Posts by Sam F
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Good to see Ian Wishart exercising his trademark journalistic caution:
Mad Muslim involved in Mid-Air hijack?
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I'm not sure which was more fun when me and my sister were kids - believing Santa was real, or maintaining the pretense later on for fun (and to ensure that an additional source of presents didn't dry up).
It's obviously a personal choice. One of my high school teachers never did the Santa thing with her kids, because she didn't see why some imaginary man should get the credit for her and her husbands' gifts. A bit extreme for my tastes, but I can see the reasoning.
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M-m-m-monster bump!
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Has this ever actually happened? I imagine it to be something like the internet version of the sasquatch: widely rumoured to exist, but only crazy people have seen it.
Who knows? Not everyone who's proven wrong is willing to say so on the Internet, especially if they're afraid it's going to be construed as admitting defeat.
Sometimes, the less you expect about argument on the Internet, the better. But I think it's valuable at least because it forces you to set out your own words on the screen, which can help clarify your own position. Sometimes you realise faults in your reasoning because others point it out - and sometimes it can just jump out at you from your own writing. Anyway, this might seem like a narcissistic way to approach the issue, but if you do it honestly you might just make someone see something in a different way, like Jackie says. It's up to them. And it's up to you too, when the boot's on the other foot.
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This was so long ago we used Keith Sinclair's History of New Zealand as the set text. Written on rolls of papyrus, it was.
I remember that - it was the set text for my first NZ history paper at university, in the distant days of early 2003.
As for the NZ history component, we received that via an internal assessment that required research on an NZ topic (I think I did immigration policy and its effects from 1950 through till 1970, or something like that). The school justified offering Tudors and Stuarts instead because it was able to get a senior teacher expert in that field, which I think was an acceptable payoff.
I still rushed to sign up for that 19th century NZ paper when I reached university, though.
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Not a bad result!
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Poor old James, with his stammer and his enduring difficulties with maintaining a sustainable financial situation for the English Crown.
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Gorgeous pics. "Vs. Gravity" is now my desktop.
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I'd second Craig's comments about the usefulness of 7th Form Tudors & Stuarts for understanding religious sectarianism. Although the topic was justified to us as an introduction into the virtues of democracy and constitutional limits on power, the religious angle was far more interesting. As you would expect when a devout Anglican was teaching a classroom of Catholic schoolboys, and regularly poked the borax at Mary-worshipping Papists for the sake of historical understanding (and light relief).
Side note: we had to write academic essays every second week, and the comments drilled us on the basic principles of paragraphing, quotation, use of sources and so on. It meant I was away safe in terms of essay style for at least the first three years of university, and thus had time to actually think about the historical issues.
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Would you be interested in some human kebabs or a Lecter like oyster perhaps Sam if your girlfriends family was that way inclined also?
For the sake of manners I was willing to bend about as far as having some of the turtle soup and that was about it. I was jetlagged and surrounded by people I was desperate not to offend, which might have interfered with my moral compass a bit, but I got home to the apartment later that day, fed the terrapins in the window aquarium (did they know?) and promptly swore off the stuff for life.