Posts by Lucy Stewart
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Hard News: Again: Is everyone okay?, in reply to Matthew Poole,
Sadly, today’s one was about the worst possible case, being a summer lunchtime with many buildings weakened from September and all the intervening shakes.
Two things make this not the absolute "worst case": it wasn't rush hour, and it didn't trigger a tsunami.
Small blessings.
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Hard News: Again: Is everyone okay?, in reply to Carol Stewart,
I had a friend get out of the commerce building. He says he nearly had a very close encounter with a large slab of concrete and isn't sure how the rest of the campus is because he didn't stop to look around on his way out. Haven't heard from any of my partner's contacts who would have been in the Erskine building, but I assume internet is down.
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Muse: Shelf Life: The Dying Elephant in…, in reply to webweaver,
Basically it costs around three times the price to buy a tech book in NZ as it does to buy it in the UK and get it shipped here.
Fiction is bad enough in NZ, but technical books are insane. Whenever we went to Borders, my partner would always go and drool a little at the software and security books, but never buy - some of them were more than we were paying for a week's rent. Cornered market, I guess, but...sheesh.
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I live in Auckland, and while deep discounting is nice, depth and range of stock being sold by knowledgeable and pleasant staff is better. Certainly worth paying a premium for.
Once I passed the age of, mmm, thirteen, Whitcoulls barely ever carried anything that I wanted to read - at least, that I couldn't get out at the library or secondhand. It certainly never had any newly-released books I wanted, outside of things like Harry Potter. Borders in Christchurch, on the other hand, never got close to passing on the "knowledgeable staff" front, but as Emma says, carries a decent genre collection. Though my favourite bookstore in NZ is still Arty Bee's in Wellington. Imported sci-fi AND secondhand books? Brilliant.
The real problem is, of course, that books in NZ bookstores are more expensive than books from international online retailers - often even when you're paying a decent price for shipping. And there's usually a much better selection online. People who love books, and can afford them, will go there. Partly because of that, I think, Whitcoulls aimed very clearly at the bestseller-and-stationery market, and that's a market that will stop buying in a recession. And then where do you go?
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OnPoint: Election 2011: GO!, in reply to Paul Williams,
Lucy, I’m not necessarily saying student support should be reduced though I am questioning the value of interest free loans (which is not quite the same thing).
It's probably worth me noting that I am actually in favour of achievement-based reductions in support; i.e. we'll keep your loan interest-free if you finish your degree, that sort of thing. There are a lot of people going to uni who go, whether they're ready or not, because it's pushed as the best way to get ahead, and who then drop out after a year or two with a not-insignificant loan and nothing to show for it. This sort of thing is hard to structure, though; lots of people will not succeed immediately or have to come back for a second try, or have other life circumstances force them out, and they shouldn't be excluded.
I’ll take a pay cut to do something meaningful, I want also to ensure my kids opportunities aren’t unreasonably narrowed.
I have to come back to NZ for at least two years once I'm done over here, by the terms of my scholarship, but the big thing when I think about whether I'd come back to NZ longterm is kids - bluntly, the potential career opportunities and pay are ridiculously better for both me and my partner here, but then we'd be committed to raising kids here. And I'm really not sure I'd want to do that. (To be entirely fair, I feel the same way about Christchurch.)
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Field Theory: An important message for…, in reply to Yamis,
I knew the White Ferns were playing because I listen to radio sport. If you are interested in watching womens cricket then go and find out when it’s played, don’t whinge because there was no full page ad in the local paper. I often go to watch club sport in my area and I have to go to the official website and find out the draws and who is playing, where, and when.
But that's the problem, see. I'm a casual sports fan. I will go occasionally if I am reminded there is a game on. You're arguing women's sport should be restricted to people actively seeking it, because, what, men's teams deserve to attract casual sports fans and women's teams don't?
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OnPoint: Election 2011: GO!, in reply to Paul Williams,
. Fees are still regulated but Commonwealth funding doesn't match costs and the difference is paid by the student. I don't know the number of scholarship places.
I doubt the number of scholarships available can be worse than in New Zealand, where the majority that are available are for relatively small amounts (one year's fees or significantly less; there are lots worth only a couple of hundred, which are barely worth the time to apply for) or oddly specific. I spent a lot of time looking into science scholarships; the ones available at Canterbury were all for things like "parasitology" or "the botany of Northland" or "people who went to one of these three schools". Scholarships based on straightforward academic merit are vanishingly rare.
But, really, I just don't think there is a solution to the funding vs. brain-drain problem that is entirely funding based. Even if you cut funding for students, you'd need to address the real question, which I think is - what do we want out of our university-educated population? Why do we want people to have degrees? Do we need this many people to do full degrees? Are we still willing to pay for anyone who wants a degree to go to university? Are we willing to set boundaries on who we're willing to pay for? You can't form solutions without addressing those issues.
And, as I've said before in similar discussions, there needs to be more of a willingness to accept that we are a tiny country at the end of nowhere and a bunch of our best-educated will always leave once they've graduated because they're smart and curious and know there's a big world out there. The trick is in making sure that "a bunch" is not "everyone", that we can attract other countries' best and brightest in return, and in ensuring that a significant portion of them do come back.
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Put a fork in him, he's done. The Army seem to have had a strong hand in it - so what happens next?
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Speaker: Medical Journal, Chapter V, in reply to Jackie Clark,
Whilst your beliefs are admirable, Steve. peoples' levels of fertility are incredibly diverse. Some, such as your good self, have the number of pregnancies/children they wish for. Others fall pregnant if a penis is so much as waved in the direction of the nearest vagina.
To be pendantic, he did say "no chemicals or pills", which leaves at least three very-to-extremely reliable methods of contraception I can think of. Or more information about how often he gets laid than we really needed.
The human body can't be improved by human intervention other than a good hair cut, brushing ones teeth, a decent diet and regular exercise.
Either you're taking the piss, or you have led a life ludicrously isolated from the various genetic screwups (cleft palates, Type 1 diabetes, problematic wisdom teeth...) that cause many human bodies to be in need of a great deal of intervention from quite early stages in life. In which case I suggest you start paying more attention to the people around you, because that's a fucking ableist statement.
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Muse: TV Review: Good Gods Almighty!, in reply to Rich Lock,
Not saying it shouldn't be done (and in fact I'd like to see it), just that I can see why film/TV makers may decide to give it miss.
Well, yeah, it can be (and has been, as Tui pointed out) done badly. Extraordinarily so. I can see why you'd want to avoid the obvious pitfalls - but at the same time, if everyone goes around never addressing any non-European myths because it's too dangerous, then for the time being they're just never going to get addressed at all. Someone has to try.
Supernatural is also not a good standard for "trying to handle people who aren't straight white American men sensitively", because it never has and never will. I have a bit more faith in the Kiwi TV industry than that.