Episode 279 : Mystery Episode 31

Posted on July 14, 2016 by themagicaltalkinghat

I’m really starting to think you all like the evil William and Tony better than us! At least, it seems like there’s more of these popping up over time. All as the Hat wills, I guess. Enjoy!

 

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15 Responses to Episode 279 : Mystery Episode 31

  1. Azuretalon says:
    July 15, 2016 at 8:07 am

    You know what’s weird? As you started the whole “blood and glory” thing, before you answered, I pulled up behind a salvation army box truck. I paced this truck through the whole bit, and because I’m an apparent optimist I looked for that slogan the whole time.

    Reply
  2. Stuart says:
    July 15, 2016 at 9:30 am

    I would think LLC provides protection for the corporate officers, assuming it works similar to UK companies. I’m the president of a society in the UK, which is a registered limited liability entity. If the site gets sued, its elected officers aren’t personally on the hook.

    Reply
  3. Stuart says:
    July 15, 2016 at 9:57 am

    I’m inclined to agree with the Peter Gibbons answer to the $1m question. That said, I’d like to think I’d devolve back to science. Chasing grants and funding for science never appealed, nor was the requirement to crank out published work. I’d love to go do science for the sake of it. Probably something back to astrophysics or astronomy.

    I do like to volunteer my time to maintain a forum server, too. I can’t imagine the pressures of IT work would make it an enjoyable job, though.

    I reckon many of us are in Tony’s boat. Enjoying the job insomuch as the people are great, the intent is good, and I don’t mind what I do. Also, superb boss.

    Reply
  4. Stuart says:
    July 15, 2016 at 10:32 am

    Sorry for the stream of comments, I was posting as I was listening!

    Enjoyed the discussion around my question. I guess it depends on what you’re clued up on, I often find myself with little in the way of meaningful opinion on a lot of the things you guys discuss, but am continually impressed with how you guys deal with the questions. I guess I feel more comfortable with science, technology, politics, and current affairs but fall flat on most other things. That’s only since I immerse myself in them, though, particularly politics. It’s probably giving me grey hairs of late, and almost the very definition of stressing about something almost wholly outside your sphere of influence.

    Reply
    • themagicaltalkinghat says:
      July 15, 2016 at 12:38 pm

      You need to get rid of those other, stressful interests. Focus solely on the podcast, and whatever we talk about there. And here.

      Reply
  5. jas says:
    July 15, 2016 at 7:38 pm

    One of the things I teach is Rhetoric and in that class I came up with what I think is a good way of explaining what is and what isn’t a topic that one can debate. And both the things you mentioned (Gay Marriage and Abortion) are ones that I’ve kind of ruled out in class, despite the fact that everyone seems to have debated them in high school and so thinks they’ll just do it again for an easy grade in their college class.

    The way I tell people to think about what is debatable is to think of a spectrum from the completely subjective to the objective. So for instance a completely subjective assertion is that I hate beets. Not a debatable topic because there is no evidence that could be presented that is going to change how my taste buds react to beets. (Whether I SHOULD eat them is a different story). Completely objective would be things like the boiling point of water.

    Debateable topics lie somewhere in the middle of that spectrum. There must be enough objective evidence so that one could persuade someone who disagrees, but there must be enough subjective disagreement to make the evidence necessary.

    Gay marriage–having seen a lot of the evidence over the years, all of it seems fallacious. It’s all based on very tenous biblical interpretation and since we aren’t living in a theocracy, none of that evidence really holds water as far as legislation.

    Abortion–comes down, in the end to the question of when human life begins. There is no way to prove that so it’s not really debatable.

    One thing I do tell them about Abortion debates is that to begin with “Abortion is murder” is a fallacy (circular reasoning), because murder, is, by definition, illegal (that is, if you are trying to prove it illegal). So I would disagree with what you both said there–that murder is not necessarily illegel. The killing of innocents isnot necessarily murder, but anything that is defined as murder is illegal because that’s inherent to murder.

    Reply
    • Stuart says:
      July 18, 2016 at 2:19 pm

      “Completely objective would be things like the boiling point of water”

      My inner man-child would exclaim “at what pressure?”

      Reply
    • William says:
      July 19, 2016 at 6:44 am

      Well… it’s inherent to the use of the term “murder”, that’s true, so we ought not have used that term. I think what we both intended to convey was the notion that it’s possible in a human society to have a scenario where one person kills another and the members of said society do not regard said killing as “murder” per se. “Killing another human” is very often not the only criteria for calling an act “murder”, and this is definitely true in the US.

      The term we should have used is “homicide”, because that is a term we use in the US to refer to the killing of another human being that may or may not be justified. And that’s the term that I had in mind when I made my point that, in a way, it doesn’t matter if one considers abortion homicide, because, legally speaking, that still leaves open the question as to whether or not it’s illegal, because, in the US, not all homicide is illegal.

      Reply
  6. Mark says:
    November 2, 2016 at 10:20 pm

    New Evil Kitty: I’m really curious what a cat with a goatee looks like and am surprised that cats need a goatee to be part of the evil-verse.

    Dune (books): Yeah, the son’s books were rubbish.

    If happiness were money, what kind of work would make you rich?: I rather enjoy software development. There’s a definite sense of satisfaction in solving a problem.

    Are you doing something you believe in or are you just trying to believe in what you do?: Yes.

    I feel much better working for my current employer vs. any of the previous companies I’ve worked for. With that said, the work that an employer provides to my community isn’t something I really think about when I’m applying for jobs or while I’m working for that company. It is something I occasionally think about later after I’ve moved onto another job. As Tony said, Applied was mostly neutral. My prior employer now that I’m not there, neutral to somewhat negative. Also, apparently I lack some sort of people skill that meant people liked/remembered me enough that they’d send in thanks gifts. I don’t recall any customer ever sending me gifts while I was at Applied.

    Reply

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