Posts by Mark Easterbrook
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What percentage of the USA's GDP does porn make up?
Is porn bigger than corn? Is it bigger than Hollywood? Or bigger than big oil?
Check out Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market by Eric Schlosser (author of Fast Food Nation).
It's three essays cover the economic role of marijuana, porn, and illegal migrant labour in the USA. It's a good start.
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Here's a factual, non-emotional summary of my recent experiences with Xtra.
I've been with Xtra for a few years. Before the Great Xtra Migration debacle, I had received maybe half a dozen spam messages - ever - referring to my penis size, cheap prescription drugs, rolex watches and stay-at-home money making opportunities.
I now receive several a day. Even if Xtra's webmail sends them into the spam box (which is uncommon) I have to manually delete them to stop them being delivered into my Outlook inbox once I get home in the evening.
Happy customer? Nope.
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Afghan cookies, at the very least. Just don't carry any through Customs...
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From memory this is not the first time police have stopped and photgraphed people leaving an area where an investigation is going on.
Last time I remember it making the news was in 2000, when party-goer Jamie Langridge died at a dance party on Pakatoa Island.
Police stopped and photographed all partygoers as the disembarked from the ferry in downtown Auckland.
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We in advertising NEVER let the client listen to the verses.
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Wish I'd known about the back cracking thing before I went to the chiropractor this morning...though it might have meant shelving my plans for the rest of the day.
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As for teachers: IMHO, there are two types of teachers you should hope your kids have at some point.
The first are ones like my Mum and older sister - teachers who give every ounce they have to give, and then some, to their students. Who genuinely care about every kid in every class, every year, and get emotionally thanked by those kids 10 years (even 30 years for my Mum) later.
The second ones are like a few I had at high school, and a few I know now: intelligent, worldly, interesting people who seem to fall into teaching somewhere around 30 because they want to share what they know and make a difference.
NB: The first sort usually don't know the first thing about YouTube.
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Just jumping back to Nandor:
Many years ago now, when he first stood for Parliament, I saw Nandor speak in a debate at Auckland Uni. I had a long conversation later that week with my then-girlfriend's Dad.
He was a fairly liberal, Labour stalwart kind of guy, but it was very hard convincing him that Nandor was actually a smart, reasoned and intelligent individual with a direct and incisive set of arguments - because all he had to go on was the media portrayal (remember their obsession with Nandor's hemp suit?).
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Ok. So you get into a lift and find a cobra, a lion and John Banks. You only have two bullets in your gun what do you do?
Call your local terrorist cell and requisition some more?
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Great Selwyn Toogood story.
Years ago I used to work with his grandaughter. She told me about how, when she was about 5, Selwyn arranged it so her and her brother could sneak on to the Play School set and play with Humpty, Jemima, Manu and the Teds.
Best Grandad ever!