Posts by Kyle Matthews
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At the risk of being insensitive, the whole reaction of the Elim church people has seriously creeped me out.
I'm with Gareth on this. Whether or not it's the right reaction - and it wouldn't be mine - it's a lot more mature than a lot of people would react to losing six kids and a teacher like that.
Their willingness to understand that no one at the OPC would have ever wanted this, and that their questions will probably be answered by the investigations that are going on, but that nothing is gained by screaming in anger at the OPC staff who are all probably grieving too.
I'm not religious at all, but sometimes religion can be a path to mature, humane responses to the world, and if it doesn't hurt in other ways, that's OK surely. I don't know anything about the Elim Church, but we should bag on the wacko religions causing harm in the world before we start telling people who have lost six kids how they should grieve, surely.
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The Zapatistas are a very different beast, honest at least. Conflating the two is disingenuous.
No comparison is ever wholly valid, we can cluck about that all our life or we can try and take meaning from the questions that are being asked.
The Zapatistas are in open rebellion (previously armed, but not at present I understand) against a government which most of the world thinks is legitimate.
Falun Gong, as far as I know, isn't in open rebellion, they're just demanding the right to practice their religion and not be persecuted. Non-violently I believe.
I suspect the Falun Gong gets much worse press, and less problems, because they're seen as a bit of a religious wacko cult, and because the Chinese government works hard to make sure they get bad press. Maybe their lack of honesty about what their show is in the mix as well.
Personally I don't mind if they have a show, thought I'd be very unlikely to go see it. The removal of adverts about the show by supporters, and the targeting of anyone important to try to get them not to see it - seems to be taking it a bit too far away from 'free debate' and more towards 'shut down debate'.
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Anyone game to concoct a cricket-and-crime metaphor?
"hat-trick" seems a bit too positive really. And you don't lose the actual wickets one at a time, once one goes, you're out.
Still, stupid policy, why should the sporting analogy make sense? So I propose:
The Garth McVicar "Three rubs of the cricket ball on your crotch and you're masturbating" crime policy.
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From Wikianswers:
Question: How can you tell if a mushroom is safe to eat?
Answer
A mushroom is safe to eat if you find it in one of two places- at a supermarket or a local growers' market. Unless you happen to be some trained expert, don't eat mushrooms you find out on the wild. Way too many people think they know what they're doing, maybe because they cook a lot or read some picture book of mushrooms, pick up a mushroom that they think is species type "v. delicicus" but, whoops, it was really the closely related cousin, the Death Cap mushroom. Shucks, now you're going to need a new liver!
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I had perfectly good looking mushrooms popping up in my vege garden this summer. several dozen at a time, looking like standard portobello mushrooms I'd buy from the supermarket. Probably 2 or 3 hundred over a few weeks.
Every web page I could find on identifying mushrooms basically said in large letters "don't try and do this yourself unless you have some knowledge in [what's the word?, mycology?]. The safe ones look almost exactly like the incredibly dangerous ones."
So I threw them all away. I might have been less cautious if I liked mushrooms more.
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For example those "banned in China' web badges are a nonsense. I was able to access pretty much every website I wanted with the exception of external blogs..and that was from public places.
Did they function the same? I'm wondering (for example) what you would have found if you searched for Tiananmen Square etc.
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I haven't heard it, or anything about it. But I think they're always going to struggle to match Dummy, which is simply wonderful.
And if they did match Dummy, I suspect it'd be dragged down for 'just being the same as...'.
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Your comments on pre-, in-, and post- season are interesting.
Lots of rugby talking heads talk about how players are playing 'too much rugby'. Which to be honest is a pile of tosh. A full season probably consists of 13 - 15 Super games, a dozen All Black games, and maybe five or six club/Air NZ cup games. 30 - 32 games, assuming no injuries. Given that the rugby season should be about 9 months from beginning of super 12 to end of northern hemisphere tour, 32 games isn't a problem.
One game a week for 32 weeks, plus pre-season training of 6 - 8 weeks ends you up at about 9 months, and that length of season only applies to All Blacks, everyone else finishes a month or so earlier.
The problem isn't too much rugby, it's that they're trying to make players do everything. Pre season super 12, super 12 round robin, super 12 finals, local tour, tri-nations, pre-season Air NZ Cup, Air NZ Cup round robin, Air NZ Cup finals, northern tour. It makes what should be 9 months into 11.
If you forget about the All Blacks playing Air NZ Cup, and run the end of the super 12 closer to the northern teams touring here (ie, have the players in the finals not available for beating up on Tonga or whatever) then you get that two months back.
Grant Fox had a really interesting proposal in the SST a few weeks ago which matched my thinking. The Air NZ cup should be an amateur feeder competition, running the same time as the super 14. Which could either be a double-round-robin, or expand to pick up Argentina and Pacific Island teams. Air NZ cup players would get paid retainers for their contracts, but not be paid for playing, unless they get called up to their super 14 franchise. The professional focus would then be on 5 teams, and the sparse money available in NZ could be more focused on those players and help prevent them going overseas. Air NZ cup could switch to being played mid-week - there's no sport on TV midweek in NZ over winter, it's a gaping hole. The whole season could shorten to about 7 months, and there could be gaps in the schedule for internationals in much the same way that the NRL State of Origin game does.
Having just spent the past 7 months watching the Anaheim Ducks play 82 games of ice hockey, sometimes on consecutive nights on the road, and they now begin four (if they win the whole thing) best-of-seven series in the postseason... the idea that 30 games of rugby is 'too much' is just bizarre.
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I wouldnt travel in a plane that was "very likey" to reach its destination
Or you could use an analogy that made sense and related to the debate at hand.
Because you're already on board the plane, and scientists are telling that you should get off because there's a problem with it.
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Nicky and his sources are even gloating about the inability of the sources to be found.