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WearyPedant

Listed below are comments made by WearyPedant between Friday, 13th February 2009 and Thursday, 5th November 2009.

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Caption Competition 3:30pm on 05 Nov 2009 Sofus understood that you shouldn't bite the hand that feeds you, but...
Count it, don't follow it (redux) 12:30pm on 13 Oct 2009 Sorry, I don't think this has anything to do with "Fungibility" it has everything to do with reimbursing MPs for expenses _necessary_ for the job.
I can't see why the tax system has allowed blatent profitering from the allowance system - I must be missing something, do MPs pay tax?
MPs have an unusual set of circumstances and have two bases of operations. I would expect any relevant receipted expense to be paid back. I would expect any fiddling of the system to result in the person losing their job.
When I was a civil servant I had to live in Paris for a year as part of my job. The cheapest way to do this was to rent an unfurnished flat and buy furniture. At the end of my stay I sold the furniture, settled my expenses and then gave the remaining money back.
If we can't trust them to be honest in their expenses, how can we trust them to run the country?
Caption Competition 1:13pm on 17 Sep 2009 This is a fake caption contest entry.
Caption Competition 4:57pm on 10 Sep 2009 The girls realised they had drunk too much when they started hallucinating outside the bar.
'Obama is a Quaker' 09:35am on 06 Jul 2009 So, what is the 'The Sarah Palin train wreck' you refer to it in the title and in your main text, but don't say what it is... Don't tease us please, it might be obvious to everybody else, but it isn't to me.
David Bain's Brain Strain 5:52pm on 08 Jun 2009 If we assume that there is a God, then their opinion should be ascertained (I believe most major religions are against murder of newborns).
If there is no God, then as a self-aware being I am capable of viewing the situation as if I, or my children, were that newborn (there is probably a term for this). I would suffer anguish from this as I love my family (and myself) and would realise that they wouldn't have existed - thus I care about 'potential'.
I also think you would find it hard to argue that there any humans that have no 'potential' - talk to the parents of severely handicapped children.
The real question about waterboarding 11:53am on 21 Apr 2009 O.k. picture this scenario:
A member of the 'Coalition of the free' forces is captured. The 'Axis of Evil' personnal have good reason to believe that this person has information about a planned bombing raid which could result in 'collateral damage'.
Option 1: It has the potential to save 'innocent' lives, so waterboard the PoW.
Option 2: Stick to the Geneva convention. Whether or not you've signed it.
I personally think that torture cannot be justified, if only on the possibility that you could be torturing someone who is innocent.
Caption Competition 5:07pm on 02 Apr 2009 Dear Magazine monitor,
In the interests of fairness I have posted a letter to you in the Caption Competition box to counter-act all the captions you will get in the Letter box.
Yours etc. etc.
WearyPedant.

Ps No need to reply - not that you do anyway.
Caption Competition 5:05pm on 02 Apr 2009 Just a minute, please, the big guys trying to talk to me...
Learn EU-speak 09:12am on 13 Feb 2009 I am not a lawyer, I am an engineer. We have formal methods of checking programs such that all their possible outcomes are defined. We use these when writing safety-critical software (i.e. not Microsoft, before anyone starts). Why can't we use these methods when writing legal agreements?

It wouldn't stop badly written treaties, or ones where the user requirements don't involve the user - but it would mean that you couldn't argue what the results would be for a given set of inputs.

Yes, I know I am naive and there is a very good reason we pay lawyers so much to translate the law for us....

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