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Comments by emmet


1. The Return of Religion

Comment #211892 by emmet on July 16, 2008 at 11:25 am

Simply bizarre projection and fabrication from start to finish. Perhaps we should not be surprised at seeing a tissue of lies from the mouthpiece of Big Tobacco. Perhaps Scruton is still sore from the drubbing his side got from Richard's last year:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/tools_and_services/podcasts/article1583399.ece

2. Conversation between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #207533 by emmet on July 10, 2008 at 2:09 am

Mac advocacy, although less harmful than windows fundamentalism, is equally faith-based :-D
There is no Linux but Linux; Torvalds is the Prophet of Linux.

:o)

3. The Science of Religion and the Religion of Science

Comment #200668 by emmet on June 28, 2008 at 4:05 am

At the end of the Q&A session after "Religion of Science" (D4), I think Richard missed the point of the last questioner (a student of comparative religion). His point was, in essence, that the definition of religion adopted for the purposes of the lecture, which the questioner described as "fedeist anthropomorphic theism" (faith-based theism of a man-like god), did not exhaustively cover the academic definition of religion. I agree that the questioner didn't express himself with great clarity and succinctness, but if Richard had understood him, I think he would have agreed: there are religions that are not faith-based theisms, such as non-theistic variants of Buddhism. Indeed, Richard has previously said this himself several times and may even have said it during the lecture. The point, I think, is that the Desert Dogmas are "fedeist anthropomorphic theisms" and it wasn't at all unreasonable for Richard to limit himself to them for the purposes of the lecture.

4. The Flea Delusion

Comment #200152 by emmet on June 27, 2008 at 1:48 am

Shorter Richard Morgan: "Believing that God loves me gives me warm fuzzies".

It's basically a straightforward case of comfort belief, as Sam Harris puts it, "believing that you have a diamond the size of a fridge buried in the backyard". He details 3 marriages and bouts of depression, therapy, and medication. Seems like a needy insecure dude for whom the comfort value of belief in God trumps reason.

I'm tempted to think that he never really got it, treated atheism as a belief system, and never understood why he was an atheist. That kind of atheism is as fragile as any religion. I'm reluctant to point and laugh, though, who knows what a shortage of neurotransmitters might do to you?

5. World Youth Day condom protest against Pope

Comment #199372 by emmet on June 25, 2008 at 3:52 pm

One of my biggest problems with Razi is that he was the one who promulgated and updated the RCC official policy of non-cooperation with law enforcement investigating clerical child rape. They abused the diplomatic immunity of the Papal Nunciature to render incriminating evidence unreachable by search warrant.

If any other organisation had behaved similarly, a special police task-force would be established to infiltrate and destroy the organisation, and the Pope would be arrested the instant he set foot outside Vatican City to be extradited to any of several countries where the conspiracy he orchestrated perverted the course of justice. But because they're a religion, they can collude in the ass-rape of children with impunity.

To me, that's a criminal conspiracy to aid and abet child rapists, leaving Razi with far less moral credibility than Little Nick Carozzo.

6. On this Day: Galileo Sentenced for Believing Sun Is Center of Universe

Comment #198028 by emmet on June 23, 2008 at 4:26 am

Darth Ratzinger
I believe he's Pope Palpatine now.

7. 'I despise Islamism': Ian McEwan faces backlash over press interview

Comment #198027 by emmet on June 23, 2008 at 4:16 am

How long before McEwan gets dragged before the UN Human Rights Council?

Last time I checked, the UN-HRC was a charter-based body whose mandate is confined to investigating claims of human rights abuses against member states of the UN. If you can find an instance of the UN-HRC dragging a private citizen before them, I'd like to know about it.

8. Where do US lawmakers stand on science?

Comment #198017 by emmet on June 23, 2008 at 4:02 am

acs @#12,


Its funny, round my way the split is almost always:-

Engineer: Theists
Scientist: Atheist.

Watch your confirmation bias. I'm an atheist and an engineer. Most of my friends are engineers and atheists or, at most, very weak deists. I don't know a single engineer who's a religious theist. Not one.

9. Blogger spreads the gospel of science

Comment #190133 by emmet on June 8, 2008 at 12:35 pm

hungarianelephant,

I'd be very offended by that remark if I were a turf briquette.

10. Couple charged in Norway over genital mutilation of daughters

Comment #190095 by emmet on June 8, 2008 at 11:23 am

Islam can be compatible with western society. Currently, the way it is being practiced by a majority of the people in the world, it isn't. But if and when people choose to ignore the literal scripture (a BIG if and when, i'm aware), like the way people do with the old and new testament, then islam will be able to become westernized like christianity and judaism have.

In other words, we shouldn't criticise Islam because if it was completely different, it would be OK.

Can't argue with that logic.

11. Blogger spreads the gospel of science

Comment #189985 by emmet on June 8, 2008 at 4:08 am

hungarianelephant@#189471,

Not to mention the unmitigated bollocks the county councils made of tranlating them back into Irish. My personal favourite is Barnhill Road in Dalkey (a suburb of Dublin), which gets "Barnhill" as a corruption of "barr na h-aille" (top of the cliff), but the geniuses in the council back-translated it as "cnoc an sciobol" (hill of the barn) on the street sign.

I have it on reliable authority that these are not at all uncommon.

12. The Great Evangelical Decline

Comment #188997 by emmet on June 5, 2008 at 7:02 am

Two prayer groups, an atheist and a sex scandal.

Not to be confused with pastor-emission decay where a church emits a cleric and one or more scandals, but otherwise remains stable.

Scandals come in different flavours, of course, sex scandals, drug scandals, embezzlement scandals, and tax scandals. Have I left any out?

There's also the curious phenomenon of scandal absorption, where a large church can be bombarded with scandals, absorb all of them, and neither emit a pastor nor disintegrate.

13. The Great Evangelical Decline

Comment #188987 by emmet on June 5, 2008 at 6:39 am

Wow, what an amazing scientific discovery! The half life of churches is 22 years!

Yes, but what does a church emit when it decays? Two prayer groups and an atheist?

14. Ben Stein 1, Yoko Ono 0 in 'Expelled' copyright spat

Comment #188831 by emmet on June 4, 2008 at 5:55 pm

It's widely reported that Expelled cost "almost $4m" and marketing and distribution cost "a multiple of that" according to A. Logan Craft of Premise Media. It seems that the total cost, taking "a multiple" as just 2 is ~$12m. To open on over 1,000 screens, it would cost about $5m for the prints alone, which is consistent.

The box office gross was $7.6m. The distributor sees about 45% of the gross. Thus Premise have laid out ~$12m and got ~$3.4m back in ticket sales.

I smell turkey garnished with flop.

Addition: Whether they ultimately make a profit depends on DVD and other (pay-TV, regular TV) sales. It's very hard to find figures to base a plausible prediction on.

15. Character Attacks: How to Properly Apply the Ad Hominem

Comment #188827 by emmet on June 4, 2008 at 5:27 pm

Obama's "Candidates@Google" talk/interview is pretty interesting too (if a bit long). During the Q&A, he's very strong on science and reason as the basis for political decision-making. It's very encouraging:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4yVlPqeZwo

16. Mail-boat record 'proves Darwin stole his original ideas from a Welsh scientist'

Comment #185229 by emmet on May 27, 2008 at 8:26 am

I think it time I introuced Braidwood's first law: Other people's patriotism is boring.

Huh?

I think "patriotism" or "national pride" share a lot of characteristics with religion — accident of birth, no evidenciary basis, self-deception, and conveniently ignoring contradictions.

As a non-American, non-Welsh, non-English person, American, Welsh, and English media seem bizarrely jingoistic. As an Irish person, Irish media never seemed quite so bad, but I'm sure they are if you're American, Welsh, or English.

There is no "patriotism" involved in such an observation.

17. Mail-boat record 'proves Darwin stole his original ideas from a Welsh scientist'

Comment #184809 by emmet on May 26, 2008 at 8:05 am

I'll only add one small point. What is all this chauvinistic nonsense about 'Welsh scientist'?

I do agree, but I'll add one small point: the English are at least as bad. One probably only notices this as a non-English person watching English TV or reading English newspapers. I recall the BBC commentary on the marathon event during the Olympics some years ago when, at one point, an American, an Irishman, and an Australian were in the first three positions (they were all subsequently beaten by an Ethiopian, IIRC). The BBC commentator, having nothing positive to say about the British athletes in that event, said that the leaders were all "from English-speaking countries".

This kind of Chauvinism is universal to the extent that Wikipedia now lists the countries of birth, residence, and citizenship of famous people to solve the problem of edit-wars over whether Einstein, for example, is to be considered "German" or "American".

18. Animal Science Without Evolution

Comment #184799 by emmet on May 26, 2008 at 7:39 am

All geography books are likewise filled with round earth propaganda.

Zoology without evolution is like geography without maps.

19. Lab agrees to test Shroud of Turin for new theory

Comment #184414 by emmet on May 25, 2008 at 4:18 am

... Shroud of Turing ...
That one would be easy: test for cyanide and apple sauce.

20. Teenager faces prosecution for calling Scientology 'cult'

Comment #183321 by emmet on May 21, 2008 at 9:36 pm

I read recently that a court in Germany refused Scientology the right to be regarded as a religion.

I understand that, formally speaking, the same is true in the UK (although it differs a little from country to country within), and the CoS is formally a company, not a religion nor even a registered charity. If I were in the UK, I would file a complaint with the Companies Registration Office that the use of "Church" in the name of a company is likely to mislead the public into the belief that the company is a religious institution — give 'em a taste of their own medicine!

Apparently, there is also ample legal precedent in the UK that corporate persons cannot be harassed, alarmed, or distressed and that the section under which he's been summonsed is only supposed to be used when there's imminent danger of a riot. It seems the police were way out of line.

This post in the forum thread mentioned in the article is one of the more interesting ones.

21. Edgar Mitchell ushers in the Next Epoch in Evolution

Comment #183318 by emmet on May 21, 2008 at 9:04 pm

@OrbitalMike

Well, maybe I'm venting a little :)

I've been reading Pharyngula a lot recently, where engineer-bashing is something of a sport on occasion. A lot of 'em fail to realise that "engineer" is no more specific a term than "scientist". Factor all the soft sciences into the definition of "scientist" and I think you'll find a lot more faith-heads in science although, admittedly, I'm the kind of snob who only counts hard science as real science myself.

There's also the problem of "engineer" being used as a job title for people irrespective of their level of education or qualifications. I've met plenty of "software engineers" who did one-year Mickey Mouse courses in programming. It's got to the stage where the word "engineer" is almost entirely vacuous, just a word some people like to use to describe themselves. I'm not saying that every engineer who ever made a complete twat of himself was one of them, but they sure don't help.

I'll hop off my hobby-horse now :)

22. Edgar Mitchell ushers in the Next Epoch in Evolution

Comment #183289 by emmet on May 21, 2008 at 6:44 pm

My unscientific survey / observations indicate that while most scientists tend to lean toward unbelief, most engineers tend to lean towards belief.

TBH, I think it's highly likely to be confirmation bias. There appears to be a supposed/assumed association between theism and being an engineer (in the US, at least), which verges on the ridiculous in some fora, and is intensely irritating to me as an atheist (electronics) engineer. Every now and then, some wackaloon engineer comes out with some ridiculous horseshit and (rightly) gets lampooned. Everybody seems to remember the wackaloon engineers, but never the wackaloon physicists, chemists, and biologists, or they find some excuse for the scientists (like having gone to second-rate university), but not the engineers: somehow all engineers, but not the scientists, are tarred with the same brush when one nutcase sticks his head above the parapet. When an engineer talks shit, the reaction is "typical stupid engineer", but when Behe talks shit, it's never "typical stupid scientist". It gets my goat.

I deplore stupid engineers spouting nonsense every bit as much, if not more, than every biochemist deplores Behe. In fact, I cringe every time an engineer opens his/her mouth for fear s/he'll say something stupid and reinforce this negative stereotype and it's a damn shame, because — in my alma mater — engineering was notoriously difficult, by far the toughest course in the whole place.

23. Lab agrees to test Shroud of Turin for new theory

Comment #183279 by emmet on May 21, 2008 at 6:17 pm

He is not a professor, he is a lecturer. Big difference.

That depends on the country and the academic tradition. In many European universities, there is exactly one professor per school (or department or faculty depending on how they label the organisational structure) and, sometimes, also a tiny handful of named endowed chairs. It is not at all uncommon for a university of twenty thousand students to have only a half-dozen professors, as was the case in my alma mater, all other academic staff, fully tenured and fully equivalent to professors in US universities were "senior lecturers". Some universities even go so far as to produce "equivalence tables" to translate their ancient peculiarities into "American" terminology. Here in Uppsala, founded before Columbus was born, professorships were traditionally numbered, although I've never actually heard anyone describe him or herself as "Mathematics 2", I believe that (technically speaking) it is still the case.

24. Teenager faces prosecution for calling Scientology 'cult'

Comment #182846 by emmet on May 21, 2008 at 3:21 am

I doubt the kid would have very much difficulty finding a barrister to represent him pro bono — it's just the kind of case they love.

If the kid was convicted, do you think the House of Lords would uphold the conviction on appeal? I very much doubt it.

If, having exhausted all options in the UK, the kid were to appeal to the ECHR, based on Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, how do you think they'd rule? Either way, the publicity would be very embarrassing for the UK.

The CPS and any court would foresee the potential for a precedent in this case to be used by other religious groups to censor any criticism or, worse still, to censor anything they deem "offensive" (e.g. Muslims could censor any depictions of Muhammad).

The CPS will drop this — it's far too trivial to run the risk of it blowing up in their faces. I'd even lay a bet that the CPS has already sent the word down to the CoL police that this was a really stupid thing to do and not to do it again.

25. Mayor challenges pope during Genoa visit

Comment #182206 by emmet on May 19, 2008 at 11:36 am

Nobody likes abortion. I've yet to hear anyone say "abortions are great, everyone should have two". I think I probably aspire to the the "safe, legal, and rare" idea, with the caveat that I don't think I have any right whatsoever to decide for anyone, but I think there are some circumstances where abortion is actually a moral good, such as anencephaly. Even in Ireland, I think, there's broad recognition outside the lunatic fringe that such cases are a no-brainer (no pun intended).

26. Texas Megachurch Minister Busted in Internet Sex Sting

Comment #182081 by emmet on May 19, 2008 at 7:46 am

Er...Johnny O...there was no 13 year old girl, so it would be - um - difficult to pray for her.

If one can pray to an imaginary being, I don't see why one shouldn't pray for one. At least it can be demonstrated that 13 year-olds exist, if not this particular 13 year-old.

27. Texas Megachurch Minister Busted in Internet Sex Sting

Comment #181523 by emmet on May 17, 2008 at 10:52 am

What're we going to call it now?

Sex flags under Jesus?

28. Texas Megachurch Minister Busted in Internet Sex Sting

Comment #181504 by emmet on May 17, 2008 at 10:21 am

I read recently (admittedly second-hand) that the second-best predictor of child sexual abuse by a parent is parental membership of a conservative religious group with strong emphasis on traditional gender roles.

The best predictor is alcoholism or drug addiction of the father.

The source was "Sexual Abuse in Christian Homes and Churches" by Carolyn Holderread Heggen.

29. Richard Dawkins Responds to Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

Comment #181462 by emmet on May 17, 2008 at 8:57 am

The science vs religion debates is the internet-wide flamewar.

I think people in the future will look back at the internet and think that's what it was for.

I think there's very little doubt that people in the future will look back at the internet and think it was for disseminating pornography.

30. Americans pray at the pump for cheaper petrol

Comment #179696 by emmet on May 13, 2008 at 2:11 pm

Canada, Australia, Russia, Niger, Namibia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, South Africa.

With the exception of the first two countries, I wouldn't consider the countries highly stable. …the U.S. will be have its kahunas in the hands of quasi-rogue states in Africa and the Asia. That may take 50 years or more, but it will happen.

So, how about this for an idea: the US spends $100 billion over the next 50 years on education and infrastructure in those of the above countries that need it, in the hope of not spending $5 trillion bombing them into the stone age in 50 years. As 50:1 bets go, it seems like a pretty good one.

31. Faith in Britain today

Comment #177504 by emmet on May 9, 2008 at 7:51 am

Have you ever met anyone who believes what Richard Dawkins doesn't believe in?

No because nobody could possibly believe all the things that Richard doesn't believe in, you old fool, because some of them are mutually contradictory.

I usually find that the God that is being rejected by such people is a God I don't believe in either.

True by sheer force of numbers: the number of gods I reject is approximately equal to the number of gods you don't believe in. Here's the mathematics for the hard-of-thinking: x ≅ x+1, for sufficiently large x. Here x is the number of gods you don't believe in, which has been measured and found to be precisely a metric shitload. I just reject one more.

32. Bill Good Interviews Richard Dawkins

Comment #173631 by emmet on May 1, 2008 at 2:23 am

My favourite answer to the Stalin canard is that Stalin was a paranoid despot who sought to eliminate any possible challenge to his power, including the Orthodox Church. He knew exactly how powerful the Church was and exactly how they exercised power over the general population from spending his formative years in the Tiflis Seminary.

33. Anti-Evolution Film Misappropriates the Holocaust

Comment #172982 by emmet on April 30, 2008 at 8:13 am

Q: What do you call the useless bit of skin that remains after completion of a circumcision?

A: Ben Stein.

Or "When Ben Stein was circumcised, the rabbi threw away the wrong part."

34. Museums teach society lacking in science literacy

Comment #172760 by emmet on April 30, 2008 at 4:05 am

You have to laugh that the writer had to point out that the child lined up his toy dinosaurs - as if anyone might think he lined up his real ones! :o)

Obviously he couldn't because the real ones were being fitted for saddles at the time.

35. Anti-Evolution Film Misappropriates the Holocaust

Comment #172749 by emmet on April 30, 2008 at 3:32 am

I've been saying that the ADL should jump all over Expelled. I'm glad they have.

Other people I'd like to see publically condemning it include:

* Holocaust historians
* The curator of the concentration camp used in the movie (was it Dachau or Auschwitz?).
* Any rabbi, particularly a senior rabbi, a German rabbi, or Ben Stein's rabbi
* Groups representing the Roma people, gays, the mentally or physically handicapped, or other groups the Nazis murdered en masse.

36. Girl, 17, killed in Iraq for loving a British soldier

Comment #172726 by emmet on April 30, 2008 at 2:10 am

Vaal,

She lied, she got caught, she was ashamed, she left. She was not "bullied".

She was accused in (what is now) #58, rumbled in #75 and had already started deleting by #77. Everything after that is totally irrelevant to her decision. I fail to see how any of the posts between #58 and #77 could possibly be construed as "bullying".

37. Girl, 17, killed in Iraq for loving a British soldier

Comment #172691 by emmet on April 29, 2008 at 11:15 pm

njwong@#291,

...and the horse you rode in on, mate.

#291 is utter bollocks. She was asked if she edited the post, she said she didn't, she lied. It's not like she just told one little white lie, she lied repeatedly and compounded the deceit: "You misread", "I didn't edit the post". She allowed other people to leap to her defence, pointing out what she "had really written", and she allowed al-rawandi to apologise to her for "misreading" what she had "originally written".

Her behaviour was dishonest and reprehensible. I categorically reject any suggestion that I erred in setting the record straight. I'm appalled that you see fit to take me to task for testifying to the truth. You would rather that I would stand by and let her dishonestly humiliate al-rawandi and make unwitting accomplices of the posters who defended her? NOT BLOODY LIKELY.

I think al-rawandi often delivers messages on a flaming arrow that would be better sent by mail. I've called him a "condescending bastard", amongst other things, had heated disagreements with him, we often disagree, but there'll be a cold day in hell before I let someone humiliate anybody with a stinking lie when I know the truth.

Some people understood her post one way. Some people understood it another. It was ambiguous. She could have clarified her meaning without being dishonest, but she just couldn't let go of the petty little "win" of squeezing an apology out of al-rawandi, and let integrity be damned. Maybe she was piqued that he'd been harsh about her rashly-chosen words. So what? That makes her deceit OK? No way!


She could've just said "yeah, you know, that could've been clearer, I was upset when I wrote it" and it would've been dropped instantly. At the point where she'd edited out the content of all of her earlier posts, it was dropped: al-rawandi had dropped it and left, I had no dog in the fight. It was over at that point. I haven't mentioned it since then except to answer questions about it or discuss the pros and cons of having the editing facility. You're the one who's brought the damn thing up the last two times! It was all but forgotten until you put the big shit-stirring spoon in.

To defend her deceitful post-morphing with reference to inveterate self-confessed pedants changing punctuation or a dyslexic guy correcting his spelling beggars belief. Other posters, including myself, edit their posts a dozen times or more to correct punctuation, grammar, or spelling, not to deceive. Big, big, BIG difference. I'm flabbergasted that I have to point this out.

Anyway, since Bunny has quitted the RD.NET site, please consider yourselves victorious.
Awwww... boo hoo! Is that supposed to make me feel bad? She lied, got caught, and erased all record of her misbehaviour, now I'm supposed to feel bad? Not a chance, mate. I'm totally unapologetic about my conduct: I absolutely did the right thing. If I witness anyone perpetrating post-morphing deceit to embarrass, humiliate, or disadvantage another poster, I'll damn well expose them. I know where I stand, I know what's right, I'm proud of what I did, and no feeble attempt at laying a guilt-trip on me is going to change that. So you can take that one, wrap it 'round a pineapple, and stick it where the sun don't shine... crown first.

To her credit, I think she's thoroughly ashamed of herself, and that's why she went. If so, good for her, she learned something. No harm.

38. Girl, 17, killed in Iraq for loving a British soldier

Comment #172522 by emmet on April 29, 2008 at 4:53 pm

Timeouts can be used very carefully on different pages to deal with issues of resource use by sessions on high-traffic websites, like this one. On the other hand, I can't imagine there is much session state to be maintained.


There should be no resource issue at all with using session cookies rather than persistent cookies with the expiry time explicitly set a short time in the future. My appeal to authority is that I've written database backends for dozens of sites, some of them with high traffic levels, over a period of about 10 years (admittedly a long time since I did such a big job and I'm out of the web programming business entirely now). There is quite a bit of oddness here. For example, (it doesn't seem to be so bad now) for a long time if you reloaded the home-page, all the images would reload too, which made it look like there was a no-cache pragma sent even with static content (or a very short expiry time). Another example: Firefox won't fill the login boxes, which is a double PITA when sessions expire so readily. I could pick out more odd things, but it just seems to me that, on the whole, "the principle of least surprise" is quite often violated.

39. Girl, 17, killed in Iraq for loving a British soldier

Comment #172485 by emmet on April 29, 2008 at 3:49 pm

On the off topic of posting, does anyone else have a problem of being logged off while typing a comment? I know I type slow, but at times, after I hit submit I seem to get logged off, thus losing my comment.

Didn't there use to be a warning above the comment box advising one to copy their comment before submitting?


I think they've set the timeout on the login cookie to be a lot longer than it used to be, which ameliorates the problem somewhat, probably enough so that they felt the warning was not necessary any more. I don't understand why there's a timeout set at all, if there's no timeout specified, the cookie is a session cookie which lasts until the browser is closed or it's explicitly removed (e.g. via a "logout").

There are quite a few very peculiar things about the way the commenting software works here, that's just one of them.

40. Girl, 17, killed in Iraq for loving a British soldier

Comment #172470 by emmet on April 29, 2008 at 3:31 pm

Sorry, he did ask you. I just had to get in the fun after all the serious stuff.
Serves me right for taking so long over the post and "lithium" was funnier anyway :o)

41. Girl, 17, killed in Iraq for loving a British soldier

Comment #172459 by emmet on April 29, 2008 at 3:21 pm

What I hate is when I think I see the static avatars move. How do you bock that?!
Therapy?


Edit: Dammit, beaten to the punch :o)

42. Girl, 17, killed in Iraq for loving a British soldier

Comment #172442 by emmet on April 29, 2008 at 2:59 pm

I can still change it if I get more complaints :)
No, it's not a complaint. I don't mind people having animated avatars, it's just that I block them so they don't distract me. It's the same with animated ads: I have no desire to block static ads or text ads, but I use Adblock Plus to get rid of the distracting animated ones and the other ones get killed as a side-effect.

I do feel sorry for the people who find animated ads/avatars as irritating as I do, but don't know of Adblock Plus as a solution. If you hit escape over GIF animations, that stops the animation in most browsers, but it's not practical to do that for a pageful of ads/avatars prancing all over the screen.

That said, if I ever meet the guy who decided to put animation support into GIF 89a, I'll punch him in the face :o)

43. Girl, 17, killed in Iraq for loving a British soldier

Comment #172429 by emmet on April 29, 2008 at 2:49 pm

Okay then, how about a compromise?
I find animated avatars very distracting, except for slow/subtle animations, so I block them as a matter of course. If it were up to me, I'd ban GIFs and only allow PNG or JPEG avatars.

It can take me ten gos to get the punctuation right. Oh, the public humiliation.
Me too: pedantry is a harsh mistress. That --- and the fact that the comment submission software here f**ks things up when you submit them, but not when you edit them (like links) --- would make me reluctant to forego the ability to edit. The other thing, of course, is that merely having an edit count would admit a "oh, I edited earlier to put in a comma" defence: if people are going to be dishonest, it's pretty hard to stop them.

44. Girl, 17, killed in Iraq for loving a British soldier

Comment #172400 by emmet on April 29, 2008 at 2:19 pm

Phil@#231,

Yep, I like being able to edit posts to correct punctuation or grammar, but it's definitely a double-edged sword, particularly when it can be abused so easily. I don't think it'd be practical to have a complete history of every post (it'd require a fairly significant software and database changes), but it should be very easy to tag a post has having been edited (i.e. every time a post is edited, an edit counter is incremented, if the edit counter is non-zero, the number of edits is displayed). That would at least tell us if a post had been edited, although not what the exact changes were.

TBH, I think the "moral of the story" is to copy/paste and blockquote in responses.

45. Girl, 17, killed in Iraq for loving a British soldier

Comment #172359 by emmet on April 29, 2008 at 1:55 pm

I can't see any of them, unfortunately. They must be on imageshack which, for some reason, always times out on me.

46. Girl, 17, killed in Iraq for loving a British soldier

Comment #172339 by emmet on April 29, 2008 at 1:43 pm

Fortunately, I am not a 300 lb man with a beard...today

Well in any case, it's better than one of those annoying animated avatars. I thank his Noodliness for Adblock Plus every time I block one.

47. Girl, 17, killed in Iraq for loving a British soldier

Comment #172325 by emmet on April 29, 2008 at 1:25 pm

Everyone picks the very very very best picture of themselves. It is almost a ruse.
I don't have a recent halfway decent photograph, which is why I use my "Southpark" character (a pretty good likeness): it makes me look less like a scruffy demented troglodyte. There is a pic of me online, but it's a few years old.

I am glad you caught the editing of the post, I had actually issued the apology.


Yep. When I saw the "I did not edit the post" line, I was so shocked that I immediately copied and pasted it for the one where I just quoted it and said "Liar". That overwrote her unmutated original post on my clipboard. I had just posted my "FWIW, #23 was edited to change 'they' to 'people like this'" post and moved on to the 2nd page (the thread was moving very fast). If I hadn't reacted that way out of surprise, it would've been much better: just post what she actually wrote with "From my clipboard" in front of it.

So you think that pic is a good representation of me?
All we can say for certain is that the girl in the photograph is very pretty. But whether it's a good representation of you? I dunno, what do you really look like? You could be a 300lb man with a beard for all we know :o)

48. Girl, 17, killed in Iraq for loving a British soldier

Comment #172308 by emmet on April 29, 2008 at 1:02 pm

al-rawandi,

The commandment link didn't work unfortunately.


I went back and edited it ;o)

I find that the commenting system tries to hyperlink my hyperlinks and screws them up, so I always have to edit to get rid of extra <a href=""... stuff. Sometimes threads move very fast, so I haven't had time to fix the links before somebody finds that they're broken.

49. Girl, 17, killed in Iraq for loving a British soldier

Comment #172297 by emmet on April 29, 2008 at 12:54 pm

al-rawandi,

Seems like she's deleted all but one of her posts, not just in this thread, and deleted her profile picture. I think this indicates that she's thoroughly ashamed of what she did. I hope for her that it reinforces the 9th Commandment rather than the 11th :o)

50. Girl, 17, killed in Iraq for loving a British soldier

Comment #172261 by emmet on April 29, 2008 at 12:03 pm

Colwyn@169,

Bunnyboiler went back and edited a post (was #23) in the middle of an argument with al-rawandi, tried to screw an apology out of him on the basis of "misreading" the post, was asked if she edited the post, lied repeatedly, got caught, and went back and deleted all her posts (about 10 in total), so the numbering of posts is wrong and referred-to posts are gone. At a guess, the most relevant posts are now probably between about #45 and #65, or thereabouts. You'll probably get the picture from the 2nd page of comments.

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