![[dr. bob]](/dr-bob-sm.gif)
Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 1 to 15 of 15. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by alexandra_k on May 18, 2018, at 19:25:29
There is an attitude that I didn't know some people had. About this whole hierarchy thing. At the very top you have God. Then you have the surgeons. Then you have the GP's as the head a tribe in a rural community. Then you have the allied health workers. Then you have - right at the bottom - the 'other'. Those who have things done to them for their own good whether they want those things to be done or not because they lack capacity and beggars can't be choosers...
And in virtue of how they choose to treat those on the 'bottom' there is this mad panic scramble to not end up there. And it is fear of that that is opressive.
But there is also this thing about how people will be happy with whatever they have -- just so long as they aren't aware that others have different.
So, for example, the monkey is happy with it's cucmber. Until it sees another monkey with a grape at which point it throws a monkey tantrum.
And then the empirical question is how long can you make the people go before they... Uh... Before they...
Kill themselves?
Remove the food from the supermarkets. Have 5 or 12 differnet 'options' of the same old sh*t (deep fried cardboard coated in sawdust with a little msg and chemical 'flavor') so people think they are free to choose.
If people complain about the price of fresh produce: Take the fresh produce away and they won't see what they are missing.
I heard health managers complaining about how people are happy with the public health system until they become aware of medication and treatment options that are available to people overseas as which point they are unhappy with our public health system. Teh solution hasn't been to see what we can do to improve our system. The solution has been to see what we can do to get the people happier with sh*t.
We are inundated with surveys all the time always. Hit the big red or green button to rate your interaction with the customer service person you just saw.
Who wouldn't believe that such things are tracked... Who wouldn't be afraid they would be labelled as a 'dissentor' or 'complainer' and find that they couldn't use their login for course contents or... Or...
This is the supposed free world?
And the people don't know what's wrong. They just know that they don't much feel like living.
That's the thing.
Maybe even the managers are suprised at just how low they trained people to go... Systematically...
The people had to leave. Because if we don't see people we can't be upset or throwing tantrums that we don't have the various things they have.
Meaningful conversation.
The ability to express an opinion and to hear the opinions of others respectfully.
All the things...All the things...
Student residential halls are the prision camps... The concentration camps of today. This whole country is a f*ck*ng refugee camp on the edge of the free world.
at least..
since coming back there
that's all that i see.
Posted by sigismund on May 19, 2018, at 18:34:14
In reply to don't know what's wrong, posted by alexandra_k on May 18, 2018, at 19:25:29
>This whole country is a f*ck*ng refugee camp on the edge of the free world.
I really like it in comparison to here. We should apply to be the Eastern State of NZ. Better people, less militarised (airports), you have a nice PM. But I only know Wellington.
>At the very top you have God. Then you have the surgeons.
Sounds like a sudden drop. I thought it was God, Queen, Archbishop of Canterbury and down from there, which left unexplained the pope (in Italy?) not to speak of the Orthodox (of whom we knew nothing). OTOH I had a fair bit of contact with high level surgeons recently and they are different.
>Student residential halls are the prision camps... The concentration camps of today. This whole country is a f*ck*ng refugee camp on the edge of the free world.
NZ must have the grace to put their refugees inside the country, unlike here (Manus, Nauru). I like your PM. We don't have many nice people in politics, just a few.
I accept the tents of Liberalism (free market, social protection, independent judiciary etc) but it was easier to arrange in the new world rather than the old with all that new land.
Posted by alexandra_k on May 19, 2018, at 19:17:55
In reply to Re: don't know what's wrong, posted by sigismund on May 19, 2018, at 18:34:14
It appears less militarised because there aren't really any people, here.
One of the reasons why you don't want people doing research is because they get to manage their own time. If you get to manage your own time you can avoid peak hour rush. If you get to avoid peak hour rush then you get to see how this place is practically an empty wasteland. I mean, around the university. Around the centre of Auckland. The roads are nearly empty outside the artifically constructed peak hours. Even in Auckland. Empty lecture theatres, even, all locked up so people won't notice how empty they are...
I think the previous government fooled people to invest in infrastructure because they were obsessed with population growth being the solution to everything... Only, what that did was increase the proportion of poor illiterate people etc.
We had these horrible cheap accommodation buildings (that got around building law restrictions on minimum size of apartments and so on) because they were only supposed to be temporary for students... We got all that stuff built because we marketed ourself as having legitimate universities that had world rankes status and a clean green environment with lots of outdoorsy things like Lord of Rings scenery and ski mountains and water sports...
But the students and tourists come and see for themselves how filthy things are... How we won't even blind grade their work... How we treat them like cattle... They go home and spread the word so now our numbers of studnet tourists are down...
So now the empty spaces... Well... We are trying to herd a greater and greater and greater proportion of kids through these public universities... But it is hard to teach kids who didn't learn reading writing or arithmetic at school and our drinking age is 18 so you have these alpha, beta, gamma, residential halls where people are allowed to do more or less work depending on the quality of the tutors...
> >This whole country is a f*ck*ng refugee camp on the edge of the free world.
> I really like it in comparison to here. We should apply to be the Eastern State of NZ.Maybe you aren't locked out of things in Australia? I don't know. All I know is that here I'm locked out of what I want to do (and what I've worked hard to do). That the people who are in charge of me are... Mostly mercenaries, really. I'm supposed to suck up to them to make them want to help me... But, really, I'm not a suck up. Never have been. Their goal is to... Ruin people for civilised society. The only way... Through... Them is being accepted to the alpha hall in the first place... Or fighting a bit for hierarchical position in a beta hall... Or... Being popular in a gamma hall primed to collect the samples and give the shots...
There's something toxic about the world that i see...
> Sounds like a sudden drop. I thought it was God, Queen, Archbishop of Canterbury and down from there, which left unexplained the pope (in Italy?) not to speak of the Orthodox (of whom we knew nothing). OTOH I had a fair bit of contact with high level surgeons recently and they are different.I meant the hierarchy of health systems. That's the view of it. Being a surgeon isn't like being a tennis player or a mechanic... It isn't about learning a skill and working hard on the skill and coming to be the best at it over time. It is about teh position being bestowed upon one by God such that those around you are powerless to prevent your inevitable fate. That is what the marketing is. So there is no point trying or wanting to be one.
It's just... Psychopaths...
It's mostly... Shiny things. Trying to divert anyone whose attention can be diverted.
I am aware that people think I enjoy arguing things round and round with people who lack the cognitive capacity to speak meaningful English. But actually I don't enjoy that, at all.
I don't know how much more removed from people I can actually be, than what it is I actually am. I don't know how much more loudly I can say 'don't try and keep me with you and your research group because I really really really really don't wnat to stay' without their just wishing I'd f*ck off an die. I mean... Liberation? Why would you want to set something free? There's just mercenaries in charge of the varmin... That's all I see...
And that's hard in a world where people are interested in targeting solitary indivdiuals -- because they are easy pickings.
Locked out from anything else.
> >Student residential halls are the prision camps... The concentration camps of today. This whole country is a f*ck*ng refugee camp on the edge of the free world.
>
> NZ must have the grace to put their refugees inside the country, unlike here (Manus, Nauru). I like your PM. We don't have many nice people in politics, just a few.That's the thing... Inside the country / outside the country. There are two worlds in New Zealand. You don't see the world the undergraduates live in.
It's supposed to motivate them to work hard (if they have the capcity to work instead of being side-tracked / hijacked by those around them with nothing to lose / who have been persuaded to believe they have nothing to lose...
It's an elaborate hoax to get people to accept whatever is doled out to them with respect to what program they get entry into. The illusion of a level playing field from first year (people are sorted into their residential halls).
> I accept the tents of Liberalism (free market, social protection, independent judiciary etc) but it was easier to arrange in the new world rather than the old with all that new land.
Hmm.
There were more problems for our immigrants up north. People come and build fences to keep their flocks / herds together. Maaori rip down the fences and take things. Being mischevious. Food was plentiful enough for subsistence and the climate was temperate enough for temporary shelters so one could play at hitting people from neighbouring tribes with paddles and so on... The idea of building up a surplus for storage... I don't think there was that. Apparently there were planting calenders.... But the kumara plantation sites I've seen looked more like throw your left / overs / inedible scraps down the hill and that's where your trash ends up, to me. mischevious... constant auditory contact. cooing and yipping and yelling over distances. attention focused on people and worrying about where the bullies are and hiding away from them and so on...
so land wars when people start trying to produce a surplus for storage or sending back to the mother land... how to protect things when previously things were simply there for the taking...
down south there weren't as many maaori because it was much colder. there haven't been as many. they are coming here now, though. this university is the only university (apparently) without a Marae. they are talking about building one, now. the number (also proportion) of maaori at this university increased last year. it got to the point they felt obligated to actually fill their government funded quota of maaori for medicine, even. less international students so that means more accommodation etc available for local students.
then the trouble is that people don't get the immersion expereince that offers them hope for a better life.
we don't want that experience, anyway, right.
worst thing that happened for me was getting to Canberra to see how the people lived...
not all of the people... i bused to the suburbs and saw the kids with knives on the buses...
the difference is in whether you are locked out, or included.
i was included in canberra. i was included in north carolina.
i am not invluded in new zealand.
they want me to do philosophy / politics.
they don't need me to do philosophy / politics. any undergraduate can copy-paste and kludge together what people have developed from overseas.
nothing new needs to be done when you are running so very far behind all the other developed nations. all we need to do is stop trying to reinvent the axle and speed things up with the benefit of what's gone before.
anyway...
nobody listens to me, here.
at least i've learned why so much of my life has been spent wishing i'd never been born.
i do think this country owes me.
especially when you consider how very f*ck*ng well they are willing ot treat their psychopaths.
Posted by alexandra_k on May 19, 2018, at 19:44:45
In reply to Re: don't know what's wrong » sigismund, posted by alexandra_k on May 19, 2018, at 19:17:55
When I say 'they want me to do philosophy' I mean they want me to teach undergraduates philosophy.
They want people to take philosophy *instead of* statistics or computer science or maths or physics or engineering or law.
They want more and more people to be thrown back from those programs to be happy to settle for philsophy. Because that's their view of it. The hierarchy of the university, you see:
Medicine
Dentistry Engineering (Engineering is so varied it's hard to know where to put it, honestly)
ChemistryLaw
Arts and social sciences and education
It's a bit unclear... But that's roughly how the hierarchy goes.
There was something about how this university had the lowest proportion of professors to students of any university that had world ranking status... So a directive to employ more professors... Translates into promoting more of what we've currently got. Pay bump. Title. Because it doesn't look good when it's student volunteers grave robbing cemetaries. It looks better when it's a professor directed cultural bioanthropoligical investigation into early settlers in NZ (because anything dead for more than 50 years isn't 'medicine only' in these parts since we don't have to worry about non-medicine people researching implanted materials and so on... and generally our laws...
Anyway... That puts me as head of the varmin. That's the idea. The hierarchy thing. The kids who got thrown back from the skilled jobs. Babysitting them. So they want to kill themselves a little less. Or, actually, I don't think we care about whether they say they want to kill themselves or not (if they say they want to it keeps them occupied doing that all day -- right)? Just so long as they don't actually... Mostly... Until we decide it's time for them to go...
I don't want to work towards the development of philosophy in NZ. Not any more than I want to work towards the development of psychiatry in NZ. those things... philosophy... psychiatry... can't develop until we've got a whole f*ck*ng bunch of other things right.
People are setting up the costs of orthopedics to inevitably skyrocket. and it will go in for materials science experimentation. implant things into the body that can't be removed. their identification tags. implant slow release devices. the development of gamma babies...
it doesn't have to be / go that way. really, it doesn't.
when will we learn to look after the things we've got?
the rest of the world is waiting...
you just have to believe that when it comes to civilisation... it can't be anything other than just standing / stepping up.
sigh.
i have to write philosophy this year since my previous qualifications in philosophy are past their use-by date. i think insofar as there are any people left in the world who have integrity enough to let someone be free withotu doing mercenary work first i will find it, there. trouble is from english person who thinks that it should take 1 1/2 years to do 1200 hours of work.
just get it done...
all the work i've done already... that wasn't acknowledged because i didn't... force people to acknowledge it for what it was. doing my 6 month review and my supervisor says 'that can't be your 6 month review it's not good enough'... and actually that was b*llsh*t. it really genuinely was b*llsh*t. i see the students he picked out as the best of his students and other people didn't see that in them (they didn't end up with jobs in the field). and the students of his who developed closer relationships with other people and went on to thrive in teh field... and then the australians who bail to medicine...
anyway... i'd want to shoot my face off doing that all day... and then all these kids who (for them) it would be a dream come true. why don't they spend their time genuinely nurturing those ones who have capacity?
oh yeah... because this whole hierarchy thing is only fun when you get to bully and torment the people below you. what is it they want to do? then the opposite must be enforced!
i... am genuinely not like them.
huh.
so the trouble is i must have nothing. the an example, to them, of why they must tow the line to their mercenary superiors and take what joy they can get from tormenting their vermin students.
that appears to be how they like to live.
Posted by alexandra_k on May 19, 2018, at 19:58:54
In reply to Re: don't know what's wrong, posted by alexandra_k on May 19, 2018, at 19:44:45
there's a centre for bioethics here.
i was never much into applied philosophy or bioethics because the quality of the debate was so low. people were encouraged to write about whether they thought abortion was good or bad, whether euthanasia was good or bad, people were encouraged to engage in classroom discussions where people take sides and argue for it with as many different points as they could think of...
there was no effort to teach people to accurately summarise the best case they could for each side of the debate.
sometimes people lacked the capacity to do this. they will be picked out as future leaders for that field.
because... who wants to engage with the religious folk about abortion or euthanasia? the rapist guys who think that abortion is never justified... the people with no moral conscience... with no empathy... the people who want to get their way by bulling other people who think philosophy might teach them oratory skills to pursuade the world to do what it is that they want.
all the seminars are filmed. and i sometimes get the sense that people are talking in code. often what people say they are studying and what they are actually studying are two very differnet things. i went to this talk in psychology by this girl from sweden who was sponsored by a european legal society. her thing was to set people (undergraduates) up so she could accuse them of stealing something. to say that they had to stay in the room and she would question them later in detail. to leave them in the room for a bit (locked). to come back and question them in detail. to get them to commit to things that were false (about their own behavior).
she said it was research into how police can pursuade people to make false reports on their own behavior if they aren't more careful about how they ask questions.
i pointed out that :
'one has the right to remain silent. anything you say might be used in evidence against you in a court of law. one has the right to an attourney...'
we know the way police ask questions can make people likely to make false confessions. that's why police are required to read people their rights. that is why lawyers are supposed to be there during questioning and why lawyers speak with tehir clients (asking them questions) before the police get to ask questions of them...
she was training undergraduates to think that they should cooperate with the police (waive their rights) and this was okay because there was research going into making sure the police would ask appropriate questions...
her research was ethics board approved.
what a joke.
there was a girl studying the effects of exercise on muscle mass. her research involved her keeping rats in a special cage with padded walls to prevent their climbing the walls. cages that were too small for them to move around in. cages with no wheel. to prevent them exercisnig. so she could watch their muscle mass waste away (failure to thrive) and take tissue sample biopsys. then the 'normal rat' who weren't kept in such deprived conditions (the rats that had cage access to a running wheel) were the exercised rats.
she got paid to do that. she did that. she stood up in a seminar room and pronounced what she had done in the name of research that would help people.
for the cameras.
what happened to the university?
Posted by alexandra_k on May 19, 2018, at 20:15:59
In reply to Re: don't know what's wrong, posted by alexandra_k on May 19, 2018, at 19:58:54
I can only think to myself that these people have signed themselves out of civilised society. Because of what they chose to do. I don't know if their project was their own idea, or whether people said they would pay them to do those things, or whether people said they had to pay whatever in student fees for the privaledge of getting to do those things... They did those things. They stood up and said they had done them. The rat lady even said that when she started out wanting to do research on effects of exercise on muscle she would have thought her line a complete waste of time...
But gradually over time... She became pursuaded.
There is this idea that I hear from people that the only way you get to the top is by becoming one of them. That there is a sense of that.
But I guess that's the thing... I don't buy into any of that. Whatever they have identified as the 'top' is not someplace that is a target of mine...
I'm interested in what isn't around. What I don't see. What is lacking from this place I'm in. What it is about my situation here that has be wondering why I'd been born. What it was about my situation in Canberra and North Carolina that made me genuinely want to help people.
In the... I don't want to torture undergraduates or rats -- I want to help people sense.
In the... I refuse to complete a degree majoring in physiology because of the animal torture experiments that are required... Sense.
I do want to do things... But not at any cost.
Well controlled puppets... I don't know...
Someone I know did kill 7 cats for neuroscience research. But he was genuine... As in he genuinely thought he would be able to understand a certain kind of neurones response to visual information more from his experiment. He had a lot of math... Data from 7 cats... I remember that sense of genuine...
And it's different from what I see where what I see doesn't even have confidence intervals or error margins around slope...
Thats a difference...
Fools jump in...
I do have respect for philosophy. For the arts as helping make life worth living. For happy and productive artists.
But we can't have that when a bunch of other infrastructure isn't in place yet.
It is one thing to have the arts as something for people who didn't get ot learn skills that could have them contribute to that other infrastructure...
It is something different entirely to kick people back to the arts in favor of promoting ones own alpha or beta baby by design...
Especially when that baby you force to become an engineer or whatever might have been a wonderful artist.
I wonder what the free market would do if we stopped trying to artificailly impose a hierarchy of being.
You know, teh employment hierarchy
manager
manager
manager
manager
administrator
support person
...
...
cleanerwhich only causes more and more and more and more to become susceptible to infection...
Posted by alexandra_k on May 19, 2018, at 21:47:10
In reply to Re: don't know what's wrong, posted by alexandra_k on May 19, 2018, at 20:15:59
and back... to ranting.
which is not, at all, what i like to do.
despite appearances.i'm doing a statistics paper and a physics paper.
the last 2 of the first year papers.in part... i suppose i do feel that i need to do them. or i'll always wonder whether my concerns about this or that are justified, or whether other people know more than i do and i don't have the entitlement to an opinion because i don't have the basic background that they do.
which...
to be honest...
might just be a position... of my own making.
and so now... this year... i actually have the opportunity to do those 2 papers. and i can do it all online... i don't have to get stuck in the crowded lecture theatres with all the kids... and i have a quiet house so i can't blame noisy neighbours for distracting me from my work...
and i have to finish a qualification to be eligable to apply and i found yuo can do a MPhil thesis in one year. sort of... it's a bit unclear... anyway... i need to have completed it by December 07 or I won't be eligable to be selected for interview...
and it takes up to 3 months to be externally graded... and it has to go overseas to a grader...
and will they let me when they could delay things for a whole other year?
i thought they would be supportive...
i guess it's only english lady who isn't. because she thinks it isn't fair to other students. it is true the university needs to look into how they need to do more to encourage their students to complete in a timely fashion. basically... a little honesty on how you could get sucked into spending all the time there is on your teaching work... especially if your actual genuine dream for yourself is to teach at university level. but if you spend all your time on your teachign and believe people who say 'sure, extensions on your work are no problem' then what happens is you don't finish in a timely fashion (or at all) and eventually you see that you only have temporary teaching work with no benefits and you could be replaced any time another student comes up through the ranks and so now there is an incentive to play whack a mole constantly whacking the capable students back...
and it is hard because i guess professors might pay a little of their salary to their graduate students for their graduate students to take over bits of their own teaching (contracting out in other words)... so professors have incentive to keep their graduate students around forever swamped by undergraduate teaching...
anyway... encourage the students to get a freaking move on and get stuff published asap and... well... even to avoid teaching work entirely if possible...
is the best chance one has of getting a permanent teaching job. one where, uh, you might decide not to contract out your teaching because you enjoy it so much?
ahaha.
people must do that which they do not wish to do...
anyway... in physics i learned that much of what is learned is irrelevant. some people do best-est because they have most-est years of worked examples drummed into them over the years by excellent teachers (not that they know that). all they know is 'why are the other kids so stupid?'
mechanics... we didn't learn about bridges (propping up the foot with an insert) or about springs when it comes to jumping... we modelled squatting as having no elasticity / material deformation whatsoever... the body is a rigid lever... force is calculated from that assumption... little bits i'm glad i did. i know now. i will feel comfortable now to know that i'm not missing overly much. and i suppose i did learn some useful concepts. but much of it is plugging the bits into the equations with no meaning.
stats... i will feel more comfortable with my focus on the actual meaningful content of the experimental design (it's obvious f*ck*ng problems). at the confounding. at the selection bias. at how the sample isn't representative of the general population. i don't want to be doing research making stats... but i have learned... mostly that my concerns are well founded. i was right 'we found a statistically insignificant difference' isn't actually anything to report proudly (but in a number of talks i've been to this year the presenter geninely seemed to think that it was). that it really is important ot have confidence intervals etc...
i don't think i'll do particularly well... that's reserved for people with several years of school / expensive tutors... but i'm learning enough from them to be okay with what i know... and okay with knowing more about what i do not know (for the divsiion of labour down the track).
i'm just kinda lonely, yeah.
when i was auckland i was keen for a study group... then finding people more interested in pursuading people they know everything than interested in learnign anything new. here... i went to a few tutorial sessions but not entirely useful. i get more done on my own. when i work on my own. motivation starts to flag with too much distance from the sense of urgency / slight panic, though.
i don't know...
i do know... it is the sorting. and here i've been thrown in with the worst. at auckland only the worst kids got sent out to Tamaki each Wednesday. Down here, the resiential college was for the worst kids, again. they thought i'd be alright because they put a couple med students in teh same corridor (mature students who transferred from auckland so didn't know anyone).
only... i wasn't in medicine, yet. and it's not that i didn't like them. so it's not jealousy... but more a longing that made me feel like crying... and i didn't want to talk to them about what they were doing because i didn't want to live it vicariously i wanted to be doing it myself. and so i didn't really have anything to say to them...
and in this way...
the circle of friends receeds...
from the ones who sold out who now have little in common...
to the ones who like me to have nothing because it makes me needy / supplicant on them...
to the ones who want to include me in their psychopathic circle...
to the ones who want to encourage teh hospice people to air their views on how euthanasia is unacceptable always forever (and hence will never be legalised -- if i can afford a lawyer and a hospice worker observes me leaving a small fortune to hospice and i make it clear i'll change it and not leave a small fortune to hospice if i don't die within teh next few weeks has my chance of a death with dignity gone up, down, or remained the same?)there were a couple seminar series that were... genuine. or had elements of the genuine. sometimes. one of them got hijacked by the dhb...
the other... womens and childrens health.
i guess that's how you learn about a person. . how they interact with children. animals... and then children... whether they listen to children and can assess capacity. can assess the difference between 'i don't like brocolli' and 'i don't like being sexually abused'. first the assessment and then... the attitude... when tired and caught unaware. the involuntary physiological reaction to those with capacity when their wishes are not attainable.
the measure of a person.
hunker down...
sigh.
maybe i'll have the opportunity to make friends (equal status) next year?
Posted by alexandra_k on May 19, 2018, at 22:10:36
In reply to Re: don't know what's wrong, posted by alexandra_k on May 19, 2018, at 21:47:10
the 'highest quality' or 'gold standard' of research is research that is conducted on involuntary participants.
if people can choose whether or not to participate in the research the research (by definition) has a 'selection bias'. the idea is that you can't learn anything about people who would choose not to participate (if they had that choice) from people who would choose to participate.
the only way you can really learn about the population where most people wouldn't choose to participate in research is by forcing people to participate in research.
the very best is when they don't even know they are being researched. that is the very highest quality of reseach. when you research people who would not give consent without their knowledge.
that's the very best research.
who wants to be a researcher?
duly noted.
Posted by sigismund on May 19, 2018, at 23:56:59
In reply to Re: don't know what's wrong » sigismund, posted by alexandra_k on May 19, 2018, at 19:17:55
>It appears less militarised because there aren't really any people, here.
That's all to the good. But we used to be like that before 1993. I wonder if Stewart Island would be good. Not too many there? Dunedin was nice, but a little warm for me.
I dunno about Auckland. I have spent many hours at the airport.
>We had these horrible cheap accommodation buildings (that got around building law restrictions on minimum size of apartments and so on) because they were only supposed to be temporary for students.
Yes there are crappy buildings in NZ. I was expecting Hobart, which Wellington resembles. Plenty of water everywhere. Nice cool climate. And all those meth houses one hears about. We live in an area supposedly 'lashed by ice'.
>There's something toxic about the world that i see...
No argument, mate.
>I meant the hierarchy of health systems.
Ah well. Thank God for private health insurance. My anaesthetist said 'When you wake up you will be on a drip and after that on tablets. What would you like?' I said Morphine then oxycodone and he said 'We find morphine does not work quite quickly enough and prefer to use hydromorphone. What about that?' I was very pleased indeed.
People don't read as they used to. And in fact not many teachers can teach it. The base permitted the superstructure to provide something vaguely resembling a very second-class classical education but now that's off, and anyway a raft of other problems make it something or other.
>The idea of building up a surplus for storage... I don't think there was that.
Even more so here. I don't much want to see much more of us ruining everything building up more surplus. (I'd like to shout Repent! Repent! But one of our problems is the dominionists in parliament enjoying their culture wars too much.)The world is old and tawdry, ruined by continuous lies and violence, tired, broken and shameless.
You did go to what I think of as one of the best universities here. I like Canberra. Nice climate and buildings, not too many people.
Posted by alexandra_k on May 20, 2018, at 1:42:14
In reply to Re: don't know what's wrong » alexandra_k, posted by sigismund on May 19, 2018, at 23:56:59
> >It appears less militarised because there aren't really any people, here.
> That's all to the good.I suppose you are right. I do agree that we have exceeded carrying capacity and so less people is good. We are more likely to make headway of learnign to look after the people we've got if we have less people. I think...
I do remember conferences in Melbourne where some Philosophers got into an altercation with some street-kids and I was actually really upset with the way that went down... The cops were called and they treated the street kids like crap, really. Even though the philosophers (a few of them) had (in my view) unnecessarily provoked the street-kids because they were a bit drunk... And hierarchically inclined...
I also remember seeing a couple police kicking at a guy who was sleeping on the sidewalk. Just kicking him to check he was alive, or just because they could... I wasn't sure. It freaked me out how quick Australian police were to have their hands on their guns in their holsters...
I need to remember it was only different for me because I was part of some elite world...
I need to remember that civilisation comes in small pockets of interaction that are dispersed... And that there is plenty that is just as bad and worse as what I am describing in Australia and Scotland and Ireland and England and the USA and Canada...
And I'm sure there is plenty that is civilised and genuinely cooperative in Palestine and Iran and Iraq and Afganastan and China and India and so on... It's more... Local.
The weather in Dunedin is odd. I expected it to be a lot colder / worse than it is. Especially if you get yourself into habitable housing, it really ain't that bad. I mean we have wonderfully warm days in the middle of winter. But then we have some horribly windy and chilly days in January or February. It is really very varied, indeed.
> I dunno about Auckland. I have spent many hours at the airport.
Auckland is very dispersed. Like how Sydney is very dispersed, I guess, so lower density. And smaller scale, for sure.
The city centre is largely unoccupied. Maybe it mirrors the death of city centre in other places... The city centre is mostly very (very very) cheap high rise for a pretty city skyline... Plywood partitioned 'apartments' like 13 sq meters with no balcony... Where building managers think cockroaches are endemic... Just all kinds of nasty...
Heavy harbour traffic... They want to move the stuff that's oversized overnight and in the small hours of the morning. So you have the stuff that causes the ground to vibrate and shake being moved from 12-5am. Then you have rubbish trucks and the sound of glass recycling... It's varmin country...
I haven't seen comparable parts of Sydney Central but I suppose there would be some, to be fair.... Melbourne, too...
I have been to Hobart for conference. I only saw that other world, though. We got a nice motel and a rental car and commuted to the university around the water. We got fresh seafood from the harbour boats. Like fish and chip shops but on water. And you could get muscles and paua and so on... And it tasted wonderful. So fresh.
But probably really expensive to the majority of locals, yeah...
We went to a museum to see... I don't remember... And I think I saw some aspect of local poverty that upset me, rather. Tugged the heartstrings.
> Ah well. Thank God for private health insurance. My anaesthetist said 'When you wake up you will be on a drip and after that on tablets. What would you like?' I said Morphine then oxycodone and he said 'We find morphine does not work quite quickly enough and prefer to use hydromorphone. What about that?' I was very pleased indeed.I think anesthetists win the day for the favorite doctor award. I was very impressed by the sleight of hand of my last anethetist. He sort of pinched the back of one of my hands which drew my attention to it in a surprised / startled kind of way... Such that I didn't notice him insert the line in my other hand at the same time. I all but clapped. ACC. So, our version of private, sort of.
> People don't read as they used to. And in fact not many teachers can teach it.That is true, not many teachers can teach it. I do think that there is an element of only promoting those that can't, however.
I think that everyone who doesn't learn to read in these parts is dx'd with dyslexia (or similar) then told they can't read by standard techniquies because they are learning disabled and they need private one on one tuition. And then they don't get that because we don't have the resources to provide one on one tuition for all these students...
But it's largely about us getting serious about genuinely wanting more kids to learn to read -- instead of being happy for them to be diverted and constantly kicked back. You have these awful teachers who think that blue text on a yellow background or something like that will be the thing... But, really, it's just the implementation of stuff we've known for ages and ages... That which the rich people do with their own kids...
It is hard to teach reading in Maaori culture because the kids have learned to attend to the bully / one who is most likely to hurt them. Or... There's a constant stream of noise from some person-source who needs / wants / is the constant attentional focus. Kids aren't taught to attend to things within themselves... To communicate (inform) others... You can't really teach reading when you can't get the kids to attentionally focus to the words on the page.
> You did go to what I think of as one of the best universities here. I like Canberra. Nice climate and buildings, not too many people.It was meant to be the best research university. Not a destination for undergraduates and I think 1/3 of the student body was PhD students. There was also (thought this has been restructured now) a distinction between 'Schools' who taught the undergraduates and 'Research Schools' who focused on PhD level research and funded Researchers whose only teaching duties was PhD level supervision.
The best researchers bailed to better offers in the US. Australia started to wonder why it should get so good at things only for that to happen... The researchers who were supposed to support the PhD students into becoming the next generation of superstar researchers for Australia didn't really support hteir students. Lots of students quit the field entirely. Australia decided NZers couldn't get government jobs in Australia anymore (our Arts / Social Science people should return back to NZ and help things develop over here, instead... Only... People return here only to find that they are 'overqualified' to work in NZ... Not welcomed back, at all... People determined to teach them a lesson or two, knock them down a peg or two... No matter... They will have to make some way or other in NZ society, because Aussie is sick and tired of carrying us...
I think if I went to Sydney or Melbourne as an undergrad... If I studied the pre-med first year courses... I would find more of an approximation of what I have found here at Auckland and Otago. There is some awful bully awful rite of passage... Or something. I don't quite know what it is...
But my experience in Canberra and my experience with quality research conducted by quality researchers across various fields... With Medicine being the last field to develop, there...
That's the thing, really. Whether Medicine is central wlith all the psychopaths and vultures hovering around... Or whether other things are developed and Medicine comes in as an... Afterthought. An Interloper.
I just didn't see reason to finish when I didn't want to be a Philosophy academic. The Medicine I saw in Canberra was Medicine for persons. Medicare... The fact that practiioners had public and private aspects to their practice and they could choose to offer a partial subsidy to match a medicare subsidy to make genuien healthcare genuinely affordable.
I'm scared that not even money can buy, here. I've been trying to see a GP who will be a consultant for me (and not an ambassador for dhb or government or foreign interest)... And... It seems that some things not even money can buy. No amount of money will buy me a consultation.
I guess because if I don't see it... I won't know what I'm missing.
Only... I've seen it already. And seeing it was what drew me to medicine. Wanting to provide precisely that to a greater proportion of people.
Those who want it. And plenty don't.
Here, we are only interested (often) in treating the involuntary.
Simply because... We can.
Culture of bullies. For sure.
Posted by alexandra_k on May 20, 2018, at 3:04:12
In reply to Re: do know what's wrong, posted by alexandra_k on May 20, 2018, at 1:42:14
and now my computer wants me to voluntarily choose to restart my system to the latest version of 'mcaffe livesafe' or whateverit's called.
it will produce the 'informational' message on my screen every 20 minutes or so...
then, when the latest version is installed i will see what happens to my system, no doubt.
as a consequence of my choosing not to give my credt card details to an outfit who purports to be 'livesafe'.
i mean, not giving them my credit card details (which they no doubt have alesay) can't be anything other than an informed decision to live unsafely and to personally suck up whatever costs...
right?
i am sick to my stomach of living in such a shithole where this is how people here see fit to allow people here to be treated...
Posted by sigismund on May 20, 2018, at 15:48:17
In reply to Re: do know what's wrong, posted by alexandra_k on May 20, 2018, at 1:42:14
>I also remember seeing a couple police kicking at a guy who was sleeping on the sidewalk. Just kicking him to check he was alive, or just because they could... I wasn't sure. It freaked me out how quick Australian police were to have their hands on their guns in their holsters...
And on their tasers. We're just 20 or 30 years behind the US. Now this can be and is photographed.
Perhaps you need to study law? Then you could find a field perhaps even more full of psychopaths from private schools. What interests me, as I look back, is the more or less complete ignorance of people aged around 20. They'd be good at bluffing. You could be out in the evening enjoying the ambience and someone might wonder about what to do with the jews. 'I suppose we'll have to deport them all'. Now this sounds really weird today, (and should have then). But that is, after all, all the consideration we gave to the original owners, so it was in character. But that was in another time, and sad to say, not a worse one.
I was once accosted by some Israelis in a shopping centre to sell me their range of cosmetics for men. In the course of this I was told about the fanatical Arabs. I said something like 'The Ottomans controlled the 2 velayats (?) comprising Iraq and Syria (?? pure bluff) with only 30 executions a year. She said 'Oh, you read books?' I hardly remembered, I was just annoyed. Ignorance can be safely assumed.
Posted by alexandra_k on May 20, 2018, at 16:54:14
In reply to Re: do know what's wrong, posted by sigismund on May 20, 2018, at 15:48:17
> Perhaps you need to study law? Then you could find a field perhaps even more full of psychopaths from private schools.
I studied law for a year at the commercial centre destination. Perhaps surprisingly I think there is a greater level of baseline sociopathy in wannabe medical students.
Medicine provides a much more... intimate... way of messing with people / controlling them. something very direct and hands on about it.
Law has also chosen to limit entry significantly less than Medicine. So people spend however many years studying law and then don't even get jobs as public defenders. I don't know that Medical graduates have trouble finding jobs as junior doctors in the public sector... I mean, I know they keep threatening for that to be the case but... Marketing...
> What interests me, as I look back, is the more or less complete ignorance of people aged around 20. They'd be good at bluffing.
Yeah. Kept so busy there is no time to think...
But also obliviousness about the significance of things, for sure.
I've been surprised to learn how utterly undemocratic things are this far south in the world... I put in this thing to get to a committee... And particular individuals keep preventing it from getting to the committee. First, someone who is on the committee (the chair, or whatever) said they had the power to make decisions on behalf of the committee. Refusal to get things to the committee. This year administration refused to pass it on to the committee. I found a precedent in this government report that was done in Queensland about how particular individuals should not make this kind of decision -- committees should. I tried to get the university to look into this -- you appeal to the univesrity council - which is a commmittee. Then I had a meeting with a guy who is supposed to decide whether it is worth the committee looking at it.
Who are these individuals? Don't they have real work (that is their job) to be doing?
And then the committee is likely to be comprised of white man clones and people who think just like them. They've learned they can find women and Maaori who think just like them and an increasing number of them are included (only if they are really forced to show a modicum of diversity, of course).
There was something in the paper today about how a town voted not to have Maaori wardens. It was a cartoon with a couple Maaori guys saying that the process wasn't democratic because non-Maaori were allowed to vote.
The assumption (by them) being that non-Maaori wouldn't want Maaori wardens -- but that Maaori would.
Do Maaori get to vote by secret ballot so they can't be bullied / harrassed for the way they voted?? If so...
Do they really think that the majority of Maaori would prefer Maaori wardens to police?
For reals?
Depends a lot on how democratic the Maaori are in the area (I don't know). I've seen Maaori wardens who were female... Looking out for females to help them get to safety etc. On the other hand, I've seen Maaori wardens who were big bully males just going about looking to pick fights.
Anyways...
Seems to me that people will let me do anything - just so long as it isn't the only thing it is that I actually want to do.
This the way of most people.
Posted by alexandra_k on May 20, 2018, at 17:25:37
In reply to Re: do know what's wrong, posted by alexandra_k on May 20, 2018, at 16:54:14
I couldn't bear to be a lawyer, in this country.
Partly it's about how law has been marketed. Boston Legal has been hugely influential. Men behaving badly and females dressed like hookers.
There was this thing not so long ago about a law camp at this University. How it was basically a lot of drunken debauchery that was tolerated by the University and the Law School. Practically sanctioned. Together with judges pronouncing abuse to be socially sanctioned and appropriate (what a person did was 'not that bad') and then... Female lawyers claiming sexual harrassment from major lawfirms where they worked as interns.
So now the head of the law school person is going to go to another university...
But that's the state of Law, in New Zealand.
I had to appear in the District Court in Auckland. After I tried to get to see a Psychiatrist and the nasty allied health lady was all oppositional and I have her a couple firm punches on her stout woman shoulder to try and get to to f*ck off and she called the police and (as a government worker) requested they charge me with battery.
The police thought I was a homeless person or simliar. Thought I would enjoy the drama. Nearly strip search -- but at some point (when she saw I wasn't wearing sexy underwear) the police officer seemed to realise that I wasn't enjoying things and she actually stopped. The learned I had on priors whatsoever. But they were force to charge me because she was a governmetn worker.
My appointed lawyer... We were in the courtroom over the recess when the judge was out of the room. And she was bantering with the police and other people in teh courtroom. Telling tehm about her drunken weekend. She seemed to think that this was entirely appropriate.
She wasn't trying to assess my reactoin to this at all... She was new to the area and she was trying to make friends...
That's law.
Public defenders become judges... That's law.
Though I guess you want to start out in High Court rather than Domestic... But still. It turned me off law.
Teh student union lawyer, here, who couldn't have done a better job at undermining my case (the person she was supposedly representing) than if she had been put there strategically by the opposition. She'd been put there precisely to make sure that students did not get adequate legal representation when their rights were persistently violated...
Our system doesn't have skilled students who get any kind of kudos for volunteer work or for doing a good job of defence of the poor etc.
And the public defenders are too swamped to adequately help any of their clients.
But I would rather minimise any kind of reliance on the health system in this country. I don't have much more faith in teh private system, either, since I've heard it said 'people simply aren't in the position to judge competence' etc. You can throw money at the private system and I'm not at all convinced your money will buy you the things that are most important (to me). Some things not even money can buy. I need to do as much for myself as I can.
I do believe that there are genuine people out there who aren't psychopaths etc.
There's just a really very high proportion of them indeed concentrated around minding people at the lowest levels in this country.
Nobody was meant to spend as much time hovering around here as I have... The assumption is that I'm incompetent or mentally defective that I've done this...
New Zealand: It's not working.
It really is largely because of the proportion of bullies. That people will put them in charge / that people really are powerless to prevent them.
So persons have gone into hiding.
You just don't see them, anymore...
Posted by alexandra_k on May 20, 2018, at 17:45:53
In reply to Re: do know what's wrong, posted by alexandra_k on May 20, 2018, at 17:25:37
I've been thinking a lot about televison as a way of educating the masses.
I knew about people being read their rights from television. That's what you learn off of any cop show - right? That the police need to read people their rights. That you should ask for a lawyer.
And I know about what informed consent looks like (in part) from seeing how doctors explain things to patients (in competence appropriate way e.g., to children, to intellectually impaired people, to adults) from televion.
Only... Other people seem to have watched such shows? I guess they have... But they didn't get these messages from them...
Maybe they haven't seen such shows...
I guess we have a greater proportion of New Zealand shows, now, and less overseas ones. Shortland Street educates our people on how gossipy health receptionists get to be. How you better suck up to people and cajole them on demand or they have the power (and right) to make your life a living hell as a consequence. How arrogant surgeons and hunky cleaners will woo the same nurse and the cleaner will win out because he's a nicer person but the surgeon is an arrogant tw*t with the maturity of a toddler... These are the ways we educate our citizens...
I've been watching Shameless... And parts of it ring home. The way people(?) are about sex. Except they've made all the women agressors... So removed the element of male cooercion that is much (much much) more typical. The emotional manipulation...
And Frank is far too well groomed.
Teeth. That's the thing. And the smell of urine /whacky male feromones... That's not there. The fact that those things bring out a deeply visceral reaction of disgust and recoil in anyone who is presented with that who isn't high or drugged into a stupor. You don't want to kiss people who have foul breath and vomit all over them... You just don't.
The other day there was this guy smoking around my bike. Construction. A lot of the Auckland awful is coming here. I think they sometimes have prisoners (or ex prisoners) working construction. You can smell them. And the way they band together and oggle the passers by while they are waiting for... Whatever. Anyway, I was a bit freaked / intimidated that there were two of them hovering around but then one of them stepped away. And I made a decision to say something politely to the guy and smile so it would be less awkward about the proximity of him being right in front of my bike while I got on it and started the motor.
Anyway... I'm pretty sure he wasn't a constructin person even though he was dressed as them. Probably engineer? I don't know. His teeth were perfect and white, his glasses weren't government issued, the whites of his eyes were white and his whole manner...
You can tell really rather a lot, so briefly...
I'm not sure what is up with the 'Chicago Polytech' thing. The storyline didn't make sense. One minute he's got a funded offer for MIT (yeah, right) and the next he's studying English Literature and Critical Theory at Polytech for a 4 year degree...
Anyway...
Back to stats...
This is the end of the thread.
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