Posts by Rich Lock
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Well, that was probably my worst BDO ever.
Sorry to hear that. Would it be wrong of me to say at this point that I had an awesome time?
the Germans probably have a word for thatt
I would have asked Rammstein, but they were too busy blowing shit up and generally being awesome.
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Wasn't going to, but will go for the later shows, and demonstrate to the young'uns what a primal scream really sounds like with a bit of mileage behind it.
Looks like there's a few of us heading along later, then.
See you down the front, as they said in my young day.
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There's an article in Nov or Dec Metro (??) by Charlotte Grimshaw (nee Stead) about her experiences as a child at Piha, her father being airlifted from the beach after being dumped by the waves, and her becoming a Lifeguard, including being dropped from a helicopter behind the waves and told to swim back to the beach
Sandra Coney's essays about growing up at Piha under a somewhat authoritarian father who was a big cheese at the surf club are quite interesting, too.
The new book is called War in all markets, I'm pretty sure - Restrepo is rather the name of the doco film that resulted from the same trip to Afghanistan.
Yes, my mistake.
It does rather sound like the Japanese are pretty old-school even now in their Aikido training, that injuries in training are quite common. I don't admire that at all. It's much less like that in NZ, possibly because, for starters, people don't just accept the right of someone in authority to hurt you.
Yes, that's the impression I get, too. Although you still get a flavour of it in the old-school, traditional martial arts (dojo-dependent). I was always really put off by the whole 'bow to the mat to show appropriate respect' aspect of it.
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Some kiddies scream and shy away from waves. Perhaps it's the sudden coldness of the water, and of course, it's incredibly noisy sometimes.
Yes, good point. We have built her up to it fairly slowly. She used to be pretty frightened of surf noise, for example. But there's been enough paddles and visits to the beach in the last nine months to get her fully accustomed to it.
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Ah, Fentanyl – that would be what they give to US soldiers in lollipop form when they get hit?
Sure would. Interesting article generally about how rough it is as airborne rescue in Afghanistan.
Sam, the guys in that article are described as pararescue jumpers, or PJs. We talked about Sebastian Junger's 'Restrepo' book a while back. If you haven't read 'The Perfect Storm' yet, then I recommend it again. It has a fair bit of description on the training and work these guys do. 'Rough' is an understatement...
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The founder of Aikido is in a lot of old films doing his thing in his 80s.
Ben, do you mean Gozo Shioda? Have you read 'Angry white pyjamas'? If not, then I recommend it.
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It's so fundamental to human movement
Yep. Try briskly walking/running up a relatively steep slope without swinging your arms.
Anyway, I was inspired by this thread to take my 14-month old on her first sea swim last night. The surf was pretty fierce down at Narrowneck - a good 4-5 inches at one point. I think dad was more concerned than she was, though. She's not quite walking, but will walk if you hold her hands and shuffle along behind her.
A beeline from the beach to the sea and straight in up to dad's waist, with a total lack of fear. My biggest concern was an inadvertent head-dunking that might put her off, but no problems at all. Wouldn't want to do it in the winter, though.
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I'd prefer to end up as ashes and carbon emissions.
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I have had, in the past, strange - what I can only describe as "big/tiny" physical feelings - which happened when I was just about to fall asleep.
Would your list of feelings include any of these? :)
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This will be my last post on this particular discussion.
If we refer to the articles you cited earlier
I am going to link again to both of those articles, so that they can be read in full by those who are interested:
The Jessica Valenti article makes no reference, either specific or otherwise, to anything outside of the last 2-3 years, except to note that it is the first female political assassination in the US. The Gary Younge article makes one reference, in passing, to note that the 'tree of liberty' quote is the same as the Timothy McVeigh T-shirt quote. He des not explore the link in any detail.
In other words, even the very articles you are claiming as evidence for this historical amnesia admit and highlight previous American political violence.
Apart from that they don't (unless I've missed something), I used those two articles as examples of what appeared to me at the beginning of the week to be a overwhelming rush to judgement based on little to no concrete evidence.
The shootings took place 10.00AM Saturday morning local Arizona time (around 5.00PM GMT Saturday evening). Both of those articles were published just after 10.00PM GMT Sunday evening - around 30 hours after the shooting. We also have a local commentator
commenting on the tea-party blaming commentry, posting at just after 10.00PM Auckland time (i.e. around 20 hours after the shooting). He does not give examples, but it is clear from the context of his post that there must have been quite a bit of finger-pointing going on in that intervening 20 hours. Again, on little to no evidence.I don't know exactly how the timeline played out over the weekend in terms of what was known or relased to the press when, but I don't recall details of Jared Loughner's Youtube messages, etc being released or discussed before Monday.
You may think that 30 hours and the sketchiest of evidence is long enough to make those explicit links. I don't. I think it's no time at all.
I made a passing remark, musing on the continuum of violence in Americal politics back to 1850. Given the number of other commentators who have since made arguments about the recent mainstreaming of what was previously fringe Tea Party thought (Simon Grigg, Russell, etc), I'm prepared to withdraw that. It probably helps that they managed it without descending into snidely personal attacks, too.
By the way, do you really not get why allegations that people are just using this as an excuse to take their hobby horses out for a canter are pretty offensive?
Actually, no. But, genuinely, I do have trouble with what my wife would refer to as rude behaviour. If you can explain it to me without getting insulting, please do so.
And I stand by my hobby horse remark. 30 hours to me smacks of a point looking for an excuse so it can be made. And making that point in that timeframe if you can't absolutely back it up? Well, that's pretty offensive to me.