Posts by Russell Brown
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Hard News: Limping Onwards, in reply to giovanni tiso,
When somebody tried to turn it into a reasoned, content-filled conversation, you came back with many more rejoinders of that tenor, dismissing all the propositions that you had no come back for and without actually arguing anything
I must agree. I’ve enjoyed the actual discussion that Danyl provoked. It has had content.
Danyl, how exactly do you think people should have responded to your original statement? Because it seems to me that the response was overwhelmingly in good faith, and some of what you’ve said hasn’t been.
Edit: Actually, that's not good enough on my part. If you say you're arguing in good faith, I accept that and I'm sorry for suggesting otherwise. And I'm sorry if you've felt monstered by the discussion or the gestalt or whatever. -
Hard News: Perverse Entertainment, in reply to Rex Widerstrom,
But surely so will the Timaru Herald and the Taranaki Daily news (both owned by Fairfax)? Even The Manawatu Standard, Marlborough Express, Nelson Mail, Waikato Times etc draw a lot of content from NZPA, unless things have changed since I last saw them.
I heard from someone at a regional Fairfax paper today. He said NZPA had provided 14 stories for his paper today. His colleagues had provided seven.
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Hard News: Limping Onwards, in reply to giovanni tiso,
It is – and I really don’t know how else to put this – funny you should say that. There will be an announcement hopefully soon about a new stage in that project, and involving some of the people on this very thread. Much work to do.
Including a guest post explaining yourself here. I will accept no less.
(I was at that presentation! That’s where we were first introduced.)
I recall. Or, rather, know that but don't. I basically remember everyone seeming really nice.
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Hard News: Limping Onwards, in reply to giovanni tiso,
Whether that’s because the academy attracts certain temperaments or whether it merely shapes ’em that way is largely moot in the face of the institutional pressure to operate almost entirely within closed, professionalised locii which means that academic intellectualism, if not exactly private, is in practice not more widely visible.
I’m not inclined to give academics such an easy pass on this one. They should in fact view it as their responsibility, even if their employer doesn’t reward them for it. Very few do. Too few.
I was struck when I talked at the launch of the Humanities Research Network about blogs and other modern communications by the way that nearly everything I said seemed to be news to those present. (But not, clearly, to Gio.)
The fact is that exercising that responsibility does mean doing so in the places where people are (I had some metaphor about graffiti on Roman walls, iirc), which are outside the perimeter.
What the Science Media Centre and SciBlogs have achieved should be an inspiration, but probably isn't the precise model for the humanities. Scientists can be summoned to shed light on empirical fact, but the women and men of letters should be there to provoke thought and provide context. That plugs in to a difficult part of the media cycle.
I think what Matthew is doing in the media is very good -- the more so given that he's had to overcome lifetime speech hesitancy to do it. It helps that he's able to talk about something that people are talking about: conspiracy theories.
I just thought about Erich Geiringer, then remembered that he was a doctor. And then I thought, hey, a doctor was a major public intellectual.
Another candidate: the great Listener editor, Monte Holcroft. I'm not such a fan of his essays, but his Listener editorials were often beacons of intellectual leadership: moral, wise, open, heartful -- and consistently liberal as times when New Zealanders needed to hear a consistent, liberal voice. But ... he rather supports Danyl's point, given that he had no tertiary study, and was a farmhand and a clerk before he became a journalist.
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Hard News: Perverse Entertainment, in reply to Andre Alessi,
That electorate isn’t small, and the Democrats ignore it at their peril (see the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections, and the 2010 midterms.) No matter how crazy these people are, they will be voted for.
But they're also wildly vulnerable candidates, and the party hierarchy knows it.
When you look at that Pew poll -- and I think Pew is the gold standard for opinion research -- it's hard not wonder whether the constant Rasmussen polling is offering a misleading impression of their chances.
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Hard News: Perverse Entertainment, in reply to Alex Coleman,
I’m slowly convincing myself that the GOP doesn’t actually want to win; that they have moved on from politics being anything other than a fundraising exercise. That’s not to say that they will try not to win, only that if they do it will be incidental.
There may be something in this. Palin is so obviously a grifter, and she's vividly demonstrated the way politics can be harnessed for personal enrichment. It would be surprising if some of her peers hadn't noticed.
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Hard News: Perverse Entertainment, in reply to nzlemming,
I think he is real. The pseudonym dates back to Usenet and nz.general
ETA @MatthewPoole Snap! But less of the dinosaur, ye young whippersnapper!
I remember Usenet before Redbaiter.
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Hard News: Perverse Entertainment, in reply to Josh Addison,
If I recall correctly, he showed up and got himself banned in quick order very early on in PAS’s history. Him and dad4justice.
I recall having to ban dad4justice, after his spate of heart-rending drunk commenting jags, but not Redbaiter. You may be right, though.
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Hard News: Limping Onwards, in reply to HORansome,
I’m so printing that on a business card.
With a little logo of a fez?
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Hard News: Perverse Entertainment, in reply to MikeE,
I still think that Redbaiter is a troll account set up by a lefty :-P
It is quite hard to work out his actual politics. Sometimes he presents as a libertarian, but I spent ages once trying to point out to him that his loathing of the nanny state was incompatible with his passionate love affair with the state of Singapore – where the government owns nearly everyone’s home, and can pull you off the street, take a blood sample and imprison you for years based on the results. He didn’t get it.