Posts by BenWilson
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Was 5907 pavers hyperbole, btw? That's a big number! At, say, 25cm square, that's 16 of them per square meter, suggesting you have pavers covering 370 square meters.
I definitely feel the pain, having moved only about 10 square meters of pavers to another location in my garden, taking away a courtyard to make pathways. It took a whole day. Every tool you can bring to bear on a task like that, you should. Moving a similar amount of gravel is far less work because you can at least use a shovel to pick it up and a wheelbarrow to carry it. With pavers you have to actually bend right to the ground to pick them up. A low trolley of some kind would have saved me hours of work.
2 people can also do this kind of work with more than double efficency - one standing, one kneeling, saves all of that lifting of your whole body weight. That working bee sounds like a very good idea.
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Southerly: Deconstruction and Construction, in reply to George Darroch,
You don’t need water to drink alcohol.
No, but water and alcohol are better at getting people's clothes off than either one on it's own.
@David Haywood
Well done! It seems like only yesterday (but has actually been 7 horrible stress filled months of hard labour) that this idea was suggested to you by Che Tibby, and you said you'd contemplated it but weren't sure if it was possible.
I thought it probably was, only because I've done it once before, and there's no requirement that the house be in one piece, and it's an amazingly cost effective way of getting a house built. Especially in your case, since you already owned the house. I was definitely extremely nervous on the day that the house might fall off the truck somewhere along the way down from Whangarei to Auckland. But it was quite literally done and dusted in one day, by a very competent team of extremely foul mouthed engineers.
Fantastic work! May your new ground remain forever firm under your feet, and these years be remembered fondly as your finest days. I was staggered that you took the time to apologize to me over some imagined slight from years ago during all of this catastrophe - your character is an inspiration*.
*Edit: If it goes swimmingly, it could also be something others in your plight could do? How many others are have done, or are doing it, that you know down there?
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Hard News: This Is Not A Complicated Issue, in reply to linger,
@linger, It was a false equivocation.
@Craig, I didn't use the term.
@Russell, yes, my apologies for any part in lowering the tone.
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Hard News: This Is Not A Complicated Issue, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
You might want to have a little think about whether your idea of what constitutes “appropriate” or “normal” body language is as sound as basis for making vehement character judgements as you seem to think.
Cheers. I'll give that the 25 seconds I think it's worth...
Done. Hmmm, no I'm still going with my own judgment, because it's the one I've got. But thanks for the thought.
With a school pupil, as a teacher, I can actually interact with them, there's no real need to rely on first judgments. But teachers are indeed highly sensitive to the body language of students, or they are hopeless teachers. So it's not the best example, really. It's actually a core competency of teachers, to be able to rapidly judge the emotional state of people, and to deny that they both have it and need it is wrong.
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Hard News: This Is Not A Complicated Issue, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
“That boy just looks wrong” was… um, a somewhat unfortunate line of attack.
On a deeper reading of what you're saying here, I sense an unfair equivocation. It would be an unfortunate line of attack if Lockwood Smith were disabled, and I was mocking him on account of some aspect of that. So far as I know, he is not. "Emotional cripple" is only a turn of phrase, not a recognized condition.
But again, yes, "irrational argument" is an oxymoron. Body language arguments usually are irrational, as are all psychological speculation, really. Straightforward ad hominems. Perhaps they should never be mentioned. Then again...in the context of a debate about the language of the body, rather than the mouth...well...perhaps that's just revealing yet another kind of privilege. I don't know. A lot to think on there. The deaf are the only disabled people I can think of with a common superpower - is Mojo like Professor X?
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Hard News: This Is Not A Complicated Issue, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
Fair enough, it's unduly personal to note that I hate him at a level that's deeply irrational. It probably does color the way I see him. You're right, it's plenty enough to stick to the things he does.
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The thing that always bugs me about Lockwood is he doesn't own his shit. Cutting his teeth with an outright lie that he would remove student fees, then taking office and putting in place measures that hiked the fees 300%, thus began a long career of doing shitty things then blaming them on other people. To make blatantly racist statements, then when challenged to backpedal with claims of having been taken out of context, that he was merely reporting that other people had said those things.
He's completely divorced from the outcomes of his deeds. This time, it's imperative that the mud sticks. Whatever he say, everyone can see that he has tremendous discretion, as the Speaker, to make stuff happen in Parliament, if he had a will, a conscience, and an ounce of diligence. For us to even be niggling over the technicalities is playing his shitty little game - the failure is far bigger than that. It's a failure of him to consider the very purpose of his role - to make sure that Parliament gives a level playing field for debate and discussion of the momentous matters of state it discusses every day. He either doesn't get that, or he's deliberately obstructing it.
Personally, I think the latter, but there's little by way of argumentation in there, it's entirely a reaction to his body language. He always looks to me as if he likes to be the bearer of bad news, that he can barely hold back the glee with which he crushes the hopes of people with less power than him. I don't think I've ever seen a genuine unconflicted emotion cross his face, because the real emotions would always be so unseemly.
There must be some Nats who feel the injustice of the situation. Nikki Kaye? Here's your No Coromandel Mining for this term. This is a conscience issue.
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Hard News: This Is Not A Complicated Issue, in reply to Sofie Bribiesca,
this isn't really the issue here
Indeed. Excellent instant point scoring by Peters, but really, the point is that a whip-around shouldn't be the way Parliament funds vital things like access to Parliamentary debate for an elected MP.
The mere side effect that hundreds of thousands of NZers could also be empowered to follow parliamentary broadcasts at all, and millions of people could be empowered to follow the Maori contributions (and Cockwood would have less excuse to kick Hone out for giving his vows in Maori), are also important, but at the very least representatives should get is an equal chance to represent.
Which is, incidentally, exactly what Mojo is doing by raising this issue. Representing. It's a mirror of the exact same issue faced by the disabled constantly, and good on her for getting stuck in, straight away, on something so damned important.
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I'd agree that this issue is bipartisan - I can't imagine that the Nats will back Smith on this, the best they could do is wash their hands of it. He's harming their brand whether or not they have any control over him at all. This is disastrous publicity, and could so easily have been turned into a win. Now, the opportunity is lost, the PM can't be seen to be leaning on the Speaker.
I think this is a Lockwood issue. Also, a fuckwit issue. They're closely related issues.
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It's academic that I despise Lockwood Smith, but I never expected to be despising him for something so obviously, bipartisanly, blindingly, deafeningly wrong.
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