Posts by Lucy Stewart

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  • Field Theory: An important message for…, in reply to Yamis,

    There's nothing stopping people going down to local parks and watching females playing sport.

    Actually, the lack of advertising around women's sport is appalling. I know the White Ferns played in Christchurch several times while I lived there, but buggered if I ever saw an ad for it except when they were the warm up for the Black Caps. Hard to go watch something you don't know is happening.

    We all know that for the most part the quality of male sport is vastly superior (not always).

    It's always so nice to be reminded of what I know. Otherwise I might start having thoughts. Like, 'Bullshit'.

    Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 2105 posts Report

  • Muse: TV Review: Good Gods Almighty!, in reply to Rich Lock,

    Even with the best of intentions, trying to portray anything from a not-exclusively-white pantheon could easily see you speeding waaay over the line into 'unacceptable racial stereotyping' territory.

    Oh, come on, though. "It's too hard not to be racist so we'll just tell stories about white people"? Like there's no-one who could dare Maori or Pasifika mythology, let alone stuff from further afield? Not good enough.

    In the Norse-gods-in-popular-mythology stakes, there's a reasonably good novel by Timothy Zahn, "The Green and the Grey", although that's more about explaining the Norse (and Greek) mythologies than featuring their gods per se.

    Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 2105 posts Report

  • OnPoint: Election 2011: GO!, in reply to Paul Williams,

    No, that's way too superficial I agree (bonding being a sensible variation I think we agree). I don't have the answer but I do think the discussion is worth having and I'm not sure it will be. Labour's long been committed to restoring a level of student support slashed by the Nats in the early '90s and National's now locked in too. I don't advocate students living an impoverished existence but I do wonder about the risk that resources are being over allocated to a group that mightn't need them at the expense of a group that does.

    Which resources - are we talking about the student allowance? Because that's the only direct non-loan funding to students I can think of, bar one or two scholarship programs. At it maxes out, for those with the poorest parents or who are over twenty-four, at around $180/week. You're just not going to save very much money there.

    The real question in keeping the investment in tertiary students in NZ is, of course, jobs - especially in the sciences and engineering. It's getting the first job right out of university that will keep people here - there is nothing more demoralising than spending several years and a lot of money on a field-specific degree to find that your best offer is barely above minimum wage working a helpdesk. I can't tell you the number of job ads I've seen that say things like "graduate position, two years experience required". It's a joke.

    Part of that is about educating students that they can't expect to just walk into a job even with a supposedly "in-demand" degree - they need to start looking well before they graduate, and treat finding a job as a serious, time-consuming thing, not something that happens magically. Part of it is about persuading companies to offer more lead-in programmes for graduates, and to be willing to train people up. But it starts with acknowledging that what we're doing right now is telling people "get educated and you can get a great job building our knowledge economy", and focusing only on the "education" part.

    Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 2105 posts Report

  • OnPoint: Election 2011: GO!, in reply to BenWilson,

    We'd rather that colonial hovels designed for poor working classes during the early 20th century, or before, are endlessly recycled, than allowing high density good quality property to develop near our city centers.

    You're also going to have to persuade the renters that they want to rent high-density infill property - of whatever quality - and that's an entire shift in attitude about living space which is not just price-driven.

    Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 2105 posts Report

  • Speaker: Medical Journal, Chapter V, in reply to Pat Hackett,

    Because I was under 30 at time, the Family Planning Clinic deemed that I required a counselling session first.

    Not to start the competition thing again, but I understand that the counselling for vasectomies is nothing compared to the hurdles faced by women wanting tubal ligation, because, you know, all women want babies. Always. Without exception.

    My mum was a nurse for many vasectomies, meaning I probably had the best understanding of what one entailed of any ten-year-old ever. Wellington being a small-ish place, she used to run into a lot of patients socially afterwards - perhaps luckily for everyone, the fact she wore a surgical mask meant they usually didn't recognise her. I bet any time they did was...interesting.

    Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 2105 posts Report

  • Hard News: Book review: 'Wikileaks:…, in reply to Matthew Poole,

    Of course they would, unless one considers it to be lacking in virtuosity to have in-private conversations with, say, Nelson Mandella in apartheid-era South Africa.

    What it comes down to, really, is "do you trust the people who are deciding what stays secret and what doesn't?". And the goal, sometimes, should not be to make everything public, but to make sure the people who make those decisions can be trusted.

    Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 2105 posts Report

  • Hard News: "Orderly transition" in #Egypt, in reply to Angus Robertson,

    They don't specialise in selling weapons that poor people can buy, what they mostly do sell is over specced uber technified military hardware. They sell debt and banking services, products which sell best when customers have money.

    I think you misunderstood Ben's point; it's not that poor people buy "over specced uber technified military hardware", it's that the kind of regimes that tend to be in charge of many poor people tend to buy it (and the bullets to go with it.) And I think the last three years or so illustrate rather spectacularly that debt does indeed sell to people without a lot of money.

    Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 2105 posts Report

  • Hard News: "Orderly transition" in #Egypt, in reply to Keir Leslie,

    But this is business as usual. Close the borders, seize the presses, control the telephone exchange etc.

    But cutting off the internet entirely isn't business as usual; as Russell just illustrated, it's pretty unique to this situation. No-one's ever done this before; sure, cutting off communication is standard, but there's never been this much to cut off, so quickly.

    Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 2105 posts Report

  • Hard News: "Orderly transition" in #Egypt, in reply to Danielle,

    On the other hand, we *have* learned that he thinks Liz Hurley is ‘hot’. So there’s that.

    In the scheme of "things I didn't need to know", I'm startled by how highly that rates.

    Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 2105 posts Report

  • Hard News: "Orderly transition" in #Egypt,

    May be obvious, but I've found the Al Jazeera live blog and combined Twitter feed the most informative and up-to-date way to track what's going on.

    And I think our own PM's response to events has been...well, it's been, and that's the nicest thing I can possibly say about it. Otherwise it starts at "been exceptionally dimwitted" and goes downhill from there.

    Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 2105 posts Report

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