Posts by linger
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Hard News: Lost Men, in reply to Emma Hart,
Some people have testified (there are some fascinating examples in This American Life episode 220) to experiencing striking changes in mood and behaviour associated with changes in their baseline testosterone level. But individuals vary in their sensitivity to testosterone, so not everyone on hormone treatment will experience these effects as strongly; and, more generally, measured testosterone level is not a good predictor of individual behaviour (as seen in the third story).
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I.e., can a random member of the public, who has been freely given private information by the individual concerned, in the absence of any explicit confidentiality conditions (*), be subject to laws preventing dissemination of private information? Probably not – because the member of the public would then have no statutory duty of stewardship of that information. The presumption is that the individual waived privacy for that information by voluntarily sharing it outside a protected domain. Which is admittedly problematic if that individual’s judgement was impaired at the time.
(* As distinct from information held about individuals under conditions of client confidentiality, e.g. in legal or medical domains; and also as distinct from private information unlawfully obtained.)
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Hard News: Dirty Politics, in reply to Neil,
They just asked the police to …
Which would look less suspicious if National didn’t already have form for "just asking" the police to handle things for them, and being willingly accommodated even to the point of proven illegality (e.g. against Hager).
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Certain operators within the National Party have a history of accepting, enabling, and using such "odious behaviours" for their own ends. I seem to recall that a few years ago we were discussing National's use of Cameron Slater in similar terms.
At this stage it's pointless to speculate about how far such behaviours are the product of some pathology or other; it is more important that National clarify what if anything it will do to change its relationship to such behaviours. If National has been directly involved in sectioning Ross, primarily to silence him, that is not exactly the sort of change we might hope for. -
Hard News: Dirty Politics, in reply to Dennis Frank,
It’s designed to work for them, to allow them to solicit money while concealing their funders.
Which works exactly up to the point where it puts off voters from supporting the party perceived as most egregiously benefitting from that state of affairs. So far any such alienation of voters has reduced overall turnout, but has not greatly harmed National. Possibly their voters are ideologically more likely to see such self-serving behaviour as unexceptionable, or even desirable. How bad does it need to get before it alienates National’s base? We might be about to find out.
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Applying "waka jumping" to someone who has not jumped to a different waka, who was arguably pushed as much as jumping, and who still has some claim to representing an electorate … well, I don't think that particular law should exist at all, but this doesn't seem the most appropriate use of it.
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Ladyhawke's cover of "Break in the Weather":
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Hard News: The next four years, in reply to WH,
But surely the more direct moral of that story is: don’t get involved in greed, narcissism, and megalomania. The occult is irrelevant, and was treated as such by that ruler, however Crass he was.
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Hard News: A painful reflection, in reply to Katita,
Nah, Collins and her ilk should be held politically accountable for such attitudes in this life; otherwise they just keep repeating the same damaging lies. Problem is a large chunk of our opinion-obsessed mainstream media has spent the past decade choosing to support rather than challenge the blood-sport of beneficiary-bashing. (Not without an eye on the race to the bottom line: newspaper readership continues to skew older and more reactionary.)
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And a radio drama by Martyn Wade ("Blue Veils and Golden Sands", first broadcast in 2002)