Posts by Rich of Observationz
-
…do you want (at least some) MPs to be selected by (and therefore accountable to) parties?
MPs are selected by parties in all systems. Electorate MPs are chosen by the party, and their chance of being elected depends on the electorate. Being #1 on the list or National candidate for Helensville both guarantee election.
If you don't like the people on the list, don't vote for the party. (or join it and agitate for better candidates).
-
one might assume that ten years later they might have found an effective way of dealing with being found by goatherders
What they could do is flood the battlefield pre-combat with hordes of Ozzie Ozborne clones hell-bent on exploding any goats they found (1).
Then any stray goat herders would become pre-occupied with protecting their goats from immolation and not concern themselves with lurking troopers. Also, if they did stray too close, the troopers could RPG the goats and the goatherds would simply blame it on Heavy Metal Megaslaughter.
1. Ok, this is wierdly undocumented, but Ozborne apparently once exploded a goat onstage. I learnt this in primary school at the age of 8, so it must be true.
-
The site looks really nice, but I'm a bit wary about the Electoral Commission doing this sort of thing.
To me, their advocacy should be limited to encouraging people to vote and explaining how to do so. This seems to be a bit beyond that (one could do a similar thing where you entered your views on private property, individual vs community rights and had the parties ranked for you. Would that be ok for the EC?).
It's not that I see the site as a bad idea, just the EC's involvement.
-
I read a similar story about an SAS patrol in the first Gulf War being found by a young goat herder and compromised as a result of not wanting to kill him.
Of course, correct SOP in these circumstances is to disembowel the kid and garrote him with his own entrails, before feeding his liver to the youngest member of the patrol by way of an initiation rite.
-
Hard News: Auckland City Nights, in reply to Islander,
co0mments arnt posted - but then turn up twice
Perhaps some of your traffic is using RFC1149 tonight
-
It’s how the peer review function (ie: quality control) has traditionally been managed. There are other ways to do that which don’t involve creating private gatekeepers who can charge accordingly
I'd have thought so.
How does peer review work? Do the reviewers get chosen by the journal, the author, their department head? Do they get paid and by who? Are their names and reports public?
-
Hard News: Steve, 1999, in reply to Russell Brown,
So, dock your iPod to a computer and play the files off it through an audio interface attached to the computer.
For $1000 you could get a neat little ITX box and a quality interface.
The iPod does act as a USB drive, doesn't it?
-
So they can finally poll as well the the Greens?
This morning's poll is probably an outlier, but the Green vote seems to be going up and Labour's going down.
I'd think that 25% must be close to the core tribal vote for Labour.
-
The alternative model that is being developed is the open access academic journals
Can someone explain for a lay person why papers can’t just be put on the university website under creative commons? Why do we need the journals at all – other than them acting as “cricket scorers” for the academic community?
-
Hard News: Complaint and culture, in reply to Ross Mason,
Hiring some science/engineering intelligent subbies would be useful
Gotcha. There are no sub-editors in a typical TV newsroom, I expect a formal clarification.