Comment Re:Let them play WOW (Score 1) 356
Yes, but Acadia's an IMF. Full crew complement's about 1600 - big enough to be a flexible community in her own right.
Relevant, but hardly a comparable problem.
Why can't you just use exclamation points? All-caps may be yelling... for idiots. English already has a convention for that. Besides, it would be more effective if you expressed it more artfully through your writing, rather than resorting the the cheapest possible method.
And there's the point. Nobody on
Why is copyright law so bad? Because 99% of people don't know anything about it, and don't give a fuck. These are the people we need to win over, and it can't be done by yelling. I don't need to mud-wrestle Allen to beat her... and the more people do, the more it hurts our case. This is a media war, and the bad guys own the media... so why give them free boxes of ammo?
When we speak like this, people caring caring how right...
That's 'people stop caring', of course.
Which has been completely wasted in favour of people helling cheap insults on her blog.
yelling. Although, now I'd like this to be a verb. "To send [person] to hell, by the magical application of the proper insults on their blog, and invocation of the rituals of the BoingBoing criticism."
When we speak like this, people caring caring how right our argument is. You are yelling disgusting abuse at a woman you've never even met and about whom you know nothing. (Celebrity headlines do not constitute knowledge.) If we want sane copyright law, if we want to win this, then step one is making the case.
Allen's hypocritical rant was an opportunity to air our arguments. Which has been completely wasted in favour of people helling cheap insults on her blog. Let's make this clear: I don't care how stupid Allen is being. I care about winning the argument, getting better copyright laws, and fighting this 3-strikes bullshit. (She's ignorant of the issues. So educate her.)
So: big media gets a major, free win, which for once they deserve - we handed it to them on a silver platter. Right now, in media perception, 'opponents of Lily Allen's idiotic opinion' == 'bunch of rude screaming foul-mouthed teenagers yelling insults'.
Getting better copyright law in future will need the support of musicians. Many are already onside; you won't convince the others by calling them stupid or greedy, much less calling them 'human trash'. Insulting the enemy is inflating our egos... at the expense of actually accomplishing anything. - Modding up to promote yelling at people you don't like doesn't make it wise, but does make you look foolish.
The US hasn't ratified the extradition treaty because, apparently, even Congress isn't that dumb.
It's certainly not what he intended to claim!
In Science we try to communicate in the most precise and least ambiguous manner possible. Journalists don't have a reputation for that.
Journalists certainly don't, but to be fair, Singh does.
Most science journalism is bad because it is disastrously sensationalist (MMR vaccine), or far too gullible (most articles on alternative medicine), or both. Libel law cannot prevent either of these, as gullibly accepting claims that something is effective does not lead to libel suits. The journalism debunking nonsense, however, is easily threatened.
"The British Chiropractic Association claims that their members can help treat children with colic, sleeping and feeding problems, frequent ear infections, asthma and prolonged crying, even though there is not a jot of evidence. This organisation is the respectable face of the chiropractic profession and yet it happily promotes bogus treatments."
It doesn't seem like that big a leap to go from "[BCA] happily promotes bogus treatments" to "chiropractors as a group are intentionally deceitful"
It seems to me to be a huge leap. It is precisely the leap from 'Tynam is blatantly completely wrong about this' to 'Tynam is deliberately lying about this'. Nowhere in the article does Singh claim that the BCA knows the treatments are bogus; indeed, his objection is precisely that they don't know, and ought to.
What if he wrote what I substitute here in bold?
"The British Chiropractic Association claims that their members can help treat children with colic, sleeping and feeding problems, frequent ear infections, asthma and prolonged crying, but they have not provided verifiable proof for any of these claims. This organisation is the respectable face of the chiropractic profession and yet it happily promotes scientifically unfounded treatments."
Then in all probability it would have made no difference. The judgement made against Singh doesn't have much to do with the dictionary definition of 'bogus', and he pretty my ignored all text submissions made by either party on the subject; it seems unlikely that paraphrasing in a more clinical way would have avoided the judgement. Indeed, it ignores the following paragraph in Singh's article, it which it is made clear that by 'bogus' he means exactly what you (correctly) assume he meant above.
Paraphrasing certainly wouldn't have avoided the lawsuit itself.
My point is that the cost of defending the suit is ruinous even if Singh wins. Critical science journalism is silenced by fear-of-lawsuit; the merits and flaws of this specific case are almost irrelevant. To be blunt: people like Singh and Goldacre are only able to perform journalism on medical issues at all because they have financial resources available, and have acted fearlessly in the face of large, unearned risks.
The current state of British libel law is such that only a rich person, or one with a large organisation's resources backing him, dare even try to write an article critical of poor (but profitable) pseudoscience.
...the law hasn't been described well enough.
That may well be. I don't see a link to the law, so I don't know how to verify this directly. Bad laws are written all the time, and this is probably one of them. But the complaints I've seen so far don't really sound hostile to scientific journalism.
British libel law is hostile to pretty much everybody; the damage it does to science journalism is simply an egregrious example.
Sadly I haven't found a good summary of our libel law online anwhere; just fluffy newspaper summaries of little evidential value. However, Google Books lets you preview the International Libel and Privacy Handbook; the English law section is Chapter 15. There's a quick summary of the problem at scientificblogging.
The law as described here sounds very much on the side of good science.
Unfortunately, that just means the law hasn't been described well enough.
British libel law is abominably poor, and entirely on the side of the plaintiff. For a start, it's easy and cheap to bring a case, but ridiculously expensive - cost often two full orders of magnitude greater than the European average - to defend it. And the judge can easily hammer you with ridiculous interpretations of the original statement, which you're then required to accept. (For example, Singh has been required to prove a claim obviously incapable of proof - that chiropractors as a group are intentionally deceitful, not just wrong. It's certainly not what he intended to claim!)
This is disastrous for science journalism - because any attempt to debunk the pseudoscientific nonsense of fools, homeopaths, scientologists, scam artists or outright crooks is subject to immediate censorship-by-libel-law. (Even if it occurs elsewhere - London courts are notoriously willing to accept jurisdiction over libel cases that have no connection to the UK whatsoever.)
So... intercourse is not required for european sex?! Ridiculous.
Possibly ridiculous, but definitely true. I offer an easy proof-by-experiment: go down on, say, a French girl, then ask her whether you've had sex.
There is foreplay, and there is sex. These acts may happen within proximity to each other, but a person having an orgasm in a room by themselves is not having sex, that much is clear.
Yep, clearly. But that's not the discussion. A person having an orgasm in a room with somebody else, in one of their orifices, is clearly having sex regardless of which hole they use.
On the other hand, this european standard may explain why american girls have had this reputation for being easy... they thought they were merely being friendly when all the while, unbeknownst to them, they were being euro-raped.
Hmmm... this almost makes a bizarre sense. An American girl can, apparently, have anal sex while blowing another man, and then tell herself there wasn't any sex. Anal is the new heavy petting.
Huh.
This entire discussion is getting silly, even by my generous standards, so I'll finish on that thought.
For those who missed it: Europeans don't think you have to have babies to be having sex. We find these two situations easy to distinguish. Hint: It's also still sex if you're using a condom.
The more ebay becomes a store front, the more the network size no longer provides it with a lock-in.
There can be prejudice without bigotry. But it's hard to imagine bigotry without prejudice.
Administration: An ingenious abstraction in politics, designed to receive the kicks and cuffs due to the premier or president. -- Ambrose Bierce
