Posts by Tim Hannah
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Idiot Savant said
There was an article in Scientific America last month ("Illegal drug labs leave toxic legacy" by Peter Aldhous ; 26 Apr 2008) which talked about that. It also had a throwaway line relevant to this debate; any chance of someone with access to the archive emailing me a copy?
New Scientist, not Scientific American.
It should be accessible through Palmerston North library - take a look at Australia/NZ reference centre or Masterfile Premier at PN library databases. Though that article is called 'Unsafe Houses' in whatever edition is in that database.
</random library promotion>
-
But that's not the argument - at this moment (unlikely to last past the next primary) it's Clinton who has got more Dems out to vote for her. That's not something any super can disregard.
That's only the case if you include not only Florida but also Michigan where, get this, not one single lonely dem voted for Obama, as he wasn't on the ballot.
Do you really think that any Super Delegate should consider being swayed by the idea that 40%+ of democrats in Michigan voting against Clinton really means that Obama has 0.0% support there?
That's not an idea Supers can't disregard, it's an idea they have to disregard.
-
Tim, was that meant sarcastically or not? I honestly can't tell.
Sarcastic. Reasonably highly so. Sorry.
-
The Police did not emphasise the terror charges aspect - that was the media and people like Harawira.
That's a fair point, the Police only used the TSA for interception and search warrants and attempted to lay charges under it. If only the accused, their supporters and the media had all STFU and accepted that quietly, there'd have been no drama.
-
If cars were designed to kill. If medicines were designed to kill a proportion of their users. If creating offensive tv was not controlled (to a degree that doesn't satisfy either end of the viewing spectrum) then you'd have a point.
These things have their harms as an unwanted byproduct of their usefullness. In the case of cars and medicines their unwanted side effects are designed out of them, to some degree at least. In the design of pokies their socially unwanted side effects are deliberately designed into them. And the industry lobbies pretty hard to avoid putting any kind of warnings onto them. In effect they want to maximise not the pleasure or usefullness of the product, but the addictiveness.
If cars and medicines were designed that way, I suspect you wouldn't be happy about the situation.
-
Yeah, course you could make that judgement. Better yet, you could emblazon all your pokies with big "Can you afford this bet?" signs. Or program them to create the occasional toilet break. Or put them in an area bathed with sun light, where you can watch people, socialise, smell nice smells.
Do stuff that would make them possibly even more enjoyable to many people, but likely decrease the addictiveness of them.
Funny how the industry doesn't do that.
-
I take the position that if something you do harms other people directly, then it's wrong.
So designing a pokie machine to be psychologically addictive, knowing that some relatively set proportion of it's users will be directly harmed by that designed addictiveness is, therefore, wrong?
Fine, let's keep reducing the number of pokies.
-
History is still unfolding in Iraq. I still reserve my judgement on whether the intervention there was good.
So what's your take on the French Revolution? Too early to tell?
-
They were originally against it, then for it, then against it again.
No, Christianity wasn't originally against slavery. Christianity was for slavery until it started shucking off bronze age morals. Just like everybody else.
-
Does she count as a women in this discussion?
Oh, FFS, should there be any debate? Of course she's a woman ...
Of course, reading again, I think the emphasis of Che's question was on the 'outed' part - which Georgina Beyer certainly wasn't - and I should have read a little closer. And been more careful with terminology.
But still, I do think it's interesting that a female MP has been open about the stripping and prostitution in her past before male MPs have been open about being on the other side of the deal.