Posts by Tom Beard
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I don't think this shift is all that new: when I came to NZ from the UK over 30 years ago, I was already having to spell my last name for them, to distinguish it from "Baird". Since then, I've been fortunate enough to grow a mnemonic device on my face to remind people of the correct spelling.
And certain English classes have their own vowel shift in the opposite direction: if I'd have been born in a slightly different part of the southeast, I would have said "over 30 yairs ago". It reminds me of the upper-class greeting: "air hair lair there".
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What was Noelle McCathy on about today with Garry Moore?
She was talking of private security guards in the Streets of Christchurch hired by the local firms. Garry didn't know what she was on about & neither do I.
Possibly something like this:
Central Christchurch landlord Anthony Gough said business owners were concerned about safety on the streeets and had hired "ambassadors" to help keep the inner city safe.
"It's something nobody likes to hear about and is certainly something we would like to try to stamp out," he said.
The private security guards patrolled the streets seven days a week from 11am to 9pm and may soon be supplemented by a night team called Walkwise, he said.
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Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. If you say that you saw a horse trotting down Lambton Quay, I'd say "Really? That's unusual." If you say you saw a zebra, I'd say "Really?! Do you have a photo?" If you say you saw a unicorn, I'd suggest that some sort of veterinary examination would be in order before I would believe you.
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I think its reasonably plain that anecdotes are not "science", but anecdotes are still evidence, and frankly it is absurd to claim otherwise.
I tend towards the view that "anecdotal evidence" is a contradiction in terms. A sample of 1 is not statistically significant.
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Personally, I like "I can has Heisenburger?" but that's a level of geekery well beyond that which is socially acceptable.
Not here it isn't!
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And the "Sensible" Sentencing Trust is an egregious offender
And I think that the media should be banned from using the terms "sensible" and "Garth McVicar" in the same breath.
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That Andrew Llewellyn. Sends a Christmas card to anyone, full of holiday greetings. What a great guy! Feel the love.
I think he may end up to be the first person to be spammed with nuts.
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With any luck, we'll no longer hear from the likes of "Elite Herbals", inviting the obvious Lolcat:
Invisbl Herbalz
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Perhaps he means to say something like this:
[Let's] stop the underfunding of the higher income areas and [stop giving funding] to the poor areas [above higher income areas].
Yeah, them po' folks have had it too easy for far too long (?)
That's pretty much how I read it too, but his writing is so appalling it's hard to tell for sure. Someone who rails against "creat[ing] a country of average people" should ensure that his writing is at least up to average standard. Or perhaps he grew up in a criminally-underfunded higher-income area, which would explain his inadequate education.
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I'd like to see an actual random blog, with entries on such topics as even-toed ungulates, Berlin-Mitte, sludge metal, representation theory and Saskatchewan Highway 782 (selected courtesy of hitting the "Random article" link at Wikipedia).
And very informative articles they were. Personally, I'd always had trouble distinguishing between Stoner Sludge Metal and Southern Sludgecore, but now I know.
By comparison, Taillie's "random thoughts" are a fairly predictable melange of vapid salesman's "wisdom" and barely coherent right-wing rants:
Lets stop the underfunding of the higher income areas and give it to the poor areas. What are we trying to do, create a country of average people!
Quite apart from the apostrophe catastrophe (TM Jo Hubris) and other punctuation crimes, what is that first sentence supposed to mean?