Posts by Stephen Judd
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Cracker: How Media Made me a Bad Person., in reply to Damian Christie,
Perhaps the difference here is between "Stephen is a bad person" and "Stephen did a bad thing".
You see this all the time when racism in public discourse comes up. Instead of talking about what people said and did, we end up having a pitched battle about whether they are a terrible person, often in the process defending people we like (even thought they have done a bad thing) or failing to praise people we don't like (even though they have done right against our expectation).
It's also desirable in commentary to try and show insights denied to ordinary people, so we speculate about a person's motives and goals without any actual knowledge thereof.
Of course this level of detachment is beyond most of us in ordinary life, but it would be neat if professional commentators could display it.
With Laws of course I feel justified in calling someone who repeatedly behaves badly a bad person. This is far less clear cut in many other cases.
Also, I stumbled on this today, and I think it's relevant somehow: The Philosophers' Mail.
...strokes beard and retires to life of quiet contemplation.
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Hard News: Making it up on smacking, in reply to Martin Lindberg,
Do you think it’s the English language that drives this need to beat children or is there something deeper in the Anglosphere driving this urge?
Confining ourselves to Europe, in that case it's also something about French, Italian, Turkish, German, Lithuanian, Latvian, ....
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Is there any evidence that mechanically unsound bikes/accessories contribute to cyclist injury stats significantly?
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Hard News: Lowering the Stakes, in reply to Bart Janssen,
But bikes could be separated temporally fairly easily by giving bikes a time of their own to cross the intersection. Much the same way we allow pedestrians to cross intersections at a different time from cars.
A bike button at the intersection that gave bikes a 10 second “lead” on the green light would do it.
This pretty much is the state of affairs at some lights in Wellington, notably around the Basin and on Karo Drive. It’s good.
Christchurch has a neat feature on its railway bike path where there are sensors just before the path intersects with the road, and they trigger a red light for cars so cyclists can cross. Very nice.
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Hard News: Lowering the Stakes, in reply to Bart Janssen,
Why then are drivers, who are also in charge of a lethal weapon, not asked to take responsibility.
Because drivers are a very large constituency and they have well-funded advocacy groups.
Earlier posters noted the difference in attitudes 100 years ago and how the street has been transformed in favour of the motorist. I myself have written about this in the past. The takeover of city roads by motorists started with sustained lobbying by a relatively small, rich group of people (remember cars were much more expensive relative to incomes in the early 20th century).
For this reason I am quite pleased to see people like Lance Wiggs speaking out. Cycling will begin to get parity with motoring when rich people want to ride bikes in safety.
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Oh, another suggestion: "a bad look", the great kind of sort of not really excuse for the barely legit.
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I do like the way #twitteraunties sounds like and subverts the often-sneered "Twitterati".
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Also, I have so many feels about these words.
FEELS.
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I'd like "meeting in the Ngati Whatua room" to become our local "discussing the Ugandan situation."