Posts by BenWilson
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Mind you, I'm not alone on the Meola one -- it's a horrible slow surface, and steeper than it looks to the eye, for some reason. I do chuckle when I see people in fancy cycling gear blowing a bit as they get to the roundabout.
It certainly is, I'm always surprised how fast I come down that - without hard pedaling it's around 50kmh.
I'm not entirely sure how it's going to cross the Southern Motorway to get into Grafton gully
I think I see it now, if it crosses the motorways on Upper Queen St, then it could skirt the cemeteries and go under the Symonds St on-ramp, then track along the side of the Wellesley St off-ramp. Which would be why it ends at Wellesley St. A cycle crossing right there, and it could do a lovely drop-off and track all the way down to Parnell Rise, at which point it's only a mile or so of painted lines on the road until it joins directly to the Tamaki Drive cycleway.
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This will be opened next Thursday..
That's a big w00t from me. Much though I loved the hills in Kingsland (at least I loved having them behind me), I didn't like the narrow roads, concealed driveways and bumpy ground.
Bonus, NZTA have announced that they are extending this link all the way to the heart of the city itself, via Upper Queen St, and a bike path all the way down Grafton Gully to Wellesley St.
Also Sweet! It annoyed me considerably that I'd have to slog up the side of the Newton Rd on-ramp, negotiate the foot traffic on the bridge (which seems more often than not to be totally pissed) wait at the lights, and then ride back down the other side, then cross Ian McKinnon Drive, when a bypass down below through a mostly disused park was such an obvious alternative.
Also, blatting straight down Queen Street is a lot of fun, but it is bloody dangerous really. A more direct bypass of the city is a great idea. I'm not entirely sure how it's going to cross the Southern Motorway to get into Grafton gully, though, do you have a link to the proposal?
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I have never noticed any booze selling holiday in the last 10 years. I buy it all online at half the retail prices and it arrives in crates so I've always got a stock. That's "planning ahead".
Curiously, having copious amounts of booze on the property at all times has meant that I've drunk a whole lot less. I don't really know why.
Speculation: if you buy booze for an occasion, then you tend to drink it on that occasion. But if you have booze for all occasions, then you only drink it as the occasion dictates. There's never any sense that booze will be wasted at my place - it just goes into storage. It's not sitting in the fridge demanding that the space be relinquished.
So while I tend to agree with Damien that we should be able to buy all things all the time, I also don't particularly care. Alcohol pretty much lasts forever, so it just doesn't make sense to me not have redundant stocks, sourced at the lowest prices, if there's any chance that supply could be disrupted by stupid things like religious holidays.
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It seems to me that the question of whether an RPG was actually there isn't regarded as relevant in these 'Rules of Engagment'. What matters is whether something, anything, could be plausibly mistaken for one. If you're following James' line of thinking, then holding anything large in your hand at all is sufficient reason for you and everyone standing near you to be indiscriminately killed, and anyone who tries to help you, for that matter, whether they have children with them, whether they're family members or just people who believe in helping people. Doing anything other than hiding inside is sufficient provocation at any time. Even hiding inside isn't going to protect people from armour piercing rounds, of course, and there were dozens of surrounding buildings which appeared to have been hit too, in which there could have been people. Basically, if you haven't evacuated from Baghdad, then you deserve anything that happens to you.
Unlike Vietnam (where much the same sort of thing happened), the Americans have really kept their own body count down. A friend and I speculated before the war broke out just how many bodies would be required for the Americans to lose their bottle and GTFO. I settled on 10,000, based on the idea that about 5 times that number were lost in Vietnam before it was too much, and the politicians have most likely learned a lesson from that. There's a loooong way to go.
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Advocating a particular law restricting certain behaviour seems the same to me: to argue for its justification only by pointing out it hasn’t been refuted is analogous to saying: “well you tell me why God doesn’t exist, then.” By that thinking, any law would be justified until proven otherwise.
Perhaps but this thinking about legislation isn't about the justification of it, just the specification. And sometimes it's more practical to specify what freedoms you do have than it is to specify all of the restrictions. That is why when someone is arrested they are told what they are allowed to do, not what they are not allowed to do. The reason? Because the list of what they are not allowed to do is far, far longer.
For a lot of folks, this idea of a specification of rights seems like a really good idea. I'm personally not so much of a fan, thinking laws do a better job, and the assumption that if it's not illegal, then it's allowed, ie a right. This is because I think, like you, that freedom to do as you please is an important good.
But other people can easily be found who take the opinion that this freedom is earned, rather than a natural right, that it needs to be clearly specified which freedoms you have, and in what circumstances. I can see that in a lot of cases this is quite practical, particularly if the list of things you are not allowed to do is getting extremely lengthy. The reason for these freedoms sometimes needs to be given, it is not natural to assume they are good without discussion. For example, the right to bear weapons does not strike me as a gimme. Nor does laws against bearing them. Basically there is no automatic "default" position. I've got my position, but I can't just put onus on other people because of it. All positions need to be argued for.
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I'm not entirely sure that the rounds were being fired from the aircraft that was taking the pictures at all. There is so much point and click technology now, that it's hard to know. Perhaps the video is coming from a remote spotter drone (which would explain the constant circling), and the firepower directed from elsewhere. It did certainly seem from the movement of the crosshairs that they were involved in the aiming process, they were "leading the target" and so on, a few moments before the rounds arrived.
I'm no gun expert but it looked to me like the rounds were exploding. There just seemed to be too few of them to account for the carnage. But if direct hits are not needed, that also explains how one person actually survived being hit. A round from a 25 mm cannon hitting the human body is surely only going to leave pieces. Everything that was hit would be completely dismembered. Although I have heard that some of these rounds are so powerful that they only have to pass within a meter of you to kill.
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Pertwee first. Surely I'm not that old?
The credit music was amazing. It's like an electronic version of water sucking down a plughole, which seems to be a universally terrifying sound to children. I still haven't heard a satisfying explanation as to why that is.
Re: long scarves, I think Isadora Duncan put parents off letting their children wear them.
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Very interesting John. Where does that set of rules come from, BTW?
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That's a chilling look at modern warfare. Holding something in your hand that might be mistaken for a weapon by someone flying around in a chopper a mile away is enough to get a dozen people killed. Must suck for anyone who plays a musical instrument.
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I think it's an interesting exercise in genre, and an almost utopian way of asserting the power of film in an age when we're abandoning the physical object itself for digital reproduction.
An interesting analysis too. Most of what you say is true, I guess I just didn't find his pastiche interesting. There's a point where homage is simply unoriginal. I wonder if QT draws so much inspiration from 1970s film that he'll respond to the question "What will happen when your audience decides that's one homage too many?" with "I won't even notice because I'll be too busy looking good ".
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