Posts by B Jones
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OnPoint: Ich bin ein Cyberpunk, in reply to Amanda Wreckonwith,
Chatham Island State Prison
Because that worked so well last time.
Maybe this is a silly question, but given that I understand encryption that can't be cracked by governments isn't supposed to be publicly available (limit to number of keys) - isn't there a risk with encryption that using it attracts attention in and of itself, and that with small volumes of encrypted traffic, agencies can comfortably handle the processing power to crack it? I've assumed for years that everything I put on the internet, including email, can be harvested, it's just that nobody cares enough to do it provided I don't stick obvious keywords in there, or correspond with known agitators, or have offline activities that might draw attention. Security by obscurity.
Of course, if enough people use encryption, the appearance of secrecy doesn't stand out as noteworthy. Another thought - a really good code doesn't look like a code.
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Not to mention, different kids have different pleasures. One of mine is a future mountain climber; the other is a future health and safety inspector. Sticking timid kids into environments that freak them out can show them their inner strength, or it can scar them for life.
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Southerly: My Life As a Palm Tree, in reply to Hebe,
I totally disagree.
I guess I wasn't writing very clearly, since I largely agree with the rest of your post, particularly the "talkback-grade cliche" thing, which is the guts of what I was trying to say.
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Southerly: My Life As a Palm Tree, in reply to Hebe,
I guess it's my constitutional contraryism to argue against prevailing wisdom going on here. To me, the cry of "we wrap our kids in cotton wool" is up there with zeitgeist cliches like "political correctness gone mad" and "boys are hurt by the feminised teaching environment". Maybe they have a kernel of truth and certainly it's a issue of balance, but they're more often repeated than questioned, and I like poking truisms to see if they're really true. I'd say that a fair proportion of people wanting more rough and tumble for boys would blanch at letting girls roam around at will - I hated the fact my male cousin was allowed to explore on his own when I had to be chaperoned by my wet blanket little sister.
Free play is something that ERO looks for and encourages when it reviews early childhood centres. I think that's great, and I've just considered and rejected a childcare centre that was told off for being too rigid. Lack of free play isn't just a question of supervision, it's also something schools and parents (more so overseas) do to cram in as much formal teaching as possible into children - music lessons and extra tuition and so forth is part of the middle-class scramble.
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I know it's currently fashionable to complain about kids being coated in cotton wool these days, but I'd much rather play on the cool bright plasticy playgrounds that are around a lot today than the jagged rusty broken-arm machines of my own childhood. Burma bridges are as much fun when there's rubber matting under them, than hard clay, plus there are fewer trips to hospital. And lest we forget, I can pretty much pinpoint when I was no longer allowed to play in the wilderness on my own - Karla Cardno was killed in 1989. I don't know if we have the balance right today (certainly stranger danger is overstated, compared with mundane car accidents and so on) but unsupervisedness has its costs as well as benefits, and they're not always trivial. We still have a high rate of childhood injury by international comparison.
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Southerly: My Life As a Palm Tree, in reply to BenWilson,
My youngest saw me disengage the privacy lock on our bathroom with a breadknife one morning. I made the mistake of closing it behind me later that day, and next thing I hear her bashing away at the paintwork with a knife she's retrieved from the drawer.
I've learned to handle lack of privacy - it's the commentary that breaks my spirit. I'm looking forward to the day when I hear someone else's kid say "I like your undies mum" from behind a closed cubicle door.
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Hard News: It's worse than you think, in reply to Bart Janssen,
the one thing NZ does not have a shortage of is water.
Cold water, to be sure. It takes electricity to make your showers hot, and I quite like mine like that. An efficient showerhead keeps the power bills down.
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I think the lefty counterpart to the fabulously wealthy "self-made" conservative leader would be some sort of a dragon-slayer, a cross between a firefighter and Erin Brockovitch. Hence the respect people still have for Lange's nuclear free business despite Rogernomics.
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I wrote something, then izogi said it better.
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Up Front: Good Counsel, in reply to Bart Janssen,
There is a sick culture is NZ that revolves around being tough mentally. It is strongest in men but is there in women as well. That culture dismisses the skills of counsellors, it dismisses their value and it does so because to acknowledge their contribution would be to acknowledge a weakness.
I've known people to totally reject counselling as an appropriate treatment for their issues, but accept that SSRIs treat a chemical imbalance, which is less stigmatised than being mentally unwell. Probably to their detriment.