Posts by Rob Stowell
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... if Chris Carter had gotten around Parliament with a phalanx of bitch-slapping drag queens to make sure the press pack didn't disturb his serenity with their uppity ways?
It'd make great television. I wanna see!
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In the 1960s & 70s, pretty well every high school kid in CHCH bicycled to school.
That's what I thought. And university students, too. A lot of us didn't aspire to own cars, in large part because they were expensive.
I haven't followed this very carefully- but how do you tease out people's reasons for not cycling, to the point of being able to put a precise value on compulsory helmets as a factor? Doesn't it also correlate to a huge increase in cars, and car ownership, in NZ?
And why do so many of us drive our kids to school? Mostly, I'm guessing, because of perceptions, largely unfounded, of how dangerous it'd be for them to walk or cycle.
I'm not sure how it exactly relates to helmets (yeah, they certainly don't make cycling seem safer...) But that fear and its consequences might be the most dangerous things our kids will encounter. -
Hell yeah. I spent a fair whack of time two years ago talking to a range of scientists (and businesspeople) about science and entrepreneurship in NZ.
It was bloody depressing. -
Experiencing and imagining are quite different things.
Yes!
And... no!
(This is bloody complicated territory... since a/ everyone's experience is inherently private yet b/ we can and do talk meaningfully of sharing experiences (in a wide range of ways) and c/ empathy is a key human trait (or it used to be, harumph!)
<silly>But I cannot say more without unleashing an endlessly recursive loop of signifiers which could destroy language itself!</awkward dig at derrida>) -
you don’t import a new plant into NZ without making sure it doesn’t overrun our native forests (gorse).
PS @Bart, Keep it up, you are doing well.
Yes, you are doing a great and eloquent job Bart, and I'm learning from it.
Still, I'm a bit sceptical. RBentley makes some good points.
(And FWIW gorse doesn't over-run forests. It's a relatively short-lived pioneer plant that needs lots of light. In fact native forests over-run gorse :) -
Yes, Wilson would be the perfect replacement for Plunket were it not for the fact that she's needed where she is.
I like her too. And I can't think of anyone else.
But if she's that grumpy at 5pm, at 6am she'll be strangling puppies and electrocuting bunnies between questions :) -
there's no evidence for it that can be shared. There is also no evidence against it.
That's enough for me. Puts dualism on the same level as the teapot god :)
Though I'm uncertain what you mean by 'that can be shared". You think there's an essentially inexpressable experience of dualism? Sure, no two of us can share the same conciousness.
Though, if we could... dualism would take on new shades of meaning. -
Thanks David. Great years.
And thanks too, for pointing, as you leave, to the beedin' great hippo in the room.
To be a little fair on Labour, it's crept up, and not just on NZ. Seems to be an unintended consquence (and not the only one- Brash's tenure in the 90s as governor went the other way, and desperately squashed growth) of running an economy via the single mechanism of interest rates.
It's arguable that the (insanely low) US interest rates from 2001 have had even more effect on our economy (pushing our dollar up, allowing the banks to borrow very cheaply themselves, and fuelling worldwide 'growth' based on consumption and debt) than our own.
But it's still a shocker.
Mechanisms intended to rebalance national economies have rebalanced the world. :) -
Damian: RNZ rates very well against other stations. I seem to remember them having the highest ratings: about 10% nationwide. (Gosh, that's a lot of liberal academic blog-readers!)
One thing that always gets my goat is the proposed costs of a public service TV station and news operation. I remember people throwing around a minimum of $80m a year, and a lot more to set up.
I think that's tosh.
Well, if you got TVNZ to set one up, that's probably a minimum it'd cost them. But having worked for CTV for its first three years- a very very cheapo TV station- and watched while TVNZ, suddenly enthused about regional TV (they had access to CTV's books) managed to quickly drop $50m bungling the same sort of operations (remember Horizon? No? who does!)- I can't put any faith in their figures.
I'd look at it differently: how much is a govt willing to spend? And lets see what we can get for that. There are many relatively cheap existing- and more emerging- ways to do the actual broadcasting, which takes a big chunk out of the set-up costs.
I bet there are a good number of journalists and producers who'd love to get involved in stories that lifted the stones and rattled the bones.
The effect of one public broadcaster can be to raise the game- and the terms of public discussion- across the board. Worth getting passionate about :)
edit: oh bother- about 20 posts in the last ten minutes, who can keep up? not me! -
what sense is RNZ "coming under attack"
In the sense the govt is seriously considering ways to cut RNZ's budget. They are critics with big teeth.
Ironically the only one consistently criticised - and IMO not completely without merit - for being a bastion of the left.
Yeah? I'm not very familiar with this criticism. I do know some people who work there are lefties. But I know a few of those at TVNZ too...