Posts by BenWilson
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I think he gets the rules of Q&A. The rules of milling about the pizza wondering who to chat to are much harder to teach.
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I agree that treating our MPs like schoolchildren or clock-watching factory hands is silly. I don't vote for them to sit around in Parliament. I did it so that they would vote in the important legislation in a direction I agree with. How they come by their opinions on what should be done is entirely up to them and could be done by spending a lot of time with their constituents, discussing with their colleagues, browsing the internet, or lying in bed for all I care.
The ones who hold some Ministerial brief clearly have more regimented jobs. But I'd expect the party to hold them accountable first, and the public second if they fail of these duties. Not some bureaucrat.
Why was I not surprised to find you blogger link going to Kiwiblog? DPF has banged on about this shit for years and years, like enforcing his idea of working hours on MPs is somehow going to make them actually do better jobs.
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David, now I'm feeling stink for not chit-chatting more to you at the Great Blend. I mistook your shy smile for cool aloofness. It didn't help that Emma was next to you with a thought bubble over her head in which I could almost see "He stood there, chiseled and manly. When would he turn to me? I quivered with anticipation". Only later on did I realize she was actually just unprepared for the cold Auckland weather.
It's very strange how contextual our social abilities are. I know so many people who can totally dominate some traditionally intimidating situation, like speaking in public, or negotiating with powerful people. But when it comes to something as simple as saying hello to someone sitting next to them they can't do it. A lot of people are curiously scared of talking to children. How many people are afraid to ask their mechanic to explain themselves?
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We are the way we are because of our lowly origins, we are monkeys.
You, sir, might be a monkey. I am and always will be proud of my status as an ape. A great ape, if I were to brag.
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Tom, O'Donnell was not there under duress, and the work he was doing sounds like it helped people. If NZ got FTA brownies then that would be a good thing too.
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I don't expect someone from Fielding to die to make me feel better about women's rights in country we've got no right to be in.
I don't expect it, but I do have a small amount of gratitude for it. The fighting for women's rights, not the dying. That's a terrible shame, but also an occupational hazard.
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You're right, of course, that the situation as it is now is what must be dealt with; how best to proceed with that is really beyond my purview.
Pretty much exactly how I felt the moment the bombs started dropping on Baghdad. "Now it's broken. The time when I knew what to do is past".
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It's not called the fog of war for nothing. I see that fog itself as one of the main reasons not to go to war.
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Yes, it is, if it's - for instance - a warning about where we might be headed if we were to adopt certain positions; "eternal vigilance" and all that.
Quite a few positions between us and full blown fascism. But it's entertaining to try to adapt models of how it happened elsewhere to how it could happen here. Smith's Dream was deliberately vague about it, probably because that wasn't really what the story was about - it was more about what NZers might act like if it had already happened.
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Is it even the least bit plausible to depict fascism in NZ? Doesn't mean it's not fun to depict.
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