Posts by Tom Semmens
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Is 'absolument' OK?
Absolutely not!
Hmmmm. What if the speaker is cute and French?
Just trying to establish if there is any absolute limit here.
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Is "absolument!"
O.K? -
Sam F: Interesting what you say about your mix on your iPod. To my surprise, I seldom used my music player when out running or walking - I much prefer being nosy about what is going on around me, and listening out for motorcars - but recently I've discovered it's the perfect way to brush up my French whilst ambling along. Your accent is really good this way!
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I loved Noelle McCarthy's restrained piece on Bill Ralston. Ralston is past his use by date. I am sick and tired of grumpy old rogue elephants (Ralston, Deaker, Jim Hopkins, etc etc ) lashing out a herd they no longer understand. They could all do a lot worse that study the good natured acceptance of the onset of dotage by Brian Edwards. I want to grow old like him.
Morning Report:
Required listening, although I have personal dislike of interminable business "news".
Kathryn Ryan: She is OK, and clearly keeps a super soaker handy to keep Matthew Hooten under control. I always thought Havoc would be perfect in nine to noon. And lets not beat around the bush: Leighton Smith is a fascist, and commercial talkback in general is a cesspool of morally bankrupt agent-provocateurs cheerleading an audience of proud ignorance and profound prejudice.
Midday report appears under-resourced, often just offering re-heated morning report and business news filler. The rural news can be interesting, but it comes to far through the bulletin.
Noelle McCarthy is a gem, I find Jim Moira insufferably smug and a real turn off. I generally tune in hope into the panel then switch to GeorgeFM when Moira annoys me.
Checkpoint seems to only get into its stride after 6pm, before that it suffers from the same lack of pace (for want of a better term) as midday report. I quite like Mary Wilson, although sometimes she does get in the way of the story.
Kim Hill - is getting better with age, I've come back to Saturday morning on National Radio.
Chris Laidlaw is aging better than Bill Ralston, but that is damning with faint praise I am afraid.
Funnily, I don't watch television much before 6pm or listen to the radio after 12pm. -
Apple products are triumphs of design and marketing. Lordy me, we’ve all stood in the appliance store for ages with our eyes flicking between the economical, boxy, four slice white toaster mass produced in China (function) and the shiny, curvy, chrome two slice one with cool knobs from Italy (form) that has half the functionality for four times the price.
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Kyle: thats why I think the answer must lie in new carbon sequestration technology. Our society is built on technology, and our culture is predicated on technology finding solutions to the problems we get ourselves into.
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The Windows vs. MAC debate might had have some relevance when 8mb was a lot of memory and computers were arcane machines that geeks made do stuff, but nowadays when computers are an everyday tool I find it as tedious as the contrived Holden vs. Ford arguments I hear.
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Oh and at a recent conference I attended, one of the speakers mentioned that while 20% of people (and 95% of PA readers it would seem) would willingly take to public transport, 80% would not give up their car until someone prised their cold, dead fingers from the steering wheel. This 80% would happily buy a smaller car or (not so happily one suspects) go electric, but fundamentally they want to keep their car.
And why not. People love their cars.
A lot of public transport champions find that a concept a real cognitive challenge, but it seems to me that if we want to come up with sensible transport solutions then we should start listening to what people want rather than lecture them on the virtues of light rail. Perhaps, just perhaps, if we spent our hundreds of millions developing and deploying an electric vehicle infrastructure built on the existing roading infrastructure then for commuters the outcomes might be quicker to achieve, and better for everyone.
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Quite why you would want to be a big enough idiot to rush out and spend three days camping out in winter so you can spend a small fortune on a 3G product that has crap storage, an out-of-date camera and you'll only be able to afford to use 2G services on is quite beyond me. In this country, you'd be better off buying a decent music player, a good entry-level camera and a $99 mobile.
As for the environment, I would have thought that the mutinous reaction of the electorate and truckers to but the first zephyr of global, multi-industry simultaneous change should have taught us that if our technological society can’t find a series of technological solutions (carbon sequestration, orbital mining, a genetic engineered second green revolution, mass produced biofuels) for us and our (soon to be) ten billion fellow humans then a Malthusian Mad Max is a more likely future than a green and pleasant Hobbiton. To that end, Green “solutions” like leafy carbon sinks are as much hogwash as the snobbish Tolkienesque “deep England” ideology that underlies a lot of the Green’s wishful thinking.
You know, in the time it has taken USA to spend up to a trillion dollars in Iraq (2001-2007), they’ve spent just 105 or so billion dollars on NASA. That is a lot less than the US Air Force Space Command has spent on weaponising space over the same time. The total Iraq fiasco will end up costing around three trillion they say. I read somewhere Barak Obama promises to spend 150 billion on new green R&D initiatives. Three trillion is TWENTY TIMES that amount. You weep at the wasted opportunities.
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Errrrr... Its an ad.
In other threadjacking news, a lovely taxi driver (Mr. Khan, of co-op taxis) handed in my vey expensive digital SLR to the police after I left it (sans any form of easily identifying ID) in his cab in my various nocturnal wanderings on Saturday night. I had no idea what cab firm or even what time (well, i knew it was between 2.30am-4.30am) I mislaid it, so I was naturally dispairing of seeing my little friend ever again. However the police, showing the skills of Sherlock Holmes, tracked me down in 48 hours and I was reunited with my camera late yesterday.
Moral of the story: Never combine alcohol with trying to carry your camera and pay the taxi driver and keep an eye on your stormtrooper helmet and keep an eye on Ms. Rainbow Bright, Ms. Pussy Galore and Mr. Nacho Libre all at once.
Just wanted to share a good news story about an honest taxi driver, and a police force going the extra mile. :)