Posts by Joe Wylie
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Hard News: Dirty Politics, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
This strikes me as inverse 'cyber-bullying' somehow
You really do have to contort yourself to read that piece as anything other than a deliberate posthumous smear. Something similar was attempted twenty years ago in Australia when the Brisbane Courier-Mail attempted to portray the late historian Manning Clark as a possible Soviet agent.
In that case the motive was clear. It was simply another offensive in Australia's heavily politically charged history wars, where academics such as Geoffrey Blainey and Keith Windschuttle have espoused theories on the the treatment of indigenous Australians that bear a disturbing resemblance to holocaust denial.
Without a clear point, Ric Stevens's piece reads like an isolated fart on the final day of the silly season. Having recently finished Ginger Strand's fascinating The Brothers Vonnegut: Science and Fiction in the House of Magic, about Kurt Vonnegut and his older scientist sibling Bernard's work for General Electric in the immediate post-WW2 years, the scenario of denigrating scientists who held genuine moral concerns as enemy agents is instantly recognisable.
While Ric Stevens has obviously done some digging on Maurice Wilkins, it appears to be in the service of skullduggery rather than in illuminating the achievements of a distinguished New Zealander fallen into obscurity. The only other Stevens piece I can recall, memorable mainly for its contempt for whatever might be left of its readers' intelligence, was his convoluted and pretentious defence of the paper's abysmal "cartoonist".
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Great piece Russell, great thread.
Here's an old fave featuring a very snappy Lemmy: -
Hard News: Music: The year the…, in reply to Mike O'Connell,
Joseph Spence and Santa Claus is comin' to Town.
Thanks for the reminder, you can never have too much Joseph Spence. He's like a cross between Popeye the Sailor and Thelonious Monk.
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Hard News: Cheers, in reply to Russell Brown,
Popped up on the Horny-Handed Subs of Toil Facebook group.
Subs were doing bleak career humour years before reporters.
The Mini Glitter Gel Pen is a particularly impressive touch.
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Hard News: Cheers, in reply to Russell Brown,
Journalistic decline solved. Not enough glitter.
A bunch of those turn up at your local $2 shop after Scout folded?
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Hard News: PAWOTY: We are all quaxing now, in reply to B Jones,
I reckon we need a word for taking the trolley all the way home. You could name it after my neighbours, who currently have two in their yard.
Someone did a story on trolley "theft" in Sydney around 15 years ago. The stuff about how supermarkets recover "borrowed" trolleys was interesting, especially the story of the old lady who did a weekly run of over three kilometres from Bondi Junction. The supermarket was aware of her "arrangement". As they did a regular sweep with a special trolley van, knowing exactly where she'd left it didn't bother them too much.
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Polity: Cold, calculated and cynical, in reply to izogi,
Dr Bronwyn Hayward as the head of political science at UC (2:30 onwards), claiming the PM’s been shifting over time to a more recent behaviour that’s very polarising...Not that it’s an especially new insight or that her opinion will affect polls. I just found it an interesting thing to hear on The Panel.
Interesting to hear from Dr. Hayward, who's nothing if not a seasoned Key watcher. I believe it was in early 2007 that Key gave of his time as recently-minted opposition leader to meet with and answer questions from Dr. Hayward's students. The impression he made, even on those predisposed to regard him as hellspawn incarnate, seemed to be of a disarmingly straightforward consensus builder.
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Hard News: Dirty Politics, in reply to Angela Hart,
Apparently it is ridiculous to think that the police acted in any way unusually...
While Police Association President Greg O'Connor won't be standing for re-election, voting doesn't appear to be due until next October. Whatever his replacement's views might be on issues such as the perceived politicisation of the force, continuing O'Connor's reactionary attitude on cannabis law reform promises to be problematic, even for an opportunist like Collins.
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Speaker: The Spirit Level, in reply to John Farrell,
You misunderstood my irony.
There's a bit of that about lately.
Just to be clear on middle class values - when the state no longer offers the means for every citizen to maximise their potential through educational opportunities, such things become restricted to those who can afford them. That libertarian link assumes that everyone starts from scratch with the kind of awareness of possibilities that have become the stuff of class privilege.Many of the post-WW2 generation were able to rise from working class families to the professions with only a state school education. Yet they'll happily spend more than the annual income of a beneficiary on private school fees to give their kids what they believe is an advantage.
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Hard News: Art with a job to do, in reply to Russell Brown,
"Then there was Red Peak, which wasn’t a flag. Nice abstract art but not a flag.
It was Red Peak that made me vote. I had believed social media to be a serious reflection of public opinion. I had to do what I could."
"I don't know what I like, but I know about art"?