Posts by Stephen R
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Hard News: Time to Vote, in reply to Hilary Stace,
I asked about the requirement to verbally confirm your name to the electoral officer - even with the easyvote card - and whether this was a problem for any non verbal or disabled people and the man assured me there is always a way to communicate.
When I advance voted, they asked me to confirm I was <name> and I said "yes", so there doesn't seem to be a set formula for requiring the voter to say their own name.
I get much more rigorous identity confirmation when I donate blood. I think anyone who could hear the question would be able to affirm their identity to the satisfaction of the polling clerk, and if they were hearing impaired, I imagine the polling clerk would be happy to try to work something out. -
Hard News: A call from Curia, in reply to Grant McDougall,
Leading questions like this are always weird, as if some parties actually believe what they're doing is wrong.
Yet when I've responded to questions that way "Actually, I think all of them *think* they're doing what's right" I get weird reactions, like the caller can't quite wrap their head around me believing that even people I disagree with might be doing things for good motives.
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Up Front: Oh, God, in reply to UglyTruth,
To make it perfectly clear, the crux of the issue is that it is more rational to believe that deity exists than not because evidence exists that supports such existence, but no evidence to the contrary has been shown.
You used to be JTB on Realms of Insanity, didn't you?
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Hard News: Dirty Politics, in reply to BenWilson,
There's many ways in which the NZ government could fuck with them and theirs so I think their right to vote is not something to take away lightly.
Agree completely, but then this also applies to people in prison, which is why I sort of hope the current challenge is successful, and people who's lives are currently completely controlled by the state can have some input in how the state treats them.
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Southerly: Sign this Petition, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
I see it more as a mad scramble by the railway children, through dense bracken and against the clock, to alert the Honeytown Express driver that the Mad Meccano Mob have been tampering with the supports of the upcoming viaduct, bridging the vast chasm of disbelief and ennui.
A structure already strained by prevailing winds, and non-Euclidean geometry.That was a quote from "Five go mad on Mescalin", right?
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Southerly: Sign this Petition, in reply to tussock,
first: yes, signed on.
I've heard family anecdotes about this stuff from the 40's. Not every National government has been that way, nor every Labour government free of it, but for the most part and certainly today and in the near future: being clean, open, and honest, playing the ball and not the player, is a left wing idea for government.
That's a rather depressing outlook, and I hope you are wrong, but fear you are correct.
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Speaker: Telling Our Own Tales, in reply to Emma Hart,
Hey look, the ellipses are gone! It's almost like somebody pointed it out.
Obviously magic powers. It took my wife 5 years of constantly criticising my apostrophes and Over Capitalisation before I finally got it sorted. (mostly).
Have you considered a career in teaching literacy?
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Hard News: Privacy and the Public Interest, in reply to Kumara Republic,
When I look at the ICT jobs advertised on places like Seek, they insist on several years’ experience with the right ‘tools’.
My experience with this, from both sides of the interviewing table, is that for developers at least, there is a dearth of people with exactly the right skills. Generally people advertising jobs ask for their ideal candidate and then hire the best they can find; who will almost certainly be missing a range of things they want, but will have convinced the interviewer that they can learn them.
Also most people worth working for know that technology is changing all the time. Chances are, any new job is going to be 50% stuff you know, and 50% stuff you have to learn, and that over time you're going to have to keep learning; if you can demonstrate that you know some stuff, and that you can learn, then someone will take a punt on you. How you demonstrate that might be via sample projects, home projects, volunteer work or similar (I'm not entirely sure what it's like starting now. I got a break working for a friend on pretty shit wages for a few years, but then it took off.)
Once you've had a job for a couple of years, then your job performance and the things you've done are much more important than your qualifications for most things.
Good luck for the future.
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It really annoys me when politicians organise the economy so that wages stay low (by keeping a large enough pool of unemployed that low-skill workers are desperate to get minimum wage) and then castigate the unemployed for not having jobs.
It just seems ... vindictive. Like blaming a bleeding accident victim for getting blood on the floor... and it pisses me off.
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Hard News: Privacy and the Public Interest, in reply to Aidan,
My memory is a bit rusty, but I think that it's a random order of parties on each ballot paper to avoid just that situation.
(Obviously, it's difficult for me to have checked this... It's possible they say it's random, but just print all the ballots the same way and trust that people won't multi-vote...)