Posts by linger
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Yeah; I do wonder if it’s at least in part a deliberate attempt to “move on” the yoof and the homeless (cf. Hostile urban architecture).
Notable exceptions: some parts of the Wellington waterfront, and the interior of Reading Cinema. -
Legal Beagle: Last call on the Electoral…, in reply to Sacha,
Yes, but is the proposed waka-jumping bill going to be based on decisions made by all party members, or just its sitting MPs?
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Perhaps specify "near unanimity" as "one or two dissenters" or "two-thirds", whichever is the maximum: consider the case of a party with fewer than 5 MPs.
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Hard News: On joining the international…, in reply to Dennis Frank,
Problem is, phrases such as "political correctness", "social engineering", and "nanny state" are loaded terms that often reveal more about the user than about the intended referent. E.g. railing against "nanny-statism" has been used to excuse the blocking or dismantling of regulations around food-origin labelling, building safety, energy efficiency, environmental protection… meanwhile the same governments tend not to see any contradiction at all in enacting laws extending the powers of the state against personal privacy and peaceful protest.
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The danger even in a seemingly positive claim such as Brash’s is that an assertion “Group X is more successful” reliably feeds conspiracy theories attacking Group X on the assumption that their success has been obtained unfairly.
(What is needed is more testable general hypotheses regarding possible causal mechanisms, rather than claiming exceptionism of any one group. E.g., we may hypothesize that – as one ingredient – a monotheistic culture favours a search for single-cause deterministic models, which may promote the advancement of mathematics, science and technology. As another ingredient, the culture’s traditions should be open to question and debate, allowing a faster adoption of improvements as they are discovered.)
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Oh, there may well be a correlation; but as always, that doesn’t prove causation. We should be wary of any assertion of g(u)ilt by association, whether cast in terms of “race” or “culture”.
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I rather liked the DomPost letter today to the effect that they should be on the Wellington comedy circuit.
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Hard News: Dilemmas: the drug-driving ad…, in reply to Dennis Frank,
Ads are primarily designed to be short, which may or may not mean a holistic design. It does mean that, as far as possible, an ad draws on common experience (e.g. using instantly recognisable stereotypes, story schema, and default value judgements). All I’m saying is that in this case, if you haven’t had that experience, the ad doesn’t work. (It’s usually a bad sign when every referent leads you down the rabbit hole to a previous ad.)
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Really confusing. It looks like Ghost Chips, but drops any pretence of linking the images into a coherent narrative. (E.g., where does Nek Minit dude fit in?) Maybe makes more sense if you're actually high while watching?
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Except that Watkin’s article didn’t tell anyone to do anything:
(i) it cited a colleague’s tweeted suggestion, and enthused on how it might have trapped them; and
(ii) it was published after the snakes had got on a plane.But I agree that hosting abhorrent views isn’t something that anyone should be required or expected to take on.