Posts by Rich Lock
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OnPoint: Other People's Wars, in reply to Greg Dawson,
Assuming everyone agrees that there is such a thing as just war, and that it is possible to have such in a war of invasion.
That's a whole 'nother oil drum full of off-topic worms...
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OnPoint: Other People's Wars, in reply to Martin Roberts,
Peacekeeping is a great use of troops, but reconstruction may not be. Troops are not neutral, and once they undertake humanitarian work then the neutrality of NGO teams is thrown into question.
Slightly off-point, but much the same argument is made very compellingly by James Fergusson in his study of the British army in Helmand. Short version: if you make the decision to deploy a bunch of people trained as hammers, then don't be surprised if they end up telling you they have to deal with a lot of nails in their area of operations...
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OnPoint: Other People's Wars, in reply to Lucy Stewart,
Solution: send our regional team of murder specialists over, with strict orders to not murder anyone. Wink, wink, nudge nudge. Like those English paratroopers sent to Northern Ireland back in the day.
Requirements: orders not to murder anyone, plenty of murdering, and confirmation that no one is murdering anyone. Lots of winking, guided tours for the tame journalists, guided missiles for the native ones.From both a strict legal viewpoint and a common-usage one, repeated use of the word "murder" here is...not entirely accurate.
Whilst I mostly agree with the original comment, I agree that use of the word 'murder' is emotive and entirely counter-productive.
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Well, if I was about to rob a bank, I'd probably not be sitting around having a relaxed and lengthy meal with my mates, no.
Unless sitting in the back of a van, trying not to spit the nerve-settling gum that I've been chewing in a frenzy for four hours into my balaclava counts...
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I'm going to hand the debate over to some guys in sharp suits. Some NSFW language.
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Ross, I don't disagree that 'breast is best'. But my experience, albeit largely anecdotal, suggests that the other options are being shouted down, even when they might be more appropriate. The debate, she lacks nuance.
Or sheep?
Two legs bad! four legs good!
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Hard News: Auckland City Nights, in reply to BenWilson,
A tip is money paid directly to the actual human doing the work. It's hard to imagine a fairer deal.
When I lived in London I would often tip extremely generously, as it was expected, and I wanted to err on the side of caution. I found it quite refreshing to come here and pay what was stated in black and white - no more or less.
My wife has a story about visiting New York when she was younger, and not getting served in a bar after the first round because she didn't tip. When she did eventually get served, she had the change flung back in her face. Obviously she was unaware of the cultural assumption that she would tip handsomely, no matter how good or poor the service actually was.
So in theory, tipping is all good, but as with most human activity, the unspoken rules and assumptions generally turn it into something of a minefield. I'm more than happy to pay handsomely for a job well done, I'm just not sure that tipping is the best way to do it.
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Here is the (edited for privacy) text of an e-mail I got from a friend recently:
Just after I last wrote we all started getting really down. Baby was spending most of the day screaming and never really going to sleep, and this went on for several weeks. I celebrated my birthday by visiting my doctor who put me on anti-depressants because I was really depressed and she agreed that I needed some help. Meanwhile Mother was just as depressed and her doctor diagnosed severe post-natal depression.
When the doctor signed me off work and the prozac started to take effect it became clear to us that Baby's poor health was caused by starvation. The health visitors kept visiting and seeing Mother breastfeeding, and reasuring us that everything would be OK soon because breastfeeding is a miracle cure for all of baby's ills. During one visit I "disclosed" that I had been diagnosed with depression and then the health visitors went into child protection overdrive. Suddenly we were getting phone calls and visits every day - they must have considered me a risk, but ironically they didn't diagnose the real risk which was that Baby wasn't getting enough nutrition.
A bit of drug induced clarity allowed us to decide to put Baby on formula milk, and since then she's been really good, going from zero weight gain and perma-crying to massive continual weight gain and full nights of sleep.
One Monday we got a visit from "the No.1 breastfeeding specialist". She observed Mother and Baby and declared that "there's nothing wrong, she is just having a growth spurt." (In spite of Baby not gaining any weight for two weeks). A few days later after we had decided to put Baby on the bottle another health visitor was sat with Mother and said, in an idle chit-chat stylee, "Oh yeah... that specialist who saw you on Monday came back to the office and she was really concerned about Baby. She told me that Baby should definitely be on a bottle because she isn't getting enough milk from your breasts." I was out but Mother relayed the story to me later - my blood boiled. I could feel the bubbles. Needless to say, we have severed all links with them now.
What a difference proper feeding has made to Baby. Her weight is now 6.5kg and she looks phat. She goes to sleep at about 8pm and wakes up at 7am and that's about all there is to it. If it hadn't been for the health visitors and their specious dogma then we would have had a perfect baby experience.
My sister also took to blatently lying through her teeth to her health visitor, and hiding the bottle down the back of the sofa cushions when she was round.
When our daughter was born, my wife shared a hospital room with a mother who was reduced to a state of perma-crying for three days after the birth because she couldn't feed properly. The husband put his fist through the drywall in frustration.
Still, some people just have a bad attitude, right?
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Hard News: Auckland City Nights, in reply to BenWilson,
I expect he doesn't even know that he was 8 shades of awesome, and they were fucking lucky to have him working there.
Well, by writing the letter I was hoping that there would be some sort of trickle-down to the particular employee, which would let them know how awesome they were, and possibly provide them with something to leverage off for personal gain down the line, even if the manager was also using it for personal profit.
Personally, I'd rather write about it here, where upwards of ten thousand quite intelligent, conscientious and tech savvy people might read about it
Then shouldn't you be naming the branch, the guy and the phone model in question? :)
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Hard News: Auckland City Nights, in reply to BenWilson,
He worked at that sale for about 90 mins going well beyond what I have come to expect from any shop salesperson
That's very generous and kind of you, but when you have no cultural context for it, really confusing. The guy's probably wondering what you mean by it, what you want, if it's okay/legal for him to accept it
I've been in similar circumstances a couple of times. I took the time a day or two later to write to customer services/branch manager, naming the staff member and saying how pleased I was to get good service.