Posts by Russell Brown
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Oh, and I have a special post due tomorrow from one of the TV journalists featured on Onscreen. I trust you'll find it interesting.
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There is something rather bearish about our Russell,
All the gays say so.
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This thread makes me think we should have a nerdy Public Address book club. There seems to be a common enough core of interest (if Ian Banks is a decent touchstone), and if we can all have civil discussions about politics, why not about books?
I'm very much in favour of the community here manifesting on relevant social platforms -- and also greatly in favour of me not doing it all.
Pete Darlington has kicked off the PAS Rollers group on Last.fm -- is there a Last.fm for book fanciers?
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And as for that kid - too damn cute to be true, clearly Photoshopped by some graphic designer getting in practice for election posters.
Same guy that did Helen Clark, I hear.
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Hmmm... 50% of Americans would see through that story. Changing size in response to environmental factors smacks of evolution. Surely NZ rats, like US rats, are sized in accordance with God's plan, independent of the presence or absence of foxes.
Ah, but wouldn't a wise God design bigger rats for more spacious countries?
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Andrew: if you check their source - a list of "The World’s Ugliest Elections" in Foreign Policy - they think we're "dirty" because of... Googlebombing John Key?!?
That might be the silliest thing I've read all year. And ...
National Party supporters retaliated, causing a search for “Labour-funded lackeys” to turn up a link to a pro-Labour newspaper.
No it doesn't. But the idea was mentioned once in this story by Colin Espiner. The author obviously thinks The Standard is a newspaper.
Indeed, it appears that Foreign Policy's expert researcher seems to have assessed New Zealand on the basis of two Espiner articles on Stuff.
The other is Minnows lash out at campaign launches, which provides both the Peters quotes and the supposed justification for this claim:
Third-party politicians, whose support is usually required to form a governing coalition, have been responsible for much of the campaign’s vitriol.
And this is a publication that trades on its authority.
Still, I'm sure Colin will be amused.
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__conspiracy theory that Rupert Murdoch was forcing his newspapers to take a pro-Iraq editorial line, using the truly eccentric methodology of looking at editorials on the subject . It simply wasn't true -- at least in New Zealand__
Rupert Murdoch doesn't own any papers in NZ.
Was this a while ago?2003, shortly before the commencement of hostilities in Iraq (and when News Ltd had a large stake in INL, whose papers are now owned by Fairfax).
Roy Greenslade wrote a Guardian column alleging that Murdoch had ordered his newspaper editors the world over to back the war. He appeared to have pulled his evidence for this claim out of his liberal ass.
This is the relevant part of the Mediawatch script I wrote around it:
In Monday's edition of The Guardian, columnist Roy Greenslade alleged that Rupert Murdoch had instructed the editors of his 175 newspapers around the world - from the Times, to the Australian and the New York Post - that their editorial stance should support war in Iraq.
After conducting what he said was an "exhaustive survey" of Murdoch's highest-selling and most influential papers, Greenslade said it was clear to him that all were "singing from the same hymn sheet". Some were softer than others, he said, but: "Their master's voice has never been questioned."
The malign proprietorial influence extended even to these shores, where, he said, "Murdoch's papers are eager to push readers and politicians towards belligerence." He quoted an editorial in Wellington's Dominion Post, which argued against what it described as the "charade" of "appeasement".
So does the evidence here support Greenslade's theory? No. We conducted our own, somewhat exhaustive, survey of editorials in New Zealand newspapers published by INL, in which Murdoch's News Limited has a 49 per cent stake. We concluded that editors were taking their own counsel, rather than that of Mr Murdoch.
By far the most hawkish of the INL papers has been The Press in Christchurch, which this week said the United Nations faced irrelevance if it did not opt for military action. The Dominion Post has been more circumspect and the Waikato Times and Sunday Star Times have been doubters.
I noted in the interview that followed that the Dom Post editorial Greenslade quoted actually appeared in The Press.
If there was a pattern, it was that newspapers tended to back their own governments' line.
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Imagine being as gorgeous and happy as you are now and having pots of dough because you were sensible all through your 20s and 30s and saved and invested sensibly.
Er, yeah, I'm imagining it. When can I open my eyes?
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I'm stunned that Obama is ahead in the polls. I am trying not to become complacent. It could still all go horribly wrong! Wrong I say!
The smart thing the Obama campaign is doing already is locking in that polling by getting hundreds of thousands of people, particularly in swing states, to vote early.
That takes any last-minute dirty tricks out of the play and helps nullify the coming wave of Republican voter-suppression antics. The early indications -- ie: lots of black folks voting -- are promising.
But check this report from an AmericaBlog reader (their asterisks):
A friend was telling me about calling people in Northern Fla. to ask how they're voting.
One woman had to ask her husband (first tipoff, ask her husband?)... the response was "We're voting for the ni---r"
That kinda says something about the repugnican ticket. These people still refer to Obama as 'the ni---r', but they're going to vote for him anyway.
Wow.
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At the moment, I approach forty with mild curiosity. Though it may turn out that as I get closer, it's something I'm less sanguine about.
I find that ruthlessly planning my own enjoyment gets me through birthdays quite well. My 40th birthday party started at 1pm on a Saturday and wound up at 3am Sunday on K Road.
Actually, a lot of my parties seem to go like that ...
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