Posts by TracyMac
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Yeah, not that convinced by the "suffering = great art" trope. Sure, some great artists can produce great works in great adversity, but not that much actually when you're right in the middle of it - you generally need supplies and (paying) audiences.
For every Chatterton, you have a John Donne. Bach and Handel never lacked wealth and patronage, etc etc etc. The Beatles and the Stones made their millions pretty quickly once they hit the big time.
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Was never a great fan of vinyl - fragile and quality seriously degraded after a bit of normal use. I certainly never managed to keep my albums in archival quality.
So in Wellington, never related to the Slow Boat live, and with Real Groovy closed, frankly I found it to be a bit of a music shop wasteland. There's Rough Peel too, but that never had anything I was looking for.
Off to Amplifier for Tahuna Breaks' latest. And can Amplifier do up a mobile interface or app, and allow FLAC downloads? (I always loved them for their high-quality non-DRMed offerings in any case).
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I personally feel that the biggest achievement for queer rights, once the sodomy canard was out the way, was the change to the Human Rights Act in 1993. A huge fight, but with an early win when the armed forces said they would not seek exemption to the terms of the act, thus making gays in the military a non-event.
And majorly sticking one up (so to speak) the police commissioner at the time, who was allowing his religious views to influence policy for the organisation.
Marriage is great for those who want it, and we are no longer 2nd class citizens in that respect. But we are all protected by the Human Rights Act - let's not forget that achievement that laid the foundation for today.
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Not to get all earnest about language (and not that I think the article needs correction, but I would like to note that the campaign is using the terms "people/talent with disability" to identify the group.
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If I ever manage to write a book about this endless, endless goddamned interleftiegument from which I can apparently never escape, it will be called: Identity Politics Ruined the Left! How These Dudes Know What's Really Important And The Rest of Us Should Just Shut Up.
Put me down for a signed copy.
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There are plenty of problems with the police. There are corrupt cops and useless cops. There is is definitely a fortress mentality with some. There are plenty of celebrated examples of miscarriage of justice. That's why not having a death penalty is a good thing.
But there are between 40-70 murders per annum in NZ, and the police "resolution rate" typically hovers around 90%. So with that in mind, a handful of "false positives" (as awful as they are) should be seen in perspective against the hundreds of instances of murderers brought to justice in the 40 years since Arthur Allan Thomas!
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Hard News: Violence in the streets, in reply to Steve Barnes,
Dude, I am not going to compromise my job, but let's just say that cops investigating a violent death - especially one of this nature - are nowhere near as bloody stupid as you seem to think they are.
I think it's best summarised as "been there, done that". And there are a multitude of other inquiries being carried out that are well beyond the scope of that paltry list you've managed to toss off the top of your head.
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"Roots-reo-dub" - I like it. And the track is awesome.
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Hard News: Friday Music: Go Home DJ, in reply to Steve Barnes,
Yeah, for "party mix" at home, I thoroughly endorse Media Monkey. Tons of features, and I use it to manage all my media, rip CDs (into zillions of formats) and so on.
There's even a lock mode so you can cue everything up and no-one can get into it without the password. :-)
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As for the "geeks = super cool" in terms of their acceptance of queers, eh, I think maybe the "we are awesome liberals" type are - as in, they go beyond "tolerance" to acceptance.
But there are huge pockets of Christian geeks, military-SF geeks, Randians (and despite their professed "libertarianism", the ones I've encountered have been bigots against queers), etc etc. Having worked with a fundie-type Christian for the past couple of years, I've learned there's a big tranche of them floating around, but who remain relatively stealth until you talk about personal stuff with them for more than 5 minutes. The right-wing military nuts, I've encountered on more than one SF-fan mailing list.
So maybe in terms of population proportions, geeks have greater queer acceptance compared to the general population, but there are still plenty who have issues. I suppose in the general geek culture, it's less socially-acceptable to be openly bigoted, which is a very good thing. I have to say I do notice the entrenched sexism more.
Speaking of literary genres and acceptance, I find romance readers are pretty accepting of queers - there is a whole swodge of "gay" romances written by women, and whose market is - at least partially - het women. Of course, there's a heap more Christian-orientated and "traditional" role-affirming stuff out there as well (although those subgenres are the minority compared to the more common staunch heroine these days - just look at Nora Roberts).