Posts by stever@cs.waikato.ac.nz
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sagenz---
I have with political correctness. It stops any debate by labelling the mere discussion of an idea unacceptable.
Absolutely---labelling someone's ideas or actions "politically correct" is clearly designed to attack their position without having to think about it properly---classic "dog wehistle" behaviour. Whenever Ihear someone "close" an argument with "that's PC nonsense" I think "idiot!".
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Here's an extraordinary thing from Dr. Brash from yesterday:
Asked what the difference was between him and Mr Key, he said: "He's got more money than I have. That's an important difference."
In the context of being leader of the Nats, what does this mean? What is he saying here?
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To echo Yamis' points: part of my job is to bring along new researchers as well as contribute to research myself. One of the things that needs very subtle handling is showing new researchers (typically PhD students) that they are truly in an environment where they are safe to have ideas, talk to people about them, modify them, discard them if they turn out to be bad ideas that don't work etc. By "safe" we mean: no one will ridicule you, get angry with you, shun you, steal your good ideas and so on. The reason, of course, is that having truly new ideas is really, really hard and anything which makes bringing them out into the open for discussion, further study etc. unlikely means the end of progress, the end of science. Building such a supportive envoronment, and "training" people to believe in it and perpetuate it, takes time, resources, people and is so central to what we, as researchers, are about. It is also easy to destroy essentially over-night. The point, though: such environments are clearly precious, and such attitudes are clearly needed to make progress. To work in an environment that is not like this (which politcians seem to have to) cannot, in my experience, be conducive to ideas emerging and good ideas surviving and growing.
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John Key's address in the North Harbour Stadium really does sound like something lifted from (the emails of :-) ) David Cameron in the UK! Just as platitudinous (there's a great word).
It makes the (rather tired) great play of giving everyone equal opportunities. This sort of thing was unravelled long ago when Sir Keith Joseph first started on about it when leading into "the Thatcher years"---opporutnity is all very well, but you need the resources (usually money) to "activate" the opportunity too for it to be tangible and real, and that's so often a problem for many people.
And, oh dear---will we have the blog and the video site to go with it soon?!
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I also remember something about a cavekid, somehow caught in our world, living in a rubbish tip.
Stig of the Dump---you can still get the book, audiobook and VHS tape on Amazon!
Was "The Owl Service" ever here in NZ? Set in Wales, an Alan Garner adolescent/spooky tale---extremely good---as were his other books 'The Wierdstone of Brisingamen', 'The Moon of Gomrath' and 'Elidor'---some of which were also TV shows, I think.
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So this is probably a conspiracy by Whitcoulls (which rich person owns them??) to stop Hagar making money...
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Does this mean that next time anyone from National tries to leave the country they'll be stopped at the border?
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Anjum, I think you're mistaking the Waikato Times for some sort of newspaper! It's been clear to me for sometime that actually it's a forum for advertisers, where any space annoyingly left unsold is filled with a selection of verbatim PR handouts from various sources (sometimes including varous press associations!). Oh---and infinite resources appear to be available when the possibility of running-down the University presents itself.
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Nice one Stephen.
We clearly have "Lies, damned lies and DC statistics"
Even better if "DC" here is thought of as "dicey".
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BTW, Russell, in that RNZ interview David Farrar was introduced as the man with NZ's most popular blog---can this be true? How was it measured? Did David supply the stats :-)? Did he consult DC :-) ??