Posts by Tom Beard
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
The very concept of soccer mom (or nascar dad, or whatever) is patronising
Of course, just like any catch-all marketing segmentation, lifestyle generalisation or class-based insult (hippies, yuppies, Chardonnay socialists, chavs, bogans, douchebags, "mainstream New Zealand"). Sometimes it would be lazy borrowing, but other times it does strike a chord.
It wouldn't work in the UK, of course, because "soccer" is the dominant (and working class) sport. But the evocation - of middle-class suburbia, dropping off the little tykes in the SUV to play their nice safe sport (that the parents would never watch on TV) before taking in a spot of shopping at the megamall - means that it does have some resonance here. It's an American term, but when it's used here it's being applied to a lifestyle that is almost as much an American borrowing. I don't think I've actually used it myself (except in reference to American culture), but I know what people mean when they say it.
Round our way the preferred term is yummy mummy. But a chunk of that demographic have seceded to become desperate housewives.
I'm sure that most soccer mums would style themselves as "yummy mummies", though (at the risk of lowering this thread even further into bathos and patronisation) "yummy mummies" are so not MILFs. Desperate housewives, on the other hand...
-
Since when has "soccer mum" been a part of our vernacular?
Oh, for at least as long as "MILF" has :-)
-
Oh, and BTW, does anyone else think that today's DomPost headline was seriously misleading? "Napalm blast", indeed! Anyone seeing that would be justifying in thinking that the stuff had actually been used on someone, rather than (allegedly) used in an exercise. To make matters worse, the accompanying map uses little explosion icons for each of the locations where the police acted, which would seem to imply a whole lot of "blasts" up and down the country. I supposed they'll argue they were just stars, but I'm sure they know what they're doing.
-
Here are the relevant sections anyway
Thanks, David. That's a fairly labyrinthine piece of legislation, but it seems that the only definition of terrorism that doesn't involve the risk of death or bodily harm to human beings is "introduction or release of a disease-bearing organism, if likely to devastate the national economy of a country."
So, releasing foot & mouth would count, and rightly so, since the resulting impact on our economy could indeed be seen as "devastating" to so many ordinary people that even if no-one actually starves to death, people would be justifiably terrified. Shaving a few percentage points off an SOE's profits is not in the same league.
-
This is because SHVC is prepared to disrupt the economic activity of an SOE. From my limited knowledge I believe that economic disruption of the Nations interests does qualify. Someone correct me please.
According to whose definition? I vaguely recall some such wording being used in some sort of dodgy legislation, but I'd have though that the common definition of terrorism requires actual acts of violence against civilians, with the express aim of spreading terror through the general populace. Damage to property or "economic disruption" wouldn't count per se: illegal, sure, but hardly "terrorism".
I may have missed something, but AFAIK the most extreme things that SHVC did was to damage or tie themselves to some rails. If that had been done in such a way that there was a danger of causing a derailment and potential harm to human beings, then that could be construed as terrorism. But (and my memory is a bit hazy on this), I though that any damage they did was made known to the train drivers, and while it disrupted the coal it didn't endanger anyone.
-
Duck tastes like lizard .. yuck.
Really? Can you recommend anywhere that serves a good lizard leg confit? :-)
-
Isn't "peace activist" a bit of an oxymoron?
Of course not, unless you define "activism" so that it requires non-peaceful action. Activism can just mean "intentional action to bring about social or political change", so strictly speaking, anyone who writes a letter to the editor or makes a submission could be an activist. I've heard people describe me as an "urban activist", just for blogging about transport and urban design, and I wouldn't shrink from the label.
Surely you need to be actively at war in order to aggitate for peace?
No, on several grounds.
First, who's the "you" who needs to be at war? NZ may not be actively at war (though some peace activists would disagree over Afghanistan etc), but plenty of the world is, including some of our allies and "friends".
Secondly, surely you can take part in activism to try to stop a potential war, even if you're not engaged in one yet?
Third, to many such activists, there is a war going on: a constant global war of oppression against indigenous people, women, the working classes etc. That's not a view to which I'd wholeheartedly subscribe, but it does exist.
Finally, I think you're confusing "peace activist" with "pacifist". Many activists would subscribe to the maxim "No peace without justice", and would believe that armed struggled against oppressive regimes is a necessary evil in the struggle for eventual global peace. That's a position that's easily abused, not just by "freedom fighters" but by nation states arguing for so-called "just wars" (cue jokes about "f*cking for virginity"), but again, it is not an unheard-of political position.
-
As an etymological aside I notice some people using the word 'hippie' as a derogatory term. Could someone please explain why this is so? I don't understand.
Ha! I was just going to post this:
I'm surprised no-one's suggested the obvious conspiracy theory: Kerry P gets re-elected, and immediately thinks "Right, time to teach those dirty hippies a lesson: it's the last time they'll try to stop one of my roads".
Though these activists sometimes get referred to as "hippies", I think they're more anarcho-vegan punks than "whooa, bad karma man!" hippie stereotypes. And perhaps the Young Ones is where the derogatory use arose.
-
BTW, does anyone see any irony or sick humour in the fact that the TV3 video of this police raid on a house strongly associated with resistance to the bypass was bookended by ads for an SUV?
-
That's definitely 128 Abel Smith St, not the Aro Valley Community Centre (it's a couple of streets away). Some of the anarchists and other activists associated with it are definitely at the extreme end of the spectrum, and while I agreed with them on some of their campaigns, they could get a little scary at times.
I wouldn't have expected actual firearms and stuff, but then again, maybe they decided to get serious with some non-vegans...