Posts by Bart Janssen
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Feed: A scientist researches restaurants, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
Shame it is invite only…
Yeah - who do you have to kill?
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Hard News: The Letter, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
that source is a bad faith actor
IF that source is a bad faith actor it would nice if there some actual journalists around who could identify that and report on it. It might give us a better idea of The Herald's position in all this since they seem to be playing the role of both news organisation and political campaigner.
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Legal Beagle: Suicide Reporting; or, The…, in reply to James Green,
I’d be really really hard pressed to be confident of making any conclusions
As would I. The suicides are from multiple causes and much of the data is difficult to obtain. And yes it may be questionable whether the creative minds at the advertising agencies can do anything other than make themselves more money, but I'd like to at least try.
What is clear is that the aim of the law, as confusing as its implementation may be, is to reduce suicides. In particular, the anecdotal copycat suicides. Yet the rate of suicides in NZ has not decreased as a result of this law.
So I'd rather not have many lawyers sitting around figuring out how to make this law function more efficiently at all. Because the law itself is failing to reduce suicides. Time to try something different, rather than polishing the turd that we have at present.
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I realise your post mostly highlights the insane complexity of dealing with the law as it stands and you've done a really good job of highlighting why the law needs to be refashioned so that it works as intended.
But behind this law is a real problem. Last year more people died by suicide than died on our roads. Yes that's abuse of bolding and yes I'm becoming tedious and boring on this issue.
I don't agree with you that the evidence show reporting of suicides increases attempts, I strongly doubt that there is anything more than anecdotal evidence to that effect and a statistically sound meta analysis is needed before I'd be comfortable with that conclusion.
But even if the evidence stands up to examination it is pretty clear that the policy of hiding suicide underneath a cloying blanket of law has not worked to reduce the loss of life. We report road deaths in great detail and that combined with the application of tremendous creative talents in the advertising industry has actually reduced our road toll. Perhaps it is time to take the same approach with suicide. It won't be simple, there won't be one approach that fits all the reasons for suicide but that is not a reason to sit back behind the law and ignore those deaths.
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Feed: A scientist researches restaurants, in reply to TracyMac,
food is scraped, smeared, painted, scattered and assembled directly onto the table itself
The restaurant (under two names) that occupied the space now occupied by Bolaven (formally Bowman's and prior to that Chez Daniel (sp)) used to do a dessert that was assembled on the table. Apparently it was both entertaining and tasty and it made for a fun final course to the meal.
I can see how it would work for the last course but I wouldn't be keen for the whole meal.
As the above might indicate restaurants in Auckland do change hands, that makes it quite an achievement for a restaurant to survive several decades eg The French Cafe.
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Hard News: The Letter, in reply to Matthew Poole,
So either Barker is lying through his teeth, and broke Parliament’s rules in a big way to boot, or it wasn’t a junket. Which is it, Bart?
Fair enough, it was either one or the other.
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Hard News: The Letter, in reply to Matthew Poole,
So a politician who goes on holiday is on a junket? I see.
If he pays for it himself it's a holiday. If work pays for it and he does work then it's a business trip. If some businessman pays for it and he does no apparent govt business on the trip it's a junket. If work pays for it and he does only a token amount of work on the trip it's a junket.
Bear in mind please that as a minister of the crown and a representative of the public of NZ it is expected that you operate under higher standards of propriety not lower standards.
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A couple of things strike me about all this. First is our media seem to have no sense of proportion, electorate MPs actually should be a legitimate port-of-call for people struggling with government bureaucracy. This letter is nothing. However, Rick Barker's junket is actually a story worth telling.
Second is that it seems to me that Mr Liu is not someone who (in hindsight) should have been allowed to immigrate.
Third our representatives in all parties need a strong reminder that the public of New Zealand does not pay them their salary so they can go on corrupt junkets and abuse their position to generate party funds. Seriously, there appears to have been a shift in understanding of what is acceptable in terms of corruption down at parliament.
There would also seem to be a story worth telling about just how National is getting inside information on Labour Party activities.
And the politicians wonder why we can't work up the energy to even vote any more - when they all behave like this.
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Feed: A scientist researches restaurants, in reply to llew40,
Went to Masu last weekend, the food was divine, but the service let us down.
My experience was much the same, except of the 6 dishes we had, only two could be described as divine, the other four were OK. But the service and atmosphere made the evening one I will remember for all the wrong reasons.
This is one of the reasons I work hard to correlate the review data. Sometimes it's only by reading between the lines on three or more reviews can you figure out that the amazing new restaurant venture of the celebrity chef of the month is actually kinda average.
And while I understand the economics of trying to get two seatings per table, perhaps these restaurants could consider the effect on repeat business and more importantly the word of mouth value of letting a customer sit for 15 minutes more and leave of their own accord.
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What I find sad, ironic and ultimately a bit terrifying is that the terrorists are using the height of modern technology and science to extend a culture that promotes and glorifies ignorance.
And no I'm not saying that all of the sects have such an agenda, just the ones committing the obscene violence in Arabia and Africa.