Posts by Lucy Stewart
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Yeah that's the one. Given that she's taken 16 seconds off her PB in a year, that last two seconds to the world record probably isn't too unlikely in the next five years.
I hadn't seen that before, and it is interesting. Still don't think it's an issue until/unless that happens.
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"it's unfortunate for women because hermaphrodites have a huge advantage".
I ask again - if Semenya has this huge and insurmountable advantage that means she is ineligible to compete with women, how come her times are squarely in the middle of the range of the top female times for the past thirty years? She's very good; she's not breaking world records.
I also think that regardless of the technical terminology, it's actually pretty horrible to say she's not a woman. She self-identifies as a woman and clearly has believed herself to be fully biologically female all her life, although this may not be the case. Her biological sex may be up for debate, but her gender isn't.
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Several times I've been utterly bewildered by running into someone I knew at school and having them greet me with what seems like genuine enthusiasm when all I can think about is how thoroughly unpleasant they were to me at a time when it might have mattered to me.
One of the most socially reprehensible but sweetest moments of my life was when I stopped by the seventh-form prizegiving of some friends at a school I'd gone to for intermediate (they'd stayed for college, I hadn't) and they re-introduced me to a girl who had given me a very hard time during those intermediate years. They'd evidently forgotten.
"You remember X," they said, "she was in our class."
"Oh, hi, yes," I said. "You used to bully me a lot."
She gaped, my friends were suddenly very uncomfortable, and they gave it to me later for being rude to her but boy, was it worth it.
(In my defence, that was literally the only thing I remembered about her.)
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“As far as I am concerned, this is not civics education - it gives the appearance of creating a cult of personality. This is something you’d expect to see in North Korea or in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq,” Russell said.
They also conveniently forget a speech Reagan gave to schoolkids which basically consisted of Ten Reasons My Government Is The Best Government Ever. Because that was just, um, truth in advertising. Apparently.
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This is just one story, but one that really struck me.
I thought the US healthcare system couldn't depress me any more, and yet.
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I think 5% is too high, I'd be happy for it to drop, but not below 2.5%. That would give three MPs, maybe four.
Which strikes me as a good number because it basically rules out, in very tight votes, one MP - representing 0.8% of the population - being the difference between a bill passing and failing. Maybe it's academic, but I'd be much happier with a group of three or four being that difference. (Which doesn't matter at all for conscience votes, but in the general scheme of things.)
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If 120,000 people want a party represented in Parliament, they get it, but if 115,000 voters want a different party they're extremists?
And therein lies the problem with any line in the sand.
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Sartorial comment: NZers, as a rule, do not regularly wear khaki chinos, jorts, or jirts. Therefore, we are made of win.
I don't know what any of those are and I'm not sure I want to.
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The large number of 1-2% parties can all put through their favoured policies, often despite popular objection.
So maybe we could try around 3-4%? Enough to knock out the crazies, but would have got rid of, e.g., the NZ First/ACT imbalance last election.
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And I thought I was badly dressed because I just didn't give a twopenny fuck.
Perhaps related to the repeated complaints by leaving French ambassadors about how boring and badly-dressed New Zealand women are.
(That'd be an interesting national motto, wouldn't it? "New Zealand: We Know How To Look Good, We Just Don't Give A Fuck".)