Posts by daleaway
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I think the media has led you by your nose rings again.
No, Dale Evans is okay, he's no moron. He's a civic minded chap who has done the Wellington/Kapiti community a lot of favours in his time.
This time he made a bad judgement call, but a little context might explain why. It was in the course of satirising Kapiti mayor Rowan's being the poster girl for the current hoods-is-good non-campaign. Literally, that's her in the publicity photo scowling out from under a hood. Ms Photo-Op herself.
His version of a hood is quite funny in its way, and taking the hoodies' slogan to its logical conclusion ... but where using an image of the Klan is concerned, people are into knee jerk territory, so non-Kapiti readers would fail to make the connection. Guess liberals still have some taboo topics for humour.
And the issue he was aiming to draw attention to, the failure of successive Kapiti councils to make adequate water storage provision while granting ever more development permits for new housing, is one of genuine local concern. It always seems to slip off the Council's agenda somehow. Don't think it will be able to do that any more!
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It would have been a lot of money indeed - easier than the UK machines I fear.
There is a thriving though underground (as far as one can be, on the web) community discussing how to rip off UK pub quiz machines. I stumbled across it by accident when writing a quiz game for a UK electronic games manufacturer a couple of years ago ( a career direction I could not have envisaged!).
There are travelling game banditos and hit squads that pub landlords are advised of and encouraged to watch out for, tricks of the trade such as obtaining question lists from second hand machines, and all sorts of shenanigans. One of the ex-quiz machine raiders has written his colourful memories online.
The manufacturers are busy trying to keep a step ahead - I have been asked to update my game in a year or two.
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Kyle, quiz shows are out with TVNZ. Dumbing down is the flavour of the decade. My husband is a quizzy who has appeared quite a lot here and by invitation in Australia, and we followed the scene.
The heyday of Mastermind and shows where content and intellect counted was over 20 years ago. Of their nature, they did not attract mass participation. Although they rated well with viewers, they put too many older faces on telly for the advertisers' liking.
So to bring in a younger demographic, the show makers started changing their definition of general knowledge, slanting the questions towards current movies, pop music, and sport.
Even this didn't go far enough for their ends, so they took it a step further and quiz shows became game shows and turned into games of dumb luck. Democracy in action, of course.
Not the case in the UK, where our friend Daphne Fowler (you can see her on Eggheads on UKTV) has over the years won cars, trips to the Olympics, staggering amounts of cash and jewellery, paid off her house etc from her extraordinarily wide general knowledge (of the old school variety). General knowledge is still sought after and well rewarded in that country, with many new quiz shows and intellectual contests continuing to appear on their TV and to rate highly.
In this country, by contrast, we have quiz contestants of international standard with no programmes to compete on. Too bad, I hear you cry, and on a personal level our household has done well enough out of Australian telly-money to be grateful for what we have, but that's scarcely the point.
But then we have become used to New Zealand TV increasingly being aimed at an incredibly low lowest common denominator. The audience has been the frog in the pot of warming water where that is concerned. I'll echo Jolisa's cries of Shaaaaaaame.
(As a footnote, we were with Daphne in a pub in Weston-Super-Mare one day when she and Mr Daleaway decided to try out the quiz machine together. Even with those two superquizzies collaborating on the answers and working the buttons together, they could not win a quid out of it. Those machines are rigged!)
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From a woman in Gore:
Cheese Rolls
1 packet onion soup warmed with 1 cup of water over low heat,
add 2 packed cups grated cheese,
½ tsp paprika,
½-1 tsp curry powder.Cut the crusts off bread slices and spread one side (lightly) with butter or margarine. Spread the cheese mix on the other side, roll up with the cheese mixture on the inside, place in plastic bag in fridge for 1 hour, then grill.
Really handy things to keep in the freezer for last-minute snacks. Quantity of spread is enough for approx 2 loaves of bread. (she says)
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Well, at the risk of not being cool, a la mode, identifying with yoof or *currying favour with them * , I'll say that I can't disagree with Ron Mark.
We're importing some very shabby aspects of overseas culture, and if hoods are identified with gangs of whatever sort, then who needs them? Is this a bandwaggon truly worth jumping on?
What is the point of a Hoodie Day?
Who's trying to impress whom about what?
Who's organising this silly little non-campaign, and for what purpose?Defiance is a poor reason for chosing clothing. Grownups don't have to express their antisocial thoughts or all-round bloodymindedness through textiles - we have language for that.
Anyway Ron Mark is okay by me after his sterling performance in the Terrace Tunnel yesterday, saving that bloke's life. Top mark(s).
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It's the eye of the beholder, Geoff.
A few years ago, on a trip to the Coromandel, I caught up with the late Michael King and also a former colleague from the Ministry I used to work at. Both had recently returned to teaching at the University of Waikato.
"How's the job going?" I asked them both (separately).
"Oh it's such hard work," said Michael. "Long hours, student demands, all the preparation. So much stress."
"Piece of cake," said Colleague X. "Shorter hours than we worked at the Ministry, lower intellectual standards, and no Minister breathing fire. Less stress all round."
And compared with what both of them had been doing before, they were probably both accurate.
That's why I get a bit defensive when bureaucrats are attacked for sloth and sloppiness. It ain't necessarily so.
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Please Miss, if Russell's not allowed to say "butt" for "bum", then Danyl is not allowed to write "check" for "cheque".
I'm culturally offended, Miss.
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My first thought on reading the blog was: is that the Scots "canny" (cagey, shrewd), or the Geordie "canny" (pleasing, fine) that he's using? Quite a different nuance.
I see Gordon actually says "cannily constructed" which implies a degree of craftiness.
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What a patronising assertion : that feminism blames men for everything.
Not the feminism I know.
Women are quite capable of making bad decisions that hurt other women, and the feminists I know would be calling them on it - and in the case of destructive magazines and the sexualisation of young girls, they certainly have been.
It's been a very loud and long debate. I'm astonished you missed it. How about lending a hand?
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Do you live on the Kapiti Coast?
You can rot under a tree to your deceased heart's content there, as from last February:
http://tinyurl.com/5yoxk6