Posts by Stephen Judd
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Gio: the Jargon File claims "automagically" goes back before the 70s. I'm pretty sure I learned it from the O'Reilly Perl book. Anyway it's virtually a term of art in programming circles.
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I think Hilary's "discussing cultural differences" deserves an honorable mention. It has become my official successor to discussing the Ugandan situation.
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Oh yeah, let's eviscerate Wellington.
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Hilary: I'm with you. I was particularly infuriated to read in the Dompost:
Transport Ministry documents show it could take longer to reopen after an earthquake than the coastal route, and ministry officials told Mr Joyce this year that the economic benefits were low. But public support remains high, with 89 per cent of submitters in a Transport Agency survey last year supporting the route.
So basically, we're going to spend 1 BILLION dollars on something of little benefit, on carbon-emitting cars and trucks, whose fuel continually increases in price... argh argh argh.
WHERE IS MY LIGHT RAIL TO THE AIRPORT?
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I think Jack is too modest to share his triumphant Twitter post:
... that's why you should have a disreputable youth, kids! Or more than one if you can fit them in the bed.
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Best wishes to you and your family, Edmund.
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That reminds me of a story of my own.
A few years ago, I had one of the most intense emotional experiences of my life. For about two weeks I sat every day, and a good chunk of most nights, outside the ICU at Shaare Tzedek hospital in Jerusalem, wondering if my pregnant sister would die -- she had blood poisoning of an unusual kind and we had been told she probably would. My Dad had got a phone call from my brother in law in the middle of the night, so he and I got on a plane not knowing if she would still be alive when we arrived.
Top weight-loss tip: if you sleep four hours a night and eat two meals a day for two weeks and worry ceaselessly over a family member, you can lose up to 7kg!
In order to remove any sense of suspense you might be suffering from, she received excellent care, had some very good luck, and lived and had a very healthy baby after. Hooray! But that's not why I'm telling you this.
Over those two weeks, I saw a lot of patients and their families come and go. A lot of them left because they died. Some got better. No one who was there when I arrived was still there when I left: my sister hung on fighting longer and harder than anyone thought possible.
All the stories I heard were tragic, some hideously so -- like the baby with no working liver. And because of the nature of the area, there were a lot of devout friends and families of various religions praying for the sick. And for me and mine -- my sister is part of a fantastically supportive and helpful religious community. Like Ben's wife, I enjoyed and valued the warmth and good feeling they transmitted.
I can still see the young haredi father whose baby was going to die, as we sat in the corridor waiting stoically for God's will. He offered me a cheese boureka for breakfast. I gave the Palestinian family whose daughter was dying of pneumonia the last of my coffee stash, they gave me tea.
But. The whole while I was feeling the love of strangers, while we were sharing our little supplies of coffee and pastries, and reading psalms and exchanging halting English and Hebrew and Arabic, the last shreds of wishful faith I had were slowly evaporating under the relentless proof that the universe is random. I didn't see any rhyme or reason to who lived or who died, or even who was afflicted. It was just all stuff. And the good things I experienced in that awful time came from people being people. If there were miracles, they came in the wholly explicable form of experimental antibiotics.
I can see how belief in God and membership in a religious community can be a comfort, but it isn't God who's helping through prayer, it's the knowledge that one of your fellow primates cares that's helping. I take offers of prayer as an expression of concern and don't worry myself about the form it's expressed in.
And on another note, next time I have an argument with someone on an apparently irrelevant topic, I'm going to try to remind myself they might have a lot on their mind...
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I would guess that is also a high decile school.
It was indeed, Dec 9. Her earlier reports from another, Dec 5 school in another town had been far more comprehensible, but I thought there had been a change -- I didn't realise that they weren't standardised. Interesting.
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One possible source of support for Tolley: parent discontent with incomprehensible school reports.
I read difficult technical matter for a living, and I had trouble understanding what my daughter's primary school reports were telling me. Goodness knows what other parents made of their kids' reports.
The combination of levels of achievement and age group bands (with the explanation and keys several pages away from the actual report pages) meant it was very hard to figure out where she sat. Clearly someone had decided to present the information with as much context as possible, but unfortunately they'd supplied so much context that the crucial thing -- is she doing ok for her age? -- was obscured. Only the actual notes from the teacher made any sense.
So I can imagine a lot of people thinking "yay tests, at last a non-waffly measure."
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I discovered our cat Raoul could catch mynas when I stumbled over a pair of myna legs on the dining room carpet, still connected by a thread of bloody flesh.
Thank God he eats mice from the head down and just leaves the arse end -- otherwise I'd have to look at their terrified faces when disposing of the corpses.
Unfortunately he catches skinks. We always rescue them, and our section provides lots of cover inaccessible even to cats, but I feel pretty bad about this. We got him from the SPCA, so I think his hunting skills are pretty much unalterable now. But if we get a kitten, I'll definitely try the Janssen method.