Comment author: Lumifer 25 March 2015 04:03:34PM 2 points [-]

substantial market for superior women's clothes

What exactly are superior women's clothes?

Comment author: Izeinwinter 05 April 2015 04:25:58PM 3 points [-]

.. Clothes made by people with any sense of pride in craft? I sew for a hobby, and for the purpose of making gifts. - for example I just finished a nice summer jacket for my brothers birthday, english wool, silk lining. Cost to me: <70 euro. (and time, but eh.) I learned to what to do largely by reading on the internet and taking old clothes apart to see how they were built.

The clothes sold to women is depressing as all hell in that regard. Materials, build, functionality - Lowest bidder doesn't begin to describe it. "I don't think you even tried at all" about covers it.

I think this happens because womens clothing stores sell a ridiculously tiny fraction of the stock they purchase. The price tag on a shirt or skirt has to pay not only for that piece of clothes, but also for the 5 to nine other items on that rack nobody buys before they go hopelessly out of style. In order for that to work out to a net profit, the items on selection need to be nearly worthless. And they are.

Men's Jeans are the perfect opposite clothing item - a store can buy those home in bulk, and be assured that every single item in that consignment will eventually be sold because they are a commodity, so the gap between price and worth is much smaller.

So, in order to make better womens clothes, you need to design something which is as guaranteed a sale as a pair of mens jeans. And to not hate women. Eh.. This really does look like something I could do...

Comment author: banx 01 April 2015 03:41:41AM 3 points [-]

What do folks here think about blood donation? Is the consensus that it's not an efficient way to help people?

Comment author: Izeinwinter 05 April 2015 03:43:01PM 0 points [-]

Sure it is, if you are in the vicinity of a donation site on a regular basis anyway. Pop in, donate, read while doing so, pop out again. Warm fuzzies during pleasure reading time.

Warning, my opinion on this may be influenced rather heavily by the fact that I essentially don't notice the donation, nor do I mind needles.

Comment author: V_V 29 March 2015 09:44:21AM *  0 points [-]

I was thinking that most murders are gang-related and most gang members are male, but I see that this is disputed. Unfortunately, all the sources I can find seem to take a partisan position in the gun control debate, hence I don't know.

Comment author: Izeinwinter 29 March 2015 10:46:13AM 0 points [-]

Bad prior. Gang violence is a major murder statistic, but it's pretty far from being "most". Quick googling says: "1 in 6 murders". The most common motive, at 50% is "Argument". So.. men are more likely to escalate those to homocide?

Comment author: Izeinwinter 29 March 2015 06:07:53AM 3 points [-]

.. The thing that puzzles me here is why Knox was ever prosecuted at all. The prosecution had Guede. Who left his fingerprints all over the scene, fled the country, had a history of burglary and knives and changed his story repeatedly. That's a pretty simple and very solid case. Why the heck the prosecution insisted on trying to pin the crime on two more people who could have no plausible reason at all for conspiring with him is just inexplicable to me. I mean, traces of dna from people who lived in the apartment? Wtf? All that proves is that they indeed, lived there.

Comment author: MarkusRamikin 15 March 2015 05:29:06PM *  2 points [-]

Hermione says that she has an answer to Quirrel's question: if he was horrible for walking away from his fight, are the people who never even lift a finger still worse. That got my interest, because I think that's a good question.

But insofar as I can understand, her answer is not on topic. What she says may be a useful thought in its own right, but not an answer to Quirrel's question. Or am I missing something? Does she have a worthwhile point that I am failing to see, and what is it?

Comment author: Izeinwinter 15 March 2015 07:27:24PM 5 points [-]

It does address it. What we call heroic action is high combat ability and resources deployed for good. Hermione's point is that privileging that particular class of good works is an error - The proper measure of virtue is if you do the things which fall within your reach. Thinking in terms of heroes is a distraction,

Note that wizarding britain still largely fails hard on this count.

Comment author: fezziwig 11 March 2015 09:09:32PM 2 points [-]

How do we know the crisis was war, and not (for example) people gradually reinventing the arts with which the Atlanteans destroyed themselves?

Comment author: Izeinwinter 12 March 2015 01:01:16PM -1 points [-]

The description of the founding of the wizengamot. War is probably not a very descriptive term for what was going on before it - The political structure implies that it is what came after a period of feuding families. In this case, feuding families with magical might backing up the kind of stupidity bloodfeuds cause.

Comment author: WalterL 11 March 2015 07:16:56PM 0 points [-]

The Vow doesn't kill you if you violate it, it makes you unable to violate it.

Voldemort can't get the law passed that everyone must obey him because the law-passers are vowed not to be intimidated by snake-nazis.

Its vows all the way down.

Comment author: Izeinwinter 11 March 2015 08:07:58PM *  -1 points [-]

Actually, the one wow I really do not get all wizards are not under is very simple. Merlin laid down his interdict due to a crisis of magic being used in wars in utterly unrestrained ways. Blocking people from learning certain kinds of magic is a daft way of stopping that. What you do is you take every single wizarding child of 8, and make them swear to never use any magic that would harm more than one person. Still free to fight, still free to defend themselves, just noone capable of area effect magics of destruction anymore.

Comment author: Subbak 10 March 2015 08:03:24PM 3 points [-]

So what would he have been doing? Saving victims of accident so that they end up being fine after a small hospital stay? Miraculously curing terminally ill people? I find it unlikely that he could do anything else with long-term benefits without anyone catching on. But yeah, I like that alternate character interpretation of Flamel.

Comment author: Izeinwinter 11 March 2015 02:47:01AM 6 points [-]

Mostly, resurrecting dead children. The population used to be lower, but kids also used to have piss-poor odds of making it to adult-hood. In terms of QALY, this would have been the best use, and if a child goes missing from a sickbed only to wander into the kitchen feeling chipper and fine, noone would even think twice.

Comment author: Gondolinian 10 March 2015 06:57:12PM *  6 points [-]

Hopefully the apparent time limit on the Philosopher's Stone isn't going to get worse over time.

Good point. A time limit of 3:54 does seem too arbitrary to be hard-coded.

Harry also hasn't considered that it may only be good for some finite number of permanent transfigurations. He's going to try to use it many more times than it probably has been used in a very long time.

At least he only intends to use the Stone as a stop-gap measure for fighting death until he is able to properly end the world.

[edited]

Comment author: Izeinwinter 10 March 2015 07:40:06PM 9 points [-]

It occurs to me that this limit means Flame could, in theory, have been using the stone flat out for five hundred years without anyone catching on. 56 million people died this year. If the stone was used to save as many of them as possible, at random, then with only moderate use of magic for coverup purposes compared to shit we already know the magical world is pulling of, that is just going to be utterly undetectable. "Here have a second chance at life. Also a magical compulsion to keep your mouth shut".

Comment author: Vaniver 05 March 2015 09:10:29PM 1 point [-]

Your argument supposes that Harry - at age 11 - has mental defenses better than Flamel at age >600.

It's almost as if Harry is a mental clone of the most powerful Legilimens in recorded history.

Seriously, no.

ಠ_ಠ

"Perenelle has lived this long by knowing her limitations," said Professor Quirrell. "She does not overestimate her own intellect, she is not prideful, if that were so she would have lost the Stone long ago. Perenelle will not try to think of a good Mirror-rule herself, not when Master Flamel can leave the matter in Dumbledore's wiser hands...

Comment author: Izeinwinter 08 March 2015 05:20:03PM *  -3 points [-]

Eh.. Voldemort is a legimens. But he isn't an unusually good one at all. He actively dislikes actually reading peoples minds. He simply had a very impressive talent for entirely non-magical cold reading and inference. The wizarding public heard tales of that, and in the same way they failed to consider "hidden broomstick enchantments!" credited him with scary superpowers he didn't actually have.

This is an inference from the text, but a high probability one. - However, it is also stated outright in the text that Harry's mental defenses are nothing special. He's an occlumens, but according to his teacher in that art, who bloody well should know, not a perfect one.

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