Disqus - Latest Comments for Si_Hollett

Re: Game of Thrones 8×06 Liveblog: Endgame (at last!)

Si_Hollett — Mon, 20 May 2019 14:10:01 -0000

Because the Wars of the Five Kings didn't happen - it was just the War for the Living and the War of the two queens (ie two battles, one Ice and one Fire) - Season 1-4 didn't happen for anything beyond call backs!

Re: Game of Thrones 8×06 Liveblog: Endgame (at last!)

Si_Hollett — Mon, 20 May 2019 14:06:48 -0000

Yep - https://qz.com/1065792/game... Ned 100 minutes, Bran 99.

Re: Game of Thrones 8×06 Liveblog: Endgame (at last!)

Si_Hollett — Sun, 19 May 2019 22:24:33 -0000

I can see the Jon-Arya-Sansa montage working at persuading people that episode was good, especially with the appearance of Ghost and the epic music of awesome. It works well to help you forget that the previous 70 minutes were some of the worst garbage we've seen, which is saying something.

Re: Game of Thrones 8×06 Liveblog: Endgame (at last!)

Si_Hollett — Sun, 19 May 2019 22:16:30 -0000

No Jon Ghost reunion?!

Re: Game of Thrones 8×06 Liveblog: Endgame (at last!)

Si_Hollett — Sun, 19 May 2019 21:57:43 -0000

Bran's story is the best, which is why - on top of skipping it for a season, he has been a secondary character since season 2. At the end of Season 7 he'd still not overtaken Ned for screentime. FFS!

Re: Game of Thrones 8×06 Liveblog: Endgame (at last!)

Si_Hollett — Sun, 19 May 2019 21:43:45 -0000

That's better than Arya and Larry treating similar wounds as if it was nothing.

Re: Game of Thrones 8×06 Liveblog: Endgame (at last!)

Si_Hollett — Sun, 19 May 2019 21:38:10 -0000

So it was snow in the throne room after all? Why the retcon to it being ash all last week then?

Re: Game of Thrones 8×06 Liveblog: Endgame (at last!)

Si_Hollett — Sun, 19 May 2019 21:16:43 -0000

Tyrion reprising "smash the beetles". All the great D&D misses will get replayed.

Re: Why do we celebrate our inspirational Paralympians, but abort the disabled in the womb?

Si_Hollett — Tue, 20 Sep 2016 05:45:00 -0000

Don't forget that the upper limit for aborting disabled fetuses is birth, not the 24 weeks gestation able-bodied fetuses have. Disability can still be diagnosed and destroyed within 24 weeks, making it a pretty token gesture, but that also means that this baby step against eugenics should be uncontroversial.

So why is it that, 4 years after 2012, we still haven't changed this discrimination?

Re: Attack of the Clones is the Best Prequel & Ironic Enjoyment

Si_Hollett — Fri, 19 Aug 2016 15:35:21 -0000

That the despised Jar Jar created the Empire is perhaps the ultimate bit of fanservice!

Re: Why I have (finally) decided to vote ‘Remain’ in the UK’s EU referendum

Si_Hollett — Mon, 20 Jun 2016 19:37:55 -0000

"4. Things have got so bad this referendum seems to have contributed to the death of a much beloved politician and mother
Whipping up hatred and fear of the outsider has been the clear goal of some in the leave campaign."

I agree with the second sentence, but the first one is being drawn into the #ProjectSmear (and the even more odious #ProjectGrief version of it) campaign by some Remainers of whipping up hated and fear of the Leave voter, seeking to make them outsiders. You got it right in point 3 - parts of both campaigns are about hate, but then you spout the bigoted nonsense of odious parts of the Remain campaign in the very next point.

Re: Harry Potter and the Reread Project: Ickle Firsties!

Si_Hollett — Fri, 06 May 2016 16:19:55 -0000

87% isn't 95% or whatever that often gets assumed (though given Hogwarts also covers Ireland, and we're talking early 90s, you are looking at something more like 90%), but it is still very predominantly white. Rowling gets the ratios roughly right even if you assume that everyone whose race isn't mentioned is white. The real issues are the tokenism of the non-white people and that a character's race has zero effect on anything as blood-status-ism is a proxy for racism - the racial diversity is only there for diversity's sake and is totally irrelevant to anything.

And, while we're on diversity, where's the diversity in the cuisine? Especially at Hogwarts (Triwizard Tournement excepted) it's all just classic British dishes. It's the 90s - pasta dishes, British-style curries and pseudo-chinese would have been on the menu occasionally in even the most traditional of boarding schools!

Re: Harry Potter and the Reread Project: Ickle Firsties!

Si_Hollett — Fri, 06 May 2016 15:41:44 -0000

I'm pretty sure that Sorting (and the undercurrent that it is not a good thing) is a sort of proxy for the Grammar School/Secondary Modern system of British that hasn't happened in most of the country (there are some hold outs) since it was phased out beginning the year Rowling was born. Basically, at the age of 11, children would do some aptitude testing to see whether they went to a school with a more academic focus (Grammar schools) or one with a more vocational focus (Secondary Modern).

OK, I might be reading my own situation into it - I'm a Grammar School boy, and these arguments from the late 60s/early 70s were still going on in the 00s (when I was at school) in my part of the country. However, that Umbridge was an explicit attack on Thatcher's early 70s stint as Minister for Education suggests that Rowling still seeks to pick these educational fights from her early childhood.

Re: My Fave Is Problematic: Harry Potter, Part 2, Women, Wealth, and ‘Abroad’

Si_Hollett — Sun, 10 Apr 2016 17:51:04 -0000

Like 'Albania', the Home Counties' stockbroker belt is foreign to both the author and the protagonist. It is only as we spend considerable time there that we get a tiny bit of nuance on the offensive caricature of 'Stepford suburbia full of nosy Little Englanders, save for one cat lady', and even then, not much. There's also lots of prejudices in play in the account - but if it's alien to you (and shaped by your main character's immense dislike of it) then that's going to happen.

Vernon Dursley, as a privately-educated company director would be, demographically, highly unlikely to be hostile to foreign things and far less-likely (having got a bump start in life) than someone who climbed up the socio-economic ladder by themselves to dislike those who seek help to get their feet on it. Rowling's retcon that basically has the experience of contact with Lily and James shaping his outlook on the world still doesn't explain away how jarring the whole of Little Whinging is.

Re: Canon Rosie Harper on the "good girl guides" who have been consecrated bishop

Si_Hollett — Thu, 23 Jul 2015 06:59:51 -0000

For the record, Canon Rosie Harper is married to a clergyman - the Rev Tim Harper, Rector of the Parish of Amersham and Coleshill.

Re: The queer case of the gay cake

Si_Hollett — Fri, 07 Nov 2014 08:00:24 -0000

One problem with the article - does it actually matter whether or not Gay Marriage is legal in Northern Ireland? As was pointed out in the rest of the article, the refusal to bake the cake had nothing to do with the sexual orientation or marital status of the people ordering, but what what they ordered was promoting.

Or is it the case that if gay marriage was legal, the baker wouldn't be able to dissent from creating publicity for a movement with which the law agrees with? That would be very worrying indeed - to be able to dissent from promoting the Government's view is surely something needed in a free society.

Re: A14 Web Chat

Si_Hollett — Wed, 04 Jun 2014 12:00:24 -0000

Thanks for deciding to question me rather than give the one word answer "nothing", BTW.

You might aim to provide a reasonable level of service up to 2035, but the figures predicted for that date are above the levels given as 'congested' in the DMRB

Re: A14 Web Chat

Si_Hollett — Wed, 04 Jun 2014 11:53:27 -0000

Indeed, and if they are prohibited, what is stopping the route becoming motorway other than vague notions of not having a motorway in the middle of an A road corridor (despite the isolated Alconbury to Peterborough section of A1(M) just north of this scheme being such a road, and one able to be remedied by making this a motorway).

Motorways also, because they allow HGVs to go faster than 50mph, makes for a safer road with less speed differential between vehicles.

Re: A14 Web Chat

Si_Hollett — Wed, 04 Jun 2014 11:48:55 -0000

The opening year traffic levels are well above the recommended levels for the cross sections being built, especially between Brampton and Brampton Hut on the A1, (which is above opening year traffic levels for D4M, despite being D3AP). In fact they are at levels that it is recommended that "alternative methods of providing additional capacity" (to quote the Design Manual for Roads and Bridges) are considered if opening year AADT figures are above the 90,000 for D4M, which both the Brampton bit of A1 (95000), and Bar Hill - Girton (91000) exceed.

Have alternative methods of providing capacity been considered? What were they and why have they seemingly been rejected?

Re: A14 Web Chat

Si_Hollett — Wed, 04 Jun 2014 11:45:11 -0000

I'm not advocating a predict and provide approach, I'm advocating an acknowledgement that the scheme is a stop-gap in a growth area and will need upgrading in the medium-term and so needs to be designed to not make further upgrades more difficult.

Re: A14 Web Chat

Si_Hollett — Wed, 04 Jun 2014 11:14:30 -0000

Will cyclists and pedestrians be prohibited from using the new road, for safety reasons?

Re: A14 Web Chat

Si_Hollett — Wed, 04 Jun 2014 11:13:59 -0000

Predicted traffic levels are high for the capacity of the roads, especially on the sections upgraded online (A1, and A14 south of Swavensey), where they reach congestion levels by 2035. What provision would be made to accommodate the future growth predicted?

Re: A14 Web Chat

Si_Hollett — Tue, 29 Apr 2014 08:07:52 -0000

With All-lane Running meaning that the Highways Agency are happy to have motorways without hard shoulders, is there any reason why this entire scheme that links two motorways is all-purpose?

It isn't as if there is no alternate route for prohibited traffic, most of which would be local (invalid carriages, farm vehicles, cyclists, pedestrians) and shouldn't be on fast roads for safety reasons.

Re: Strange Fire: Every biblical argument refuted: apostles today

Si_Hollett — Wed, 06 Nov 2013 15:08:50 -0000

I believe certainly-not-Charismatic Calvin considered Luther a 'rare exception' to the ceasing of the office of Apostle. Can't find the reference where (memory of Michael Reeves' talks on Calvin, which have been taken off Theology Network and I loaned out my copy of Unquenchable Fire, grr).

Re: ObamaCarelessness

Si_Hollett — Sat, 02 Nov 2013 16:59:45 -0000

No, you aren't an idiot, that was the point of the law. However, given that no one had read the bill when it passed, it was an unwitting non-truth, not actual lying.