Posts by izogi
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Hard News: Poll Day 2: Queasy, in reply to andrew r,
Journalist as the star – Gower etc. How very very sad. Grow the fk up and get some integrity. You’re a journalist for gods sake do and be proud of your job.
I also find it depressing to watch, but I have trouble completely blaming the journos alone when it seems to be what they're encouraged to do by higher-ups.
Maybe those in the industry could comment, but when a TV journalist is looking for a job, I'd expect that like any acting job, someone whose face and presence is well recognised is likely to have more job security, and especially with competing channels is probably worth a higher salary. Promoting that aspect would count as career advancement---is there a screen time clause written into the modern employment contracts?
John Hawkesby managed to get booted from TVNZ with $5.2 million in his pocket after 3 weeks work, because the network had somehow falsely imagined he'd bring so many viewers! In this type of environment, it's no wonder today's journalists are incentivised to be seen traveling to places on satellite feeds even when it's meaningless, to make sure their faces are shown asking the hard questions (not always the most important questions), and generally to make themselves the centre of stories. That's what goes into the ads to make you look better than the other channel.
But yes, I do find Patrick Gower to be on the more annoying end of the scale.
-
Muse: Guilt By Association Copy, in reply to Lucy Stewart,
I’d pretty much feel the same way about an autographed book by Stalin, for the record. Or Pol Pot, etc, etc.
There’s no way I’d want to own this type of item, but I can’t completely rationalise where I draw the line except that I think it’s around how recent the history is.
Genghis Khan went out of his way to efficiently and effectively wipe out entire nations in genocidal waves of destruction for little reason other than to stamp his name on the world, yet every week thousands of kiwis probably dine in a Mongolian barbecue restaurant chain which celebrates the guy and his notariety. This is the exact type of recognition and memory which Genghis wanted with his deeds, and he’s immortal thanks to his butcherous regime.
Horrible, disgusting and evil man by today’s standards, but it’s also had 700-800 years to date, so fewer people care about what he did besides an aspect of history that no longer effects anyone in ways that matter to them, and we laugh over dinner as we order off a menu with his face on it. You can bet where the personal items of Genghis turn up today, they’d be considered valuable and interesting.
Hitler and the Nazis generally? Also horrible and disgusting, and more to the point it’s still in the living memories of many people who are alive today, from both sides of events, whether directly or through connections. WW2 stuff, expecially Nazi memorabilia, means completely different things for a large number of people in today’s society.
KDC doesn’t seem automatically creepy to me for owning it as an investment, though. It’s not as if he carries it around and idolises it (unless there’s further evidence), and from an investment perspective it’s almost certainly going to be more valuable in future, especially as new generations come along and the perception of WW2 and the Holocaust changes over the decades to come.
Pretty dumb politically, but he’s also not exactly in politics for the traditional reasons.
-
Hard News: The Web, in reply to BenWilson,
I’d rather actually talk to someone in the building than struggle with Emacs in a command line
You used EMacs as a mail reader??
Actually, yeah. Knowing EMacs I could believe that. -
Hard News: The Web, in reply to Richard Aston,
But when google came along it was a seismic shift in searching.
...And now it doesn't just mine data about websites people might want to read, it mines data about its users.
It's a bit weird how stuff changes. I've recently switched from Chrome back to Firefox/Iceweasel because I became sick of so much of everything I do on the 'net being so dependent on Google. It's only a token change in the scheme of things, but it's kept me sane.
-
Maybe I only saw one side of it, but I remember the big point-of-difference with Ask Jeeves being that it let people type in questions, instead of search terms. It was meant to be more naturally usable, and therefore become extremely popular to sell more advertising, or something.
I don’t think its actual search results were especially better than anything else around. That’s what mattered in the end.
-
A 2011 MBIE paper included this graph on the percentage of people who agree that “it is a good thing for a society to be made up of people from different races, religions, and cultures”
From following the link it looks as if that chart came from a 2000 study that was centred on Europe, plus MBIE pulled Australian data from a 2003 study, and the NZ data was taken from another study in 2008. Australia and parts of Europe might have increased (or decreased) in the 5 to 8 years since NZ data was added.
Nevertheless it’s great to see NZ circling the top of that graph. What I’d be really interested in seeing, though, is how some of the other societies rate beyond Europe. Maybe the likes of South American, Asian and African nations. It could be quite fascinating to gauge who thinks their societies benefit from outside cultures, and then maybe dig a little deeper to discover what that actually means to them when they say that, what they’re already experiencing and what they expect from mixing other cultures in. Like, if lots of people in a society are very accepting, is that because they’re already feeling very secure with maintaining their own culture? Why do they feel that way when some others obviously don’t? Do people who answer that question only think of the other cultures they're already mostly aware of?
-
When Lorde emerged at Sydney airport yesterday she was flanked by both private security guards and (according to Jonathan Marshall on Twitter) no fewer than 10 Australian Federal Police officers.
I do hope that New Zealand never becomes like this as habit, though, in the sense of using gratuitous Police presence to absolutely overwhelm any potential issue anywhere. Something I really disliked about living in Melbourne, and what I saw of Sydney when there, was the frequency with which Police commonly roam the streets in intimidating gangs of 4 or more.
Hopefully this is just a passing phase.
-
Hard News: Crashing the party before it starts, in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
My comment was about the impossibility of Internet voting at this election.
My comment was about the view I might form of this party based on its policies (if it actually has any). :)
-
Hard News: Crashing the party before it starts, in reply to Hebe,
Will those 15,000 young people vote at all?
Possibly not, but they might all sign a petition stating that they should be allowed to vote online.
Come to think of it, has anyone seen any hints of what the Internet Party’s policy (if any) might actually be towards Online Voting, given the degree of internet actually involved? It’s not something I’ve ever been able to associate as compatible with a free and fair election, at least in terms of things like guaranteed anonymity and less likelihood of coercion at the time of voting. (Most of it isn't too different from postal voting in many respects, but we don't use postal voting in national elections.)
-
Hard News: Making it up on smacking, in reply to Revel Drummond,
I can say with complete confidence that my life would have been worse had my mother been investigated, charged and convicted for smacking me and my brothers.
Can you say with as much confidence that your life would have been worse if your mother had not smacked you and your brothers, knowing that smacking was not legal?
That’s more what’s at issue, because if the law had been what it now is when you were growing up, your mother very possibly would have acted completely differently. Especially if it had been that way for a number of years.
I can’t speak with qualified expertise, but I know plenty of young modern parents who appear, in my view, to be doing a great job bringing up their children without resorting to smacking them. I know several who don't seem to be doing as-great a job, but in their cases I can't imagine that being allowed to smack would make the slightest difference.