You might also wish to point out where I aired ” the well-worn cliche that cops are thugs who beat people up”.

I was referring to this comment:

The police brutally beat a young man who we now know to be disabled.

You may have known at the time that there was a good justification for saying that this event occurred, but you did not make reference to any sources, or the need to protect any sources by not naming them. So it read simply as a prejudicial comment. If it were a comment made without evidence, then it would align with other unsubstantiated comments regarding police brutally beating people.

But if you are such an expert

My experience is not as an expert.

I beg your pardon? Having an investigation is the same of an admission of guilt now?

To _pre_judge ("prejudice" if you like), is to make an assumption before having the facts. So looking for the facts after making the comment would be an admission to having pre-judged.

So you’re saying that he attacked the police and the police was unable to restrain him? Who’s wildly speculating now?

Russell's commented that he couldn't imagine an alternative, so I imagined one.

Just for clarity. I have no idea what happened to Arie. There is a comment in this stream where a person claiming to have knowledge has passed on an accusation that a police officer beat Arie. While this may be the truth, it is currently hearsay from an anonymous source. My comments were not a supposition about what may have occurred to Arie in police custody.

It may be true that Arie received the injuries described from a police officer, but looking for evidence to substantiate the claim after it has been made is as good as an admission of guilt.

I found it ironic that in an article about prejudice there was such a blatant and unsubstantiated claim, followed up by Russell's comment that he could think of no other explanation. On the one hand he is saying we should not jump to conclusions about people with autistic spectrum disorders, then on the other he follows the well-worn cliche that cops are thugs who beat people up.

Perhaps we are not all immune from prejudice after all.

My experience of people with autistic spectrum disorders is that if they are in a unusual situation, particularly where stress triggers are involved, it would not be at all surprising if the person or someone nearby who was unaccustomed to the behaviour received some injuries.

There are some very important questions about process and opportunity here. The waterfront is one of Auckland City's prime assets, and it is incredible that we are being forced into rubber stamping either a hastily thought out stadium, or sinking more money into Eden Park.

If we're finally allowed to get rid of the container port from the CBD (and please, please say that we are!), surely this is a once in a lifetime chance to reclaim the space for the public.

Lets take this chance to combine the tank farm and whatever wharves we can into a public space that provides a natural environment (eg. trees, grass, gentle hills, water access) to compliment the business district as it meets the water. Think Battery Park, Botanical Gardens, Mt Victoria etc.

I believe in the Greenhouse theory. I have carried out a certain amount of research into atmospheric forcings, and can see the correlation between an anthropogenic increase in CO2 and various measures of increasing temperature.

But I am not expert, so my major interaction with the theory is a relationship of trust with people who use methods I don't understand to tell me something that I must take as gospel truth.

From what I can tell, the experts are almost united in direction - that increasing CO2 will lead to increasing 'temperature', but are not at all united in outcome. What will have happened by 2100 if we don't curb our CO2 outputs? When will the ice caps melt? How will increasing cloud cover caused by increasing sea temperature effect the over-all gain? What happens if the Gulf Stream is disrupted? What major volcanic eruption will occur in this century, and how will they contribute? There are a multitude of plausible answers to these questions, but they are not yet scientific certainty in the sense that E=mc2, or that cyanide will kill you.

We don't know if Auckland's median temperature in summer 2100 will be 35degrees or 28, or whether the sea level will be 5 meters higher or 5cm. However there are compelling reasons to act on the basis of what we believe will happen. Action now is a matter of faith.

Faith is a mechanism by which you anticipate knowledge. It's never rational, but it's not always unreasonable.