Posts by Bart Janssen
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Hard News: The GCSB Bill: We at least…, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
I do think there is a largish group in NZ who buy into the bullshit and actually *want* the government to spy on freaks, geeks and wierdos.
Setting aside the issue of freaks geeks wierdos and other Green party voters ...
I do believe there is a role for an agency that uses technology to get information in order to protect the interests of the people of New Zealand. BUT that agency should be regulated and undergo strict oversight. It should have limitations placed on its powers simply because those powers allow it to breach all sorts of rights that we kind of want to have.
What really worries me is that with such broad powers the oversight is left pretty much solely in the hands of the PM ... who is elected in a popularity contest! We've had good PMs and had bad ones. Leaving so much power under the oversight of a potentially bad (yet popular) PM is just plain stupid.
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Hard News: The GCSB Bill: We at least…, in reply to Russell Brown,
They’ve clearly had a strategic rethink
Someone did a poll
I'm sure we'll discover it was all Labour's fault anyway ... and the earthquake ... and the GFC
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Southerly: My Life As a Palm Tree, in reply to BenWilson,
Balances of harms and pleasures.
I kind of took the obvious pleasure we all took in putting our bodies in harms way as a given.
hmmm actively courting pain ... which thread am I in again?
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Southerly: My Life As a Palm Tree, in reply to B Jones,
if we have the balance right
And that is of course the point. This is actually a balance between preventing all possible harm and allowing children to learn by (sometimes painful) mistakes. There is evidence now suggesting children protected from harm have a poorer body awareness, that is they don't instinctively know exactly where their various bits are in space and hence are more vulnerable to accidents later in life (when the consequences are usually harsher).
That kind of analysis is very difficult to do right and may all prove to be bollocks but it will be interesting to see in 20 years if a protected generation has more accidents as adults.
I'd be much happier if the H&S discussions were about finding the right balance, than about eliminating all risk.
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Southerly: My Life As a Palm Tree, in reply to B Jones,
rubber matting under them, than hard clay
pfft hanging upside down by my legs from monkey bars over concrete and falling on my head never did me no harm harm harm harm
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Hard News: The GCSB Bill: We at least…, in reply to Andre,
to persuade her husband [Dunne] not sell us out
It's worth remembering that it's not just him selling us out. The same could be said of any National MP.
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Southerly: My Life As a Palm Tree, in reply to David Haywood,
It’s the one that starts where the Konini Road reservoir is now, right?
Yup, but there is another stream that joins it, that starts right up where Konini rd meets the Scenic drive. That's where my home was.
Those diggings at primary school were great ... and then there was the time we discovered the wasp nest down the bank from the lower playing field ...
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Southerly: My Life As a Palm Tree, in reply to Gareth Swain,
the same stream
Yup that's the one. This was back before the bottom half of Konini Rd became subdivisions so it was mostly bush all the way down.
I learnt so much in that bush, how to slide down mud banks and avoid the trees, how to recognise bush lawyer, how to identify deep mud from shallow, the difference between storm water drains and sceptic tank overflows. It never occurred to me I could hve got lost or injured, the worst case scenario for me then was missing lunch.
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Southerly: My Life As a Palm Tree, in reply to Russell Brown,
I’m just a bit rubbish at that stuff.
I am too. But lack of money forced me to learn that despite lack of natural skill I could get there if I went slowly enough and was willing to accept that the first attempt would end up in the bin. A love of shiny tools also helped.
Besides you CAN cook, that is also a kind of magic.
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Our home in Titirangi backed onto reserve. I could and did literally walk out the back door into the bush to randomly play. I remember following the stream down the valley to where I discovered eventually it emerged into the suburbia of Glen Eden and walking the 5 or so km back up the road to our house. I know my parents had no way of knowing which way I had gone but they trusted me enough that I would figure out a way to get home.