Posts by TracyMac
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Can you provide us with some evidence that someone has been violated with a baton.
What Russell said. I think it was acknowledged by some of the parties concerned that a baton was used. The question of consent is the part that was in question.
Craig, I'm not really worried about the "normality" of the activities concerned myself. I don't care whether it was one or many cops fucking a young woman with a baton with hazy consent - if you're into sexual/violent power trips that you can't keep in the bedroom, I don't want you in a police force I'm expected to trust.
But yes, I totally agree that the root issue is quite similar to the one with the teacher and the student. But there is that extra layer of ickitude if someone has a kink that their position would be feeding, so to speak. So, I think a more direct equivalent would be if a person known for having a fetish for teenagers was found to be a teacher (I'm not using the word "pedophile", because I'm trying to keep the age of consent issue out of it).
Still, it doesn't matter that I'm a bit extra squicked by that aspect, you're right that the issue of professional ethics and abuse of power is the base, and I sure as hell don't think a senior police officer should be vague on any of that. Also, the fact that the only thing he sees wrong with the situation was his cheating on his partner at the time!! I'm sure he'll be a sterling model to his subordinates. Not.
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Hilarious blog title. *shock horror* a paper does the decent thing!
Riddley Walker - word.
I am finding it oddly disturbing the lack of examination by the media into the screwed-up ethics here. So, according to the verdict, the young woman wasn't raped. But that was only part of the issue. I don't give a toss about group sex myself, having actually done it. I don't even care that it was police officers engaging in group sex (there's no law against it).
There are two things that concern me. One is the youth of the woman concerned and the circumstances in which they mean her. Definitely crossing professional boundaries there, ick. Secondly, while I'm fine with people doing BDSM in their bedrooms *cough*, I do not want to have a person in a place of trust using their job to get their jollies.
Screwing someone with a police baton is bloody edgy enough, even for experienced kinksters. For someone to be carrying that baton and using it in the *course of their work* as well as in a sexual context is going well beyond crossing professional boundaries. The fact it involved a young woman - obviously lacking a great degree of maturity, if not actual experience - and was in a context where consent was hazy, if not missing, and involved obstensible misuse of the police officers' power by virtue of their positions compounds the issue.
We all know that a proportion of people who are kinky are attracted to police or military work because it gives them scope for their (often unacknowledged) leanings. And I hear a deafening silence in acknowledging that aspect of this particular case. Oh noes, some police officers probably *are* sexual sadists! I'd rather someone was open and honest about their kink, and stayed away from work that allowed their professional and sexual lives to cross over, than for someone to effectively say "It wuzn't rape, so it's all ok".
One expects a certain degree of objectivity from police officers. If they're getting their rocks off in the course of their work, that objectivity will be flying out the window.
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Duh, I don't know why I said "__speedy__ deletion" throughout my comment - obviously my brain is not happy after 6 hours' sleep. I was intending to refer to the usual deletion process for non-notablilty.
And with that statement about the Kiwi FooCamp being an ongoing event, well, yes, it certainly fulfils any requirements for notability that I can think of.
It's just a shame that some sucky editors can give the rest of us a bad name, by being such rude pricks, and not giving something that has obviously been written in the right spirit the appropriate benefit of the doubt.
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I can totally see why it was put in the Speedy Deletion category, but not that it was yanked twice with no discussion. That's bloody rude.
The reason that I can see why it's a candidate for Speedy Deletion is that there is no indication that this is an ongoing event (if it is), and really reads more like a news article than an encyclopedia article. For example, when the Californian Browncoats put on an alternative to the Firefly convention that went down the gurgler, I felt that Wikipedia was not an appropriate forum for that news either (and voted for its speedy deletion).
While I realise that FooCamp is a much more structured event, I do think the Kiwi FooCamp is more appropriately mentioned in the main article, at least until it takes on a sustained life of its own.
I certainly don't think there's anything wrong with the way the article is written - it's much better than most WP articles! But a section in the main article (even a lengthy one) or an entry in WikiNews seem like better places for the information to me.
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Seems prices are going up in some areas - a great deal too - and falling in other parts of Sydney.
Juha, that's what makes it confusing. I think the average, Sydney-wide, is a slow-down in the rate of increase overall. But you're absolutely right in that the central areas, and those on the train routes, are rocketing up in price. It's just being somewhat "balanced" by those horrible sprawling shit suburbs that the less well-off are being pushed out to.
And it's an excellent lesson that quality dense housing utterly relies on decent public transport. Look at Canberra, where I live. There are a few burbs which are undergoing a dense housing boom, all on bus routes that take 20 minutes to the CBD/government sector. With the outlying and sprawling suburbs - which are sprawling by the minute - bus services, if they exist, commonly finish at times like 8pm. If you want to get cross-town in less than a couple of hours out of rush hour (when more buses are run), driving is the only way.
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Regarding the reason Sydney prices are dropping, they aren't. The rate of increase is slowing down slightly. A lot of the more rednecky variety are also moving to peripheral suburbs and places like Newcastle, where there is more industrialised work and fewer "Lebs" to deal with.And it must be said the traffic in Sydney is a bitch.
Anyway, if you check the study, the price of housing in Sydney is still way more per median wage than the prices in Auckland - 8.5 times the median income, compared to 6.9 times in Auckland.
I'm totally with Tom in that there needs to be more design-led and sustainable dense urban housing going on. Why on earth build a dozen leaky townhouses on a couple of acres, when if you built up a bit and exercised some creativity, you could house as many if not more, and still have some green space for landscaping.
How's that "eco-village" in Henderson going these days? There's a model of medium-density housing that's a lot nicer than yer typical townhouse battery-farm.
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I have hunted in vain to see where "pakeha" is categorised. Is it under "European", or is it under "Other/New Zealander"? If things like "kiwi" are included in the latter category, it seems likely that "pakeha" is there as well.
In the 2001 census, pakeha was included under European, but it's quite unclear whether it does now. It also irks me that European is just a diverse a group as "Asian", and also encompasses NZ-born "Europeans". We might as well include Cook Islanders in the Maori statistics. Or shall we just go for categories of "white/black/brown/yellow/coffee-coloured/offwhite"? That'd be just as meaningful.
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Weird: "Of a strikingly odd or unusual character; strange".
I would say not owning a television qualifies as weird.
Maybe once or twice every couple of years I'll come across somebody who doesn't own one and more often than not they themselves are weird.
Thanks for the information, Yamis, it's nice to know I'm considered "weird" because I don't possess a TV. Why on earth should I bother with the ads and crap when I can bittorrent everything I want to watch sooner than it's shown here in Oz? The only thing that might be considered time-critical is sport and news - news I get on the web; sport I don't bother with.
Oh, and I'm not religious. At all.
Also, if we're going to split semantic hairs, you might want to consider nuance. If you want to say not having a TV is "unusual", fine. "Weird" has an associated value judgement, and it's not a positive one.
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I'm disappointed not to see many nutty(?) assertions in this thread!
* More queers are better than hets as parents, because they have to choose to have sproglets - it's hard to have "accidents". So if right-wing Christians were truly concerned about child welfare, they would encourage more gays to have children or adopt.
* Anyone who talks about "survival of the fittest" or states that Group X (of which they are a member) is "superior" ought to be given a pocket knife and a mirror and dropped alone into the Siberian tundra. We'll give the body a decent burial in a couple of weeks.
* Anyone who says that "guns don't kill people, people kill people" should try giving them to people who've been institutionalised for mental health disorders. If this doesn't seem like a good idea, it might be good to reflect on the number of undiagnosed people wandering the streets, or those who have been released into "community care".
* It's Australians who have been assimilated by the Borg. Seriously, who else would keep voting for Howard?
These statements to be taken with more or less grains of salt - I'll let the reader decide what amounts are appropriate.
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The Herald is abysmally slow here in Ozland. Interestingly, while my home connection downloads it fine (eventually), when I access it at work, the main stylesheet doesn't come down, so all of the formatting is blocked (other than the tables). Same Firefox brower, same Adblock extension running in both places.
At work, the proxy blocks anything not on port 80/443, so I'm wondering if The Herald are doing some wierd stuff with protocols. If I were truly motivated, I'd run some kind of network sniffer to find out... but I can't be bothered.
Anyways, it's been that way for the last couple of weeks, so something definitely changed around that time.