Posts by Lucy Telfar Barnard
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Despite having done some research on infectious diseases, including rheumatic fever, I don't feel I can definitively comment on whether the government target is realistic.
However, from what I do know, I don't think the target is completely impossible. Rates in high income countries in general are below 1 per 100,000, so it's a reasonable goal in general. ARF is usually a complication of streptococcal infection, either strep throat or (emerging evidence) strep sores. Both are highly treatable with antibiotics, and the highest incidence of ARF in NZ occurs in very geographically concentrated pockets, which ought to make delivery of public health measures easier.
So overall, while the announced government targets may or may not be deliverable (I haven't looked at them yet), I'd imagine that if they're not then there would be many more risible or unrealistic targets than this one.
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It is hard not to see this governments education policy as simple class war on behalf of it's middle class supporters.
This. And the other comment about parents wanting to know which is the best school so they can send their children there. That's all about insecurity.
We're currently in the London commuter belt, and the angst over schooling is insane. National Standards (or whatever they call them here) rule everything. As a result, the curriculum is extremely limited - hours and hours of reading, writing and 'rithmetic and very little else - worst of all, only 30 - 45 minutes of science per week.
At the same time, there's only limited ability to choose what school your children attend. All enrolment decisions are made by the local council (which was in turn a response to some schools refusing to enrol students who were perceived as likely to jeopardise their test results). If you're in zone, you'll probably (but only probably) get in. If your child wasn't doing well at the school they were zoned for and you wanted to move them you could try moving to the zone for your preferred school, but if the school was in demand you'd likely have to be on a waiting list for an extended period before your child could actually change schools. And there are screeds and screeds of threads on forums like "mumsnet" containing parental worry over which school to send their child to; how likely they are to get in; and what to do if they don't. It's completely hideous, and my sense is that the school rating system feeds it, though there's certainly a cultural aspect to it as well (thus the annual publication of the "Good Schools Guide"). I think Christchurch's long obsession with "which school did you go to" suggests that it is a culture New Zealand could easily adopt if the conditions were right, and league tables would certainly fertilise the ground. Yuck. -
Up Front: Sex with Parrots, in reply to Lucy Stewart,
No, no, Lucy, I think you'll find that human relationships can in fact all be reduced to mathematics, especially geometry. And building inspectors, apparently. Though I did 'specially like the bit where it said that polygamous marriage could theoretically work if (basically) one spouse was dominant and all the others subordinate. But not otherwise. I think I might have to stop engaging with this guy now before I descend into ERASPO (Exhausted Rage at Stupid People Online).
Incidentally, and entirely off-topic, did you also get Lucy Two-Shoes? Lucy Lastic? You picked a fine time to leave me loose-wheel? And of course "Lucy in the sky with diamonds"? The last one got particularly dull, but I quite liked Lucy Two-Shoes.
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Up Front: Sex with Parrots, in reply to Stephen Glaister,
it wouldn't be true in that case that every marriage is an in principle locus for (has the potential to host) high-bandwidth fulfillment and intimacy for all parties to the arrangement.
The section of your paper you refer us to, (2.4), includes the phrase "Our reasoning about these concepts will, however, be strongly informed by our understanding of basic facts about how the world, including the human world, actually works (e.g. that no one can be in two places at once, etc.)". I would argue that your understanding of how the human world works is limited, perhaps by your experience, but certainly by your assumptions (e.g. that it is necessary for someone to be in two places at once for PA marriage to work).
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Up Front: Sex with Parrots, in reply to Steve Parks,
Yes, that's exactly the sort of thing I was thinking of.
As far as the Glaister piece goes, say what now? Glaister's excuse for subjecting poly-marriage to greater tests than mono-marriage is that mono-marriage has a chance to succeed but poly-marriage just doesn't. This excuse is erroneous on its own, but also wrong because his arguments as to why poly-marriage doesn't have a chance don't wash. Quite apart from the assumption that a poly relationship would have only a single member of one gender, it also continues mono-assumptions about intimacy and relationships -i.e. the "dance-card" analogy, which carries the implicit assumption that you can only dance with one person at once; that intimacy can only occur or be fulfilling on a one-to-one basis. My extremely limited experience and/or observation (no, not intimate observation) of poly relationships and/or intimacy doesn't suggest either of these to be the case; and that at least some poly people might argue for the right to marry on the basis that for them, one-to-one intimacy is less emotionally fulfilling.
Glaister glosses over this possiblity by stating that "there are reasons to doubt that many [cases of 'shared time'] exist", and glosses over what cases there may be as divisable into shorter periods of one-to-one time. At this point, if it wasn't before, I think it's pretty clear that he probably just doesn't understand poly relationships, so there doesn't seem much point in reading any further.
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Up Front: Sex with Parrots, in reply to Lucy Stewart,
Not to mention, of course, that as I understand it it's pretty well psychologically impossible for people who have grown up in a family situation to develop attraction unless other stuff is going on - it was historically, I believe, even a problem for children who were chosen for arranged marriages young and raised in households with their future spouses.
Well, I've always thought that was an interesting question. There was a long debate in anthropology about the incest taboo, and laws against incestuous relationships. On one side of the debate was the argument that it was psychologically impossible to be attracted to immediate family members; on the other side was the argument that if it was impossible, you wouldn't need a law against it.
Then there's there's the whole historical and cultural variation in what's actually considered incest. We've ended up with a pretty short list of prohibited marriages (your or your spouse's parents or grandparents, children,grandchildren, nieces, or nephews), but it's still got historical components to it. Why not be allowed to marry your wife's mother, for example? There's no blood relationship, so the mutant babies thing doesn't apply; and mostly you won't have met her much before you met your wife, so the abuse thing is unlikely to apply either. It's not even spectacularly ew - compared to, for example, marrying your cousin, which isn't on the list, but which a lot of people would consider at least a little bit icky.
As for the argument that most incest will include abuse/power disparity when it's between generations, I'm not sure that's a good enough reason to disallow marriage. There are plenty of non-incestual relationships involving abuse and power disparity, and they're all allowed to marry.
I'm not saying that I'm personally ready to see the list of forbidden marriages done away with altogether. But it could do with a revisit, and could perhaps allow for exceptions, perhaps via judicial order. -
Sorting out the children could in some ways be easier than sorting out the property, since courts theoretically rule in the best interests of the child, whereas property doesn't really care who it belongs to.
Another challenge for people: is there any reason why incest laws should still be in place? The most common reason I've heard people give against it (apart from "ew"!, which isn't really a reason. Lots of people say "ew" about same-sex marriage too) is the potential for birth defects. That argument doesn't really fly because a) birth defects tend to only appear after a few generations of inter-breeding; and b) it's again assuming that the purpose of marriage is reproduction.
I mean sure, it doesn't really affect many people - the blood relatives I've heard of shacking up together have all included an adoptee - but that's not really the point, is it?
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Hard News: Reading the Numbers, in reply to Russell Brown,
That's Brian Cox. He was in an actual pop band (D:Ream) as a young man.
Now he's in a not-actual pop band with Morgan Freeman, Stephen Hawking, Michio Kaku, Richard Feynman, and Frank Close.
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Hard News: Press Play > Budget, in reply to Andrew C,
don't quite understand what you mean here. If you sell an asset that makes a profit you pay a % in tax. You can still buy a better/bigger home with the remaining profit cant you? Just because you chose to spend it on a bigger home doesn't mean the profit is unrealized, it just means you spent the profit.
Except that you don't get to spend the profit on a bigger home, you have to spend it buying one that is the same as the one you just sold.
If I buy a house for $200K, and don't do anything to it other than basic maintenance, and then sell it 10 years later for $300K, then in theory I've made a capital gain of $100K, which is taxed. So let's say the tax is 15% (as proposed by Labour, though not on the family home), and we'll pretend I've managed a private sale so as to avoid the additional cost of agents' fees; the CGT would be $15K. So I've sold my $300K house and I'm left with $285K. However, if I want to buy a house that is basically the same in every way to the one I've just sold - not bigger, not more opulent, not a better area, just the same - it will cost $300K - that's what I got for my house, so that's what they're worth. If I want to move, I'm going to have to either down-grade the size, quality or location of my home, or increase my mortgage.
In practice a version of this already happens in the form of agent fees, which on a sale of $300K would amount to about $12K, it's just that it goes to real estate agents and not the government. I haven't noticed REA fees doing anything to make home-buying more affordable, probably the opposite, so I think the ONLY way a CGT would help towards that goal would be if it applied only to investment properties and not to the family home. As owner-occupier properties (presumably?) still make up the bulk of the market, they would set the market price, thus making rental property less attractive as an investment, and quick do-ups less attractive as a business.
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Hard News: Free the Street, in reply to Sacha,
I once drunkenly approached "Lionel" on Ponsonby Road
whereas years later I was approached by him seeking directions to a liquor outlet in New Lynn.
Clearly he was still seeking solace over the one that got away...