Hard News: Emma Hart is a werewolf
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Thing I don't understand is why 92A is getting so much attention, while 81A barely gets a look in.
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Sorry that was poorly worded, i do understand why the prospect of having your internet connection cut without due process, but then again that happened to my mate last month because he forgot to pay his bill.
I'm just surprised it measures up so highly against the government telling you exactly what you can do in your own home, with the recordings you've paid cash for, or at least that this is seemingly a single issue battleground.
good on people all the same. respect(of the mana variety)
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Can I get an amen to that?
I'll go you one better --
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(finally made it home) Yes Emma is a werewolf, but then so was I ...
While we're talking about disability issues I had an eye-opening experience - I lived in Berkeley in the 80s during the start of their disability rights movement - I'm used to being driven off the footpath by people asserting their rights :-) - I broke my toe a few weeks ago and it had healed enough that I figured foo would be manageable - sadly somewhere along the way I stressed it and ended up with a really pronounced limp and a lot of pain - at foo most people ignored it, probably too polite to ask - but the trip home was really interesting, I found people in public avoiding me, giving me weird looks - as I said a real eye opener
Finally what bozo designs a toll road and doesn't put in toll booths - the stop and pay toll machines were broken much of the time (and not wheelchair accessible!) - anyone without a credit card or an internet connection (maybe half the country over 60?) has no other way to pay
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Same sort of bozo who designs any piece of pedestrian infrastructure in this day and age and assumes no one uses wheelchairs, prams, etc. Nic took a photo of the kerb with no cuts at the manual toll payment station. I'm sure he won't mind people checking it out.
Had the exact conversation about the credit card and internet with my mother who has neither and lives up that way. Luckliy she values the scenery on the free route.
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I found people in public avoiding me, giving me weird looks
You do realise that disability is contagious, right?
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Finally what bozo designs a toll road and doesn't put in toll booths - the stop and pay toll machines were broken much of the time (and not wheelchair accessible!) - anyone without a credit card or an internet connection (maybe half the country over 60?) has no other way to pay
The same bozos who set up an unsecured webpage for everyone to hand over their crediir card numbers on?
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I happened to be there at the time Nic arrived (grumbling because with my broken toe I didn't really want to have to get out of the car) - I particularly enjoyed him telling the people who had apparently been paid to push the buttons for all of us (because they don't have enough machines and people are so slow with touch panels that don't work very well) that he wasn't bloody well going to give them his pin number ....
BTW the issue wasn't just that the curb had no ramp but also that the machines are placed too high for people in chairs
I've traveled the NJ Turnpike many many times - I can't see how they could improve on winding your window down, throwing change in a basket and having a machine count it -
I'll go you one better --
My day is already brighter, thanks for that.
(although between brishop Williamson and Eluana Englaro, these days I feel ilke dousing the rag in kerosene, sticking it into a bottle and... you finish that seditious sentence for me.)
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the machines are placed too high for people in chairs
Because who knew that wheelchair users can do anything for themselves let alone drive on their own? Oh it brings out the cynic in me..
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I've traveled the NJ Turnpike many many times - I can't see how they could improve on winding your window down, throwing change in a basket and having a machine count it
Dunno about you, but I *heart* the high-speed EZ-Pass lanes you get in bits of Jersey.
Conversely, I hate hate hate change-only toll plazas, especially when driving alone. It's extraordinarily stressful to be driving along wondering how much you're going to have to hand over (they never seem to give you much advance warning) and whether there is going to be enough money in the change compartment to cover it. Perhaps it's different if you're doing the same route every day - but then SURELY you would have an EZ-Pass?
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Russell is going to be on National Radio later this morning, just before 12 I think, talking about the blackout copyright protest thingey.
And I can't believe that toll road - you mean drivers who use wheelchairs have to get out of their cars to pay, and then can't access the toll booth because of the kerbing? In 2009 New Zealand!
And there are no big signs at the beginning of the road warning about this - or perhaps red wheechair forbidden signs?
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What a hassle. If only there was a way to conveniently deduct money straight from one's paycheck to pay for roads and other infrastructure needs. Providers of multiple infrastructure services could then pool this "Prepaid Automatic Yearly Expenses" money, and then fund maintenance or extension of services as required.
I think this is a winner, as long as the Government doesn't adopt the idea and start pinching our money to pay for collective needs. That would really be through the looking glass.
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You do realise that disability is contagious, right?
I suspect it's more the weird human quirk where you're trying so hard not to be offensive or insensitive, you've quite offensively and insensitively made another human being feel like shit. And another paving stone on the Road to Hell gets lobbed through a window...
(although between brishop Williamson and Eluana Englaro, these days I feel ilke dousing the rag in kerosene, sticking it into a bottle and... you finish that seditious sentence for me.)
Well, I find myself meditating on how very very intelligent people (and Joseph Ratzinger is a formidably scholarly and erudite man) can still be stupid beyond the comprehension of this bear of little brain.
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In terms of what people in IT can do as a protest, is not possible to refuse to do IP address lookups to ID people? or to 'break' that system so nobody else can? Obviously you would want to check the details of your employment contract first, perhaps couch it as a work to rule?
Having been employed under the terms of several contracts for jobs that related to looking up IP addresses against login databases, I can safely say that many IT workers in NZ have a clause that states, roughly, "and perform any other such request as may be reasonable and legal in the circumstances." So "work to rule" won't fix it, because "rule" includes doing IP lookups.
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Giovanni,
I'm assuming you're one referring to Berlusconi's attempts to rush through legislation:
The Senate interrupted the debate and observed a minute’s silence as a mark of respect. After the silence came recriminations. “She didn’t die. She was killed,” Gaetano Quagliarello, a centre-right senator, shouted, while others screamed “murderers, murderers” towards the Opposition benches.
Mr Berlusconi’s law would make it illegal for carers of people “unable to take care of themselves” to suspend artificial feeding. Euthanasia is illegal in Italy but refusing treatment is not.
The Prime Minister expressed “deep pain and regret” that he had failed to save Ms Englaro’s life but government officials vowed to push the Bill through. “I hope the Senate can proceed on the established calendar so that this sacrifice wasn’t completely in vain,” Maurizio Sacconi, the Health Minister, told legislators minutes after she died.
"“She didn’t die. She was killed,” Gaetano Quagliarello, a centre-right senator, shouted"... all class.
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"“She didn’t die. She was killed,” Gaetano Quagliarello, a centre-right senator, shouted"... all class.
That was almost the classiest thing said about it over the last few months. This was another Terry Schiavo case, in some respects more upsetting in fact. And it had the Pope in it and all, so I'm surprised it didn't make more international noise. I was toying with the idea of asking Russell for a guest spot to talk about it, although it'd probably better wait until my disgust has subsided a little.
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"“She didn’t die. She was killed,” Gaetano Quagliarello, a centre-right senator, shouted"... all class.
Well, I find it rather ironic (and ever so slightly confused) that in the minds of people like Quagliarello, it is God's will and respecting "human dignity" that people like Eluana Englaro be forced to endure painful, humiliating interventions like having plastic feeding tubes jammed down their throats. If it is God's will that Eluana Englaro continue to live, isn't it totally immaterial whether she was on artificial life support or not.
In fact, I find it rather ironic that the Catholic Church is so determined to make sure people like Ms. Englaro is kept "alive" by the most unnatural means imaginable. Isn't that arrogant human presumption, that the Vatican and the Italian legislature knows better than God himself when -- and how -- human lives come to an end?
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"Isn't that arrogant human presumption, that the Vatican and the Italian legislature knows better than God himself when -- and how -- human lives come to an end?"
It's hypocritcal of them, for sure. And I'm starting to worry that, if we get legislation like that propossed by Berlusconi, human life won't come to an end, in these circumstances. Technology allows us to keep people alive when once it wouldn't have been possible. I'm all for medical advancement and curing diseases etc, but I would have thought maintaining a life artificially was meant as a temporary measure, to give the body the chance "regroup" and see if it can show it will recover; not to keep someone in a coma for 17 years, and their family in emotional pergatory for just as long.
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On the other hand, and getting back to disability, how disabled are you allowed to be and still live, and who decides?
Many in the disability community have not forgotten that disabled people were murdered in Nazi Germany in great numbers because they were seen as less than human. -
On the other hand, and getting back to disability, how disabled are you allowed to be and still live, and who decides?
Could you be a little more specific? You're not suggesting in any way that Eluana Englaro could have been regarded as disabled, are you?
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Giovanni - I'm not suggesting that, but it is a thin edge of the wedge thing. There are a whole lot of ethical and philosophcal issues about what is quality of life and who decides when someone else (for whatever reason) doesn't have quality of life. It is relevant to disability because for hundreds of years disabled people have had other people make judgements about their quality of life, without consulting them.
So on these sorts of issues - like this case - we need to be aware that our own values and perspectives are our own and not universal. What seems straightforward to us, may actually have negative implications and repercussions for others.
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here are a whole lot of ethical and philosophcal issues about what is quality of life and who decides when someone else (for whatever reason) doesn't have quality of life. It is relevant to disability because for hundreds of years disabled people have had other people make judgements about their quality of life, without consulting them.
This can become a vexed issue when someone's disability precludes their making such decisions for themselves. The concept of promulgating the rights of the disabled is laudable, but failing to take into account the special needs of the intellectually disabled has had some rather adverse consequences in NZ in recent years.
Over the recent silly season there have been a few 'stupid crim' stories in the media. I'd suggest that this is at least part way symptomatic of people failing to get the help and support they need, which leads to their becoming part of an inept criminal underclass.
I'm a little uncomfortable with the notion that all disabilities somehow represent a single special interest group. Supporting the rights of the intellectually disabled without supplementing their often inherent lack of life skills seems dangerously akin to 1980s Thatcherism, with its implication that the implementation of free market policies would somehow raise the general IQ of the populace.
. . . we need to be aware that our own values and perspectives are our own and not universal. What seems straightforward to us, may actually have negative implications and repercussions for others.t
Agreed.
And your wise men don't know how it feels
To be thick
As a brick. -
disabled. I hate that word. I HATE it.
Christopher, please, what word do I use instead? Not being snarky just a pure honest question because damned if I can find a word that describes er you know ... that hasn't been made derogatory. I end up with that word because it feels accurate without being as derogatory as some others.
Granted if I'm describing deafness then deaf is just fine. But what if I'm referring to one of several possibilities?
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And why won't my gravatar change? :(
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