Posts by Palladius

Holy Father turns on to Dad Rock

Catholic church and homosexuality

You know, all this information is on the internet? Especially with the Catholics, they've got reams of the stuff up there.

A quick search reveals a letter to the bishops from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on the Pastoral Care of Homosexuals. In it, the Congregation seems to emphasise two points (the second rather more strongly). Firstly that homosexuals should be treated inclusively and with understanding and, secondly, that the homosexual act itself is immoral and can not be condoned or excused.

To be honest, I rather get the impression they're patting themselves on their collective back. They've already said that sexual activity can only ever be within marriage and that marriage can only ever be between a man and a woman. They must think they've got it sewn up rather nicely.

Fifty Strikes and… we'll tell your Mum

3rd party cliches

"The simple fact is that the Lib Dems could also promise jetpacks for all... sounds good, but it ain't going to happen 'cos they ain't going to get in at a national level."

Is it just me, or does this statement not make a lot of sense? Criticising a party for promising the impossible is entirely valid, but if their policies are feasible why would a smaller party be more or less likely to implement policy when elected than the main two parties, given that, if elected, they would have received a huge mandate for reform.

The statement seems to hinge on the premise that you'd rather have policies you don't want, but will definitely get. That seems almost as deranged as not voting for a party because they wont win. I'm pretty sure an election is not a quiz, and you don't get marked on your answers afterwards.

Head-cam video used to OK Arkansas cop kill

Doublethink?

Can you honestly believe, at one and the same time, that an armed citizenry is both so terrifyingly dangerous that the police are justified in shooting to kill on a circumstantial supposition and also that an armed citizenry is intrinsically and inarguably conducive to freedom?

Stephen Hawking both British and not dead

Even if it were so...

Would the statement constitue a decent argument even if it weren't an sterling example of farsical, culpable, ignorance?

Assuming the NHS were so poorly funded that health provision had to be strictly rationed, and further assuming that increasing the funding to humane levels was not possible for whatever reason, would dying on a waiting list be better or worse than dying because you simply couldn't afford treatment?

Is his statement simply that inequity is only intolerable when rich, influential people suffer?

Ecopocalypse causes giant fish ears

@ ElReg!comments!Pierre

From what I've read, that's certainly not the current understanding of carbon dioxide induced climate change. Increased atmospheric carbon dioxide will lead to increased oceanic concentration of carbon dioxide. The oceans tend to act as a buffer to increased carbon dioxide production, and a great deal is sequestered long-term in the deep ocean. The worry is that the the oceans can only absorb a small fraction of the increased output, so extra carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere.

Massive releases of carbon dioxide through decreased solubility due to raised temperatures is much more likely to be an effect of anthropogenic climate change than a cause, a final nail in the coffin, if you will.

On a personal note, there doesn't appear to be a lot to support your rather fervent and disingenous attack on this paper and it's authors. In my experience, scientists do not include trite little caveats just to prove they're 'not biased'. Thankfully for the scientific community, a lot of scientists are at least as clever as you, and I imagine one or two would see through such a ploy. They included the note because they expected the ear bones to be smaller. I would have expected them to be smaller. Boldman (above) expected them to be smaller.

Honestly, what motivates such an exaggerated attack on such an innocuous and (frankly) rather uninteresting research observation?

@ BoldMan, Dodgy Geezer, etc

Come on guys, how difficult is it to read the study for yourself? It took me five minutes to find the abstract and the author's summary on their website, the latter of which is even linked from the Reg article.

Rather than simply make bold assertions of what carbon dioxide concentrations will 'surely' do to fish, the authors have investigated the matter. Although David England makes excellent points about longitudinal studies, it appears that this was a controlled experiment. The authors grew seperate populations of sebass, one in water with a high carbon dioxide concentration, which is certainly how I'd go about it.

Interestingly, the authors note that this finding was contrary to their expectations.

Blog homeopathy horror hammers hippy herbalists

@Mark

"You can't really know alternative medicine/therapies don't work, until you've given them a go. Can you?"

Yes, you can. You do a double-blind, controlled study and you find out. Thankfully (if the anticapation is too great) some helpful souls have done just that.

They don't.

E-cars are a dangerous myth, says top boffin

Problems with the counter-argument

"i cant go very fast, or very far"

Doesn't that argument basically boil down to: "Sod the world, I wanna hurtle about while making a really BIG noise"?

Yeah, electric cars aren't great (although they seem perfectly adapted to driving in cities) and anyone with a brain can see that they're not going to decrease carbon dioxide emmission at the moment. I think those pointing this out are kinda missing the point though. As commentators above have suggested, the value of electic cars is in their potential. Detractors should surely point out what they suggest we do instead, or risk their comments appearing trite and redundant..

Germans resist Street View invasion of privacy

@ Peter Thomas

I take your point but, while you can probably be Orwellian on your own, I'm pretty sure an individual can't be a corporation or the government.

Surely the issue here is in the use of the photographs, rather than the capture of them?

Aussie censors implement six degrees of separation policy

RE: Australia???

"Doesn't seem that long ago when we should have been looking at Oz's immigration, settlement etc system as they seem to have a pretty clued up group running the whole shebang down there.."

You're surprised that a fascist immigration policy has developed into a fascist censorship policy?

Or are you only interested in freedom when it directly benefits you?