Posts by Grace Dalley
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Graham, I love your gallery/museum idea! I think it's quite possible for a waterfront gallery to do something different from the Auckland City Art Gallery, such as craft art or applied art. And maybe some space given to recent local contemporary art, which is an area often not well served by our city galleries.
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making a six-inch incision from above my right ear upward to about the middle of my scalp, and then pulling my scalp down to expose the skull, so that no matter where they started sawing into the bone, the scar would still be above my hairline. (Squeamish readers should look away shortly before the start of this paragraph.) There will be drilling. There will be shrinking my brain. There will be chipping and sucking and at least six hours of surgery.
Yikes!!! Can't they just use a sonic screwdriver?!
Best of luck, Emma. We will all be thinking of you.
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Haydn: I'm not suggesting Bolt takes steroids, my point was about normal variability of hormones from one male to another. If, say, he naturally had more testosterone than his competitors, would that give him an unfair advantage?
And how would natural hormone levels be different than any other natural physiological characteristic?
Dyan: I don't think there's any actual evidence that Semenya is intersex, is there? Isn't it just speculation at this point?
And as Lucy says, if she *is* intersex, is she unable to compete with anyone? Differences in hormone levels between men and women are clearly much less dichotomous than we'd like.
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Oh and PS, has anyone been worried about Usain Bolt's testosterone levels? Is anybody rushing to test him in case he has a hormonal advantage? If it doesn't matter in his case, why does it matter in Semenya's?
Nobody is refusing to race with him just because he's freakishly gifted.
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Yes, wow, this sure is a complex issue.
But as Rachel says, it's not like any really successful athlete has an average physique.
My feeling is that if Semenya's physiological advantage is natural (ie. not caused by performance-enhancing drugs) then she's a legitimate champion, just as Michael Phelps is with his unusually long arms. And she sure doen't deserve the public humiliation. If she's freakishly athletic, it's hardly her fault!
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On the issue of students being impoverished, if Students' Association fees are compulsory, they can be paid by student loan. If they're voluntary, the cost must be met by the student. And in my experience the Students' Association provides benefits to each individual student way out of proportion to the fee.
And obviously a union can't be funded by govt or by the institution. It has to be independent or it can't decently be an advocate.
Your church analogy I think is a real stretch. A fundamental human right not to belong to a union?! To me affordable universal access to tertiary education is a fundamental human right, why aren't you fighting for that?
And look if students hate compulsory membership, then surely they need to organise against it? If they don't, I really struggle to see how they're being oppressed.
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Good on you for having a go, David. As a Sumner girl I feel ashamed on behalf of the suburb!
You'd hope old ladies would use their special powers for good, but you must have met the Evil Nemeses. -
I love reading PA posts, they are thoughtful, interesting, and highly varied. I like that each post can meander through several topics and be of any length, depending on how much the blogger has to say on that particular day. I like how outbound links take me to all sorts of places on the web.
I love how good the dicussions are. I love how smart and passionate everyone seems about issues.
I have one tiny complaint, and that is: the text-size widget doesn't go big enough for me. It needs a few more notches. -
I'm still chortling over
like a bouncy castle with a slow leak, you're letting us all down
Thanks, Jolisa, another brilliant post :-)
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The "good bacteria" capsules work out at about $1 each? That sounds like a lot, but they have something like 25 billion bacteria in each one. Per bacterium, that's really quite reasonable! ;-)