Hard News: Buy now: spend the recession inside!
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What Keith Locke is saying is entirely consonant with the Green Party charter principles. He's batting from a position of principle.
The government, including the Prime Minister, are not. The have cleverly espoused the meme that it's OK to trade with partners who have less-than-perfect human rights records, because with have very few options otherwise.
I can see the practicality of that, but how come we can't expect our trade partners to still trade with us even if we raise serious issues about their human rights abuses ? It's not like their economies depend on human rights abuses in order to trade with us.
On the local produce discussion, it's really about making choices that lower the overall environmental footprint, as well as support the local community.
Choose local when you can, choose organic when you can. For instance, I bought some coconut cream in the weekend. Ceteris paribus , I chose the Samoan tin over the Thai one even though it was more expensive. Lower food miles & support your neighbors/cousins and all that.
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BW - exactly. Either Ralston doesn't know about how the contemporary media works (in the manner you describe), or he doesn't care.
He only has to look at today's issue of the Herald where two substantial articles on the Bear Sterns collapse come from the Independent. In fact content on both of the relevant pages (pages 2-3 of the Business segment) are sourced from the Indy, Reuters and AP. Does Ralston criticise Granny for doing this?
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Paul - indeed. The more I think about it, the more I wonder whether this little outburst is related to the fact that RB (and PA more generally) are not only refusing to follow the "Labour government in its dying days" media narrative, but have even had the gumption to criticize it.
Thoughts?
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I'm wondering if in part Ralston's rant was set off by the perceived personal insult that Media 7 is/ will be the new Backchat. Remember what happened to Bill's old show?
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No, but I do remember the pomposity of "The Ralston Group".
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He does seem to rant a bit, and even plays up at being a curmudgeon
When did the media start to think that "curmudgeon" no longer meant "a crusty irascible cantankerous old person full of stubborn ideas" and turned into a positive term? Both the DomPost and Listener have self-described curmudgeons on their rosters (Karl du Fresne & Hamish Keith), so I guess they're all going for the "grumpy baby-boomer" market.
As for bloggers not doing any primary research, Ralston ought to do some research himself on what bloggers do. In my time writing WellUrban I spent what must have been hundreds of hours not just studying reports, aerial photos, GIS data, census data and historical records, but getting out there and investigating sites & buildings myself. I spent a lot of time correcting factual errors in the local media, and get frustrated when they continue to get things wrong. Case in point: today's Dom has a headline "Flats may overshadow historic capital church". Unless they've discovered that the sun now shines from the southeast (and that would be a real story!), there's no way in which the proposed building will cast a shadow over St Mary's.
The 100-mile diet thing might be worth trying for primary ingredients (which are bulky and inefficient to transport), but doing without a range of spices and special ingredients seems unneccesarily limiting. Besides, while NZ now makes some passable gins, until there's a good local vermouth a 100-mile diet will just not be feasible.
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The "original research" one is interesting.
Far too often in conventional news reporting, that means getting on the blower to the annointed talking heads of various interest groups. The GE "debate" was the prime example of that. Very, very few journalists really tried to get to grips with the issues.
OTOH, there is an enormous amount of public research out there to be analysed, and that's something that the likes of DPF (whatever you think of his commenters) and Keith Ng do so well.
I just love the fact that we have more public data to chew on than ever. It was through recourse to such data that Keith was able to more or less instantly discredit Deborah Coddington's 'Asian Angst' story.
For his trouble, of course, he was deemed an "insane blogger" ...
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Tom, perfect example of what I just wrote about.
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Tom - your pertinent examples of blog-based primary research, combined with some other examples coming to my mind, make me wish to revise some of my earlier comments that bloggers often/usually only comment/analyze. It was a poor generalization on my part.
Your point about correcting factual errors made by the professional media (who are paid to know better) bears reiterating too.
RB's point about bloggers undertaking serious analysis of public documents ("secondary research" - or, rather, "research using secondary sources") is also important.
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Update: Apparently, composite input is fine, so forget what I said about that.
Also (and as I've mentioned before) bear in mid that digital integrated TVs (ie: a TV with a Freeview HD decoder built-in) are coming some time in the next six months.
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100 mile diet is nolonger sustainable in NZ.
We now have to import wheat to make NZs bread. Change in land use (crops to dairy) has resulted in the staples of our diet now come from overseas. -
I am a recent blog convert but it has been because of PA rather than a wider investigation of the blogsphere. The discussions here (and I mean all of you) provide a much-needed alternative to the shortcomings of mainstream media--most especially the NZH.
I was involved in an on-line survey of NZ journos last year (eventually published in the Pacific Journalism Review) and made much of one particular response to our question about use of new technology in the workplace viz "What the fuck has changing technology have to do with the news!!" In fact, it was the original title of a paper I did to the Jeanz conference in Wellington, until they persuaded me to swap if for something 'less contentious'. But it may well some up the Ralston response to seismic changes in news gathering and distribution.
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it could be that mr ralston is getting clannish, and having a rant on behalf of fellow op-ed writers and journalists at the herald, who have also been criticised by various PAS bloggers eg in regards to their criticims of the herald's coverage of the EFA.
but i'd agree with what someone has said previously - if you're writing your opinion publicly or you're going to take an editorial slant, then you have to accept that people will critique it. making personal attacks in response is just a little sad. it only shows he isn't able to debate the substantive issues.
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Also (and as I've mentioned before) bear in mid that digital integrated TVs (ie: a TV with a Freeview HD decoder built-in) are coming some time in the next six months.
Did that $6,500 Loewe have that? Back in the day when I used to sell them (CRT's mind, none of this new-fandangled plasma hoohaa), they already had models coming out with digital tuners included - I don't recall how, but around 2000ish we were watching a digital version of TV1 in Loewe's offices? If I recall it was coming off the Sky feed but was unencrypted so could be read by the European circuitry.
The beauty of them was that the signal stayed digital until the very last point of conversion for the screen - presumedly HDMI connections now achieve the same thing, but if you have to go composite, s-vid or component you are analogue converting in the box, just to digitally convert in the TV again.
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Tom - your pertinent examples of blog-based primary research, combined with some other examples coming to my mind, make me wish to revise some of my earlier comments that bloggers often/usually only comment/analyze. It was a poor generalization on my part.
I think that the generalisation is Ralston's: he may be intending "blogger" to mean "political blogger". It may indeed be the case that political bloggers do less investigation of primary sources than political journalists, but when it comes to fields such as technology, the environment, the arts, sport, economics and a whole host of other specialisations, there are plenty of bloggers doing their own research and writign based on their own experiences.
Besides, the whole idea that the value of journalists lies in them doing primary research is flawed. Do we expect science journalists to be the ones using test tubes, telescopes and radiosondes? Of course not. But we do rely on them to compare and examine the literature that comes from scientists, and to critique their methodology where appropriate. Come to think of it, that's the sort of thing that's much more likely to occur in the scientific blogosphere than in the general press, where coverage of science seems to be either "Shock horror!" or "Golly gee whiz!". Or worse: Muriel Newman.
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I wrote:
I don't recall how...
If I recall...How about THAT for short term memory... ahhhh... recall?
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Did that $6,500 Loewe have that?
Now you mention it, yes (although most other Loewe models don't).
They're advertising that feature, but Freeview NZ haven't approved, or even seen it. I'd like to know how well it works.
The beauty of them was that the signal stayed digital until the very last point of conversion for the screen - presumedly HDMI connections now achieve the same thing, but if you have to go composite, s-vid or component you are analogue converting in the box, just to digitally convert in the TV again.
I'm an HDMI fanboy now, even if it will let The Man stop us copying TV any time he likes. End-to-end digital video and audio in one slim cable. Our new set has three inputs too, which is actually just enough.
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Our new set has three inputs too, which is actually just enough.
Indeed. We bought a Bravia six months ago with just one HDMI slot.
Bugger.
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Indeed. We bought a Bravia six months ago with just one HDMI slot.
Bugger.The HDMI switchers are apparently okay, so that's an option.
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Oooh, thank you for that Russell. That has saved me time and effort searching for solutions. Seems they even accommodate the PS3.
I wonder if the msm would be as quick and helpful...
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sadly I put out bigger buck 3 years ago for a TV and explicitly asked about HDMI - no one had any idea what I was talking about so we had to go without - now we're stuck with a bunch of scart stuff
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I assume the integrated Freeview-TVs will all have video-out sockets?
Don't see much point in buying a TV where you can't record stuff on your VHS/DVD-R/HDD/Whatever.
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sadly I put out bigger buck 3 years ago for a TV and explicitly asked about HDMI - no one had any idea what I was talking about so we had to go without - now we're stuck with a bunch of scart stuff
Think about the people who bought "HD ready" sets here during the six-month window when they had HDMI but not HDCP support, which will be essential for viewing the HD TV programming. I'd be bloody furious about that ...
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I'm an HDMI fanboy now, even if it will let The Man stop us copying TV any time he likes. End-to-end digital video and audio in one slim cable.
Yeah, it's the fact that it enables full end-to-end digital (not just the cable) that excites (well, interests) me - one end being the conversion to digital within the camera capturing it, the other end being the last circuitry in your TV to turn that digital signal back into viewable audio for the ol eyes. Combine that with the resolution it's being captured at and you have the first real significant change in TV for aaaaaaaaaaaaaages in my mind.
and thanks for the quote-mess-fix =]
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HDMI but not HDCP support
Ouch. I actually thought the HDMI standard had HDCP within it, so I certainly would have been caught out with that...
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