Posts by Scorchio!!

Re: @AC

"For every author who does not believe in anthropogenic driven climate change, there is one who does."

Belief is a dangerous thing. Knowing is safer. If as you say you ' tried [your] best to put together the most accurate and comprehensive article on “who Anonymous is.” ' you most certainly understand that, because you've demonstrated a commitment to knowledge in place of belief and manipulation.

Re: Damned resistance

"Damned resistance fighters staying anonymous during the Axis occupation of mainland Europe! How dare they! Cheeky cowards they are!

See how crazy your argument is? There are plenty of reasons to stay anonymous, for good or for bad. Its all about perspective."

Just to make sure that you have a little light reading, in which to have (as Douglas Adams once put it) 'some sense of perspective':

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violette_Szabo

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/military-obituaries/army-obituaries/5048954/Captain-Charles-Upham-VC-and-Bar.html

'Stupid boy'. (/girl)

Re: Yeah

"And then make sure the enlargement is on the last page.

Yeah, I checked."

<AOL>Me too</AOL>

An observation of merit is that ogling women's mammaries seems to improve the health of men. I have the research paper somewhere on one of this machine's HDs.

Perhaps the moral of this story is that feminism is bad for male health, though I don't think I'd try too hard to push that one, purely for its non sequitur quality alone.

Re: there you go

"I've pretty much been saying this for ages, nice to see most of my suspicions regarding anon turn out to be true :)

always in it for the lulz, as it was meant to be."

I can't say with certainty what your view is, but it's clearly the case that there are people who deface websites, steal data/breach security in a variety of ways for the purpose of schadenfreude (deriving pleasure from the misfortunes of others, which misfortunes are in this case brought on by the person enjoying them). In it for the 'lulz'. Ah yes, enjoying the pain of others, and that lays bare the ethical pretensions of such people. It is also sad that these fools don't think that far ahead and anticipate the consequences of their behaviour, something for which Ritalin is prescribed in the US.

There will be a backlash [ http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/mobile/technology-12007616 ] and that will not be so funny, even if the original offenders are made to suffer. Why not funny? Because my online rights will be reduced because of this shallow, vandalistic stupidity. Don't give me the 'gotta-crack-a-few-eggs' argument. Stalin used that one. Various other dictators and, more recently, Labour politicians did. Furthermore these shallow prats were not chosen by any electorate.

Re: Causation / Correlation

"The other alternative is that women are simply rejecting men with features that indicate they're not prime mates and as a consequence, at least a proportion of those rejected men are turning to homosexuality instead."

...and here is the quote from Greer, the unscientific:

"Most homosexuality results from the inability of the person to adapt to his given sex role, and ought not to be treated as genetic and pathological, but the prejudiced language of abnormality offers the homosexual no way of expressing this rejection, so he must consider himself a freak. The ‘normal’ sex roles that we learn to play from our infancy are no more natural than the antics of a transvestite. In order to approximate those shapes and attitudes which are considered normal and desirable, both sexes deform themselves, justifying the process by referring to the primary, genetic difference between the sexes. But of forty-eight chromosomes only one is different: on this difference we base a complete separation of male and female, pretending as it were that all forty-eight were different. Frenchmen may well cry ‘Vive la différence’, for it is cultivated unceasingly in all aspects of life. It is easiest and most obvious to consider that deliberately induced deformity as it is manifested in the body and our concepts of it, for whatever else we are or may pretend to be, we are certainly our bodies."

The Female Eunuch, pp33-34, Harper perennial modern classics (1970)

Greer seems to have a bee in her bonnet about homosexuality, mentioning it several times. Today I found myself wondering if she hates homosexuals because they have escaped women!

She has to the best of my knowledge never offered any data in support of her argument, and this is typical of the empirical claims made by arts graduates. I've concluded that this woman is a charlatan.

Re: Causation / Correlation

"The other alternative is that women are simply rejecting men with features that indicate they're not prime mates and as a consequence, at least a proportion of those rejected men are turning to homosexuality instead."

That, roughly speaking, is the Germaine Greer argument in her nonsensical 'female eunuch'. She says words to the effect that homosexuals are men who cannot live up to their sexual role. I'll be home tonight and will pull that out for a quote if desired.

It is of course pure unsubstantiated bullshit, of the sort that you would expect from an arts graduate making claims in the empirical realm. How that thing was ever believed defeats me. If a man had made half of the misandrist comments that she had, except in misogynist form, he would probably have been prosecuted under one of the yuman rights/equal rights 'laws' [1] passed by the Blair government.

[1] Much of the welter of Blairite legislation was in fact their personal preferences in legal form.

Re: Causation / Correlation

Oh Francis Galton and the early Italian criminologists (Cesare Lombroso) would *love* this bit. It means that the early criminologists' claim that criminals can be detected by dint of physiognomy is valid and true. Only it is not. Particularities (e.g., truthfulness, honesty, criminality) do not manifest themselves in physiology, but generalities (e.g. sexuality) do. One of the reasons is that criminality, lying and so on are not biological constructs. Similarly the polygraph is *not* a lie detector, substantially because lies are not (yet, you might argue; just as there is no one to one correspondence between sensory stimuli, how they impinge on nerves and are sent to the brain, there's no general machine code for cognitions, such as deception, criminality and, furthermore, CNS development, both genetically and phenotypically, differs across individuals, leading to the term 'individual differences') accessible in biological form; the polygraph detects dissimulation in the form of neurobiological correlates, that is, elevated pulse, HR, skin conductance, and so on.

In addition, there are a number of different reproductive strategies, including fecundity, accuracy and so on; these rely on sexual fitness, intelligence, and so on. As with the 'criminal face' I've seen no demonstration of an 'intelligent face, no 'sexually fit' face, consistent with the debunking of Lombroso. Since human males are always in season it is hard to think of a reason why and how (hormonal cycles) their faces would show it, though this does occur in females; lips puffed out by elevated blood pressure indicate sexual readiness/receptiveness, a blush on the cheeks, in fact the very sorts of things that women pay a lot of money to have implanted/surgically altered by cosmetic surgeons.

Re: What's not obvious to you?

Also from the department of the bleedin' obvious; males have less to be jealous of females, inasmuch that they do not plant a seed. From a Darwinist/reproductive strategy there is no threat. A read of Dawkins' selfish gene amplifies the point.

Re: Actually

"the implication is that according to this study, 'gay' men and straight men have different facial features."

I've not read the article but, from my reading during my psychology B.Sc. way back that would be right. There are neural differences between straight men and 'gay' men/straight females and 'gay' females, and these involve neurohormonal releases from the womb onward. The differences are clearly measurable (in spite of past claims of 'gay' people), in the form of the preoptic bulb of the anterior hypothalamus, for example; in females the nuclei are (IIRC) larger and less numerous. This sort of finding occurs in the brains of 'gay' (I hate neologisms, especially when they abuse the language so) people Gunther Dörner did a lot of work on this kind of thing, and withstood a great deal of abuse from 'gay' people who short sightedly did not realise or accept that his work helped to substantiate something they often claimed; they simply were homosexual, not by choice, but because it was in their nature.

Returning to the (cough) entry point, hormones affect the way facial bone structures are formed, among many other things, including hairline.

Re: re

"Yep, gotta love all this freedom. Locked up with no proof of crime."

If there are reasonable grounds to believe that a serious crime has been committed, as there seem to be, then your hyperbole/rhetoric are wasted, and no bail is granted pending a judicial decision on the matter. Perhaps you have evidence to show that the current measures are not merely unjustified but wrong. If so perhaps you would like to share this stuff with the rest of the world. Perhaps you would also care to say what you, with legal pretensions, would do were you the sitting magistrate/judge on the case.

Re: And to rehabilitate?

"Perhaps a non-custodial sentence recylcing computers for developing nations"

My initial response was 'what an excellent idea'. However, the possibilities for raising armies of vengeful script kiddy armies made me uncomfortable with it. Perhaps undoing the damage done?

Re: Well, we all know.

"I'll bet "keen" doesn't half describe his new-found attitude."

Eager? Desperate? There still has to be a proportionate punishment, one that deters future offenders. It's not enough to merely punish.

Re: Two of these things

Oh. I have four plus the portable item. Oops.

Re: Mike Richards

The stuff that you are making up does not cut it in the legal and psychiatric arena. If his responsibility is diminished, and if he is at risk of harming himself or others, there are specific routes open to the system, but your completely ignores case law and statutes. Playing games with words - what Wittgenstein called 'private language games' - will not work; from the perspective of psychiatry it is the effect of his behaviour on society at large that will determine, if at all, what happens to this individual. OTOH he may just find himself serving a spell inside, but then subsequently referred to a ward specialising in forensic psychiatry owing to depression and perhaps suicide risk. He would not go to a general psychiatric hospital due to the legal nature of his case.

Re: sounds sad

"Let's hope he's given treatment rather than punishment at least"

If he is guilty of an offence and successfully pleads diminished responsibility the route is a harder one than mere prison. If he gets section 37/41 the logical route is to the house on the hill in Crowthorne, Berks.

Re: Re

Mental illness != not responsible for his acts. Such things are determined by a multidisciplinary psychiatric team, after a relatively protracted period of assessment, usually no less than 3 months, on what was a section 37/court order (and still seems to be). Skivers, slackers and fakers are usually found out, though I've seen one case where a man was discharged and went on to commit the crime he said that he would; that might mean that he decided he could get away with it, of course. As to agoraphobia, or fear of the market place (tr from the original Greek, as used in the DSM), I fail to see how illicit activities could be excused on the basis of this. People do not necessarily commit crimes because they fear open spaces, nor because they are cooped up. Something else has to be going on and, should he persist with his claims, it will be for the judge and appointed court experts (that would be rule 17 IIRC) to agree whether or not a period of assessment in a forensic unit (usually secure, but I do know of one open ward) is necessary.

Re: Glad you reminded me.

"How is Mr Assange getting on these days?"

Glad you asked. It seems that he and his friends are in a 'tizzy' over the active speed warning cameras/signs in the area. The original video on this site

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13801331

indicated their presence predated our Julian's arrival. They are all jumping up and down, saying how he's been treated 'like an animal', but I think readers will remember the controversy in which his Swedish legal representative has been called by his professional association to account for failing to respond to police communications, and for failing to tell Jules that he was wanted for questioning. Under this analysis it would seem that Jules is indeed a flight risk, and must be kept under strict bail conditions. His indignation and of his friends is misplaced, especially given the scale of his activities. Anyhow, our Jules should be up in front of the beak on the 12th of Jules. I do hope that he is put in the position where he can bleat about his rights being taken from him, and saying that he could attend over the net. It will make him seem as insightless, twitty and guilty as ever.