Posts by Kyle Matthews
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We need another word for a "troll" who actually believes what they're saying.
"Wrong"?
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There was also a (hot) visual artist from the Ukraine, whose chosen medium was sand sprinkled and swept over a light box, projected onto the big screen.
Kseniya Simonova I'd imagine. This is her pretty famous work in Ukraine's got talent which is about the invasion and massacre in her country during WW2:
(18 million views on youtube, and that's not the only version up there)
She's actually a trained psychologist, she learnt sand art as a side line to her job. -
Modern philosophers (generally speaking) aren’t valued because what they say is incomprehensible. Noam Chomsky wrote about this: if he’s interested in a subject in contemporary physics or mathematics he can read about it, or find an expert in the field to explain it to him; but advances in post-modern philosophy are simply opaque to him as a non-expert, and no one in the field can explain them in meaningful terms. All they CAN say, seemingly, is that their work is very, very important, and requires public funding.
I feel the need to point out that most doctorates - including almost all in the science, commerce subjects etc, are technically doctorates in philosophy - hence PhD.
We certainly don’t require our science students to be well rounded. Looking at Auckland and Otago, neither do they. I find most of them are though, because if someone is intellectually curious they’ll read books of their own volition rather than pay a humanities lecturer to tell them what to read.
All medical students at Otago have to study a humanities subject as part of the their training. The medical school requires it in order to remind them that treating patients is about more than science.
You really want me to explain the premise behind professional qualifications to you?
I can point you to a list of professors at my Law Faculty who would bristle at calling what they teach a 'professional qualification'. Many law graduates don't go on to be lawyers remember.
Those poor people, reading Rowling on the bus instead of paying for a Professor to teach them how to analyse it within a critical framework.
English at Otago teaches a summer school paper on magic in Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter and... C S Lewis I think. I haven't done it, but I think the lecturer puts a bit more into it than you get from just reading the books.
unlike other liberal arts students in this thread who went onto diverse things, I didn’t find myself quoting the original text of the Iliad in my subsequent IT career. It was not a brilliant investment of the taxpayers money.
I'm an IT manager working in a Humanities department at the university, and I wouldn't be anywhere near as good at my job if I hadn't also done a History honours degree. The biggest failing of many IT graduates is their lack of empathy and understanding of what the people they're working with are trying to do, and an inability to communicate their knowledge with them.
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I’m not entirely sure that this is as clear as you say. For instance, tertiary participation in Australia trebled since HECS was introduced, unfortunately, participation by low-SES students hasn’t changed!
You can say something similar about NZ - indeed we've both heard many national ministers of education say that very thing. Correlation does not equal causation however.
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My views on loans aren’t fixed but I think a case can be made for them if they are structured so that they increase and importantly broaden participation without unduly disadvantaging graduates with unmanagable debt.
I think at face value, that's true.
However the loan scheme became part of the structure which allowed governments to cut funding (increase fees), and restrict access to allowances. You couldn't do those things in NZ unless you could point to a loan scheme so that people could access it anyway. It's the convenient answer to the challenge "but fees and lack of allowances mean people can't afford tertiary education".
It's an essential part of the structure of user pays tertiary education in New Zealand. It's only an answer to that challenge in theory, in reality we know that the costs of tertiary education deter people despite the existence of the loan scheme.
And at some stage the government is going to have the balls to put interest back on. Which is going to go back to the end result of people that earn less as a graduate paying more in real terms for their tertiary education.
That's because it's a loan scheme, not a graduate tax or a bonding scheme. It's based on a financial system which is commercially based.
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Yup, I can’t warm to the guy, who was the Minister of Education when student fees were first introduced. 15 years later, after I finally pay my loan off, he wants me to elect him Prime Minister? Cheers dude, but die already.
22 years ago. I pay off my student loan this year, thanks largely to one bulk payment when I inherited some money. Though the loan scheme is Lockwood, not Goff's.
Section 8 of the 1989 Education Act (which set up Tomorrow’s Schools) legislated for the right of all children, including disabled children, to attend their local school from 5-19 years, This was huge and I think Goff was minister at the time.
Lange launched Tomorrows Schools in 1988 as Minister of Education and would have headlined most of the work on it. The legislation came through in 1989 I believe.
I’ve got to say, having vehermently opposed student loans when I was in student politics, I’m not entirely sure they’re so bad albeit in need of modifications.
I'm clicking the unfriend button on facebook as we speak. C'mon Paul!
I think the "why won't someone replace Goff now" answer is:
1. It's not just what the party wants, it's what individuals are happy to put themselves forward. I think any of the potential candidates will be thinking about their political careers as well as the good of the party.
2. The party isn't an amorphous blob. It will take some of the right wing of the party to abandon him, and them and the left wing to come behind one candidate. It's not just "what's good for the party", there's lots of politics and factions involved.
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The present problem for Labour I feel stems from Helen Clarke and Michael Cullen not sticking around long enough to help bed in successors and assist with developing the opposition mindset (running gear) and strategy, what Goff got left with was a job no one appeared to really want.
I think this is based on the assumption that Labour is a party without splits in the caucus. Clark's successors to who she passed on that information will probably be on the left wing of the party. Goff ain't part of that faction so might have missed some of that.
My feeling on the discussion that people have been having about the extent to which the Labour party needs to deal with the situation in front of it in terms of media and public engagement with them and their policies is...
The party needs to work from where people are at - both their base that they'd expect to vote for them, and the middle swing voters in particular. I'd hope they'd have done some good work over the past two years figuring out where those people's priorities were, their beliefs, what change they'd like to see in NZ, what they'd like to hold onto.
There's really two things that they can do with that information - seek to use their position to change those views, particularly where they contrast with what they consider to be 'core Labour party values', and 2. feed into them in terms of their policies and how they present themselves. They'll be doing a mixture of those two things in different areas.
But the whole process isn't very obvious from where I'm sitting. On the presumption that they've done/doing it, their ability to communicate the outcomes are pretty appalling. Yes the media and political culture in NZ is pretty average, but they're running for election in New Zealand, so they need to work through and try and improve what's in front of them, and I'm not seeing it.
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The practicalities of leaving are crushing: how would we sell our house? so how could we buy another? Finding new jobs, new schools for the kids, leaving all our friends behind – and almost all of our friends are staying, which is a big deal, because Home is also people.
My stepdaughter was struggling through trying to prepare her house in Chch for sale having separated from her partner (they're both still living there). She's now feeling in a right hole as the house is badly damaged but not bad enough for demolition, and she just wants to walk away and start somewhere else, but can't financially.
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Despite having lived in this country my whole life, my accent is often mistaken - by NZers and otherwise - for English, or perhaps South African. Perhaps that's another reason for being "from" Wellington - when asked where I'm from (or more insidiously, where I'm originally from), it's easier to reply "Wellington" than get all defensive.
I have a sporting acquaintance with an accent (not sure where from exactly) that's at the "proper" end of English accents.
The day I met him I asked him where his accent came from. His answer:
"Proper diction." Well prepared sir.
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Every other US president in recent years has gone through the legalities of getting congressional approval for any US war, internationalist or not.
For very limited 'recent years'.