Posts by Bart Janssen
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They're on the Auckland city council!
Their number one priority in life is to get re-elected.
Cyclists don't vote do they?
Allowing anything other than cars on the bridge requires imagination and vision and that doesn't get you re-elected.
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Doesn't always work too well however.
heh I'm sure we could build a neat list of names that wouldn't work
The Denver Dolphins?
The Minnesota Heat?more?
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Graeme asked
What on Earth was wrong with the name Wellington?
I must resist the temptation ... no it's so easy though ... no I can be strong.
Anyway the serious answer to the question is, if they named the franchise "Wellington" then when they sold that franchise to, for example, Sydney, then it would look really really stupid to have a team in Sydney called "Wellington". Whereas "The Sydney Lions" just sounds like it was always meant that way.
Of course the above reasoning suggests that there is anyone in their right minds who would want to buy and NZ Rugby franchise in the NPC. See I resisted the temptation to be specific :).
The use of names that have no connection with a place derives of course from that cultural mecca we all want to emulate, the US of A, where buying and selling of sporting franchises is common as is moving the franchise when the local city doesn't front up with the appropriate bribes.
cheers
Bart -
I will be sending a CD of whale songs and some aromatic candles to Sir Brian Lochore, endorsed with the message, "love, Colin".
Huh? How does Sir Brian know RB's cat????
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At the other end of the spectrum.
Today faults got our broadband and phone back online after 6 days.
6 days of trying to figure out what we used to do before...
It's time like the last few days that made me realise how embedded the internet is in our lives.
And like others my first computing was done with punch cards that we mailed to Auckland Uni.
For my MSc thesis I broke all sorts of university regulations and was the first in our department to write it on a computer! A BBC micro to be exact. What I didn't realise was that because I could correct errors so easily my supervisor decided to make me try and correct everything.
I remember getting quite good at landing 747s on the IRIX while I was doing my PhD and typesetting a colleagues thesis on the VAX.
But as I said above it was cricket commentaries that made me get the internet.
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Ok late to this and really glad I found it (even if I did get a fright when I stupidly autoclicked a link :). My bad not yours Emma :).
This is a great discussion and there isn't much that hasn't been said and very well said.
For me porn is one of those things in life that comes in the complete gradation from purely evil to "good". And for those who don't believe in good porn think about using it to help Pandas breed.
And the sex industry is also filled with that complete gradation as well.
So how do you figure out how to stop the evil and keep the good that is done? And how do you stop yourself from making the connection between the industry and the evil that is done sometimes within that industry?
And how do you do anything without limiting what we perceive as peoples freedom of choice?
Keeping porn and the sex industry in the legal economy is very important to make sure we can access those that need help and to allow us to collect real data about what harm does occur. From some of that data you can start to figure out that things like stopping child abuse would go a long way to preventing some sex workers from feeling that is the only career they have. That kind of indirect connection is only revealed when you get good data.
I don't think there are any easy answers in dealing with the harm that undoubtedly occurs in association with the sex and porn industries. I guess for me that is the key - for some things in life there are no simple answers just hard complicated mistake ridden answers that require hard work and good will from everyone.
The pay-off is that we might be able to keep the good bits.
cheers
Bart -
I really really wish you had put a definition of
NSFW
at the TOP of your post.
I know I should have remembered the FLA but I forgot
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You know I’m bit unsure of the actual dates, but looking back at the test match records it must have been the summer of ‘93/94. I was a newly minted scientist and I was already pretty familiar with the internet. We did things like download DNA sequences and of course lots of e-mail and newsgroups. Back in those days the newsgroups were pretty civilised places where you could ask questions about methods and get really useful responses, and of course give useful answers when you had them to give.
Oh and there were newsgroups devoted to things like cricket :)!
So there I was sitting in the computer room at work (we had 4 or 5 computers for the whole floor) listening to cricket on my radio and at the end of a post mentioned that I was listening to the test match live. Immediately, I got responses back from a group of Pakistanis and Indians wanting me to jump over to their dedicated cricket channel and give them commentary. So I did. It turned out there were hundreds of cricket mad folk from the subcontinent whose only access to news of their favourite game was the newsgroups. In a matter of hours I was led to the dedicated channel where I started giving ball-by-ball commentaries. There were 3 or 4 of us kiwis giving live feed and we handed over to each other when we needed a break (or needed to do some work). The listeners wrote scripts for us to use so that we could keep up with the play. I think I did 4 test matches that summer, in between trying to do my work. I can’t remember exactly but I think we got a “listening” audience of a couple of thousand at one point.
It was a neat experience and I guess probably was one of the first “live” commentaries of cricket on the net. By the time the next summer rolled around I was too busy to do any more commentaries and I think by then cricinfo had really started up properly. And then we moved to the US where RB’s hard news e-mails were our best connection to home and my connection to cricket was those same newsgroups I had served before.
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Winstone's ghost writer said
Most of these people have an aversion to the truth unless it fits their agenda.
Boggle
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And below the line, my sympathies Russell. It's hard losing friends.cheers
Bart -
Why so much angst about weddings?
You get together with friends and family to celebrate the love you have for your partner. Is there anything better than that?
And yes I love brides in wedding dresses, wedding dresses are one of the few items of clothing that look better on real women than on models. And my darling looked amazing in her dress. I even didn't mind wearing a suit (no tie though, there are limits). My best man was my best friend and a woman. We had a string quartet, because we were really into classical music at the time. We chose the Wintergarden and had dinner afterwards with all our friends at our favourite restaurant (Bowmans, when Richard owned and ran it).
I've enjoyed all the weddings I've been to (even the really boring long religious ones) because everyone is celebrating one of the most amazing things that happens to us humans - we fall in love with each other. What's not to celebrate.
And for me the difference of the wedding event is what makes that celebration special. Weddings are different from other events and even the unusual ones described above show that difference. And I love that.
So enough with the wedding angst, set aside your cynicism for the day, relax, enjoy the celebration, enjoy the pomp and ceremony, whatever kind it might be, you're there to celebrate love!
cheers
Bart