Damian

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• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  Well Kissinger was the engineering solution, after all... Sorry, bad humour....
• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  solicit manuscripts from wannabes, praise them to the skies, and then tell the author that the advance is the payment by the author to cover printing costs, rather than the other way around. If you haven't read Foucault's Pendulum by...
• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  I'd have thought that believing spectral evidence was admissible (not to mention the whole witch thing) should put the rest of Hale's legal opinions under question Common law doesn't really work that way, but the whole point is that statute...
• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  I think the 2008 thing is an outcome of the 80s deregulation fad anyway....
• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  _10m away looking smug and waiting to see if there was more _ Ha, luxury. When I'm grilling on the barbecue on our back deck, sometimes, a kooka will come sit on the railing less than a metre away unless...
• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  I've always seen them as kingfishers. I guess the comparison we have in Brisbane is the azure kingfisher, which you see mostly around creeks, and they are a lot smaller. But where we are now we get kookas on the...
• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  when Thatcher gave Murdoch free rein to take over the British press Agreed. It's pretty safe in hindsight to say that neither Thatcher, nor Reagan (least of all Hayek, their mutual infatuation although the Americans required a Friedman to translate...
• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  Probably the one that everyone will trip over is lecturer, which I think have different meanings in different countries. Well it's both lecturer and professor, really. I think the way we use 'lecturer' looks more different for you, while the...
• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  "I don't need science" humanities side I think that's squarely selection bias....
• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  I had a classmate in high school who knew he was heading for medicine and basically planned his high school study accordingly. His electives were physics, chemistry, Latin and extra mathematics. I'm pretty sure he was actively discouraged from taking...
• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  I once worked with a GP who started out as a meteorologist One of my wife's cousin's kids finished undergrad Law, decided he'd made the wrong choice and went back to do Medicine. He's some sort of rare specialist trauma...
• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  Apple's quadruply-damned autocorrect I have come to rely on the hold-down-the-on-screen-spacebar-to-manipulate-a-cursor trick for that sort of thing, but generally avoid trying to comment here from an iDevice too. Was going to jump in with how GPAs in Aus are different...
• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  We need so many more Nurse Practitioners! Totally agreed! I have to admit having been in healthcare IT for such a long time and having studied health economics a bit I might tend to filter out people in the media...
• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  so they could pull off a last second A after not studying all semester I feel seen!...
• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  a piece of paper just to placate employers, but it's in Health Informatics Was that the CHIA? The content for that is actually really impressive, and I have hypothesised that it's aimed squarely at killing Dunning-Kruger among practitioners in the...
• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  How's that going? How it's going is that I'm seeing a lot of category errors that are in themselves very boring. Moving on might be more interesting....
• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  But the general rules is that people react to things around them, claiming that anything they react to is necessarily art seems to devalue the idea of art quite a lot Surprisingly, there's quite a bit of theory about this....
• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  I've written a few comments in that subthread which I deleted before posting and have really just been trying to stay out of it, having said what I might say already. Dealing with obvious misconceptions is just whackamole and not...
• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  There was a trend away from undergraduate entry into medical school in Oz in the noughties and teens, and at this point about half the medical schools only accept graduate entry (via the GAMSAT process). Not sure whether it's changed...
• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  I'd made a note to come back to this comment with a perception-vs-reality thing, but I see others have already pointed out the Global Social Mobility Index (TL;DR: the top band that scores over 80% is the Scandies plus Austria,...
• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  Well it's true I put a lot of effort into converting my old 90s chromoly hybrid touring bike into an e-bike recently, and have dithered for just as long over printing a sticker claiming it complies with the EU standard...
• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  Then study what went wrong when we try, and then try again. I think you're batting up against the descriptivism vs prescriptivism distinction, which plays out in different ways in different disciplines, some aligned to a general pattern and some...
• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  _ I wonder if it's definitional too_ I think this is a blind alley. You seem to be trying to paint each other into different corners based on somewhat flippant hypotheses, while actually agreeing about most things, even if it's...
• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  I give up To be fair, I think there's a bit of "no true scotsman" in what Moz says... those of us who do make things can't possibly be considered Humanities folks or something. I don't like to claim my...
• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  Now add that to your novels and/or screenplays with my blessings. Boring but based upon engineering basics. While I'm sure I can't think of a specific SFnal example off the top of my head, I'm pretty sure this has been...
• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  It's like that xkcd cartoon where the physicist wonders why other fields need a whole journal I've noticed people with the narrowest IT specialties are often the ones who make somewhat dismissive assumptions about the depth of other areas of...
• Commented on I should blog more, but ...
  I was going to say something more pithy, like it depends on whether "pound" refers to measured weight or mass. Assumptions: "heavier" refers to measured weight, at sea level or at some fixed altitude not in a vacuum. If "pound"...
• Commented on I should blog more, but ...
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Izzeldin_Abuelaish...
• Commented on I should blog more, but ...
  what have you got for a finalized resolution that nobody else has come up with thus far? Ah, the ultimate bad faith debating question, the brown noise filter....
• Commented on I should blog more, but ...
  The Regicide Report should be back to full length or even longer given the number of loose ends it needs to tie up. Looking forward to both! The Regicide Report, for reasons that probably aren't entirely bad reasons, makes me...