Posts by Stephen Judd
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Yes Che, that's why the most desireable retail in Wellington is on Lambton Quay where shoppers stop and park at the roadside on the spur of the moment, and why the Cuba/Manners malls are devoid of retailers. And you know in Christchurch those pedestrian only areas in the CBD are complete retail dead zones. The empirical evidence abounds.
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the blog swarm poneke and stephen judd seem to be getting closer to.
Yes, behold my, er, stinging contribution.
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Oh, and also, I am irresistably reminded:
M: Oh look, this isn't an argument.
A: Yes it is.
M: No it isn't. It's just contradiction.
A: No it isn't.
M: It is!
A: It is not.
M: Look, you just contradicted me.
A: I did not.
M: Oh you did!!
A: No, no, no.
M: You did just then.
A: Nonsense!
M: Oh, this is futile!
A: No it isn't.
M: I came here for a good argument.
A: No you didn't; no, you came here for an argument.
M: An argument isn't just contradiction.
A: It can be.
M: No it can't. An argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition.
A: No it isn't.
M: Yes it is! It's not just contradiction.
A: Look, if I argue with you, I must take up a contrary position.
M: Yes, but that's not just saying 'No it isn't.'
A: Yes it is!
M: No it isn't!A: Yes it is!
M: Argument is an intellectual process. Contradiction is just the automatic gainsaying of any statement the other person makes. -
"Any medical procedure required to save the life of the mother can be done by delivering the baby."
Do you know what an ectopic pregnancy is? That's one situation I can think of that sometimes results in exactly that scenario, and is still a significant cause of maternal death. Another counter-example is a person known to me, who, after hormone treatment associate with IVF, suffered a severe hormonal reaction that could only be stopped by abortion or miscarriage of the embryo (she miscarried, which was very sad, but saved her life). (Note I use your definition of "baby" here, which I also don't agree with, but no matter).
You seem to be very confident over things you clearly don't know a lot about. You don't seem to be able to deal with any other definitions than the ones you propose. You don't seem to be able to actually argue, only to repeat assertion after assertion. And your hectoring is actively off-putting. My feeling that your views are stupid and inhumane is only strengthened by the way you make your case for them.
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"It is never wrong to not steal and there is never the necessity to do so."
What the hell? How completely ignorant of history can you be? Judging by your surname, you share the same British heritage as many of us, and you ought to know that at various times in the British Isles the poorest people have had neither work, nor charity, nor food, nor any prospect but starvation while the rich ate.
Would you steal to feed your children? Would that be wrong if there were no alternative? It seems that your approach is simply to claim that there are always alternatives, but I just don't believe that. I don't even need to point to hypotheticals. We live in a world right now where some societies are organised sufficiently unjustly that property rights don't have fundamental moral force.
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I'm glad to hear that, Bart. I have an elderly but very reliable Legacy that I plan on driving until it rusts or petrol goes to $100/l, whichever happens first.
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"the most recent international crime victimisation survey gave New Zealand a stellar rating for victim support. Best in the world, in fact."
I've been wondering about the tendency for New Zealanders to complain about things that are, in fact, rather good. I'm starting to wonder if it isn't actually causal. That is, those things are rather good BECAUSE people whinge about them all the time.
The logical corollary would be things where we are absolutely dire by international standards that nobody complains about, but I can't think of an example off the top of my head.
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What's wrong with wanting to be safe Stephen? Or wanting our families to be safe?
Nothing's wrong with that. I applaud it. It's what you do to try and achieve that safety which is the issue.
My argument wrt the SUV is that it's a false sense of safety.
The "screw you" part is that even the perceived safety - whether from height or mass - only comes at the expense of other drivers. If everybody tried to drive a taller, bigger vehicle we'd have an arms race that ended in tanks.
So to me it looks like an anti-social choice that doesn't even achieve its ostensible aim.
Note I'm thinking here about people (see A S, I am thinking about the driver not the vehicle) who mainly use them as car substitutes in the city. Who could object to a boat-towing, wood-hauling, sheep-herding SUV? Not me.
Notice that Volvo drivers, stereotypically safety-conscious, don't get the same animosity, for example. They don't obstruct the view, they're not noted for hitting other cars high up, and their drivers anecdotally are cautious and careful.
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Marginal threat? Well sure. Any fairly small risk can double and look insignificant on the margin. On the other hand, looking at tables of stats for the risk to other drivers, like the one here, they don't look good in comparison.
I think 4WD is a red herring. It's not like it helps you to brake.
Hilariously, the Wikipedia page on SUV criticism led me to this study done in Wellington.
(There are 70 "criticism" pages on Wikipedia - a surprisingly low number. I note that no other vehicle class appears to merit its own criticism page...)
Jared Thomas and Darren Walton of the Opus behavioural sciences lab in Wellington, New Zealand, watched 1196 SUV and car drivers on motorways to see whether they drove with their hands at the "ten-minutes-to-two" position on the steering wheel - a sign of a safe, alert driver.
They found that SUV drivers were 55 per cent more likely to drive with only one hand on the top half of the wheel than drivers of regular cars (Transportation Research F, DOI: 10.1016/j.trf.2006.10.001). "Being in larger, taller vehicles, SUV drivers believe they are safer and possess a lower level of perceived risk than car drivers," says Thomas.