Posts by Emma Hart
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things are rather too quiet around these parts
Today I was going to write this, but someone already did.
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So what are the autographed copies selling for now?
First person to "persuade" Peter Dunne to sign a copy may well find themselves very well rewarded financially. And covered in kudos, but that's okay, it comes off in the shower.
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Business report James Weir writes with a straight face in the Dominion Post of 26 December:
So would it freak anyone out if I swore truth Dr Bollard did at one point buy up all of Arty Bees' stock of the RBA?
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a strange old book called The Coral Island by RM Ballantyne which was first published in 1857 and details the adventures of three boys who are shipwrecked on a Polynesian island
From the age of about... eight? my daughter has read this book several times a year. It's the copy my brothers had when they were kids. She also loves her grandfather's battered old copy of The Fox and the Hound.
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A gay man is a man who has sex with other men.
No. Here's my personal bottom line: nobody gets to define anybody else's sexuality for them. Nobody. A "closeted" gay man is someone like Gareth Thomas who knows he's gay, who internally identifies as gay, but doesn't admit it to other people - whether or not he's had sex with another man. Somebody who's had sex with men but considers himself heterosexual? You don't get to tell that person he's gay. There can be all kinds of reasons for that and denial is just one of them.
Over-sensitive? Sure. But I also do know what it's like to have someone very helpfully tell you what your sexuality actually is, if you could just get it 'straight' in your head.
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part of the argument here is that rugby discourages participation by gay men
Sorry, I meant as a rate in the general population, an equivalent of that '1.5%'. It's still really too early for me to be properly coherent, and I can see it doesn't read that way.
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Okay, here's my problem. Look at the survey the 1.5% comes from. Yes, I think it's inaccurate because of the way the survey was done - but on the low side, not the high side.
But your 1.5% is the rate of out gay men. It tells you how likely there is to have been an out gay All Black, assuming no bias in rugby. It tells you nothing about the chances of there having been a closeted gay All Black. And as Richard said, there's simply no way to get a number for that.*
Also, what's the basis for not including bisexual men? Which I guess is another way of saying, what are you trying to say here? Because surely the same things about prejudice and role-modelling apply. (Also, I did see it, and my stereotype will tell you 'can't get no love' is so not our problem.)
*Unless you could get good figures for the incidence of the genetic and environmental conditions that produce teh gayz.
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Can anyone here tell me anything about Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book?
Ask, receive, etc. And the comment of Craig's that follows. My daughter is 12 but could easily have coped with it at 10. But she does have a taste for the weird and the dark. She loved Coraline.
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@Islander - no I don't have Where's my Cow? yet - it hasn't appeared on the bookshelves at Arty Bee's as yet - I'm sure it will pop up at some point though.
Ask Matt nicely, they're very obliging. And massive Pratchett fans.
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I would say that any young gay man coming through the ranks of provincial and professional rugby to get to the All Blacks would have to get through some intense bigotry to get there and remain there.
Which is probably why this exists. Maybe we can get some coverage of the Bingham Cup next year - named after the gay rugby player who died storming the cockpit on UA Flight 93.