Posts by Grace Dalley
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Just leave Javellina and Trevalynne out of it!
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And sorry but I can't help posting this.
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<splutter>
Soap operas have *nothing* on you, David. Thanks for the wonderful stories! I'm sure they weren't in the least bit funny to experience, but you're making all of us mirthfully inhale our hot drinks.
I must admit to being in suspense about the fate of the partly-buried dog, though. Was it so awful that you're tactfully not saying?
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No sound but what a vision.
That made me think of Roy Montgomery's instrumentals so I put on Scenes from the South Island while I watched it. It worked quite nicely.
Or Rhian Sheehan's New Zealand Landscapes. Perfect!
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Emmy noms=cat eating toffee, surely?
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Totally in awe of the mad poetry skillz, Chris and Ian! :-)
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Has anyone else read Memento Mori by Muriel Spark? It's about a man who rings up random strangers and reminds them that they're going to die. People try and have him arrested for threatening to kill, but the police eventually decide it's not a threat, just a factual statement. :-)
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Ben: my point (perhaps not clearly expressed) is that the intention makes all the difference. As I understand it (someone correct me if this is wrong), mokamokai were made by killing captured enemies, and removing the most sacred part of the body to be displayed as a trophy. Lenin is preserved as a hero of his country. You get the difference.
Ancient Egyptian mummies or European bog people are trickier to work out, ethically. I'm quite OK with scientists examining them to discover things about the times in which they lived, but I don't think it's particularly OK to turn their bodies into a freakshow. Is there some good reason for the general public to be looking at them? If not, then I'd rather they weren't.
There has been some debate in Europe about the display of plastinated, dissected corpses for the sake of public education. Where the bodies were donated specifically for this purpose, I think that's OK too, provided they're displayed in a sensitive and respectful way. People who don't want to go and look at them don't have to.
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it doesn't take much looking to find examples of the use of human parts that make most people feel exactly what others feel when they see mummified remains. And the choice of reason for that is quite arbitrary.
Arbitrary? Not at all, it's all to do with how much respect is being shown. Lenin's embalmed body is on public display, as is Mao's, precisely because they are revered. Yet the mummified mokamokai that Islander saw in the Otago Museum is the remains of an individual who's been shown the ultimate disrespect. Context is everything.
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Probably the only thing I'm missing is lashings of home-made ginger beer!
And a dog named Timmy? :-)
I have just heard from a friend that it is
104 degrees Fahrenheit in New Jersey today!
maybe they should rename it New Tank Top...Or No Jersey?