Posts by Paul Campbell
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Speaker: Catalonia, interrupted,
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I feel there’s a rule of thumb this sort of constitutional change requires a super-majority, say a 2/3 majority, otherwise the results are chaos and recriminations (for a great modern example the ongoing brexit clusterfuck)
(which doesn't excuse the Spanish government's overreach)
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Speaker: Drug History: What happened…,
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In 1980 I bought a small cottage in Waitati north of Dunedin, summer was amazing, the vege garden turned out to be full of “self seeded” poppies, one morning they were all gone ….
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Hard News: Music: Some deep belief,
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I saw the movie last night, there's a scene where they explain that he's tried a different drug now and it's worked ... they didn't go into details, but it wasn't just "you're cured".
The movie was great, not some airbrushed hagiography, but also not a tell all assassination - something in between warts and all.
It's also a bit of an homage to Dunedin, wonderfully quirky shots of everyday places made special, if you are from here you probably should go just for that
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Hard News: Music: Some deep belief,
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Verlaines: Dunedin Spleen
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Hard News: Digital persuasion and the…,
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The US also has the "fairness doctrine" which essentially required the users of the public airwaves to be politically neutral, effects of that spun over into cable (because much of cable is also on satellite which is over the air)
Sadly it was repealed by the Republicans in the late 80s
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Hard News: Music: The urgency of Mr Arabia,
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7 Nation Army
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Hard News: These things we must now change,
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How is it he's allowed to sell guns in NZ? he was jailed in the US for attempting to smuggle guns (into NZ)
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Hard News: These things we must now change,
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To be fair that's something that happens at every Indian airport these days, they've reduced some of the more aggressive security stuff inside the airports, but added a front line screening at the door, I guess to keep out the bombers.
Contrast this with NZ where normally you almost never see cops with guns, except that one guy at Dunedin airport who just seems so out of place
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Hard News: These things we must now change,
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+1 - I also lived in the US for 20 years, the whole guns as quasi-religious deities thing there is just sad ... and dangerous - more guns in homes means more deaths (suicide, kids, accidents, domestic violence) - given that I don't see any reason why "collecting" has any real reason to exist in NZ
I'd go further, I think that sport shooting (handguns etc) should be banned too, so we miss out on an Olympic medal every century or so, who cares
I'll make my previous suggestion again - the "good keen man test": if you want to keep your arms license you have to turn in a brace of deer tails to the police every year
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Hard News: These things we must now change,
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Sigh, just like Judaism, there is no Muslim pope - they have a tradition of scholarly treatments of their religious books, Rabbis argue about the Talmud, Imams argue about the Quran - they don't all agree - there are no absolute religious authorities in the sense that the Pope is.
So all you're doing is picking the views that confirm your world view, it's a bit like deciding that white supremacists represent all white people when we all know they are a tiny but dangerous minority (as equally are ISIS and Al Qaeda )