Posts by Tom Beard
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All those places have concentrations of student population but none with the density -- no pun intended -- of Dunedin's.
I'm not so sure about that, at least on density per se. For theree years I've lived right beside one of the most densely-populated blocks in central Wellington (whcih is saying something), and it's mostly student hostels. There's plenty of drunken hooting and hollering every Wednesday night as the first-year muntocracy and tottering Supre Slappers surge between the hostels, Big Kumara and Courtenay Place, and Orientation week is definitely time for earplugs. Extraneous bodily fluids are involved, and there's no doubt the occasional punch-up, but you know what? I've never come across any of them throwing bricks, setting things on fire or chanting "Let's start a riot".
We're not talking two-storey infill here, but 8-14 storey high-rise hostels, and people around the world live at far higher densities without feeling the need to chuck stuff at the rozzers, so I don't think we can blame property developers for the Dunedin problems. But the monoculture might be more of an issue, and the fact that these hostels are right on the edge of the CBD means that the students are part of a much broader population. There's also the fact that in central Wellington there are things to do that don't involve bonfires and throwing bottles.
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DeepRed: "it brings to mind the Listener article, "The unbearable lightness of being English". "
Quite, especially when she writes:
streets have been usurped by half-formed bullies whose boredom mates with self-hate to become destructive anger.
Kapka lived in Dunedin for quite some time, so she should have seen plenty of Castle St high-jinks, but the current "riots" (and I wouldn't want to glorify them with the name) seem more like the bad English behaviour she said was much worse than anything in NZ. Does that imply that this is much worse than Dunedin booziness from a decade ago?
There is one difference: I don't see much boredom and self-hate in those crowds, just a gleeful and selfish desire to start a fight as if it were entertainment. It's not as if these are long-term unemployed from Toxteth, full of inchoate anger against an unjust system and fuelled by the mind-numbing boredom of a council estate. These are kids with a rich and prosperous life ahead of them, but maybe they were just the same bullies who were always kicking third-formers for the heck of it. Some people are just douchebags.
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This isn't, for me, a moral tale of privilege but of the role alcohol plays in our society's ideas of fun.
I'm not sure that that's the entire problem. I have to say that alcohol plays a big part in my idea of fun, and in that of many of my friends. In fact, if you take ALAC's purse-lipped definition, binge-drinking is my idea of lunch.
We've all done unwise things while under the influence: sing karaoke, eat a kebab, hit on a married colleague, do lines of snuff from someone's cleavage, order a round of excrutiatingly expensive cocktails, send passive-aggressive tweets at 3am (and that was just last weekend). But I've never known any of my friends, no matter how grossly intoxicated, ever, ever to be seized with the desire to throw a bottle at the police.
Perhaps we have to ask whether it's not the alcohol culture that's to blame, but a part of the culture that encourages violence, mob behaviour, "bringing back the biff", fighting for the hell of it and macho oneupmanship. Sure, alcohol plays a big role as an enabler of that behaviour, but not all drunkards are munters.
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I did a quick scatter plot of turnout vs "yes" vote based on the data by electorate, and the results are intriguing.
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Thanks, Michael: I was afraid I might have to have a go at explaining the Alephs myself! And it really has been a long, long time...
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I studied Pure Maths. How pure? We looked down on group theory, because it had practical applications in quantum mechanics: too much like getting one's hands dirty. We literally looked down on engineering students, since they spent most of their time down by the riverbank below the Maths building experimenting in fluid dynamics. The "fluids" in question were primarily beer and its bodily byproducts.
Within about a year of leaving varsity (and by the way, when the hell did we start calling it "uni"?) I could no longer explain the difference between different kinds of infinity or prove the irrationality of pi, and I couldn't save a partial differential equation to save my life. Yet I think there's something in a mathematical education, and the understanding of structure and pattern that goes with it, that has contributed to all of my subsequent careers in meteorology, web design, animation, literary criticism, data visualisation, cartography and urban design.
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I think there is/should be some sort of interesting aerodynamics playing to be had.
Exactly. My feeling is that it would work well with the strong, steady katabatic winds of the Antarctic, but the turbulence and swirl of a squally southwesterly would be a very different matter.
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Is Auckland ever windy and rainy at the same time?
Yes: it's not just Wellington that gets the wind, and Auckland can get some pretty nasty weather from the westerly quarter during winter and spring. At first glance I think it looks lovely, and while not outstandingly original, it's quite a clever concept for a fiddly brief. In some weather, it could actually be practical, but that would be far from all the time.
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Saying "kids who go to AE are taking drugs so we must stop funding AE" is so... just... bad.
If you're saying that for AE, you might as well say the same for A&E: "The hospitals are full of sick and injured people! Quick, review funding for hospitals, and we'll reduce sickness and injury!"
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I'm a bit late to the party (gee thanks, Bloglines) but in response to Craig's call for More Cowbell, I give you 3:10 of this:
followed by perhaps the world's greatest treefrog solo at 3:58.