Posts by Lucy Stewart
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Lucy, did we by any chance go to the same university?
If you refer to the tertiary education system of the fair city which we both inhabit, then yes. I sit in one of its offices as we speak.
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You know something, that's an argument we can have until the sun grows cold. But I still have no problem sleeping that my partner's by-pass was performed in the private sector. Really -- and I don't know how fair or useful a term like "rort" is.
I don't think anyone has actually demanded the immediate abolition of the private sector, Craig. That doesn't mean that you can't look sideways at weird contracting practices. I'm perfectly happy for the private system to exist, and quite likely I'll get health insurance if I ever have enough money - but I don't want the private sector taking advantage of the public one, either.
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Without anyone looking over their shoulders, they spent at least a year falling down, throwing up, and smashing letterboxes. Any course-work handed in would be done in a blaze of panic; a couple of hastily-typed pages thrown together and sprinted across campus to be flung in a submissions box seconds before the deadline.
At my university, they even have a name: engineering students. (Don't ever let anyone induce you to help mark first-year engineering essays. Your belief in humanity will never recover.)
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Terry Pratchett maintains there's an initial advantage while the quadruped gets those extra legs sort out.
Humans will also win over really long distances. Which may just be because we're the only species dumb enough to invent the marathon, and also isn't much comfort when the tiger's already eaten you, but I guess it's something.
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I've often wondered at the number of my rock 'n' roll friends who have become marine biologists ...
I think that's probably because shorts, jandals, and dreads are acceptable work clothing. And I imagine a lot of pot gets smoked on those several-month-long research voyages.
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Cyanobacteria - blue green algae - had an unparalleled two billion year run as the crown of creation, eventually undone by their waste product, the toxic and unstable (for them) free oxygen. It's an ill wind that blows no species any good. All we asked for was another few millenia atop the evolutionary tree before passing the baton to our CO2-loving overlords, whatever they might be.
That's actually kind of debatable; they may have evolved photosynthesis as late as just before we see the transition to an O2 atmosphere in the geological record, rather than having been around for two billion years. Regardless, they're responsible for some ridiculous proportion of photosynthetic production today, besides having several times the mass of our entire species. I'd say they still have that crown.
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I'm semi-tempted to go over to the marine biology labs and break in, as I will no doubt find cackling PhD students force-feeding puffer fish to sea slugs, then mailing them to Auckland in a calculated campaign of eco-terrorism.
Or, you know. Something evil. I've never trusted those marine biologists. They have to have a special alarm in case someone gets locked in the freezer. That's dodgy.
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That would be Stephen Hawking, British professor, who was born in the UK and has lived there for his whole life.
The especially ironic bit is that given that his disease came upon him suddenly in early adulthood, there is every chance that had he lived in the US his insurer would have denied him treatment on the grounds that it was a pre-existing condition.
You want to find "death panels" in US healthcare, look no further than the insurance companies.
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I'm not sure whether the "is it a genuine cultural practice or not" line of enquiry is a useful one. At what point does the circle of people who believe in supernatural effect X become so small that the criminal law can take precedence? Any line would have to be arbitrary, given that exorcism isn't subject to rational inquiry.
Well, it isn't, ultimately; belief that God told you to do something, sincere or otherwise, is not an excuse for breaking the law. From a historical perspective I find the synthesis of such beliefs and the relation to colonialism and inter-cultural contact fascinating, and worth discussing, but it doesn't change what was done. IIRC, we've imprisoned people for praying for their sick kids instead of taking them to hospital, causing death - and that could be argued to have been done out of love too, right?
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Jeremy E - try Elsdon Best "Maori Religion & Mythology" vols. 1 & 2*
- very Tuhoe, but there is a lot of other iwi input also - philosophy per se - meh, cant be detached from practice/practises. And there were and are, great tribal differences...
*I think these - or some of these compilations maybe available online-With the caveat that some of Best's work can be regarded as a little dubious, especially his uncritical acceptance of Io-matua-kore as a authentic pre-Pakeha tradition. His writing is also teeth-grindingly patronising, but that's the nineteenth century for you.