Posts by Paul Campbell
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
yes - definitely teachable - you get to talk about when to use quote marks, how to reference things you're using, how much you can get away with quoting without pissing off the teacher because you didn't actually write something (a few lines, they have to be relevant and as a rule you have to write something about them that's longer than what you quoted)
-
First time I caught one of my kids plagiarising in an essay it was so obvious - definitely not his 10 yr old english .... right in front of him I cut out a chunk, pasted it into google, and up popped the source .... right away I made the point that his teacher could do that too.
While the net (and the move to word processing) makes it so much easier it also means the kids learn about why it's bad earlier
-
Oh yeah and the day Mandela was released - it was a Sat or Sun morning in the US we sat in bed all morning and cried
-
we may have been in Berlin at the same time - we were staying with friends down the road from Checkpoint Charlie as it closed down - the eastern currency was being shut down the next week and all the stores in the East were having going out of business sales - there was nothing worth buying.
We rode the subway - and that week those stations where the (Western) subway cars used to pass thru with the one soldier under a light with a machine gun were now working subway stops - they had no graffiti - for that week at least.
Pink Floyd were setting up to play The Wall by the Brandenburg gate in what had been no-man's land - we didn't stay for that but did see the most awesome double bill of Sinead O'Conner and Midnight Oil .... in the same stadium Hitler held the olympics ....
There were Romanian beggars everywhere, our friends decried the East Germans crowding their favorite cheap supermarket, and you passed guys carrying TVs back across the border on every block
-
Now, IIRC, they can take DNA samples from people they "intend" to charge.
Doesn't that put the cops in a bind - once they've taken a DNA sample from you they can't untake it - so they have to charge you or run the risk that you will go after them for not really intending to charge you and taking the sample under false pretenses - that means they have to find something, anything, to charge you with to keep them out of trouble
-
Maybe I'm just naive, but I really have been struggling to work out how someone who's "nominally law abiding" could end up unable to prove that they didn't acquire assets by way of legitimate means. If nothing else they should have records with IRD for their income tax payments.
So I run a consulting business - I sell my time by the hour mostly to people in the US - what does that look like from a NZ perspective? gobs of money, sometimes quite large gobs appear in an offshore foreign currency account in my bank - then I pay tax to the IRD on the money as it gets passed to my checking account - I imagine someone doing something really dodgy - money laundry, offshoring stolen cars etc etc would have similar banking patterns - sure I have invoices - but those are just pdfs that I made and emailed - some of the companies I've worked for don't even exist any more (not my fault honest) ....
You can see how one might be a bit worried that some copper with the wrong end of the stick might show up one day and take all my stuff
-
The thing about zombie movies is this: the actors are cheap and lack of talent doesn't hurt the part
-
heh - sadly I have a W F Buckley voice somewhere in the back of my head (from years of boring PBS talk shows) but no Gore Vidal one
-
I tend to agree - I imagine it being used by William F Buckley whenever I hear it
-
pantywaist? who on earth uses 'pantywaist' in normal conversation (other than about underwear)
unless of course you're trying to appear pompous on purpose