User talk:Father Inire

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Contents 1 Orbital (The Culture) 2 Anarchism 3 On Onomatopoeic 4 The Culture 5 Thurgood Marshall 6 Workers cooperative

[edit] Orbital (The Culture)

Hi. Thanks for the Orbital edit. Could you point me to where you got that ("Look to Windward" I guess, do you still have the page number?)?

I'm a bit curious I must say about the 'as an insurance' part. What could they do if the Mind went crazy? They have absolutely no direct power over it. Is that actually described like that in the book? Can't remember anymore. Cheers. Ingolfson 12:12, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't know if I'm supposed to respond to my talk page or yours (I'm new at this), so I'll do both.

The relevant bit about the General Board is in a single paragraph on pages 122 and 123 in my edition of Look to Windward, in the chapter "Peer Group." I'll just quote the whole thing here - I don't think that's a copyright violation:

"The General Board was supposed to represent the inhabitants of the Orbital to Hub at the highest level; it was pretty much an honorary office given that each individual could talk directly to Hub whenever they wanted, but as that carried even the most thinly theoretical possibility that a mischievous or deranged Hub could play every single person on an Orbital off against each other to further some unspecified nefarious scheme, it was usually thought sensible to have a conventionally elected and delegated set-up as well. It also meant that visitors from more autocratic or layered societies were provided with somebody they could identify as an official representative of the whole population." -Iain M. Banks, Look to Windward

However, I would agree that this insurance doesn't cover all eventualities - a truly evil Hub could probably kill everyone on an Orbital before anyone even realized what was happening. So maybe there's a better way to describe what the General Board is for. I thought the original version of the text made the Hub sound like an autocratic ruler, whereas from what I can tell it's more of a worker and administrator: it makes the trains run on time, operates factories and shipyards, organizes parties, handles traffic control, etc. When it comes to public affairs, though, the Hub is still subject to the democratic norms of the Culture, both in the form of the General Board and through the processes of initiative and referendum. There's a paragraph about this in "A Few Notes on the Culture", and a practical example is discussed in the LtW chapter "Pylon Country". -Father Inire 11:31, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Anarchism

Confused as to why you changed the link bay from Collectivist anarchism to Anarchim.. Collectivist anarchism seems a more direct correlation to Direct democracy. Can you explain? I would like to add both if that's what you prefer. Jwiley80 01:38, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Hi Jwiley80 - Almost all anarchists, including individualist anarchists, support some form of direct democracy. Collectivist anarchism is distinguished from other forms only by its economic content. Collectivists advocate a combination of social ownership of the means of production with remuneration for hours worked, as opposed to market-based wages or totally free consumption. So because collectivists don't have a separate position on political decision-making, I think it's better to have just one link to the main anarchism article. -Father Inire 03:53, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] On Onomatopoeic

Regarding TARDIS: My mistake. Thanks for the clarification! EdgeOfEpsilon (talk) 02:24, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] The Culture

[1]. \o/ Cool, thank you! :-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 08:51, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Thurgood Marshall

Hi. I noticed your recent revertion of the above article almost didn't quite work. Have you thought about applying for rollback rights? This gives n extra feature, where one click reverts all the last edits from a particular user. Being granted the rights is no big deal, but abusing them will get the rights revoked very quickly. This doesn't guarantee perfect fighting against vandalism, but is a great help (with 2 consecutive vandals, only the efforts of the last will be rolled back). I have only been on Wikipedia about as long as you and was granted rollback rights about three weeks ago. Greetings TINYMARK 07:21, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Workers cooperative

I've replied to your comments on the talk page of worker cooperative. Thanks for the edits. EdGJones (EdGJones) 14:19, 13 April 2008 (UTC)