Posts by TracyMac
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I'd just like to ask WHY Pitch Black are playing the night before I arrive in Auckland. ARGH.
The only time I've been able to check out Mr Free (and any of his collaborators) live was in the Mesh days. And Mesh were totally Orsome. Pitch Black even toured London when I was living there, but the tickets sold out before I even heard of the gig.
Maybe one day before I'm 90?
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@LegBreak - I don't see why. I think Auckland is pretty cool myself, but I'm not parochial either. He didn't say Auck is the be-all and end-all or even "the best". As for me, I love Auck, but I think Wellington is better. :-)
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...ah, and thanks for the update, Karl. :-)
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Good luck.
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I got my Studio XPS from Dell (yes, the Dell Hell, but these lappies are sexay) last week, and spent the grand total of 20 minutes this evening installing Mint Linux (an Ubuntu derivation) as a dual-boot OS with Fista [sic] (hurry up Win 7 upgrade!) and all the bundled apps. Oh, after downloading and burning the DVD, of course.
I had to run a wee app (EnvyNG) to install the proper ATI graphics driver to get the 1080p display to full res, but that was a 2 minute job. No command-line: it downloaded, installed and configured the driver. No muss no fuss.
Anyway, horses for courses as far as OSes go, I reckon.
As for Kashin, I grew up an Aucklander, enjoyed the zoo, and like elephants, and I don't really give a toss. I suppose a lot of people got into Kashin because of the ASB school banking thingie, but we never had money for that.
As for the remark about the Centre for New Zealand Studies at Birkbeck, huh, that can't have been around long. I worked there for 4 years in the early 00s, and it didn't exist then (or they were very quiet about their existence).
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From Carol:
He [Hide] was concerned local government was dominated by 'old white males' and it should be more representative of all groups, not just Maori.
There's a lovely Internets term for that: concern troll.
Because it's always cute when someone who isn't a member of a minority group runs around telling that group that their concerns are not worth bothering about, and are "counter-productive" one way or another. For whom, one wonders.
Obviously, to most thinking people, the fact Hide and his ilk won't take Step One to make the dominant group more diverse doesn't really give much credence to the stated desire to increase diversity. It's painfully transparent.
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Oh, and regarding the victim-blaming that goes on with people wearing "slutty" outfits, I like the "yes means yes" philosophy that's been bandied around lately. If someone isn't actively consenting, hello, it's not consent.
It doesn't matter if someone's wearing thongs and high heels (call me crass, but I thoroughly support a woman's right to do so, although not so much in ads or at work), or is as drunk as a skunk, but unless she (or he) says it's cool to proceed, it isn't.
I think that's the message that the young (and not so young) idiots of any gender need to assimilate. It won't stop pathological rape, but it might help stop "confusion".
It's not as if asking for consent is hard - touching someone and saying, "this ok?" or simply "how about it?" isn't exactly rocket science.
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I. Have. No. Words.
It's like "OMG, some black people in the US are crims, why did they free the slaves?" Because some random people of subgroup X always represent all other members of that subgroup.
And I agree with Craig - feminism is all about the right to be as big fuckups (or successes) as men. It's about choices, after all.
Anyways, nice sporking here, and I'm glad I read this rant before the article in question (assuming it ever makes it online). What has been happening to The Listener in the years I've been away from NZ?
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Regarding motivators, this all sounds very much like the controversy ranging in the dog world about the best training methods, with the Millan-loving "I'll stick a shock collar on my dog if I want to" lot at one end, and the "positive reinforcement" types at the other.
According to those at the positive reinforcement end, you start off with consistent modelling of the behaviour you want and rewards for successful execution. More high-value achievement bring higher value rewards (and for dogs, it's not just food - perhaps they love frisbee or tug-of-war). Once the behaviour is pretty well embedded, you reward more and more intermittently, but you still keep your modelling and signals consistent.
And from my own experiments, this technique works pretty well for humans too. :-) The idea is consistency, good direction when required, general low-key appreciation of what someone else is doing, and rewarding intermittently for exceptional efforts. Not exactly rocket science.
There are a hell of a lot of people who seem to have their egos massively embedded in the "right" to hold a "misbehaving" (or confused, badly directed) dog up by the choke collar to "teach it a lesson". And a lot of smacking of muzzles when the dog chews - 5 hours ago - the slippers you left out in the lounge. Completely pointless. And not unlike the way in which certain people feel they should have the right to treat their children.
For me, the compelling argument is if you can get the same result using positive methods, why the hell would you use physical force? Forceful methods and punishment have not been demonstrated to have better results in getting the desired behaviour compared to positive reinforcement techniques. So why go to the forceful side?
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Graeme, point 2 is very interesting. At least that's a positive step, although I'm sure the coppers will be knocking on your door (with a sledgehammer) in a week or two anyway because they have "due cause" to assume you have drugs in your house. We'll have to see how that plays out.
Still, it doesn't address what I understand iis the binary nature of this kind of testing - something in the blood = impairment. As I mentioned, there are plenty of drugs that remain in body fat (and thus the bloodstream) for extended periods, beyond the point where they're having an effect. If there were defined thresholds that seemed to have some actual validity, then perhaps I might feel a bit more comfortable about the idea.
I've never driven while stoned, but I have driven within a month of smoking pot, and a standard THC test would find it, no problems. I think that sucks.