Posts by Lucy Stewart
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"Rape is a crime wherever it occurs, and can be dealt with in the same way as any other offence committed in prison," he said.
"The fact is if you don't want to be assaulted – or worse – by a cellmate, avoid prison by not committing a crime."
I think I'm going to throw up. Or cry. Or something. That's - Jesus fucking Christ. Don't ever commit crime, because you might get raped, which is just natural justice, because it's not like you should be *safe* in prison or anything. I don't even.
And Stephen - no, I'd bet strongly against unionisation. Because then you have to pay people more for doing a dangerous and unpleasant job.
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I'm guessing that the profit comes from saying it costs, say $50k (why does that number keep popping into my head? Was there an article sayingthat was how much it cost to house a prisoner for a year? Hmm) and then trying to do it for $40k. Or less. That sounds like... fun.
And doesn't that just make your stomach turn a little, thinking of all the misery and death that goes on when prisons are badly and cheaply run as the cost of doing business? The profit margin?
Which is, incidentally, what I really don't get: where on earth are private companies supposed to be cutting costs to turn a profit on prisons? If it costs X to house and feed a prisoner, how can they possibly do that more cheaply than the government, without abusing inmates or risking guards? How is it supposed to work, apart from waving the magic wand of privatisation?
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On a semi-related note, does the specter of private prisons mildly worry anyone else? I'm filing them in my "what could possibly go wrong" basket.
*Mildly* worry? There's nothing mild about it. There was a very alarming interview on Morning Report which covered Australian private prisons, some of which have been taken back over by the government or are on their last warning due to high suicide and riot rates. That is people *dying* to give private industry a chance to stuff up. It's pretty damn disturbing.
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Call me a prude, if you must, but I thought the attempted rape of Sally Jupiter was one thing that didn't need to be expanded from the book.
It did seem in there for the shock value - I mean, we've seen this guy *shoot* a woman *pregnant with his child*, we don't need a graphic rape scene to establish that he is a nasty piece of work, thanks. And given that this is the only time we see Sally in any sort of fight, it served to largely diminish her as a hero, which I didn't like, either.
And was the sex scene between Dan and Laurie in the OwlShip intended to have the audience laughing hysterically?
There was some small amusement value to be derived in counting the number of orgasm faces Laurie made, but otherwise I just found it boring.
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It depends on your tolerance for full-frontal blue demi-God, I suppose -- but I do think you've got to acknowledge the production values across the board are wonderful. The cast, for the most part, are better than is strictly necessary... but the whole exercise ultimately felt like going to geek church.
The opening montage, in particular, was an absolute piece of brilliance - in fact, I enjoyed the use of music throughout the movie - and I second the comment about the cast, who were in general very goodl. (Nixon's prosthetic nose distracted me a little in all his scenes, but oh well.)
My main problem was pacing; the move worked very well until about the prison sequence, and then got a bit flustered until it pulled together for the end. There were also some plot elements that didn't work for me, mostly involving how much everyone tolerated from the Comedian, but I'll hold judgement until I've gone back and read the original text, I think. I would have liked the sex and violence to have been toned down about 50% - I'm surprised it got away with an R16 rating, really - but that's just me and my severely low tolerances for both those things on screen. Overall I'm very glad I went to see it in the theatre, it was worth it even at today's prices.
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But that's the problem, by the time a person or group of people have reached the point where they think killing other people is a reasonable way of achieving their goals, it's no longer possible to sensibly hypothesise their motives. They are by definition so far outside normal that you can't realistically imagine why.
See, I don't think that's true, exactly; fanaticism of any striupe generally follows pretty logical ly *if you accept their premises*. The problem is the premises are usually batshit crazy. I can imagine all sorts of ways someone might come to the conclusion that killing the visiting cricket team is a good idea, *if* you're coming from certain starting points. It's just, well, batshit crazy. And immoral, and inhumane, and all those things. But not, sadly, unimaginable.
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Course not, although I don't know how much longer I'll be able to suppress my smarmy side and refrain from asking "is there anything you can do about the crap articles?" It'll burst out of me any minute now.
It occurs that if the *content* on Stuff were miraculously fixed, that might be evidence towards the existence of God.
Or a really righteous and vengeful editor, which from some points of view is basically the same thing.
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There is a good chance that the original target was the Indian team that was supposed to be touring at this time. But the fact that the attack went ahead against the Sri Lankans shows that one of the objectives was to terrorise the people of Pakistan and attack their way of life.
Pretty much what I was getting at - I agree that the Indians were probably the initial target, but, hey, any touring team will do to cause a bit of mayhem. One can hypothesise motives, but it's all pretty chilling.
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It's not just the Macs that have got ouchy, either; the other half and I were looking at new laptops, only to discover that getting something functionally equivalent to his 1.73 Ghz dual-core/2 GB RAM Asus, bought last July, would cost probably more than he'd paid for it. Last July. And that's not even looking at *upgrading*. (Well, you can get extra HD space for the same price, but that's so cheap now it's barely a consideration.) There does seem to be a gap opening up in the market between the big, heavy-duty laptops - the 15" + type - and the netbooks, leaving the mid-range laptops difficult to find for a good price, but the exchange rate bears a lot of the blame.
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I heard that too, in and out of the media. I don't think the word "terrorist" means someone who wants people to like them.
The mere fact that it was the Sri Lankan team illustrates this pretty well. Terrorists don't care who gets hurt or killed, just that someone does.