Posts by st ephen
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I do believe the vote was for "The Public Address Word of the Year 2010", so I'd have thought that equal dashes of (self-knowing) geekery and cliquery were par for the course.
In passing, while looking up the pronunciation of "twat", I came across Twayblade, which ought to mean "a bisexual dandy" but doesn't. Yet. We have 12 months...
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My understanding was always that "twat to rhyme with hot" was an offensive four letter word that you couldn't say on the telly, whereas "twat to rhyme with hat" was a meaningless monosyllable that edgier UK comedians adopted to put one over the censors. Not for the first time, PAS has demolished one of my pet theories.
I had a suggestion for Word Revival of the Year: egg, from that movie that everyone loved apart from me and Cecilia. But thanks to Tom I now see that the "paul henry word" also claims that category.
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Isn't it possible that Andrew's friend is actually a National MP putting on a funny voice?
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Hard News: I'm not a "f***ing cyclist".…, in reply to Sacha,
Sounds familiar...
"A dark city street with men lurking around is no place for a young woman, no matter how much they bleat about having every right to be in the same place as a man. I’m unsure if it’s either arrogance or stupidity that lead various wimmin's organisations to insist on saying women have equal rights with men."
Men are just bigger, faster and have greater upper body strength. The consequences are simply biology + physics, or something...
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Hard News: I'm not a "f***ing cyclist".…, in reply to Jolisa,
...useful practice for rounding a corner and encountering a handful of kids happily riding home from school the way my siblings and I used to.
Kids are "strongly discouraged" from riding to our local school. Instead we have a walking bus, which means five and six year old kids (who are like a sackful of puppies at the best of times) are expected to don fluoro vests and walk in single file to school acting like mini-adults the whole way, while drivers whizz past acting like frustrated toddlers. In more enlightened times, it was the cars that had to have a fluoro flag - waved by a pedestrian walking in front of them. This seems more sensible than teaching drivers that potential risks will be lit up like Christmas trees.
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Just to be clear Craig, I agree with you. I'm not the "some people" I was referring to.
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... the police (who might be good at taking over and administering an incident but are not experts in mine rescue) are presiding over amateur hour at the (literal) coal face.
I thought Tom touched on what's bugging some people, but he's 180 degrees out. It isn't "amateur hour" at the coal face, it's stone cold by-the-book professionalism - "Best Practice Mine Incident Management", by people who sat through the same lectures as Matthew. And these professionals know they are accountable and any deviation from the book would be a career-limiting step. As long as they follow procedure, any inquest will exonerate them. The police do procedure well.
It isn't that some people want a Hollywood response, they just want a more human response.
Of course if my own son was down there I'd want to don the breathing gear and go in, without waiting for permission from some arse-covering bureaucrat. I wouldn't expect or want anyone else to be responsible for my actions. But equally, I'd be beyond angry if some other cowboy decided to ignore the experts and drive a digger down the tunnel to rescue his son. I'd want someone to be responsible for preventing his actions. And I guess that's why we end up with procedures to follow, and why Knowles isn't just some arse-covering bureaucrat. -
re. M.Laws:
...there is no practical solution, other than cyclists accepting that it is they who have the greatest responsibility to stay safe.
This sounds a lot like the "don't blame the flies for being attracted to the meat" argument.
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Hard News: The Engagement, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
Nonsense! The Mayans have clearly indicated that this will occur when the ball playing Hero Twins bring down 7-Macaw
Does Graham Henry know about this? NZ plays Tonga first up in RWC2011, but the Tongan ball-playing twins Anthony and Saia Faingaa are in the Australian squad. 7-Macaw could meet them in the semi-final if France beats NZ in pool play. More likely is a meeting with the Argentine twins Manuel and Felipe Contepomi in the quarter-final. But NZ also plays Canada in pool play, with twins Dan and Mike Pletch. And you can't rule out de Villiers picking Akona and Odwa Ndungane for the semi-final.
Someone needs to tell 7-Macaw to avoid the dentist.
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Hard News: Moving targets, in reply to Steve Barnes,
I can’t help feeling the ingrained racism of NZ in this
Yeah, I’ve been pushing the Institutional Racism angle all along. Work-Life Balance is such a pakeha concept – “business is business and holidays are holidays and never the twain etc”. I’ll bet the Wongs have never taken a holiday in their lives. The idea that a New Zealand-Chinese businessman would take a holiday in China without doing a bit of wheeling and dealing on the side is ridiculous – that’s a key driver for our immigration policy isn’t it? We want New Zealanders to be going back and forth to China setting up business deals – surely that’s better use of taxpayer funds than flying Sir John Key to one of his offshore holiday homes for the rest of his life?
But no, I couldn’t find any takers for the argument out in the real world, either.