Posts by HORansome
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Polity: Meet the middle, in reply to Stephen Judd,
That argument, mutatis mutandis, applies to the Chinese names/foreign buyers debacles. Perceived to be racist, therefore racist.
Amen!
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Polity: Meet the middle, in reply to Rob Salmond,
Hold on Rob; you've both said "perception is reality" and "if people think they are centrists, then they are centrists". So, if both of those propositions are true, the fact that people slam Labour for engaging in dole bludger rhetoric (for example, that story about the roof layer) despite claims about policy means that if people perceive Labour's message as being all about hating people on Welfare, then that's the reality, no matter the claims about (unreleased) policy.
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I have had two regular segments on b. The first survived two changes of hosts, only to find the Sunday morning segment change when Rhys Darby and David Farrier came onboard (I like to think my conspiracy theory stuff was just too weird for Rhys, and that’s why I got let go…).
The second segment also survived two changes of hosts and three changes of producer, but not the fourth. Actually, the story of being “let go” from b the second time is still a bit of a sore point to me; they told me just after a segment that that was the last one. It’d be nice to have been told beforehand so I could have said some kind of goodbye.
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OnPoint: Don't put words in our mouths, Rob, in reply to Marc C,
and even in some cases nothing but reverse racism.
You say "reverse racism" and all I can think of is this:
Ha! "Reverse racism" indeed!
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Polity: House-buying patterns in Auckland, in reply to ,
We had an election resently.
As typos go, that's very accurate indeed.
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I'm no fan of James Shaw, who was my third place pick for co-leader, but really, when you say:
This whole argument is predicated upon a contention that the Greens are somehow failing in the first place.
I would respond by saying your whole argument is predicated on accepting the views of people like Hooton and Farrar, who have a vested interest in making it look like the Greens are shifting to the Centre or Centre Right; you seem to be buying into the very conspiracy theory about the Greens you ostensibly oppose. Are you really suggesting that the party membership of the Greens, who you "No True Scotsman" construe as follows:
[Are] characterised by a deep ethical, philosophical and political commitment. These are the ten per cent, and historically, they have punished parties they consider to have deserted their dogma.
are really under the sway of the practitioners of the Right's Dark Arts? Because either the Right are far more powerful and able to change the hearts and minds of the stalwart co-leader electing Greens membership, or they are merely successfully getting some of us to see enemies in our midsts in order to generate blogposts just like this.
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So, I asked this question on Twitter and I'm going to ask it here: I'm the author of the book "The Philosophy o Conspiracy Theories" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) and I want to know how I can prevent the extension of copyright on my work post my death. I realise that, at the moment, the copyright is really with the publisher, but is there anything I can do to make sure they don't apply for extensions when I'm dead?
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Speaker: Why we should not dismiss…, in reply to Kyle Matthews,
If conspiracy theory gets claimed only to include the wacky claims used to put down the person talking, then we’ll lose the use of a particularly useful phrase.
Boy, do I have a book to sell you then. Because that's what I argue, although at slightly more length and with more references to the assassination of Julius Caesar.
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Speaker: Why we should not dismiss…, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
You'll need to be a little more specific, I'm afraid, Ian.
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Speaker: Why we should not dismiss…, in reply to tussock,
A conspiracy is just a few people doing stuff out of public sight that’s deniable and for personal gain.
I'm with you up until that point, and all I want to say is that I don't think we need to bake into the definition of a conspiracy theory that it's for personal gain or anything vaguely nefarious or malevolent. I think there can be conspiracies of goodness where people act in secret towards some public good. After all, one story as to why Brutus and his associates assassinated Julius Caesar was to rid Rome of a tyrant (it's not the only story, admittedly), and activists who plot in secret to disrupt some meeting or stop some event from occurring (which is a kind of conspiratorial activity) often do it because they consider it to be the best outcome for all.