Posts by Bart Janssen
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Legal Beagle: Voting in the Flag Referendum, in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
Is it actually fair for me to rank my least hated or should I just not bother?
Entirely fair to rank your least hated to give the best chance ensuring your most-hated is not selected.
Pretty much the way I operate at a beer tasting then - sadly that usually results in a win for budweiswer or equivalent, apparently I'm hypersensitive to the bitterness of hops.
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Hard News: Ten Thousand Maniacs, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
unlikely sources
When Putin is sounding like the reasonable person you know things are truly FUBAR'd.
But he does make the point that if you hand weapons to folks there is a good chance they'll do something bad with them.
And in religious news the Pope gave a speech* saying he recongnizes all these wars and atrocities are occurring mostly because of ridiculous beliefs in sky fairies and so he is dissolving the Catholic church and will be returning all the loot they've stolen over the centuries and calls upon all other religions to do the same.
*not really -
I'm a little torn. I strongly believe everyone should vote as a general rule. It is one of the few times we actually get to exercise our personal view in this democracy.
Yet I personally hate all the designs proposed (yes even red peak).
Setting aside my reasons for hating them it is my belief that none of them should replace our current flag.
So should I vote in the ranking process when my vote in the actual referendum to change the flag will be to keep the current flag (as flawed as it is)?
Is it actually fair for me to rank my least hated or should I just not bother?
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Polity: A hazy, intriguing crystal ball, in reply to Deborah,
I’m finding it rather difficult reading all this speculation about when a particular named person might die. It feels wrong to me.
Yeah sorry.
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Polity: A hazy, intriguing crystal ball, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
Also, life expectancy is strongly correlated with wealth, and Winston isn’t poor.
Very true. However, he hasn't exactly lived a stress-free life and I'm gonna guess his doctor would like him to live a healthier lifestyle, giving up smoking, drinking only in moderation and eating better are usually recommended.
Of course this is all moot because Winston is probably the poster child for n=1 so all bets are off.
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Hard News: Stories: Home, in reply to Lilith __,
Duck Mums are like human Mums
Also male ducks are pretty awful, while we lived in Davis CA the route from my lab to my partners lab went over a pond - one day we witnessed a female duck being mobbed by a group of males - we came past later to see she had drowned.
So maybe a little sympathy for mother ducks is not unwarranted.
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Polity: A hazy, intriguing crystal ball, in reply to linger,
Average life expectancy for Maori males who have reached 70 is 77.
I was wondering if that stat was somewhere and suspected that it would be higher than 73.
It is true that once you make it past 75 or so you do have a pretty good chance of making it to 90 - another quarter century of Winston anyone :).
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Kinda morbid I know but since we are playing with numbers ...
Winston Peters is 70.
Average life expectancy for Maori males is 73.
Does anyone believe NZFirst will exist after Peters?
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There is a genre of science fiction called cyber-punk that casually assumes a society where psychoactive drugs of all kinds are embedded. It's a dystopian future, full of casual death an a huge underclass that suffers horrendous conditions and are the primary market for every drug imaginable.
When reading such futures you have to wonder how we get there from here, sadly the utter debacle of drug legislation in New Zealand makes it remarkably clear just how you get there. Endless cycles of genuine attempts to make sensible reasonable legislation followed by faux outrage by the elite media (NZ Herald looking at you now) and then crackdowns that drive the drug-making expertise deeper into the criminal world.
You couldn't make this shit up.
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Hard News: Stories: Home, in reply to Soon Lee,
although that might be because I now speak with an accent and mumble & swallow my words like a proper Kiwi…
True story :P