Posts by Russell Brown
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Perhaps instead of fining people who are caught being stupid with substances, the court could direct them to attend compulsory drug education courses that cost (and paid for by the offender) an equivalent amount? Directed to their particular thing.
They do that in some US states, and it gets farcical, especially when it's framed as "treatment". What malady are you actually "treating" in a 22 year-old who got caught with a couple of joints?
If bzp based substances were sold in a controlled environment such as a chemist then I'd be a whole lot less inclined to oppose them. But as it stands with them on sale over the counter in the Dairy across the road from the school I teach at (primary), on display right next to the lollies, I have to say I take issue with that.
Me too, along with anyone with a lick of sense. It's crazy that these things are sitting on the counter at dairies, because they are real drugs. That proliferated during the period when the media inisted on referring the party pills as "herbal" highs, something they never were.
Fact is, recreational drugs greatly enhance certain experiences. At the BDO next week, probably half the crowd will ingest something illegal, and a quite few more will be on the BZP. For a lot of people, I suspect it's one of one or two times a year they pop an E. And, in comparison to the alcohol-oriented atmosphere of the early events, that represents a considerable benefit. It certainly makes life easier for the police.
The place no one goes yet in the legalisation debate, but one day will, is the idea of actually developing a safer alternative to the present crop of illegal drugs (as opposed to adopting something originally sold as a worming tablet). That's quite a philosophical shift - we're only supposed to take a pill when there's something wrong with us - but yer basic alcopops are hardly any less manufactured than any pill.
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I like this one ...
This category profiles individuals who identify themselves as part of the “social justice” movement – which is post-Communist terminology for socialism and communism.
The source material seems to consist greatly of drivel from Michele Malkin, and the definitions are ludicrously selective.
Honestly, if that site wasn't so funny, it would really be quite creepy. James, please tell me you don't actually take this vindictive tosh seriously.
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I'm with you on that, Craig. I thought about going, just for the Violent Femmes, but decided against it, like I do every year at this time when I think "ooh, so and so is playing, that would make the ticket worth it, I could even put up with crowding throngs of little people". Whoever's playing is never enough of a drawcard for me to get past the St Luke's factor of it all.
The final crowd will actually be about 8000 short of the record (the year the Chili Peppers played) but they seem to have decided not to repeat that unhealthy experience. The site is better arranged these days too.
But hell, I'm not out there with the real punters. God bless David Slack and his hospitality table ...
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" ...maybe the weakest ever"
It's certainly up there.. I'm skipping this year for the first time in many in favour of Diplo's solo show.
What would we know? This just in:
Big Day Out sells out in record time
The Big Day Out officially sold out on Monday, according to promoters CRS Music Management.
But the message from promoters to those who missed out, is don't cry just yet.
They are putting an extra 2,000 tickets on sale next Monday, with a limit of two tickets per person.
With 40,000 people snapping up tickets, it has been the fastest selling Auckland Big Day Out on record.
Promoter Campbell Smith is putting it down to the line-up, which boasts The Killers, Tool and The Violent Femmes as headliners.
"Our outlets have reported incredible demand for tickets this year right from the outset," he says.
"2007's line-up is as strong as we've ever had with a great blend of established acts and exciting new artists."
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so was that before or after he and his 'posse' beat up phil from bfm outside the bowling club then? Phil's a relatively nice bloke in passing.
Phil's a good friend. Naturally, he still doesn't feel good about the assault, which was really nasty, but he was compensated and had his dental surgery paid for. More to the point, he had a pretty satisfactory experience with restorative justice meetings, where he was able to tell PNC exactly how badly the beating affected him, and receive an apology. He didn't really want to go to court, but he needed to let this guy know what he'd done, and he feels he was able to do that.
I think there was also a statement written to the effect that the assault was not provoked by a racist comment from Phil, as a shitty rumour that circulated in the following days claimed. Basically, PNC was so drunk that he misheard something Phil said about Scribe's record label and attacked him, actually blindsiding him after the initial scuffle had been broken up.
Scribe didn't do the beating up, but I gather he could have done a hell of a lot more than he did (ie:nothing) to stop it. I think there's a real danger in these kids getting famous and having a crew to project force around them, although it's not exactly unusual in hip hop.
I'll never quite look at Scribe the same way, but I'm prepared to listen to his music and hope he's grown up a bit.
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I don't want to be a negative voice (although I guess I am being so) but, looking at it from afar, that BDO lineup ain't strong....maybe the weakest ever. I guess Tool will pull in the western Suburbs which is more and more what the BDO seems to be about.
Always has been, to some extent. You need that kind of act to fill the place - Soundgarden (twice), Metallica, Chili Peppers. It was when the dance thing caught on (bringing the E with it) that the vibe shifted and made it more than boganville. Having the Stooges and the Stripes last year was a bit of an aberration.
The boiler room in particular is lacking anything (and I exclude Hot Chip who are supposed to be fantastic live) to go Ahhhh about...I mean The Crystal Method DJs fer gods sake (who?)....and The Streets again....
I was terrified that those Crystal Method guys would be headlining. I saw them when they played "live" a couple of years ago - rubbish. I think someone once dubbed them "the Bachman Turner Overdrive of dance music", which was pretty priceless. I thought the Streets were very disappointing last time.
But Shapeshifter will be huge - they did two nights running at the St James this year, and were by all accounts brilliant.
The thing with Scribe is that his debut album didn't really start to fly in Australia until after it peaked here, so he's been shopping that for the past 18 months. New album soon, apparently ...
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81stcolumn:
The self help thing really doesn’t bother me. The self help thing with no sensible evidence to support it bothers me somewhat. The self help thing with no evidence being adopted by teachers and policy makers - makes me want to rant a lot and use the c word. It upsets me most because it highlights a failure of education and the triumph of marketing. I’m sure this will sound like a an oft repeated bleat but the “dumbing down” of higher education and the desire for more “vocational content” comes at the expense of teaching people how to obtain, evaluate and use evidence (research).
The obtain-evaluate-use paradigm is particularly important in an age when the Internet brings us a huge amount of information of hugely variable quality.
Ironically, when those skills are built into an NCEA curriculum, in place of rote leaning, some people complain that's dumbing down ...
So my view is similar to yours, but with the authority of a masthead in mind. From what I can tell, Jensen's stuff is a grab-bag of things that might well be true, things that simply are not, and points in between. The linked review readily acknowledges that he has some fresh ideas for the classroom. But overall ... It's. Just. Not. Science.
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What exactly was your Christmas whisky? Inquiring minds want to know. I assume it was single malt but from which distillery?
Delighted to answer. We did a little contra with Whisky Galore, which allowed me to order something a cut above what I could normally afford.
I originally plumped for a 13 year-old Talisker (I'm a big fan of the standard 10 year-old Talisker) and an 18 year-old Longmorn. Michael Milne congratulated me on selecting two "fine whiskies", but reported that both were out of stock, so I asked him to pick replacements.
He came up with a 20 year-old BenRiach (Speyside) and Adelphi's Breath of the Isles, a 13 year-old single-cask bottling (309 bottles) from an unnamed island distillery - substituting for the Longmorn and the Talisker respectively.
The BenRiach is insanely drinkable, with honey and nougat tastes. The Adelphi is more spicy, grunty and phenolic (ie more like Talisker, but much paler in colour) and, at 53.4%, needs a splash of water to bring out its complexity.
So, two different whiskies; both bloody lovely. I must say, it's nice being able to go up a notch from the usual <$100 malts - but I still wonder what that 13 year-old Talisker tastes like ...
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Points for finding your own sources James (and, as ever, for maintaining a civil tone), but there's a pretty obvious like-for-like problem with those two references. One is the rate for a single, particularly violent (as much as 10 times the national average) urban centre, the other is an estimate for an entire country, including relatively peaceful regions such as Iraqi kurdistan.
An earlier version of the murder rate meme debunked by the WSJ's pro-war conservative James Taranto.
A different tack from Kung Fu Monkey.
There are quite a few more.
Here's the interview with the Reporters Without Borders correspondent - conducted by an avowedly conservative citizen journalist:
And while he has significant criticisms of Saddam Hussein's regime, if forced to simply categorize his perspective, I'd label him an educated Sunni who believes Iraq was better off under the former dictator, and one who greatly fears the Iranian and Shiite militia influence in Iraq's politics and current violence. Despite the domestic horrors and wars of aggression stemming from Hussein's rule, Raazzaq's wistful reminiscence for a pre-war Iraq is not exactly irrational, given his frame of reference.
And from the conclusion of part two of the same interview:
And there you have it. After an hour of "wink, wink, nudge, nudge, know what I mean, know what I mean," we'd finally built his plainly stated belief that the current Iraqi government is run by Shiite parties backed by foreign influences, which have no interest in stopping the violence. Is this merely the perspective of a Sunni who is nostalgic for Saddam's rule? I'm not sure, because to some extent we know that revenge killings are happening; we know that Americans arrested Iranian agents and were forced to release them by the current Iraqi government, we know that Iranian-trained Sadrist splinter groups are behind many of the murders and that the government has failed to reign them in; we know that Maliki halted a cordon of Sadr City during the search for a missing serviceman.
The key themes are Raazzaq's rejection of the idea that sectarian hatred was pervasive in Iraq pre-2003, and his contention that Sadrists have a dangerous and destructive presence in what passes for Iraq's government. Given that Sadrist militiamen infiltrated even Saddam's execution, he would appear to have a point. If I were a Sunni, I think I'd be pretty scared too.
This isn't a liberal blogger writing, and the interviews have been linked to by the likes of Instapundit and Malkin.
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re: the Run DMC rider...your memory is correct I think Russell. The rider for the 1988 NZ shows was about the same, but with the addition of large amounts of McDonalds too.
But did they get through all two dozen condoms?
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