Posts by Joe Wylie
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But a pandemic will come, and it will hit disproportionately the people who are now dying of forgotten diseases like malaria and the measles. So it doesn't actually do those people any service at all to dismiss this event like a media beat-up.
When the media cries wolf - which is pretty much what's been happening of late - it undermines preparedness for real future pandemics. While coverage of the 2002-3 SARS outbreak was hardly the fourth estate's finest hour, compared to the present unfocused sensationalism it seems relatively responsible. In a time of huge evolutionary media changes and likely mass extinctions of old institutions, the ability to disseminate clear and trustworthy information in a genuine emergency seems seriously threatened.
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Alternative viewpoints are useful to filter and question the received wisdom and official party lines, and sure, the mainstream media are crap at so much of what they do. But reflexive disbelief a-la Poneke is just as bad, if not in fact worse.
Nicely nailed. Projecting one's own credulity onto a bunch of straw people would be sad if it weren't so wilfully spiteful.
As usual, the Opinionated Diner does a great job of putting things in proportion.
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That PNC video:
Hey!! Certainly rewards more than one viewing. What a goodie.
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Do affirmations work? F'rexample, something in the order of "No no no by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin."
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Do affirmations work? F'rexample, something in the order of "No no no by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin."
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. . . there was much enjoyment at studying all the botox and cologen.
Looks pretty good considering the vintage of those who've undergone the procedures, but doesn't move very much. For that kind of thing I guess you'd need to move in the sort of bootie-clappin' circles frequented by Mr. Brown.
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ScottY - you've nicely, succinctly, summed the matter up.
Agreed - tho being human, judges don't spring fully formed onto the bench from their previous law careers. While they've presumably been appointed because of their experience, as ScottY says, they bring certain prejudices along with whatever ideals they might have, and these may be tested and transformed as they learn on the job.
As a journalist with longtime experience of the NSW system observed about Justice Wood, who presided over the watershed 1990s Royal Commission into corruption in the NSW police force, he seemed set to bring in yet another whitewash job, as in the past he'd shown himself to be very "North Shore", and was prone to becoming "squeamish" when counsel got on top of police in cases that came before him. As it turned out, Wood amazed those who knew him by seizing his chance to make history by standing firm, and one of the most institutionally corrupt police forces in any Western democracy underwent a massive shakeout.
A pity, perhaps, for those who may have suffered from Wood's prejudices in his early learning days on the bench, but as ScottY pretty much says, over time it's an imperfect system that seems to work better than most.
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Iron and wine don't have day jobs yet their latest album is up for download.
Iron & Wine (Samuel Beam) is an individual, not a band. Way to keep overheads down. Until around a couple of years ago he taught film in Florida, before moving to Austin, Texas, where he's currently a full-time musician.
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Just as an aside, being a sculptor and all that, its always tempting to start making dildos. There is an outlet on the main street in Levin.
Hope it's 3-phase. They take their dildos seriously in those parts.
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Good on you, well worth commemorating, tho it'd be nice to produce something a little more expressive than the current rather Airfixy dude with ho(e). Hell, my first (and toughest) job at age 10 was picking & weeding for an elderly Chinese lady in Buller Road. A short stooped old dear grudgingly counting out sixpences and shillings, as she did each payday, would be just dandy.