Posts by Rob Stowell
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Thanks Stephen.
"Standard AOS proceedure" looks like one thing when they are responding to an armed offender. Not ok when there are no arms, and no offenders.
I hope some key players heard this, and paused for a moment. -
Four rifles and it looks like two were .22s. What a stockpile. The state of NZ trembled...
Please- no falling on swords, though- unless you have a licence for that sword, Mr! -
This is scary. The detail of the "commando gear" that's most disturbing is the facial covering.
Mr Williams said the interviewees, mainly women, told stories of being ordered out of bed in the early hours of October 15 by police toting guns and wearing black commando gear.
"They were herded into either a shed or a prescribed area and all were kept under guard for a period of several hours."
Adults were not allowed to get food or blankets for hungry, crying children, and a girl as young as 15 was subjected to "an intimate body search", Mr Williams said.
People also told of their houses being trashed by police - including holes smashed in the ceilings - with no effort made to remedy the damage.
Faceless men with machineguns raiding NZers houses at dawn: we HAVE stepped ove some sort of line, surely?
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Cheers David- and erm, I 'fess up to linking to something after a cursory google: one of the fresher social faux pas- sort of like using "gay" in one of it's three current meanings, with a member of the wrong generation!
Certainly the Vikings had the technology, tho the square sails weren't ideal, (neither was the lateen) and viking craft could be paddled/rowed fairly long distances by their large (for the tonnage) crews.
The wiki article on the lateen sail credits it's independent discovery in polynesia, which is interesting as I'd always assumed there was a link. Together with out-riggers/multi-hulls, it was an amazing tool.
And what the polynesians did with it- setting off into the enormity of the Pacific, against the prevailing winds- has been best likened to space travel. Mind-boggling.
Thinking of Bart's question: any ideas as to what happened to the technology after arrival in Aotearoa? How was wind-power being used in the later (1300-1800) period of Maori history? Single-hulled vessels, which by then predominated, must have been better in some ways for inshore work, and coast-hopping.
Sympathy re the "colic" (I'm not quite sure what that names, but it's definitely real). I'm not sure why it's predominately first-born kids, but it puts ya through the wringer. We had a projectile vomiter as well: quite spectacular when it hit the wall. Holding, patting, rubbing, and above all, endless midnight pacing were the best- really the only- solutions. Quite hard to sleep while striding around a small room- but at least without the wailing, one partner can doze.... -
Another grand story and another brick in the theory.
Polynesian navigation and seamanship was remarkable. In fact the use of sails to tack against the wind may have originated rather closer to Alexandria, however. See, eg: this link which suggests lateen sails most probably originated somewhere around the Red Sea. -
What is the optimum way to encode clips for youtube? I've tried quite a few, including several recommended by others, and some recommended by youtube themselves. None have worked particularly well.
(youtube sayWe've found that files converted from .wmv to one of the other formats our webpage accepts generally have a lower playback quality than other file formats. If you have your source video in a format other than a .wmv file, I'd recommend encoding directly to MPEG4 (DivX, Xvid, SQV3) at 320x240, with 64k Mono MP3 Audio. If you have a source .wmv in high bitrate and larger resolution I'd recommend converting to MPEG4 at full resolution and then resizing to 320x240 using a high quality resizing algorithm - this can help reduce the number of artifacts you end up with.
But I've found- via extensive but far from exaustive trials-at least for PAL- that mpeg4 - and other flavours of .mov- which have a better picture, lose audio sync. Encoding to flash (.flv) has worked best, but still not as well as I'd like.
I work in the field: I'm not surprised most teachers don't have this knowledge! -
A lot of history is the history of violence, but a lot of violence is not history, methinks, Creon, simply because people working with a touch of common decency have forged the sorts of institutions deborah cites. Institutions that dilute and divert and challenge and sometimes overturn the dominent power structures without automatic rifles or endless corridors of emotionless bureaucrats.
Whether the one's we've got can improve, function adequately, heck even survive the world we're moving into is moot. Change is inevitable. Striving to keep that change peaceful: I'm all for it. -
oops. Creon has sped to the scene faster than a speeding bullet- or at least an aged hippy brain. where is that delete/edit function, dudes?
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Deborah- while it's philosophy club here ;-) I hate to forgo any chance to jump up and down on post-modernist phlunck (ooh, it's so squishy, and so easy to squash!)- but I suspect Creon was merely referring to the specific lack of any concrete information on events in Ruatoki by any of us here. (I lived there for a year, but sadly, no insight. It was in 1963. I was three. However I can find it on the map!)
And I thought his comment about propping up power structures was a little more interesting than apologism for violence. If pissed off people cause violence, it makes sense to take a wee peek at why they're pissed off, just from time to time. Though I am of a pacifist bent myself, and indeed inept at all forms of violence, and quite agree we have a myriad of ways of being pissed off that don't involve amunition.
I also enjoyed James George's blessay, bless 'im. That it was calculated to piss people off, didn't mean it missed all it's targets. I'm not much for conspiracies (apart from "a conspiracy of dunces", heh!) but while I'm not buying the whole package, it's possible there's some synergy/synchronicity floating loose.
I'm not happy with the new bill from what little I've seen and heard. We live in very complacent times, we hardly vote and forget that every little check or balance on power is a small part of a big social machine. I hope it gets a good deal more intention- and I hope it influences how people vote. -
woooo ho.
they were a hoot at the hippie festival at charleston in '79. If i remember rightly, which i probably don't.