Posts by Lucy Telfar Barnard
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Hard News: So long, and thanks for all…, in reply to Scott A,
I don't know about reasonable, but it's certainly what I'm hoping.
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LOVE the title… (no apology necessary.)
Otherwise:
David Shearer seems a genuinely decent man who has been out of his depth in a party leadership role but clearly has a contribution to make yet.
This describes exactly my view on Shearer. I just wish he'd stepped aside early enough to give someone more effective the Opposition leadership going into the GCSB debate.
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My stomach turns in horror at the thought of my children doing what we used to do.
There was a pohutakawa tree that used to , and probably still does, hang out over a cliff, at least 10 metres above a stretch of hard flat rock next to the sea. We used to sit out on the trunk of the tree and dare each other who could slide out furthest.
There was the sliding scar of exposed dirt that you had to run across at speed to get to the other side and find the path to some hut. If you didn’t run fast enough, you’d lose momentum and slide to the bottom of the scar. If you slid down, it was harder to get up again. At the far end the edge of the scar was not bush, but another sheer cliff down to rocks and the sea.
The only child death we knew of was someone across the bay whose tent had caught fire from a candle. Nevertheless, the fact that none of us fell off the pohutakawa, or down the cliff, gives me little comfort when I also consider that a good part of the decreases in infant and child mortality has come from a reduction in the practice of leaving children in the care of their older siblings, or to their own devices.
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Hard News: Friday Music: I'm Over The Edge, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
Getting gum off the pavement is always a problem…
;- )When I was 3 years old me and a small friend used to wander up and down Leamington Rd (a back street of Mt Eden) looking for chewing gum fresh enough to pick off the pavement. I still remember the grittiness of it in my little teeth.
But some gum was too embedded and you couldn’t pick off enough to chew, so yep, def'nitely a problem.
I think next time there’s a concert there someone should go along the queue handing out free gum to everyone who agrees to chew it immediately. Then security can freak out searching everyone’s pockets for gum, and not finding any.
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I've read elsewhere that the policy would not be consistent with our existing FTA with China. Is anyone able to confirm or refute this?
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Hard News: The Real Threat, in reply to Bart Janssen,
But if you are happy that anyone can distinguish between jouranlist vs tabloid
I wouldn't suggest that we distinguish between tabloid journalists and "real" journalists. I'd suggest that we distinguish between journalists "spying" for the sake of news/tabloid story gathering, and the state spying on its citizens going about their lawful business.
and , how about this for a more difficult comparison …
Surveilance of a known drug smuggler suspected of bringing into NZ illegal weapons.
Surveilance of an importor suspected of failing to pay duty, say a million dollars worth of duty.There is no comparison required. In both cases, such surveillance would be the investigation of suspected crime. What crime was Jon Stephenson suspected of?
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We have a couple of Le Creuset casseroles/dutch ovens/whatever they’re called, which we’ve had for 13 and 14 years respectively. I thought they were good until we bought “temporary” IKEA cookware for our 18 month stint in the UK. That cookware included the “Senior” cast iron casserole (http://www.ikea.com/gb/en/catalog/products/70131724/). The interior is cast iron rather than the Le Creuset enamel. I don’t know why (possibly someone will tell me) but it did a far better job of browning onions and generally making things yummy, and was perfect for getting a good crust on sourdough, and every week I regret not including it in our (minimal) shipping home.
However, we were glad to come home to the WMF frying pan that my aunt gave us for a wedding present. Also 13 years old, doesn’t look it, and still going strong.
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Hard News: Who else forgot to get married?, in reply to Islander,
You call me/write to me as Keri Hulme I’ll happily respond…otherwise…
What about "The Right Awesome Keri Hulme", or similar? I mean, if people can be "Right Honorable" and/or "Very Reverend", I don't see why we can't invent other complimentary honorifics.
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On the Spanish – unless things have changed recently, or unless the Spanish do something different from the Latin Americans, the common practice is not for women to retain their birth name when they marry, but to keep the first of their two surnames, and add “de” (of) + [first of husband’s two surnames]. The children get their father’s first surname and their mother’s first surname. It’s a more patriarchal version of Paul Campbell’s suggestion.
Also, they don’t use hyphens.
i.e. Paul A B marries Lisa C D
Paul’s surname stays “A B”. Lisa’s surname changes from “C D” to “C de A”
The children’s surnames are “A C”
As for the Marital Surname business, I’ve found it all a whole lot more troublesome than I expected it to be.
When we married we really wanted to take each other’s surnames as an extra middle name, but when you marry you only get to change your surname for free, not your other names, so we changed our surnames on the assumption that there’s not a whole lot of difference between “Lucy F + Telfar Barnard” and “Lucy F Telfar + Barnard” (and the opposite for Mr Barnard Telfar)
After 13 years of marriage, however, whenever we have to fill out forms or contracts we find ourselves explaining that it seemed like a good idea at the time.
How it’s turned out is:
- Although my husband’s surname is legally “Barnard Telfar”, he uses Telfar everywhere except in legal documents;
- Although I’d fully intended to also just use “Barnard"…
–-- our children, like Emma’s children, have their father’s surname as their last name, and their mother’s surname as one of their middle names (incidentally, my half-siblings on my father’s side have this too, so I do think it’s, well, maybe not common, but certainly not rare either). We did this because we didn’t want to lumber them with hyphenated surnames.
–-- I found I wanted it to be clearer that our children were also my children. So I use Telfar Barnard. This has the additional advantage of making me easy to find in literature searches (except for a book chapter where the system obviously couldn’t cope with two surnames and even after correction I still ended up as L T Barnard. This wouldn’t have been a problem with a hyphen, and the university has also put a hyphen in my standard format email address.) but I do find it a bit of a mouthful.
–-- I have considered just using one surname, and choosing Telfar over Barnard because it’s a rare name and there’s noone else with that surname in my field, whereas Barnards are common.- Our joint cheque book can barely fit our names on it.
After all this, I have some sympathy for women who just take their husband’s name on marriage. It’s not very feminist, but it must make some things a whole lot easier.
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Would it even be possible to spy effectively these days without in some way filtering all electronic communication? Given that filtering will always turn up entirely innocent communication "bycatch", doesn't that mean that it must now be a choice between no effective spying at all (which may be how you prefer it, and that's a valid position) or spying on everyone?