Posts by BenWilson
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"Modern warfare is much more civilised inasmuch that fewer soldiers are actually killed"
I'd make a minor correction. Modern warfare by superpowers against small nations are more civilised in that the superpowers have less soldiers killed. The other side's losses are of course much bigger now than they have ever been, especially civilians.
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Donna, I tend to agree. I thought it was just me, but Kiwiblog seems to have gone downhill. I don't think there are more idiots posting there than before, just less non-idiots.
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Cops are only wankers if you're not on their side. Mostly they're nice enough.
As a kid I was insulted by one for (you choose) a) not stopping quick enough to his confusing hand signals or b) being taller than him when I got out of the car.
In Ozzie I lost my leather jacket about 4 times on various drunken nights. Every time I got the jacket and everything in it back, bar one. That was the time someone handed it in to the police. The cop at the desk said 'yes, I do remember it had a camera in it when it arrived'. Never got the camera back, but on the bright side it had a totally proprietary non-standard cable, so it's utterly useless to whatever cop nicked it. They were politely apologetic.
The one time I needed them fast they turned up 4 hours later. Fortunately my assailants got the wind up just from me calling the cops. But when I saw a knife fight in the street they were there within 1 minute. Priorities.
Back in NZ a little punk on Trademe failed to return my bike jacket and helmet when I sold my hog. I filed a report with the cops. They made no progress, and I went in to update them on some further info on where the guy was. The copper was very pleased I was a computer guy because the cops IT department hadn't got his printer moved for 8 months that he'd been asking, and I did it for him in a few minutes. My jacket was personally delivered to me by the little punk most apologetically about 6 hours later...:-)
They're human, it's a hard job, there's temptation to abuse power and let your prejudices and shoulder-chips fly, but mostly they're pretty good.
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soz for double post....my first ever!
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"As we've opened our lives to some degree in the last few weeks, some people have told us what great parents we are, which I'm not sure is warranted: you just do what you have to, and the fact of the fundraiser has actually given us a useful boot up the bum."
I think a lot of people just don't do what they have to, when they have kids with special needs. My wife and I got similar praise recently from our physiotherapists for our son, and it was embarrassing because we remember all the times we've been slack and didn't rigorously use all the exercises suggested. But from they way they told it, getting parents to not just give up on kids who are hard is half of their battle. So many apparently do, and of course the child doesn't make the progress they could. And in our case the excellent support from others, friends, family and the health system have all made it that much easier.
So be proud.
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"As we've opened our lives to some degree in the last few weeks, some people have told us what great parents we are, which I'm not sure is warranted: you just do what you have to, and the fact of the fundraiser has actually given us a useful boot up the bum."
I think a lot of people just don't do what they have to, when they have kids with special needs. My wife and I got similar praise recently from our physiotherapists for our son, and it was embarrassing because we remember all the times we've been slack and didn't rigorously use all the exercises suggested. But from they way they told it, getting parents to not just give up on kids who are hard is half of their battle. So many apparently do, and of course the child doesn't make the progress they could. And in our case the excellent support from others, friends, family and the health system have all made it that much easier.
So be proud.
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Yes, any manifesto that's reached the 200 page mark can be formiddable hand weapon when rolled up. You should need a license to carry it.
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I'm usually suspicious of anyone bearing a manifesto. I like to pick and choose what I believe in.
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It's funny that so many people think God created man, when really the converse is true. God evolved too, probably starting off as an idealized version of particular humans, and then becoming more abstract and powerful as time passes. I wonder what the next phase is?
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Over the time period most creationists are talking, evolution probably hasn't changed any species very much, except in so far as quite a few have become extinct.
So if you buy into the world starting around 4004BC, the statement that creatures are now pretty much as God made them at the beginning of time (well actually 4 days later if you really buy into that), is pretty accurate. I imagine creationists mentally exclude selective breeding, or they'd have a great deal of trouble explaining the kiwifruit.
Obviously buying into the world only being 6000 years old is pretty unscientific, though. God must have been making a hell of an effort to hide the age of the universe when he buried all those dinosaur bones and put all those light photons in motion from anything more than 6000 light years away (such as most of our galaxy, and pretty much all of the rest of the known universe).
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