Posts by Jeremy Andrew
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and yet they sometimes seem to be thinking "if only I were bigger, you'd be dinner"
I told our late, lamented pussy cat, Paget, regularly during the later months of 1999 that he was our Y2K emergency food supply - 9kg or so of mostly-muscular cat would have fed the family for the requisite 3 or 4 days...
stories about cats dying are the worst thing in the world to read because it's pretty much what I'm most terrified about in my life.
I'll spare you the touching tale of Paget's last moments then.
admiring the skillful segue to dogginess in the cat thread
A decent interval after we lost Paget, we got a wee doggie, and our Charlie is at least part cat. He's a Cavoodle (that's not him, but looks like him before a bath).
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Yes, I distinctly remember a chain email in the late 90s which consisted of some girl saying that she liked the taste of her boyfriend's jizz. Her real name was in this email, and it had reached millions of people within one day. If her workplace didn't all ending up knowing, it would have been amazing.
Clare Swires as I recall - a workmate was in a band that wrote a song about it.
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I have a thought percolating, along the lines of how a society defines and enforces its mores. As a society we have a continuing background discussion going on about what is acceptable within this society and what isn't. Its a balancing act between the reactionary elements and the liberal tendancies. Its not always old vs young, but the DNA of our mores is generally passed down from our elders and enforeced by our peers. We then, sometimes conciously and more often not, decide on how to translate and adapt and adopt those mores to our own lives; and society reacts to all this to develop a more-or-less coherent, unwritten policy on how we behave.
Megan has spotted herself working on balancing what she thinks about young pakeha womens' clothes, with the inherited DNA. The nice thing is that here in this forum at least, we're stopping to think about it. Megan is thinking about what she thinks about what the students wear. Russell is rethinking what he thinks about what the boobs on bikes chickies wear. We're all in our own ways working out what society will allow and what it will frown on. Megan spotted one of the popular ways of enforcing a more - frowning upon the infringing behaviour. However, unlike Megan, most frowners don't stop to think about whether what they are frowning at should be frowned at.
I think there was a thought in there somewhere... -
As you were, ladies.
I presume you were ladies...
Sorry, overexposure to Goons at an impressionable age.
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It would seem to make sense if there was a 'conduct of referenda' Act which provided a central reference point for any time someone wanted to put up a bill which included referenda. You could then reference it, and presumably a well written electoral finance act, rather than have to make it up each time (or not , as Keith Locke seems to have done).
Object-Oriented Legislation?
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why are people so keen to escape Timaru?
Its the Tokoroa of the South Island?
A very popular place to be from. -
I don't want to seem churlish about what Professor Gluckman was saying. I get that there isn't much spare money and also that the Government might be reluctant to put more money into CRIs when they don't believe CRIs are working how they would like them to work.
I do think the changes sound good. The key shift is from seeing CRIs as a business which should make money to seeing them as RS&T institutes who generate ideas and transfer them to the relevant sector. That's a good change.
If only someone would tell the goverment, which is still leaning heavily on the CRIs to return a profit. Their default position is that we should be returning a set ROI, we have to negotiate hard to be allowed to keep some of that money back to try and keep the institute running.
It will be hard to achieve because we've had 10-20 years of establishing CRIs as businesses and much of the management has understandably adopted that mindset. So changing management (and science staff) thinking is the biggest and most difficult task.
All the CRI management and scientists I know would loooove to worry less about bidding & commercialising & maximising profits and to be able to concentrate on doing the work they signed up for - the science. I really don't think convincing scientists (and the majority of our managers are scientists) to do science and worry less about profits will be much of a battle - more the welcome end of a battle.
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(And the thing is: it's *sensible* to give the CRIs more long-term funding. It just sucks for everyone else.)
There's a difference between more long-term funding and more funding. They're not talking about giving more money to the CRIs, just giving them the same amount of money in bigger lumps with a bit more self-determination on how to spend it.
What would be nice is if the Govt would make the call on whether the CRIs are primarily working for the national good, or primarily making money to hand back to their shareholder (ie, the Govt).
Also getting their act together to make the money flow from the PGP fund - it was supposed to start appearing last financial year, hasn't turned up this financial year, and is looking like the second half of next financial year is the earliest any will be seen.
Don't know about the rest of the CRIs, but the one where I work had to shed 20 scientists at the end of last year, and there's about 50 folks down the road over the next wee while now. -
But, more importantly, give us the names of these cheap booze sites you frequent. I'd hate to think I'm missing a bargain...
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Blake's Seven, anyone?