The Round Ball Game

[vinteuil]

People that don't like football shouldn't be trusted.

...hmm, let me see : whom would I rather trust - Harry Redknapp or Samuel Johnson? John Terry or Immanuel Kant?

[Beef Oven!]

...hmm, let me see : whom would I rather trust - Harry Redknapp or Samuel Johnson? John Terry or Immanuel Kant?

That's entirely a matter for you.

[Richard Barrett]

Harry Redknapp or Samuel Johnson?

Presumably not Samuel Johnson the goalkeeper for Port Vale FC?

[vinteuil]

People that don't like football shouldn't be trusted.

...hmm, let me see : whom would I rather trust - Harry Redknapp or Samuel Johnson? John Terry or Immanuel Kant?

That's entirely a matter for you.

... thank you for that. Provisionally then, I think - the more someone likes football, the less I should trust them; the less someone likes football, the more I should trust them.

Thank you. It all helps in one's Bayesian analysis, dontcha know?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_inference

[ahinton]

speaking of goalposts, isn't it about time you learned something about football. People that don't like football shouldn't be trusted.

Then clearly (and perhaps unsurprisingly) I am not, according to your estimation, to be trusted. OK, I don't particularly dislike football per se, but I have not the slightest interest in it and would neither watch it on television nor spend money on a ticket to see a match live; that said, I can perfectly well undersand that others are/were passionate about the subject, not least Shostakovich. The perceived relationship between trustworthness and soccer remains unexplained, however.

[Richard Barrett]

Football is rubbish.

[vinteuil]

Football is rubbish.

... of course it is - but it provides the panem et circenses to keep the proletariat occupied and unaware of the inauthenticity of their basic condition.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses

[gurnemanz]

... of course it is - but it provides the panem et circenses to keep the proletariat occupied and unaware of the inauthenticity of their basic condition.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses

Proletariat can't afford tickets any more.

[vinteuil]

Proletariat can't afford tickets any more.

... aye, but there's t' telly

[Beef Oven!]

Football is rubbish.

Philistine!

[Beef Oven!]

... of course it is - but it provides the panem et circenses to keep the proletariat occupied and unaware of the inauthenticity of their basic condition.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses

Football has no class barriers, race divides, gender-walls or any such things. The rules of association football is mankind's greatest invention. In fact there is nothing that is even one hundredth as good as it, in all the billions of galaxies in the universe.

[vinteuil]

Football has no class barriers, race divides, gender-walls or any such things. The rules of association football is mankind's greatest invention. In fact there is nothing that is even one hundredth as good as it, in all the billions of galaxies in the universe.

... if anyone is looking for an example of 'false consciousness', here you have it.

[Beef Oven!]

... if anyone is looking for an example of 'false consciousness', here you have it.

Even Althusser was a footie nut (no pun). Rosa was a huge Warsaw Athletic fan and Gramsci only worked on his prison notes each day, after he'd read that week's issue of Shoot.

[ahinton]

Football has no class barriers, race divides, gender-walls or any such things.

Really? I do not pretend to be any kind of authority on the subject, but whilst there's soccer for men and soccer for women, the balance between the two is hardly an equal one and I wasn't aware of mixed soccer teams/matches.

The rules of association football is mankind's greatest invention.

If that were indeed the case, it wouldn't say much for (in no particular order and by no means limited to) penicillin, the telephone, the computer, the internet, the wheel or J S Bach's works, would it?

In fact there is nothing that is even one hundredth as good as it, in all the billions of galaxies in the universe.

...all of which you've presumably visited in order to be able to vouch for your rather large claim, yes?

Anyway, aren't rules made to be broken? And why do you appear to value those particular rules over the game itself?

[ahinton]

Even Althusser was a footie nut (no pun). Rosa was a huge Warsaw Athletic fan and Gramsci only worked on his prion notes each day, after he'd read that week's issue of Shoot.

...and Shostakovich was a keen football fan, as I alluded to earlier, but I do think that he'd just about have managed to write his Fourth Symphony without being one...