Posts by Heather Gaye
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Rich said:
If I'm right, it's reasonable to assume that anyone who threatens you is no more likely to take on physical form than the characters in a video game. So treat the nasty people as a string of bits, delete their outpourings and move on.
For a few weeks I was the target of a string of abusive emails & forum comments. It wasn't any kind of random misogyny but a personal matter, it could be argued that I deserved it. I also knew the person sending the emails wasn't going to follow through. Over the course of those weeks, I stopped going out, I'd rush home from work in the dark with my hood up, and I'd sit alone in my room with the lights off. It really annoyed and frustrated me for being so affected by "a string of bits", but that was my life for a month, and no amount of trying to shake it off worked. I simply dreaded going outside. It may not seem rational, but those kind of threats are the abuse.
Personally I've often had the tendency to fob off feminist opinion as hysterical hypersensitivity (it doesn't help when they all seem so angry). My first reaction was the same as Finn's - that it's not a male/female thing, but an arsehole thing, and that sex just happens to be a convenient target.I think that's because I've never been a victim of any kind of sexual discrimination (I'm not sure why that is, lucky me). I've only started understanding that misogyny actually exists (and is whole lot more nuanced than my original, rather blunt understanding) by reading feminist blogs that are heavy on real-life examples. I think that's what causes at least some of the division in this topic - that it's difficult to acknowledge that a problem exists, and the impact it has, if you've never really been exposed to something that you can specifically identify as that problem. It's telling that Finn describes the distinction (women vs other bullied people) as "arbitrary".
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OK, call me Mrs Thicky, but I still see no difference.
It goes against my sense of loony-lefty community spirit, but I have to agree with Anne M. And I reckon there are plenty of creative solutions that the ticket sellers themselves could come up with, without needing legislation to protect their fragile constitutions.
Glastonbury tickets were (to my knowledge) the first to be stamped with name and address; purchases are restricted to two per customer, & photo id is checked at the gate. Scalping is ridiculous in the UK, I don't understand why noone thought of it earlier. Glasters didn't even have any scalping trouble to speak of before they built the fence - just people-sneaking-in trouble.
How about promoters just withhold a few hundred tickets until two weeks before a clear sellout, and auction them off themselves? Donate the extra profits to charity, no way anyone'd bother with ol' Raymond hocking off his "accidentally purchased" back-row litter on trademe for five times their original price; but it still leaves open the chance to sell off some tickets that he genuinely bought in error & can't use.
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Sorry, messed up the linky.
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I thought that the Chinese count like Maori. i.e. to say 11 you say "ten and one", to say 342 you say "three hundreds and four tens and two".
but I don't speak Chinese, anyone?Correct, without the "and". Also, pointy -finger stuff!
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two of which were rigorously constructed buildings yet somehow as a result of a short explosive blast from half empty plane fuel tanks fell at basically un-obstructed speeds an hour later exactly into their own footprint, generating all the hallmark chemical and physical symptoms of controlled demolition.
I think there are a lot of problems inherent in second-guessing the expected vs actual results of this kind of event. I think it's very easy to contrive more "plausible" scenarios when you have some elementary physics, but ultimately the elaborate scenarios I've heard - rather than proving the conclusion that the twin towers destruction was an inside job, they actually rest on that as a premise.
One problem with the physics involved in the destruction of the twin towers, is that a lot of people know what a controlled demolition looks like - but very few people know what a plane crashing into a building looks like. Here's an opinion, just one, that I found after a friend pushed the "controlled demolition" angle. Granted, it doesn't even touch controlled demolition, but it is still *coff* eerily plausible, and mentions some quite obvious factors that the "jet-fuel burns too cold" brigade ignored.
I'm not saying that all alternative theories should be cast aside without consideration, but I think too many people latch onto half-formed ideas primarily because they're exciting and they make people feel clever. Those theories then become the popular counter-argument despite their own scientific or logical shortcomings, which is counterproductive, in my view.
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Here's a nightmare for Kiwiblog readers:
I don't know if it'd constitute a nightmare, or all their christmases come at once. If they had the choice of a decent, hardworking leftwing government and an overtly corrupt one, which do you think they'd choose?
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no, pun intended.
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I can think of one instance in which a former member might resemble a vagina.
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Ah, can't remember who originally put me onto this story, but here's one for those that favour a more proactive approach to weeding out the freaks before they go postal.
...And another case from 1995. Pre-terrorists, pre-Columbine even.
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hope RB gives the OK because Sword Head is a doozy
umm...we could just click on the linky in your member details, right? Is there a catch?