Posts by Hilary Stace
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Look at what happened to Trevor Mallard's suggestion for a huge glass waka stadium on the waterfront a few years ago.
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Thanks for the manatee solidarity. I hope people start to appreciate and nurture them before it really is too late. My gravatar (which doesn't quite fit) is my little beacon of hope. In a roundabout way this brings this thread back to the original post topic.
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George has a nice clear explanation on The Standard thread that involves Bill Gates catching a bus.
And, Islander, it is true about the manatees. I tried really hard to concentrate on standard deviations, margins of error, means, outliers and all those other menacing statistical threats, but all I can remember is the cruelty to manatees. (And by the way I've just found out the numbers of propeller attacks have started to increase in the last year after trending down for a while. Why can't they just use sails or oars?)
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I'm confused enough without bringing in mean as well. Isn't mean half way between two extremes and median half way through a given quantity? Or is that the other way around?
Look, I attempted Stats 101 but was distracted by the poor manatees in the textbook examples who were getting attacked by the Florida jet boat propellers.
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I see that the standard has had a go at some unpicking. And Matt McCarten on Eye to Eye apparently said that 90% of Maori won't get tax cuts. The minimum wage is going up but even those working full time on the minimum wage won't get into the tax cut range. And what about women, or people with disabilities?
We also need some good gender/ethnicity and other data about the effect of the recession. I suspect that women are losing jobs faster than men and that any jobs created are targetted at men (eg National Library redundancies while a big construction project goes ahead).
Sorry about hijacking this thread. Great discussion on Earth hour by the way.
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Keith - please could your brilliant statistical analytical brain (or someone with similar skills on PA) help me clarify the tax cut issue. I suspect either we either seeing smoke and mirrors spin or statistically naive journalism (or reporters as confused as I am).
TVNZ like much of the MSM is saying that 'most people' will get a tax cut this week. But you have to earn $40,000 or more to get a tax cut (or earn a bit less and be a single person with no dependents to get the $10 top up). But I thought the median annual income for NZ was about $36,000 which means less than half of all earners will get a tax cut. Let alone beneficiaries or non earners who aren't included in that table. Other media sources quote an average wage of $50,000 which must mean there are some people on really high salaries to make that much higher than the median (if they are using the same data).
On the other hand I've heard that those earning between about $12,000 and $24,000 are apparently having their tax rates revised upwards so will actually have an increase.
And what will happen to a person on say $70,000 who loses their job and goes onto the unemployment benefit of $195 a week during the tax year?
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An excellent Media 7 last night--especially the discussion on the future of advertising.
Watched the Freeview repeat last night by candlelight. Loved the comment re Obama's misspeak about Special Olympics (that has led to spirited web discussions in the US and Obama forever karmically indebted to improving the lives of those with intellectual impairment - which he had started to do anyway).
But a little gender analysis of Media7. Is it just me or are there a disproportionate number of successful yet cool middle aged pakeha males on it? Or is this just the target demographic?
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I can't help but think that officiating at funerals might be an ideal line of work for the retiring news broadcaster.
At my mother's funeral a couple of years ago we were fortunate to have veteran broadcaster Ian Johnstone as MC. He did it as a favour because he's my sister's friend, but it was a brilliant decision and the beautiful diction and appropriate gravitas was only part of it.
But otherwise you would have to choose your news broadcaster pretty carefully for such an important occasion as you only get one go at it.You'd have to be sure they would stick to the script and not ad lib, wink, smirk, or make smart asides to the funeral director.
Personally, I've long been a fan of Warwick Burke and the way his voice has aged over the decades. He used to be on TV in the old days before newsreaders were 'personalities'.
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What worries me about letting Paul Henry get away with this sort of behaviour is that members of the public who appear on Breakfast (and people do for all sorts of public sprited reasons) will now be vulnerable to having unflattering public comments made about their appearance. As well as being exposed to the puerile, little boy giggling behaviour that is totally irrelevant to the reason they are on the programme.
Breakfast on TVNZ is the first impression of NZ that some visitors get - whether in the airports or in their hotels. I cringe to think what sort of message they are getting about us sometimes.
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Just a comment about programming. Just turned on TV7 by chance a little while ago after visitors left. There happened to be screening a brilliant NZ made documentary on autism. It's a few years old (c 2003?) and I know some of the people featured have got a little older, but it was still world class. Had Temple Grandin demonstrating her famous squeeze machine, an aspie marriage, wonderful Jen Birch describing her love of libraries and her understanding of chooks, even Tony Attwood doing some diagnosing. And showed real families and real kids. And only interrupted by the brief TV7 promos - no ads.
So why don't we have this sort of thing on prime time free to air any more, and well publicised? And will there be future funding for such factual, informative and sensible docos?