Posts by Keir Leslie
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So... does anything count as cheating, in football?
Well, yes, and I listed a whole damn bunch of those things up thread.
(And Sacha, look, it isn't moral elasticity; it's a set of morals you disagree with, a different kind of thing.)
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No, he isn't like a doper in cycling (and doping in cycling isn't black and white either for that matter), mainly because he just isn't like that.
I dunno. It's not something you can sit down and prove neatly and simply, because it's part of a thick slab of culture and convention and so-on that you need to try and understand before you can start talking about it.
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My understanding is that playing the ball with the hand is the ultimate sin in football.
Well, not really.
The real sins in football are things like making monkey noises at a black player, breaking people's legs, match-fixing, bribing referees, playing out nil-nil draws to put another team out, etc. That's bad. Handball's just breaking the rules.
The anger over Suarez is like people who don't follow cycling getting annoyed at the bunch in the Tour for letting a rider lead the race through his hometown & pick up a few primes. Sure that's `matchfixing' to some extent*, but that's an entirely shallow way of reading, and quite without any attempt to understand the mores of the sport.
* Not entirely comparable, because it isn't against the rules in cycling, but there's some similarities.
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How was his instinct (and in fact both of the players on the line do it) be to put his arms up and bat the ball away. It's football, you know that hitting the ball away is cheating, plain and simple.
Because not hitting the ball away is putting your country out of the World Cup. He broke the rules, but he broke them honestly.
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New Zealand going home unbeaten at the World Cup Finals. I'd have offered you a lot of money for that a month ago, so why does it feel so sharp now?
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And further, I should note that there are these independent institutions called `universities' where scientists can work, which are specifically designed to emphasise academic freedom for that very reason.
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If you can't work for the government, and you can't work for commercial interests, without being accused of being a pawn of either, then who can scientists work for without having to fend off presumptions of bias?
There's a difference between merely working for the government and working on the atomic bomb.
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If we're going there, I understand Einstein and Oppenheimer were both top blokes and were in no way pawns of government or commercial interests.
Er, this is sarcasm, right? Because Oppenheimer built the atomic bomb.
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Good at putting himself in a position to capitalise on a well placed aerial pass, but could he outwit three defenders on the dribble, then hammer one in off his left foot?
Well, getting on the end of aerial long balls is pretty much an English striker's job, and very few strikers can beat three defenders on the trot and score; that's why Maradona was the greatest on the planet.
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But cycling (with or without helmet) just isn't that dangerous. The UK figures (Office of Population Censuses and Surveys) rate tennis as four times more dangerous than cycling, horse-riding as 29 times more dangerous, and fishing as 41 times more dangerous (per capita per hour). I can't find such figures for NZ, alas.
Aye, this is true. BUT one the other hand there are a lot of things that no matter what we accept as our right: and one of those things is to travel safely on the Queen's Highway. And I think that the Queen ought exert herself to make sure her Highway is safe for all it's users, no matter what choice of vehicle.
It doesn't matter what the utilitarian argument is, for the anti-utilitarian argument is more important. As a rule, the anti-utilitarian argument is told that our right to act in such-and-such a way is more important. And quite right! For I must say, no matter what, I will ride on the Queen's Highway, and no matter what, that is my right as a citizen, and the law ought accommodate that.