Posts by Kyle Matthews

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  • THIS JUST IN,

    Ironically, far from being too loose, the TSA is, in the SG's opinion, pretty much impossible to secure a conviction with in regard to any domestic activity.

    We can probably then take a reasonable guess that the eventual response of parliament will be to ramp it up and make it easier, rather than tone it down or remove it.

    Truly sad.

    Since Nov 2006 • 6243 posts Report

  • Hard News: Dopamine psychosis and other…,

    I'm totally against Kyle's wanting to ban cigarettes for the same reason. To say there is nothing good about cigarettes is wrong. It is for many people a stress relieving ritual, and an excuse to socialize. That's worth something.

    By that logic, if there are people who find... I dunno, dog fighting... a stress relief, and a way to meet other arseholes, then it has a positive role to play in society, and we should be weighing it up against the fact that it's a terrible thing to do to dogs before making it illegal.

    The two things you've created there are inherent in the object. A cigarette is a stress relieving ritual because it's addictive and it relieves withdrawl symptoms when you smoke it. Similarly heroin is a stress relieving ritual, yet it doesn't appear next to foot massages in the yellow pages.

    Since Nov 2006 • 6243 posts Report

  • Hard News: The Demon E-Word,

    "Education and teacher training wouldn't work."

    Why not?

    And because teacher graduates here have to teach the NZ curriculum, not the Australian or English or American etc curriculum. The only experts in the NZ curriculum will be in NZ.

    Since Nov 2006 • 6243 posts Report

  • Hard News: The Demon E-Word,

    I'm sure an elite university would have no trouble coming to an arrangement with a similar overseas institution.

    Only for some subjects. Anything with looking at NZ wouldn't fly - that's a fair bit of history, culture, film, literature, politics, Maori language & culture. Sciences largely would be OK, as would commerce. Various 'professional' courses taught at universities would struggle because of the country-specific nature. Medicine and Dentistry would mostly be OK, but law would struggle. Education and teacher training wouldn't work.

    Nevermind the cost of sending tens of thousands of pieces of work overseas for marking. That used to be the system a hundred years ago, when all work from the University of New Zealand was sent to England for marking. Of course, it only involved a couple of hundred students then. I wonder if any top university does it comprehensively in the modern age?

    Since Nov 2006 • 6243 posts Report

  • Hard News: Scuffling and screaming on…,

    The idea, however, that settlements set down by the government, whether Iwi sign them or not, are full and final is nonsense. For a contract to be legally binding the parties have to be equally empowered to negotiate the contract and not be under duress. ANY and EVERY time the government IMPOSES a decision on Maori it is in breach of the Treaty.

    I think a lot of iwi have been pretty happy with the Waitangi Tribunal and treaty negotiations process. Nothing's perfect, but I'm not sure if you can consider the fact that the government has the assets/land/money that an iwi wants as 'duress'. No iwi has been forced to sign anything, they just negotiate and either sign or don't.

    I think parties on both sides would be concerned that you've decided that negotiations that they've both entered into in good faith and signed up to aren't legally binding.

    In particular Ngai Tahu will spew if their settlement gets ripped up and they have to return their big pot of cash, and all the profit they've made from it since.

    Since Nov 2006 • 6243 posts Report

  • Hard News: Dopamine psychosis and other…,

    That definitely sounds like pokies to me...

    I don't think that pokies have no benefit at all. A lot of people can have a wee flutter on the pokies and enjoy themselves for half an hour and that's it. I know I did once last year, and I haven't touched one since.

    I always liked the idea of increasing the minimum age at which you can buy cigarettes by 1 year each year

    That's what I'd want to do - set a fixed birthdate, after which you couldn't buy cigarettes. The black market is a problem, but I also couldn't get around the international element - tourism, people moving here etc. How much would it cost the NZ tourist industry if most of the people who smoked stopped coming here (and would there be any benefit in promoting ourselves as a smokefree destination)?

    Since Nov 2006 • 6243 posts Report

  • Hard News: The Demon E-Word,

    In my limited understanding of how the academic world works, this would be increasingly hard above second year university level. I believe that in most cases the lecturer giving the course would be the only one with enough understanding to set and mark a paper in it. No?

    We don't do double blind marking here at my university, though single blind marking is an option for the student.

    But we do do external marking at the honours level. Material is sent away to another department at another university where it is either marked by an external (the internal and external marker have to agree on a final mark), or 'boundary cases' (high B+, low A+ etc) are looked at to ensure peer review of both the students and the lecturers.

    The small size of many NZ departments would mean that you would need to send it to another NZ university to accomplish double blind. His suggestion that there be one elite university would make it impossible, as there wouldn't be another institution of sufficient quality to send your material to.

    Since Nov 2006 • 6243 posts Report

  • Hard News: The Demon E-Word,

    We are a democracy competing against not so democratic countries - we need to get real.

    Personally, the whole 'we need to be better so we can compete against other countries education system graduates' reason for having a better school system bugs me.

    I don't mind that we have an education system that does that, in fact, it's a good thing. I can just think of ten more important reasons for having a good education system than keeping up with Britain/Australia/Korea/Canada/China whoever else. Personally I don't send my son to school so that he can beat someone somewhere else for a job later in life. Why is it almost always the first (and often only) reason that people troop out?

    Since Nov 2006 • 6243 posts Report

  • Hard News: The Demon E-Word,

    One of the great problems with the system at present is that there is this push for "independent thought", "problem solving", "individual research", active learning and the like before the pupils have even been given the tools to do this with. That is why we see this dichotomy between the successes* of the system nd the failures that the archaic left-right divide needs to create in order to keep the political elite in power, and food on minto's table whatever he does for a living.

    I read this twice and now need to ask. What are you saying? The success-failure gap is maintained by the radical left and right to keep the political elite (the moderate center?) in power, and Minto in food?

    I looked at one of those unlimited programmes.

    Here's a couple of things they're teaching:

    Fighting Fantasy
    Braden Faavae
    We're studying 'Star Wars' as a film study and then beginning our own journey to build a web-based fighting fantasy game like Dungeons and Dragons. First however it is to a galaxy far, far away. Spaces will be limited to twenty.

    Fantasy Adventure Games
    Brent Silby
    Enter a world of fantasy. In this world, you become a valiant knight on a quest to vanquish an evil wizard who has enchanted the land with treacherous monsters and demons. In this option we will explore the world of Fantasy Adventure games. We will compare the story in these games with some traditional fantasy stories. By the end of this course, we will have produced our own Fantasy Adventure game.

    I don't know to what extent those have educational value, but man I would have signed up for that when I went to school. Bet it's newbie D & D stuff, no where near the geek wet dream that a hard core gamer would have wanted.

    For those that are ragging on Minto:

    Bling Bling!!!
    Katie Ward
    Ever found yourself thinking about money??... Well this course might just be for you! In this class you will get a nice taste of different markets around the world. We will find out why our systems of exchange are what they are like today and learn some basic commercial / economic terminology. Although other blocks in this course will focus more on entrepreneurship, this class is strongly economics based which will set you up with a good understanding for the rest of the year.

    (There's more traditional content as well).

    Since Nov 2006 • 6243 posts Report

  • Hard News: Scuffling and screaming on…,

    There was I think even justification for the (armed) Black Panthers at the start when they formed to police the streets of black LA neighbourhoods because the police weren't doing their jobs in those areas.

    That also wasn't illegal, as California at the time didn't have a law against the carrying of what was some fairly serious weaponry around the streets.

    They did have a law against bringing said weapons onto the floor of the state house of representatives, which caught them out in 1967 when the BPP went there to protest a law banning the carrying of weapons in public (ironic really).

    Since Nov 2006 • 6243 posts Report

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