Thursday, May 18, 2006



Neanderthals

If anyone is wondering why the police are likely to have a difficult time coming up with the recruits to boost overall numbers by a thousand, they have only to look here. It's no wonder people don't want to work in an organisation which seems so dominated by neanderthals.

Posted by Idiot/Savant at 5/18/2006 11:34:00 AM

16 comments:

Attitudes of the NZ police aside, what have you got against Homo Neanderthalensis such that you keep using them as a descriptive term for bad behaviour in Homo Sapiens sapiens? I mean, we have no evidence of homophobic behaviour from H. Neanderthalensis at all. We have evidence of hunting, use of fire, advanced stone tool use (soft as well as hard percussion), wooden tools some simple bone tool use, complex shelter building, basic burial ritual, possible cannibalism (ritual or otherwise), possible warfare(A stab wound in one of the Shanidar III bodies, and human flesh fragments on a spearhead), and probable language capability (Based on complexity of tool use and shape of hyoid bone and larynx (and probably squeaky and higher pitched than us, too, not grunts and deep voiced)).

If, based on what we know, you can determine such fine cultural points as presence of both homosexuality and homophobia in Neandethal culture, you're a better scientist than I. Both are likely, based on analogy to current human/chimp species, but how are we to know whether the Neanderthals took after us, chimps or bonobos in sexuality?

Given that their average brain size was larger than ours, I don't think we've got much reason to claim lesser moral development over them, rather than us (although we do have the tech edge, obviously, as we did manage to conquer the poor buggers and wipe them out (there's not much evidence of interbreeding...)). And they've just managed to sequence a million base pairs of Neanderthal nuclear DNA, too - very different y chromosome to ours, apparently.

 Posted by Weekend_Viking : 5/18/2006 12:43:00 PM

Ouch :)

 Posted by Idiot/Savant : 5/18/2006 12:57:00 PM

Was fairly serious there - You're speaking ill of the dead, effectively an entire species of them at one go, based on the actions of members of _our_ species, not theirs.

 Posted by Weekend_Viking : 5/18/2006 12:59:00 PM

There are obvious jokes about the appearance of policemen here, but really, I've adopted a Victorian colloquialism which conflates social advancement with biological advancement (and that whole latter concept is itself fairly dubious; creatures are adapted to their environments, not reaching towards some ideal of progress).

So then, what's a better term for the obviously socially backward, who seem to retain the attitudes of a past era which is better buried with a stake through its heart?

 Posted by Idiot/Savant : 5/18/2006 01:08:00 PM

Right Wing Death Beast.

 Posted by Anonymous : 5/18/2006 01:16:00 PM

Well, the whole deal comes from putting ideas of development/progress onto evolution without grokking the fact that it's a Red Queen race, plus of course the original description of the whole 'shambling neanderthal' based on an arthritic skeleton.

Recidivists, perhaps?

 Posted by Weekend_Viking : 5/18/2006 01:36:00 PM

RWDB, while accurate, doesn't seem to get to the heart of the matter. Neither does "caveman" (which is the other typical usage). "Recidivist" isn't catchy enough.

 Posted by Idiot/Savant : 5/18/2006 01:49:00 PM

I often refer to myself as a recidivist paramilitary pseudogoth, which I think has a fair ring to it.

 Posted by Weekend_Viking : 5/18/2006 01:53:00 PM

Good grief! Weekend Viking (despite providing a very interesting outline of Neanderthal society) amply demonstrates what I intended to say: get a life!
As previously stated on these pages, I am no fan of the NZ Police as an organsisation - it is thuggish, anti-intellectual, ignorant, racist, sexist, elitist and often, plain bad.
Senior recruitment officer Kelvin McBride might exhibit all of the above attributes; he might also be guilty merely of being terribly home sapien in that he uttered an off-the-cuff remark that fell flat.
Perhaps of more interest is how this hyperbole masquerading as a story made it into print in the first place. Can I suggest that the reporter, Mike Steere, desperatly looking for a story, knows the mildly offended Simon Calcinai and wrote it up to appease his editor. No where does it say Calcinai had made an official complaint.
Instead of blathering about how the police are homophobic (of course they are), perhaps we should be more worried that this State sanctioned gang is soon going to be electrocuting the most vulnerable sections of society - the young and the poor - with the same impunity it currently maces them.

 Posted by Anonymous : 5/18/2006 01:56:00 PM

Having spent some time in current and recently ex- police states, I can assure you, writeboy, that the NZ police are comparatively _Fucking Wonderfully Enlightened New Age Sensitive Guys_. They don't disappear anyone, they're less corrupt than Queensland (except maybe in Reefton), they don't use rape as a standard procedure, they don't carry firearms at all times, they tend not to beat up too many suspects (and often get dobbed in by more upstanding officers when they do), they have a functioning complaints authority of some sort, etc, etc. Having had some slight run-ins with what passes for police in the rest of the world, I _love_ the NZ police. I definitely don't like it, but I'll take the risk of tazer and/or mace over any variety of bullet or being worked over with a polythene hose any day.

 Posted by Weekend_Viking : 5/18/2006 02:22:00 PM

Weekend Viking: I never said we lived in a police state - far from it and I also have seen such first hand to know the difference. But I have also seen police forces that are far better than NZ's. As an organisation, I think NZ's police force has a culture of aloofness. It sees itself as being separate from the society it serves, engendering a 'them and us' mentality, especially in the main centres. That is dangerous and I think it desperately needs to be addressed. Anyone with any insight will agree that policing is an extraordinarily difficult job, but that does not put the orgaisation above criticism (although it seems to in NZ). A truly independent complaints authority would be most obvious first step of which there have been calls for at least 30 years that I can remember. To use one of their own favourite 'truisms' - If you have nothing to hide, what is the problem.

 Posted by Anonymous : 5/18/2006 03:02:00 PM

John: and that's the real concern - that serious homophobia is tolerated in the NZ police. Such people simply have no place in the police - or any other workplace, for that matter - and if they can't get on with their coworkers then they should be encouraged to move on to more suitable employment. I'm sure Destiny Church would hire them as security guards...

 Posted by Idiot/Savant : 5/18/2006 03:24:00 PM

Neanderthals had certainly a better dress sense than the NZ Police. No gay person wants to be seen dead in those badly tailored pants and off-coloured shirts. And those hats... they look like something I did my potty training on.

 Posted by Hans Versluys : 5/18/2006 03:38:00 PM

"...they look like something I did my potty training on."

I sense a business opportunity there, Uroskin...

 Posted by Psycho Milt : 5/18/2006 07:27:00 PM

It’s all relative. NZ Cops are intellectual giants compared to the gold medal winners of ignorance, abuse and malice - prison officers. They get away with it because as cowards they pick their targets carefully, in fact that is the one example of intelligence and judgement I ever saw them use. They mummy the crims, bringing them cigarettes, cell phones and drugs because they are frightened and even more criminal than those they are paid good money to mind.

In fact if it weren’t for the crims a decent person would not last a week in the filthy green uniform. The crims do at least have some respect for those who uphold the rules and behave with integrity, the same people the department hate and persecute.

As long as the little cowards in little uniforms only destroy the occasional intelligent, ethical, truthful person who slips through the ‘selection’ process they can be sure of the full support and protection of their paymasters in Wellington.

With the likes of Tony Ellis only concerning himself with the sensitivities of poor little criminals there is no-one to care how many innocent people are ruined for the despicable NZ crime of upholding the code of conducts produced by the fiction office every government department has.

If you want friends and top lawyers in NZ make sure you kill a few people (preferable women) first and there will be a queue to be your new best friend, if you prefer to remain decent get a one way ticket out the filthy place.

 Posted by Anonymous : 5/18/2006 09:54:00 PM

Hahaha classic!

Now can we find someone to take offence at W Viking's language or does this highly amusing chain end here?

 Posted by Rick : 5/20/2006 07:55:00 PM

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