Posts by Lucy Stewart
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Hard News: Winning the RWC: it's complicated, in reply to Kumara Republic,
Furthermore, comparing the Olympics and the RWC is basically comparing a B747 with a Dash-8.
Fortune magazine was claiming the other day that the RWC was the third-biggest sporting event in the world after the Olympics and the football world cup (on an exponential scale, obviously.) It didn't really sound right but then I couldn't think of anything that would be bigger, so. One assumes they did some research before they made the claim. Makes you think, anyway.
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Up Front: Casual, Shallow and Meaningless, in reply to Amy Gale,
his answer was along the lines of "I don't read books, I just write them".
I wonder if he realises that's pretty much the same as advising people to not bother reading anything he writes, on the grounds it has a high probability of being awful?
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Okay, this has made me think. Everyone is, at some stage, strangers to each other. So how have you initiated your friendships?
With great difficulty.
More seriously: via the Internet, or through discovery of shared interests. I would love an Idiot's Guide To Making Friends With People. I can socialise without making a complete fool of myself - or if I can't, no-one's been unkind enough to tell me - but the step from acquaintance to active socialising outside of obligatory contexts (work, university, clubs, etc)? Still a bit of a mystery. It's happened, but I couldn't tell you how.
(Of course, this is largely because I'm fairly introverted and the difficulty/benefit ratio has never been on the side of me putting a lot of effort into learning this stuff, but it still would have been nice to know how.)
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Hard News: Winning the RWC: it's complicated, in reply to 3410,
Saw that somewhere else, too. Poetry in motion.
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Hard News: Thinking Digital, in reply to Rich Lock,
Well, we’ll all have quantum computing devices by then, so today’s strongest password will be effortlessly cracked in microseconds.
Hey, if it's for historians - i.e. there's no great time pressure - modern supercomputers could go through and crack pretty much any password your average civil servant uses in a very reasonable timeframe. Just ask the NSA.
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Hard News: Winning the RWC: it's complicated, in reply to Carol Stewart,
I seem to remember it was mid-morning?
But yeah, your point is a good one.Well, 8am on a Sunday. In a flat full of uni students that qualifies as "getting up for". It's practically dawn. (For similar reasons, the University of Canterbury Fencing Club's annual "Duel at Dawn" usually happens around 10am.)
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Hard News: Winning the RWC: it's complicated, in reply to BenWilson,
Yes, that is quite shit. I have a whole bunch of vague statements to fob off persistent inquiries, and changing the subject is the best tactic. It’s annoying to have to do, but that kind of thing is by no means limited to rugby. Being asked how much I dig some kind of music that I don’t know about is in the same bag. Or books. Or religion. Sometimes the safest is to just support them all. Or pick an obscure one, and claim it’s what you’re into.
I wonder if one issue is that certain groups of people - i.e. men - get a lot more of this than others. It's way less acceptable to just say "nah, I don't watch much sport" if you're a guy. I've indulged in versions of that in the past (like giving my male flatmates a bit of grief because none of them got up for the 2007 RWC quarterfinal, when my female flatmate and I did) and it's not cool.
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Field Theory: All Blacks v Wallabies Tensionfest, in reply to BenWilson,
Make a big guy run around the field for 80 mins and you’re just wasting their potential.
Tell that to Jerome Kaino.
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Hard News: Winning the RWC: it's complicated, in reply to 3410,
Never. Even. Said. That.
You may not have, specifically, but a bunch of other people definitely have said things along those lines.
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Hard News: Winning the RWC: it's complicated, in reply to 3410,
(And, Bart, without wanting to make a thing about it, your last paragraph was unjustified in at least three different ways).
I think what Bart's responding to is what I like to call the performative disinterest of non-rugby-attracted Kiwis over the last few weeks - people seem to feel the need to announce loudly and dismissively they're not interested, even in forums where no-one is importuning them to be. I can understand that sort of response when you're being personally harassed to pay attention, but if it's just a bunch of people on the Internet being happy together about something? It comes across as very inducing-precipitation-on-the-parade-ish.
Once a year America - especially the American media - goes absolutely nuts for the Superbowl, the pinnacle of a competition I don't care about in a sport I find somewhere between bizarre and pointless. But I don't feel the need to go around telling people how much I don't care about American football and the details of the things I will be doing in lieu of having a Superbowl party.