The blind adherence to the Single Conventions on…

and yes, religion is generally organised, one way or the other...

Anyway, all this is way offthread, and interesting as it has been for me to read your insights/opinions, I'll leave it here.

Edit button, edit button, wherefore art thou edit button?

Why do you think so? I didnt say I wouldnt do anything about matters I find injust – just that I wont ally myself with religious people. As for it being 'a blinkered view' -…

Agree with that stance Brian – will not ally myself with christians (or ANY religious group whatsoever)however-

In which case you're going to be leaving a lot of social problems well alone. Many causes are advanced by religious groups, and when it comes to penal reform the link with churches…

I ended up in a police holding cell after a drinking binge. The best analogy of the environment there, is an old style public toilet. If prison is anything like that, I'll rest my case.

Ok, I suspect a public toilet could be good or bad, depending on where you…

Oh, and make fines proportional to income, duh.

A couple of years ago I was astounded by the news that some very rich bugger wouldn't be getting the $3,000 fine that the judge would have normally given for cocaine possession, because he was so rich that it wouldn't have had…

1: Pardons. Yes, really, and lots of them. Go nuts.

2: Repeal prohibition. Let adults be, well, adults. Give the poor, struggling chemists something useful to sell again. There were no more drug addicts in the world when it was perfectly legal than there are now,…

I think one does have to face the fact that a lot of the organisations out the doing good are Christian; in some cases this is incidental.

To me going in to bat against Garth McVicar and David Garrett counts more.

The people at The “Rethinking Crime and Punishment” project are people who apply themselves to this issue and more, restorative justice etc, and they are looking…

Evernote is pretty cool.

I still prefer Zotero, although being wedded to memory hungry Firefox is starting to become a downside. Ironically, I lost a year of biblio when upgrading Zotero to their 2.0 web-snyc version, which…

I had the computer back the next day with a new, larger drive and Time Machine had an…

Green-lipped mussels, before you ask.

And it wasn't just the pre-electronic world that was cruel: I saw a note up at the Wellington bus station a while ago asking…

(Sort of irrelevant, but I love trotting out that anecdote.)

Don't just back it up. Leave a copy in another town.

I studied under a guy who was rumoured to have accidentally dropped his almost-completed PhD thesis down a stormwater drain. The pre-electronic world was a cruel place.

Allegedly true story of a guy one of my lecturers knew. Physics PhD in early 80s working with lasers in prefab building. All but finished PhD, laser malfunctioned and burnt the building down...

Did the frickin shark survive?

Back up your thesis too.

Don't just back it up. Leave a copy in another town.

Allegedly true story of a guy one of my lecturers knew. Physics PhD in early 80s working with lasers in prefab building. All but finished PhD, laser malfunctioned and burnt the building down...

– my hard drive
died and I have lost all my emails, contacts and
other data and about 5 months worth of work ...
...sob ...sigh
– I must back up
– I must back up...
– tsumi, tsumi
– digital tsunami...

O shit.
Will email you as soon as…

Speaking of restraining and constraining:
Containers are for Shipping Goods !
ergo Sewers are for Kipping Bads...

...So let's just stack a whole…

"Don't give me your opinion. Give me your experience."

Excellent. As someone whose identity now eludes me once said, there are few things more useless than an opinion. Experience, on the other hand . . .

McVicar: Containers – Our Soldiers Would Love Them, even though tents are probably easier to carry.

I see my plan of preemptively out-McVicaring McVicar is working. My McVicar is heaps more McVicar than his McVicar.

...... as an aside I've been sitting on the information since the time of the napier police…

I'm told that in the late-1970s through early 1980s it was actually useful. Most politicians stopped taking it seriously as a representation of broad public opinion in the 1990s.

Any coincidence between the above and the ascendancy of Big Media Inc?

I'm told that in the late-1970s through early 1980s it was actually useful.

It was, but people like Gordon Dryden brought a very different philosophy to the radio than most of today's hosts.

I frequently quote him, in the context of explaining Public Address, on what he used to tell…

So this talk about expensive, or affordable (depending on your point of view), prisons, shipping containers and what not .... Isn't that just the noise the machine makes when it's warming up, just before the privatisation?
It is a rather lucrative business sector, after all. one of the few sectors…

I'm told that in the late-1970s through early 1980s it was actually useful. Most politicians stopped taking it seriously as a representation of broad public opinion in the 1990s.

There should some rule that talkback radio disqualifies you from having another job in media

Or being a (super) mayor.

It's easy to dismiss talkback radio as the insane ravings of hyped morons. Which it is.

On Saturday, I watched the unjustly buried Mike Judge satire from a couple of years ago, Idiocracy . It was pretty scathing stuff. I like to think that we aren't getting stupider, and that…

Okay, I'm not looking for those people to make important decisions, lead the country, etc. But shouldn't the Prime Minister be able to understand it?

To be fair, it wasn't a direct quote, and I suspect that it might have been NZPA that screwed it up.

They need a lot of painting, and having usually been at sea, corrosion is quite an issue. Also, for living purposes, the main…

I spent part of yesterday lying in a hospital bed listening to Danny Watson and a chorus of morons on Newstalk ZB work themselves into a frenzy

It's easy to dismiss talkback radio as the insane ravings of hyped morons. Which it is.

But what really, really, irks me about…

So how can they save so much money? They can't. The $643,000 vs $380,000 figures are rigged.

Thank you Keith. This was what I was writing about yesterday, although in a roundabout way.
As soon as you hear this govt. claiming to save money you have to ask "who…

No wait, something's backwards about that...

Putting aside the (highly valid and needed) discussions around WHY we have such a burgeoning prison population, the point about an immediate need for prison beds at efficient cost very much stands.
And properly designed cells using containers on existing prison land does seem a valid possible response to…

But having been at what was billed as a "Debate" between David Garrett and Kim Workman about the ACT 3 strikes policy, it seems the ACT view is that we have tried…

Prisoners/humans need higher standards for accomodation and there won't be too much money for an Architech on this project I'm sure.

Prisoners don't play well with others and are likely to bang…

The thought that the gummint is cutting funding on education (adult education, enviro schools), in favour of building more prisons is just a touch depressing. What happened to the debate to alternatives to prison?

At this rate, the country's going to face an ambulance shortage – they'll all be @…

See Ambrose Bierce:

FOOL, n. A person who pervades the domain of intellectual speculation and diffuses himself through the channels of moral activity. He is omnific, omniform, omnipercipient, omniscience, omnipotent. He it was who invented letters,…

Just wondering now what the others are.

Laziness is another.

Hope you are feeling better and back into action, Russell.

Feeling better, yes. Back into action would be rather overstating things.

Just wondering now what the others are.

Incidentally, does anyone else find the ad to the left of this screen (the flashing one)…

“Cost per bed” had nothing to do with beds, or cells. It's just the total cost of the prison divided by the prisoners it's designed to hold.

I'm staggered at how many people don't understand this very basic point.

I spent part of yesterday lying in a hospital bed listening…