Posts by richard
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OnPoint: Pay Attention, in reply to Ross Mason,
H/T to Douglas Adams, but he omitted that.
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http://web.archive.org/web/20071020051936/http://iq.org/
Search for “Canberra” :-) And "ANU" :-)
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Devil's advocate hat on...
Assange does seem to be fairly sure he knows what is best for everyone.
Its not hard to see a guy like that as a rapist.
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Up Front: The Up Front Guides: How to Be…, in reply to Lucy Stewart,
Better yet: become a graduate science student. Undergraduates volunteer for minionship. If you play it right, you will never wash another dish.
(Okay, you will, but it will be many fewer dishes than you would have washed without minions.)
I once got a post-doc to help move a sofa. Does that count?
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I am wondering if part of the animus toward cyclists is that (despite the rantings of the chap masquerading as a motoring journalist) most drivers are aware that if they did seriously damage a cyclist, there would likely be consequences, and they are trying to (psychologically, at least) establish a credible defense as “insurance” in advance of the hypothetical day they clip a cyclist as they drive to work.
If you are a basically law-abiding person you stand very little chance of suddenly finding yourself in prison – but killing someone on the road is probably one of the ways to do it. But opening your door without looking does not feel like dealing drugs or burglarizing beach houses, and in one sense it isn’t: you may be able to go a good deal of time running a tinny house before getting caught, but you should know that you have stepped across the line long before the handcuffs go on.
To most drivers, opening a car door on Tamaki Drive doesn’t feel criminal or even wrong (and perhaps isn’t actually criminal until someone gets hurt) so if you do find yourself in the dock as a result of doing this, it must be fault of the “idiot cyclist” you forced to swerve into traffic, and not something done by a fine, upstanding citizen such as yourself…
Of course, the smarter thing to do would be to look before you opened your door, and give bikes more space on the road – but that must look like hard work to a lot of people.
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Up Front: That's Inappropriate!, in reply to Russell Brown,
Bong hits for Jesus, anyone.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morse_v._Frederick
Almost all schools prohibit some activities which would be entirely permissible outside of the institution – their perennial struggle seems to be where to draw the line.
FWIW if I was 17 and American, I would probably want to wear a T-shirt to school that said “Bong Hits For Jesus” on the front, and “The Supreme Court Erred in Deciding Morse v. Frederick” on the back (which is political speech, and likely protected). Even though I am interested in neither bong hits nor Jesus.
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When my mother went to school (as she tells it) three girls being seen in public without their uniform gloves was enough to provoke a thundering denunciation in assembly from the head mistress (as I am sure she was called) which, according to my sainted Mum, could not have been more thunderous if they had been caught selling their services to sailors.
And where and when I went to school they could (and did, and quite legally, too) hit you repeatedly on your pre-teen bottom with a bamboo stick.
So things do seem to be getting better.
Now that I teach myself (in a university, not a school), I have had a couple of occasions when I thought that the student in my office (and this has involved students of both major genders) could possibly have been wearing a few more clothes, or at least the same number of clothes, but ones that left a little less of the student immediately visible. Fortunately, fashion alone has seen to that, insofar as belly buttons appear to be less visible this summer than they were a couple of years ago. Gym attire on the lads seems to be relatively immune to the vagaries of fashion, however.
But I grow old, and wear my trousers rolled.
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Catch and release has always struck me as wantonly cruel. It is probably a dozen years since I caught a fish (and also, by no coincidence a little over a dozen years since I was last a full-time resident of New Zealand) but I used to catch hundreds of fish in a year, and everything that could be used, was used. If we couldn’t eat it, it was frozen or given to neighbors, and the cat (who imagined his name was “Fish”, as in “Here, Fish, Fish, Fish!”) would eat the offcuts.
I have no qualms about eating flesh, but catch and release is to fishing what running up to a sheep in a field and whacking it with a stick is to a lamb roast.
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As well, a lot of ANZ readers are disappointed when someone says they'll make things right - like, by buying back the books - and then doesnt. Witi Ihimaera has lost a ton of respect from us. And from his peers.
Oh, I agree, but a quick googling to catch up on the Witi news reveals he is still swanning round the place doing (possibly lucrative) guest appearances on the conference circuit -- this one for instance
http://www.banffcentre.ca/event/5133/witi-ihimaera-and-whale-rider.mvc?d=2010-09-25+19:30
Very nice place Banff. He may have lost our respect, but you can't take respect to the bank, nor does respect provide the padding on the comfy seat at the front of the plane that likely carries you to and from a literary bunfight in Banff.
I really would like to know just how many books the guy bought from the warehouse.