sufficient. A ruleset doesn't need to be grounded in the real world to be a ruleset. It can be entirely abstract, but as long as it doesn't contradict itself then that's good enough as far as the logical proposition is concerned.
[Irouléguy] Indeed it wasn't! This may be getting into the stuff of flame wars, but I had in mind (as you no doubt guessed) the removal of Saddam as the moral act, and cannot see any of the resistance "actions" (i.e. suicide bombing, suicide bombing, and suicide bombing) as moral acts, especially given that the resistance is coming from the Sunni minority whose goal is Islamic dictatorship. Which of their actions do you think are morally justified?
How do we learn morality? Upbringing, practical experience, revelation, and reason applied to those. As someone once put it: "If you get it, it will be in spite of any method. You must have a method."
How do we learn morality? Upbringing, practical experience, revelation, and reason applied to those. As someone once put it: "If you get it, it will be in spite of any method. You must have a method."
self-defeating post :-)
[Raak] Hm, I don't think I'll bother continuing with this. Nothing you've suggested as an example needs more explanation than simply that humans enact moral (and legal) consequences upon one another according to the collective effect of shared or accumulated beliefs. This is the main reason muggers (nowadays) can have little success (even ignoring the fact that poverty is probably as much a cause of mugging as vice versa). Sure, all this might be the manifestation of some deeper mechanism, but it could just as easily be a bottom-up emergent phenomenon (rab can correct my terminology if I'm using this expression wrongly) that arises out of our brain chemistry and its interactions with the environment etc. etc. From what we know, this seems to me the most conservative and most available explanation. Why invoke absolute good, absolute evil? It still seems to me that you might as well invoke God. Certainly the notion of absolute good and evil, once you start trying to define them to the letter (in the case of say, the actions of Iraq's invaders and Iraq's resistance), admit of as many conceptual problems as the notion of God. Unless you can tell us more about the reasons for your willingness to entertain your leap of faith (and you've said you can't), I feel we're really just pushing words around.
More word-pushing.
[rab] Good idea re defining morality. We could take our pick from the 11 definitions, some claimed obsolete, offered by the OED. The ones it thinks are current are:
Rather a hazy selection, no?
- Moral virtue; behaviour conforming to moral law or accepted moral standards, esp. in relation to sexual matters; personal qualities judged to be good.
- Moral discourse or instruction; a moral lesson or exhortation. Also: the action or an act of moralizing.
- Conformity of an idea, practice, etc., to moral law; moral goodness or rightness.
- The quality or fact of being morally right or wrong; the goodness or badness of an action.
- The branch of knowledge concerned with right and wrong conduct, duty, responsibility, etc.; moral philosophy, ethics.
- A particular moral system or outlook; moral thought or conduct in relation to a particular form of activity.
Rather a hazy selection, no?
[Projoy] Quite. I had a think about definitions, came up with one and devised a framework for thinking about this whilst queuing in the bank this morning. Then the teller muttered something about ISAs and it all vanished. Oh dear. I also have more pressing things to worry about, in that I have in two weeks an interview for a job I really, really want and for which I expect the competition to be fierce. So I really need to pull out the stops, so if you don't hear from me it's cos I'm doing my homework.
Not posting on MC sites! Is this moral? :)
[rab] Morality: that which does not involve ISAs.
[Projoy] "Emergent phenomenon" isn't an alternative to other explanations -- it exists alongside them. For example, I am of the opinion that the mind is literally a physical process of the brain, which assembles itself by knowable (though currently almost entirely unknown) physical processes, so all the stuff we do is an emergent phenomenon of the molecules. That doesn't mean that that stuff -- thoughts, sensations, consciousness, etc. -- doesn't exist, although discoveries about the physical stuff can call into question our naive ideas about our experiences of our minds.
As a last remark, I don't want to give the impression of hinting at mysterious mystical revelations (and I cynically suspect that a lot of accounts of such are describing nothing more mysterious than a minor stroke). The experiences that I can find no adequate way of communicating are no more than a few personal development courses I've taken, following which some religious language became a lot more comprehensible, and reading in a couple of quasi-religious traditions of disputed provenance (the works of Gurdjieff and Idries Shah).
As a last remark, I don't want to give the impression of hinting at mysterious mystical revelations (and I cynically suspect that a lot of accounts of such are describing nothing more mysterious than a minor stroke). The experiences that I can find no adequate way of communicating are no more than a few personal development courses I've taken, following which some religious language became a lot more comprehensible, and reading in a couple of quasi-religious traditions of disputed provenance (the works of Gurdjieff and Idries Shah).
*sound of penny dropping*
Ahh. So you're saying that objective morality is a high-level description for a de facto emergent phenomenon? Well, we agree, then! It's only if you're insisting it's transcendent of the nuts and bolts of human behaviour and psychology that we have a fundamental disagreement.
I did say I'd shut up, didn't I? I will now shut up.
[Projoy] Actually, I'm agnostic about what it is. It might be that, and it might not be.
[Raak] You're right in a literal sense that "commands" are for those who need to be told what to do, but the point I was trying to make is that morality, if it is real, is normative. That is, it carries an implicit command in itself, irrespective of whether anyone is standing there articulating it. If it is true that there are people with moral insight who can "see" these truths, then they would also be able to "see" this implicit command and respond to it one way or the other (would you, incidentally, accept the existence of people with moral insight who nevertheless act wrongly?). Enlightened prudence (and yes, it's the "Nic Eth" I was thinking of, but any other kind too) doesn't cover it. When people say "Murder is wrong" they don't mean that it's in your interest (or even in the general interest) not to murder people - they mean that it's wrong, that you shouldn't do it, not even in an extraordinary case where it's beneficial. That's what Crime and Punishment is about. I haven't seen any argument explaining why, in the example given before, a soldier should sacrifice himself for his friends. I haven't even seen an argument explaining why I should not murder. I can imagine an argument setting out the undesirable effects of my murdering, but that's not the same thing. Jesus said "Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these other things will be given to you" - but he meant that happiness comes as a result of doing what's right, that is, as a reward. He didn't mean that happines literally is doing right, and I wouldn't have thought many people would either. Purely from an empirical standpoint, how many people would agree that the happiest people in world are also the most moral?
[Darren] The guilt point is a good one, but you'd have to argue that the guilt of doing something you believe to be bad would always outweigh any happiness you derived from the benefits of the bad act, which I think would be unlikely - people generally rationalise such things eventually. Plus, of course, it's no use when trying to make an objective account of morality, as you point out, because different people feel guilty about different things.
A shame Projoy's bowing out as I think he's been entirely right throughout this. But like him I'm not sure that much headway is being made in any direction, so perhaps I'll do the same!
[Darren] The guilt point is a good one, but you'd have to argue that the guilt of doing something you believe to be bad would always outweigh any happiness you derived from the benefits of the bad act, which I think would be unlikely - people generally rationalise such things eventually. Plus, of course, it's no use when trying to make an objective account of morality, as you point out, because different people feel guilty about different things.
A shame Projoy's bowing out as I think he's been entirely right throughout this. But like him I'm not sure that much headway is being made in any direction, so perhaps I'll do the same!
[Bm] In which case, perhaps it's time to draw the whole question of "what is morality" to a close.
[Bm] Here's a thought: if immoral actions are those which we feel guilty about, then perhaps as guilt wears off the actions become less immoral! Has anyone ever claimed that a given action is (im)moral for perpetuity, or is it allowed for its status to change with time? Note that I'm not putting this idea of transient immorality forward as anything too serious, I'm just playing around with the concept to see what happens.
After all, most people would say (I think) that once you've done a particular immoral action once or twice, it becomes easier to do it later. I'm talking here about personal morality rather than any kind of universal morality, of course.
[Bm] "Command", "normative force", and "should" are just different labels for the same thing, whatever that thing is, if it exists. You can't get an ought from an is, so there are no arguments proving that one should do this or that, except from assumptions about what one should or should not do. There isn't an argument proving that you should get out of the way of a car either, only a description of the consequences, on the basis of which everyone is free to make their own response to the situation. "Enlightened prudence" (with an emphasis on the enlightened) doesn't bridge that gap, but neither does anything else. The only way to get there is to be there.
[Raak] Well, that is precisely one of the key reasons for supposing there is no such thing as objective moral truth!
Coming in during Dinner
Some people don't seem to have quite got the hang of this, you could say.
[Bm] I left moral truth off that list, because although one view is that it's just another name for the same thing, in the view I'm arguing, it isn't. It's...it's moral truth, that's what it is! And one still has a choice about whether to follow it or not.
talking of dinner
Last night I had dinner at a nice restaurant called Baltic, with , among others, Sarah Atkins, who is Head of Legal at London Underground.
[st dogmael] Did you ask her about the meaning of morality?
Yes. She said that it was buried deep in the foundations of the Jubilee Line Extension, somewhere near Canary Wharf, and that LU owned the IP rights to it.
gatsos
got hit with one on the M4 on Friday eveniing - doing 45ish in a temporary roadworks 40mph zone. BATFISH.
Greetings from deepest Vermont, where the speed limit is 25mph and the hire car does almoat 20 mph without complaining. And the weather's pretty bloody hot too.
[st d] Why do I suspect that when you add "-ish" to your speed, you actually mean "+30"? :-)
Well I've just got back from Inverness and a lovely time I had too, despite it being work. It appears the Highlands haven't yet discovered speed cameras if the taxi I got from the airport was anything to go by. Rab might be interested to know the flightpath in takes you directly over Inverness Sewerage Treatment Works.
[Botherer] Did you buy a cape?
speed estimates
CdM] Funnily enough, loud mouthed as I am, I do try to drive safely. The signs were all over saying 40MPH SPEED CAMERAS etc etc so I dropped to about 50, then saw the camera and braked and got flashed so I assume I was doing about 45. To be honest I would have braked a hell of a lot harder and probably been okay if I though it would have been safe but there were cars behind me. (a speeding tikcet, caught on camera, with brake lights showing and a Nissan crashed up my ass and HGVs jackknifing left right and centre would have been a bad look)
Cameras
I was almost caught by a static camera on my way into Liverpool on Sunday; I'd been travelling down the East Lancs road at 40 (the limit), and always forget that it changes to 30 on a ridiculous junction where it's really far more prudent to be looking at the five con/di-verging pieces of road (and persons alongside/between them) than at the signage and the speedometer. It remains a 30 zone, with no real need to be so. I only thought to ask my girlfriend on imminent approach to the camera what the limit was at that point, and I think I managed to take 10mph off before it could see my plate (there were no flashes that I could discern). Thankfully there was no-one close behind. The camera is placed on a flyover between the run-offs to and from one of the tunnels, so again my concentration really would be more use on other aspects of my driving than the speedometer and signage.
I was also pulled over for the first time on the M62 on Friday for (in my eyes, obviously) mostly unjustified reasons, at least partially caused by the officer doing the pulling. Thankfully he was only in the mood to administer a lecture, and then had to extricate me from the far more dangerous situation he'd left me in - he'd pulled me over behind a broken down van in the hard shoulder on a exit filter lane to Warrington. This involved both of us reversing down the hard shoulder(!), then him madly waving people out of the filter lane before pulling out into it at 3mph(!) so that I could get out and 'safely' build speed and pull back out of the filter-off lane. Which I'm fairly sure is an offense, due to the markings on the road, but that was what he'd told me to do(!).
I wrote an overly long-winded explanation. Click here to see it. I pretty much know what's going on around me, even when I haven't been able to see into a spot for a second or two. It's called induction and extrapolation. Well, I think it is, and on that point I think I'm in pretty much the ideal place for correction. Sorry, I needed to vent. My girlfriend got sick of it after about half an hour.
[PJ] Cape and Top Hat, brushed up my tails...
coptastic
nik] he sounds like a cunt of the very first order. You should write a letter of complaint.
If he'd actually booked me for something, then maybe. As it was, he just seemed to be something of a busy-body. I think I've pretty much worked it out of my system now. Only taken a week! :/
(Nik) Dear me, pulled over by a bumptious cop and given a lecture. Get over it FFS.
Er, did I not say I'd gotten over it? In the post before yours? Which was days before your post? In response to st d, posting several days after my original post? Can I direct statements including the word 'fuck' at you too? Can I? It's big and clever.
orders of c....
nik] sounds like he didnt give you a ticket because he knew he wouldnt get away with it. Still ranks pretty highly with me or he wouldn't have pulled you over at all.
(Nik) Try www.upmyownarse/pettymotoringwhinges.com
[Rosie] Careful now, it's been a pleasingly long time since we had a full-blown flamewar.
[Projoy] Don't worry, I've never been good at flamewars. They require far too much effort and a short-term memory capable of remembering that I'm participating in one.
driven up the wall
[pettymotoringwhinges] Yes please! I have loads . . .
flamewars
not sure i ever remember one on here, it does seem that you are spoiling needlessly for a reaction though, rosie.
(Projoy) No flamewar. I've made my point, which stands.
Point standing?
No, I'm sorry, Rosie. A point simply isn't stable; it would tip over.
[SM] It depends which way up you stand it.
(SM, Darren) Points mean prizes. (wearily) What do points mean?
PRIZES!!
hooray. I would like to win a very fast loud car and drive it about extremely fast with music blaring.
[st d] If the exhaust drops off your Peugeot and you point it downhill with Take That turned up to full bifters, that's what you'll have.
Peugeot Exhausts
[pen] Shirley you mean when the exhaust drops off your Peugeot?
[Botherer] Have you seen the amount of string holding St D's Peugeot's exhaust on?
string
that's not string, that's plastic bags wound round lots of times.
Phew wot a humid scorcher
I was up at 0530 this morning (another of my apparently weekly trips to Heathrow to collect/deliver people) and it was 17 degrees. I still think the best summer holiday I had was in the Arctic Circle. I'll bore you with temeperature updates and whinges throughout the day...
[pen] You are joking, right...?
[CDM] Nope. I have the build of an eskimau
Eskimo Nell
(pen) As long as you don't have their washing habits (nil). It's going to get a lot hotter over the weekend but you can avoid it by yet another trip to Heathrow or wherever and flying to "the uttermost part of the earth" (EasyJet, £5). See http://groups-beta.google.com/group/uk.sci.weather Mine is the first post in a thread marked "Cold Stuff". Maybe a bit technical/anorakky.
[pen] To be clear, my disbelief didn't concern the arctic circle vacation (I remember a wonderful trip to Lapland in midsummer) but the idea that 17 degrees is remotely warm, even at 05:30. Even for an eskimo.
[CdM] I sound like a complete marshmallow, but 17 degrees is at the point where I find it difficult to sleep. Flerdle will scoff...
[CdM] 17 degrees is quite warm enough for me, I can tell you. And you know where I'm going to be a month from today! Ha! Oh dear...
hahahahahahahahaha I win.
*scoffs*
[oblig weather report] "Normal" temperature range here now is 30 to 40°C, often about 5 degrees higher, with daytime humidity usually around 60%, higher at night. It was 35°C at midnight one day last week.
Yes, of course we use airconditioners, to bring the inside temperature down to somewhere in the mid to high 20s, and to dry out the air, and to avoid situations like the one on Wednesday night when (presumably) the freezer electrics overheating in the grocery store below our flat caused a fire that almost burnt down the building. I'm not surprised it happened, because they've never bothered to kept the shop cool enough. They're paying for it now.
During the heatwave in Bris at the start of last year, I found my "can't really sleep" point was almost exactly 23°C. Even one degree lower helps.
I don't know how I'm going to cope with Tasmania in early August.
(Re 23°C: things like humidity, fans, etc would vary it, but it was interesting observing my sleeping patterns and correlating it to temperature, at that time. Hey, I was stuck in the wrong country for two months, I needed something to do. I'm not about to redo the "experiment" if I can help it. Also, here we probably have the aircons set a bit lower than I said above. We don't have a thermometer or hygrometer, so I have to go by reported temperatures, but I have no reason to think they fib.)
I have a nice little chart which shows the apparent temperature, given the humidity and environmental temperature. Fascinating reading. For example, the other day when it was 40°C and 50% humidity, for most people that gives an apparent temperature of about 55°C, or 63° if you're in full sun (that's 145°F, if you needed the conversion).
Yum.
Sleep temperatures
(flerdle) No air-conditioning in this house and the temperature in my bedroom now (9.45 pm) is 25. We've had quite a warm day. The next few nights will be warmer still - probably 27 or so in this room but to me that's no problem. You just wake up a bit sweaty, that's all.
That's quite hot
I don't know how I'd cope with 40°C, but I dream of temperatures reaching 30something here! Far too seldom.
Chilling out
[flerdle] You had best put on some weight. Tassie in August is going to be right nippy I would think.
Our snowfields finally received a dump or two over the last few days - about 500mm according to reports - so it looks like the monied classes will have something to play in again this year. Locally the nights are cooling off (4.5°C minimum last night) but the days are fine and, unfortunately, dry. The dam levels for the Sydney area are down to about 38% of capacity - not great when you have 4 million plus people relying on the supply. Water restrictions have been tightened again. Some towns west of the divide are now having to cart water in from afar. I feel for the poor farmers. There are five year old children in some areas who have never seen rain.
Yeah, thought you would be interested. Sorry.
Our snowfields finally received a dump or two over the last few days - about 500mm according to reports - so it looks like the monied classes will have something to play in again this year. Locally the nights are cooling off (4.5°C minimum last night) but the days are fine and, unfortunately, dry. The dam levels for the Sydney area are down to about 38% of capacity - not great when you have 4 million plus people relying on the supply. Water restrictions have been tightened again. Some towns west of the divide are now having to cart water in from afar. I feel for the poor farmers. There are five year old children in some areas who have never seen rain.
Yeah, thought you would be interested. Sorry.
Scepticism
(Dujon) Has there really been a 5-yr absolute drought in parts of Oz that normally receive at least some rain from time to time? Possible, I suppose. The variability is greater than in the UK. It's been dry here too, at least in the south. At Maison Rosie there have been 7 dry months running and the total is under 60% of normal for that spell and there's now a hosepipe ban. Such hardship! But why should people think they can lay water out to dry? It's a finite resource.
Correction
Sorry, Rosie, I should have typed 'four-year-olds'. But, yes, it's true, and I'm not commenting on desert areas. Even where I live it's not particularly good. This calendar year (Jan & Feb tend to be our storm months) we have had 126/144.5/61/20.5/22 and, so far this month, 0.5 mm of precipitation. Some of this arrives in bucketsfull - we had 35mm and 30mm land on different days of Jan., 38.5mm twice in Feb. and another of 54mm (the 22nd; this followed one of the 38.5mm days), 14.5mm, 12mm and 19mm on separate March days. Since then we've had 13 days on which it rained, the maximum being 7mm on May 18th.
Put your scepticism back in the wallet and save it for a rainy day. ;-)
Put your scepticism back in the wallet and save it for a rainy day. ;-)
[Rosie] We really should find a thermometer and see what it is in here; in any case, it's not 18°C. I suspect I've become better able to tolerate heat, including while sleeping, but I still don't like it.
[Dujon] I have been :-(
[Dujon] I have been :-(
Dumper truck
Call me Mr Purile, but I'm always amused when people concerned with snowfall talk about "good dumps".
Drought and sweat
(Dujon) OK. It's just that I'm a natural sceptic, based on the "95% is bollocks" principle, but this forum has a greater percentage of truth-tellers than most, I'd say. Your total comes to 370 mm or so which is a lot less than the 600 mm that Sydney is supposed to have in that period. But are you in Sydeny itself? The figure for Richmond is only 420 mm for the same period. But I suppose any deficit is serious if it's part of a long-term dry spell. (flerdle) Yes, I can't believe 18°C in your tropical paradise. I'd find that decidedly chilly. (rab) Carry on! I am equally caused to giggle when people say they had to evacuate to avoid some imminent weather disaster. Scared the shit out of them, in other words.
I can't see anything amiss with using 'dump' in such a context. One meaning of the word is 'to put down heavily', which sums up heavy falls of rain/snow/whatever. Perhaps it would have been more correct to have said 'was dumped'? My apologies for mangling the language.
I'll have to check my records, Rosie. Unfortunately I took the trouble to transfer my data from notebooks to a computer spreadsheet program and promptly lost it all when a hard drive failed. Naturally gubbins here hadn't got around to backing up the files. There were about fifteen years of it and I've not had the inclination to do it all again. I'd have to find the notebooks, too (no doubt they'll be in a 'safe place'). I'm about the same distance from Sydney as is Richmond - 80 Km/50 miles - but with about 1000' extra elevation and 30 Km south-ish.
I'll have to check my records, Rosie. Unfortunately I took the trouble to transfer my data from notebooks to a computer spreadsheet program and promptly lost it all when a hard drive failed. Naturally gubbins here hadn't got around to backing up the files. There were about fifteen years of it and I've not had the inclination to do it all again. I'd have to find the notebooks, too (no doubt they'll be in a 'safe place'). I'm about the same distance from Sydney as is Richmond - 80 Km/50 miles - but with about 1000' extra elevation and 30 Km south-ish.
Further to that lot, Rosie, if you are interested then look here for information on current Sydney dam levels.
The bit found here includes a small reference to Goulburn (I could drive there in less than an hour and a half - I think). It's not quite up to date as the town has tapped the aquifiers and is using 'grey' and recycled water quite extensively. Strange though it may seem, much of the recycled stuff is used for keeping the sporting fields operational - combined with water carted in to the town (at some considerable expense to the clubs involved).
I won't bore (sorry) others on this site with useless chatter, I'll send an e-mail in the next few days. I noticed that London is expecting well over 30°C today (Sunday) and will ask you a couple of questions about it. That sort of reading is becoming seriously warm.
The bit found here includes a small reference to Goulburn (I could drive there in less than an hour and a half - I think). It's not quite up to date as the town has tapped the aquifiers and is using 'grey' and recycled water quite extensively. Strange though it may seem, much of the recycled stuff is used for keeping the sporting fields operational - combined with water carted in to the town (at some considerable expense to the clubs involved).
I won't bore (sorry) others on this site with useless chatter, I'll send an e-mail in the next few days. I noticed that London is expecting well over 30°C today (Sunday) and will ask you a couple of questions about it. That sort of reading is becoming seriously warm.
[Dujon] There's nothing grammatically wrong with using the word "dump" in that way - it's just highly amusing to those of us with the minds of small boys. Maybe Australians don't use the word in - ah - that sense? I'm most surprised!
generalised dumping
[Bm] I don't think we do, really.
[Breadmaster] Ah, yes! No, it's not common here and so went straight over my head. Rosie's evacuation quip should have alerted me. :-(
Heat
(Dujon) You're up! So am I. It was 30.6 here at Hughes Hall (southern edge of London, 600 ft) but the highest was 32.6 at Heathrow, a bit suspect due to all that concrete. Some tasty thunderstorms in the north but nothing here. Outside it's stuck at 21 and not a breath of wind, and 28 in this room. No bedclothes tonite, Josephine.
tasmania
why are you going to dear old tassie flerlde ? where you going ? have you been before ? tassie is one of my favorite places.
tasmaina
Just visiting a relative, in Hobart; not sure what we'll actually do. Should be a bit different. Second week of August. I've always wanted to visit, but it's been a bit far away ( = expensive to get to) for just a holiday.
AVMA
This game has died. Either that or Gusset Login has. If he's not there later today I'll start it myself and you'll all suffer. :-)
AVMA
You're safe. He's back.
[Rosie] But everyone else has gone. Hellloooo?
I'm lurking!
Lurking
I'd like to play more but as I can't access MC5 from work (apparently Websense thinks it's a game!) I feel reluctant to contribute.
Snow jobs
In exciting news just to hand: It's snowing. Well, not here, but where my wife works, which is a half hour drive to my west in a place called Katoomba. This, I suspect, will mean that PaulWay will be taking anti-chilblain precautions due to his location in cold Canberra. Sorry for the exuberance - most of it stems from the fact that I'm glad I'm not there.
(Dujon) Latest from Canberra is 6°C. BTW how high is Katoomba? I can see why it's a bit cold from the excellent animations from the Bureau of Metorology, which show a series of charts and loads of other data too. The Americans, via NOAA, also provide this kind of thing, and for the whole world. Not a dicky bird from our own UK Met Office, which has now completely abandoned all idea of public service. It sells forecasts to the BBC at a huge price and operates purely on a commercial basis. It is about to shut down all non-military outstations, including weather centres. The archives are not online and its website is minimalist, quite unlike other countries' services. Its attitude to the public is "up yours - you don't pay". It is despised by all its former employees, including this one, and by a good proportion of its present ones, except the accountants, probably. The poison was first injected by Thatcher and further heavy doses have been enthusiastically administered under that prick Blair. A heap of shite and a national disgrace.
[Rosie] Katoomba? About 1000 metres, give or take a few. It's not particularly elevated in world terms but is in those of Australia. I'm approximately 270 m.a.s.l. (which is close to, but not quite, 1000' a.s.l.). Please keep in mind that Mt. Kosciuszko, our highest point, is a mere 2228 metres above sea level and that you can pretty well drive there.
Last night was 'nippy' here - about 2.5°C - and as I write it seems about 11°C (it's approx 13:30 local). That reading comes from an electronic device and one in which I invest little credibility - though it's probably close. Whatever, it most surely is cold for this part of the world.
Last night was 'nippy' here - about 2.5°C - and as I write it seems about 11°C (it's approx 13:30 local). That reading comes from an electronic device and one in which I invest little credibility - though it's probably close. Whatever, it most surely is cold for this part of the world.
prescience
[Dujon] PaulWay is in the Caribbean at the moment, or possibly the west coast of the US.
*is not jealous of the antipodeans' sub-10-degree-centigrade temperatures at all, oh no...* 20 degrees C here (NW London) at 09.00 this morning, with a high of 32C or 90F expected today. Thank goodness I'm working outside for the next couple of days. I think...
(Dujon) Thanks. Along with penelope I could do with a bit of that. Just popped out to the screen - it's 29°, dewpoint 17°, i.e. sweaty. Almost no wind and the sky is full of heavy cirrus, which should stop it getting any hotter but might stop it cooling down much this evening, alas. Tomorrow's forecast is for all hell to be let loose (thunderstorms). It looks rather tasty, but we'll see. Only 6 mm rain here this month. Good, no gardening needed. Concerning my earlier rant my sources in the Met Office seem to have been reliable; see http://northtonight.grampiantv.co.uk/content/default.asp?page=s1_1_1&newsid=6898 You can get UK Met Office charts but only via the University of Karlsruhe.
[Pen] Bah! Luxury. It has topped 32oC every day (Except Weds)this week here in the Avon Valley. 19oC ish at night. I have been sleeping out on the lawn (in my sleeping bag) all week - listening to the hedgehogs fan themselves.
[flerdle] PaulWay must indeed have a sixth sense - good luck to him. Drifting around the east coast or west coast of the U.S. of A. sounds somewhat idyllic - unless there're cyclones or earthquakes.
[Rosie] That does sound a bit, well, short sighted? I can most certainly understand the concerns of local industries - fishing, oil rigs and the like - as I have always felt that local knowledge in these matters is a significant asset. Yesterday Katoomba had a temperature range of -1°C to 3°C. Given my wife's earlier account I thought I'd gird my loins and drive up to bring her home (she often has to walk to the station - a good half hour walk and all up hill). Not having been to her place of employ previously I got flummoxed in the back street up and down dale topography. Enough so as to miss her. I then hurtled up to the railway station and again missed. Most sad. There was, however, a light side to this epic voyage of discovery: Just about everyone I saw in the main street of the town wore a beany, many were wearing fleecy lined jackets (some with Alaskan style fur collars/hoods) whilst little old me was wearing my usual short-sleeved shirt with a cardigan for insurance and no hat. It was most assuredly cold and I would not have liked to wander around for an hour in that garb, but it did make me chuckle.
To make things worth, by the way, thinking that my wife's train was long gone by the time I rediscovered my home territory, I took a cursory glance at the railway station as I passed and, seeing no one of interest, carried on home. I was advised fifteen minutes later - in no uncertain terms - that I'd driven straight past the poor lass. Honestly, you can't win.
[Rosie] That does sound a bit, well, short sighted? I can most certainly understand the concerns of local industries - fishing, oil rigs and the like - as I have always felt that local knowledge in these matters is a significant asset. Yesterday Katoomba had a temperature range of -1°C to 3°C. Given my wife's earlier account I thought I'd gird my loins and drive up to bring her home (she often has to walk to the station - a good half hour walk and all up hill). Not having been to her place of employ previously I got flummoxed in the back street up and down dale topography. Enough so as to miss her. I then hurtled up to the railway station and again missed. Most sad. There was, however, a light side to this epic voyage of discovery: Just about everyone I saw in the main street of the town wore a beany, many were wearing fleecy lined jackets (some with Alaskan style fur collars/hoods) whilst little old me was wearing my usual short-sleeved shirt with a cardigan for insurance and no hat. It was most assuredly cold and I would not have liked to wander around for an hour in that garb, but it did make me chuckle.
To make things worth, by the way, thinking that my wife's train was long gone by the time I rediscovered my home territory, I took a cursory glance at the railway station as I passed and, seeing no one of interest, carried on home. I was advised fifteen minutes later - in no uncertain terms - that I'd driven straight past the poor lass. Honestly, you can't win.
lithping
s/worth/worse.
Blue Mountains
[Dujon] I have to say that I think you have the good fortune to live in one of the most beautiful parts of the world that I have ever seen.
[BtD] Sleeping outside? Is your house better or still falling down?
bool- house is fine, just very hot. please excuse the formatting, this is being posted from a mobile.
[CdM] I had gathered you'd been here, but hadn't realised that you had visited the 'mountains'. Though they are not very high there are some majestic parts of them, for sure. I'm pleased that you enjoyed the place.
[All] I hope that everyone else has had some relief from your oppressive weather - I know from experience that it can be quite ennervating, especially the 'getting to sleep' bit. Urrk. As a matter of interest, Bob the dog, if you were escaping the heat then why the sleeping bag? You have me intrigued.
[All] I hope that everyone else has had some relief from your oppressive weather - I know from experience that it can be quite ennervating, especially the 'getting to sleep' bit. Urrk. As a matter of interest, Bob the dog, if you were escaping the heat then why the sleeping bag? You have me intrigued.
Full moon
Dujon] Its a summerbag - simply for keeping the dew off - not that there has been much. There is also the discretion factor as I sleep in view of neighbours who are very good friends of ours - but who would probably be offended by the sight of my lack of attire. Come to think of it - a topic of conversation here in the UK recently has been the unusally large moon close to the horizon...
the great outdoors
[BtD] So do you hop out the back door in your sleeping bag, sack-race style, or do you tiptoe out once you think they're asleep?
Full Moon
(Btd) The moon, full or otherwise, always looks big when close to the horizon. It's an optical illusion, which nobody can really explain. If you actually measured it you would find it's smaller near the horizon than when high in the sky, other things being equal. This is a simple geometrical effect.
Moon river
[Rosie] No, I think, surely, you would find that the Moon is the same size in the sky no matter whether it's high or low. After all, it only takes a few hours for it to rise or set - it's not going to change in apparent size as it does so. The apparent growth of the Moon when near the horizon is of course some kind of psychological effect.
The reason the Moon has been looking even bigger than usual near the horizon this week is that full moon has coincided (almost) with midsummer. The Moon is full when it is opposite the sun in the sky. The sun is at its highest at midsummer. Therefore, if the Moon is full at midsummer, it will be as close to the horizon as it ever gets whilst being full. Therefore the "Mendex" or Moon Illusion is at its strongest.
The reason the Moon has been looking even bigger than usual near the horizon this week is that full moon has coincided (almost) with midsummer. The Moon is full when it is opposite the sun in the sky. The sun is at its highest at midsummer. Therefore, if the Moon is full at midsummer, it will be as close to the horizon as it ever gets whilst being full. Therefore the "Mendex" or Moon Illusion is at its strongest.
When I say that the Moon doesn't change in apparent size while rising or setting, I mean that the area of sky that it covers surely doesn't change. Obviously its apparent size does change because it looks bigger closer to the horizon, but it extends over the same arc of the sky (and indeed of the retina).
The moon should appear to be smaller when on the horizon than when at the zenith. Reason? It is further away when viewed at a tangent to the Earth's surface than from a perpendicular. This slight change is measurable though unlikely to be noticed by a casual observer.
Why we generally perceive a full moon to be larger on its rising as opposed to when it is high in the sky has often been said to be as a result of it being in proximity to our more normally observed everyday horizon (trees, buildings, horizon line) than when it's clear of such. In other words the sense of scale becomes more evident.
Why we generally perceive a full moon to be larger on its rising as opposed to when it is high in the sky has often been said to be as a result of it being in proximity to our more normally observed everyday horizon (trees, buildings, horizon line) than when it's clear of such. In other words the sense of scale becomes more evident.
Moon size
(Breadmaster) Dujon has explained what I meant by the "geometrical effect". The moon is measurably about 1.7% larger in apparent diameter when overhead than when on the horizon, other things being equal. We're simply closer to it when it's overhead. The same applies to the sun, strictly speaking, but as the distance of the sun is 23500 earth radii the effect is barely measurable even with instruments.
Peter Greenaway
reference is made to: http://petergreenaway.co.uk/games.htm
Many of the films of Peter Greenaway, at least the feature films that I have seen, have the structure of games. The best example is probably Drowning by Numbers. I have only recently discovered MC and I find the similarity to Hangman's Cricket to be striking. Does anyone know whether Greenaway has played MC?
[Rosie] Sorry to steal your thunder, old son, but Breadmaster's comment had been sitting for quite a few hours without response.
[Effable] Hello. I cannot answer your question but, on the law of averages, my guess would be 'yes'. The reason for that is that I believe I'm the only person on Earth who hasn't played a serious game of M.C..
[Effable] Hello. I cannot answer your question but, on the law of averages, my guess would be 'yes'. The reason for that is that I believe I'm the only person on Earth who hasn't played a serious game of M.C..
(Duj) No problem, mate. I've never played MC, either live or on these sites. It is essentially a performance in which the audience and panel enter into a mutual conspiracy about the complexity of the rules. Very few people I know have ever heard of it, which is rather disappointing. You could go up to anyone over the age of about 40 in this country and say "Bal-ham", and the almost instantaneous response would be "Gateway to the South", but say "Mornington Crescent" and you'd get mostly blank looks.
[Breadmaster] I just re-read your earlier post vis-à-vis (sorry!) full moon and the midsummer situation. This is not true. On average there are thirteen full moons per year. As viewed from Earth (the Sun always 'sees' a full moon) such an event can only be seen from one point on Earth and will happen at a specific time. To be technically correct a proper full moon will only occur during a total lunar eclipse, which is when the Sun, Earth and Moon are truly aligned - even then it can only be termed a 'full moon' by a person standing/sitting/lying on the direct line between the Sun, Earth and Moon at the time that this occurs.
Ooh Arr, hello Rosie. Simulpost.
I trust you agree with my little piece on celestial mechanics? Or have I mislead myself?
I trust you agree with my little piece on celestial mechanics? Or have I mislead myself?
conspiracy
[Rosie] Well, I'm very nearly fifty and I only learned of the existence of MC a few days ago. Now I'm hooked. It is as though it had been out there waiting for me to discover it, seems so right, so well suited to my motley talents. It doesn't bother me that it is so obscure. That is part of the appeal. And I am confident that many people have played MC without knowing what it is called. The pattern is a common one in many circles with intellectual pretensions.
Sprung
[Effable]
Your research, Sir or Madam, is exemplary. Welcome to the world of wannabees, couldavebeens and mightwellbees. I suspect that you will fit quite well into this society of misfits and miscreants. As a relative newcomer to the M.C. world myself, I'm quite sure that you will understand the deep and meaningful discussions, the amazing word play and generally unintelligible literary references which pepper this and other M.C. sites. Should I be correct then maybe you could help me out when I get stuck?
| "... The pattern is a common one in many circles with intellectual pretensions." |
Your research, Sir or Madam, is exemplary. Welcome to the world of wannabees, couldavebeens and mightwellbees. I suspect that you will fit quite well into this society of misfits and miscreants. As a relative newcomer to the M.C. world myself, I'm quite sure that you will understand the deep and meaningful discussions, the amazing word play and generally unintelligible literary references which pepper this and other M.C. sites. Should I be correct then maybe you could help me out when I get stuck?
[Dujon] Yes, of course technically you're correct about the full moon - I was using the term in the slightly vernacular sense, meaning the moon when it is as full as it is getting this month, as it were.
Living in Norfolk and often driving through the fens, I have frequently seen "full" moons on the horizion and they never look any bigger than when it is up in the sky. The moon does look huge however when it is a very fine crescent rising just before or setting just after the sun on a red sky.
mooning.
[Boolbar] Do you have only one good eye? The "moon illusion" is much less if you close one eye (or really only see well out of one), or stand on your head. If you don't want to stand on your head, you could bend over and look through your legs. Noone would think you're strange. Honest.
[flerdle] No-one is normal in Norfolk, so such behaviour would be ignored, or even actively encouraged. I have two good eyes last time I looked, although one looked bigger than the other . . . .
[Boolbar] Does the eye look bigger when it's closer to the horizon?
Sprang
[Dujon] I answer to neither Sir nor Madam but will admit to the y chromosome. It is possible that my participation will be of some small benefit to the community.
Full moons and chromosomes
(Duj) Strictly speaking you're correct but the term Full Moon is used, even technically, to mean that the ecliptic longitude of the moon is 180° more (or less) than the sun, whatever its latitude (-5° at the last full moon). (Effable) To save you putting your foot in it, so to speak, I too must admit to the Y-chromosome. There is at least one other person here who does the same. But beware; there are people here with no Y-chromosome whatever, some, moreover, with non-gender-specific monickers. Truly a minefield. :-)
Stale games
This site has had the same games on the front page for an offally long time. Time for a bit of turnover, perhaps?
stereotypes
[Rosie] I really don't mind. I'll watch my step and try to be PC.
[SM] You Know You're Getting Old... is unkillable
[SM] S'true. We've tried everything.
Which, I suppose, is ironic in a way. You know you're getting old when you stop caring about killing games, since you expect even the short ones to outlive you.
Death to...
I have tried to dispose of the Furcation game, but we have another non-standard winning move situation.
I think that one might be protected by administrative fiat. Still, I must admit that the prospect of my ever making the promised move is not getting greater as time goes on.
By Thunder!
Wow - last night in Herts was the most spectacular display of lightning... torrential rain, at least half an inch... whoooo-wee! Marvellous. Anyone else get anything ?
[pen] I got a nice bit of fish for tea.
[pen] I got a squash racket for my birthday.
castrated ram
[pen] I got leaks. The lightning was rather good though, very blue in colour.
Balls
Pen] Notmrsbobthedog claims to have seen ball lightning. She was out making sure the chickens were safe when there was a massive boom. Looking up she saw what she described as a lightbulb-shaped white glow which hung in the air for a few seconds after the strike.
Meanwhile, I was stuck in Brum, attempting to get the train back after a trip to York. I was sat in a metal hanger during the best of the storm. Sadly, the Selfridges building escaped divine judgement. All trains (including mine) were cancelled for two hours due to the weather. I got home very late.
Meanwhile, I was stuck in Brum, attempting to get the train back after a trip to York. I was sat in a metal hanger during the best of the storm. Sadly, the Selfridges building escaped divine judgement. All trains (including mine) were cancelled for two hours due to the weather. I got home very late.
Goodness Gracious etc...
[Btd] woweee.
[Chalks] Good idea. I'd fish the fish out of the freezer if I was going to be in tonight, but Flatmate's mum is taking us out for dinner - local chinese does THE BEST Szechuan Stir-fried green beans with salt and pepper.
[Tuj] Happy Birthday. Are you going to play grown-up squash? ;o) I once got through to the country trials in my younger, squash-playing days, mainly due to my killer serve which I could drop dead in the back corner. Unfortunately the rest of my game let me down. But I enjoyed the acoustics in the squash court - my best friend and I would spend an hour singing songs from The Jam, Duran Duran, The Teardrop Explodes and Gary Numan rather than playing squash.
[Boolbar] Leaks? Oh dear. The husband of one of my colleagues, in the midst of a huge house-improvement project, of which he is very capable, chose yesterday to take off the roofs off their porch and garage. Ooops.
[Chalks] Good idea. I'd fish the fish out of the freezer if I was going to be in tonight, but Flatmate's mum is taking us out for dinner - local chinese does THE BEST Szechuan Stir-fried green beans with salt and pepper.
[Tuj] Happy Birthday. Are you going to play grown-up squash? ;o) I once got through to the country trials in my younger, squash-playing days, mainly due to my killer serve which I could drop dead in the back corner. Unfortunately the rest of my game let me down. But I enjoyed the acoustics in the squash court - my best friend and I would spend an hour singing songs from The Jam, Duran Duran, The Teardrop Explodes and Gary Numan rather than playing squash.
[Boolbar] Leaks? Oh dear. The husband of one of my colleagues, in the midst of a huge house-improvement project, of which he is very capable, chose yesterday to take off the roofs off their porch and garage. Ooops.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with Birmingham, here is an image of the Selfridges building on the new Bull Ring.
The term Bimbo architecture has been used in association with this building.
Bimbo Architecture means buildings designed to attract customers but lacking in architectural integrity. RIBA president Maxwell Hutchinson said: “Bimbo architecture has a big smile and a pretty face but nothing between the ears. It is ‘hi-tech’ architecture without the tech and with an exclamation mark after the ‘Hi’ “.
The term Bimbo architecture has been used in association with this building.
Bimbo Architecture means buildings designed to attract customers but lacking in architectural integrity. RIBA president Maxwell Hutchinson said: “Bimbo architecture has a big smile and a pretty face but nothing between the ears. It is ‘hi-tech’ architecture without the tech and with an exclamation mark after the ‘Hi’ “.
Bimbo architecture
Wow, that's ugly. I don't think the lens helped here but still ... are people expected to shop here or is it an office building? It looks like something from a bad SciFi movie. "The Blob That Ate Bull Ring!"
[Effable] I've never been there but I understand it is for shopping and not purely offices. For what it's worth, I quite like it.
speaking from experience
Bull Selfridges Ring - it's much nicer in the flesh.
What a visual insult! Come friendly bombs and fall on Birmingham. It makes Croydon look like a pretty little market town, which it ain't.
At the risk of offending someone, that looks about as attractive as a beached whale.
[Duj and other detractors] Like most things - the edifice needs to be viewed in context.
[pen : hot beans] - how's your digestive system this morning?
[Chalky] But OTOH, I like it just on its own. [Btd] I can't resist asking (in the typical debate-starting manner) why this bit of architecture is less intelligent than, say, St Paul's Cathedral. The best reason I can think of is that while this building looks like a jokily scaled-up sequinned amoeba, St Paul's Cathedral looks like, well, a cathedral - which depending on your POV suggests that Christopher Wren was less decadent than Future Systems. Also, some architecture critics have pointed out that Selfridge's is basically a shell-concept, with little of architectural interest inside it, so not a coherent bit of architecture? Are these your reasons for disliking it?
Architectural integrity
What does Maxwell Hutchinson mean by "architectural integrity"? To me, that would mean "it satisfies the purpose it was built for, keeps out the rain, and doesn't fall down", but he appears to have some moral concept in mind. Googling for some reviews of the place, I didn't see much mention of whether it works in that sense. I did see a lot of photography that one might accuse of lacking in architectural integrity, i.e. shots taken from unusual angles that give no idea of what the thing actually looks like.
St Paul's
[Projoy] Ever seen St Paul's from above? The facade is not part of the structure, so it's a shell just like Selfridges. It gives a nice impression from the street, but it's not what it appears to be.
The Beauty of Hot Beans
[Chalks] Perfect, thank you :o)
Projoy and debate] I'm not that good at debating well because I feel very strongly about some issues and have a tendency to be both self-righteous and politically correct. However, I will present my own reasons for disliking the Selfridges building and why I think that Maxwell Hutchinson quote on Bimbo Architecture is a spot on reference to it. I would not like to think that I have offended anyone (as I have done when I fail to understand why people should play golf, wash their car on a Sunday, get married, get pierced, get tattoos, wear high heels or do any of the other multitude of bizarre things people do unquestioningly in order to comply with a convention.
I have no idea whether St Paul’s is good Architecture. It has stood the test of time in terms of its foundations and stability, it is a huge and well laid out edifice with some stunning work by a range of crafts people, it has a fascinating and well documented history.
My first reaction to the Selfridges building was ‘wow!’ It really is impressive. It is not out of place and it fits the nature of what it contains. My issues are more to do with the nature of consumption to which it is a cathedral. In one respect, I can see that there is some validity in the design. The shallowness of the outside is perfectly complimented by what it contains.
There is no reason for its appearance other than to attract consumers. It is simply a fashion statement. I have no idea how long it will last, but if its predecessor (which was greeted with similar acclaim when it was built) is any reference, it will be pulled down in 2030 amid claims that it is an eyesore. The building materials may be novel, but are not sustainable or easily repaired or updated. There are already worn and grubby areas. Despite this, I hope that it does survive, as an historical reference to the fashion of the age and so that no more hardcore, plastic reinforced concrete and fibreglass is dug into land-fills and left to contaminate the countryside.
I have no issue at all with the look of the building (apart from the fact it will get very mucky very quickly) and I would have welcomed a far more radical design (something by Anish Kapoor would have been perfect) had there been any thought to social and environmental sustainability when it was built.
I have no idea whether St Paul’s is good Architecture. It has stood the test of time in terms of its foundations and stability, it is a huge and well laid out edifice with some stunning work by a range of crafts people, it has a fascinating and well documented history.
My first reaction to the Selfridges building was ‘wow!’ It really is impressive. It is not out of place and it fits the nature of what it contains. My issues are more to do with the nature of consumption to which it is a cathedral. In one respect, I can see that there is some validity in the design. The shallowness of the outside is perfectly complimented by what it contains.
There is no reason for its appearance other than to attract consumers. It is simply a fashion statement. I have no idea how long it will last, but if its predecessor (which was greeted with similar acclaim when it was built) is any reference, it will be pulled down in 2030 amid claims that it is an eyesore. The building materials may be novel, but are not sustainable or easily repaired or updated. There are already worn and grubby areas. Despite this, I hope that it does survive, as an historical reference to the fashion of the age and so that no more hardcore, plastic reinforced concrete and fibreglass is dug into land-fills and left to contaminate the countryside.
I have no issue at all with the look of the building (apart from the fact it will get very mucky very quickly) and I would have welcomed a far more radical design (something by Anish Kapoor would have been perfect) had there been any thought to social and environmental sustainability when it was built.
But (and at the risk of retreading the discussion about value in music) why should such a building have any purpose for its appearance other than to attract customers? And if an architect sits down and asks himself, "How can I make this building attract customers?" then why is that any less of an intellectual challenge than any other building purpose? Similarly, in what sense does it look "shallow"? I'd have thought that if it makes sense to talk about shallowness in building design, you'd apply it to buildings that are unoriginal or that look like everything else. I'd say that this building had an original and unusual appearance. Whether it is an attractive appearance or not, or one that is compatible with the good functioning of what goes on inside, is another matter, but I don't really see what "shallowness" or "integrity" or "bimboness" have to do with it.
[Bm] Well, I don't think Btd is saying a building should have a better reason for its appearance, simply that if it doesn't, he doesn't think much of it. The intelligence of architecture, I would imagine, is in the way it interacts with the intelligence of the people that use it (rather than just whether it's a brain workout for the architect, otherwise a Temple Grandin abbatoir would be great architecture). Thus if all the Selfridge's building does is to drag you in and make you spend some money, then that's not a very intelligent way to be treated. If, on the other hand, it inspires you with thoughts biology or maths, that's rather more intelligent. If it manages to combine intellectual stimulation and its function, and make those two things interrelate, then I guess it's very clever indeed.
[Btd] All seems fair enough, although I must say, I've never worn high heels simply in order to comply with convention.
[Btd] All seems fair enough, although I must say, I've never worn high heels simply in order to comply with convention.
Projoy] Nearly there. I agree whole heartedly with your phrase "If it manages to combine intellectual stimulation and its function, and make those two things interrelate, then I guess it's very clever indeed."
Bread] I agree that an architect may if s/he wishes choose to design a building with the sole purpose of attracting customers. In this case they have and I am led to believe that they glory in that. My issue is that I (personally) find that approach unethical. Regarding shallowness - I did not say that it looked shallow. It doesn't, it looks interesting. The concept is shallow - one dimensional. If Joseph Beuys had piled lard on a chair to sell lard, it may have succeeded for a while but it would have been quickly forgotten. For me, the Selfridges building is just that, only more blingy. And with consumer culture responsible for so many of the environmental and social ills of our time, disposable 'environments' are a trend I would not wish to support.
Bread] I agree that an architect may if s/he wishes choose to design a building with the sole purpose of attracting customers. In this case they have and I am led to believe that they glory in that. My issue is that I (personally) find that approach unethical. Regarding shallowness - I did not say that it looked shallow. It doesn't, it looks interesting. The concept is shallow - one dimensional. If Joseph Beuys had piled lard on a chair to sell lard, it may have succeeded for a while but it would have been quickly forgotten. For me, the Selfridges building is just that, only more blingy. And with consumer culture responsible for so many of the environmental and social ills of our time, disposable 'environments' are a trend I would not wish to support.
[Chalky] Don't take me too seriously, my comment was made from that one image. I'm quite sure that if I happened to be in the area I'd duck in and have a look at the interior.
Still looks like a beached whale though. :-)
Still looks like a beached whale though. :-)
Poo
I learnt today that I didn't get the job I spent ages and ages preparing for. That'll teach me.
commiserations
Awww - I didn't like to ask because I thought it might tempt fate ...
[Rab] but you still have the preparation. Surely it'll be useful the next time something comes up? But sorry to hear it anyway...
Kinda - next job will be in a totally different department with wildly different interests (might even be maths, rather than physics) and so a lot of the application and job talk will have to change accordingly.
At least I'll be a bit more prepared for the ridiculous questions they throw at you in the interview, though.
[Rosie] The drought has not broken, but it's most welcome - see here. I have been loath to say anything less I jinx the weather, but it seems to be clearing and I guess it's now safe to do so. Many farmers are rejoicing but others are forced to wait until they can get their machinery into the paddocks. As far as my local dams go, we'll have to see what run off finally arrives.
[rab] My sympathies, good sir.
[rab] My sympathies, good sir.
Rain
(Duj) That's quite a splash, 150 mm in a week, and should be helpful. Back here the drought is slowly accumulating, the running 12-month total being just short of 600 mm instead of the normal 820 mm. And the two wettest months by far were last August and October. It's not desperate and no-one is going to die because of a hosepipe ban, even if a few plants do. But my raingauge needs some exercise, having got more in the way of seeds, dust and dead insects than water in it at the moment.
I broke my marching virginity today. And great fun it was too, waving placards. Having been exhorted to end capitalism now, all my future posts will be entirely in the lower case.
[Rab]Been There, Done That.
[rab] WHAT? I WON'T BE ABLE TO HEAR YOU.
[Rosie] You are in chalk country are you not? I would have thought that a 25+% drop in rainfall would have affected you more than most. We are still permitted to use hoses for gardening purposes twice per week (I think it's Wednesdays and Sundays - but I'd have to check), within limited hours, and it's breaking my green thumbed wife's heart.
[Rosie] You are in chalk country are you not? I would have thought that a 25+% drop in rainfall would have affected you more than most. We are still permitted to use hoses for gardening purposes twice per week (I think it's Wednesdays and Sundays - but I'd have to check), within limited hours, and it's breaking my green thumbed wife's heart.
It's ridiculously green out here (SW Qld). Green grass in winter, for pete's sake. The weather has really gone mad.
[rab] Marching virginity. Is that like galloping insomnia?
Anhydrous
(Duj) Yes, it's chalk, which is why there are no rivers on it, just hundreds of dry valleys. The water sinks in to become groundwater and is in effect a huge subterranean reservoir from which the water is drawn via boreholes. The problem is that it takes ages to top up again after a dry spell but short-term fluctuations tend to be ironed out. (Projoy) Certainly won't give you a running sore.
Taps hearing-aid battery and fiddles with the dial
I can't hear anyone :o(
[pen] I guess everyone is just too busy. Our phones at work have just failed. Horrah!
I'm on a conference.
pedant mode
[rab] How can you be on a conference? Shurely, you are at a conference? Discuss.
... and by the way
I am ON a chair as I type this, mainly because I'm still in my officey place working and not just lying on a bed with a laptop like sensible people do at this time of night.
[Tuj] Then allow me to make up for your modesty by shouting about my fortieth birthday which is on Sunday. British Grand Prix day, dammit. Garden party planned - Pimms with all the salad, chilled sparkling stuff, iced coffees, canapés etc... all welcome. Bring presents.
[Chalks] I was in bed with a laptop, as it happens, enjoying the BBC's 'Listen Again' features - a Hannay novel, 'Greenmantle' and then the programme about the life of Wellington. Brilliant stuff, and all usually bradcast while I'm at work. Only 25 years until I retire - I'm almost halfway there!
[Chalks] I was in bed with a laptop, as it happens, enjoying the BBC's 'Listen Again' features - a Hannay novel, 'Greenmantle' and then the programme about the life of Wellington. Brilliant stuff, and all usually bradcast while I'm at work. Only 25 years until I retire - I'm almost halfway there!
[pen] Spooky. I was thinking of you when I typed that :-)
Pedantically "on"
Anti-inflammatories, trombone, the right after the road junction, bitter. A useful little word.
Hey Pen! Congrats and all that! Oddly I will be in London on Sunday - at a fourtieth Birthday party.
deja vu
[penelope] Only a couple of years then before you can have your second 21st. ;-(
tempores mutantur
[Pen] If fifty is the new forty, then does that mean forty is the new fifty?
I'll kill a few braincells on Sunday in your honour - have a good one.
I'll kill a few braincells on Sunday in your honour - have a good one.
XL-ent
Yey! for being 40. All the best people are 40. ;o) [pen] Advanced Birthday Greetings from me. Have fun!
Wish I was there
[pen] Happy birthday for Sunday... would bring many exotic gifts, but am sadly geographically indisposed. Down a Pimms (or three) for me, ok?
[Everyone] thank you, thank you. Anyone wanting to drop by, from 1pm for food and drink, to junction 17 of the M25 (assuming the M25 is open) can email me for precise co-ordinates. My AOL.com email address is in my real name, Justine (2), and I'm New(1). Put (1) and (2) very close together in the correct order and add the suffix.
Addendum
Posted 12.45pm 06/07/05 It seems I may have some difficulty getting into London on Sunday. I hope everyone living and working there is safe. God, what an unbelievably callous act.
Addendum Addendum
07/07/05. Daft me.
rab] yes.
rab] yes.
while reflecting on today's news, I am also aware that for me, life is good. I am currently in possession of two cups of hot tea (they're small cups and the kettle is about 30 feet away down the office) and a refrigerated gingernut biscuit. I can heartily recommend the combination.
Pen] Gingernuts are good, but have you tried Traidcraft's 'Extra Spicy' Fairtrade Stem Ginger Cookies? Great big galumphing bits of ginger in a fab cookie. Dunking heaven.
stem ginger... mmmmm. By the way, for those in search of the perfect gingernut, it's not a McVities specimen, nor the Spar shop own label, but Tesco's own which packs the most powerful punch, sufficient to sustain a morning hard at work.
pen] Happy birthday! I remember 40...sort of. And surely the perfect ginger-nut is one that has chocolate on it?
happy birthday
to dear, dear Tuj -
Happy Bithday to Ya (Happy Biiiirthday) Happy Birthday To Ya.
btd] re your 07/07 post - it strikes me, in a kind of gallows humour kind of manner, that the boys with the bombs maybe realised the whole 9/11 11/9 confusion, and did this day for us (oh thank you for your beautiful bombs you stupid stupid men) today of all days so that there would be no confusion either side of the pond........
London is shaken but, from where I sit, fine. Drove through the centre at 11pm and what glorious calm. God help those who were told their sisters and brothers died today, but fuck them that did it and who cares why they did it and lets carry on regardless. 2012 here we come.
Amen.
I'm in an agreeable mood, so I'm agreeing with what all the previous 6 posts said. [BtD] Ta for CD. I was too gloomy to play it yesterday, but it brightened up an otherwise grey and rainy journey to work today. Mon lapin pelucheux est plein de la joie.
Woweeeeeeeeeeeeee!!
The most enormous bouquet of flowers (including ornamental cabbages - that's lunch sorted out then!) has just been delivered to my desk, from the Press Office of the certain french motor manufacturer what I work on behalf of [sic]. Coool... I never had flowers like this before. *grins*
special deliveries
[pen] aww - what a treat.
[I've just posted your card just in case we don't make it on Sunday]
[I've just posted your card just in case we don't make it on Sunday]
Birthdaze
[st d] Almost two weeks late, but thanks, there had to be someone to spoil my anonymity :P
[pen] All the best to you, of course!
[pen] All the best to you, of course!
Happy Birthday whatsits and hugs.
Not sure why but I was Mrs Inkspot bought me the CD, X&Y and it is not mine till September, I wonder what favours she is after!
Not sure why but I was Mrs Inkspot bought me the CD, X&Y and it is not mine till September, I wonder what favours she is after!
[pen] Happy Birthday!
[pen] happy birthdya, late tho it is.
hello everyone, exams are over so I have time for crescenting once more. woo, eh.
hello everyone, exams are over so I have time for crescenting once more. woo, eh.
Thank you for all your greetings. A more elegant birthday I couldn't have wished for. A big bunch of friends all made it down to London from various parts of the country to eat at the Oxo Tower last night, and a bunch more made it over to Rickmansworth for a perfect summer's day garden party this afternoon (The Day Itself). My dress is stained with cava and watermelon... how lovely. *beams*
I wouldn't worry about cava and watermelon. my mum didn't realise until I pointed it out to her hat while she haad been sat in the garden reading, she had sat on a raspberry. nice pink and grey skirt she has now... bet vanish'll do nothing too. hah.
Happy Bidet
Many Happy Returns, young pen.
Hip hap
Happy Birthday, pen.
Cake!
[pen] Yey!
little bit of cake?
[pen] What everyone else said.
*groooooaaaagh*
I was definitely pre-hangover when I made my previous post. I am now post-hangover. I don't want to tell you what went on in between, but suffice to say I just wasted one of my precious days of annual leave on something that could have been soooo easily avoided. And I *still* have washing up to do. Just one glass of Pimms won't hurt....
Welcome back nights!
Lots of celebratory back-slapping around at the minute. Oh, and very restrained of you to avoid MC over exam time...
well, it was waste loads of time on MC and fail my second year, or work and... hopefully not fail my second year. I've booked flights and everything now, so I'd better pass...
bday oxox
pen] sorry not to repond to your text the other `day (at least i dont think i did) my last few days have been a litle weird and i have now finished work and none the wiser about what to do next. I am glad it sounds like you had a nice time. bob..x
next
[st d] no worries... I'll catch up with you soon. What's the email address now?
[pen] Have finished motor sport project [at last!] but feel a tad guilty - I've been thinking about you a lot but don't seem to have got round to pressing any buttons or keys which would have let you know this. I now have a natural break until the next job - email on its way ..
[st dogstar] you're bound to feel rather adrift - even after 5 years of freelancing I still experience those feelings on a regular basis but have learned to go with the flow. Mind you, like Mr Micawber, I always believe that something will turn up.
[Chalks] Don't feel guilty - I seem to have lurched through this summer so far, I can't remember ever being so busy. Of the past two months, I have spent precisely two weekends at home, one of which was the birthday, so not exactly the 'laying-on-the-settee-watching-old-movies' time, but instead 240-mile-round-trips-on-Friday-night to collect parents when the trains weren't working and mad midnight dashes to the 24-hour supermarket to buy party provisions because that's the only time I had. Tonight I am driving another 240 miles from London-ish to North Yorkshire for another race meeting. Last night we, as a company, organised the third of four Mountain Bike race events. If anyone is interested in coming to the next one at Wycombe Summit (the woods alongside the dry ski-slope)in High Wycombe on the evening of Thursday, 28th July, then shout out! We have a small field, but it's increasing. And I only went because I thought I might see some handsome men getting changed in the car park... some hope. By the time I got home, my poor tomatoes were wilting! *blithers on in similar abstract vein for another five minutes*
pen
same as before but with a "d" instead of a "." in my name, and @gmail.com instead of @legal....:o) any confusion try st_dogmael@hotmail but i dont use it much
a ha'porth of pitch
Relating to the discussion a ways up there ^ from a while ago. Arts and Letters Daily just featured an article reviewing a new book that suggests we are all born with perfect pitch.
Perfect pitch
I've got it and always have had. Great Western engines whistle A flat (above the treble stave). My brother hasn't got it. He can play the piano and read and sing a choral score, so he, too is quite musical. We both had exposure to music, and a piano, from birth. From that, a reasonable deduction would be that I was born with it and he wasn't. The reviewer rightly says that perfect pitch (I prefer Absolute Pitch) is of no use except as a rather flashy talent (though I've never pulled a bird with it) but spoils his argument by saying it actually inhibits the understanding of language. I don't see this, and have never thought of speech as having a pitch, more of a continuous modulation from which much can be deduced. Absolute Pitch is only a form of memory and to be perfectly honest I don't quite understand why anyone who plays an instrument hasn't got it.
Er, why don't you understand, given that you've deduced it's something that some people have from birth?
mono-types
BTW, I haven't read the book, but I wonder if part of the argument that it inhibits language acquisition is to do with the subtleties of intonation - where the pitch is contextual rather than absolute. To interpret the same intonation in different people, you'd need to slide up and down the scale depending on who was talking. Which is interesting to consider when you link it with the fact that a common feature of autism (strongly associated with a weakness in interpreting the emotional states of other people) is a monotonous voice with very little subtlety of intonation. I'd better go read the book now, hadn't I?
Deaf as a post
I would have thought that most people have a good sense of frequencies - in that they can tell if a singer or musician is 'off'. The ability to recognise a note and give that note its correct nomenclature is a learned skill and therefore should not be part of a discussion about hearing. I wouldn't know a B flat from an A sharp, by name, unless the difference was demonstrated to me. If a musician (particularly those who play stringed instruments) cannot 'tune' their much beloved device then why (and how) are they playing?
[Rosie] On reviewing my post I think I sort of agree with you.
[Projoy] I'm not sure. Some oriental languages seem to rely on intonation changes for the meaning of various words and phrases - though English does the same to some extent - but I suspect that your comment regarding a 'sliding' scale must be true and would certainly not rely on perfect/absolute pitch, just the variation in such.
[Rosie] On reviewing my post I think I sort of agree with you.
[Projoy] I'm not sure. Some oriental languages seem to rely on intonation changes for the meaning of various words and phrases - though English does the same to some extent - but I suspect that your comment regarding a 'sliding' scale must be true and would certainly not rely on perfect/absolute pitch, just the variation in such.
[Duj] Pianists can't always tune their instrument, and they seem to get on OK. :)
(Projoy) What I can't understand is why everybody hasn't got it from birth. As I said, it's only a form of memory, like remembering colours. (Dujon) Most people can tell if someone is out of tune, but only relative to some other pitch which is assumed correct. Most people who play a guitar can tune it so that the instrument as a whole is in tune. I have a friend who plays a few tunes (only at home), and plays rather well, and his guitar is in tune with itself but at least three semitones flat. He has a good sense of tuning but none whatever of absolute pitch. I tuned it up for him but he said the strings were far too tight so back down it went.
[Rosie] Perhaps I can help. I have played guitar and sung in very amateur choirs. so I'm not totally lacking in the ability to hear pitch. But I hear lots of other things at the same time. For example, when tuning a guitar I'm often not sure if two strings are at the same pitch because of the different texture of the sound caused by the make-up and length of the string.
The same applies with other occasions. If a man and a woman are singing a duet I could tell you if there was a discord (to my ears), but would struggle to say if they were singing the same note (either an octave apart or exactly) because I cannot separate the pitch of a sound easily from the rest of its character.
Also I find it easy to sing a tune (relative pitch), but have no idea whether I'm singing the same notes as on a previous occasion. It seems to me that the ability to keep or hear a tune in your head does not imply that you remember the actual sound (which would imply that perfect pitch should be possible), but rather that you remember a pattern, which you can then apply to the sound when you remember or sing it.
The same applies with other occasions. If a man and a woman are singing a duet I could tell you if there was a discord (to my ears), but would struggle to say if they were singing the same note (either an octave apart or exactly) because I cannot separate the pitch of a sound easily from the rest of its character.
Also I find it easy to sing a tune (relative pitch), but have no idea whether I'm singing the same notes as on a previous occasion. It seems to me that the ability to keep or hear a tune in your head does not imply that you remember the actual sound (which would imply that perfect pitch should be possible), but rather that you remember a pattern, which you can then apply to the sound when you remember or sing it.
[INJ] Perfectly described. It is the same for me, except that I'm usually better at the octave thing. At a weekly music school, I always impressed the teacher by being extremely quick at identifying intervals, and thus have a good memory for melody in the way you describe. I now find I have to make more cognitive effort to recognise intervals, but then I have learned a lot more about the subtleties of language intonation since then (through drama but also through acquiring more social skills). Which is interesting.
To me, anyway.
Musical memory
(INJ) Remembering a whole tune would seem to be much more complex than remembering the pitch of a note yet we seems to do it rather well, just as we remember faces rather than any specific physical feature of them. But to me pitch of a tune is an integral part of it and if I hum a tune to myself in the wrong key (because it's easier, say) I still have to assign a key to it.
Perfect pitch...
...is lobbing an accordion into a skip without touching the sides.
On a more serious note, I've had perfect pitch since I could ever remember, both in the absolute sense and the relative sense. So I have very little trouble transposing at sight, as well as playing at sight, or keeping in tune when singing a song in different keys. I've never known how I do it - I also have a pretty fast learning memory for music too. But, oddly enough, I'm lousy at matching names to faces.
(JLE) Yeah, but you're a f****** genius. Would you lob a soprano sax in the skip while you're about it, just for me? Then the five tons of rubble just to make sure.
[JLE] Hi - I'm Kathy. I was the other [apart from pen] female person at Rugby Pilg in May. I thought your piano playing was particularly fine.
I don't have [or have never tested the possibility of having] perfect pitch. I do, however, have an unerring sense of direction, and can point to North however many times I've been spun round. Is this normal?
controlled experiments
[Chalky] Wow. I, for one, have never heard of that. Out of curiosity, how accurately can you do this (exactly north, or just approximately?), and how rigorously has it been tested (not quite sure what the most rigorous test I can imagine would be -- maybe someone moving you while you were sleeping into a dark room where you have never been before?)? And can you point to any direction just as easily, or, if asked to point southwest, would you still start from north and work from there?
Septentrionation
[Chalky] Can I carry you round with me next time I go orienteering?
I have a pretty good sense of direction and I hang around with a lot of very good navigators, but that's a first for me. I think we need a scan for an overdeveloped pineal gland.
I have a pretty good sense of direction and I hang around with a lot of very good navigators, but that's a first for me. I think we need a scan for an overdeveloped pineal gland.
Prosthetic pineal gland
I can always tell where I am and where North is -- I carry a street map and a compass whenever I travel.
[CdM] Just approximate north - nothing too exact! The other directions I would work out in a more conscious way.
[Dan] Interesting. Makes me wonder how bewildering I would find being placed on the north pole with nowhere to point.
[INJ] I don't think you'd want to be burdened with the load :-)
I'm quite good at finding my way home, no matter what city or how drunk I am. can I claim that as a skill?
[nights] That seems to be a skill that humans have evolved as a species. This is evidence - I am sure - that beer has been around at least as long as humans have.
[nights] Were you born with it?
(nights, rab) There must be serious limits to the ability or we wouldn't have "Show me the way to home".
I'm almost tone deaf, can't remember names, and have to calculate north by looking at the sun and trying to remember what time of day it is. Should I get a new brain? Incidentally, there are languages that accent with pitch rather than stress (such as Japanese and Attic Greek). I wonder what it is like to have perfect pitch and speak those.
where?
[Chalky] How do you go in the Southern Hemisphere, in a place you haven't seen a map of?
I have an excellent sense of direction and hardly ever get lost, but I think that's got more to do with observation of my surroundings and the use of maps, mental and otherwise. I feel slightly unnerved without a map, if I am going to spend a while in a place. I carry a compass sometimes. The problem is that, since I obviously use the sun's position for orientation, this sense is most finely tuned on the southern hemisphere environment, so my location of north flips 180degrees when in the northern hemisphere. This is a *most* unnerving experience. I was convinced that London was t' other way 'round, and had to work very hard to swap to the "correct" directions.
I can do it standing on my head.
[Flerdle] I can relate to that. I find the same problem when I go South of the equator and the sun goes the wrong way.
In the Attic
(Breadmaster) It doesn't make any difference, having perfect pitch. It's the change of pitch that is important. The pitch of speech varies so rapidly, even during one syllable, that it is impossible to assign a pitch to it, other than high or low, say. BTW your method of finding north is quite normal and one I use myself, if that's any comfort.
*goes on holiday*
[flerdle] I wouldn't know - having never ventured into that territory.
upsy-daisy
[INJ] It does, it does!! And the moon's upside down.
I don't think I consciously look for or use the sun's position or movement, it just adds to a general sense of where's where.
[Chalky] You might be in for a surprise then :-)
drinkyfeet
there must be limits, but so far I haven't found one. I even, in my fairly drunken state, remembered the Russian for 'do you mind if I use your toilet', while nipping into a bar in St Petersburg on my merry way back to Ligovskii Prospekt. I may have been born with it, but I don't think I was ever drunk as a child.
*goes to work*
*goes to work*
[flerdle] It would be interesting for sure. I've been fairly close to the equator but never below it [see? I still see north as 'up' and south as 'down'] Can relate to everything you said earlier about observation, map usage, etc. Even as a child I had a compulsion to know where I was placed and was first to a floor plan, street plan or map - it made my day when faced with one of those pictorial street guide display thingies with a big fat arrow saying YOU ARE HERE!
Austroborealism
(Chalky) North is still at the top even in the Southern Hemisphere. Weather charts are a bit difficult to get the hang of because everything goes round backwards but North is still at the top. Everything would still go round backwards even if North were at the bottom. It's fundamental. I'm with you on maps. My father had millions of OS Maps, some dating from the 1930's. I've got them all now and a whole load more. I've made a contour map, six feet by two, of the North Downs from Farnham to the Medway. Wonderful what you can do with tracing paper and a scanner and printer. Needless to say, Maison Rosie (TQ 3516 5955) is bang in the middle.
Moon
[flerdle] Maybe that's why you think the moon is white? :-)
it is!
[Néa] *thwap*
Maps
[Chalky & Rosie] Sign me up to the Cartographile Club !! I love 'em - old ones, new ones, from maps of countries, oceans, volcanic distribution etc. down to the most detailed O.S. map - I can pore over them for ages. I trust you've discover www.old-maps.co.uk which is a superb resource for late C19 O.S. maps of Britain.
Ooops
Sorry, forgot the http ... that should be www.old-maps.co.uk
Old maps
(Blob) Tried that. Excellent. Thanks.
MCiOS unreachable
Hello. Sorry about the downtime. Looks like an upstream provider is having problems.
Now a bunch of semitrained chimpanzees are jumping up and down on the routing tables. Connectivity is coming and going and the routes are changing even as we speak. Whee.
I hope you're filming that!
(Dan) Only properly trained chimpanzees should be employed. Otherwise you might as well use IT consultants.
Ook ook
Should be sorted now.
chimps running about aimlessly running servers, routers and whatnot? users with more knowledge than the IT staff? sounds like a job for Bath University Computer Services!
[nights] judging by that lack of response, your marketing for BU CS didn't go down too well ;o)
*thinks* . o O {I really fancy a biscuit}
[projoy] oooh, don't. I'm staying late at work to make inroads into a pile of work neglected by a colleague and to show him up as a workshy fop. And I'm STARVING.
has just munched a couple of ginger biscuits
[Blob] Thanks :-)
MCIOS?
Has MCIOS gone down again? Anyone able to access it?
I expect the monkeys are on the case again.
Oh, I know this sounds like the beginning of a limerick, but I hate it when subordinates sulk. What can be more pathetic than a man who can't accept the fact that his manager is a woman who has vastly more experience than himself? I'm not pointing out improvements he could make for FUN... I'm f*cking helping him... sheesh. *withers and dissolves into a cup of Earl Grey 'Management' Tea*
*some minutes later*
The sulk has come to a head. He's cross with me for proofreading his work and adding rather a lot of pink pen to it. And he still has a problem with women managers. :-/
[pennylope] a pink pen? Now that's just adding insult to injury :-)
Talking of work - my current project requires that I'm in't office from 4 - 8 pm for 3 weeks supervising a small team of temps who are carrying out a telephone survey. They are all students, immensely grateful for the work and their sheer enthusiasm has transformed a very mundane task, for me anyway, into enormous fun.
Talking of work - my current project requires that I'm in't office from 4 - 8 pm for 3 weeks supervising a small team of temps who are carrying out a telephone survey. They are all students, immensely grateful for the work and their sheer enthusiasm has transformed a very mundane task, for me anyway, into enormous fun.
[Chalks] Pink rather than red - now that's just too teacherish, although after thinking about it this evening, I might start doing it in pencil. And lucky you for having a nice bunch to work with. I bet they're having fun working with you too. :o)
[Chalky] see, this is just the sort of job I WANTED. I like being on the phone. but I don't get it, do I? I get forced back into catering, a sector I gratefully left two years ago promising never to work in again. grumble grumble grumble, sorry. on the other, more important hand, I need the cash, as I leave for canada in 29 days.
[penelope] BUCS are evil, pure evil. they're arrogant, poorly organised and unreliable. the campus network went out on a sunday, in the couple of weeks running up to most people's coursework deadlines. it took them FOUR HOURS to even get to the sodding campus. naturally, this deep sense of satisfaction was expressed in the annual user survey (encouraged quite a lot by me), so the feedback of the users of the computing services of the university of bath will be, uh, buried in someone's drawer and forgotten about. never mind, at least I have my health, and my own computer.
[penelope] BUCS are evil, pure evil. they're arrogant, poorly organised and unreliable. the campus network went out on a sunday, in the couple of weeks running up to most people's coursework deadlines. it took them FOUR HOURS to even get to the sodding campus. naturally, this deep sense of satisfaction was expressed in the annual user survey (encouraged quite a lot by me), so the feedback of the users of the computing services of the university of bath will be, uh, buried in someone's drawer and forgotten about. never mind, at least I have my health, and my own computer.
[nights] Must be frustrating... but it wasn't ever anything I used to deal with. When I graduated (1987) everything - coursework, laboratory practicals with graphs and diagrams and EVERYTHING was hand-written and hand-drawn. My final year project had to be typed - my mum did it for me. There was a computing course as an element, but I never went to any of the tutorials.
[pen] see, I know that writing my essays longhand would be time consuming and thoroughly annoying when I wanted to insert a quote I'd found at the last minute - but I think I'd focus on it more. this has been the case when doing translations into russian (which I can't be bothered to type out because it takes ages) and scored better. so this is something to think about.
BUCS are still evil though. although they were thrilled when I dragged my old iMac down there to see why it wasn't working with the network. I actually rather miss that one.
BUCS are still evil though. although they were thrilled when I dragged my old iMac down there to see why it wasn't working with the network. I actually rather miss that one.
*has fond memories of Microsoft Word completely reformatting, and removing the figures from, our 1st year project one hour before deadline*
*sigh*
It looks like I've now been victim to twatspam, of the 5000-links-to-a-website-in-a-post variety. As it happens I'm currently tweaking the back end of this website, so I'll be making it difficult to post more than a couple of links per move I'm afraid.
well I think we can all appreciate it. and it gives us the opportunity to use the construction "a link not totally unlike..." which is always a positive thing.
And it's happened again. These people are complete arseholes. More anon.
Ignore, mispost, sorry
Right I've disallowed <a> links for the moment. This is only a temporary solution until I come up with something more sophisticated.
Spammage
[Rab] Writing you offline.
Oh, what the hades...
Actually I'll just say it here, since the bumfuques who do this stuff don't read anyway. What I've been thinking of doing is treating any post with an A tag as bad HTML unless it contains a special attribute. For those following this at home, an attribute is like href="url". We could form them in the same way except require an additional or substitute attribute. For example, instead of href we could require the surname of the nice lady who writes letters to Humph. Another thing that occurs to me is to replace the A entirely, with some other nonstandard tag which will get converted to A on output. Thoughts?
On reviewing my own code, and thinking about it from a user-friendliness standpoint, I'm inclined to go for the latter. It's trivial to implement and easy to explain in the error message, in such a way that users will get it and passing spammers will not.
[Dan] Agreed! Would be nice to still be able to post links with a special tag. [rab] Can you get round your a link prohibition in the same way as at Dunx' place?
I have plans which hopefully should impact genuine Crescenters minimally. My banning of A tags for now is purely a short-term inconvenience.
(sorry if that sounds a little curt - Dan's solution will probably be the workaround that will be offered if the server thinks you're being overly naughty)
On the topic of campus computer people: I have wasted an entire morning trying to get my laptop configured so it can use the university network and internet provider. The goons at the Computer Centre took about an hour and a half trying to do it before declaring that they didn't have the right driver for my make of computer. Assimilating, dubiously, the revelation that this varies according to make rather than OS, I then had to go to the other end of the campus (requiring not one but two bus trips) where, surreally, there is what seems to be a support place for Toshiba. Why this isn't next to the Computer Centre, God only knows. They didn't know what to do, because a look on the Toshiba website revealed that there are lots of possible drivers to download and I hadn't been told what kind to look for. So I had to go all the way back to the Computer Centre (through a monsoon), where a new set of goons had replaced the original ones, but were no more competent. They couldn't find the relevant part of the website and in any case were now talking darkly of the need to open up the laptop and fiddle about with its innards. They wrote down what they needed and told me to take that back to the Toshiba people. Of course, they are all closed now and I have to wait until Monday. All this just to log onto the wretched network! Oh, and the whole thing was conducted in Singlish, which is basically incomprehensible at the best of times but far worse when it's people going on about drivers and networks and suchlike. Really, this place is appallingly disorganised. Thank God I can use the university's own computers for internet purposes or I'd really be in trouble.
Links
As I did on Dunx's page, you can always use Javascript in a tag to get around a restriction on A tags. For example: I'm a link to Orange MC without any A tags. (This works on Firefox at least.)
...and IE, as I just checked.
For those who are curious and don't want to View Source, here's how I did it:-
<u><font color=blue onClick="self.location='http://www.dunx.org/cgi-bin/orange-mc'">I'm a link to Orange MC without any A tags</font></u>
I have plans which hopefully should impact genuine Crescenters minimally. My banning of A tags for now is purely a short-term inconvenience.
Link without A tabs
Not to be picky, but shouldn't one be able to click on a link? It may just be AOL being incompetent but I can't click on Darren's one above. However, as this topic of conversation goes way over my head (I can just about cope with bold tags), I should probably just let you IT types get on with it.
Linkages
It works for me on Firefox. For Knobbly's info., in my case the cursor does not change (i.e. there is no indication that the text is a link) but is 'clickable'.
Links
I like Dan's simple work-round. The problem with Darren's (otherwise excellent) solution is there are some of us who operate in Firefox with javascript disabled. I have found this is a very effective tool in combatting trojans et al and am loath to change. Just my opinion, obviously.
I have plans which hopefully should impact genuine Crescenters minimally. My banning of A tags for now is purely a short-term inconvenience.
Impactfulness
Well, I was all set to say something about the use of impact as a verb, but apparently it, like Wagner's music, is not as bad as it sounds:
http://www.bartleby.com/64/C003/0165.html
http://www.bartleby.com/64/C003/0165.html
rab's statements on the A tag issue are starting to sound a little... disturbing.
Sorry - that's what happens when I visit the site when drunk. I really hope to have this sorted out properly sooner rather than later. More anon.
They actually reminded me of government statements. As they pointed out on Yes Prime Minister, you should just keep making the same statement over and over again, no matter what people ask you.
Satire
Paxman: Are you happy for users of the site to find ways around your ban on A tags?
Prime Minister: I have plans which hopefully should impact genuine Crescenters minimally. My banning of A tags for now is purely a short-term inconvenience.
Paxman: But in the meantime, you accept there are workarounds?
Prime Minister: I have plans which hopefully should impact genuine Crescenters minimally. My banning of A tags for now is purely a short-term inconvenience.
Paxman: Prime Minister, are there or are there not loopholes in the ban on A tags?
Prime Minister: I have plans which hopefully should impact genuine Crescenters minimally. My banning of A tags for now is purely a short-term inconvenience.
Paxman: Look, yes or no. Do you accept there are loopholes?
Prime Minister: I have plans which hopefully should impact genuine Crescenters minimally. My banning of A tags for now is purely a short-term inconvenience.
Paxman: So you say, but what Crescenters are asking is, do you realise there are ways around the ban?
Prime Minister: With respect Jeremy, that's not the real question. I assure all genuine Crescenters that I have plans which hopefully should impact genuine Crescenters minimally. My banning of A tags for now is purely a short-term inconvenience.
Paxman: But Prime Minister...
Prime Minister: I have plans which hopefully should impact genuine Crescenters minimally. My banning of A tags for now is purely a short-term inconvenience.
Prime Minister: I have plans which hopefully should impact genuine Crescenters minimally. My banning of A tags for now is purely a short-term inconvenience.
Paxman: But in the meantime, you accept there are workarounds?
Prime Minister: I have plans which hopefully should impact genuine Crescenters minimally. My banning of A tags for now is purely a short-term inconvenience.
Paxman: Prime Minister, are there or are there not loopholes in the ban on A tags?
Prime Minister: I have plans which hopefully should impact genuine Crescenters minimally. My banning of A tags for now is purely a short-term inconvenience.
Paxman: Look, yes or no. Do you accept there are loopholes?
Prime Minister: I have plans which hopefully should impact genuine Crescenters minimally. My banning of A tags for now is purely a short-term inconvenience.
Paxman: So you say, but what Crescenters are asking is, do you realise there are ways around the ban?
Prime Minister: With respect Jeremy, that's not the real question. I assure all genuine Crescenters that I have plans which hopefully should impact genuine Crescenters minimally. My banning of A tags for now is purely a short-term inconvenience.
Paxman: But Prime Minister...
Prime Minister: I have plans which hopefully should impact genuine Crescenters minimally. My banning of A tags for now is purely a short-term inconvenience.
etc. etc. etc.
(no offence meant to rab)
links
Good lord, you're right. I should have tried to click on it despite it not looking like I could.
[K] Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Although I recommend not clicking on the '1,000's of free smileys' pop-up.
has the INTaRWeB always been so full of crap, or has it got steadily worse since I got online in the summer of 1997?
[nights] Like everything, it's been mostly full of crap since it started, but it's only been in the last few years that the crap has expressed a desire to leap down everyone's throat.
The big cautionary tale of the net is Usenet, which although some people manage to keep active newsgroups going (using I don't know what antispam measures), is now almost entirely spam. I've been working recently on a little predator/prey population interactives, and I wonder if the cycles of spam-genuine content follow a similar statistical pattern. i.e. the population of predators increases, diminishing the population of prey, which in turn leads to extinction for the predators...
[Projoy] I think part of the problem with Usenet is that most people aren't even aware it exists any more, and those who are aware of it, by and large, consider it too full of spam to be useful. For this reason, I don't think you'd find a cyclical pattern, but rather a gradual tail-off with time.
[Projoy] I see almost no spam at all on Usenet. I read mainly rec.arts.sf.* and a few others. Where do you get the idea that it's mostly spam? (Er, I probably won't see a reply to this for a couple of weeks -- off to Glasgow at the crack of dawn tomorrow.)
[Raak] Well, as you won't see this I can make any claim I like. :) I don't know, but I assume the admin of some newsgroups have anti-spam measures in place, or there are anti-spam measures at the ISP news server level. No idea, really. I also have frequented a rec.arts newsgroup or two (and I believe the drwho one still goes on strong). I used to read a group or two on the alt. hierarchy, but would not attempt it now. They were swamped in spam years ago.
all the usenet groups I ever use (a few music ones and tomb raider, all under alt.) are filled with crap. I looked in on the MC one this morning and that was full of rubbish. a shame really. I'll try other groups though.
Usenet groups
I regularly look at, and contribute to uk.sci.weather. There are rather a lot of gadget nerds and people of the spotty-herbert tendency who seem to use weather as an excuse for computer exercises but there are also professional meteorologists who contribute, necessarily under a pseudonym. There is very little outright junk.
The only one I ever contributed to with any intensity was rec.puzzles.crosswords, in which I even created a long-running competition which still runs.
so, who's going on holiday?
Not I. I wish to remain here and enjoy the delightful British Summer in all its scorching glory.
[nights] Holiday? I seem to remember those. Many years ago . . . .
*comes back from holiday*
welcome back Tuj! have a nice time?
Hello nights et al!
Yep, 2 weeks in and around Boston with my family, pretty good and apparently the weather kicked 7 bells out of the weather back in Britain, so that's OK. I still say their money smells funny though.
[Tuj] I'd forgotten about that. Mm. Dollars.
I wonder if canadian ones also smell. I've heard you can pop the middle of a $2 coin out.
Yes, but I've heard that about the £2 coin too and never managed it...
tv
Great night on tv last night and all 3 hours of it on Channel 4 starting at eight. A combination of Big Brother (Craig evicted ......yes!!!! result) and two opening episdodes of new drama Lost. An ensemble cast is allowing multi storylines and twists it is gripping already with unanswered questions, polar bear? 16 year old mesage still being transmitted? how is the labrador unscathed?
is watching you
[Inks] Glad you mentioned Big Brother. I wonder how many people in the UK Morniverse have seen some or even all of it? I think it's been very watchable this year for two reasons: Big Brother himself has been amusing, unpredictable, capricious and in charge; there has been considerable action, some of it admittedly grotesque, during the 'live' streaming.
As for Lost - unless they repeat the episodes at weird times [which is usually when I watch TV], I doubt if I'll get the opportunity to see it.
As for Lost - unless they repeat the episodes at weird times [which is usually when I watch TV], I doubt if I'll get the opportunity to see it.
isn't watching back
As a militant anti-Big Brother person, I think the current series has been one of the best so far because it has been low key enough to not manage to puncture my consciousness. I couldn't name a single contestant, so I'm happy.
I think last year was better from that point of view. Can't remember anything about that. This year I recall seeing some press stories about Derek Laud, so it managed to sneak its way into my consciousness.
I watched it until I came home from university, and all of a sudden don't have time for it. never mind.
and I'm stuck with dialup at the moment as our broadband is up the chute again. so I won't be around very much at all, no.
and I'm stuck with dialup at the moment as our broadband is up the chute again. so I won't be around very much at all, no.
[Big Brother] I'm with Tuj on that one, I'm afraid. The less I know, the better!
Mock the loonies
I've probably watched an hour all told. What stupid irritating people they are! I've no need to be militantly anti, no-one I know ever having watched any of it, so they claim.
alone.... alone..... completely solitary
Someone, talk to me! Please............. *sniff* Actually, I'm not despondently lonely, just bored and I have a cold. ;o)
Acute nasal coryza
(pen) Hello, pen, I bet your cold isn't as bad as mine! Head feels like lead, i.e. heavy, deformable and the product of radioactive decay.
talking to penelope
I like maps
Maps are great
Scratch my knees with a dinner plate.
Maps are great
Scratch my knees with a dinner plate.
revisiting
[Darren] your javascript works fine in Safari on a Mac... and lovely satire :) [rab] MCiOS is also having a mild spate of spammers. (If two can be called a spate, but it's a sign of the special nature of the Morningverse that just two such spams seems a flood!)
I like the custom tag idea best as outlined by Dan - newcomers will get it wrong once and the error message can put them right, or if we want more security we can always refer to some obliquely crescentish word such as Mrs T's surname and anyone who still doesn't get it just has to ask! Any spammer getting around that clearly has such fine products for sale I for one will be proud to read about them on a website in Russian full of ladies with their nightwear on...
[Pen] Hola!
I like the custom tag idea best as outlined by Dan - newcomers will get it wrong once and the error message can put them right, or if we want more security we can always refer to some obliquely crescentish word such as Mrs T's surname and anyone who still doesn't get it just has to ask! Any spammer getting around that clearly has such fine products for sale I for one will be proud to read about them on a website in Russian full of ladies with their nightwear on...
[Pen] Hola!
Ah yes, I must get back to finishing mc5-and-a-half. That work thing has rather annoyingly got in the way.
back for a few days
[pen] hope you're feeling better.
hello pen, I fixed my ADSL by going to the local exchange and poking it, just for you. here's a mildly offensive rhyme:
Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
I'm schizophrenic
And so am I.
Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
I'm schizophrenic
And so am I.
Thnaks, thanks all for the good wishes and the rhymes, some of which were more amusing than others, hehehehe. I took the day off yesterday (I take very few days off sick - I think that one is my second this year) to try and get rid of this lurgy, but felt so guilty about it that I spent almost the entire day hoovering and cleaning, washing and ironing. I'm the first one to say that guilt isn't a useful thing to have, but also one of the biggest feelers-of-guilt. *cringe* Any advice?
celebdaq
There only appear to be three of us these days. Where'd'they go?
It's your fault
[Pen] What you need is lots of people blaming you for things. You'll get so indignant about it that you'll stop feeling guilty even when you should. So to help in the process I should like to say that I blame you for all the evils of the modern world, in particular having to go back to work after a holiday.
Thunderstorms
(ImNotJohn)The precipitation (needed for electrification) would be in the cloud and below it but evaporating into the dry air before reaching the ground. These precipitation trails are called virga. This effect is always present in showery or thundery weather even if the stuff reaches the ground. The evaporation absorbs latent heat and cools the air, making it denser and causing a downdraught which appears as a fierce gust of random direction at the surface. It also explains why "April showers" can turn to snow if heavy enough even if the temperature beforehand is as high as 8°C. All this stuff needs rather dry air below the cloud; not too dry, of course or there wouldn't be any cloud in the first place.
*indiginanting*
[INJ] An interesting theory. However, you should know by now that it's your fault for booking the time off in the first place. :o)
[Rosie] Thanks - clear and concise.
post-holiday post
Back from land of coolness. Now in land of heat. *sigh*
[pen] tips for getting rid of that nagging guilty feeling - do anything and everything possible, keep yourself busy. or do something to feel guilty about - go shoplift. apparently clerks is the most shoplifted video cassette in the USA...
and another thing...
I managed to bag a thermometer-hygrometer thingy in Aus. It's been interesting to see what actual readings have been since returning here, especially inside the house. If you ask nicely I'll say, else I'll spare you. Needless to say, my "can't sleep" point is rather different here. It's amazing what you can put up with if you have to.
No problemo
By all means, flerdle - at least from me - I always find others' weather interesting. Of course others may well disagree; privacy laws and all that, I suppose.
ah.
Well, that brought the conversation to a grinding halt, dinnit? Anyone for a mint? *offers*
I think they've all been eating gob-stoppers, flerdle. ;-)
Mints
[flerdle] Does it have a hole in it?
holey
[blamelewis] If you want it to I'm sure we could arrange that. *prepares electric drill*
hey, no playing with drills. play friendly, you lot.
hole hog
[flerdle] Send the hole over - can you attach it to an email?
*drops a pin*
looking down
Ooh, a pin! *picks up pin*
Shaking
At approximately 0642 local time, Monday 29th August, I believe Sydney suffered a mild earth tremor.
(Dujon) So it it didn't wake you up, then? Nothing whatever would awaken me at twenty to seven in the morning. Maybe a full bladder. Maybe even a half-full one. :-(
shakey
[Duj] Was that the moment England won the 4th test match?
Awakening
[Rosie] Néa may awaken me any time. (Sorry, Néa, it's only a bit of joshing - OK?)
[Chalky] What on Earth are you doing at this ungodly time of the morn? In answer to your query, no, see the response above. Still, I might now have a cigarette. Care to join me?
[Chalky] What on Earth are you doing at this ungodly time of the morn? In answer to your query, no, see the response above. Still, I might now have a cigarette. Care to join me?
Awwwww
[Dujon] I bet you say that to all the girls you play MC with.
[Néa] Only the ones who drop pins. Handkerchiefs are so passé. :-)
Handkerchiefs
Also, presumably that wouldn't wake you.
Yet another on back from hols
Brittany was great with a short stroll over the sand dunes to the beach, and come back to home to a scorhing Indian Summer. To make the most of this glorious weather, the ironing board will be set up on the patio this evening. Life is about to settle down into more routine with the schools starting to go back tomorrow.
*message for Chalks*
I'm doing ancient history tomorrow (thursday)... might you be in for a cup of tea later in the day? I'll txt...
not a good reader of handbooks or rules
As things seem to be rather bleak on the matress front since March I have decided to place an ad in the Personals in the London Review of Books. Might be scuppered by a medical indifference to reading. Advice as ever appreciated
*penelope*
*plans to buy bake a cake* :-)
Ah yes. I might not be around for a bit. Keep the place tidy, will you.
at home with Mr Kipling
[rab] you dropping in as well?
just an observation
Funny thing. This Banter Game, although fairly quiet at present, appears to be kept alive by a regular group of MCers. Yet many other long-standing games on this server have a completely different and prolific group of contributors - most of whom never post an entry in here. Why do you suppose that's the case?
maybe an explanation
(Chalky) I suspect many of those who contribute to the games but not to the banter are quite young and lack the confidence to spout off here. Also, older people tend to find their niche and stick with it whereas when you're young you tend to have broader but shallower interests in which contributing a word or two to a game is quite sufficient. There could be other reasons but that'll do for the moment.
The age of garrulity
I thought traditionally it was the young who overconfidently spout off and the older, and wiser, who keep their counsel. Admittedly, seven years here has been enough to disabuse me of this fanciful notion. Some people (such as me) are spouters and some, like Drewsxpa for instance, are containers. :)
Containers
(Projoy) What sort of container is Drewsxpa, then? A 45-gallon drum, rucksack, ladies' purse, breadbin, boxfile, skip, biscuit barrel? I think we should be told.
not a weather report, honest. Oh, ok, perhaps a little.
Just went for the first walk of the season; the temperature's been down a bit these last two or three days, and that plus a nice breeze was enough to prompt us to go for a walk in the evening (last time was some time in May, we think). Amazing. And we didn't even die.
[flerdle] It's been rather uncomfortably humid here in mid-south UK which has made for a very weary sort of day. I've been reading your blog the last few days so I know that what we're experiencing bears no comparison ....
... which helps me understand how going for a walk in a nice breeze is something to celebrate :-)
... which helps me understand how going for a walk in a nice breeze is something to celebrate :-)
*peeks from round the corner, notes an absence of vandalism, disappears again*
Posting Habits
Going back a few posts, if I may comment, the reason I (and possibly others) don't often post here (although I read fairly often) is that it feels a little intrusive, as though butting in to someone else's conversation. I suppose 'eavesdropping' is just as rude, if not worse though! *feels ashamed and shuffles off*
[Rosie] I long to ask him, but I don't know he'd care to tell me.
Intrusion
(Ella) If you've got something to say, say it. And even if you haven't, still say it, be it ever so banal. This place may appear cliquey to the relatively infrequent poster but it isn't. Even if we assume it is, all you have to do is put up a few remarks and you'll be part of the clique anyway. :-)
*sprays "rab is a weneir" on the wall*
graffiti
(Néa) A what? Is it rude?
*intrigued*
[Rosie, above]
Well, that was informative
Curse these fingers! I was going to say that it's also easy to get left behind by an ongoing debate, which if you come in halfway through or just simply aren't interested in, is very difficult to comment upon. Does that sentence look coherent?
* crosses out weneir and replaces with "weiner"*
Exactly
[Projoy] It's nice to be understood :-)
*crosses out weiner and replaces with "Weimar"*
*crosses out Weimar and replaces with 'whiner'*
*crosses out whiner and replaces with 'wino'*
...and nods in agreement with Tuj's comment about getting left behind while welcoming Rosie's invitation to join the clique.
*crosses out 'wino' and replaces with 'window'*
*crosses out "window" and replaces with "willow"*
*crosses out "willow" and replaces with "tara"*
...and is with tuj and Ella on this one.
*crosses out "tera" and replaces with "terror"*
I'm on the bean bags for this one with the break out area through the patio doors just by the swaying palm trees.
In the last couple of days I've killed so many wasps. We have a very low eaves house and they have made a nest behind the bargeboard. There have been too many flying around to spray during the day, but in the dark just after sunset when they are all inside, it’s spay time. In the past 2 two there have been over 200 on the ground outside and another 100 in the lobby as they have found a way from the cavity though the blockwork to come up behind the skirting but the are drowsey even a four year old can kill them – hitting them several times before they stop twitching. The good news is this year we were not plagued by flying ants, it was the neighbours turn to run inside one the summers evening.
Vespicide
(Inkspot) Sounds 'orrible. Where are you?
M4
I'm encamped in the small north Wiltshire town of Wootton Bassett, famed for its black and white timber framed town hall on stilts. The wasp thing could have been worse the house is drylined so they could crawl anywhere behind the plasterboard and find their way between the floor joists.
Spaying the wasps...
[Inkspot] I'm impressed. That must require both great courage and great delicacy.
B269
(Inkspot) Not a single wasp here in snooty Surrey. I didn't know about the Wilts stilts. Was it transplanted from Jakutsk, Siberia, where all buildings are on stilts to avoid melting the permafrost? Probably not.
Wootton Bassett, famed for its black and white timber framed town hall on stilts
[Inkspot] Does it walk around of its own accord?
[Darren] At last we know what happened to Baba Yaga's Hut! By the way, have you given up on the Kingdom of Loathing?
What it says on the can
Tonight it is showdown time with the beasties we have "Wasp Nest Destroyer Foam" it will be put along the bargebord, a little treat for them to take home.
A lovely warm summers evening here in SN4 just right for sitting out with a glass of wine.
A lovely warm summers evening here in SN4 just right for sitting out with a glass of wine.
good evening everyone. as people who frequent orangeMC will have realised, I am now settled in québec (finally) so you can expect me on here a little more.
and the weather, today started out quite warm here in QC but it quickly went cold when I was sat on a hill watching a 'football' game. more clothes were definitely needed. and I have a horrible feeling this is that cold that everyone here keeps on telling me about. oh dear.
and the weather, today started out quite warm here in QC but it quickly went cold when I was sat on a hill watching a 'football' game. more clothes were definitely needed. and I have a horrible feeling this is that cold that everyone here keeps on telling me about. oh dear.