Posts by Joe Wylie
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Up Front: Fringe of Darkness, in reply to Katharine Moody,
We don't even have a Crown Research Institute devoted to social science.
If you don't count this bunch of immaculately academically credentialed social scientists toiling for the Crown.
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Up Front: Fringe of Darkness, in reply to Katharine Moody,
No I can't, he's not named.
If it were simply a matter of "sending the police around" that shouldn't be a major problem. After all, they have their methods once they're motivated. As it seems plain that they're not for whatever reasons, I don't believe that it was in Anke Richter's immediate power to put a stop to the alleged "walking and stalking".
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Up Front: Fringe of Darkness, in reply to Katharine Moody,
Should we be interviewing him for a book - or sending the police around?
The last few paragraphs of Anke Richter's article make it plain why, according to her own judgement and the expertise of those she credits, she took the course she did. As it's now in the public domain, presumably you can do what you wish with the information she's supplied.
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Up Front: Fringe of Darkness, in reply to Katharine Moody,
As I said earlier, we needed to listen to that guy who said,
“In the end,” he says, gripping his coffee mug hard, “guys will just be wanking over your stories.”
Having read that in context in Anke's article I'm frankly puzzled as to why you'd single out a statement which, perhaps more than any other single quote from any of the unreconstructed Potter alumni, encapsulates the breathtaking lack of insight from those who'd happily outsource their moral compass to a charlatan.
There are other "male voices" I find it vastly more worthwhile to recall. For example, the old acquaintance who, back before Potter's unmasking, mentioned that he'd attended one of the then-ratcatcher's pre-centrepoint seminars.
So how did he find that?
"A randy old man talking bullshit". -
Legal Beagle: Cameron Slater: computer hacker?, in reply to Steve Barnes,
So it would seem that if you employed someone with a “photographic Memory” to read the formula for a top secret widget then has any law been broken? and if you then manufacture said widget and claimed you were “told by an associate” how to design and manufacture said widget, what law has been broken?
Seems like the kind of hypothetical that can only be kept aloft by frantically flapping one's willingly suspended critical faculties. I'm thinking of an account by an Australian detective, of attempting to loosen the tongue of a person of interest by driving him around various rural crime scenes. As they sped past a give way sign the guy says "Did you see the 29 bullet holes in that sign?"
Later the cop tells his boss "I think I've finally met someone with a genuine photographic memory".
"Bullshit", says his grizzled superior, "My assumption would be that he's the bastard who put those bullet holes there." -
Envirologue: 1080, "eco-terrorism" and agendas, in reply to Rosemary McDonald,
What Ben Benfield says is correct.
Whatever the merits of Benfield's track record as an anti-1080 campaigner, he's not judge and jury on this case. If there was good reason to expect the pending court case to repeat the murky machinations of the media he might be the best we have, but I doubt if we're there yet.
(and yes,,,I did realise it was a press release from SHOT :))
SHOT's Laurie Collins doesn't let the issue's importance distract him from keeping things narrowly partisan: “Only NZ First has had the guts to stand up on behalf of the increasing numbers of Kiwis opposed to the destruction 1080 causes the ecosystem."
Collins has something of an ongoing relationship with NZ First's Richard "Wogistan" Prosser. In the usual NZ First fashion, environmental concerns are treated as narrowly selective single issues. We've just had another example of this with Denis O'Rourke's self-serving sniping at former ECAN councillor Eugenie Sage. Despite his chairing the trust that oversaw foreign banks apparently gaining control of Canterbury's water, O'Rourke still attempts a bit of arse-covering by invoking the ancient NZ First tradition of attacking the Greens.
SHOT and whoever they're currently allied with don't own the 1080 extortion issue. There are others with just as much skin in the game.
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Polity: Saudi sheep: Misappropriating…, in reply to Alfie,
Hey... look over there! It's a snow leopard!
Heh! You might give someone ideas. In Owen Marshall's novel A Many Coated Man, set in mid-21st century NZ, there's a passing mention of feral snow leopards having been "acclimatised" and established as apex predators in the South Island high country.
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Polity: TPP, eh?, in reply to izogi,
I haven’t seen the book but unless all jokes were shown to have been published more than 50 years earlier, can anyone see a way by which the publisher could have deemed it legal to publish at all? I can’t see how Fair Dealing would apply.
My only beef at the time I received The Penguin Book of New Zealand Jokes - it was a well-meant gift - was that very few had a genuine NZ connection. It did have a chapter specifically dedicated to stuff sourced from the internet, which possibly had a novelty value back then. If this effort by ABC stalwart Phillip Adams is any indication, there's a publishing market catering to folks who prefer reading to going online.
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Polity: TPP, eh?, in reply to izogi,
John Barnett of South Pacific Pictures has been on a soap-box in the last few days, arguing the same-old “why shouldn’t they be paid for an extra 20 years??” line.
Presumably the same Barnett who was involved as an editor in compiling a pair of "NZ jokes" collections for Penguin. While I could happily exit this world without sighting the second volume, he freely admits in his intro to the 1996 Penguin Book of New Zealand Jokes that many were gleaned from the internet. Certainly there was no suggestion that any kind of copyright was due to anyone but the harvesters of a bunch of up for grabs material.
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Polity: TPP, eh?, in reply to Stephen Judd,
Ask yourself, how much trust you would like to place in Hooton.
Be gentle with Hooton, he's easily confused:
"there is a great story about Mandela wanting a flash suit in which to leave prison, in order to send an important political message to the financial markets, the military and white South Africans. I can’t remember if I had any pre-release impression of Mandela back then, but I probably assumed he was a Castro or Che Guevara type figure. The Armani suit (or whatever it was) confused me."