Posts by Lucy Stewart
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Hard News: Popular Paranoiac Politics, in reply to Andre Alessi,
For some reason, this inspired her to escort me to a nondescript office building on Queen St, force me to watch interminable Scientology promo videos about volcanoes, take budget lie detector and IQ tests, before spending about 6 or so hours trying to get me to sign away all my worldly possessions and join the Church of Scientology as an employee (who wasn’t even guaranteed minimum wage, by the way.)
I really wish I was exaggerating.
There wasn't a window to escape out of? Maybe an air duct?
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Hard News: Popular Paranoiac Politics, in reply to BenWilson,
Mind you, it would be shameful to have once been the head of the National Party, and to end up scrapping with Rodney Hide over who gets to be King of Act.
Shameful wouldn't be the half of it. And there's a good chance the position he took while head of National poisoned the well with the real ACT free-market true-believers, anyhow.
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Busytown: She loves you, YA, YA, YA!, in reply to giovanni tiso,
Yeah, that makes no sense, since books are so much thicker and heavier. You wouldn’t get a lot more than a paper cut fom a comic.
Dunno, have you seen some of the collected editions?
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In my view Don Brash the politician is actually a very interesting mix of radicalism, populism, and principled and opportunistic politics.
In other words: genuinely nuttily right-wing, but still cherished hopes of being elected?
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Sally – Gaiman’s Sandman comics might be a nice transistion from King (who lauds the work in one edition’s volumes, which can’t hurt).
I love Sandman, but I found some of the content disturbing enough at eighteen, let alone twelve. I really wouldn't recommend it for that age. Some of Gaiman's other work, maybe, but not Sandman. Although I personally find comics violence more disturbing than book violence, so.
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I really put the guy out of kilter, though, when he produced the book, and said it could help me with all my problems if I just bought it, when I responded (truthfully) “I doubt it man, I got that out of the library years ago, and it obviously hasn’t helped”.
This is an entire argument for the public library system, right there.
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…and who want to work. I spent a bit of time on the dole, at my great age, when I just couldn’t find any work. Applied for jobs I was qualified for, but never even got an interview. It was soul destroying. Numbing. And the amount I got from Winz was so pathetic, it didn’t go anywhere near what a reasonable person needs in order to live. It was probably the most demeaning, humiliating time I’ve ever had in my (previously) productive working life.
It always comes back, very quickly, to the assumption that the poor and/or criminals aren't really like the rest of society. They don't want to work. They don't mind being humiliated and poor and desperate, or in prison. In fact, they prefer it, because it's so much cushier than holding down a real job like us right-minded productive citizens. Why, they get nearly half of minimum wage! A week! What lazy criminal would want more?
It's an assumption, in fact, that social mobility is a one-way phenomenon, that anyone who doesn't achieve upwards mobility was Found Unworthy, and that the stick is far, far more effective than the carrot. That "we" are not and never have been and never will be poor; "we" are not, and never have been, and never will be criminals; "we" have what we have because we earned it, and if everyone else just tried harder, they could too.
And it's fucking creepy.
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ETA; Which then raises the issue of how fast was it collecting methane to create this kind of pressure? I doubt that it would have been temporarily stored within the mine - that would be crazy
If there was only one line draining methane to the outside, but collecting it from various places in the mine, that could add up to quite a lot of pressure even if no individual spot was outgassing that much. Because 0.8 cubic metres/second of methane is a lot, looking at ChrisW's figure of 10-13 cubic metres/tonne of coal. A quick look at the literature also suggests that, to put that figure into perspective, other New Zealand coal seams have more like 2-4 cubic metres/tonne.
(On a note of professional curiosity, I see that biogenic methane is a significant fraction in other NZ mines - I wonder if that was the case here?)
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Insofar as 19th century Pakeha culture produced some of the earliest labour struggles and victories in the world, I think you may be reading what James said quite unfairly there.
It's still, at best, unnecessarily exclusionary of the non-Pakeha who were part of New Zealand then as much as now. And given that there were significantly worse mining disasters in that period than this one, I don't think we've really regressed in terms of mine safety.
I can perceive what James might have been *trying* to say, but that's not what he *said*.
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Such a cruel, cruel place for the poor. We *can’t* become like that.
Oh, we totally can. But we shouldn't. And mustn't. And, I hope, won't.
(Happy Thanksgiving to you as well!)