Posts by Mikaere Curtis
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I'm down with "SUV driver <> bad person". In an age where we can no longer kids ourselves about the effect of our lifestyle on the environment, I find it difficult to see justification for using an SUV for, say, driving to the office.
The article http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/0212.mencimer.htmlDavid linked to has some scary data:Part of the reason for the high kill rate is that cars offer very little protection against an SUV hitting them from the side--not because of the weight, but because of the design. When a car is hit from the side by another car, the victim is 6.6 times as likely to die as the aggressor. But if the aggressor is an SUV, the car driver's relative chance of dying rises to 30 to 1, because the hood of an SUV is so high off the ground. Rather than hitting the reinforced doors of a car with its bumper, an SUV will slam into more vulnerable areas and strike a car driver in the head or chest, where injuries are more life-threatening.
Can any of the pro-SUV persuasion explain to me why we should allow such an inherently dangerous vehicle on our roads ?
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Sad for the Listener to lose one of it's more enjoyable columnists. Are they going to keep the column going ?
True, actually. I remember Jenny Wheeler telling me she'd had feedback asking why I banged on about this internet thing all the time, and why didn't I write more about CD-ROMs. I gave her a speech about how a CD-ROM was a piece if plastic, but the internet would change the human condition. Or something ...
I can relate to that. I was working at AIT back then and was on the Finance committee. One of the techs wanted to roll out internet access to students, estimating a 25% growth in use per month. Many of the committee members we appalled at the cost.
They said things like "but we could employ half an FTE for that kind of money".
I made a speech about the internet being bigger than the telephone. They got the point, but I was still appalled at the lack of foresight at an Institute of Technology.
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Rather than a maximum of 7 seats in a 120 (or 121, or 123 seat Parliament), the Māori Party's 3-4% of the vote could generate 10% of seats in Parliament, and in close-ish elections (most other than those like we look to be having now) they'd stand a good chance of holding the casting vote in Parliament: a near permanent hold on the balance of power.
And if National managed to secure enough votes - much easier to do under FPP - they could implement their stated policy of consigning the Māori seats to oblivion.
To hell with that. I like my representation thanks, and I'm sure the Māori Party have achieved a similar conclusion: FPP didn't work for Māori and there's no reason to conclude that it will, especially with a major party campaigning on deleting the Māori seats.
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Okay, back in the house and settling down with -- no, really -- a glass of sav blanc.
I must note a pang of jealousy. Where I work, we have absolutely no culture of Friday drinks whatsoever.
There are exactly 2 beers in the fridge from the Xmas party...__2006__ !
BTW, good post, I wholeheartedly concur.
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Perhaps, but I think anyone who drugs up when they're looking after kids or before operating heavy machinery are abusing their freedom.
I agree - freedom and responsibility and all that.
Also, having fun with your kids is better than drugs any day.
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I'm not going to respond to obtuse baiting - you know perfectly well what I mean. We will confine ourselves to illegal drugs and abuse of prescription drugs.
Fine, just checking, although I fail to see any correlation between the legal status of a drugs and whether it enables or disables "clarity of perception".
And as I said, I place the utmost value on the clarity of perception. Drugs degrade your ability to interract with people in anything but a facile way because drugs ultimately are about what you experience, not how you interract with the world = solipsism = navel gazing = narcissism.
Are you speaking from experience? If so, then your position is probably a sensible one.
I have a lot of respect for people who say "drugs aren't for me". Frank Zappa hated (illegal) drug use. He called such people "Assholes in action". And he produced, IMHO, the most sublime music of the 20th century, with a fair amount poking fun at drug use.
Where I draw the line is "and drugs aren't for you either", especially when it involves authoritarian violations of one's freedom.
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Andrew, is "drug use" limited to illegal drugs ? Or does having a glass of chardonnay reveal a tendency to be tosser with little concern for one's family or dependants ?
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I don't want the drug legalised or normlised, possibly the parking ticket style of policing might be handy here (agree to disagree stage).
But it already is normalised. Do you know anyone who can't get hold of marijuana if/when they want ? Why should we waste police time on responsible adults using a recreational substance, assuming use is reasonable and the adults are not in high-risk categories ? And if someone does have a problem, can you explain how a parking ticket is going to help ?
Section 2.3 on growing your own contradicts the notion of making it legal. If it's grown there'll be a market, medical, green dollar, or commercial hydro style.
Seriously, would you trust tobacco or alcohol companies to responsibly market marijuana ? Under the "grow your own" proposals, any black market would be a) smaller than we have now and b) highly distributed and viral in nature which therefore reduces the need to those seeking marijuana to come into contact with dealers.
I am convinced that part of the P problem is that marijuana users are introduced to it via tinny houses and other dealers (who are into it for the money, not as a community service).
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At least acknowledge the harm these drugs cause and the risk inherant in them.
Yes, totally. All recreational drugs have health risks associated with their use.
I don't think I made myself clear in my post. When I said "relatively harmless", I meant relative to the circa 99% of substance abuse deaths that tobacco and alcohol are responsible for, and also the circa 80% of violent crime that alcohol is blamed for by the police.
If you take away the prohibition (i.e. money) related crime associated with cannabis, the health consequences are orders of magnitude lower that those associated with alcohol and tobacco.
I do tire of the argument that legal = OK.
Mikaere I thought NORMAL might have left the Greens with Nandor.
That's NORML (no A), and perhaps you would like to read our Drug Law Reform Policy.
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Comparing P with Tobacco doesn't really help the discussion IMHO.
Tobacco (still) and Alchohol , are both legal drugs . The electric Puha and P among many others are not.
And your point is ?
One of the glaring aspects of current drug policy is that the real killer drugs (tobbacco and alcohol) are not only legal, but widely available and promoted, and relatively safe drugs (cannabis, bzp, ecstacy) are pilloried.
Equating legal to OK is not only simplistic, but results in dangerous policy decisions.