Posts by Lucy Stewart
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Too right. If we think there is a miscarriage of justice here, if there is a systemic failure, that system is police management, and the failures go back to the 80s. If these cases had been tried 10 years ago or earlier we might have seen different verdicts.
As I understand it, Louise Nicholas first complained about her alleged rape by those policemen (along with anothe, unconnected incident) in 1993, fourteen years ago. While I believe there was a trial related to the unconnected incident at that time, I'd love to know why, exactly, it took fourteen years to get from complaint to trial. I've no idea why that is, but maybe if prompter action had been taken back then, we might have seen a different verdict.
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I think the word "creepy" is definitely the right one to describe Disney's actions. However, shouldn't the sheer longevity and breadth of works surrounding these stories prevent Disney from copyrighting them? I don't know a lot - okay, anything - about copyright law, but I'd think that for most of these stories, the sheer weight of adaptations and references and re-interpretations floating around should be enough to prove that Disney does not have the first or only claim to them - most of these other adaptations well pre-dating Disney's. How on earth does that translate to Disney claiming copyright? They can possibly prove that they have the most popular version of some of these stories, but, numbers-wise, I believe that the Catholics have the most popular version of the Bible. "Popular" does not mean "only".
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Hmmm...as a middle-class young white female, I do believe I support the notion that Maori should be compulsory in the first two years of high school (or, frankly, any language) thus proving the slavish PCness of all middle-class white women.
Or perhaps I'll go with reforming the abortion system to get rid of the rubber-stamp two counselors deal. That should give any anti-abortion Christians the proof they need that the pansy liberal university education system we have turns good women into...__feminists__.
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Well, I never really watched TV much as a kid (does Fair Go count?) but...my TV still runs on valves. Pretty damn awesome TV, too; on the one hand, no DVD/laptop input, on the other, nice big screen and speakers. The annoying whistling sound for the first five minutes is sort of par for the course.
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I would put Numb3rs and a show not currently playing, Bones, in a slightly different category from the 'usual' crime shows - they're about the interaction between academic specialists and the FBI, and thus have a different take on things. The format of the episodes is often the same, but it seems to me that they're a lot less 'crime porny', in terms of gore. Then again, the second season of Bones seems to be turning into CSI:Museum, so I'm probably speaking too soon.
Not so sure, Conor. In the end, I think it's much more visceral: In dice, tidy 44 minute packages the inexplicable, complex and mysterious -- death, pain, justice - becomes a tidy moral universe where the good end well, the bad get what's coming to them and things make sense. They're morality plays in a universe where we're not quite as cynical and ironic as we like to pretend.
I think that's exactly right - it's nice to pretend that justice is always served and the bad guys always go to jail, rather than having to look at the reality of our imperfect justice system (here and in America).