Posts by Ben Curran
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Buy a journalist a drink? Maybe one or two of them. Any random journalist I meet? Hell no. There may be a few journalists doing the hard yards, but the media as a whole at the moment, is appalling. Puff pieces on Jacinda, pillorying Metiria. Almost complete absence of critical facilities.
Statistically speaking, I'm more like to tell journalists to sod off than buy them a drink.
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Hard News: First Thursdays: Light on the…, in reply to Nick Russell,
K Road is great but it will never be Cuba Street....
This is most certainly true. They're spelt entirely differently to begin with ...
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Polity: Meet the middle, in reply to chris,
This think tank series or whatever this actually is, led by Rob who may or may not be affiliated with the Labour party and who possibly has a Labour/ centrist obsession, have dramatically reduced my faith in Labour. It’s not so much that I don’t appreciate the nature of the discussion itself, it’s that the initial posts always feel like we’re being pounded with propaganda, the targets are invariably people on the left, there’s next to no give or take, and if this is actually designed to inform policy in any way shape or form, I can’t see a gripping need for anyone closely affiliated with Labour to be producing a series like this out in the open.
That was said so much more eloquently than I am capable of at the moment. It feels like a proclamation to people that are probably already going to be voting on the left, that Labour are using data now and that means they are now grown up and responsible.
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Feed: Saints Preserve, in reply to thegirlstefan,
It's surprisingly easy to use the feijoas into feijoa vodka as well. Just need to add a bit of sugar to stabilize the flavor.
On the off chance there are spare quinces lying around, I'd very much like to get my hands on some he mused - there's a venison and quince recipe I've been wanting to try for a while now.
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I'm not a big film festival goer. Given the general ... ickyness revealed in the past couple of days, I am penning a quiet note to the NZIFF telling them I won't be attending any. They may well be a trying to do good, but they are providing material support for an institution (Sky City) that is attempting to operate in a way that I can not, in good conscience, turn a blind eye to.
Pretty similar to the reasons I won't be going to see Enders Game.
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It's not so much the actions themselves that bug me (though they do), it's the general disregard for the rule of law that really gets me - hell, if the law commission are worried ...
The even bigger worry though is the number of people around me in day to day life that don't seem to think that it's relevant to them, or important enough to even be a little outraged by it all.
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Hard News: Kitchen Hacks, in reply to Hebe,
The Galletly sisters are taking an entertaining stroll through some old cookbooks. hint: they're not all worth reading :)
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Hard News: Kitchen Hacks, in reply to Tom Semmens,
If you can be arsed rendering it out, the beef fat that you get from roasting marrow bones is quite tasty for the final fry of the ye olde potato chip. Nice high-ish smoke point.
Or alternatively, instead of oil, when roasting, I parboil the taties chuck in a tablespoon or so of semolina, close and hold the lid on, bash them them about a bit then put them into a roasting pan full of very hot duck or goose fat, which you can get at the westmere butchers and probably farrow/nosh etc. Roast away at as hot as possible for a bit. Then wait before eating.
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I'd already read most of the Ender series when I found out about Card's attitudes. I still think Enders Game is a good book. It did sort of colour the rest of his writing for me though, I've never been able to get into any of his other writing. I've never been sure though whether it's because they're not as good or because I'm put off by Card himself.
Scott Adams is the other author I've had this happen to me with. I can't read Dilbert any more. Reading stuff that I'm pretty sure I used to find funny begets a deadpan "meah" from me now. With Adams though, I'm pretty sure it is the author putting me off.
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Hard News: Fact and fantasy, in reply to llew40,
There is an element in our media culture (Gordon MacLaughlin may argue it is inherent in kiwi culture) that wants to scour the world looking for negative perceptions to highlight back to ourselves. Our rugby media is a great example.
Whatever the merits of those offshore perceptions, the reality is that they are usually centred on issues all countries are grappling with.
True, but the fact that everyone else is dealing with these issues is no reason not to put our own house in order though. And it's not necessarily a bad thing that we look overseas for someone else to highlight our flaws.
It's like the country has a little voice of in the back of it's head (Joy et. al.) telling us we need to take a bath. The little voice is being steadfastly ignored until someone else actually turns around and tells us we stink.