Posts by Rich Lock
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Hard News: A Capital Idea?, in reply to BenWilson,
I'm presuming they meant at noon, when you shadow is directly below you, rather than dawn or dusk, when it can cast all the way to the horizon.
Yeah, you've got to be a little bit careful with those tricksty definitions...
According to legend, Hiarbas, a king in the area near Carthage, agreed to let Dido buy as much land as she could cover with a bull's hide.
Dido then cut the hide into tiny strips, and with the strips surrounded a large area of land, which she called Byrsa, naming it from the hide of the bull
My man Hiarbas needs to get himself a good lawyer up in the place.
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Mildly scary to think how much obsessive time and effort went into making those hundreds of pages, though....
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Hard News: A Capital Idea?, in reply to Keir Leslie,
one of the great ironies of New Zealand is that we both over-invest in property and yet have consistently sub-par houses.
When we were doing up our house, we wanted it to be both a pleasant place to live and functional for the foreseeable future.
I recall making a trip to a bathroom supplies company, where the salesman showed us two racks of identical-looking bathroom fittings. 'These ones on my right are the good-quality ones', he said. 'they will last a good few years before failing, and they are premium-priced accordingly. These ones over here on my left are the crap ones that look good on the shelf but will probably break in a few months. But you don't need to worry about that, because obviously if you're buying a house in New Zealand, it's for one reason and one reason only: so you can make money selling it on in a few months time. So who gives a shit if they break after you've sold it, right?'
I paraphrase, but only slightly. We tried several times to explain to him that we were doing up a home, and wanted to live in it for the foreseeable future, but I'm not sure we would ever have been able to make him understand...
Short version: sub-par housing is an inevitable result of a property investment merry-go-round, where spending money actually doing anything more substantial than painting over the cracks eats into your profits.
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Hard News: Radio NZ: Sailing on in…, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
If you don’t get what you want the first dozen times you snarl the question, number thirteen probably isn’t going to do the trick.
Best to change tack completely in those circumstances, and ask them what is the fastest fish.
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Hard News: #NetHui: it's all about you, in reply to recordari,
So by now you must have become legion, and the natural progression from there is a George Lucas film, right?
Please, by all the holy socks, don't. If it's a Lucas effort, there'll be endless witterings about him being The One Who Will Bring Balance to the Load.
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Hard News: #NetHui: it's all about you, in reply to giovanni tiso,
Literally yes, but it seems to me that the useage of the word has evolved so that it wouldn't be in the least jarring on the ear to use patronising to describe a woman's behaviour. Assuming she was actually talking down to someone, of course
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Hard News: #NetHui: it's all about you, in reply to Heather Gaye,
Wasn't there another thread here than mentioned mansplaining a short while back? Might've a link to elsewhere, but I had an "ooohhh" moment when someone expressly defined it as speaking from the platform of male privilege.
This is why I think it's useful over and above 'patronising'. It specifically indicates a male, talking to a female, under the assumption that the female couldn't possibly know or understand the subject in question, and therefore needs it explained to her. Which is more specific, and in certain circumstances more useful, than 'patronising' would be.
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Hard News: #NetHui: it's all about you, in reply to Lilith __,
Guilty feet ain't got no rhythm.... :-)
Ah, so that's why white men can't dance. Too privileged.
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Muse: That Book, The Ban That Isn't,…, in reply to Andre Alessi,
I’m surprised that the attitude that “People can buy the book directly from Wishart’s website” has been allowed to pass without comment. Not everyone has a credit card, and not everyone has internet access. So yes, for some members of the community, if major retailers choose not to stock a book it is as good as a ban..
Although, as Craig pointed out. Auckland Libraries will be stocking copies.
Even if major retailers were stocking the book, where do you draw the line? Do we require them to also stock a large-print verison? An audio book version?
It was what its author did after he published [Mein Kampf] that cause people to question the moral consequences of the ideas espoused within
My working hypothesis is to assume everyone reading this is able to make that distinction, and note that part of the discussion was what would a bookseller in 1920's Germany, unblessed with 20/20 foresight, do?
I also think that your edit was unnecessary: anyone daft enough to think you might have some sort of affinity for the ideas of Mein Kampf can be dismissed pretty easily.
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I can’t believe I didn’t find time to make more of how active and comfortable women are in these forums, and what a useful influence that is.
Your hiphop name: LL Cool R.
Are you sure it's not MC Smoove B?