Posts by Russell Brown
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Yes, Frank Haden wasn't all bad, and he did represent a reasonably coherent view. People might be surprised to learn where I met him: at a Skeptics conference, where we were both speaking.
His later writings on grammar were completely bonkers though.
Garth George would turn out the occasional good column until a couple of years ago. The lazy, deceptive cut-and-paste jobs in which he's been caught suggest that he really doesn't care any more.
McLeod? One in a blue moon she's great, but I generally don't both any more. She was tremendous in the 70s. Indeed, The Listener was extraordinarily fortunate then to have two contemporary writers who could illustrate their own writing. The other being Tom Scott.
It does seem to me that although there is more opinion being written in local print publications than ever, the quality seems to be draining away. I like Charlotte Grimshaw in Metro, though. She can write.
I probably should stop before I go into a career-limiting rant about certain other columnists.
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Hard News: The Wall and the Paper, in reply to giovanni tiso,
Who, the globe-trotting financier biker that the Listener has turned into a permanent advertorial for?
He's newsstand gold, I gather.
There are number of reasons to admire Gareth Morgan, but his godawful prose-writing isn't among them.
But that -- with very notable exceptions -- is The Listener these days. I flicked morosely through the new one, noting one lifeless intro after another. My suspicion is that without the superhuman subbing bench there, some of that copy would read even more badly than it does.
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Hard News: The Wall and the Paper, in reply to David Herkt,
[Russell, btw, I have to admit the phrase ‘in defence of Jonathan Marshall’s honour’ is a great one. I bow in admiration…]
I did smile as I typed it.
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Hard News: An excellent evening in Newtown, in reply to Jackie Clark,
So she’s like me, only bossier.
Good grief.
;-)
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Hard News: What Now?, in reply to Ross Mason,
I think the peak accelerations would be a pretty good measure of how close you were. The top at the Heathcote School was 2.2g vertical. But it was so short that the buillding do not have the opportunity to be chucked up.
How much does peak acceleration have to do with the nature of the shallow soil? Heathcote Primary is on shifting soil, it seems. David Haywood in Avonside wrote about his PC slamming into the wall next to his head and "shattering into parts". It sounded really violent.
OTOH, none of the first-person accounts or videos of the Japanese quake seem to show anything like that. It just went on for ages.
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Hard News: An excellent evening in Newtown, in reply to Sofie Bribiesca,
Woos… but yes,
An experience all on it’s own! :0
Dont rub your eyes or rub anything for that matterA female friend of mine has a story about a boyfriend who leapt out of bed on a Sunday morning to make cheese on toast sprinkled with freshly-chopped chilli ...
And then afterwards sensually reached down to be all lover-man ... yow. Cold bath, apparently.
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Field Theory: Japan moves, in reply to ,
Ya, It’s marginally better to watch for magical behavior in pet wilder-beast. Even better to use the telephone proper.
I'm going to disagree with both of you. Hadyn's problem tweet came from a newspaper. I had the same problem reporting on the Christchurch quake: I stopped quoting Newstalk ZB after a bogus report that the Christchurch airport control tower was down -- because I was promptly corrected via people on Twitter. OTOH, a clearly anecdotal tweet I passed on, in context, was reported as authoritative by 3 News.
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Field Theory: Japan moves, in reply to Steve Barnes,
Has anybody asked about the Pacific Islands? Has anybody heard anything?
The Pacific islands near us seem to have been okay.
Gareth Morgan's hotel in Galapagos got trashed, but.
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Field Theory: Japan moves, in reply to Robyn Gallagher,
I’m still in Tokyo and I’m having troublr convincing some concerned folks that it’s not a tsunami-ravaged, radioactive hellhole. Life goes on here in that ordinary, onwards Tokyo kind of way.
I thought that might be the case. Even the people in the innumerable first-person videos posted to the wires have generally seemed quite composed.
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Hard News: About Arie, in reply to BenWilson,
I'm stoked things are improving, Russell, and glad to have helped.
You so did. It's like Leo has had a chance to think since and he's decided he wants to engage. We're going in to see the Grinding Gear folks when they're through their deadline, and he's signed up for their closed beta. Is good.