Posts by Carol Stewart
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Notes & Queries: Nightingales/Bombs/Beethoven, in reply to Islander,
“Life of Pi"
Life of Pi was gorgeous, wasn't it? And yet I felt the novel had a sly,elusive kind of quality that the film didn't quite nail.
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Notes & Queries: Nightingales/Bombs/Beethoven, in reply to Islander,
Almost all adaptations of complex novels are epic fails but some books work better than others
A couple of exceptions spring to mind where I think I preferred the film version to the original novel: The Remains of the Day and Atonement. I'm looking forward to Mr Pip coming out in a couple of days time ..
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On this general theme, may I recommend David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas. The movie version was an epic fail, but the novel is sensational.
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Hard News: No Red Wedding, in reply to George Darroch,
That's really good to hear, George. Considerably reassured.
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Hard News: No Red Wedding, in reply to Cecelia,
Thanks Cecilia for relaying that response from Kevin Hague.
I'll have to say that I'm not all that reassured by it. The example of Sir Paul Callaghan and the high dosage Vit C is not really applicable as Sir Paul would certainly not have been expecting public funding to cover it. It is worrying that the Greens health spokesperson is making a case for allocation of public funds for 'therapies with no proven benefits' - hardly an evidence based approach. For prevention of bowel cancer, oh how much better it would be to allocate more funding to stepping up routine colonoscopic screening, there is very good evidence that it is an effective intervention. Having had a parent and a parent in law both die of bowel cancer I take a strong personal interest. -
Hard News: No Red Wedding, in reply to Paul Williams,
Mallard on the other hand, I personally think, would be a great Speaker.
Poacher turned gamekeeper..?
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Amazingly, Stephen R, John Morrison wasn't even the most obnoxious candidate in the debate last night. That was Rob Goulden, who was petty, negative and vindictive throughout. He got a resounding boo from the audience when he slagged off Mayor Celia for cycling to the airport to meet Hillary Clinton that time.
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Speaker: You ain't from round here, in reply to Christopher Nimmo,
Did you go to the mayoral debate at Massey last night, Christopher?
That event was brought up by someone in the audience to challenge John Morrison, although unfortunately the person asking the question was very tedious and rambling and it was difficult to work out what he was asking. John Morrison certainly came across as being a bit of a sexist dinosaur. The live Twitter feed commentating on the event was hilarious at times - they parodied John M for a while:
Shut up Celia, the Old Boys are talking! -
Hard News: The shaky ground of…, in reply to Lucy Stewart,
This minds me of a blog post I read not so long ago - wish I could remember where - talking about how the new way to avoid hiring women/POC in Silicon Valley is "culture fit", e.g., "we're really impressed by your skills but you're not a good culture fit for the company". Like many of those insidious ideas, there's some truth to it, but it's also code for "you're not like us".
OTOH, is there really much difference between assessing the suitability of the candidate to work well in the team, and assessing cultural fit?
I'm not disputing for a moment that some organisations could do with wholesale culture changes .. like those Silicon Valley ones you mention.
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It was interesting to hear the three contenders on Morning Report this morning (around 8:20 am). I thought Robertson played it rather badly - he talked about the need for unity, but then used the occasion to strongly push himself as leader and make it about himself, which didn't exactly come across as very .. unified. I really wanted him to do better. The other two both played it pretty well.