h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Though I do remember Ictoan posting a link ages ago about all manner of things going on in NZ to a high degree.....But maybe they weren't biological reproductive things though. After all there's a lot more to it than that.

>I am reminded of my mother telling us as girls not to study too hard, or we'd "get brain fever and die" <

That's truly shocking.

<>

Au contraire, ducko! (As Warner Bros characters say to Daffy..)

I remember a few months ago, many researchers here citing the recent Durex study that showed NZ women to be the slappers of all time, as part of the kind lovely treatment I get here. (I can't remember what I had said to provoke having the Durex study linked to page after page, but I remember being so relieved when people got sick and tired of that particular dig at me...

simpost

But my dig was much more friendly and imaginative.

<< am reminded of my mother telling us as girls not to study too hard, or we'd "get brain fever and die" <

That's truly shocking.>>

The most shocking thing is that she really believed it! (Like putting butter on burns, even schoolteachers believed that one, and I shudder to think of the damage they did, all with good intentions! (We had 'sunscreen' made with olive oil and calamine lotion - I joke now, that the intention was to baste us good and proper. I am surprised the incidence of melanoma isn't higher than it is...

I wonder how many things we do and say now, and tell our kids, will be found to be wrong by the time they're grown?

Well I can say hand on heart I have never said anything to compare with that to a child. I'm still shocked and stunned. I don't want to hurt you by saying what i really think such behaviour should be termed. But I put it in a certain category.

*I am surprised the incidence of melanoma isn't higher than it is...*

Because we had only just then started using all those lovely spray cans and air conditioning units and fridges full of CFCs. It took all that time for the holes to get burnt into the ozone layer.

I remember being told that butter was good for burns and the best sun oil was olive oil. I have black and white photos of me looking darker than the natives, but I only got severe burns when boating in the 80's. Now I tend to stay indoors when it's a real scorcher, I'm lucky here because it's overcast about 40% of the time.

<<, I'm lucky here because it's overcast about 40% of the time. >>

As is the case here (today being a very good example!)

NZ isn't known as Aotearoa (Land of the Long White Cloud) for nothing!

Any more thoughts about my Old Athiest angst question? So far, if I've caught them all, we've had one no angst, one angst, and one Russel's Teapot.



And what's this 'kill a kid with full fat milk' thing? Did I miss something? Do human breasts produce skimmed milk? Human babies can't metabolise lipids?

>>So far, if I've caught them all, we've had one no angst, one angst, and one Russel's Teapot.<<



Was I the 'angst-less' teapot?

Is a detailed explanation required?

no, a more detailed answer is not needed. I was simply hoping to gather a more statistically validly sized sample.

You realize some of the more active thread participants are vacationing, and it is the weekend...

Have you considered making a separate post to Ask?

That's actually a good idea!

But I'm tired right now.

>>What is the mechanism? HOw can full fat milk kill anyone? When I was a child, it was all there was!

I should have put 'full cream milk'. Babies cannot tolerate full-fat cows' milk generally. Even richer, full-cream milk - as I understand it - kills them even sooner. It was not being given to strapping young New Zealand weans, but to disabled neonates. I have the same story from two independent sources. The other one - an alcoholic waister who was a former sweetheart and later drinking partner (and very possibly also lover) of my father's. Her testimony on its own would have been reasonably plausible - she had no reason to lie. Myself, I was quite astonished to hear the same story from a fine, upstanding character who *definitely* had no reason to lie.

And I'll ask you once again not to besmirch the name of people about whom you know zilch. Is this you returning to form?

Existential angst...

Speaking as someone who has had to make a conscious decision not to kill himself...obviously I've felt it. But my reasons for instead volunteering to spend time in the purgatory of an NHS psychiatric ward were not to do with fear of non-existence. That was actually what I was after with my frequent desire to turn the steering wheel into the path of an oncoming lorry. Rather...the first thought was 'What about the children?' The second was 'I want to be part of life - I just need help to slow it down a little'.

Does that answer the question?

A little more on Abortion:

I think it's somewhat disingenuous that Disability Rights shoild be hauled out as the principle argument against abortion (cf Vicky's 'Hitlerian' jab.)

Sure... it's an important ethical issue (and a complex one that can *only* be left to parents to decide)...but let's not forget that medical abortions make up an insignificant proportion of the total. The vast majority are simply to prevent the birth of an unwanted child. Here we should stick to our guns and say that female control of fertility by legal abortion is an unalloyed human good. Emotive talk which brings in disability is cheap.

I've also had those thoughts Ed, but not come close to doing it literally, (except once when extremely unwell, and in hospital), but when you're in that state of mind, like even me just fantasising, I consider myself unwell, you lose that sense of reality of what 'death' really signifies.

Are you really not bothered at all by the idea of the end for ever of any consciousness?

(I think this is really quite an interesting topic, in that one's view of death can so alter, according to mood.)

Abortion


We should step back to get the whole picture. YOu are talking about developed countries, where, it's not and it wasnt easy or simple to get an abortion . Imagine how it is in not developed countries.( Church's actions in those areas are relevant)
Some high-school mates and I did a research for a discussion to be held in Ethics lessons about abortion. It was a lot of time ago, I remember that 500.000 women died a year?-not sure about the data, but a lot of them died because of unhygienic conditions. The source was the WHO.

***

I dont think that any woman in her senses considers abortion as a method to control natality. However, if other anticonceptive means have failed, it is a woman right to be able to CHOOSE if she goes through such terrible experience.

For me it goes beyond reason that a law can affect the body of a woman. A woman can't be forced to have an abortion or to have a baby. To carry on with a pregnancy depends completely of the woman. And there are as many reasons as woman do it, or not.

as many reasons as womEn

I'm in full agreement with you Mar. Religious motivated reasons for having repressive power over women's lives and happiness, is *never* a good thing, IMO.