Posts by daleaway
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But its spelling is incompitant.
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I wouldn't go blaming too much profanity on the Dutch - after all Old English is a very close relative of Old Dutch and most of those words have been around in Old English long before the Dutch became merchant traders.
The Dutch swearwords I learned while working in Amsterdam mostly do not bear much relationship to English swearwords. And indeed English "fuck" is modern Dutch "vok", a perfectly respectable word meaning to breed (as was its English origin). A cattlebreeder is a veevokker, which seems rather alarming at first sight.
You can see the common derivation, but the two languages have nuanced it differently over the centuries.
Incidentally, the Dutch for "rich prick" is "rijk lul". But then I never heard the Dutch use wealth as a pejorative.
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Hide's a climate change denialiser, unless he's had an aha moment recently.
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Thank God I was cured of incipient diamond-lust young - in 1969 in fact, when within a few weeks I had visited Tiffany's in New York and clapped eyes on the Tiffany diamond, and then the Sancy diamond in Paris. Then the Koh-i-Noor and the Cullinan etc in the British crown jewels. Shone like torches, they did.
This had the effect of making all lesser stones look like gritty dust and chips in my eyes, and ambition died on the spot. I own some, regardless. Well-meaning blokes have given me diamonds (usually pendants for some reason), bless them, and I've inherited some, but given a choice I said no to an engagement ring.
It's not that big sparkly things are to be despised - lordy, who doesn't enjoy the brash swagger of a bit of stage bling ? Those giant fake jewels that are currently decorating formal table settings are especially hilarious. It's just that 99 people out of a hundred can't distinguish prettily cut jewels from prettily cut glass, a fact which a whole extensive Far East gem-swindling trade relies on.
So who's being fooled by what?
And why become the last link in a chain of undoubted exploitation? -
Slightly OT, but by golly here's a gripping piece of reporting by Greg Palast on the Spitzer downfall, the sub-prime mortgage scandal, and the latest sleight of hand by the Bush administration, and why they may be all part of the same story:
http://www.gregpalast.com/elliot-spitzer-gets-nailed/ -
I think not, Craig.
Seems to me she said [paraphrase]: If our opponents are going to run with an "experience counts" message, why would we want to stand a rookie up against them?
And as for Muslim reaction to either Clinton or Obama, it's anyone's guess whether they would rather deal with a woman or a Muslim-turned-Christian. I believe the latter species is not well thought of in Muslim traditionalist circles.
Darn, I told myself I was not going to take any notice of US elections till it was compulsory for NZers to vote in them...
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As I seem to be the oldest woman on PAS (?), it falls to me to explain why the older generation takes technology with a pinch of salt, or not at all. The reasons are several fold.
First, there’s Indifference to Cool. Strange as it may seem to approval-seeking youth, Cool is something you’ll eventually abandon as pointless effort. Lacking peer group pressure to demonstrate your ineffable coolness, you pick and choose what innovations are really of appeal and use to you. You learn them on a need to know basis. You ask are they there to enhance the way I already live my life, or just to place extra demands on me and make things more complicated? As we used to sing in the 1960s, got along without you before I met you, gonna get along without you now. But then middle age also means no longer wanting to live your life with a musical backdrop, so that pressing need disappears as well. Wants and needs become more distinguishable as you grow older.
Secondly, there’s Innovation Fatigue. By the time my generation had reached serious middle age, we’d already endured umpteen changes of technology and learned roughly a squillion new operating systems, rules and instructions. We’ve had to learn new ways of running everything from household appliances, to voting and accessing government systems and healthcare, weights and measures, currency, transport, etc and not once but many times over. As soon as we become expert in something, our new expertise is rendered useless (this joy lies ahead of all you young techies - hee hee). We’ve learned to box canny, and wait for new technology to settle in, simplify itself, and cost less. Which most of it does, unless engineers and accountants have made a pact with the devil and are working in unison to make life more complicated and expensive. Oh, wait…
(Digressing into Daleaway Brain Theory, I’ll just pick up a point for those of you who think that the brain is capable of infinite expansion. Bugger that. The brain is a brimming cup of soup, and if you splosh an extra fact into it, some slops out over the other side. Learn ephemera like a new programming system for a mobile phone, for example, and you instantly forget something of lasting importance, like your brother’s birthday or where you left the secateurs.)
We’ve learned to pace ourselves. What’s the hurry? Our perspective tends to be that if something’s going to be the real answer to a problem, it will endure. Let some other mug get it through its teething troubles. The second mouse gets the cheese. Just give us a call when it’s all established and running properly. Our time is valuable.
Thirdly, there’s the Bog Off factor. A lot of the new communications gadgetry just allows people to get in your face and on your nerves, by proxy. Frankly, you’ve got better things to do than accept their badgering to join their Friends on a web page and read all about them. If they have something to say to you, they should ring or write and engage you in two-way conversation - it’s rude to stand on your mountaintop sounding off about you with the world as your audience. And then there’s never being out of contact with your job - who dreamed up that nightmare, I wonder? Stop giving the world licence to annoy you. Be yourself in your own time. Switch off. Smell roses. Feed souls.
Then there’s CBE and CBA. Two things life teaches you, eventually: that you Can’t Be Everywhere, and that sometimes you just Can’t Be Arsed. It’s not up to you to keep up with the latest and greatest. Its up to Them to convince you that there is really something in it for you that makes the expense and effort worthwhile. Until then, you’ll bide your time and pick and choose, thanks very much. Especially if it irritates young knowalls. We oldies get a secret grin out of that.
Finally, at the time of life when your days are looking a little more finite, the last thing you want to do is spend your days looking at the world through a screen. While your legs and lungs are still working, get out there and be part of it. There’s be time enough to chain yourself to a screen when it’s your last remaining option.
That saying, I think I’ll go and pick some apples. You stay on the computer. At the end of the day, you’ll have sore eyes and ringing in the ears, and I’ll have apple pie.
Nana that.
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The news about Finn is truly sad, and I extend condolences to his loved ones.
It is usual to feel helpless and angry when we hear about such events, and frustrated that there is nothing we can do to help.
But there IS something that well people can do to help the sick, and do very effectively. They can volunteer for a medical support or lobby group.
I have been lobbying on behalf of a particular cancer charity for some years, and know how hard it is for those who are already carrying the burden of illness to add political or nurturing activity to their list of daily mountains to climb.
It's bloody hard to lobby for the action needed in your area when your membership, who have the most intimate knowledge of the issues, are not well enough to carry the stress of being an activist. I have watched committee members buckle under the strain, or worse, suffer a relapse. Sick people have a tendency to die off at a greater rate than you might expect to find on "normal" committees, too, which means the group may have difficulty completing tasks. People become difficult to replace on your working groups. It all seems too hard.
When the Health Ministry is involved, I have seen their staff insist on meetings being held on their own premises, regardless of how many physical difficulties the lobby/support group faces in accessing them. Meeting with MPs can be similarly challenging. Some flexibility on their part would help.
So what I am saying is: don't leave the sick to support each other. At a time when it seems our health system is more cracks than substance, those who have been afflicted by illness, whether physical or mental, need all the voluntary support from healthy people that we can muster. Thank you.
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I agree, Simon and Jackie.
Media need conflict in order to survive - or think they do, which amounts to the same thing. "All news good, country optimistic" doesn't sell.
The voting public wants nothing more than a change of scenery and someone new to fling invective at.
There doesn't have to be a real reason for a change of government. We're a small country where not a lot happens, and we have to make our own entertainment by shifting the furniture now and then.
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Jackie, I tried to persevere with Men in Trees (despite thinking Ann Heche could not carry a series) because it was so obviously drawing inspiration from (I didn't use the derivative word) my favourite old series Northern Exposure. But it soon proved several dozen IQ points lower than Northern Exposure, hardly using the creative potential of the setting at all. It's just another shallow, predictable US soap and might as well be filmed in LA sound stages.
I won't be seeing Campbell or Shorty, so long as they are running Antiques Roadshow on the Living Channel at 7pm. Mmmmm! Really interesting old stuff! Experts! Surprises! British snobbery! Huge wads of dosh! No New Zealand politicians!
What's not to love?