Posts by Tom Beard
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Stepfather =/ father in law.
Except in certain parts of South... no, if Hadyn won't go there, neither will I.
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married ... commitment ... for life ... pregnant ... children ... family ... couple
And you have thus summed up all the reasons why marriage isn't for me :-) I'm not sure why any of those would require a state- or church-sanctioned ceremony, but each to their own.
</ageing roue>
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But I am absolutely in favour of marriage equality, not to mention broadening the legal protection currently afforded to nuclear family units to polyamorous bi- or tri-sexual relationships, with or without children, the works. Basically, I'm in favour of the right to choose one's own relatives, by mutual consent.
Which was exactly what I was trying to say. But sometimes i wish there was a way to un-choose one's relatives...
But none of those things are directly relevant to the issue of gay marriage, and they get used to cloud the issue.
I'm not sure that they are irrelevant. I suppose, though, that gay marriage can be seen as more similar to "tradtional" marriage in that it is a (supposedly) monogamous (hopefully) life-long commitment between two (initially, at least) sexually involved people, rather than >2 or non-sexual relationships. And that that would make it more urgent and relevant than the others.
I still don't get why wnyone would be desparate to get married, but that's just me.
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Might pay to avoid the brains though.
I'll bear that in mind. Luckily, my brain consumption has thus far been purely ovine (crumbed, deep fried and served with celeriac remoulade).
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I'm getting a really mixed set of pop culture references popping up in my head now:
"Mawwiage, that bwessed awwangement, that dweam within a dweam..."
"Every sperm is sacred, every sperm is good..."
"I'm a California mother ... no, wait, I'm a Massachusetts doctor..."
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Taxonomically, rabbits haven't been rodents for around a century . They're lagomorphs, an order of critters that are about as far removed from rodents on the evolutionary tree as we humans are.
Mmmm, lagomorpha...
Thank you for the taxonomic correction, though I'm disappointed that it removes an entire order from my culinary repertoire. I must make more effort to try guinea pig next time it's on offer, and I'm a little bit squirrel-curious too.
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I favour the elimination of marriage as a legal concept.
I quite agree. Actually, I'd agree without the "legal concept" bit as well. If you want to be together, be together. If you want to celebrate your love with friends, have a party. If you want to protect your shared assets, argue for a form of legal protection that enables those in all sorts of committed social relationships, not just sexual ones, to do the same.
I'd love to get involved in the gin conversation (that, combined with the porky discussion over at Hard News, is making me hungry and thirsty), but I believe I may have said enough on the topic already. Just in case anyone wants to combine the heady delights of pork fat and hard liquor, may I point you in the direction of Yuk Bing Siu Zau.
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Hate rodents.
What even rabbit?
I'd say that most of my intake of piggy goodness comes from Italy, in the form of prosciutto, pancetta, salami and the like. I'd be naive to assume that Italian pigs are all lovingly hand-raised by Giovanni's Nonna, but does anyone know whether the Italian pork industry is relatively ethical?
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It's weird, right? Because I enjoy watching sport I'm somehow less, I dunno, intelligent or suave or some shit like that.
I think it's partly due to the assumption that being interested in mere physical activities is infra dig for those interested in intellectual activities, combined with the idea that people who spend time running around fields or watching others running around fields would have dedicated less time to reading.
That, and the undeniable presence of munters.
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a crack team of hot-shit robot librarians...the library is full of porn
Hey, that sounds like my sort of library!
On the bright side, Alpha works as pretty awesome statistics calculator.
And the provision of data as data, as well as the ability to chart it and calculate with it, is what makes potentially so much more useful for certain tasks than search engines. Who cares if it doesn't know that a kiwi is a bird, or that Hitler was a vegetarian, or that Knowlegde Bro is Ian Wishart in disguise? That's what search engines are for: it's the combination of numerical data and semantic links that makes Alpha potentially valuable.
I use the word "potentially" a couple of times there, because in my brief exploration it doesn't seem to be quite there. For instance, it's great to be able to calculate the difference in population between two cities, or see a graph of air pressure at Christchurch airport, but I couldn't for the life of me work out how to graph the pressure difference between cities. That's exactly the sort of thing that one would expect to be able to do (and while it might not sound like it, it is actually useful to do that), and unless it's my failure to work around the NLP it's a bit of a let down.
I need to go and explore a bit more.