Posts by Kracklite
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Late to the discussion, about to make an utter fool of myself etc, but,
That and the 20 or so airbags, since we travel notorious parts of SH1 at least once a week.
"I want to be SAFE (and screw the consequences for you)" angle to the urban SUV that gets me.
<quote<"Being in larger, taller vehicles, SUV drivers believe they are safer and possess a lower level of perceived risk than car drivers,"</quote>
Duh.
Has no-one who drives an SUV heard of Isaac Newton?
High centres of gravity, inertia, proprotionally less rubber against mass in contact with the road, less traction as a result. You might want to look those things up - and you may as well carry around a large, flashing neon sign saying "I am a complete fucking idiot" if you feel safer in one of those things. Ye cannae change the laws of physics, no matter how many acronymed gadgets are built into the suspension.
Or aerodynamics.
Oh well, in the long run, Darwin will have his way.
it seems that driving a SUV will make you no safer yet will make all other road users be at higher risk!
selfish wankers!!!!!
[oops, there I was, trying to be polite]Oh, then there is a voice of reason. Sorry, I'll stick with "fucking idiot."
Re Toyota Pious - yep, mining the ores to make the batteries is hardly green.
The car gets used in the weekends, for moving dogs, family, wood & the occasional sheep over long distances.
So why an SUV and not a station wagon?
Most of the comments thus far come down to a perception that SUV drivers are nasty people. That has bugger all to do with the vehicle itself.
Well, a doctor looks for the symptoms of disease first. If you've got the symptoms, it's a pretty sure sign that you're sick (or thick).
Meanwhile, look up Colin Chapman too: "Simplificate, then add lightness."
I wouldn't mind if SUVs (all cars actually) were banned from the city.
Hoorah! Speaking as an ineffectual, pedestrian, architectural academic, cars and design for cars (you hear that Prenderghastly?!) have fucked cities.
-
From this can you see that Clydesdales call to stop PI immigration is baseless?
Just to show that I'm even-handed in my cruelty, I must say, Shep, that you are wrong and you should have included the first person possessive apostrophe.
Ahem:
Clydesdale's
-
The thing that makes you so mad
...etc.
My, what fantastic mind-reading powers you have. Why haven't you made a fortune on the stock market with such skill?
Just you you all know,
Defensive, aren't we, diddums?
I get that this is the Anti-Clydesdale forum
Labelling? Surely not.
If I was so offended by your lame personal attacks on me, I wouldn't have kept posting here
That's the spirit! My, you're so tough and manly, I might almost change my orientation!
you would have had a boring weekend if I wasn't here
That's right, we're all sad cases who have been searching for meaning in our wretched lives and then suddenly - why, it's "Simon Fraser". Hallelujah! Mind you, I am dreadfully sorry to have dragged you away from the fantastically exciting weekend that you must have been having.
nor do I think they need special treatment
[rolls eyes] Where to begin? Historical obligations? Cultural and political ties? Immigration, like treaties, are based on a complex web of influences, just as the concept of "contribution" is. It would take too many words and I'd have to draw pictures for you. In crayon, no doubt.
there is a scary movement in the world in which people no longer restrict being offended
Have you heard about the Illuminati? Or the Jewish Bankers? The Greys? The Men in Black? They'll really scare ya!
I would have done something else rather than chat to you guys all weekend
Ever seen Sartre's No Exit performed or read the script? Never mind.
I could use the same laws against you guys for your personal attacks on me. That'd be fun.
Ah, projection as psychologists call it. You accuse others of what you'd like to do yourself. Nice that you're being honest for a change.
Funny to accuse someone of not handling a debate, when that person has joined a discussion forum and argued with everyone else on it.
"They laughed at Fulton. They laughed at the Wright Brothers. They also laughed at Bozo the clown" - Carl Sagan.
Persecute anyone who says something you don't like
Well, I would say "diddums" again, but I suppose there's something deeper here - sort of. Adolescents and Lindsay Perigo often pick hopeless fights to "prove" that they're being unfairly repressed by those awful grownups.
That constant repetition of "you people" is telling, indicating a deeply insecure individual.
Jeez, I must be a pussy.
Could I comment? Really? Without irony?
OK, you've really got something to prove - and put that tape measure away!
(I've probably read too much existentialist and psychoanalytical literature.)
Good night, and God bless.
Sorry, I prefer Cthulhu - no need to choose a lesser evil and all that.
Too much time being nice to underachieving students and I have to let it out somewhere I suppose...
-
One of my fave lectures once said "I have a PhD in economics, so you don't have too."
Reading aerospace engineer Ben Rich's autobiography some years ago (__Skunk Works__ nice read, can't say that much about really classified projects, but a lot of interesting anecdotes and views on the business), I came across a neat little passage. In order to get a promotion or something, Rich was sent to Harvard Business School for an MBA. When he returned to Lockheed afterward, he wrote an equation for his boss:
2/3 HBS = BS
Of course an engineer would write something like that. :-)
-
It opened my eyes.
... is usually code for "It articulated and therefore confirmed my paranoia!"
-
I'd like to know where my cheque is, in that case.
Maybe you'll get a T-shirt. You know, "I joined the PC Thought Police and did they give me a spiffy black uniform with shiny shiny leather boots and whip? Nooooo - all I got was this lousy T-shirt"
Maybe that could be shortened a bit.
-
Both hilarious and chillingly accurate.
You know what really scares me? The fact that I understand that gibberish.
-
...methinks thou protesteth too much
My thoughts too. He sure plays the victim card pretty heavily too. "PC Thought Police" and all that - then the terrible, terrible treatment of Holocaust deniers, then "some of my best friends are...", "look, there are worse people on Kiwiblog", silent majority versus lazy PC conformists. He'd be comparing himself to Galileo if this was a discussion on climate.
Especially if one criteria applies to most of the world, but a small select group get in on a quota, without the criteria being applied to them.
Ah, but that's the point: Clydesdale specifically referred to an ethnic group as a whole.
Your inability to debate this so far belies your lack of an answer to this problem.
Nonsense - and not only because of the rather quaint grammar. Clydesdale's research has been ably demolished - not least by Clydesdale himself. Kim Hill just gleefully handed out the rope with which he hanged himself. I particularly liked his saying (I paraphrase) that NZ employers aren't racist in rejecting people with foreign-sounding names, they just act exactly like racists. If it quacks and waddles...
The argument is a pseudo-argument designed more as a posture than as an intellectual discussion. Of course immigrants should be willing to contribute - I'm sure we all agree, and we all agree that death can upset one's schedule, cancer is inconvenient and distracting and that oxygen is quite useful to have around.
If we supported too many people financially who were unable to repay us, or worse, who turned to crime thus making our standard of living worse, it would be a bad idea.
If you agree with that, then it's logical to question who gets to move to New Zealand.The quote above is what I call a Procrustean argument - limbs are lopped off to make a fit. The only acknowledged contribution is financial and the rest follows like the fine print in a crooked contract - "if you sign up to A, then you are also obliged to follow B", but in fact the premises of A are dubious and do not really logically require B.
The definition of "contribution" is the real point here - and in Clydesdale's paper and the argument above, it's strictly according to narrow financial and purely immediate dollar-value criteria, which is utterly exclusive of any other contribution. I'd recommend Marilyn Waring's groundbreaking work, Counting for Nothing which shows up the true economic value of unpaid and unacknowledged work by women as a corrective.
And then there's this approving quote:
aspect of political correctness: the attempt to kill an argument or discussion by the use of labelling
Er, like "PC Thought Police"?
Pot, kettle, black (or is it brown or white?). Make a well-known phrase using these words.
I propose an ammendment to Godwin's Law: that once people start flinging about empty buzzwords like PC and histrionically wailling about how brave but persecuted they are, the discussion becomes pointless.
-
Worse than that -- Clydesdale's quote was actually "... too many black notes"
Reminds me of an episode of The Goodies - Tim, Bill and Graeme toured apartheid-era South Africa and came across a pianist - all of the keys on the piano were segregated, black keys on the left, white keys on the right. Meanwhile, at Zebra crossings, black and white people hopped across the road, landing only on their racially-appropriate stripes.
taking his performance art to parliament some day soon...
He almost is - he's advising an MP who is himself surely an example of installation art that critically deconstructs bourgeois assumptions of animation in an interactive situation. I mean, has anyone else noticed that Lockwood Smith is in fact a Thunderbirds puppet?
-
Massey University have employed such a fellow as a senior lecturer?
Sadly, yes. According to an acquantaince (no, for legal reasons related or not - probably not - to a financial settlement, that person is most definitely not me, oh no), one HoD gave a presentation to faculty, er, sorry, "staff" of their "research". It consisted - I kid you not - entirely of uncaptioned photos of toilet signs around the world. No explanation was given, just cackles of childlike glee.
I think the fa- staff just decided that they should be put in a pot and watered regularly.