Posts by Tim Darlington

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  • Up Front: The Up Front Guide to Parenting,

    PHIL 120 is a gateway drug._

    HIST 110 for me - dropped my science papers after the first HIST 110 lecture (also at the university featuring the engineering students, as it happens). Megan Wegan is right - surely there must be some legal comeback against our parents for permitting this descent into a lifetime of unpaid thinking?

    Since Nov 2006 • 56 posts Report

  • Up Front: Public Address Medical…,

    I get the pupil dilation routine annually to check for diabetic retinopathy. The most annoying bit is they stay dilated for hours, and it turns out everything you like doing involves looking at stuff.

    Worse than the dilation is the eyeball pressure test, in which they check how much fluid you've got in your eyeball (don't ask me why diabetics have gimpy eyeballs - either they just do, or the nation's medical professionals have been yakking it up at my expense for years now). Said test involves poking said eyeball with a measuring instrument. They say you can get used to anything, but so far I haven't got used to that one.

    Since Nov 2006 • 56 posts Report

  • Up Front: Isn't It Romantic?,

    And indeed: if I could read science-fiction novels like you’d eat fistfuls of popcorn and still not expect to be serving on a spaceship next to impossibly handsome incredibly intelligent delightfully emotionally-retarded men, why shouldn’t the same be true for the girls reading the pink books?

    Same here. Even more astounding: the reading mainstay of my primary school years was Commando war comics, and yet somehow I made it to adulthood without feeling the slightest urge to make Fritz eat hot lead, or for that matter to cause squinting, bandy-legged Japanese men to screech "Aiieeee!!!" as I give them their deadly just desserts. Has anyone carried out any research on exactly how that's possible?

    Since Nov 2006 • 56 posts Report

  • Legal Beagle: Threshold,

    In principle, I'd like to see no threshold - if the proportion of people who voted for a party amounts to one MP's worth, those voters should get their representation in Parliament, and we really have no right effectively to disenfranchise them.

    On the other hand, I can't help feeling your results list makes the threshold look like it has a lot going for it...

    Since Nov 2006 • 56 posts Report

  • Hard News: Moments,

    ...she had a man around, "and he gave me digital". Eeew!

    One endures much similar hilarity at one's expense, with the job title "Digital Services Manager."

    ...they'd come to ask advice "because you're in that TV ad".

    That's a good result for the TV ads. I hope that eventually people will be able to just assume their neighbour will help, whether seen on TV or not - don't think it'll be anytime soon though.

    Since Nov 2006 • 56 posts Report

  • Hard News: All this and more,

    Oh, great shout out to Foisemaster too! My brother Tim mangled guitar for them for a few years._

    It should also be said, the talentless git most improved the band by leaving it. Awesome hideous noise merchants they were.

    Since Nov 2006 • 56 posts Report

  • Island Life: In another league,

    <i>I can't remember exactly what he said, but it was something like the complainant may simply have been too wasted to recall that she had given consent.</i>

    Yeah - maybe the defendant just figured that kicking her out of his car with bruised genitalia at a public park , so wasted apparently that she couldn't be assumed capable of finding her way home, was what his various celeb character witnesses would expect an all-round great bloke to do. Nothing to see here folks, how dare they prosecute...

    Since Nov 2006 • 56 posts Report

  • Island Life: In another league,

    But I've no doubt there was a case to answer, and that the police had to bring it . His family members who screamed abuse at the police can fuck off.

    You bet, and you bet. I'm amazed a judge would put up with that without giving the arsehole involved some time in a cell to ponder what a wanker he is.

    Since Nov 2006 • 56 posts Report

  • Busytown: Pavlova Paradise,

    Yes, and sometimes you only figure out your own view has gaping holes in it once you start trying to explain it in writing. Well, OK, maybe that's just me...

    Since Nov 2006 • 56 posts Report

  • Hard News: Scuffling and screaming on…,

    Apologies - 'alliance' was indeed a stronger word than was justified. How about 'support' for "...reactionary, patriarchal tribalists...?" There's been plenty of that in evidence for years.

    Since Nov 2006 • 56 posts Report

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