Posts by Tim McKenzie
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@andin: Fair enough, I only quoted Paul's own account of his woes. What about the accounts in Acts? There's the stoning (along with a prior attempted stoning), a beating with rods, and a violent mob arrest, for example. The stoning is particularly interesting, because it comes just after Paul was trying to convince the townsfolk not to worship him as the Greek God Hermes.
Is the account in Acts one-sided? Well, in Paul's first appearance in Acts (where he's called Saul), at the end of chapter 7 and the start of chapter 8, he's approving of the stoning of Stephen, without even having to get his hands dirty.
I find it difficult to believe that Paul would have left his powerful position as a Pharisee (a former student of the well-respected Gamaliel), persecuting the church, just so that he could attempt to make a "fast buck" by being persecuted himself as a member of the new unpopular movement. Unless, of course, he was doing it because he believed it, not because he was after a "fast buck".
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@andin: Did you read the quote?
5 x 39 lashes +
3 x beaten with rods +
1 x stoned (with real stones)
doesn't sound anything like a "fast buck" to me. -
the other was from from another letter by a notorious bullshitter and fast buck artiste who claimed to have seen Jesus in a vision years after he was dead.
Five different times the Jewish leaders gave me thirty-nine lashes. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked. Once I spent a whole night and a day adrift at sea. I have traveled on many long journeys. I have faced danger from rivers and from robbers. I have faced danger from my own people, the Jews, as well as from the Gentiles. I have faced danger in the cities, in the deserts, and on the seas. And I have faced danger from men who claim to be believers but are not. I have worked hard and long, enduring many sleepless nights. I have been hungry and thirsty and have often gone without food. I have shivered in the cold, without enough clothing to keep me warm.
(NLT)
Fast buck?Nothing from Christ himself; of course, US 'Christians' don't have much use for that Commie faggy peacenik stuff he used to spout.
Don’t imagine that I came to bring peace to the earth! I came not to bring peace, but a sword.
‘I have come to set a man against his father,
a daughter against her mother,
and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.
Your enemies will be right in your own household!’(NLT)
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Weren't those new testament quotes?
Indeed, but following the links to the slideshow, there are some quotes from the Hebrew scriptures, like Psalm 139:9--10. But wait, what would be wrong with quoting Psalms in a Muslim context?
The quotation of Ephesians 6 leaves out some important context:
For we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places.
Therefore, put on every piece of God’s armor so you will be able to resist the enemy in the time of evil. Then after the battle you will still be standing firm. Stand your ground, putting on the belt of truth and the body armor of God’s righteousness. For shoes, put on the peace that comes from the Good News so that you will be fully prepared. In addition to all of these, hold up the shield of faith to stop the fiery arrows of the devil. Put on salvation as your helmet, and take the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.The quotation of 1 Peter might also seem different if different amounts of context were included:
It is God’s will that your honorable lives should silence those ignorant people who make foolish accusations against you. For you are free, yet you are God’s slaves, so don’t use your freedom as an excuse to do evil.
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Don't fluorescent bulbs badly affect some autism spectrum people? I'm sure someone else here (e.g., Russell) knows more about this than I do, but that was the first thing I thought of when I heard the idea of banning incandescent bulbs. I think I was in Canada at the time, studying maths. There was a guy in my building there who left the (fluorescent) lights off in his (windowless) office, and worked by the light of a lamp on his desk.
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I was at a talk in Wellington the other night - with members of the library community, for the most part - and at one point they all rose in unison to voice their disgust at 92C. It was taken as read that everybody would know why, I still haven't looked it up. Could somebody, er, give me the gist of it?
You can read all 250-odd words here, but as I understand it, the gist of it is this:
Suppose, (somewhat) hypothetically, that BrokenSea Audio puts up some adaptations of the Conan the Barbarian stories, whose copyright has expired in New Zealand. Then suppose (somewhat more hypothetically) that Conan Properties International tells BrokenSea's webhost that they're storing material that infringes CPI's copyrights. Then the webhost will remove access to that material (and possibly also remove access to all of BrokenSea's website, just to make sure they didn't miss anything). If the webhost fails to remove access to the material, then they risk being taken to court by CPI for copyright infringement. On the other hand, if they do remove access promptly, then Section 92C means they didn't infringe copyright by storing that material, even if it was there for a long time before CPI claimed that it infringed their copyrights.
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OK, then, what about section 92C? That section rewards ISPs for removing access to material as soon as that ISP "has reason to believe that the material infringes copyright". And,
A court, in determining whether ... an Internet service provider knows or has reason to believe that material infringes copyright in a work, must take account of ... whether the Internet service provider has received a notice of infringement
Would you agree that in this case, punishment is likely to happen upon accusation? So is this "guilt by accusation", or are we punishing the not-guilty?
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Graeme, I'd be interested in your opinion on this:
However, the Act implies Parliament’s acquiescence to a “guilt by accusation” method of copyright enforcement through an avenue that avoids the stringent evidentiary requirements of the courts.
That's from NZLawyer.
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But it does not require – or even permit – guilt by mere accusation.
This may be legally true, (and hearing it from two lawyers inclines me to believe that it is legally true), but in practice I don't believe that it was necessarily going to be the case. If, under this law, my ISP had received a letter from RIANZ saying that they'd seen my IP address highly active in transmitting illegal copies of "their" music via BitTorrent, they would have had two choices:
1) cut me off, risking legal action from me trying to prove that it was unreasonable to cut me off merely on the basis of RIANZ's claims about its logs of activity on certain torrents, or
2) decline to cut me off, risking legal action from RIANZ trying to prove that it was unreasonable to require a higher standard of evidence.
The ISP would have known that RIANZ is much more likely to start legal action than I am, so in practice, I suspect that the ISP would have been much more likely to err in favour of RIANZ, if we hadn't made all this fuss, anyway.I've read little bits of the TCF draft code, and I've read a little about it, too. It sounds like a "pre-approved copyright holder" can make an accusation by writing a notice claiming they've used an approved detection method to discover copyright infringement. (The details of what constitutes an appropriate detection method are conspicuously absent.) So maybe the accused can have "innocence by denial", but under this system, aren't they still "guilty by accusation" if they fail to respond to infringement notices? There's no requirement that a grand jury has to approve accusations first.
And of course, there are other issues with the law. For example: why is copyright infringement ever appropriate justification for depriving someone of access to cheap free-expression technologies, depriving them of access to certain free markets, and even depriving them of easy access to the laws that govern them? And why should "ISP"s be required to know who their users are in order to be able to cut them off? Because of the over-broad definition of "Internet service provider" in the law, anyone who lets people in Burma anonymously route internet traffic through their computer is an "ISP", and therefore has to have a policy for cutting off the anonymous Burmese people's ability to speak up against their government, if those people repeatedly infringe New Zealand copyright law.
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In which case the result wouldn't change.
First, I'm not the only voter in my electorate. Second, having that option on the ballot paper means that we can be more sure that the eventual winner has the confidence of a majority of voters; in a democracy, this is a good thing. Third, it might have changed the result in Tauranga last time; I admit, this is wild speculation, but it's a possibility.
The point of putting options on the ballot paper is that possibly they could result in something different and/or useful.
There's another conversation going on in this thread about safeguards against the unlikely event of getting a rogue government. A No Confidence option would be a safeguard against all the existing parties in parliament putting really evil candidates in your electorate. A non-incumbent independent is very unlikely to win under FPP (which we have in electorates), mainly because of self-fulfilling prophecies (like this one :) ). Condorcet elections would provide a similar safeguard, by making it very unlikely that voting honestly for your most preferred candidate will increase the liklihood that your least preferred candidate will win. A Condorcet election with a No Confidence option could guarantee that no-one wins an electorate without the confidence of at least half of the voters. In any case, it's better to introduce such a safeguard before we get a completely corrupt government, because it'll be harder afterwards.
The two options from having no confidence on the paper are the same MP or no MP, which is a terrible result.
Depending on who the MP was, it might be a better result. And if the voters prefer that result, then who are you to disagree? Why do you want to deny them the option of disagreeing with you on that question?
This is a party that got over 40% of the vote, there obviously was a fair bit of confidence in them.
Why? How do you know it wasn't fear of a Communist government that made people vote that way? Even if there was genuine confidence in that case, how do you know that fear of one party would never cause people to elect an utterly evil government? A No Confidence option can't completely eliminate this possibility, but I think it would help. And would it really be that bad if our votes were made more expressive? With a No Confidence option on the ballot paper, a vote for a candidate then expresses "This is my preferred candidate, and I genuinely have confidence in them; I'm not merely more fearful of their opponents."
I've just run an election in which some of the candidates weren't qualified to stand up at the podium, let alone do the job, and all of them were elected over the no confidence option by a mile.
Obviously the voters disagreed with you in that case.
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