Posts by BenWilson
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R misses Auckland coffee - way better than here!
Have you tried making it yourself? Then you can spread the good word to guests ;-)
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It hasn’t felt like a different country in the slightest, nor required any substantial adjustments that I can think of, except to slightly modify my phone voice at work, so people don’t call me Iain instead of Ben.
I had the same problem in Oz, except they were inclined to call me Bin. That was, in fact, my first email address over there, on account of a silly ozzie helpdesk chick.
The main way London differs from both NZ and Ozzie cities is simply the hugeness of it. Certainly Oz is much more like NZ in most ways, but London only really feels foreign until you go anywhere else . The US feels like a totally different planet by comparison, and they still mostly speak English. Smalltown UK felt extremely comfortable and familiar to me, more so than, say, Sydney.
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i think it's a vicious cycle that started in the late 90s, the crowed wanted to seem cool by being fashionably late and so the bands just waited till they showed up now it's the norm and no one can change it.
Yup, I think most of the KA's problems are actually driven by the fact that people want to turn up there in such numbers. Being stuffed in a room full of revelers is an end in itself to a lot of people. I highly doubt the problem will "end itself" by people getting bitter and not showing up - that would have already happened. Those who are still showing up probably like it that way. Except for the people who just wanted to listen to the music, and felt there was no other place to go. They suffer.
This party crowd wears the lateness and difficulty of it all as badges of pride, a form of exclusivity that ensure that anyone square or old pretty much won't go, because they have to work, or they can't handle the lateness. Turning up late for work looking like shit, reeking of booze and smoke simply shows how committed you are to your partying.
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Hang on a minute, that's one dodgy clown. They surely expect to be dakked nearly every time they perform. They shouldn't be freeballing (freebagging is the female form) in front of children. Aren't they meant to wear long johns or some other comical kind of underwear?
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Dyan, I must confess I didn't look it up, having read about it years ago in some Soldier of Fortune magazines. The author was especially bitter on not going commando to the point he convinced me and I went that way for nearly 15 years. The idea of crotch rot really doesn't appeal. I've since realized that underwear have come a long way since then.
But teh wiki agrees with me. It's called that because commandos did it. I find it especially hard to believe that GI Joe even could go commando - his undies are built in. He's never going to be caught freebagging when juggle-dakked. He'll down them and f*&$ing clown them. Go Joe!
I have learned tonight that going commando is also sometimes used to mean "sans dinger". Maybe that explains the doc's reticence.
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(Also wondering what Arnie in a singlet and dirt has to do with no knickers, or maybe not...)
I believe the phrase came from the custom of commandos in the tropics to not wear underpants because they actually increased hygiene problems. Curiously, Arnie did not go commando in Commando. He feels much more comfortable in undies.
So what has not having undies on got to do with your legs?
Well, I do have legs right up to my bum.
Although the bikinis they come out in don't hide much so I'm baffled, and intrigued.
Perhaps they do it to build up tension.
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Hi Steve, hope the PC's all good!
Reason and evidence simply form no part of the discourse over taste, per se.
This is as much of an assertion as the statement that reason and evidence are a large part of moral discourse. It would pay to be precise about what we are meaning by the terms (Reason, Evidence, Taste), if any further progress is to be made in the discussion. Then again, that is also likely to lead to further and further requests for clarity in an unending pursuit of justification for positions we've already fixated on. I think this is in many ways analogous to exactly how most moral reasoning goes.
So I'll try to stick to counterexamples.
I think reason and evidence can certainly affect our tastes quite a lot. Very often I've moved from disliking to liking a flavor, due to a more highly developed ability to distinguish subtleties. Sometimes a distaste has been caused much more by my mind than my taste buds - I think the fish has gone off and I don't want to touch it. But then the chef tastes it, and assures me it tastes exactly how it was intended to, and I'm perhaps tasting the dash of whiskey he splashed in there (I don't much like whiskey), and I'll try again, and guess what, I can actually convince myself it's pretty nice after all. Other things I used to like a lot more (like sugar in my coffee), but really don't like now. Not because I don't like the taste of sugar or of coffee, but because I know that I will be having far too much sugar that way, and something about that thought makes it tastes nasty to me.
Now you can probably argue that this degrades the idea of reason and evidence quite a lot. But you seem to be putting 'becoming comfortable with other races' as a reason and evidence based decision, and I just can't see much difference between the processes.
“White people are superior to people of any other race” is not an assertion of a taste sensation – it is a statement of position based on understandings about the nature humans.
That does depend on a particular parse of the quoted sentence. By "superior", a racist might not mean "Superior in every way" - certainly they will concede that other races than "white people" have dominated a number of sports, for instance. By superior they probably mean something far more like exactly what I'm saying, ie "White people are far more to my taste than people of any other race". Or "White people are the people I would like to be the rulers around here".
But how can you condemn racism if you don’t think there is really anything at all incorrect in the racist’s assessment?
I can't deny their assessment of their own taste. But I can (and do) have a very different taste in the matter. For any number of reasons I'd like people to know that, including the racists. It seems highly likely, on past experience, that people who express racist sentiments will act in ways I don't like (not just talk about it). That's how I can condemn it - because I think that condemning it might serve a purpose.
Now, there are other statements that the racist can make about which are simply statements of fact, and true or false on that account. Those can certainly be argued about, just the same as the statement "This dish is off" can be. And to that end a pigheaded racist is an unreasonable dickhead. But even if they made no other statement than that they did not like other races, a simple statement of taste and preference, without any counterfactual justification, it would still be in direct conflict with my tastes, and I would still oppose them. For that matter, even if they actually had quite a lot of evidence that white people are superior (and there are a lot of fields totally dominated by white people, and they form a disproportionate chunk of the ruling classes of the world), I would still hate their taste.
I agreed till the last line! Why would you leave reason and evidence (which is what I take you to mean by ‘scientific inquiry’) out of the equation? How else do you discuss morality, when you’re not turning to the gods?
Well scientific inquiry has much higher standard of 'reason and evidence' than moral arguments seem to. Scientific theories can, for example, be refuted by counter observations that any observer can make. In fact, I'd go so far as Popper does in saying that if they can't be refuted by such observations, they are not scientific. But in moral arguments, they always seem to come to an impasse, in which a crucial counter observation is simply seen different ways, depending on which theory you adhere to. This is a major weakness of moral theorizing IMHO, and means that the best a moral theory can aim for is internal coherence, rather than the loftier ambition science has of 'correspondence with reality'.
Further issues: Have there ever been any "Moral discoveries"? In which a fundamental new and totally counter-intuitive moral fact was discovered, which led to a whole new theory? This happens in science all the time. For that matter, are there any established moral facts at all ? Name one! Tell me how you can possibly set up a moral experiment, in which observers could agree that some moral point has been settled. Most sciences seem to involve a great deal of mathematics - where's the deep and involved moral mathematics that we could expect to accompany a scientific field? Indeed, tell me why morality as a theoretical subject is only taught in the Arts, Theology and Law faculties in Universities, rather than science departments?
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I'm sick to death of the narrowly defined debates about the relative merits of New Zealand versus Australia or some other place. We left because we wanted a change. We got it. But it's not lower taxes or better wages that keeps us in Sydney. It's a far more complex set of considerations that have more to do with social connections than work ones. Perhaps that's because we were mid-career, not starting off, I don't know.
Totally. I lived in Oz for 5 years, mainly because of a particular opportunity for me and my partner. I moved back to NZ for the same reason.
But I must say I'm rather tied to NZ now - ACC approved a lifelong claim for my first son, and I really can't see any other country in the world being 1/50th so generous. Oz certainly will not, since accidents must be covered by insurance, and this accident has already happened. Of course, if ACC is smashed to pieces at some point, that might all change.
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Edit: a reference. I think we can trust Greenwich on something like this:
Does seem to be a slightly controversial point. Some usages have put midday as 12pm, particularly in America. Also, using midnight is not necessarily perfectly disambiguating, because every day has two of those, one at each end. But it's an improvement. The 24 hour clock solves all the problems, though.
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As it is the draft policy means that pokie machine numbers will be stable (not fall), and will locate in areas less deprived - likely to be the Avondales, Onehungas, Mt Wellingtons, Sandringhams, etc.
I'm glad to hear Avondale is OK for pokies. They make a nice accompaniment for the huge racecourse, conveniently situated right next to the state housing area.
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