Posts by Stephen Judd
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"these killing took place in one of the very few places in Virginia that had a gun free culture "
I can't remember where I read this yesterday, but that touches on a very important factor in the US, namely that while individual jurisdictions may have quite tight gun laws, guns "leak" over borders easily. So you have areas where most law-abiding people have no gun but many criminals do. The gun-toting culture is always placing pressure on any gun-free areas to become gun-toting in self defence.
"they can't undo the firearms proliferation they have now. There are just too many guns already."
And the other issue is that you would have to do this at a federal level, and that would take an unachievable level of consensus.
The ultimate reply to the "if only everyone was armed this wouldn't happen" is "yes, that works so well in Baghdad."
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Can I just say that "Bosomworth" is an amazing name?
He bears it very gracefully, along with a select few others.
He told me it's a Scottish name, and I figured out that the equivalent English would be "Broomwright", ie a maker of brooms (besoms).
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/looks over shoulder for analogy police
"if the owners of your early work onsold it tomorrow for 25 times what you sold it for then, should you as the original creator get a slice of that increased market value?"
If the purchasers of your early vintages onsold them tomorrow for 25 times what you sold them for then, should you as the original winemaker get a slice of that increased market value?
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"was his first name daniel?"
Nope, this was John Bosomworth, who now works in a completely different field. (Nice guess that it was pol sci tho: I understand there was a big argument in the department whether the work was really pol sci or not).
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"a big, posh artist type who has certain refined lifestyle expectations"
You don't actually know any artists, do you?
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"why TV1 & TV3 show so much Aussie news on our bulletins. A shooting in Wollomooloo has sod all to do with us."
Apart from the obvious cost savings in padding out your broadcast with other people's footage, perhaps some smart person knows that there are lots of Kiwi expats in Oz? If your cousin lives in Newcastle or whereever you might be quite interested in Aussie news items. Especially if he might have been shot, the bastard, he had it coming.
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An old mate of mine did his doctoral thesis on television news and came to the conclusion that essentially television news is a soap opera that serves to reinforce the viewers' understanding of the world.
This is why when you go on holiday out of range of the news, and then come back, it's hard to "get into", just as if you had missed a couple of months of your favourite soap. Likewise, once you are out of it, one news broadcast seems much the same as the other.
Hence the ire of mainstream news figures in the US towards The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. They claim that those shows are merely chewing up serious news for entertainment, but in fact that's what "news" programmes do too, only not as successfully. The Daily Show is not even heretical - it is blasphemous. Which leads me to...
... the ideas in Adcult USA, whose author posits that television viewing is actually a form of mass worship. My conclusion is that in a few years, the remaining viewers, or devotees, will watch a programme that resembles todays news. But it will be even more stylised, and the stories will be reenactments, something like a cross between reality tv and medieval morality plays. (Note to self: write long piece connecting Punch and Judy, Bailey the Mother of the Nation, and the Eusa Man).
Anyway, I think television news is a lost cause, I don't watch it, and I don't care about it.
PS: Roving Keith + digicam = main premise of Max Headroom pilot.
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Holmes was the harbinger of the rot, that grandstanding merchant of emotional pornography. He was great for ratings, but bugger-all else.
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I really, really love Iain Banks, but his female characters all strike me as men with breasts.
I would vote for Consider Phlebas and The Crow Road as my favourite M and non-M Banks books. The whisky book needed a good editing and had far too much "gosh I'm rich! And I have a lot of cars!" in it.