Posts by Lucy Stewart
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Hard News: Cultures and violence, in reply to Tom Semmens,
The only way a gun ban of any sort could be imposed by the US Federal government is by amending the constitution by repealing the second amendment, probably by getting three-fourths of the state legislatures approval.
What about that assault weapons ban Bush repealed, then? Not saying it was perfect, but clearly bans on some types of weapons have been federally possible. And there are a bunch of legislative options (bans on semi-automatics, magazine capacity, rate of fire, more uniform licensing procedures from state to state) which do not constitute a "gun ban" and would probably have a significant effect on gun violence rates.
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Hard News: Cultures and violence, in reply to Paul Campbell,
the mother, the first victim, the gun nut, with all those guns, disproves that point for ever - being prepared and having a lot of guns does not protect you from other gun nuts, if anything it makes you more vulnerable
IIRC owning a gun in America makes you several times more likely for a gun to cause your death. Not necessarily at someone else's hand, but I'm not sure "easier suicide" is a great motto for gun ownership. C.f also Kasandra Perkins, recently killed by her NFL boyfriend. The couple owned several guns and she enjoyed going to gun ranges. But who is prepared to pull a gun on their partner in their own home, in front of their child?
My main experience with Americans and guns is that even in very liberal areas with tight gun control there are many people who believe, deep down, that owning a gun does or would make them safer, despite the above statistic. They'll acknowledge in conversation that having a gun in the house makes it easier for someone to die, but it doesn't seem to sink in. After this latest shooting, people have advocated that the safest society is one where everyone is armed. That idea - that the best thing to do to make children safer is to create a place where everyone is prepared to use lethal violence at any minute - sounds more like the DRC than a more perfect union to me. But it has appeal for some people. That's...really hard to understand.
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Hard News: You down with TPP?, in reply to Allan Moyle,
State Legislatures in US will not be bound by many of its requirements and can continue to offer disproportionate incentives and subsidies for industries and companies to come to their state to set up business.
This particular facet of the US set-up ends up disadvantaging the US as a whole far more than anyone else, I promise. And I'm not quite sure I see the relevance re: our desire to export them agricultural products.
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Up Front: Whimsy Is an Extra 5 Cents a Word, in reply to Robyn Gallagher,
I had similar issues when I started working for Telecom Xtra. I thought I was totally selling out to the man, but once I started my new job, I realised I was in a workplace full of smart, bright, creative people who were doing cool things. And yeah, dirty old Telecom were paying me, but they weren’t telling me how to spend the money.
I figure the ground rule for not selling out is basically “don’t work for anyone whose business model requires them to be evil” (i.e. arms dealers, tobacco companies, American mortgage brokers.) Everything else is at least potentially mitigatable.
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Hard News: Fact and fantasy, in reply to Susannah Shepherd,
And as Mike pointed out earlier, you'd be unwise to cite that study as a measure of New Zealand's water quality.
If the fertiliser-use standing is accurate, the water quality implications are straightforward - especially when you consider that we fertilise largely for pastoral applications, which gives us the twin problems of fertiliser run-off *and* cowshit, as opposed to agricultural fertilisation, where the uptaken nutrients are harvested and removed. "General environmental standing" and "water quality" are not automatically linked, but that specific measure is.
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Up Front: Or It's Who We're Drinking With..., in reply to Emma Hart,
We hold hands with lovers, and with children. And that’s it.
I remember having an excessively awkward conversation with my mother, sometime at the beginning of puberty, about why it was no longer okay for me to hold my father's hand in public. I didn't see how it was any different from when I'd held his hand all through my childhood. But just the knowledge that other people would interpret it differently made it impossible for me to keep seeing it that way.
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I found Public Address the year I started uni, which was not so long before PAS opened for business; I really can't understate how many fun and engaging discussions I've had here, and how much of a lifeline back to NZ it's been since I moved overseas, especially (but not only because of) when the Christchurch earthquakes happened.
I hope it lasts as long as everyone here wants it to, however long - and I hope it is long - that may be.
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Yes, the idea that some Republicans are taking away that their problem this election was not being right-wing enough is certainly alarming. C.f. several anti-abortion groups, who argued today that Mitt Romney had not demonstrated his commitment to banning abortion fervently enough. There's a deep-seated belief there that not only is Obama not a legitimate president, any president elected by the votes of people-not-white-men would somehow be not legitimate. It's creepy.
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Hard News: The Watching World, in reply to BenWilson,
It’s a pity they didn’t show attempting to get Obama via Jill Stein, to prove it’s not just a screen calibration issue. The guy just talked about it, which is much less believable. One is a simple fault, the other highly malicious, illegal intent.
Yeah, I watched that video and thought "well, crappy touchscreens are not unknown to mankind." It's problematic, not conclusive.
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Hard News: The Big 2012 US Election PAS Thread, in reply to David Hood,
In theory, they should be a bit careful about what the state rules are about cameras at polling places.
The nice lady at our local polling place was quite happy to let me take a picture of the machine they use to scan the ballots.