Posts by Lucy Stewart
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You’ll notice that an American preacher joins in. That’s “Bishop” Eddie Long, another huckster who has long been praised by Tamaki as his “spiritual father” and mentor.
Perhaps the most useful perspective I have ever had on Tamaki was provided by the lecturer of a class I took on mythology, who compared him to mythological tricksters - the sort who change their appearance, and their words, to match whichever audience they're facing. And - mostly - get away with it.
It's entirely probable that he believes what he says, but setting aside the vile nature of much of it, he's done extremely well financially out of the Destiny Church, and that money largely comes from people who don't have much to start with. Some of it goes back to the community, but a lot doesn't. That's the really unforgivable bit. And it's the bit that gets much less play than his tired misogyny, homophobia, and delusions of political grandeur. It shouldn't.
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Up Front: Respectably-Dressed Sensible…, in reply to Lara,
+1 for no Endnote. Far more trouble than its worth. A friend of mine had it corrupt last year and lost all her references (for an essay, not a PhD, but...)
If you have time to adapt, I strongly recommend Mendeley Desktop. Free, backed up online, compatible with Word and Open Office, and generally excellent. It's a little touchy about accurately picking up details from pre-1980s papers (because all the PDFs are from scanned pics, I think), but that's the only real downside.
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Southerly: One Hundred and Thirty-one…, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
if I am precipitation prescient,
I tie a plastic shopping bag – kept
secreted on the bike – over the seat!One of the best-kept secrets of regular biking. Keeping a flannel or some paper towels in your backpack is a good back-up, too.
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Southerly: One Hundred and Thirty-one…, in reply to George Darroch,
Well, clogged gutters mean clogged pipes, which is a cost to them. Glass on the road is only a cost to the general public. You can see what they’re thinking…
And the cost of the aftermath when a cyclist swerves to avoid glass and the car behind them doesn't realise they're about to do this...?
(Which, yes, not the greatest idea on the cyclist's part, but these things can be pretty instinctive.)
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Southerly: One Hundred and Thirty-one…, in reply to Lisa Black,
Most of the unpleasant riding events I see would have been avoided with either good manners, making the effort to notice what’s around one, or just chilling the hell out.
My experience with nearly getting hit has often been not that someone didn't see me, but that they grossly underestimated how fast I was going or overestimated how fast I could stop (especially in slippery conditions.) I wouldn't call it aggression so much as overconfidence.
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Southerly: One Hundred and Thirty-one…, in reply to BenWilson,
Hard to know for sure, the helmet being compulsory feels a lot more intrusive than the non-compulsory lycra. Also, the helmet fucks up your hair, which I expect matters to women a lot more.
My two biggest problems with a helmet were not being able to wear a hat in mid-winter (my warm hats didn't fit under it) and not being able to clip back my fringe. Which are both minor enough to be irrelevant. But it does matter to some people. (The trick, of course, is to get enough cyclists on the road that motorists watch out for them reflexively and helmets become less necessary. Not sure how you get that cart before that horse, if it's discouraging that many people.)
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Field Theory: Gruts, in reply to Islander,
ne of the weirder things I learned as a member of the Indecent Publications Tribunal was that a 'Prince Albert' was a penile piercing to keep your member tidy & contained to the left - reguardless of what you saw etc..
O my! The sacrifices the royals went to etc. etc. etc.
That sounds suspiciously urbanly mythological. How reliable was the source?
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Southerly: One Hundred and Thirty-one…, in reply to Islander,
I've come across, over the last 3 months, people, of all genders, under the age of 20 who dont know how to cook!
They dont know how to do anything (well, microwave, yessss.) Boiling eggs - let along poaching or omletting them - fuck o dear*
Cooking is one of those things that requires a reasonable amount of trial and error - which can be wasteful and/or tedious - or someone who teaches you the basic techniques. If they've managed to get out of home without learning the basics, they're not going to pick them up unless they make an effort to learn - and when there's so many tinned pasta sauces and microwave rice packets and things around...you don't really need to learn.
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Southerly: One Hundred and Thirty-one…, in reply to stephen walker,
so yes, it can be done either way. for people going much shorter distances, the need for cycling gear is very low. if you wear ordinary work clothes you just have to be much more willing to change plans depending on the weather. the cycling gear means you can ride whatever the weather thows at you (more or less).
If the average Chch commute is 5km, not a problem at all. I never bothered with anything like "cycling clothes", just rain jackets that gave decent coverage for splatter and taking note of how much I needed to bundle up. If you're only on the road for 20min, weather changes on the way in to work are very unlikely to be unforeseeable, and on the way home - well, you can shower at home, so no big deal whatever it is. Lycra is really very unnecessary for the majority of people.
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Southerly: One Hundred and Thirty-one…, in reply to BenWilson,
More integration with public transport would be good to have – bike racks on buses, for instance, or good secure racks at train stations and major bus nexuses. By secure I mean under the standard video surveillance.
Secure racks in the central city were the biggest problem I had in Christchurch. I was really uncomfortable leaving my bike some places, and others it was just impossible to find racks anywhere near where you wanted to go. They could definitely stand to put a few more of those up (and signpost them.)
As for racks on buses - I never used the few in Chch because the routes that had them weren't particularly relevant for me, but all the local buses over here have them and they're absolute gold. It opens up options like biking somewhere that's quite far away because you know you can hop on a bus for some or part of the way back, or managing non-intersecting bus routes.