[golf] the game for super heroes

H/T Australian Senior Golfer

And for the less than super hero:


No golf post would be complete without some golf babes - Australia's Nicki Garrett [left] and America's Natalie Gulbis:

[the quality of debate] my new comments policy

There was a rare fierce debate on this blog about a year and a half ago, in which I was called effing this and effing that by a commenter whom I applied the gag to but at the same time didn't delete his comments, which surprised the genteel who used to come to this blog but are now frightened off.

In response, I posted my view on the matter and this became the basis of my comments policy, linked from the About section in the Navbar above.

In the same way, I'm updating that today.

A blogger never knows which topics will "take" and which ones won't. How many times have you written , in your own eyes, a super post and no one responds, nor does anyone appear to read it? Then you post something throwaway and it gets 30 comments [huge by my standards].

The issue in the comments thread of the Ayn Rand post [thanks Tom Paine, Xlbrl and Jeffery Small] was where the line is crossed into ad hominem. Jeffery wrote:

However, I, for one, disagree with the comments made about the quality of the characterization in her novels ... if you personally cannot connect with Rand's characterization or style, I have no problem understanding that. But I do have to wonder why so many people find it necessary to belittle her literary efforts and attempt to categorize them as talentless claptrap, rather than casting their views as more a matter of personal taste?

Regarding the comments of xlbrl, I, like Rand, am an atheist, and am greatly offended by his or her remarks that attempts to cast me, and others who do not believe in the existence of god, as sub-human. These comments show a blind bigotry that does not accord with reality.

Xlbrl responded:

One observation in particular is the first thing I examine myself by when I am offended--A remark hurts generally in proportion to the truth it contains. I am not offended. You certainly are ... I never dismissed Rand; I am cautious around her. I did not dismiss you until you actually make your argument. Actually, you made my argurment.

James--Do not hesitate to delete my remarks, since they may cross your over your guidelines. I may have other people to offend today I don't even know about!

LOL. Of course I'm not deleting either and it needs to be examined why I'm not, as it appears to cross into ad hominem in both cases. This is a golden opportunity to analyse this.

For a start, they did not, either of them, come in specifically to abuse but to pursue their line and they did so. First they had to dismiss the other's position and they chose a way to do it which I myself would have worded differently although I ran a post yesterday calling someone a moron. How much more ad hominem can one get?

There are many things to say on this.

For a start, this blog is not specifically political - this post is an example - but it does run political posts which are fairly clearly signposted, I hope. If you come into one of these "debates", then you have to expect a certain amount of roughhouse and the rule applies that if one can't stand the heat, one should get out of the kitchen.

There has to be a fine line though.

The more genteel readers would deplore the roughness with which some people comment and yet these rough diamonds are also the lifeblood of this blog, just as the genteel are. It's my fault for casting the net across the spectra and having different kinds of readers come here.

So the rules on this blog follow a footballing analogy. When a commenter comes in to hit hard with good arguments, well supported, then as long as "his eye was on the ball", other commenters need to realize they may get bumped and bruised - collateral damage.

I would expect, hope in fact, that those other commenters might come back later with cogent arguments and equally hit back hard. This is what I expected on the pagan post and was most disappointed at the quality of the arguments against me - I expected to be torn apart by the pagan community, shredded in fact, at which point I would have gone away, done my revision homework and subsequently returned to the fray.

This, to me, is what online debate is all about. We have a Google facility at our fingertips, so there's no excuse for being ill-prepared.

Back to the ball and as long as our eyes are on it, then it's line ball whether it steps into ad hominem or not. At the same time, it's hardly a defence to immediately call foul, in lieu of an effective counter-argument.

When, however,that commenter at LPUK came in specifically to denigrate Chloe Smith, which caused LPUK, wisely, to review its own editorial policy, then that was pure ad hominem. My "moron post" yesterday began with ad hominem although I hope I explained why, further down.

It all comes down to whether the eye was on the ball or whether the commenter stopped and was more concerned with taking pot shots at the other, with little concern for his own argument. It all comes down to whether that person came in specifically to attack another commenter with intemperate language and this seems to be the more major crime.

Look, we all want debate but more than that, we want those visitors who deigned to click in and having read, to comment, to feel that they're welcome to return and comment again and even more - that they should not have been so offput that they give up on our blog. That is one thing we certainly don't want.

You see the dilemma, don't you? We all have that same dilemma but I have it doubly and triply because visitors to this site come from all walks of life and persuasions, in other words, they're not all a certain type, e.g. male, right-of-centre fellow bloggers, as I am.

Enough words - I'm sure we all understand the lie of the land. :)

[school children] forced into sex

It starts off all right:

In their most impressionable adolescent years, a third of high school students say they have experienced unwanted sex. The vulnerability of teenagers, especially girls, is highlighted by a survey of the sexual experiences of almost 3000 students, in years 10 and 12. It found the most common reasons for unwanted sex were pressure from a partner or just being drunk.

Researcher Anthony Smith told The Age that, strikingly, girls in year 12 were having more sexual partners and drinking 30 per cent more than they did when a similar survey was done in 2002.

... then it draws precisely the wrong conclusion:

Professor Smith said the extent of unwanted sex detected in teenagers underscored the need for sex education in schools to better explain links between underage drinking and sexual behaviour that might be accompanied with regret later.

It underscores nothing of the bloody kind - it underscores the exact opposite. This so-called sex education in schools is what has caused the whole thing, along with other outside influences. If parents would just assert themselves - WTF are they frightened of - that their kiddies won't love them any more if they make moves to restrict their kids movements by a reasonable amount, teach responsibility and then go into that school and find out who's pressurizing your kid to have sex?

If every parent stopped being a rabbit, wringing the hands and saying, "Oh, what can we do?", together they'd change the scene within a year. They're beyond your reach? Bullsh - kids are kids and respond to Fair, Firm and Friendly. So what if your the Great Ogre for a couple of years? So what if they say they hate you but deep down, they don't?

Kid's perspective

Everyone is agreed about rape, yes? That it is the most debilitating thing, that it's a gross violation, yes? Well what about the kid with no world experience and no judgement, having to do things ahead of time and why? Because a bunch of peers press gang him or her into it. If a kid has sex even one day before being ready, even one minute, then it is rape. Just because the perpetrators are underage and can't be charged, does that make it any better?

Think about it. Think back to being a kid and how there were things you didn't want to do. Think of a whole gang of kids who are expecting you to do it. Think of the way you can never tell mum or dad. Think of the teachers who are aiding and abetting this, teachers of the "all things are OK" ilk today, telling their classes that "when" they have sex, not "if" or "years later, when you're old enough", "years later, after you're married" for goodness sake, laughing and joking along so that the kids think their teachers are "with it" in the modern world - think of that kid going along with it all because she [or he] has to but silently not wanting any of it.

Does anyone think of that? And please don't say teachers don't do that because I've seen them having a laugh in the staffroom about it and saying things like, "Oo, Felicity's starting early."

So lets start by ticking this professor off with his "progressive" ideas and then we can start to get kids back into the families where they belong, free of all this external mentoring.

A society which has ceased to protect its children is a society which has ceased to function.
.

[robot technology] saves our boys, kills their civilians

Beeb again:

"Robots that can decide where to kill, who to kill and when to kill is high on all the military agendas," Professor Noel Sharkey of the University of Sheffield said at a meeting in London. "The problem is that this is all based on artificial intelligence, and the military have a strange view of artificial intelligence based on science fiction."

His main gripe is that the operators are often huge distances away and are not "in at the kill", making them dispassionate. The problem, he said, was that robots could not fulfil two of the basic tenets of warfare: discriminating friend from foe, and "proportionality", determining a reasonable amount of force to gain a given military advantage.

Between January 2006 and April 2009, he estimated, 60 such "drone" attacks were carried out in Pakistan. While 14 al-Qaeda were killed, some 687 civilian deaths also occurred, he said.

Current rules of engagement to which the UK subscribes prohibit the use of lethal force without human intervention.

There's a certain amount of realpolitic here. Technological advances will be made, the military will get in on them and the military will try to protect as many personnel as possible.

Drones help them to do that.

To say this is inhuman is the same argument against war anyway. To eliminate one's armed forces leaves a country at the mercy of foes. To engage with maximum prejudice gives your armed forces an advantage but could be considered inhumane.

There's the bind.

As for the rules of engagement - who really believes that if you can have two thousand of your troops killed in conventional engagement or zero killed by unorthodox methods, then .......

[space race quiz] american and soviet programmes

1. On January 31, 1958, Satellite 1958 Alpha was launched. What was it more commonly known as? Hint: E.....

2. To be fair, the Soviets had been first with the First intercontinental ballistic missile in 1957. What was it called? Hint: Letter and number or the Russian name S.....

3. On May 5, 1961, which astronaut, one of the seven Project Mercury astronauts selected as pilot for this mission, became the first American in space when he piloted Freedom 7 on a 15-minute suborbital flight? Hint: AS

4. In 1960 the first dogs went into orbit aboard Sputnik 5. We often erroneously say that Laika went into space but that is the type of dog. There were actually two dogs - what were their names? Hint: B&S.

5. On December 11, 1972, who were the last astronauts to [allegedly] land on the moon? Hint: EC & H[J]S


Answers

Explorer 1; the R-7 Semyorka; Alan Shepard; Belka and Strelka; Eugene Cernan and Harrison H. "Jack" Schmitt

[over there] two tales from the other side

Don't know about you but I always liked the more surreal bits of The Young Ones. The first is dedicated to my new pagan friends, especially lilith and her Turkish delight:



But in the interests of fairness, equality and positive discrimination, we can't forget my own religion either, especially the apocalyptic bits:



To the Americans attempting to watch this ... er ... sorry ...

[caption time] fancy chinese this evening?

[definition of a moron] bill maher

"Never underestimate the ability of a tiny fringe group of losers to ruin everything [by finding the real birth certificate]." Bill Maher

Losers, birthers, truthers - liberally use mud but don't dare put yourself out, Richard Cranium, to examine the evidence. That's the Maher way.

They're saying it's now been found but it had already been allegedly sighted by a reporter [correction here] well before the election and the Kenyan government then shut down the communication channels, stripped the reporter of his equipment and deported him. Fox News rescued the guy and ran a report on it at the time.

Why has it now supposedly been found again? Who took off the shackles? How has it miraculously appeared?

Either way, now Obama may be pressurized to produce his real birth certificate, the long version, for once and for all. So that's a positive.

Further reading

Update 15:07 The document being debunked is last week's obvious forgery, complete with spyware, not the Taitz document.

The Post Chronicle says:

Anyone who surfs the web has by now become at least nominally aware that a rapidly growing segment of America is quite dissatisfied with the vetting of the President. The question is largely centered on Barack Obama's refusal to release what is known as the long form of his Hawaiian birth certificate.

Equally disconcerting is the fact that some high profile conservatives like Bill O'Reilly and Governor Mike Huckabee think Obama is perfectly OK with the COLB he displayed on Snopes.com We have to wonder why they are so sure about something they have never seen either.

The birth record is only one of many documents that have raised suspicion about the President's past. It is ridiculously un-complicated because the commonality of every document in question is the same; they are still missing, or at least unseen by anyone except those who are reported to be holding them.

15:31: Vanderbilt University

“I believe that the president should end the speculation by being transparent about all aspects of his background,” [Professor of Political Science and Law] Carol Swain said. Swain said that what is posted online for the president is a certificate of live birth. “It is the failure to release the long form that keeps suspicion alive.”

Other sealed records that Swain has called for the president to release include those pertaining to his education, foreign travel and state legislative business.

It's a very simple matter to resolve - release the long copy of the Birth Certificate. No calling people nutters or birthers or writing long articles about "oh no, the birthers are at it again". Forget the ridicule and solve the issue for once and for all:

Release the long copy birth certificate.

[novel solution] to one of the world's greatest problems

The problem of flight finally solved!

Check out a better solution.

[good characterization] can get you through 1168 pages

Commenting on Ayn Rand being adept with her prose, Tom Paine commented:

That's true, but she's a hopeless novelist, and for precisely the reason Juliette nailed in the first quote. Rand cannot create a convincing character. Having slogged painfully through 1168 pages, I admire her as a thinker but I cannot begin to imagine why she chose this vehicle for her thoughts.

Tom continues:

Great writers create living, breathing characters. Sherlock Holmes is as real as you or I and will outlast both us and his author. Dickens populated a small town with his characters, each of them - even the minor ones - a recognisable individual. John Irving is the greatest living author in English precisely because he creates magnificent characters we can love, hate and care about.

He hits the nail on the head with "we can love, hate and care about". Indeed and not only that but the author has to let his characters run free, to emote freely. There's nothing worse than a contrived plot where the characters are so obviously controlled by the prejudices of the author, like marionettes on a string.

An example is this:

"There won't be any revolution in America," said Isadore. Nikita agreed. [Linklater, Juan in America, 1933]

Chesterton was one to contrive to place characters woodenly, have them stand or sit, immobile in one place, get them suddenly angry and then drop back to being calm again. P.G. Wodehouse was not immune either. I've just conceded defeat on Money for Nothing and The Girl in Blue.

The trouble is characterization. There is a female, Pat, whose first move is to urge her male friend to confront a bull in a field, just to see if the bull is as dangerous as depicted. Even if we overlook the no doubt lovely name Pat, lovely in real life but hardly the thing for a novel, there is her nasty nature and she's one of the central protagonists.

I lost all interest at that point. There was no anger, no resentment, just indifference to anything she subsequently did or how many men were going to die for her. And when a succession of Johns and Hughs and whoever then appeared, that was that - the books will be returned to the library today.

So, it's quite a thing to engage the reader.

In my own novel, the problem, it seems to me, is not in the action - things happen at random and I don't direct them but just type and record them as they unfold ... but the problem is in the characters and in the basic premise in the first place. Not everyone wants to read the doings of a glutton for punishment and the feisty females around him, especially if, erroneously, they think the main character is the author. Also, the premise that society is progressively disintegrating and the characters are trying to adjust to that, seems far fetched to many.

It's a fine line, this matter of which characters "grab" us and which we can take or leave. Maugham had this habit of making himself obnoxiously cold and unforgiving in his short stories. This from the Lotus Eater:

On the way he asked me what I had thought of Wilson.

"Nothing," I said. "I don`t believe there`s a word of truth in your story."

"Why not?"

"He isn`t the sort of man to do that sort of thing."

"How does anyone know what anyone is capable of?"

"I should put him down as an absolutely normal man of business who`s retired on a comfortable income from ill-edged securities, I think your story`s just the ordinary Capri tittle- little."

This was upfront near the beginning of the story. Now I can tell you, if I had a "friend" like this, he'd soon be an ex-friend. It's all well and good not to believe someone but he could have said, "Well, let's wait and see," or "Well, I don't know if I can agree with you there," or, "I'd be interested to know for sure."

As it is, one loses all interest in what Maugham's first person character thinks after that. It's so difficult to engage a reader in the first person, unless it is a brave tale of woe.

So yes, Tom, 1168 pages of Ayn Rand seems a tall order to me as well. 1168 pages of Dreiser would also seem a tall order. 1168 pages of, say, Josephine Tey, would be a delight.