Posts by Moz
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Ooh, this is funny: http://www.babynames1000.com/gender-neutral/ Baby names from 2011 ranked by how often they're given to both genders. In case you didn't notice, my example above used 1970-era gender-ambiguous names.
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Up Front: Sex with Parrots, in reply to Martin Lindberg,
but how many partners in each marriage?
Based on the communes I've lived in (sample size=3) actual fully committed life partners seems to run about one per person at any time, but ongoing close relationships is more like three but that's very variable. And they don't have to be polyfi (and usually aren't, except incidentally). For me, I'm closer to "one friend at a time" where some people I know seem to thrive on lots (excuse me if use dog counting... one, two, many).
But, from the outside they usually look like a bunch of free loving hippies who sleep in one big bed. Until you know them well it's hard to tell that Bob and Sam are life partners, Bob is close to Phuong who is life partners with Chris and Alex, and Alex is very close to Sam. Oh, and Sasha lives there too but is officially single after breaking up with Chris despite still having sex with Box and Alex. So when people ask, I just say "it's complicated" and leave it at that.
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More seriously, now that I've stopped laughing at myself (someone has to), I suspect that for a small number of people this would be a very, very important thing. Like when the Queen of New Zealand (and Other Places) visits her southern properties. For me, I think I'd like to be able to not marry polyamorously. Currently I'm not "married to one woman", and soon hope to be not "married to one man", but it would be nice to be able to choose not to marry several of each.
I think I'd be more likely to use this law to spread the load on my close friends who currently help me with random obligations I've acquired. As a non-parent living with my de facto wife, much of this stuff is automatic. I get the benefit of default assumptions about how things work. But being able to easily, legally define how the exceptions work would be nice. Also, cheap. Hopefully. Right now there's a bunch of legal bills attached to some paperwork that may or may not stand up in court if someone gets sniffy. So I'm more after the side effects this week. But next week? I dunno, if one of us develops a live-in relationship with someone else it'll get complicated fast (if they, say, start helping pay the mortgage).
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Up Front: Sex with Parrots, in reply to Martin Lindberg,
what sort of take-up would one expect if poly-relationships became legally sanctioned?
12. Based on Glaister(2011) it is clear that twenty pages of complex maths devoted to irrelevancies can conclusively show that there can be at most 12 polyamorous marriages in New Zealand at any one time, provided you accept the assumptions, postulates and pretensions of the author.
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Amusingly Australia is currently suffering from a free market approach to training the trades over the last few years, and at the same time as they're gutting the tafe/polytech system they're trying to import tradespeople from China because there aren't enough ozzie kids with the skills. It's not just NZ. Australia also runs a big scam where they "sell" education and after qualifying you're at the head of the queue for immigration. So we have a lot of new hairdressers and gym trainers who really don't like their jobs but it beats living in Uzbekistan.
Me? I'll probably retire in NZ, but every time I look at working there the idea of halving my pay and limiting myself to a tiny pool of potential employers just seems like career suicide. Instead I contribute by sending money to various environmentalist groups :)
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Up Front: Sex with Parrots, in reply to Stephen Glaister,
All I see is three flash applications. If it's not text, I'm not reading it. Perhaps you could post it in an accessible format somewhere?
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I'm pretty sure polygamous marriages are already recognised to a limited degree in NZ due to mutual recognition treaties with polygamous-marriage countries. The advice I recall from Immigration ~20 years ago was "do not, under any circumstances, get divorced in this country". The first wife gets 50%, the second wife gets 50%, the third wife gets 50% and you get the legal bills (because the people who wrote the law used terms like "half" and "50%" rather than "equal shares").
More practically, we already have rather a lot of law dealing with both marriage on the one hand and partnerships involving more than two people on the other. Even marriage law deals with multiple parties in many cases, as with adoption, custody involving re-partnered ex-partners and so on. It's not rocket science, and it's not a whole new thing heretofore unseen.
On that note, many communes find it useful for members to marry purely because of the legalities, even when they're not in exclusive (or even sexual) relationships. Which also complicates things, but not as much as losing things because nasty outsiders get upset. Children, especially.
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Legal Beagle: Shirking their responsibilities?, in reply to Phil Lyth,
today, MPs are constantly in touch with their constituents. 30 years ago, communication was limited to mail and telegram.
Hahahaha. Oh, how I laugh. I remember being at Kaiteriteri beach when I was about 7 or 8 and seeing Bill Rowling spend most of the day chatting to constituents. For all that in theory he was there to spend time with his family they all understood that his "real job" was to be out and about in public so people could talk to him. The "be available" part of the job hasn't changed.
Just while we're on the subject of "knowing what you're talking about", I do wonder how many commentators have ever been an elected representative at any level of government? That also counts for something when you're making suggestions to people on how to do their jobs.
Which is not to say I think our current crop of politicians is meritorious. Unless you compare them to Australia's, in which case thank bob for wassisname at the front of the Labour party, compared to Tony Abbott he's a saint. I mean, at least our lot don't take the Australian National Sport (sledging) as the be-all and end-all of their jobs.
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Legal Beagle: The law may be that stupid, in reply to Andrew Geddis,
Unless, of course, we read "the candidate" in s.5 as we do in s.109(1)(b) as meaning "the candidate OR HIS/HER CAMPAIGN", which would bring the definition of anonymous into line with the apparent intention of the disclosure mandates in s.109.
That seems reasonable to me. What's being suggested as the alternative strikes me as less of a loophole and more of a loading bay. You're not carefully lining up to hit a target without exposing yourself, you're backing up a truckload of cash and dumping it into the campaign. Fixing that was the whole point of the national law change, now we should probably have something easier to comply with but more rigorous at a local govt level. This seems simple enough to me: if anyone in your campaign can identify the donor they're obliged to do so and the campaign must report it. It reduces anonymous donations to dumping cash or bank cheques in the bucket that gets passed around at rallies.
It seems that Banks has probably done something that is not provably a criminal criminal offense, but it seems sufficiently dodgy as to warrant a change in the law. Which sums up a lot of what That Nice Mr Key is doing in our name.
I do find some amusement in the parallels between the Gillard government in Oz and the Key government in NZ. Both are scrabbling to avoid losing members they desperately need, despite some of those members doing things that justify being booted. Gillard is in the especially amusing position that her opposition did exactly the same thing with one member until she recruited him away. Now that opposition is really sinking the slipper (ahem) despite having spent five years propping him up.
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Up Front: Towards a Sex-Positive Utopia, in reply to Sacha,
> what would happen if this semi-fulfilment was deconstructed?
Occupy?Which did actually have its share of young teenagers hanging around gazing wistfully at people. There was also a certain amount* of youthful hormone-driven behaviour in the older teenagers.
I'm torn between the idea that teenage silly-sexuality is a product of our recent prolonged childhood, and that it's inherent in being that age. I suspect how it comes out is much more socially affected than whether it exists, but I'm not sure.
* lots