Posts by Kyle Matthews
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how do schools feel about getting pub charity sponsership? Just wondering as they seem to have plenty of money to distribute but i guess there is an ethical issue here? Even though the money from the pub charity is drawn from the same population that the school population is drawn from? (the students parents, grandparents etc...)??
Most pub charities are foundations, and you wouldn't know from the name that the money comes from a pub - in fact, some of it commonly doesn't.
Lions Foundation is an example. Some of their money comes from gambling machines, but lots of it comes from their other good work.
I couldn't imagine a way you could split the two, and speaking as someone who ran a sports club where equipment was incredibly expensive, we just took it and said thanks.
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Merc: what did Patti put where the * is?
F[iretr]uck?
There's also the reality of not embarrassing or making things difficult for the people I'm with and, as Graham says in his post, the fact that the Vietnamese people are generally delightful. I had to wriggle out of having a translator (ie: government minder) before I left NZ - that was quite a relief.
I wonder Russell what's your thoughts on the "have to respect the people who got me here" vs "freedom of reporting" in relation to this. I know sometimes that organisations pay for you to travel to conferences and report on them, and whatnot, which I don't have a philosophical problem with.
But the first sentence of that paragraph seems to indicate that you're falling on the "have to respect" side in this instance, and my first reaction was "Well that's not exactly hard news." and I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on the matter.
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The right to gain citizenship needs addressing. The free market concept cannot hold where human beings are not free to move like their money is.
Yeah. You're kinda scary.
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And Craig, a mercenary is "A person who works merely for money or other material reward; a hireling.". A mercenary soldier is a killer purely for pay. So those sailors are mercenaries - all of them, I don't imagine anyone is there on a Sports Foundation grant!
Well that's one definition, but based on that one, half the working population of New Zealand are mercenaries.
Another one is 'hired to serve in a foreign army, guerrilla organization, etc.' which might be closer to the intent that people use it in relation to the Alinghi people - taking money to go sail for another country rather than Team New Zealand.
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But when Simon Daubney says Allingi is "just like Team New Zealand" all I want to say to him is - no, no you are not. You are mercenaries who made a calculated decision that economically harmed your homeland.
I by long means not an Americas Cup fanatic.
But I think what economically harmed the 'homeland' was more the fact that 'our' boat leaked and broke in half and basically sucked last time around. Alinghi didn't need to poach NZ's top sailors to win, any ten year old sailing an optimist off Mairangi Bay could have taken the cup off Team NZ last time.
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My sincere apologies if there are personal circumstances which have made it impossible for the guest Speaker to be online at all since the original post, but if that is not the case, I think it's pretty disappointing that there has been no response to the many valid points in this thread. That's, like, a debate, man.
I don't know him personally, but he sometimes re-publishes these rants in Critic, the Otago student newspaper. He used to have a column in there called 'Tailgunner Joe', which was largely just a troll attacking lefties, minorities etc (a while ago, so not online as far as I know). I suspect getting strong reactions is something he enjoys, whether or not he ever sits down to debate things properly... dunno.
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You don't have to be barking mad to be a former Act MP, but it clearly helps.
In my experience, it helps to be barking mad before you become an Act MP as well.
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This'd be a TV show well worth watching:
I'd be happy for NZ on Air to shell out a few hundred thousand so we could see how many of 120 shat themselves as live rounds started heading past the head.
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It's not a club. I think it's pure twaddle to call it a western construct to oppress the colonized.
I think it's a mistake to leap from 'colonizing' to 'oppression'. Colonization, in whichever context you want to think of it (typically historically involving European powers/settlers and indigenous people's, but there are other contexts) was/is often a mixed process with negative and positive aspects.
I was thinking more of the nature of the way that people seem to be using 'Science' these days (and perhaps for a long time, I've just noticed it in the past few years) as this kind of (largely) growing blob of truth, only able to be refuted with more science, with all things outside that set of 'Science' as at best 'unknown', and possibly worse 'wrong' or 'unscientific'.
Science trumps everything that isn't science. To prove something that something isn't scientific you have to use more science. To move something from outside the set of truth, to inside, you have to use science. Which wouldn't raise any issues at all with me, except Science and what it says is incredibly important in the world.
There's a lot of power in the way that the word science is waved around. I'm curious if anyone has written on the nature of that, particularly in relation to it being a colonial power in the world of ideas, and the 'power over' that 'science' exhibits, and where that has come from - has it come from the scientific community who have successfully elevated the results of their work in this way. Is there a hegemony in play?
Anyone know of anyone putting forth those ideas? Avoiding faith/magic/bermuda triangles/other things science can't explain etc writings, because a god vs science debate or similar doesn't interest me.
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Science can claim to have a monopoly on solutions because it is prepared to take on information from all sources. If you have a solution and you can show that it performs better than chance then it becomes part of the scientific base. You can't show something works and go 'nyah nyah and science can't have it'.
Can anyone reference any books which focus on the colonising nature of 'Science'? Neil's more recent post above struck me as being particularly of that nature - the all powerful all encompassing nature of the word science in the modern world - for something to be 'OK' it needs to be done so scientifically, and once something is OK it must therefore be scientifically so.
I'm not arguing or even particularly disagreeing, I just wonder if anyone is aware of any books which discuss the way that 'Science' is used in that manner, I'd be interested in a wee read.