Posts by Russell Brown
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
What you think you know and what you can prove are two entirely different things. And as long as that remains the case Clint Rickards (presuming he does not rape anyoneelse) has nothing to worry about. He has been found innocent on the evidence discovered and can keep his job (or accept a multi-million severence).
They're working very carefully on the relatively minor disciplinary case against him. As someone else said here, Rickards is probably the only person who think it's appropriate for him to continue as a senior policeman.
You yourself explained this dilemma when confronted with Wishart's allegations involving the Dunedin police and you were right - inquiring into corruption in the police is bad news.
I'm not sure that's what I said, but I have been thinking about Wishart's Dunedin claims. The Shipton-Schollum et al horrorshow clearly shows that very bad things can happen, and be covered up, but Wishart's main source/victim, Joyce Conwell, has made such bizarre allegations -- including that she was framed by her police enemies for both her separate attempted murder and murder convictions -- that it's impossible to regard her as credible. She seems crazy. And she did get to tell her story to senior government MPs, who appear to have thought the same thing.
Wishart also crapped on his own story by framing it as a sweeping high-level government conspiracy, not being frank about his victim's credibility problems in the first place, and relying on the unreliable Wayne Idour.
But enough. Wishart, judging by his silly letter in the new Metro, seems to want to fight me, and I'm not terribly interested.
-
What do you call people like myself? White on the outside, but partly brown on the inside. Please, try not to prefix your answer with the word "Rotten..."
Ummm ... one of Dick Hubbard's YCRs?
Yoghurt-Coated Raisin, that is ...
-
This just in: journoblogger Philippa Stevenson raps the MSM for something that's all too common - the dutiful transcription of claims of expertise by foreign visitors.
Also on Rural Network: a guest expert blog on the same visitor's claim to glory in the field of soil science, which helped get him in front of a Parliamentary select committee.
Dr Arden Andersen turns out to be, um, an osteopath, and his academic resume is, frankly, rather odd. Now tell me again how useless blogs are ...
-
Wong Liu Sheung, one of the organisers of this weekend's Bananas NZ: Going Global conference, discusses change, identity and the meaning of a Banana.
-
I was also surprised that Audrey Young seems to have been given quite a hard time over her foray into blogging. She discusses that in her latest post, with reference to my Listener column on the topic. I thought it was evident that Young nailed the big political stories of two successive weeks via her blog.
It's also worth noting that the blog voice allows Young to do something virtually prohibited by convention in a normal column: refer explicitly to the writing of other journalists. That seems like a feature rather than a bug.
And one more thing: show me where in the conventional media the proceedings of the conference are being discussed with the depth and seriousness that they are on blogs, mailing lists and websites.
Vernon? Care to join the conversation?
-
From No Right Turn:
Finally, Dominion-Post reporter and Parliamentary press gallery chairperson Vernon Small gave an entertaining talk on "mapping the crossroads between new media and ethics" and where the profession was headed. Like Judy Macgregor before him, he was pretty scathing of the blogosphere, calling bloggers "biased and unfair" and saying that they were way out on the fringes of the media solar system …
The discussion also saw an explanation from Audrey Young on her John Key post (apparently, the title was added by her sub-editor). Young argued that "one of the best ways we can ensure journalistic standards in blogging is for more of us to do it". Vernon Small argued that the blogosphere's "rush to instant opinion" invited trouble in the form of errors born of swift judgement (something I'll ruefully admit to); he thought journalism had a requirement for considered opinion. Chris Warren chipped in with some very interesting points about blogging culture: the problem he thought isn't that bloggers are acting unethically as journalists - the problem is that blogging is fundamentally contemptuous of journalism. We've seen the development of a key communications technology which is fundamentally contemptuous of journalism, with that contempt being driven in part by a belief that journalists are not living up to their own standards. However, he also argued that journalists have "terrible glass jaws" and were perhaps excessively sensitive to criticisms from bloggers.
There are some unhelpful generalisations there. Blogging isn't "fundamentally contemptuous of journalism" any more than television is fundamentally contemptuous of radio. Some bloggers might operate on a built-in contempt for journalism; the very large majority don't. Blogging might manifest as a critique of journalism, it might be indistinguishable from journalism, or it might regard journalism as irrelevant. It's just a different voice.
Whether Small likes it or not (and I'm sure he doesn't), the newspaper columns of Michael Laws or Jim Hopkins manifest as journalism, but, as we have noted here lately, rarely seem to observe "a requirement for considered opinion". And the next time Steve Cook stitches up someone at the Herald on Sunday, I may well be unimpressed -- but I'm unlikely to make the mistake of making universal judgements about newspapers on the basis of it.
I am frequently in awe of good journalism. But in the real world, it sometimes falls down on the presentation and interpretation of factual information, especially where it's technical in nature. When it does, it defaults to a talking-heads model; a tit-for-tat listing of opposing claims. The GE "debate" remains the classic example.
One of the most useful benefits of the rise of blogging is that it has provided a gateway for expertise. Expert blogs, crafted by people who (a) can write, and (b) know stuff are a boon to us all. And as Keith ably noted in the Aotearoa Ethnic Journal, blogging enjoys some advantages with format:
Good opinion pieces are, in fact, torturous to write. Mainstream publications expect a coherent argument in 600 to 800 words, complete with epic hyperboles, pithy invectives and evidence. Of course, it’s often the evidence that’s left on the cutting room floor.
Blogs can have it all. Most importantly, you can reference massive statistical tomes with a simple hyperlink. By linking to relevant sources, you are demonstrating that your figures were not plucked from the ether (or from the back of a napkin, which is often the case with many politicians and even some journalists); that you are confident that your analysis will stand up to scrutiny; and finally, you allow journalists to use your analysis while quoting from your original, respectable source.
Hyperlink referencing can lend instant credibility to your argument (provided, of course, that your analysis actually does withstand the subsequent scrutiny!), and it can do so without creating excessive material for casual readers to wade through. Huge volumes of information can be embedded without interrupting the flow of the prose.
In this way, it is a uniquely effective tool for presenting factual arguments. This is especially true when the alternative is a three-paragraph letter to the editor, a medium which requires immense skill and discipline to make an effective point.
But more than anything else, Small and Macgregor make the classic mistake of believing political blogging to be synonymous with blogging per se. It isn't. But it would be redundant to go on, given that Stephen Johnson has already nailed it in his required-reading Five Things All Sane People Agree on About Blogs and Mainstream Journalism.
I lead pretty much every presentation I give with a walk through those five things.
-
Its also worth considering that the break-ins at Foreman's apartment might have had nothing to do with politics. She does co-own a multi-million dollar company with her husband, and was widely considered to be conducting an affair. That combination could make for a hell of a divorce case, and a much more plausible basis for private detectives to be sneaking around her house than some plot hatched between John Key and Heather Simpson.
Well, except that she's come out and said she believes it was Dr Brash's political enemies from "close to home". And she says her housesitter identified one intruder as a private investigator.
I think she's wealthy and successful enough to be able to find out a bit more once she had the PI's name - if only what kind of cases he usually took on. She's too smart to be saying these things lightly to a hard-nosed journalist.
If you absolutely forced me to speculate wildly, I'd say that the break-ins were malign, but probably separate from the stuff with the emails. I agree with Danyl and DPF that in the latter case you're probably talking about an individual with a USB drive.
But, like I said, it was a weird episode, teeming with strange actors. We know that some of them did hire PIs for very unseemly purposes.
-
I read this link with interest. What is missing is the corresponding analysis of the global warmers funding and backers. Science in the States is not an altruistic operation. While many Universities have pure science as their aim, they do rely on sponsored funding and that always seems to have had political ramifications.
The problem there is that you're accusing literally thousands of scientists with relevant expertise -- the large majority of those with such expertise -- of corruption.
Links between vested interests and a number of climate change skeptics can be -- and have been -- demonstrated. If you're going to allege that most of the scientists in the field are lying, you need to offer some evidence.
-
A good example of the changing nature of climate change debate is the news story today of NASA having to revise their data on US surface air temperatures. Apparently, a Canadian scientist by the name of Steve McIntyre found a 'bug' in NASA's computer software. NASA adjusted their data and now the averages have cooled somewhat. The hottest year is now 1934, not 1998. So it's still a very fluid scientific debate.
That's the story discussed in the first Slashdot thread and, as I said, dealt with quite usefully in the modded-up posts. This post, for example:
Look more closely at that (corrected) graph. In particularly, look at the year-on-year variability. The hot years in the 30's did indeed get very hot, but they were interspersed with cold years. No such thing happens in the late 90's and early 2000s - cold years in this latter period are all a lot warmer than almost any other cold years and in fact warmer than most years prior to 1930!
Which referred to this one that compiled the top five-year means from the corrected data:
1 2000 0.52 0.79
2 1999 0.93 0.69
3 2004 0.44 0.66
4 2001 0.76 0.65
5 1932 0.00 0.63
6 1933 0.68 0.61
7 2003 0.50 0.58
8 2002 0.53 0.55
9 1998 1.23 0.51
10 1988 0.32 0.51 -
I still think the whole climate change debate is far too loaded with 'us and them' terminology that makes it difficult for reasoned debate. Russell you sometimes perpetuate this as well. I object to language like 'climate change denial'. It runs seriously close to the 'holocaust denial' label and those that illogically follow that line.
But what's described in the Newsweek story <i>is</i> an organised campaign of denial. It's not about the balance of scientific opinion.
And then there are the 'conspiracy' theories and the mentioned whackos in Newsweek that fund rediculous campaigns. All this leads to frightening prospects for anyone who wants take a view that climate change may not be occuring as the mainstream thinking suggests.
As I said, the highest-rated posts in the Slashdot discussion provide a pretty good guide to the arguments. Meanwhile, we're seeing news stories with headlines like Analysts See ‘Simply Incredible’ Shrinking of Floating Ice in the Arctic.
Last ←Newer Page 1 … 2105 2106 2107 2108 2109 … 2279 Older→ First