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mesmerizingcommenter

Listed below are comments made by mesmerizingcommenter between Friday, 16th October 2009 and Tuesday, 24th November 2009.

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Bank charges - your charged comments 6:52pm on 24 Nov 2009 Sounds like a very helpful link that has been removed. Could the BBC please have a look at posting it.
Climate change debate: 'calm, civilised, informative' 11:27am on 24 Nov 2009 Its scary if you suggest even in the general public that some of the figures on climate change may not be reliable. Its like being immediately personally branded the destroyer of the earth.

Science is so often about fitting in, and if you dont you can get hounded. Grants don't come your way, people dont employ you, pier reviews cast you paper aside because of you name, or your slant.

Science should be about debate and theories about the facts.

Whilst oil companies appear to fund scientists to be sceptics, you have to ask where the funding comes from for a scientist claiming climate change is devastating and now. A massive grant to sit a ship in the middle of the ocean, or sit up a mountain, or in the antarctic, or in africa, with the latest expensive equipment...this relies on people wanting to fund climate change studies. So this means individuals are relying on climate change being real and measurable for their living.

It was much easier in the days when oil was supposed to be running out. Then you could tell people that their nice car would have no petrol (and there was apparent evidence in rationing in the 70's), and what would you do without plastics? But the idea of getting a little warmer takes a lot of imagination to feel how its going to affect you right now. And that makes it harder to sell...perhaps hence the hype.

I'm a sceptic, not of climate change, but of all studies for or against. In an ideal world you look at the evidence and should be able to listen to the arguments, everyone should have an equal chance to speak, and you make your judgement. Governments make their policies.

If only a large proportion of the money spend keeping a massive ship full of scientists running etc were spent on a bunch of engineers making more fuel efficient cars, alternative energy systems, etc. I know we need some science to show effects, but it seems from the media coverage that huge money is spent on this big science, but its left to little companies with intermittent small incentives to actually produce the wind turbines, tidal power, electric vehicles etc
Imagine what you could do with the money spent to put just one of those climate change satellites into orbit. Its similar to putting the greatest, highest tech cameras into your home but not putting locks on the doors, then remotely congratulating yourself on how well you can see the criminals walking off with your TV.
Let's call a spade a spade: nighthawks are criminals and must be stopped 7:43pm on 09 Nov 2009 There are a huge number of legal metal detectorists in societies around the country. Why don't the local historical society get together with the land owner and arrange for the farmer to give warning when the field is going to be ploughed.

The local club members would be thrilled to go out into that field in daylight after ploughing with the local historical society and scan the whole field. That way there will be little left for the illegal guys at night. The illegals won't wander around a field that they learn has already been covered, it would be a waste of their time, and they will go elsewhere.
Swine flu: The global perspective 11:33pm on 07 Nov 2009 Just two more weeks of hiding in my house not risking flu and I get my vacination..might get run over by a bus when I finally step out though.
The workers are the last to know 1:10pm on 02 Nov 2009 Borrowing money to buy instruments!

What a silly scheme. So parents will be getting instruments for their children they can't afford and having to pay it back for years?
A basic guitar £20-£50, basic keyboard velocity sensitive £99, etc etc
and lessons? £20+ for 30mins?!!!!

Come on, if you cant afford the instrument you cant afford the lessons can you?!

I would have loved to learn an instrument, but at my school you needed parents to buy the instrument and pay for extra lessons before the school provided time. My parents would not have paid £10 in the 70's for a guitar, which to be honest is a bit mean. But then they were on benefits and it would have been absolutely bonkers to borrow money for an instrument and have the debt.
Apocryphal, some might even say hysterical 4:51pm on 28 Oct 2009 Yur are spot on about the exaggerated coverage putting people off. The moment the message becomes hyped people turn off and it becomes easier to shoot the message down. I recently went to a climate change seminar for business, and you couldnt get away from it their either, all graphs that turn red as they get higher. An the statement that everyone will starve and flood.

We should not be wasteful, we should try to make greener energy. But suggesting to rich americans (and the almost as rich british) that people will starve in africa or drown in the maldives really only gets new age people going. And this is all about getting the masses doing positive things. A much better argument was the "buy smaller cars because oil will run out and we'll be living without cars or plastics". At least that affected everyone.

Then we should trust climate change scientists? Not saying the earth is not warming on average, perhaps it is, perhaps its man made. But how can you trust people that get their grant to wander around on a ship somewhere doing their research (which is their living) on the basis of grants pushed by public hype. Or those that are paid to discredit it by the oil companies.

Scientists should not be in the business of doing sound bites of how the world is going to end. They should be providing their data, suggesting where their data may be prone to error, and presenting their hypothesis for pier review.

While people stop wind turbines from being erected within view of their house while taking their hemp bag shopping so they can feel they are doing their bit...there is a big lesson that this kind of change towards greener energy really has to come from the government. But then the MPs want to get elected, and their voters dont want that wind turbine.
So whats the solution? More plastic bag free schemes to make people feel they are doing their bit, and keep quiet about the wind turbines and severn barrage project.

Perhaps after the election the new PM will have the guts to implement some of these serious power schemes, after all we want the bankers to be rewarded on long term not short term gains...so could we expect our politicians to take the same view..........
Just a minute -- 4:23pm on 28 Oct 2009 What winds me up most of all is all the hype over how good vista is, how it will revolutionise your life, how secure it is...and how you must have it. So I go out and buy two very expensive high end PCs (one desktop and one laptop) to find out its not only incompatible but its slow, and has severe problems copying files over networks (takes 4hrs to copy 2GB for backup across my 100Mbit network).
And it crashes, a lot. And even though I have automatic update turned off, it decides to reboot and throw everything away regularly.

If this were not enough we are now told by microsoft "sorry, vista was rubbish, now buy windows 7, windows 7 is excellent, windows 7 will sort all those problems you've had with vista".

My PCs are just a few months old, and I'm being told I have to pay a large bunch of cash to move to the newer version which works!!!!

What other companies out there can sell you a rubbish product that doesnt work properly (pretty much publically admit it), then instead of sorting it under warranty smile and suggest you buy the new one?

Dont even want to get started on charging extra for products in the UK than in the US with the excuse "its local language conversion" when its a similar price to the US in asia. They should just come out and say, "we can get away with charging more...so we do".

Luckily I didnt buy microsoft office 2008/9 or whatever it is since they have happily changed the interface "to make it easier to use" to something nobody who used the old version understands. Even presenting a business opportunity for a paid for upgrade to get the old menus back! Open Office is great....
What the governor had to say 12:13pm on 21 Oct 2009 The banks are like small naughty children. Every parent knows that the secret of good discipline is to keep on top of them, make sure they know there are consequences and that those will not be forgotten.

Just as small children can do something bad, and when mum gets distracted and forgets a few hours later they realised they can get away with it and keep doing it, thats the banks. As soon as the urgent pressure is off, the government stops paying full attention, and the bankers return to what they want to do, what we all want to do, make lots of money for little effort and little responsibility.

Its up to the government to be a good parent, lay strict clear boundaries, and enforce those boundaries without fail.

Oh, and when will MPs learn that just because their NLP coach has suggested using the phrase "its right" will make people take a messge more positively, doesnt mean that if they use it 100 times during question time and at least 10 times during each interview it will still work.
Everytime I hear that word (along with everyone else) I get a negative emotional reaction that they are deliberately trying to manipulate me, which they are.
'Positive action', not 'positive discrimination' 8:05pm on 20 Oct 2009 This is not discrimination against women, its just "not like me" discrimination. All the conservative policy does it put more women in, who are then treated like they got their not on their ability but on merit of being a women, so they are no invited to the core groups that make policy...so now 50% women in the policy groups? Where do you stop.

Perhaps we should have constituencies where you can only run if you went to a comprehensive and didnt get a degree from one of the top universities. If you look at the MPs you will see that the biggest factor for being an MP is a private education and doing law or politics at Oxford.

You will find its harder for a white male who didnt go to the right schools to become an MP for the conservatives than it is for a private school educated women.

So where do you stop, well expeience seems to say usually at any point where you recognise that poor white males are the worst off at social mobility...and its still taboo to point that out.

If you cant get enough women in because they dont have the right "mates" or because they dont belong to the right clubs, or they dont have the right experience....then surely you set the requirements of the candidate selection to specifically exclude selection on those areas.
The Node: 'An online gondola punting through cyberspace' 11:37pm on 16 Oct 2009 I just tried to watch armstrong and miller. That laughter track is awful, I just had to switch it off after 2 minutes. It was like having someone sitting right next to you, putting their mouth to your ear and laughing loudly in a false way every time there was something even slightly humorous.
Perhaps the iPlayer could feature two copies, one with and one without the laughter track. Then instead of BBC people telling everyone some audience study said people like it, they can look at the comparative hits of the alternate versions.

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