Posts by BenWilson

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  • Hard News: The Trophy Hunter,

    The thing about hypothermia is even mild doses can make people make silly decisions.

    It's a pretty hard thing to be objective about, though.

    As a 8 year old I was on a tramp with my Dad, brother and 2 other guys, walking off-trail across Mt Ruapehu. At one point they decided to cross a small river by jumping between 2 banks that were about 10 feet high. I was last, and I slipped before jumping, pitched headlong in the opposing rock wall, bounced off and fell into the shallow rocky stream.

    Of course everyone freaked out. It looked terrible, but the truth was that I had actually absorbed the impact into the wall with my forearms, so my head only brushed the wall, and my pack protected my back from any rocks I may have fallen on. So I was mostly just a tiny bit bruised, a lot shaken, and very wet. After it was established that I was not only conscious, but capable of walking on, we continued on, with a number of the jokes being made at my expense by basically everyone.

    However, my father became convinced that I was both concussed and had hypothermia. The slightest straying from the non-existent path we were following was seen as loss of direction. My peevishness was put down to possible hypothermia. And I was also bloody tired, after a 5 hour hike, faced with a further hour in wet clothes carrying a full pack. My memory was pretty clear on everything that happened, the continuous checks, the jokes of the other kids about my clumsiness and how I was now bonkers, the fact that Dad and his mate were basically guessing blindly where we were going, as evening approached on an exposed ridge, and how pissed off I was about it all. I'm pretty sure that I was neither concussed nor hypothermic, just tired, uncomfortable and angry, and disliking the company I was in. The symptoms are most likely identical. I wonder how often this happens in the wilds. Certainly insisting to someone who does not have hypothermia that they do is likely to piss them off. Denying that they are making rational decisions will add to that, the way it does whenever men say that sort of thing to women.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 10657 posts Report Reply

  • Island Life: Vendor says sell!,

    Fletch, I'm feeling similarly stoked about my entrails reading. My fixed rate came up for redocumenting just before our election. I asked the bank which way they thought it was going, and they said up. I asked people at my wife's company (stockbroking and funds management), and they said it would go up. I asked Wall Street (by watching what they reckoned on CNBC) and they thought it would go up (most of them).

    Then I asked myself. How can it possibly go up, when just about every government treasury in the world is talking about emergency measures, the foremost of which is to encourage banks to lend again by putting the cash rate down?

    How can the finance industry not see this? I see 2 possibilities: 1. They are indulging in wishful thinking. 2. They are lying and just want me to lock in a high rate, so when the rate does go down, they get more cream from me.

    Anyway, I went for the shortest term possible, at a slight premium, and about a week later Bollard cut the rates by 1%, and he's just dropped it again. If it keeps dropping we're going to have absolutely perfect timing to lock it in when it is at near rock bottom. I'm assuming it can't go below zero :-).

    I'm no whizzkid. I'm sure most of the mortgage holders in the world have access to the same reasoning, and this is part of the crisis. We're all holding out for the bottom. So the banks really are screwed. Which ultimately means we are screwed. I guess this is what a cycle of negativity is like. I hope it doesn't go that far, but at the end of the day I don't have the resources or the intention to prop the banks up to save the system myself. That can only be done as a collective effort.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 10657 posts Report Reply

  • OnPoint: Joggers in Saigon,

    Thanks Fonterra!

    A good friend of mine who has spent years living in various parts of Asia assures me that you can get fat on their food too, and had the man-boobs to prove it.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 10657 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: Trading Trade Me?,

    Um, Ben, I agree with your argument but in this case it was Rachel correcting herself.

    I wasn't ragging on Rachel. But internalizing pedantry to the point where you feel the need to make follow up posts just to correct something that is patently obvious, to preempt anyone else doing it (as so frequently happens) is something that I, at least, don't feel she should have to.

    3410

    Does is not also take longer when you're just pissing people off by being an anti-pedant? ;)

    I guess that depends on what you mean by anti-pedant. If it's someone who deliberately makes it unclear what they mean, then they're much worse than pedants. But if you mean someone like me, an un-pedant, then it's hard to say. The only people I piss off are pedants. If they are a majority, then yeah, it could actually take longer that way. But I don't think they are the majority, even in PA.

    Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that precision is bad. Absolutely not. I'm a computer programmer, and precision is totally vital in most of what I do. I'm accused (by you, as I recall) of being overly wordy, but my excuse is that I don't like to be misunderstood, so I say the same thing in several ways. Which means that pedantic people really piss me off, when they find one way that might have been poorly worded or punctuated, and hold that up as an inconsistency, thus hoping to refute my point. What they are really doing is deliberately missing the point. If you don't get what I mean, then bloody well ask what I mean, don't misconstrue me deliberately. I'm always happy to retract something that is poorly worded - to me that's about as emotionally challenging as fixing a bug in my software, a no-brainer, it has to be done. But humans are not computers, and they are able to get things from context, so some tiny bug doesn't need to be a show stopper in the world of human discourse. It seldom needs to be mentioned.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 10657 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: The Trophy Hunter,

    Here's Bill O'Reilly having his turn on it:

    It's hard to get po-faced about this either. In fact, his show seems pretty much like a middle-america-wanka rap. Talk some parody, rag on someone who's expressing their ideas in an equally poetic and easily misconstrued way, and then end with some curious imagery involving a slave stoking a screaming crowd with angry rhetoric. Amusingly silly, just like gangsta rap. I mean seriously, 'how can we harness the sun'? FFS haven't these guys ever heard of Hoover Dam? Of course they have, they're just using it as an excuse to evoke images of baseball and apple pie for the buttons it will push in their target demographic. Very similar to going on about black oppression.

    Not being part of the target demographic of either one, they both seem as crazy as a couple of steroid buffed professional wrestlers carrying on in their interminable interviews, as a prelude to their ridiculous staged fights.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 10657 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: The Trophy Hunter,

    I was interested to read recently that scientists have debunked the idea that we lose most body heat through the head.

    It's always seem like a pretty strange idea to me. It kind of suggests that you could wear a good hat and nothing else, and be 40 - 45% protected from the cold, which you only have to try for about 2 minutes to see is total bs.

    I'm glad to see the debunking of a bunch of claims about the timing of your eating having little relevance to weight gain. The sooner people realize that the only practical way you can lose weight is by not eating so much total, the better.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 10657 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: The Trophy Hunter,

    I think they were up in arms about the "no more white lies" line

    "no more white lies" is also something that doesn't have to be about race vs race. It's as much a statement about the racism built into language as any kind of statement about white people being liars (although it's possibly deliberately vague on that score). The fact that white lies are considered lesser lies is something that black people are understandably sore about it. This takes only a second to grasp. Again they're getting po-faced about artists celebrating a majorly historic event in language that they have always used, to an audience that understands and appreciates it. I'm looking forward to no more white lies and ma nigga in the, lemme see, the President's House, too, and I don't even like gangsta rap. I just don't expect it to mean that racism will end overnight, or that the President is going to issue an edict that gangstas have to rap in a more politically correct way.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 10657 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: The Trophy Hunter,

    Heh, classic taking a lyric out of context. "My president is black, n*g**". You only have to have listened to, like, 2 gangsta rap songs to realize that n*gg* in that context is being used like "brother", and that its referent is the person you are talking to, not about. "My prime minister is white, mate" doesn't mean I'm saying the prime minister is my white mate, or anyone's mate. It means the audience is my mate, and even then, it barely means that. It means 'you'. In gangsta rap, it seems pretty common to call anyone a n*gga, no matter what color their skin is, it's pretty much synonymous with 'people', or 'friends'. Similarly with motherfucker, and it's so obvious from the context it just makes Fox look incredibly stupid to be bringing it up in such Po-faced earnest.

    As for the 'post-racial era', it's hard to take it seriously. I don't think Americans have suddenly become less racist. They just like Barack Obama because he's incredibly likable, especially in light of his predecessor who was incredibly unlikable. Not on account of being white, btw, but on account of being a complete bastard.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 10657 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: The Trophy Hunter,

    I remember that talking about "tramping" in Australia was met with giggles. I think they thought it meant "whoring". They use "Bushwalking" or "Hiking".

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 10657 posts Report Reply

  • OnPoint: Joggers in Saigon,

    One thing I've also noticed about developed countries. Yelling at people over minor things is acceptable. In Southeast Asia at least, yelling at people was totally unacceptable, and a very foolish idea, whether you were in the right or not. It's hard to say which one is more frustrating, when you get into a conflict.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 10657 posts Report Reply

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