Posts by Tom Beard
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Up Front: Something For Your Snow Day, in reply to Emma Hart,
And there goes another Murray McCully moment...
I feel like I've missed out on something.
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Up Front: Something For Your Snow Day, in reply to Emma Hart,
I shall get with the submitting.
As you do.
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The story is blocked at work for "Adult/mature content", which surprises me. Sure, I expect it to be filthy, but mature?
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Hard News: The scandal that keeps on giving, in reply to Jeremy Eade,
It ruined jesus's health.
I'm pretty sure he didn't commit suicide. I mean, how would he bang in the last nail?
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Up Front: How About Now?, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
Well, you know that I'm far from libertarian on most things, but the field of intimate personal relationships is different. There are certain aspects of "marriage" as it's currently defined all through the law that certainly should be subject to legal rights and responsibilities, but those rights and responsibilities are tangled up with a whole lot of cultural, religious and "romantic" connotations that really shouldn't be subject to legislation.
I know that I'm on shaky, privilege-denying ground here, since even though I was once married I never sought any of those things where the law gives extra rights to married people: children, shared property, immigration opportunities. Some of those things can presumably already be achieved through other civil means, though presumably with more hassle and expense, but others are probably more difficult or impossible. Is it possible to bring your lifelong platonic BFF into the country under the immigration laws, as (in some cases) people can get citizenship rights for their spouse? Why privilege one relationship over the other because (by connotation of the word "marriage") it is sexual? There are many valid and diverse human bonds that are excluded by the word "marriage".
Of course, utterly, the most glaring of those exclusions is same-sex couples. Despite my somewhat flippant opening statement, it is obscene to deny people any rights on the basis of their sexuality, and I will also be lining up to vote, march and otherwise campaign to have such injustices wiped out. But perhaps we could also talk about what it is about "marriage" that is so special under law that it automatically confers those extra rights. Or at the very least, while we're at it, let's remove anachronistic and vile phrases like "born out of true wedlock" from the Marriage Act.
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Please don't think I'm trolling for saying this, but I don't support same-sex marriage because I don't support such unnatural lifestyles. By which of course I mean "marriage".
I'm not just saying that from some cynical divorcé's perspective (though there is that). Of course I support the right of people to have their relationships recognised by law, so that property rights, immigration rights and the various rights and responsibilities of child rearing can be protected. But by just expanding the definition of "marriage" from "one man and one woman in an emotionally and sexually exclusive relationship for the rest of their life" to include same-sex pairings doesn't include all the diversity of human bonds that might benefit from such protections. If anything, the standard definition is less "natural" than many of the other forms of bond that anthropologists have defined as "marriage" across the wide diversity of human culture.
Of course, if you put me on the spot and asked me whether I want same-sex couples to have the same rights as different-sex couples, then I'd say "hell yes". But I'd rather see the definition of civil unions extended (or some entirely new set of "unions" defined) to provide people with legal recognition of their relationships, and leave it up to them to choose whatever social, cultural or religious definitions of "marriage" suits them as a celebration of their bond.
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Field Theory: It's not yours, but you…, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
Funnily enough, unlike food where localism is all the rage among the gourmet middle classes, in beer local identification is associated with the era of blokey parochial tribalism. There wasn't much to distinguish different brands of sweet, watery, pisstanker swill on taste grounds, so brands like Canterbury Draught and Waikato whatever-it-is promoted local loyalty, as did Speights and Monteiths in their earlier days.
The new market for boutique brews doesn't identify so much with their province as with being the sort of person who has wide and refined tastes. We Wellingtonians might proudly drink Tuatara partly because it's brewed on the outskirts of our region, but we'll know that Emerson's is from Dunedin and that Dux de Lux is (was?) brewed in Christchurch, appreciate the sense of place that comes from that, but we'll drink a given beer primarily because it's delicious.
Besides, even boutique breweries have rather distributed operations these days. I associate Yeastie Boys with Wellington, because you can't miss Stu's trousers around town, but apparently it's brewed in Invercargill. Wine is associated with the terroir where the grapes are grown, not with the location of the winery. If we associate beers with the source of their ingredients rather than the location of the brewery, pretty much every NZ beer would be a Nelson beer.
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Just a thought: does DB own any wine brands, like Lion Nathan does?
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Field Theory: It's not yours, but you…, in reply to Peter Darlington,
Apart from the occasional Monteiths or Erdinger out of desperation, I'm already boycotting all of that on the grounds of crapness.
But let's think positively. Rather than just boycotting DB, let's have carrot mobs at all decent beer bars and drink as much local boutique beer as we can. Fighting corporate arrogance through hard drinking? Hell yes.
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"But the mystery remains, Holmes. What sort of rock is it?"
Holmes put down his magnifying glass, and looked up with a glint. "Sedimentary, my dear Watson!"