Posts by Deborah
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Hard News: Spring Timing, in reply to bmk,
In reality it’s you put in half, your employer puts in half (which he then takes back by paying you less than your co-workers who aren’t enrolled) and the government a bit extra.
If KiwiSaver was compulsory for all employees, then this problem would disappear.
-
Hard News: Spring Timing, in reply to Andrew C,
I’m finding it hard to like him when I hear him effectively telling bald face lies, like “I have a harvard degree”.
You mean the degree he has from the Harvard Kennedy School? The one that is described this way on Wikipedia:
he John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University (also known as Harvard Kennedy School and HKS)[1] is a public policy and public administration school, and one of Harvard's graduate and professional schools.
He has a degree from Harvard.
-
Hard News: Poor Choices, in reply to Kyle MacDonald,
Yes, sustained criticism can be difficult and hard to manage, and yes, it can amount to bullying. But frankly, being threatened with rape in the most vile way (words so vile that I can't bring myself to copy them here), and being told that what I need is a 2x4 to my face to shut my fucking yap is quite different.
I strongly suspect that Charlotte Dawson received e-mail like that too, and I also suspect that the female reporters and TV presenters who read out some of the threats they had received just censored out the rape threats.
-
Hard News: Bad Judgement, in reply to Russell Brown,
I might be wrong, but I thik what we’re talking about here wouldn’t really raise an eyebrow in an academic environment.
Using university space might, but probably not e-mail.
Even so, I'm fairly careful about keeping my party political work separate from my paid work, and I pretty much use my university e-mail only for university work. And once we get to Nomination Day, my university will put me on unpaid leave (about 4 to 6 weeks out from the election, depending).
-
People will make mistakes and poor choices. The idea is to get to a point where the penalty for making a mistake isn’t death, and where the “correct” route isn’t too risky to countenance.
Exactly. We seem to have this idea that people should behave perfectly on the roads, or that people are in some sense perfectible. They / We are not. We need to design roads and road rules for people as they are, or perhaps just nudging them in the direction of better behaviour. We need to stop having this bizarre idea that we should design roads that only work if people behave perfectly.
-
Legal Beagle: Think it possible that you…, in reply to Joe Wylie,
For me, Edgeler as freebagging public intellectual is, I’m truly sorry to say, pretty much indistinguishable from the standard self-important suburban crackpot.
Not for me. I think Graeme is wrong in this instance, but one of the reasons for engaging with him and his argument on this thread is that he's built up a long history of careful engaged thoughtful argument.
Many years ago, before I had even started on graduate study, I was at Philosophy seminar given by two eminent people at a top institution. They presented an argument to do with women and vulnerability to being victims and signalling, so the whole thing has kind of stuck in my memory. Their argument was profoundly flawed, and after engaging with the questions from the floor, after a while they said, "Ah... actually, we've gotten this wrong. We're going to have to go away and think about this a lot more."
Wow. Not often you see people do that.
-
Legal Beagle: Think it possible that you…, in reply to giovanni tiso,
Yeeeessss.... had to step away from the keyboard.
I think I'll just stay away from it, actually.
-
Legal Beagle: Think it possible that you…, in reply to Mark Hubbard,
Usually when we talk about silencing someone permanently, we have horridly sinister intentions. I don't think that Giovanni had any intent whatsoever like that.
-
Legal Beagle: Think it possible that you…, in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
I did take my turn, Graeme. I wrote an op-ed for my local paper but it didn’t get picked up by Stuff, so it only went out locally. I spoke at the local rally. My university has reproduced the text of the opinion piece on-line, and I guess that I will get paid in the form of standing at my university, and my standing locally (even some of the very conservative parents at my childrens’ school have been complimentary), but I didn’t get a single penny, nor did my voice get amplified and heard nationally. No doubt that’s for all sorts of reasons, but one of them would have to be the systemic difficulty that confronts women when they try to get airtime. Many, many more men get to have their opinions aired widely than women do.
I have a negative freedom to speak, to attempt to join the conversation. No one is going to stop me. Alas, unlike JT and Willie Jackson, no one is going to pay for me for it either.
-
Legal Beagle: Think it possible that you…, in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
Do you mean “wait their turn”? I never suggested they should.
It would come from a combination of my first comment on this post:
I’m hearing overtones of a fancied up version of “women, get to the back of the bus and wait your turn” in this analysis.
and your response to it:
I guess maybe I suggesting that the better option is to take your turn at the same time as others, rather than silencing others so you can speak?
Phrased as a question, of course.