Posts by Bart Janssen
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Hard News: The Advocate, in reply to Lilith __,
absolutely LOVED them for the coverage of red zone life post-quake
Exactly. That story highlighted the insanity of the insurance rules in a personal clear way. And it seems like they've realised they can do that really well in the time they have.
-
Campbell Live does seem to do a good job of researching their stories nowadays. That I think is their strength now. And it makes for a better quality programme.
It wasn't always so, the corngate saga was terrible not because Campbell ambushed the PM, politicians should expect that and to some degree deserve it, but because they had done such poor research (essentially just one source).
That the show appears left leaning is deceptive. There is nothing "left" about reporting stories of people being harmed by those in positions of power, be that power political, business or bureaucratic.
However, using John Roughan's criticisms to highlight the show's success is not ideal. A much better mark of success is the actual changes they've helped make by presenting stories of real people and presenting possible solutions.
It's not ratings or commercial revenue that measures the quality of the program. Rather it's if the program can make lives better. Many in the media would argue that isn't the goal, but that does seem to be what Campbell live is actually achieving.
-
Hard News: Irony Deficient, in reply to Lilith __,
strings you along until that wonderful moment where it becomes too absurd to be borne
But there is also the form where it appears absurdly unrealistic and then you discover it is real. The Daily show does that all the time.
-
Hard News: Irony Deficient, in reply to Sacha,
not setting the bar far from the ground
There's a bar under that pile of sh*t??????
-
Hard News: Irony Deficient, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
Come to that, a lot of people don't find funny funny. They see a programme like 'The Office' with those nasty, nasty characters and assume it's advocacy for that worldview.
No that wasn't my problem with The Office. It was that it was so close to my every day reality that it was genuinely depressing. It was too real to be funny any more. I love some of Ricky Gervais's other material but his portrayal of life in an office managed by a certifiably insane bully was too much for me.
-
Does the Board or Chief Executive of a Crown Organisation have to be in on the offending?
For our Crown Organisation the liability apparently rests with the CEO. It's the reason I don't mind his salary being so high. I'm pretty sure our directors don't share responsibilty. But the CRI act is a little bit different so we may have special rules that apply to us and not to the GCSB.
Essentially if someone at the bench stuffs up (or in the legal team) and creates a liability then ultimately it is the CEO who could end up in court. Of course it's a bit more complicated and you can bet the poor schmuck at the bench will lose his/her job. The out clause is if the CEO has ensured that clear instructions were given and the employee breached those instructions then I think he can dodge liability.
How that plays out for the GCSB I don't know. My guess is that the director will accept the blame. But there is a serious question about the oversight of the minister in charge, it may not be John Key's fault directly but he must accept some responsibility.
-
someone in the GCSB did something illegal. Who and what is no publicly clear
Minor typo there but I think "what was done" is reasonably clear. About 2 months ago (not sure of the date) the police were being questioned about the details of the raid by one of Dotcom's lawyers. At one point the policeman said "we knew who was at the mansion" or words to that effect. There was a distinct pause and the lawyer asked "how did they know?" at which point the policeman said he could not disclose that. At that point it was pretty clear he realised he had said something he should not have.
My interpretation of it at the time was that they had surveillence of some kind in the house before the raid.
Given the Dotcom mansion almost certainly has numerous cameras itself for security and given they are all probably continuously downloading to off-site storage it seem probable that interception of that data feed is what was being used by the police to ascertain who was or was not in the mansion.
All speculation of course but consistent with the data to hand.
-
Just another use for twitter.
I read scientific literature in my job and we used to go to the library and pick up dead trees to read the table of contents and decide if there was an article we needed to read.
Then we got newsgroups with lists of good papers.
Then we got e-mail lists and RSS feeds with Tables of content from the journals
Now I get tweets from the journals and from various agregators who highlight relevant articles.If I was smart I'd have two accounts to keep them separate.
-
OnPoint: Because Statistical Rigour, in reply to Angus Robertson,
Because publishing this data, no matter how flawed, allows readers to expand on their existing data sets and gain a better understanding of the school system.
Which might be remotely plausible IF they had not drawn a false and misleading correlation between two sets of data that statistically have no significant relationship and used that false correlation as a headline to sell papers.
Publishing the data, stupid but defensible.
Drawing graphs and printing false conclusions as headlines ... are you really defending that Angus?
-
OnPoint: Re: Education, in reply to Che Tibby,
maybe. the literature is pretty clear. the education of the parents is far more significant than the quality of the school environment or teaching.
reference pending…
i think i remember that another significant factor is if the dad reads to the child.
reasons: dad is around
dad can read
dad gives enough of a fck to read to child
child is emotionally attached, secure etc.Tempting just to quote that again because it is so very important. I've read the same papers, PNAS I think.
That relationship has been noted by the specialists in education, their take was (I think) "so we should teach boys that their role in raising their children is really important".
That's one of the things I've admired about that field, when faced with something they can't directly have much impact on they think of ways they can have an indrect impact.
Of course that is the kind of liberal namby pamby teaching national standards is designed to rid us of ... sigh.