Posts by Peter Cox
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@dave
Well, for one thing, the teen doesn't have a legal defence of reasonable force that the parents seem to be maintaining they have. Which ought to be a the perfect example of why s59 should be repealed. It's a very strong argument against the many people who claimed that Bradford's Bill would never effect serious child abusers - clearly it would, because they would KNOW that the violent attacks that they are inflicting are not allowed by law.
As for blaming CYFS. WTF? That's just crazy talk. What would you suggest they should have done differently?
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The problem with these overseas consultants is that it's like psychologist witnesses hired for court cases - you can basically just get the one that you want to agree with you and then pretend they're 'the expert', and as a consequence you're right. The thing, at least in a court case is that the other side get to bring in another expert to rebut them. No such luck here. But anyway - that's life and politics and how people retain their power, and it's hard to do much about that.
But the real issue though, is that we end up losing out own internal 'New Zealand' dialogue, about how and why we do things, and we wind up having practices that don't actually make much sense but are simply just 'how it's done'. You think the americans or the british bring in overseas consultants to tell them what to do? No fucking way. And I suspect that, to a large extent is why they're good: they have a strong sense of internal dialogue built up about how and why they do things, because they created that dialogue themselves. The systems they have in place, have evolved organically to suit their conditions, audiences and so forth. That doesn't mean it's going to work here or anywhere else. And even if it did, without the dialogue taking place before it, you don't have the people that truly understand the reasoning behind the decisions enough to be able to deal with change and evolve that system properly. All we end up with is a bunch of 'personalities' vying for power, rather than a proper debate of ideas and philosophy behind why things are how they are now and where we might want to continue growing in the future.
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that sounds like the choice of a) a man who is too afraid to have an opinion, and b) a man who never goes out.
Perhaps you're right. But still, (and I don't want to come across like a snob), I imagine a life where 'Johnny English' is your favourite film of all time and I gotta say it's a miserable, grey, barely living existence. Maybe we should make a list of actually good family friendly movies that we can send to him to encourage some horizon broadening?
My suggestions:
'The Iron Giant'
'Duma'
'Whale Rider'And if they can handle a documentary:
'Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill' -
Least Fave Favourite
Oops. This is what happens when you skip breakfast.
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Fave Film: Johnny English
Least Fave Favourite: The ExorcistIf National win I'm leaving the country.
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Seems that Wunsch is worried that all his funding will dry up and his papers wont get published
Dude, seriously? Did you even understand what you just posted up there? He's talking about the mass media picking focusing on research with a sense of showing a 'dramatic event' in order to create a strong 'story'. That's got nothing to do with scientific journals publishing data or not or funding drying up because the results aren't 'exciting' enough.
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That's quite eerie. You're not really some guy called Mike who says things like 'I have the body of a Greek god, you know' are you?
Nope. Not Mike unfortunately. As for the body:
Apollo = not so much.
Pan(after a few nights of drinking) = definite maybe.
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And I got told off in ENGL 320 just for calling Deconstruction 'intellectual wanking'. I still bear a deep, primal loathing for Post-modernism, even though it once got me laid.
Same! Although the story is quite boring. Although I guess if you told it in a fragmented, multi-narrative with unreliable narrators then it might be more interesting :/
And you'll be pleased to know Post-Modernism is out. It's all Post-Post-Modernism now.
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*Peter rolls his d20 for a few moments before letting fly and scoring a...*
12.
Hmm... Just checking the relevant saving throw tables on my Dungeon Master screen, and cross referencing my CHA bonus, subtracting the ogre's value, it says here that...
'Ross is a dumb-ass'
Well, I guess you can't argue with the rules.
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...and with my natural +3 CHA bonus things are looking good.