Posts by Dan Salmon
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Having watched the coach of a 'top' auckland private boys school blatantly cheat (yelling false information at the opposition team to put them off) in the last minute of a sports game yesterday (when two schools were locked neck and neck) i kept thinking - performance pay - performance bonus. The expression on his face when they ultimately lost wasn't a good one for young men who should be learning grace and dignity under pressure. If that's the future, we need to do everything we can to keep it out of our public schools.
On a more constructive note: every study i have seen shows parental education background and early childhood as the biggest predictors of successful life outcomes. Any party that really wants to address these issues needs to ensure children are born into health, unstressed, literate homes. It's a long game, but the only way to change anything.
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I know I'm quoting him twice today, but the old man used to reckon most of these problems would be solved if cars didn't have windscreens. That way drivers would have a proper sense of speed and vulnerability. Maybe making car drivers feel less godlike would be a good political plank for Colin Craig.
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Hard News: Lowering the Stakes, in reply to Bart Janssen,
I'd rather wear no helmet than have the false security of a secondhand helmet with no idea of its condition. If I got a secondhand helmet with a bike, it'd go into landfill. It'd also be unlikely to fit my head shape
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Where to start ? Auckland Transports intransigence? Having spent 6 years trying to sort safe pedestrian access for our poor little school (that just got torched) with AT reps who seemed to think pedestrians only travelled in walking buses.
Road laws- my father, a bike activist way back, who used to insist we ride by rode code "we have the same right etc" recently decided he was wrong and we all need to ride to survive. It's no longer a principle now his grandchildren are cycling.
City cycling: Having been near hit several times obeying the law at the Ponsonby rd K rd intersection - I now bunny hop onto the footpath ride through cars waiting at the lights. K rd itself fine, if you time it right you get all the ped crossings and no traffic.
Laws are great if they protect everyone, but road laws currently function to protect the rights of motorists- until that changes I will ride to survive. And will continue to ride. -15 mins grey Lynn to princes st rush hour and priceless look on hotel concierges face when I asked him to park my 15 yr old mtn bike while I had a meeting.
Cars and aggression: It seems to me it's the same part of the brain as prejudice. Cyclists are different and they seem to be getting something for nothing, I'd faster where roads are for cars... And and and... That short term part of the brain that sees 5 seconds waiting to get past a bike as infinitely worse than 5 minutes stuck behind a line of brother cars.
Footpath riding? A hilariously nonsense argument when inner city footpaths are blocked by parked SUVs - Coming back to another issue AT seem unable to deal with.
Cars and bikes seem to work together in some cities, why not here?
Perhaps the poor man in Parnell, didn't see the truck, perhaps he just made a bad call. Trucks and buses are nightmare. Weight, inertia and slipstream sucking anything smaller in underneath.
I do wonder whether a law change that shifts emphasis from drivers license as human right to Licence as privilege is long overdue. -
A subject dear to my heart.
If i don't get up at six, and have a full day with some outside time, i don't sleep. Which totally buggers me if i get sick and try to sleep in for a few days. I end up in an entropic cycle of lying in bed hating people who can sleep and swearing loudly.
I've struggled to sleep since i was a kid, and like Emma, read until i start to nod off. That combined with podcasts as i go to sleep tends to work. Last night, woke up 3 or 4 times, used a podcast about why Kenya has so many long distance runners to go back to sleep. Can't remember a thing, so it must have been an okay night. On a good week i can stretch a single this american life across seven nights, on a bad night i'll be listening for hours.
I still have bad nights, (only managed an hour and a half a few nights back) and sometimes use melatonin, I (now) try to avoid other sleeping pills, but am largely on top of the non-sleeping with a combination of reading, podcasts, no computers late at night, exercise, and getting up early.
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Hard News: Sick with Anger, in reply to Lilith __,
Interesting study.With those averages they're presumably dealing with other health and substance related factors outside crack. Presumably you'd need a far more comprehensive study to draw a stronger conclusion than 'the impact of poverty on IQ is greater than the impact of crack.' Which of course is an interesting finding in itself and certainly helps reinforce CPAG arguments.
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Great idea, with massive potential. Looking forward to see how it all works. The challenge, as always, will be in matching viewers to the type of content they want to see.
I had no idea about the youtube's blanket music agreement. Interesting. -
What is the legal situation for the pre-existing blocking services?
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Hard News: How much speech does it take?, in reply to Dan Salmon,
Oops - made by editors, gatekeepers and blog runners.
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As with most things, the issue is not so much the irrationality spewed out by damaged individuals, but the platforms others provide to validate or unite that anger to a cause or specific hatred. It's nothing to do with freedom of speech, but with decisions