Posts by Paul Campbell
-
we're a few years older, only got married for a green card (almost 40 years ago).
I've seen claims that the 'boomers' are a double-sized generation (as we measure them now) there are essentially two peaks in some countries' birth numbers which essentially map to "hippies" and "punks" - I distinctly remember a piece on TV1 (our only TV channel) news the summer before I started Uni that was essentially "look at these crazy kids in London with safety pins thru their noses, they say they're all going to commit suicide before they are 21"
Yeah getting old sucks, at the moment I'm mostly hoping I'll survive covid to 65 in good enough shape I can enjoy that retirement I've been saving for for 40 years. Bits of me have been wearing out, broke an achilles a while back that will never be right, I take a bunch of drugs to deal with stuff that essentially killed my parents, I've almost lived longer than my Dad.
I had a heart attack a few years back, caught it really early (suddenly feel puffed? talk to your Dr!), had a stent put in - my Dad died of essentially the same thing he was looking at them cracking his chest open and a full bypass - my stent was put in through my arm while I was wide awake, I could easily have walked out of the room afterwards - we truly live in magical times.
I've also come to realise that I'm probably different, a little, maybe a lot, aspie - it was really really tough as a kid, I've learned to cope as an adult, not really sure there's a point in a diagnosis - on the other hand now that I see my world through the eyes of today's amazing aspie kids I'm a lot less accepting of neurotypical bullshit, maybe learning to cope was a mistake, kids have so many more cool options these days
-
I was thinking more about standards for prosecution, it does seem we're prosecuting more innocent people than we should be, do they kick out prosecutors who prosecute too many innocent people? does anyone keep track of this stuff.
-
9% is an enormous amount - it means that one person in ten on remand is innocent - sure we should compensate people put in this position, but we're obviously doing something wrong in the first place - are there publicly available guidelines that the prosecution use? or is all seat-of-the-pants stuff?
-
Hard News: The Scientology front…, in reply to Richard Aston,
Man that is so out there , the sort of thing you could well hear from a really really stoned person .
You're not far from the truth, reportedly Hubbard developed a pills and booze habit some time in the late 60s and had to be locked up while he went cold turkey - his first sighting of small black space aliens crawling on his skin supposedly comes from the DTs he experienced during this process.
What's really sad is how much of this crap I know about, I was part of the first Internet vs. Scientology kerfuffle (on the side of the Internet of course, $cientology was trying shut down UseNet newsgroups) on the plus side I did get to meet Xenu
-
This is just standard operating practice for Scientology – they have long had a thing about being in competition with Psychology/Psychiatry and the drugs that they prescribe … and as an extension all drugs.
NZ actually held a government inquiry into scientology in the late 60s by Sir Guy Powles (later our first ombudsman) which produced a report into scientology in NZ – if found that they were incredibly abusive to their members and particularly ex-members – scientology promised to change, but didn’t.
Oh yeah, and they believe our real problems are that we’re all haunted by murdered space aliens, and for a large sum of money they can help you with that.
-
Not all pedestrians can hear you, nor see you even without headphones - you have to assume that none of us can see or hear you. We all can't jump out of your way either - I broke my achilles a few years ago, my reaction to hearing a bell behind me is to make no sudden moves, not to jump out of the way.
Having said that I'm all for sharing the footpath, but carefully, respectfully, please don't treat pedestrians the way that drivers treat you
-
I want to second SOS Business - https://sosbusiness.nz/ - we've bought coupons for all the local places we love - kind of sad to see our Post Office on that list .....
We got caught half-way moved, locked down in a house full of boxes (the fridge and the bed hadn't been moved yet), we've actually put off the rest of the move for a few weeks (more falling over boxes) and under level 3 have decided to hire local people to do the painting and wiring we would otherwise have waited and done a year or two down the line.
If you have something you were planning on doing some time now's the time to spend a bit of money (if you can) to help bootstrap our economy up and help get it up and running again
-
OK, best thing ever ....
-
A reminder that PA needs money to operate, I suspect that Russell's been carry the load as it has quietened down, and after today's news that's likely harder for him - I'd like to suggest that old timers who have found themselves back again hit that "supporter" button above
-
I'm rather enjoying this little polemic: