Posts by bmk
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Field Theory: 65 bottles of beer on the wall..., in reply to Craig Ranapia,
I can quite enjoy sports writing too even when it is about a sport that I don't follow. Norman Mailer's The Fight and Nick Hornby's Fever Pitch spring to mind but I am sure there are many more. If you count chess as a sport (iffy I know) then I really enjoyed Fred Waitzkin's Searching for Bobby Fischer and Mortal Games. Bobby Fischer Goes to War by David Edmonds and John Eidinow was another interesting book as the idiosyncrasies of Bobby Fischer made for interesting reading (the book is set during his match with Boris Spassky - not when he become another boring, slightly crazy anti-semite kook).
Interesting bug with the italics that after a full stop you can't have the starting underscore only the ending underscore probably something to do with the character before the full stop being an underscore also - give me standard html tags any day. Much easier to just write <em> and </em>.
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Hard News: A nation bullied, in reply to Islander,
I know he did - but I took the intent as being UK and 'the human race' as just a mis-type. But can see how you thought what you did too.
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Hard News: A nation bullied, in reply to Islander,
Humans now number __about__7 billions...
I am guessing that the 5 million out of 60 million Ross was referring to was strictly the UK. But it wasn't clear - that's just how I interpreted it.
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Field Theory: 65 bottles of beer on the wall..., in reply to Danielle,
I had a great time once watching Chess-Boxing. It's just so bizarre that it's brilliant.
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Field Theory: 65 bottles of beer on the wall..., in reply to andin,
Did I just compare sports fans to junkies
I hope not. Junkies are far more polite company. Excepting Cricket fans of course they are the one group of sports fans who are a cut above all others. Though this is probably just my personal bias speaking.
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I get up this morning and saw the response to what I wrote. And found myself in the pleasant situation of not needing to defend what I'd written as many of you have already done it for me, in far better words than I could have. Thank you all.
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I am pretty indifferent to it. But there have been a few things which turned my disinterest into dislike. Our council in their benevolent wisdom thought that spending tens of millions of dollars on upgrading our rugby stadium rather than fixing our fucked sewerage system. Resulting in raw sewage being dumped in our harbour several times a year which makes the water unsafe to swim in and means you can eat no fish or shellfish from this water for some time after.
The other thing is the changes that have been forced on the academic year with it starting and ending two weeks later than normal. There are real worries about how grades will be updated and entered in time by the end of the year.
I had nothing against the rugby world cup at the start and was almost looking forward to it. But having seen what harm it has caused in multiple areas I now wish we never had it.
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Cracker: Another Capital Idea..., in reply to BenWilson,
Yes so people here really can't complain about the tax we pay. And so all the kiwis moving to Australia aren't doing it to escape our oppressive taxes either. As I (and others) have said before it's funny how National keep talking about catching up with Australia but seem unwilling to bring in any Australian style policies here. They instead seem to think we are going to catch up with Australia by doing the opposite of Australia which seems strange logic to me - but then what do I know.
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I like the look of the Australian tax system and would be happy to have that implemented here.
Taxable income Tax on this income
0 – $6,000 Nil
$6,001 – $37,000 15c for each $1 over $6,000
$37,001 – $80,000 $4,650 plus 30c for each $1 over $37,000
$80,001 – $180,000 $17,550 plus 37c for each $1 over $80,000
$180,001 and over $54,550 plus 45c for each $1 over $180,000But of course if we were to implement this we would be told that all our top-earners would flee to Australia to escape our punitive tax rates.
*Edit* That was nicely formatted but as PAS won't take standard html tags can't put in nbsp. Can the acceptance of standard tags please be implemented at some stage?
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But if you replaced 'widget making machines' with Information Technology for example you would find that businesses constantly maintain, improve, upgrade and replace it. Providing an ongoing boost to the economy (like renovating houses) but also boosting productivity.
I think if you people were to invest in businesses who in turn would use that money to invest in technology that boosted productivity as a country we would be much better off than we would be from buying houses, doing them up and then selling.