Supergrunch

I think it's a mixture of past female supression leading to women getting the change to do very much or be recognised when they do along with the fact that most men tend have to interests more akin to those of other men. And I think maybe women often don't make such a song and dance about themselves. In the case of authors, there are loads of interesting women, but making all six authors women is a bit boring. It's funny though, people seem to be much more interested in imagining fictional interesting women than they are in recognising them in real life. Either way, it's odd that I personally know loads of interesting women, but it's hard to think of many famous women I'd find interesting. Anyway, choosing hot women is fail. [/slight incoherence]

Why use Japanese orthography, which is opaque to most people, when you can just say Takanori Matsumoto? Anyway, I've had a bit more of a think, and managed to assemble an awesome dinner party, consisting of: Noam Chomsky (for linguistics and more) Ludwig Wittgenstein (he'd storm out and ruin the party, but in an indescribably awesome way) David Mitchell (the author, not the comedian - for being generally amazing) Richard Feynman (everyone should include this man if they want a good party) Socrates (read Plato's Apology and you'll know why) D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson (for being interesting, poetic, and polymathematic in all the right ways) Emily Short (for her views on interactive fiction and game design) Barbara Partee (for some amazing stuff in natural language analysis, along with an autobiography that convinces me she'd be interesting to talk to) Margery Kempe (for writing the first autobiography, and being generally insane) Murasaki Shikibu (for writing what may be the first novel, at the start of the 11th century) Sophie Germain (polymathmatic, and corresponded with Gauss, plus may have saved his life) Margaret Thatcher (bound to be interesting, if not quite someone you'd want to talk to...) These people are chosen very much for being interesting rather than attractive, likeable, or even having many achievments (though unsurprisingly many of them do). But didn't consider people like Rosalind Franklin, because while she undoubtedly achieved a great deal, I'm not sure how interesting she'd be at a party. Whereas I know that, say, Wittgenstein would be great. This doesn't apply quite as much to authors of fiction, because as a general rule, you have to be pretty interesting to write something that's good to read. And I've even got a carefully thought out seating plan, chosen for optimum hilarity: S MT NC ES DT SG My gf Me MK RF MS DM BP LW My favourite combination has to be Margaret Thatcher between Socrates and Wittgenstein.

To make... 13 at the table! Anyway, in no particular order: 1. Noam Chomsky (for linguistics) 2. Ludwig Wittgenstein (he'd storm out and ruin the party, but in an indescribably awesome way) 3. David Mitchell (the author, not the comedian - for being generally amazing) 4. John Robert Ross (more linguistics, this guy is less well known, but brilliant and hilarious.) 5. D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson (for being interesting, poetic, and polymathematic in all the right ways) 6. Richard Feynman (everyone should include this man if they want a good party) 7. Vladimir Nabokov (synaesthesia and win) 8. G.H. Hardy (largely just for writing A Mathematician's Apology, but also for his great work - including the Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium) 9. Toshiro Kageyama (read Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go and you'll understand why) 10. Geoffrey Pullum (more linguistics, grammar, prescriptivist bashing and utter hilarity) 11. J.B.S. Haldane (very interesting guy on population genetics and more - see avatar) 12. Emily Short (for her interesting writings and discussion) Hm, seems there's only one woman. Although that's the fault of past supression, maybe it reflects on me too... And I've no doubt forgotten some people. Edit: I fail at reading. Going to have to think of some more women.

This isn't strictly true, for some of us at least. Yes, there is a "chain" of respect or whatever you want to call it, but largely the position a given person has on this chain is based on their past history of having well argued reasons for what they say. So if, say, Daft were to say "BSG is shit," we'd assume he would have a good reason for saying so, as he's demonstrated clear justification for views he's put forward in the past. (It is, however, a little rude not to justify your opinion though, whoever you are.) Diageo, by contrast, has a reputation of saying controversial things and getting aggressive about them (which isn't necessarily true, but is definitely what people seem to think). So he has to work uphill to get his opinion heard. Unfortunately, as jayseven has pointed out, his reputation has been earned from having a style of argumentation that comes across as combative and insulting, so when he argues like this again, it just reinforces what people think of him. None of this necessarily has much to do with his actual views, which may or may not be less reasonable in general than those of others. Realistically, this probably varies on a case to case basis. TL;DR: Diageo's reputation is low, but this is a direct result of his style of argumentation, and to be taken more seriously the first step is to argue better than those with higher reputations. All that aside, I don't know how so many people dislike BSG, but several of my (literature studying) friends have complained that "no-one seems to care about the world ending," when watching the mini-series, and so given up. I'm not sure what people are supposed to do when they do care...

Happy birthday Mr. Jones.

Happy birthday!

In your later posts you take it as a given that constant exposure is bad for you, but here you just say it “may lead to some complications,” and that generally “tudies have concluded that virtually almost no problems have arisen from [secondhand smoke].” Thus your below claim holds no weight, you’re clearly considering both types of passive smoking here. Moreover, saying there “may [be] some complications” but otherwise “virtually almost no problems” is vastly different to your later claim, made once people have posted studies: Furthermore, your statement that “studies have concluded that virtually almost no problems have arisen from [secondhand smoke],” is simply incorrect. Your conclusion that incidental exposure to secondhand smoke is largely unproblematic derives not from studies showing this, but from the lack of studies showing the opposite, as is clear in (for instance) this post: A lack of studies finding problems is a very different thing to studies that find no problems, which is what you initially claimed existed. Thus your conclusion that incidental exposure is essentially unproblematic is just as speculative as claims that it is in fact bad for you, which you seem to think can be disregarded for this reason: By contrast, I think speculation is entirely worthwhile, and actually agree with your later speculation – it’s likely that incidental exposure is somewhat negligibly bad for you, and so it may be that it’s draconian to ban people smoking on the street, although merely banning people from smoking in parks and crowded public places (what they are actually doing) is somewhat more debateable. Crucially, I’m not saying incidental exposure isn’t bad, I’m suggesting it’s potentially reasonable to suppose its effects are minimal. But I’m not completely comfortable that decisions are being made on this kind of evidence, although unfortunately these kinds of decisions have to be made. So yes, I largely agree with your ultimate claims. This is totally independent from your argumentation, however, which was definitely flawed, and is partially what lead to the response you’ve been getting. And it’s not the smoking legislation that I was debating, it was the validity of your earlier claims.

Yes, the studies are largely of prolonged exposure. But that's probably because cases of incidental exposure are extremely difficult to test, meaning that there's no reason that incidental exposure shouldn't have a negative effect, although of course this won't be as bad as prolonged exposure, and may even be negligible. But arguing that lack of studies means there is no effect is flawed reason; the null hypothesis should be that incidental exposure is still somewhat undesirable. So you can't really legislate based on this sort of argument. Note also that your original claim didn't explicitly specify incidental exposure, hence the response you're getting. (I don't really know where I actually stand on the New York issue, but I'm tending towards thinking it's unreasonable. But not because incidental passive smoking definitely isn't bad for you.)

(this should contain more references than anyone needs - p. 1189 onwards for passive smoking)

Wait, what? Wait, what?

You have good taste (based on his publications). Dawkins and Krebs (1978) and Krebs and Dawkins (1984) are especially great.

Accurately imagining large numbers is almost on a par with, say, visualising four dimensions - we can't do it, and only cope by sort of pretending we can. This is why the lottery is successful.

Those snail Pokemon are... actually the best thing ever.

This stuff is awesome, but sadly I don't know any academic literature related to it... Edit: Unless you include the use of second person in games under this umbrella, which you probably don't, although it may be very tangentially related. This comes up in choose your own adventure and interactive fiction, and the classic work about the latter of these is Nick Montford's Twisty Little Passages (2003, Cambridge MA: MIT Press). But that's from more of a literary perspective.

Past tense != past participle (though in English it normally does - but not for, say, eat). But yeah, I'd use reset. Resetted is the only other real possibility and that sounds a bit wrong. Of course you can be awesome and treat it like some bizarre strong verb and use resat.

I spell check with my MIND and with google when I get stuck. It's not like it matters massively if you make an error, anyway...

Using The North Wind and the Sun to demonstrate your accent makes you cool. I have a sound file of me doing it somewhere, which I'll try and dig up later...

Fun fact: even traditional RP uses glottal stops, as in the emphatic "I ?always go to Paris!" where ? is a glottal stop. But yes, most modern RP speakers both reinforce some voiceless stops with glottal stops (as in "bi?t") and occasionally completely substitute them ("bi?"). I speak this kind of RP too, but would rather speak a dialect that hasn't been so extensively studied.

No, it's because you are a playable character.

I'm probably a plot-driving NPC with more dialogue than most people want to read. I think this is a great concept though, but I don't find it as easy to apply to real life...

As jayseven has pointed out, languages are useful for getting jobs and so on, and also let you access a whole new body of literature, etc. But these points are largely qualitative and (perhaps) debateable, and not my point. Teaching someone tourist phrases is definitely not the best way to learn a language even for the purposes of being a tourist - if all you want are phrases, then you need a phrasebook, not a GCSE, and you'll end up in trouble if ever someone deviates from the script. Some simple knowledge of the structure of language is infinitely more helpful, even if you just want to ask for two beers. The repetition-based approach that seems to be lurking behind British language teaching is ultimately based on 50-year-old behaviouralist theories that have long since been abandoned.

These are all amazing. I only have a typo to add - you've got the vowels the other way round in the descriptions of Ghazeon and Ghizero when compared to the pictures. I don't know how I notice these things, it's like my superpower is proofreading or something...

I think you all know I love explaining things. Pretty much, with a few bells and whistles, for GCSE and below at least. Stupid. And I seem to exhibit almost all of the symptoms of dyspraxia, but have never been diagnosed with it or anything. Strange. It's not all that bad a form if I do have it though...

According to Wikipedia it is indeed. That's the good news here. (although I'm not sure whether it'll work in film form, or whether the Wachowskis are the right people for an adaptation)