Posts by Tom Beard
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Belatedly:
PAS is currently like a really cool nighclub that plays all the right music.
Some might say that it's more like a comfortable little cafe that plays some really naff music, like the Black Seeds or something. But not me, obviously.
-
"What did you do if you were late?" "Well son, in those day, people just had to suck on it".
Entire episodes of Seinfeld rely upon communication disasters that now seem irrelevant. Watching them now is a bit like watching a Shakespearean play where the plot hinges on a letter being dispatched on horseback. The enjoyment isn't diminished, but it seems like a period piece, and reminds one that interpersonal dynamics and social norms are sometimes radically altered by technology.
-
__the phoneline is essential__
Humankind managed for 40,000 years without one.
But society was not then based around large, spread-out cities and distributed social networks. If you live in a subsistence village where all your family are within five minutes' walk, and your job involves spreading muck on fields, then you're fine. But if your friends and family are distributed over hundreds of km, and your work requires you to contact or be contacted by people over the same range, or you need to call the landlord to fix the sink or the electricity company to arrange payment, then you're very quickly going to become socially and financially isolated.
Having said that, a landline is far from essential, and I generally get by very rarely using voice calls on my mobile: my phone's primarily for text, FB, email and web browsing. So it might be most correct to say that in today's societies, some form of electornic communication device is essential.
-
I'll have to wait a while before I think about a fixed connection: I grumble about Woosh, but as I may have to move flat sometime soon, I'm not going to bother with all the hassle and expense of a physical installation. The other things about Woosh: it's unbundled already, and since I don't need a landline I don't have to pay for it.
Now, if only it were real broadband.
-
Banks hasn't gone up much in my estimation:
we could have seen hundreds of beautiful pre-1940s homes across this city being demolished and replaced with crass modern architecture
Rather than a blanket ban on demolition, how about trying to ensure that if they are demolished, they get replaced with good modern architecture? And what about protecting beautiful post-1940s home? There must be some significant Group houses (among others) in Auckland that would not be any better protected under that.
intended to protect the spacious and tree-filled qualities of sites characterised by generously sized lots, wide roads and lower densities often with period housing.
It could be said that it's some of those qualities that have got Auckland into the sprawling, gridlocked mess it is now.
-
a screaming need to find ways to enjoy the current dairy bounty without exhausting all our clean water, and to try and curb our pastoral greenhouse gas problem
Would something like this help? Or could something like that be adapted for pastoral farming?
-
In urban design, there's a well established principle that there is a maximum distance or time beyond which most people can't be arsed walking. I think it's about 10 minutes.
My bet is that there is a similar limit for cycling. Maybe it's 20 minutes.
Actually, I was just looking over some GIS analysis of just this thing in Wellington, and the upper threshold for walking to work seems to be 20 minutes for most people (I know people on this list who walk at least twice this, but that's where rates seem to drop), and that people don't start cycling until after that distance.
Cycling is influenced by topography even more than walking is, and since anywhere that's too far to walk is usually too steep to cycle, Wellington has a fairly low (3%) rate of cycling to work. The exception is places like Newtown and Berhampore, which have relatively high rates of cycling because they're at the outer reaches of walkabilty yet have a flattish route to town.
Here's a question for Wellington cyclists or would-be cyclists: where are the bottlenecks, gaps and deathtraps in what one might exaggeratedly call our "cycle network"? Are there some suburbs with frustrated pools of cyclists who could be unleashed given a small stretch of cycle lane or an improved intersection?
-
Daleaway, I think you're right. I wasn't aware of either Kiri vs Halyey or T&S until I picked up the SST today, so "blanket coverage" might be a bit of an overstatement.
And I think that while trying to compile a hierarchy of genres is a dodgy business on so many levels, hierarchies of talent or "interestingness" might be possible. A comparison between Kiri & Hayley isn't about setting opera above the likes of Infinite Fying Kick or the Rolling Stones; it's like comparing Ornette Coleman to Kenny G. An artist can often be seen as genius by a whole range of people (who may not even like that particular genre ) if they test and redefine the limits of their art. It's about talent, imagination and inspiration vs homogenisation, predictability and marketing. Within the realm of "pop music", I think that even staunch defenders of popular culture would consider the likes of The Beatles, Kraftwerk or Prince as being on a different level from Westlife or The Feelers.
Having said that, I don't think that Dame K has done much testing or redefining lately (if at all). The real problem with "popera" is that it's not good pop and it's not good opera.
-
i cringed when i arrived in london and heard the east lundun accent. sounded like baby talk
Yer 'avin' a larf, innit?!
-
Tom: are those the same people who rhyme house with mice?
Quite possibly. Certainly, those who have a hice worth more than faive hundred thiesand piends.
I was beaten at school for being able to distinguish my vowel sounds, so I do it,
I hear you! I wasn't exactly made welcome by rool koiwois when I moved here (a common phrase in the playgrounds of the day was "bash a pom a day"), so I didn't feel any need to fit in, and in fact I emphasised my differences.