Posts by Joe Wylie
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Cracker: Breaking the Silence, in reply to BenWilson,
The very nature of science is to question the truth. It's in many ways a fundamentally anarchic system...
As a somewhat saintly precision engineer once told me, largely in jest, though with the air of divulging an arcane secret, "Electronics don't actually work you know, they just seem to work."
Science is inherently a method, not an institution. All certainties, even those that may appear the most comforting, only stand until they are eclipsed by greater certainties. There are plenty of examples, such as the young Ernest Rutherford's need for circumspection in presenting his theories to the hidebound physics establishment of his time, that demonstrate how scientific progress can be hampered by an institutionalised establishment.
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Cracker: Breaking the Silence, in reply to BenWilson,
I like science too much to fuck it up like that.
Nicely put. Some scientists have a strong social conscience, some don't. While some kind of empowered science commissioner might be marginally useful in dealing with this kind of dodginess, Greenpeace are so far proving more effective than any hypothetical priesthood of ordained scientists.
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This has been for sale in Grey Lynn for a while now with no takers. Unfortunately it has pre-USB SCSI or parallel connections, which could require somewhat advanced computer smarts. From memory, if it's still working as claimed a mid 90s Mac should happily drive it. Apart from it lacking a USB port it appears the same as my old A3 size X12USL, which passed away around 3 years ago.
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Speaker: A simple strategy for Trump to…, in reply to Dave Patrick,
Sorry Dave ):
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Speaker: A simple strategy for Trump to…, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
But what unfolded was more like a real-life episode of Homeland. You know, the one where people of colour get locked up without charge.
Closer to home, our resident curtain-twitcher believes that you should simply suck it up if you're the wrong colour.
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Last time I was at Pt Chevalier Beach, the tide was out, the pohutukawa had finished flowering, the sky was boring - so I had to liven it up a bit.
http://d3nd7i493f0o21.cloudfront.net/assets/upload/245005/1932002706/DSC05532.JPG
So sad to know that ChrisW won't be back. Thanks for the great tribute. -
Polity: Is being a tax haven worth it?, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
I guess 'Honest John' is now slightly coloured by car salesmen and the other idea that 'Honest Johns' are easily duped due to their innocence - so it may be entering that etymological twilight zone occupied by words like 'fulsome' which are seemingly self-antonymous.
Then again, as an Australian commentator suggested when the "Honest John" tag was being rolled out for John Howard's political rise, it may be justified as part of that grand folk tradition where redheads are nicknamed "Blue".
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Polity: Is being a tax haven worth it?, in reply to Alfie,
I'm impressed with Peter Dunne’s stand. He’s pissed off that during his eight years as Revenue Minister, nobody from the IRD flagged the “explosion” of foreign trusts in New Zealand. It’s great to see Dunne taking a strong line on the ultra-wealthy exploiting our lax tax laws, and NZ being openly promoted as a tax haven by a small cabal of lawyers and psuedo-lawyers.
You're impressed by an exercise in retrospective arse-covering? Dunne certainly wasn't taking any "strong line" on these issues back when he was the relevant Minister. If anything, he seemed aware of the practice of tax minimisation and actively defended it.
While I appreciate that Dunne may well have grasped the importance of building a worthwhile legacy in his present portfolio, I don't believe that creating a personality cult around him is going to facilitate that.
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One News Sport ran a link on their Facebook page which could be taken as a tacit endorsement of Veitch's phoney mea culpa. A different standard altogether for these six brown guys. Despite their only crime seeming to have been visiting a bar, they cop the kind of public tabloid pillorying that Veitch has been mysteriously spared.
