Posts by Kyle Matthews
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I'd heard second-hand that Jewish religious law had a section on how often men were required to satisfy their wives, based on their occupation. I thought it might be amusing to post here, so I went googling for it, and that was the best hit I found.
An aquaintance published in the Otago University Students Association 'sex magazine', a list of those 'rules' that flick around the internet about muslims and sex. It had rules supposedly from the Koran or something about beastiality and so forth.
It was only after the complaints started to come in she realised that the information wasn't just 'dated rules that were ignored', but 'never existed rules people had made up as a joke'. She had to make a major public apology and was disliked by the quite strong muslim community here for the rest of her year on the executive.
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Also fun has been the NFL play-offs where the Buzzsaw that is the Arizona Cardinals have cut their way through a number of teams who really should've beaten them and are now in the Superbowl.
Apparently their punt kicker is the first Australian to make it to the superbowl final (ex-AFL star).
At least the Steelers have given Pittsburgh something to cheer about. The Pittsburgh Penguins have become pretty average after going all the way to game 6 of the Stanley Cup Finals last year. Sadly they're still playing better than my Anaheim Ducks.
Luckily, the only team playing worse than my ducks at the moment are Giovanni's Ottawa Senators, who lost 7 out of 8 games on a recent road trip while the World Juniors were in their home stadium.
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I like this photo.
It needs a caption along the lines of "So long. Thanks for coming. Don't come back."
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And George Mitchell, US Special Envoy to Nothern Ireland for the last 13 years, and an active participant in the peace process there, has been named Obama's Middle East envoy.
That has to come in as one of the most difficult jobs in the world right now.
Hope he's getting well paid.
Agreed Craig. TDS breathed oxygen from the absurdities of the Bush years. Is Jon Stewart going to spend the next 4 years doing skits on writer's block?
John Stewart has been doing the daily show for 10 years now - as of last week I think.
It wouldn't surprise me if he does a couple more years, maybe a term, and then lets it go after 2012.
He is absolutely at the height of his powers however. C4 should have moved it to prime time some time last year.
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luncheon sausage
I've lived in Dunedin since 1993, and it was only this year (from my girlfriend, who has lived here since the 60s) that I heard of this alternative.
Certainly, some of these regional differences are stronger than others.
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Should Presidential libraries include archived versions of their administration's webpages or some version of them? Or do they do that already?
I was reading a wired story about the difficulty of the Obama administration continuing the success that the Obama Campaign and Obama Transitition has had online (The Wired Presidency: Can Obama Really Reboot the White House?).
It listed one of the reasons that it's difficult to do once you're in the white house is that every version of a web page needs to be archived, and if you change something, you need to archive it again.
So yes, they do archive it somewhere under the Presidential Records Act (not surprisingly, a post-Nixon piece of legislation).
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I still am not sure he's quite worked out just what the rest of the world is so pissed off about and how far back this goes.
The alternative explanations are:
He's not talking to the rest of the world, he's talking to America, and just aware that the rest of the world is watching.
He disagrees. As would most Americans. Some things are going to change, others won't. That's OK with me, it'll be a hell of a lot better. -
I would buy that in some cases, but often wonder why violent people are able to control themselves in a public place or when they're surrounded by other, equally physically strong people - yet somehow can't manage to control themselves at home.
Yes true. As B. Jones points out, it's not an answer for everyone, just for many.
But I also suspect some of the people that you're talking about still don't have the ability to redirect their issues, they just bottle it up and it comes out later - 'at home', 'after a few drinks' etc.
I don't know how you make them care, either. Is there such a thing as empathy training?
I know that a lot of non-violence courses try and do this. They have perpetrators talk about what their victims might feel, sometimes they look at victim impact statements that sort of stuff. They watch documentaries from the point of view of victims. Not perfect, but I know they have some success.
Teh Wimminz, with their sneaky mind-fu! They will manipulate you into acting crazy with their feminine wiles! You are a simple-minded male, and you cannot handle their trickery!
This is just double trickery! You're releasing your plans in a mocking type way to us, and now we don't know if you're being honest or just kidding. Mess with our minds you do!
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Any man who is so goaded is an idiot.
I don't believe that's useful.
A lot of the reason that violence happens is that people don't have the skills and experience to redirect anger, frustration, hurt etc, into non-violent channels. They've learnt that violence is a method for dealing with these issues, they've quite possibly grown up in a household where that's how it was dealt with.
If we want to reduce violence in our community, labelling and rejecting people isn't going to do it.
Yes, people need to take responsibility for their actions and front up to improve. But society needs to recognise it for what it is - something that we need to work as hard as possible to fix. If for no other reason, that if we put someone on a different path, they're less likely to hurt others.
Stephen no doubt at some stage when he was growing up learnt not to bite when his sister goaded him. Sadly, a lot of people haven't learnt that skill at any time.
Putting a tag on someone who is violent is the first step to putting them in the 'too hard' basket. Society needs to be smarter than that.
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Dumbass A reporting for duty: how is being a wife incompatible with being a writer?
I'm not sure asking for clarification is going to clarify anything, sadly. Some of the words will come out in a different order, while not making much more sense.