Posts by linger
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Hard News: Psychedelic Therapy: an…, in reply to ,
the form was mainly in Hindi but with the odd english word
Language use in India always deserves a footnote! The language spoken in the station office was most likely Hindustani, a colloquial dialect of Northern India used as a lingua franca throughout the Indian rail system, and also used in Bollywood film dialogue. Hindustani is related to the standard varieties of both Hindi and Urdu: the three names were historically used interchangeably, and “Hindustani” has (less often) been used as a cover term for the entire Hindi-to-Urdu dialect chain. Hence the forms written in Hindi. (Though it’s also true that Modi has promoted Hindi as the preferred standard over all other languages throughout the past decade, so it’s possible even the spoken variety has been shifting more towards Hindi.)
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Aside from academic research, one other sort of exception where access would be beneficial would be for the purpose of informing security of potential targets.
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Speaker: An attempt at demystifying Sharia, in reply to andin,
Just as god sitting, as he apparently does, up there above us looking down wouldnt be offended
Exactly. My interpretation of Arafat's use of the story was: (i) women's hair is not intrinsically offensive (and the Prophet is explicit about that); therefore (ii) the law is instead about minimizing reactions of less perfectly holy men (something that obvs. isn't in play concerning the Prophet).
Making that explicit was never going to be an acceptable answer for the questioner, though — because why should the law act primarily to restrict the actions of potential victims? -
Faced with something unimaginably horrific and outside our immediate control, it's a very human response to attempt to control something, ANYTHING, in our surroundings, regardless of its level of impact or relevance. Hence we reliably get arguments about names, tone policing, nitpicking over intended/received meanings of phrases. I'm not saying it's unproductive (symbols do have some relevance, how we conceive of a concerted future together is important) ... but sometimes you have to ask, is it actually worth expending so much effort on the symbol rather than the substance? Rather than, say, trusting that others are genuinely empathetic, genuinely trying to communicate in good faith, and being willing to overlook perceived missteps?
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Hard News: These things we must now change, in reply to Dennis Frank,
Political consensus could only ever derive from agreement about which behaviour is racist.
Possibly misses the point that "hate speech" is broader than "racism", and that it is "hatefulness" that should be called out?
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Hard News: The korero we've been waiting…, in reply to andin,
And yet we regard "crusading journalism" — directed by a moral compass — as a good thing.
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Hard News: The korero we've been waiting…, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
The Crusaders' response is indeed a little disingenuous given that the names of sports teams are often very deliberately chosen to connote martial spirit (Warriors, Saracens [who you'd think would have the same issue, plus cultural appropriation]), danger (Hurricanes) or predatory attackers (Lions, Sharks, Makos…). Such name choices are transparently a branding exercise about being seen as a viable threat to competitors. Though it's understandable the Crusaders management wouldn't want to own up to that intent at the moment.
If the Crusaders do want to change their name but stay in the same semantic field, they do have other entirely nonviolent options. Canterbury Pilgrims, for example.
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Measured response from the Crusaders (as reported by DomPost 18/3/19: p2):
For us, the Crusaders name is a reflection of the crusading spirit of the community. What we stand for is the opposite of what happened in Christchurch on Friday; our crusade is one for peace, unity, inclusiveness and community spirit. In our view, this is a conversation that we should have and we are taking on board all of the feedback that we are receiving. However, we also believe that the time is not right now.
N.B. — similarly to crusade , jihad is not exclusively or primarily intended to refer to a violent struggle. In both cases, I don’t think we should allow our perceptions of meaning to be distorted by those who do apply such terms as metaphors for violence.
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N.B. it may be worth revisiting an earlier thread outlining a rather different proposal to get younger voters more involved.
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when the law says you have sufficient cognitive abilities
To clarify: that’s choosing an age criterion typically associated with a developmental stage allowing sufficient cognitive abilities.
It is NOT proposed that cognitive ability be a criterion applied to individuals: that would lead towards state-mandated cognitive testing to decide when dementia should remove voting rights, which is probably not the intended outcome.
(Though some young British voters would support it right now!)Agreeing with Stephen Day: age is an unreliable proxy for voting ability — but a direct test of voting ability would be extremely problematic.