The nose isn't quite right.



Closer:



Then there's:

Posted By: Angus

Posted By: pcstruPerhaps celebrate events/achievementrs, not so much the people.

Probably a good idea going forward. Let's stop going backward. Unless someone comes up with a time machine it is pointless to apply the social norms of the present to the memory of the past.

It is not pointless. It is done to highlight injustice and intolerance that is happening to real living people right now. It might even focus the odd living bigot on what they want to be remembered for and so moderate their behaviour. It certainly helps promlgate the idea that such bigotry is wrong. Ignoring something just because it is in the past and therefore cannot possibly be changed is specious rubbish. If you were mugged, well, by the time you report it to the police, the event is in the past! "Isn't it time to move forward sir, not dwell on the past - after all, different times sir and you can't possibly change what happened". Absurd? Maybe - but if it is, exactly when do you stop recognising wrongs of the past and standing in condemnation of them?

Posted By: AngusPerhaps that addresses what I said but it misses what I meant.

It seems-to-me to be a perverse sort of special pleading to focus on how people in the past erred as measured by modern standards - if they themselves showed no sign of malevolence but were just going with the best they knew. Should Galileo be excoriated for misogyny or Newton for antisemitism or Darwin for racism? Was it a moral failing for Virgil to own slaves? It's ridiculous. We understand their contribution and their environment. Lets make the object lessons of people who both should and could know better.

I'm happy to discuss further but you need to have a go at answering the question of when you pass from standing against bigotry and intolerance to accepting it as "not their fault - it was their upbringing" (why can't that be said of many people spending time in prison right now?).

IMO it is not ridiculous for me to look at the past and make some judgement vs what I believe to be moral and ethical imperatives and to judge people accordingly. It doesn't change the past, it is just a matter of a correct view of the past and a correct view of ethics.

Morally it is wrong to hold someone in slavery. It is wrong today and it was wrong yesterday and it was wrong 100 years ago, 1000 years ago, 10,000 years ago.

"Should Galileo be excoriated for misogyny or Newton for antisemitism or Darwin for racism? Was it a moral failing for Virgil to own slaves?"

Yes. What is the alternative? To say it is a disgusting abomination to hold someone in slavery today but it would be OK if everyone agreed it was OK? Try applying some of the thinking to the Holocaust - after all, it was just something of the time and place, 'eh?

Ignoring the past and assigning the wrongs of the past as just "of their time" allows them to pollute the present. It says that if someone does something of "big merit", we might - or sometimes must overlook their misdemeanour's. That gives you people like Trump.

Posted By: AngusAs I said - look forward not backward.

So you won't be reporting your mugging then?

If this purging of the past isn't going to be itself a piece of bigotry you'd have to expunge "The Origin of Species" from the libraries and tear down Maxwell's statue in Glasgow and condemn General Relativity as "misogynist science".

Straw man. No one is talking about expunging knowledge or erasing the events, just recognising that the people that we celebrate as great because of those achievements or events were not necessarily great people even when the events or knowledge was significant. We conflate the greatness of the two things and we should not.

There is no harm in celebrating the good that people have done without accounting for the whole of their background. We do it all the time in daily life.

Right. Celebrate events and actions. Not people.

Posted By: Angus

Posted By: pcstru
So you won't be reporting your mugging then?

Straw man yourself. Nobody's talking about petty crime

Overt discrimination and hate may be criminal offences as might beating your wife or holding someone as a slave. You are arguing that people are products of their culture and as such we should overlook their wrongs. The relevance is how long before you say actions do not matter - but of course, you simply can't approach that question with honesty because as soon as you do, your position becomes absurd and untenable.

I suppose anonymous celebration of accomplishment is a fine idea but would you want to suppress mention of the fact that a woman has won a Nobel in physics or someone from the LGBTXQYZ+ community has been elected mayor?

Ideally the fact would not be at all remarkable. That it is should tell you that we have not yet escaped the past and that that is in part down to celebrating people who espoused bigotry, hatred and intolerance.

Posted By: Angus

Posted By: pcstruhow long before you say actions do not matter- but of course, you simply can't approach that question with honesty because as soon as you do, your position becomes absurd and untenable.

I don't have to and it doesn't. It isn't a question of how long until actions don't matter. It's a question of what actions we are celebrating and what actions would disqualify any such celebration ever.

That might be the case if we were celebrating actions rather than the people. The telescope is named after a man, not the achievements.

we have not yet escaped the past and that that is in part down to celebrating people who espoused bigotry, hatred and intolerance.

And how long before we escape that past? You remind me of the koan about the old monk and the young monk who came to a stream where there was a beautiful young woman unable to cross without ruining her clothes. Without a word the old monk picks her up and carries her across. The two continue for several more miles, until the young monk, unable to contain himself, asks "Master - we are forbidden to touch women. How is it that you lifted that girl across the stream?" To which the old monk replied "Are you still carrying her?"

You are asking how long until it is unremarkable that women, LGBT etc have equal status, until it is unremarkable that bigoted behaviour is condemned without question and people do not seek to 'balanced' that by other achievements. How long - at this rate, perhaps never.

Covid has been so successful at driving wealth upwards, (raking-it-in economics) that there must now be huge market potential for new pandemics.

Posted By: pcstru

Posted By: alsetalokinThe most valuable stuff on Earth

Inkjet printer ink?

Is it more expensive than the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine - which is about $2 a throw (for 0.3ml) in the EU*.

So, let's say $7 per ml. I've just seen something that prices printer ink at about $2.80 per ml. So not quite there, though we can say that a ml of printer ink will cost you more than a covid vaccine in Europe.



* Obviously twice that in the USA, as that place loves paying more for it's medicine, presumably in the belief that the more they pay the more effective it is.

Posted By: alsetalokinvalue != cost

Back to the virus itself then. Without that, who would buy some wierd cultured serum?