Posts by Finn Higgins
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The were some bag pipes blasting down on Lampton key a week of two ago. That's intimidating. I don't know why the Irish don't bring them out more often.
Scottish. The Irish have different pipes.
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I had a personal domain and switched to gmail.
Why do that when you can use Google Apps and have Gmail on your own domain? The advantages are obvious: You get all the stuff you get with Gmail, but you can set up up to 100 accounts for free and if Google ever do a Hotmail or Xtra and fall behind other mail service providers you can ditch them while retaining control of your existing email addresses.
Remember folks: a dot-com email address only costs about $15 a year if you buy it from a US registrar, a .co.nz is only $35 from DiscountDomains. Once you own your domain then you can switch providers all you like without losing your email address.
It amazes me how many expensively painted business vehicles I see with xtra addresses on them. C'mon folks, you're spending thousands on the paint job - why not spend $35 on the damn domain name?
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kowhai - I'd be keen. If I'm missing something then I'd like to have that conversation, I'm not quite the middle-aged university-educated cracker that Dubmugga has decided I am. If you want to take any of it offline if we're afraid of clogging up the thread then [firstname].[lastname]@gmail.com should set you straight for emailing me...
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Finn you seem to be painting Maori into a plastic tiki parody of itself, hollow of any meaning.
No, I'm arguing that Maori culture should be treated like any other modern relevant culture - i.e, behavior stemming from it should be up for public debate as to its impact on other people. Once it becomes an unquestionable, static museum piece I think you run more of a risk of making it into a plastic parody, lacking in meaning and contemporary relevance.
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Kowhai, I'm not going to argue that rugby is a specifically appropriate or designated context for a haka. Just that it's less likely to offend people when all involved are effectively consenting parties, rather than it being done aggressively in the face of non-consenting people who're obliged to remain where they are and can't just walk away.
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I've got a customer in Auckland at the moment who're having all kinds of hell because - for weird historical reasons - their email is configured to forward to an Xtra POP3 account from a domain default address. As of a couple of months ago Xtra have taken to swallowing everything in their spam filter.
It's probably possible to try to fight this filtering through Xtra, but given the configuration I don't see the point. Google Apps just added IMAP, might as well just migrate them to that for free...
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I don't think they are after "sympathy" just a recognition that masked people can be scary amoung other things. I think it was a particularly effective way of making a point. It's theatre. There is a context, they are protesting.
Well, if the objective was to make people think that Tuhoe are scary then it might have achieved that. I'm not sure how that fits with the objective of the protest, however.
As for the haka they can bloody well use it how they like, who the hell are you to tell Maori that they should save it for the rugby.
Sure, and people can react to it how the hell they like too. Who are you to tell people that they have to accept somebody shouting in their face because it's somebody else's cultural tradition? It might be my cultural tradition to go around touching people on their heads all the time, doesn't mean that other cultures have to accept it placidly. Having a culture does not absolve people of the responsibility to consider the impact of their actions on others.
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Punk 'n pomposity. Have fun, just don't frighten the ladies.
What's pompous about suggesting that screaming directly in somebody's face is actually quite intimidating? Fuck all, that's what, it's just stating the obvious.
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The front of the march was brash, exuberant, and at times angry, but I would ask anyone who say honestly why they felt intimidated by it. I think the answer would reflect more on the person than the nature of the march.
That's a cop-out, I'm afraid. If you put on a public event of any description then you should be interested in people's reactions; doubly so if what you're doing is a protest about feeling intimidated by the actions of others. You don't protest intimidation by making people feel intimidated, at least not if you want to gain any sympathy.
As for people feeling intimidated, I genuinely believe a good number have. I wasn't there yesterday, but I've spoken with a number of people - mainly women - since yesterday who found the protest really quite threatening.
As for the Haka thing... I think it's a matter of context. If you're on a sports field where confrontation, psychological warfare and opposition is essentially part of the fun then it seems like an excellent expression of all of that. But if you're standing a foot away from the face of a policeman who's just standing still doing their job then it's going to come across as deliberately intimidating, rather than admirable. The Haka is an admirable institution, but there's no real way to argue that it doesn't involve sending off a lot of signals of aggression. As an analogy, I enjoy hardcore punk at times and in the right context watching somebody scream their head off is a beautiful thing. But if you do that right in somebody's face when they've not come to observe you by choice? That's just being a shit.
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Just while we're on the WTF-are-they-thinking front...
"No, I'm teaming up with the Maoris, we have to ... I'll come and see ya, I can't f...... take the white man on without the c...s ... I'm declaring war on this country."
I'm assuming that's Jamie Lockett. But... uh... am I reading that wrong or does that quote have him calling Maori "cunts", and strongly imply that he'd only ally himself with them because it's the only way to "take on the white man"?
If I was Maori I don't think I'd be protesting about this guy being arrested.