Posts by Paul Campbell
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I just want to add that at this particular moment I am not a fan of stilettos - and especially those who wear them while trying to sell one a kitchen and ruin the parquet floor .... thus requiring a more expensive kitchen ....
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But if we do away with student politics where will the nats get their next generation of tested candidates from? Will junior-act wither on the vine if they have nothing to rail against?
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So maybe we're going to get a law .... those of us against smacking may be fighting a bit of a rear-guard action - so just what is "smacking a child" as opposed to "beating the crap out out of a child"? it could all get wonderfully muddied, we could define a smack as "something done at a force of less than N newtons" - probably pretty impossible to prove either way in court - better might be a test that defines smacking as "does not break or redden the skin or raise welts of bruises".
Equally we could also follow the referendum to the letter and state that an affirmative defense require the parent to prove that it was part of "good parenting" ... and then let the courts (and not the police) judge them ....
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I think that for hard core auto-litterers like that the only real solution is anti-litter road spikes - usually nails and thumbtacks left by previous litterers .....
or if the drop trash beside their car hoping no one will notice run up and set it on fire
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I've occasionally wished for doctors having the ability to write temporary mobility permits (for things like broken toes ....) - I never park in mobility spaces but have found I've very occasionally had a genuine need and couldn't
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Damn - and here I find myself off to Berkeley on Monday - I was going to drag you out to coffee or dinner to meet some other local kiwis with young kids ....
Indoctrinating the kids only lasts to the point where it gets to embarrassing or even dangerous - I remember my 5 yr old son going up to total strangers and telling them off for smoking ....
Berkeley actually has a self funding street sweeping program - in order to get around prop 13 limitations the city sweeps every street once a month - they pay for it by ticketing people who forget to move their car that morning .... still we used to live around the corner from a fast food place people would drive up eat their food and dump it in the street - eventually we started protesting their zoning and got the fast food place to spend time picking up their customer's trash.
One thing that pisses me off in NZ compared to where I used to live in the US is the comparative lack of public garbage cans - I think the NZ councils are scared people might actually use them and then they'd be forced to empty them
I've adopted a bit of the local Dunedin Town Belt near my house, collecting a bag of garbage every time I walk through - I think I was picking up 100 years of trash - but after 3-4 months I found I couldn't come close to filling a bag - I like to pick up glass figuring it will be out there after I die if I don't.
People seem reluctant to drop more garbage in a space that's actually clean ..... still a rubbish bin at each end of the path wouldn't go amiss.
I'd like to encourage everyone to pick up a bad of trash when they go out walking, it's not hard and after a while it does make a difference
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oh there are probably several different types of infinite numbers of infinities - you'll never see one in the real world though - except for the ones hawked by that Xeno guy - you step over them every day
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I bet you're army of giant robots probably looks a lot like something out of some artist's manga .... otherwise it wouldn't be cool
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The thing about the US Healthcare system is that the people who decide what you get are not medical professionals - when I lived there I has excellent insurance (I do miss the dental and vision coverage here in NZ)
But trying to get anything done required permission from the accountants at the insurance company - took a year of being put off to diagnose my gallstones, and 2 days to get them out. People with no insurance just show up at the emergency room when things get too bad.
Look it another way - in the NZ when you go to the doctor there's a receptionist behind the desk - in the US there's always someone else back there, maybe 2 someones - their job is to harass insurance companies to get paid
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so do I - you just have to be up front with your clients - and I find it's useful to be careful to avoid people who are in heavy competition with each other