Hey, good thing this got re-posted in, I can answer a question I didn’t see before.
Nope, I meant Cassandra Cain, aka Batgirl. Ex-(and now current) assassin raised to read body language instead of speak who had her best friend killed and now turned back to evil again. And yet, still less nutty than Cass Claire.
I’m into vintage synthesizers.
There are a ton of different debates that seem to cycle, but here are some favorites:
When we talk about “fatness” in older synths like the Minimoog, what technical thing are we referring to? This side argues that it results from the oscillators mildly overdriving the filter input section, leading to ear-pleasing nonlinearities and slight compression simliar to a hot signal printed to analog tape, while this guy over here has convincingly displayed, using oscilloscope images, that the Moog envelopes have a slight, milliseconds-long “hold” period between the traditional attack and decay settings on the envelope generators that leads to a “punchier” sound. Another camp says it’s all about the way the oscillators subtly drift in tuning due to the old-style power supplies…
What synth made R2D2’s voice?
What’s that synth on “baba o’reilly,” “on the run,” “lucky man,” “welcome to the machine,” “ain’t nothing but a g-thang,” and so on…
Among saxophonists: Selmer Mark VI vs. every other saxophone ever made.
To clip your bird’s wings or let them grow out.
My view is… they are birds, and should be allowed to fly.
Among frequent fliers:
– Does Southwest Airlines provide a reasonable product or should it be avoided at all costs?
– Do any U.S. airlines provide a first or business class comparable to what the best international airlines offer?
– Should children be allowed in first or business class?
– Isn’t it rude to bring very young children on planes anyway?
– Isn’t it rude for passsengers in coach to recline their seats without asking the passenger seated behind them?
– Which airline has the best frequent flier program?
– Who makes better planes – Airbus or Boeing?
– Will the Airbus A380 ever actually fly paying passengers?
Ed
I feel like answering your questions individually: 
(snipping the ones I don’t have answers to, of course)
I like Southwest, but since I don’t live in Texas anymore, American tends to be more practical and cheaper.
It seems kinda hard to twist around and strike up a conversation with the guy in the seat behind you (including getting his attention so he knows you’re not just an obnoxiously loud passenger talking to a seatmate), due to the high seats and potentially limited flexibility of the guy reclining the seat, so I suggest the prefered methodology should: Recline the seat slowly, listening for a protest, and if soemone reclines more than you care for, politely protest, and then work out a mutually agreeable degree of reclinement.
I’m a Boeing fanboy myself, not least of all because I’m a military aviation geek, and Boeing has been a huge name in US military history for nearly 60 years. I also recall reading that Airbus has lost at least one military contract because, unlike Airbus, Boeing was actually able to offer more than vaporware (IIRC, the C-17 Globemaster III vs. the Airbus A400)
Nope, I’m predicting that airlines will employ Royal Navy-style Press Gangs to conscript passengers into flying on the A380, where they will be forced to enjoy peanuts, martinis, and in-flight movies.
On WotC’s D&D boards: What should the stats for the katana really be?
It’s never long before people are citing things like the the quality of iron ore mined in feudal Japan.
Heh, as a military history geek, I chuckle when I see discussions of swords, with someone invariably saying “Well, a Katana can cut THROUGH a European suit of plate mail!” Discussions of the invincibility of various iconic weapons throughout history (Katanas, Panzer Tanks, and the USS Constitution all come up from time to time) tend not to be based too firmly in the laws of physics, from what I’ve seen.
Oh, on that note, not so much a raging debate, but a recurring one: How would the American “Super frigates” of the War of 1812 have fared had they found themselves in battle against the Royal Navy’s ships of the line? I predict that one of the American 48s, particularly well handled on a good day, may be able to take a British 72 (emphasis on “may”), but more than likely, given the overall quality of Royal Navy officers and crews, Old Ironsides would get tarred (assuming she didn’t just use her superior speed to avoid battle altogether), but fortunately, that never came up.
Aside from that, you get various “What if?” scenarios, like could England fight off a German invasion in 1940 if Hitler hadn’t stopped to play diplomat while the Brits rearmed? Could the Allies win a war if England fell and they were forced to fight from North America and Africa? Would it have been more or less deadly to invade Japan instead of using the Atom Bombs? How would WWII have played out if Clark Kent was drafted? and various other serious debates.
Should we extend the metro further, or focus on lighter transit systems such as SLR?
Should the Laval metro have been built where it was, or off the Côte-Vertu end? Was the inflated price tag due to a massive initial underestimate, incompetence, malfeasance, or some combination of the three?
Should the connection at Édouard-Montpetit finally be built?
Which station is uglier: Joliette or Guy-Concordia?
Oh, and members of the area of geekery in question will surely understand:
Green or Purple?
Can Ishapore 2A1 rifles (which are chambered for 7.62x51 NATO) safely fire .308 Winchester ammunition?
(My thoughts: Yes, they can- provided you maintain your rifle and use a good quality brand of ammo like Remington, which has strong brass).
Was the name “Jungle Carbine” applied to the Lee-Enfield Rifle No 5 Mk I during WWII, or was it invented by a US importer in the 1950s?
(My thoughts: The name was applied by British troops during WWII- I’ve been told as much by guys who fought in Burma, who swear they called their No 5 rifles “Jungle Carbines”.)
Why isn’t anyone producing commercial hunting rifles in .303 British?
(My thoughts: Because there are literally several million ex-military Lee-Enfield rifles out there which can be purchased for about 25-50% of the price of a new hunting rifle, so therefore there’s no market demand).
Are .455 calibre Webley Mk IV/V/VI revolvers re-chambered to .45ACP safe to fire using modern, commercial ammunition?
(My thoughts: I wouldn’t recommend it- .45ACP generates pressures equivalent to the .455 Proof Load, and there are confirmed reports- albeit not many- of converted Webley revolvers suffering catastrophic failures.)
Rubbah vs acrylic?
Mounted vs unmounted?
Were we all idiots to acquire the latest machine when someone discovered after the fact that a rolling pin does it just as well?
And the ever popular CASE conundrum.
From the world of magic, magicians and mind-readers. I could fill the page, but here are just a few:
Bicycles. Boring ‘me-too’ choice, good workmanlike tools, essential. or to be avoided at all costs?
Mentalists. To use cards or not?
Stooges: acceptable, or not?
Exposure. What constitutes exposure? How do we combat it? What should happen to transgressors?
Masked Magician series on TV. Harmless nuisance, possibly fatal to magic, or some opinion in the middle?
Fortune-tellers and ‘psychics’. Part of our community or not? Magic with different windoe dressing, or con-artistry that we should distance ourselves from?
Close-up acts that can only be done in a close-up competition. Does applicability to real-world performance matter? What is being judged? What should be judged?
Copperfield, Blaine, Angel etc. Best / worst? Good for magic / bad for magic? And every shade of fan-dom.
And so on. The debates do rage, the outside world remains happily and blisssfully unaware, and we kinda like it that way.
Some of my friends are convinced that Macs are superior to PCs. Unless you work in graphics or something related, why would you use a Mac? 
I have a certain problem with Apple: they regulate their prices. :rolleyes: Ever notice that sometimes, you go to the supermarket and get your favorite food, and then find that the other supermarket across town sells them for a dollar cheaper? With Apple, you can’t do that, and that’s why they’re stupid. They fix their prices, so there’s no room for stores to compete. Stores won’t make much money if the price of an iPod is the same all around. Well, there’s my rant, and I leave you with one (Mr.) nugget of wisdom MICROSOFT RULES!!!
**parsnip **- sorry, but what are you talking about?
**ianzin **- I have been aware of your background in magic, having read your references to it in the past. Could you maybe pick one of the ones in your list and provide a little background to us outsiders - how did it become an issue, what are the fundamental underlying issues at stake - and, to your mind, is there a “right” answer and why?
Kinda fun to see this thread re-invigorated after referencing it in that “Safety Net vs. Finesse Tools” thread - which isn’t getting nearly as much energy…
Another raging debate in the area of electric guitars: “relics” - newly-made guitars that have been artificially aged so that they appear to be old road warriors. You can get top-of-the-line Fender and Gibson Custom Shop guitars - which already cost $3000+ to begin with - and get a “relic’d” version of them - at times for much more than the new-looking ones. There are even relic’ing celebrities - Tom Murphy is THE man in Gibson Les Paul relic’ing and guitars he has aged can easily go for $10,000. You are, in effect, paying more for something to look like it was dragged behind a car.
Some folks love the feel - the liken them to a broken-in pair of jeans. And if they aren’t gigging - or not enough to really get that earned-in natural beat up look - they appreciate the relic’ing. Others turn their noses up at them and think they are only for pretenders or wannabees.
I don’t have any relic’d guitars - but I have played them and some are quite good players. I guess my bottom line is that a good guitar/tool is simply that. And if a relic’d one is a good player, I’d play it, but not seek it out. There are extreme examples - even past Murphy’s - of signature edition replicas of, say, Jimmy Page’s Les Paul or Clapton’s Strat Blackie - where both editions were limited to around 250 guitars, each selling for $25,000 - I can’t handle that and think of them as a bit of a joke, although each run sold out immediately and appear to have held their value. But think about it - you are paying a super premium for a guitar that looks beat to shit - but if you actually played it and compromised its current condition - i.e., added your own wear to it - you’d lower its value! Just seems…wrong.
Hell, Macs ARE PCs now, just ones that come pre-installed with an OS that’s not compatible with anything else. I was amused to find that the latest generation of Macs can have Windows XP installed on them, which is how all the macs on the college campus I work at are setup (and how I’d probably prefer to use them, since I know XP’s quirks far more than OSX’s quirks). The thing that bugs me is that the Mac design changes drastically from one model to the next. PCs, even PCs made by wildly different manufactuers, be they IBM or Dell or HP or eMachines or whatever, all have the power button in the same place on the front of the tower. I’ve seen Macs put the power buttons on the front of the monitor, on the back of hte monitor, on the case, on the keyboard, it just drives me nuts.
That, and the fact that, in my experience, Macs freeze, lock up, eat your data, and are generally uncooperative, unlike PCs. Your mileage may vary.
That said, from what I understand, I’d have a lot less grief with my SCSI-connected Polaroid slide scanner if I had a Mac, since PC support for SCSI has always been rather hit-and-miss.
Who is responsible for horse racing’s decline in popularity?
Depending on the debater’s role in the industry it is either:
**The tracks ** for being too greedy and taking too big of a cut of the wagers from the handicappers and not spending enough on purses for the owners and trainers. Forcing box holders to pay an additional license fee to keep their boxes, like other sports do. Charging too much for parking, admission, programs etc. Not cooperating with other tracks to stagger post times and not allowing horse racing broadcast companies’ access to their signals.
The breeders, for being greedy and promoting unsound horses as sires that will produce too many horses that can’t race past their three year old years. The breeders are able to manipulate the sales, making it difficult for new people to break in the game, and keeping competition limited to the top mega stables. They can hide confirmation flaws that will likely lead to injuries, causing smaller stables to go bankrupt if that happens often enough.
**The trainers ** for being greedy by only wanting to win races, which leads to ruining horses by over training, starting training too young, over medicating horses, giving horses steroids etc. They also now are not willing to put their horse up against the other best horses and take a chance of losing, so will send the horse all over the country in an attempt to find the lesser competition. So racing has a bunch of millionaire horses who have never really been tested, making it difficult for a much needed new star in racing to emerge, and robbing the horseplayer of the excitement of a well matched race, and the higher payoffs that come from more competition. And the breeders are then robbed of knowing what horses really should be used as sires, whose genes will most likely produce the best runners.
**The owners ** for being greedy by wanting to win the Derby at all costs and pushing trainers to start training too early. Paying ridiculous amounts of money (because they have it) to buy up any two year olds that show any potential. Choosing to retire potentially great horses too early to get the money they can from stud fees rather than give them the chance to prove themselves as truly great champions and gain new racing fans in the process.
**The jockeys ** being greedy by taking money for fixes, being too aggressive trying to win by abusing the horse or taking unnecessary risks, or cheating in other ways. As a rule the jockeys aren’t really considered important enough to actually have much of an influence in racing, so they are mostly only debated on an individual basis. Should they ever unionize, then they will be seen as responsible for hurting racing no matter what they do. But as it is, they are mostly a non-factor in the big picture.
**The horseplayers ** for being greedy by using off shore betting sites that don’t put money back into purses or support racing in other ways. But that debate will end soon in the US as off shore betting places have stopped taking money from the US because of the recent bill which bans online gambling. And the horseplayers mostly feel they are not part of racing’s problems because they are so ignored by the other parts. If anything they are seen as a necessary evil by the trainers, jockeys, breeders, owners, and tracks since they actually fund the sport and constantly complain about it.
Pretty much everyone is blamed in one way or another. As a breeder, owner, and handicapper, I get a trifecta share of the blame I guess. The only ones not faulted are the horses. All parts of racing want the horses treated better, but feel someone else needs to fund any new ways to make that happen. The only other thing agreed on is that racing’s decline has nothing to do with Pamela Anderson’s decision to boycott the Derby. That is universally seen as a good thing. 
Other debates include whether artificial surfaces will help or hurt racing. What is to be done with the horses once they retire? (The anti slaughter bill in congress) Is all the money from Dubai that is put into American racing good or bad for American racing? How can drug testing be implemented in a fair way? Should the Triple Crown be changed to make is less stressful on the horses’ fragile bodies?
And the current heated debated is whether or not Barbaro should have been put down right after his injury in the Preakness. This has come up again as he has defied all odds and survived, but is still not out of danger. His quality of life is questioned, although all reports are that he is happy and content, enjoying constant visitors and proving to be the exception to the rule of thoroughbreds not being able to withstand being confined during long recoveries. This debate is by far the most emotional, both sides claiming the moral high ground with regards to what is really best for this much loved and admired horse.
I know racing has the reputation of not caring about the horses, but I think if a non racing person heard our debates, they would be surprised how much we really do care about the horses and want to see their lives improved. The problem is that racing has a long history of being slow to make any changes, each part with a long history of being pitted against the others. But these debates are helping to get needed changes made, and I am hopeful racing will survive for a few more hundred years.
Thanks for asking. And I have really enjoyed getting a glimpse into the raging debates of other areas I have not previously heard much about.
Human evolution
Should the “robust australopithecines” get their own genus, Paranthropus, or be included in Australopithecus? I accept the similarities in cranial and facial morphology among P. boisei, P. aethiopicus, and P. robustus as evidence that they should have their own genus. While the first two are from the Great Rift Valley and the third was found in South Africa, that doesn’t necessarily mean that there was a geographical separation ~3mya when these made their earliest known appearance. ZA has a lot of caves and the GRV is geologically active, so finding fossils in either location is a matter of convenience rather than a definite indication that these hominids weren’t roaming the entire south eastern region of Africa.
This is also an instance of why taphonomy isn’t a conclusive means of reconstructing paleo-environments, even though I am enthusiastic about it. Some organisms fossilize more easily than others, so there will be disporportionate representation.
Anime
I used to be a member of a particular fansite message board around 2000, and the debate between dubbing versus subtitles was a bitter one (probably since a good number of members were 14 or younger :rolleyes:). While I agree that being able to hear the original dialogue provides a more “authentic” experience,
I prefer dubs as a matter of practicality rather than for artistic reasons. In the days before DVD, VHS dubs were, mystifyingly, around $8 cheaper than the subs. On top of that, I could do something else with the show running in the background if it was something I’d seen a bunch of times. DVDs have rendered this issue moot. I now like to switch back and forth to see how the different actors handled the characters. I also get a good chuckle out of really terrible dubs.
Model Aircraft
Here there is the issue of AMS, advanced modeler syndrome. Guys drive themselves insane fixing every inaccuracy of a kit and adding every detail they possibly can. On its face, this is only bad because it can sap one’s enjoyment of the hobby, but some guys take pride in it and scoff at people who don’t replicate specific aircraft down to a smudge of hydraulic fluid on panel X of aircraft serial number Y. There’s a forum I visit where members of a different forum come to flee this attitude. It’s good to take pride in your work, but some guys just take it too far.
There is also the question of whether preshading is necessary. In my opinion, most people tend to overdo it.
Personally, I like dubbing, assuming that they can do it well (not all voice actors are equal, and not all scripts are equal). I once heard someone complain that with dubbing, it always sounds like everyone is from Texas, causing me much amusement (ADV, a really big anime publishing house in the US who does much of the dubbing, is based in Houston, Texas, though I don’t know if the actors are from Texas or not).
Also, some shows just work better subbed. FLCL, for instance, not being able to understand the spoken language makes some of the more frantic scenes in the show all the more entertaining. What bugs the hell out me is when I see bad subbing, usually in fansubs. Apparantly there’s such a rush to get YOUR sub out first, that nobody bothers to have an actual english speaking person give the lines a quick read-through to see if they make any sense.
And of course, some shows I like better dubbed just because that’s how I first heard them. Tenchi Muyo, Cowboy Bebop, and Big O all fit in this category. Big O and Cowboy Bebop just aren’t Big O and Cowboy Bebop without Steven Blum voicing them. That said, Ruroni Kenshin has to be subbed, because Shishio is just disconcerting when he has Spike Spiegal’s voice coming out of him.
Excellent post - I had no idea of that context in horse racing and is exactly what I was asking about. Thank you.