Posts by st ephen
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While 1981 might have marked some kind of turning point, it wasn't long before we were all out there marching again - another year, another tour to stop. I mainly remember the adrenaline surge every time the protest marches passed a pub and the tanked-up boof heads spilled out looking for someone isolated to beat up. I also remember thinking I was this close to becoming a hooligan myself.
In 1985 there was even another Don McGlashan musical moment - sadly it proved to be unsingable by the masses (Jordan Luck should have got the commission). The line about Sharpeville rings true for me - my loathing for South Africans stemmed from 1976, but not so much because of the 176 mostly schoolchildren shot dead in Soweto a fortnight before that tour started, or the 3000 dead by the tour's end. I was a little rugby head at primary school back then, and would have been all in favour of protest marches against Gert Bezuidenhout...
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Hard News: Science: it's complicated, in reply to Sacha,
I wasn’t going to bother responding to that until after the quarter-finals.
Didn't he say he supports England? In which case you might have to wait a game or two longer...
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Hard News: Science: it's complicated, in reply to Bart Janssen,
Not our fault.
Once they go up who cares where they come down?
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Hard News: Science: it's complicated, in reply to Bart Janssen,
Even so it would be a consideration in deciding whether to make kiwifruit herbicide resistant.
Yeah, one consideration of many. Profit might be another one, I guess... ;-)
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Hard News: Science: it's complicated, in reply to Bart Janssen,
ALL of our modern crops are completely useless competitors in the wild.
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The rock stars of er, rock aren’t necessarily closely related to the good musicians, either.
A one hour Media7 special on that topic might do better in the ratings too.
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I must confess that I once wrote a pissed-off post on privilege in response to something that Jackie had said along the lines of "us kids weren't given everything on a plate - we were expected to work hard for it". I didn't post it because it's obvious even to me that Jackie is the nicest person around here and I'm really not as horrible as my posts would have you think. And I realised that I was putting thoughts into Jackie's head that I had actually heard spoken by other people.
But. If anyone other than Jackie seems to imply that poor people don't work hard, or that everyone who works hard has an equal opportunity to become rich, or that rich kids don't have extensive networks and safety nets that allow them to take risks and "try, try again"....
There's nothing "normative = usual, typical" about that kind of privilege. -
Back in the day I bought a Hunters and Collectors album specifically to get Throw Your Arms... - but it was a studio version, not the live version that student radio had been thrashing. So if I ever get around to illegally downloading the live version, that's my justification.
I also remember Chris Knox dismissing H+C from the start as just another over-rated Aussie pub rock band. I think it came down to whether The Slab was as authentic as Jennifer's Veil (but guess what Chris - we can haz both!). -
Muse: Rugby World Kitsch, in reply to Leopold,
In 1999 the French themselves installed a bouncy castle with inflatable rugby goal posts in front of the Eiffel Tower. They also had several other rugby-themed amusements on offer including horizontal bungies for practicing try-scoring feats and a row of plywood players for practicing swerving and stepping. Feel free to cringe on their behalf. ;-)
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Hard News: Limping Onwards, in reply to James Butler,
People will readily accept that the Universe is immensely complicated, but seem to balk at the suggestion that people are also complicated.
I've always said that the hardest part of rocket science was making sure the orbiting humans didn't kill each other (but I'll happily defer to richard).