Posts by Bart Janssen
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Hard News: The United States of Surveillance?, in reply to BenWilson,
It’s just the kind of thing technocrats would think of.
Stupid technocrats. Next thing they'll be promising computers predicting crimes before they happen
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Hard News: The United States of Surveillance?, in reply to nzlemming,
I said “I can read your files and email. How do you know you can trust me?”
The look on his face have been a thing to behold.
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Hard News: The United States of Surveillance?, in reply to Christopher Nimmo,
I loved that logo. It screamed to me of some of the actual geeks (the ones doing the work) designing a logo by which everyone in management would ultimately be embarrased.
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Just as a side note. While I love the fact that Dunne has had his pay cut, given his history of doing whatever it took to keep his cushy job, it seems a little odd to ses him thrown out for doing something I'd want more from our government.
Essentially what Dunne did was what should have happened in the first place. An open public enquiry. All too much of our government operates in secrecy. Either specific secrecy or simply important actions buried in mundane trivia.
We actually want to know explicity what our government is doing, and why, and oddly Dunne is being kicked to the curb for (allegedly) giving us more access to information, not less.
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Legal Beagle: D-Day for Dunne (updated), in reply to Craig Ranapia,
I guess it’s totally beyond the realms of possibility that Winston’s feeding a load of bullshit to inexplicably credulous hacks
A politician saying things that are not true???????
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Speaker: Generation Zero: Let's Grow Up, in reply to Islander,
but very bloody few of ’em actually CREATE
He's probably referring to the history prior to the mid 20th century. In those times the only people with the time available to create, invent, discover were the rich. Everyone else spent every waking hour staying alive (usually with mixed success).
As you point out even then only a few of the rich bothered, or were able to create. But because they were the only ones with opportunity then all the inventions etc came from the rich.
In the early to mid 20th century that changed. The entire middle class had time, even the poor had more time. As a consequence the generation of ideas, discoveries, art etc started to come from all levels of society. Again most folks didn't create anything significant but now the few that did could be poor or middle class rather than only the rich having that time.
It's a really interesting change in culture and not one many folks see. Even those who look at the history of science sometimes miss that change. It has impacts on where people applied their talents, the rich tended to be random in their efforts, the poor often had very specific goals. Hence art suddenly depicted a broader swath of society, science targetted needs of the poor, since it was ebing by folks who grew up poor.
All of which is completely off-topic. And all of that applies to Western culture and history and is not entirely true elsewhere.
Oh and as a side note, you borrow against savings if your return on investment is greater than the cost of the money. It's how the genuinely talented rich have succeeded - the ones who have built empires from scratch rather than being gifted them by parents or buddies.
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Speaker: Generation Zero: Let's Grow Up, in reply to Danielle,
you don’t really see the many good bits of Houston by driving on freeways, Bart
Oh I agree, they have the most amazing natural history museum, possibly the best mineral collection I have ever seen, I think slightly better than the smithsonian collection!
And other bits of Houston were neat too, but compared to Auckland it was not pretty. Some of that is size but a lot of it was urban planning.
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Speaker: Generation Zero: Let's Grow Up, in reply to Matthew Poole,
features poorly for health outcomes
Particularly if you are poor/black/hispanic. Oh yeah we really want to be like Houston. We drove through Houston a few times while we lived in Texas and living in a concrete grey city - except for the burnt out black bits where the poor folks live - is not an ideal to which we should aspire.
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Speaker: Generation Zero: Let's Grow Up, in reply to James Bremner,
so how does Auckland get affordable housing?
You could start by instituting a capital gains tax which would discourage people from owning 5 houses and never improving them because the capital gains make any improvement stupid. This would have the effect of putting more properties onto the market. That in itself has no effect on housing density in the first instance but it allows many of those investment properties (frequently low density shitholes) to be replaced by medium density modern housing.
Next as has been pointed out numerous times, so you of course know this already and are merely trolling, you make sure a significant proportion of new housing is medium density 2-6 story apartments, semi-detached housing, higher density detached housing (infill). In some areas that is inappropriate, yes in my backyard. In many areas it it entirely reasonable and would act to increase population density, improving the functionality of public transport and providing the density needed for local bars/restaurants etc. But most importantly the increase in the number of housing options reduces the buying demand and the overinflated prices will fall. But you knew all that.
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Notes & Queries: Paul, in reply to Dylan Bland,
objectify a real person
Oddly what I liked most about this piece was it's "plainness". Which is not meant in any way to imply the writing is plain. But more that it is a (deceptively) simple retelling of a plain simple relationship between friends.
If anything rather than objectifying a person, the essay/story/blog personalised someone mostly treated as an inconvenient if animate object.