Posts by recordari
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Hard News: Spinning and soldiering, in reply to Martin Lindberg,
Australia, Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Israel, Japan, Kenya, Netherlands, Norway, Peru, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Sweden and Zimbabwe... Germany
Bunch of back-water Neanderthals! What would they know?
Excuse the sarcasm, but yes, our representatives might have been expected to check, and Wikipedia now needs updating to show New Zealand in a less favourable light, than even Australia!
There seems to be a few scholarly articles around it, now I have learnt the technical term. Thanks for that.
Why oh why do we insist on following America's lead? On prisoner rights of all things.
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Hard News: Spinning and soldiering, in reply to Martin Lindberg,
I just can't get my head around how this is not a curtailment of basic human rights.
Proving my ignorance, I was even shocked to learn it is already the case for prisoners with sentences over 3 years. There are so many 'what if' scenarios running through my head, I need an aspirin.
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Hard News: Spinning and soldiering, in reply to recordari,
Prisoners banned from voting.
Is there a rule against replying to yourself?
So no one wants to pick this up? Some activity on Twitter. I'll go feed my indignation over there.
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Speaker: Dancing with Dingoes, Part II, in reply to Joe Wylie,
The Rutles:
[Like]
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This is off topic, but seemed the kind of thing GG would get on his geegees about.
National's Wayne Mapp, the only minister to speak during the debate, said offenders who were sent to jail lost their fundamental rights.
"It is surely logical that when you are incarcerated you also do not have the right to vote," he said.
First, no. Second, WTF?
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Speaker: Dancing with Dingoes, Part II, in reply to sally jones,
So I am talking to myself. Probably just as well.
Maybe people are having their cake, and eating it?
Love a good fruit cake. Half seems generous. ;-)
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Busytown: She loves you, YA, YA, YA!, in reply to Tui Head,
Not at all.
Need to learn not to ask such questions on here, as one does tend to come out looking a bit thick.
I could go on and on and on.
Please do. The girls reading list for the next 5 - 7 years is being laid out before us without having to leave the couch.
Seems most here with young adults or younger persons in general are fortunate to be raising avid readers. Not necessarily the norm. Particularly with the new technology that is so 'engaging' for impressionable minds.
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Busytown: She loves you, YA, YA, YA!, in reply to Lucy Stewart,
it isn't the monsters that are the fantasy - it's the happy-ever-after. And as a society, we're bloody poor at that.
I still don't want to rob them of the hope for a 'happier'- ever-after, if not entirely happy, all things being relative. Without hope, we are hopeless.
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett.
Yes indeed.
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Busytown: She loves you, YA, YA, YA!, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
One theory is that we shouldn't cotton wool children because what they read is a safe place to start emotionally reconciling yourself to some hard truths -- the world can be hard and cruel, you will feel as if nobody understands you or cares, grown-ups will let you down.
For one surrounded by 'Pollyannas', it is never a pleasant thing when the big bad wolf breaks down the door and eats your grandmother for breakfast. Still, if we were, as children, to comprehend the full extent of the shit that adults do, we might struggle to make it out of adolescence. It's a fine balance, that's fo'sure.
It would be good sometimes if popular YA, or children's fiction, for that matter, could transcend the perennial triumph of good over evil and explore some other facets of human existence, like identity, confidence, autonomy, freedom, compassion, empathy, grief, humanism, philosophy, entitlement... Is that too much to ask?
Ok, and naivety too maybe.
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Haven't read Gaiman yet, and while increasingly feeling compelled to, at the same time all the indications are that it has some challenges, particularly for the precocious child dipping into YA.
Shriver's Kevin sounds brilliant, and disturbing, in a not too dissimilar way to Wally Lamb's The Hour I First Believed, which is about the fallout for a teacher and her husband after the Columbine Massacre. THIFB is a long and winding road, with much exhausting narrative, but it was incredibly powerful, IMhO. It would certainly bear a second reading, but not entirely sure I could.
There is some discussion out there that Lamb's female characters are under done. Whether this is an indictment on myself, can't say I noticed in this book.