Posts by David Haywood
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It is worth noting that the Germans still have not apologised for what they did, 'cause it wasn't them it was the nazis etc
Raymond, dude, have you missed the news since 1945 or so? The German government have apologized numerous time -- not to mention paying something like 100 billion NZ dollars in reparations to Israel.
Remember that famous photo of Willy Brandt on his knees in front of the holocaust memorial in Poland?
FYI Wikipedia has a useful summary here
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More like "hw", right?
Yeah, well I didn't want to write a thesis on the subject, but --weirdly -- the old-fashioned NZ English pronunciation of 'wh' sounds more like 'hw' to modern ears.
Bauer voices it, anyway. He says Pakeha couldn't hear that sound clearly, so applied spelling wrongly.
Not to mention the 'p's and 'r's -- how the Maori piripiri gets turned into the English biddy-biddy. Fascinating stuff! (Not that I know anything about it, really, except what I've gleaned from my dearest).
I'd say you're being far too generous this time, David.
Heh. Perhaps residual guilt from my television reviews of Mr Holmes...
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Incidentally, when trying to confirm pronunciation of the W(h)anganui dialect via my 'Dictionary of the Maori Language' (7th ed.), I found this peevish note (p.484):
'Wh' represents the voiceless consonant corresponding with 'w'... It is a mistake to assimilate the sound to that of 'f' in English, though this has become fashionable in recent years in some of the younger Maori.
Which just goes to show that all languages undergo change (as if we didn't know that).
I note that the famous Dr Pei Te Hurinui Jones was on the advisory committee for the dictionary's 7th Edition, as well as Madame E.B. Ranapia -- any relation of yours, Craig?
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Sacha quoting the Holmes:
When an "h" follows a "w", it makes damn all difference to the pronunciation of a word.
God knows I don't want to become an apologist for Paul Holmes, but I suppose he could be referring to the fact that the 'wh' sound and 'w' sound used to be distinct in NZ English but now they have merged.
And -- as I understand it -- the pronunciation of the 'wh' in the W(h)anganui dialect is supposed to have followed the old-fashioned NZ English pronunciation of 'wh'.
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An interesting revelation in that Throng TV interview with (TV3 news chief) Mark Jennings.
The problems with the TV3 newsroom are because NZers are "a bunch of poofters" and, of course,... yawn... "political correctness".
What a deep and profoundly reflective thinker Mr Jennings is...
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isn't "racist" but "ray-schist"
Ha -- you obviously missed the referendum where Laws voted that he'd always pronounced it that way. So don't attempt to 'shut down' his democratic rights, Graham. 'Cause that makes you, like, just as bad as Hitler.
By the way, and to change the subject slightly, I've noticed that the occasional paragraph break in (most of) your posts is a single line rather than a double line -- which makes it a little weird to read. I have no idea why this should happen. Is it just my browser? It doesn't seem to happen on any of the other PA blogs.
Just thought I'd mention it.
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In terms of the number of people in the sample who supported the death penalty -- I suspect that this is down to the leading question asked in the survey:
Should the death penalty as part of good parental correction be a criminal offence in New Zealand?
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Danyl Mclauchlan wrote:
My Father was very angry with the lightbulb ban, not because he's a climate change denier but because almost every light switch in his house is on a dimmer switch, CFLs blow up if you put them into those sockets and he was going to have to get his whole house rewired.
Whoever told him that was talking bullshit. You just reconnect the wires in the wall-switch to bypass the dimmer -- takes me about five minutes. The only exception might be the 1970s dimmers, which you can just replace with a modern switch for as little as $13.00 (depending on how fancy-looking you want it).
Alternatively, he could just buy the dimming CFLs (although this is a more expensive option).
This kind of misinformation typified the whole debate...
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Okay, to take the argument a bit further, the main reason that parties developed is as a way of ensuring stability -- to make sure that an executive has a decent stab at implementing its policies and a decent chance of making them work. Remember how many prime ministers we had in NZ before the party system developed?
Too many parties , and you start to (effectively) revert to a non-party system.
You may not agree that stability is important (or that the current degree of stability is appropriate), but it's another one of those practical things that you've got to balance.
Or, to put it another way, and to return to Graeme's question: the job of the 5 per cent threshold is to ensure an absolute maximum of 20 parties in parliament (and an actual maximum of a much lower number).
P.S. I'm using extremist in the technical sense (of being a long way from the middle of the political spectrum, i.e. at the extremes of the normal distribution), not the emotional sense of saying that they must therefore be wrong or crazy. Mind you, they usually are, I've found.
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I think the word "extreme" is an emotive word for "minority".
Heh! I think that "ganging up to seize power" might be an emotive word for 'democracy' (in that the majority calls the shots).
I take your points... it's a complicated issue.