Posts by Moz
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Deborah, your position that by default men have consented to sex and must explicitly withdraw consent is problematic to me. Failure to say no does not mean yes.
One problem with that, of course, is that it's possible to have sex where neither party consents.
I think we as a society would do better if there was less emphasis on "being a man means always wanting sex, anywhere, with anyone". What does consent mean when the person consenting is told that his erection means he consented (it's not rape if you got wet), and that if he didn't consent he's not a real man (good women don't get raped).
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One of the scary things with looking back and wondering if you did the wrong thing is how utterly terrifying it is... for women. Most appear to have never thought about obtaining consent, let alone about what consent might look like if they had it. The "erection = consent" myth has a powerful hold, as well as the "women can't rape, so whatever we do is fine" myth. Having to actually ask whether you had consent or just assumed it is not an easy thing to do.
I do think there's an argument that if alleged victims don't want to describe something as rape they shouldn't be forced to. But I don't know enough about psychopathology to have an informed opinion as to whether it's actually a good idea.
There are also interesting problems around drinking to consent, because doing it sober is too scary. I've had a couple of strange moments when my "no sex with drugged people" rule came into the open only after someone had drugged themselves as a prelude to propositioning me. Partly I have ethical issues with it, but mostly it's just less fun when one of you is out of it.
Moz, bringing you uttlerly disconnected posts since 1996.
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Emma, there were several totally hawt ladies in Melbourne dressed much like that link. It was great to see. I almost regretted not doing the suit and bowler hat look, but it felt a little too steampunky for me.
Now that I've seen more of the signs I'm full of exciting sign slogans. "yes... but not to you" was one of the sentiments that particularly struck me. But I'd also like a "you're not the boss of me" t shirt and a sign to go with it. -
For $20-odd you can get better ones that you can adjust by pulling in and out. Stuff sounds a lot better. I'd be interested in anyone else's recommendations.
I use industrial safety ones that look a lot like the alpine ones but cost about $10 and last about 10 years. Paul Keen gave me a set back in about 1990 when I was doing lighting at Orientation in Canturbury and when they finally died I was quite pleased to discover that they were so cheap. Remarkably effective, although defeated once by Straitjacket Fits on their "we're louder than you" O-week tour. I just dump them in my wallet so they're there whenever I want them. Useful for me because I hang round with tradies as well as musos.
My test for plugs is whether I can converse with the person sitting next to me when it's loud.
Also, cut the stems short and they're nowhere near as obvious. At The Herd the other night Urthboy did a wee blink when he leaned into the crown and noticed them (we've chatted before about earplugs). That, by the way, was a great gig. 10 years of The Herd/Elefant Tracks. I've gone more hiphop than rock now I'm old. I leave with you 77%...
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I can't beleive no-one has posted this yet: The Front Lawn - When You Come Back Home
For me it's complicated. My Tūrangawaewae is more conceptual, Aotearoa as a whole. Mostly I remember specific places rather than houses or people. There's still a pond next to a creek just north of Punakaiki that I like a lot and go back to, but I wouldn't call that home. It's something I might try to replicate if I owned a big enough block of land, more the atmosphere than the specifics. There's a few other spots like that, mostly in the conservation estate. Partly that's from living in Australia, where some kiwi values stand out in stark relief (but National is making sure we catch up as fast as possible). My sense of place isn't especially strong, I grew up in Nelson, moved the Christchurch for uni, then Wellington, Sydney and now Melbourne. I find that after about 10 years in a city I want to move on.
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One of my favorite holes-in-economics is the perfect information one. In the real world the cost of obtaining information can be prohibitive, and in fact that's one of the complaints that economists often have. But then they lurch back into nonsense about car seats when it comes to the decisions other people make.
One solution might be to ask economists to help gather information. Say, about the presence of survivors in the CBD. Since perfect information is required in order to make rational decisions, it makes sense to go into the (remains of) the buildings to see whether there's anyone alive to rescue. From an economists point of view I'm sure that makes perfect sense, since the cost of gathering information can be ignored. -
Sacha, there's quite a difference between the level of training and experience that even our best Police SAR people get and what an internationally deployed USAR team gets. Our SAR people are totally excellent at finding people in dense bush or NZ's slightly irritated coastal areas, but they have a limited number of people who focus on urban disaster areas (and I don't mean the Rugby World Cup). The international USAR people are here to get experience as well as give it, and if NZ was big enough to have a similar team they would no doubt have a similar level of skill as a result. It's all about how often you see a disaster, and what variety of disasters you are involved in. The fact that we're doing well will no doubt result in some intense idea-sharing with those teams, just as their arrival no doubt produced a few changes in the way our people were dealing with things.
The flip side is that until recently NZ just didn't have enough earthquake disasters to justify a team of specialists. And the other 90% of SAR work is finding the above lost-in-the-bush and lost-at-sea customers, so that's where the expertise is focussed. -
Che, if the oldest profession is such, and politics is a profession, I think it's reasonable to call economics a profession. Profession no longer has such strong connotations of expertise, relevance and honesty as once it did. People talk about "professional liars" and "professional footballers" with nary a hint of irony.
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I haven't quite made up my mind about builders gouging though
I think people are much more accepting of the notion that each builder has a fixed supply of buildering and what they're doing is bribing their builder to work more and rest less. Call it "overtime pay" if you like. We also have the "tradesman charge a fortune" meme, and most people have no idea what builders charge anyway. People buy groceries every week, but few people hire a builder in any normal year. So the resentment of gouging will be lower.
We just had our house rewired (in Oz) and the three quotes were interesting... $12k, $15k and $6k. Was the $15k guy gouging? Or offering to do a better job? I have no idea, and no real way to find out. I suspect most people in Christchurch are in a similar position, except without any real ability to get three quotes (realistically, it's going to cost a lot to get a quote - a tradesman faced with a choice between "come and quote" vs "come and fix, I'll pay whatever it takes" is almost always going to take the latter job).
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To summarise: the question is "how do we choose the last candidate in a multi-member electorate?" Under STV it is essentially random, based on preference flows not considered by most electors. Under a proportional system it is based on the next most popular candidate.
The usual case in Australia is that there are 6 senate seats, 3 go to the government, 2 to the opposition, and one has no clear majority. Typically the proportion of excess votes will be something like 20% govt, 30% opposition, 30% third party, 20% microparties. In that case, arguing that selected a candidate from one of the microparties is just as fair as from the other parties is IMO bizarre. I think the question should be "opposition or third party" in this exact example, rather than distributing the 20% overhang from the govt party to their preferred microparty.