Posts by R A Hurley
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Hard News: The roof was on fire,
Also, I think the latest Auto-tune the News is a little less than some of the others. For me the standouts were 2, 5, and 6. The latest one is just a chance to say 'look, we got T-Pain!'.
maybe... but i think the wonderful interweaving of refrains at the end shows a degree of compositional forethought and careful craft that suggests something more than a chance to show off T-Pain...
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Hard News: The roof was on fire,
Here's another oddity, which I've been showing to everyone: a Bollywood version of 'I Want To Hold Your Hand'.
this is many kinds of awesome... i especially find myself intrigued by the complete reworking of the lyrics to embrace a kind of destiny/fate/true love angle... as though holding hands (without some kind of karmic sanction) was just not chaste enough...
or, of course, it could be terrible subtitling...
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Hard News: The roof was on fire,
excellent... thank you Russell... i wasn't sure how to do that...
such a shame they saved the Supertop... i only ever went there once... i think it was to see Pearl Jam (that's how long ago it was)... and - as i recall - they seemed really quite annoyed about it... "thanks for inviting us to play in your... ummm... tent," Eddie Vedder said at one point, to general smirks from the rest of the band...
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Hard News: The roof was on fire,
if i might talk about the Gregory Brothers for a moment...
since i first followed a link to a (very early) Autotune The News clip i have thought that, while awesome, there was more potential rather than actual brilliance on display...
each subsequent video was better than the previous one... a little more actual genius and a little less potential... but i always had the feeling they were working up to something truly grand... and with the latest ATTN, i think they have arrived...
i know you've probably all already seen this... but i can't take the chance that some of you haven't... go... go now...
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Hard News: America: Chill out!,
Also, whether you like to admit it or not, America's health care issues aren't as unusual as we'd like to think. It seems to me that every First World country is trying to deal with the same political, economic and practical challenges thrown up by an ageing population, expanding costs and entitlements while facing unpopular question about who the hell is eventually going to pick up the tab.
this is true... but i think any suggestion that the American system is anywhere near any sort of par with systems elsewhere in the first world would be misguided... all first world democracies are facing similar problems, yes... but we're not all starting from the same place...
in other words... before America can address the problems you're talking about... it has to stop failing a not insignificant proportion of its citizens... walk before you run, and all that...
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Hard News: America: Chill out!,
I must admit I am perpetually astonished at the extent to which local American politics is global news.
i think that, in this particular case, there's a basic issue of empathy for the millions that can't get medical care in a modern democracy...
and if that makes me sound like i'm invested in American health care in the same fashion as i might be invested in, for instance, the Darfur Conflict, then i'll have to plead guilty there...
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Hard News: America: Chill out!,
also, got to give it up (sort of) for the Republican response... mercifully short... and didn't mention the word "tyranny" once... from the modern Republican establishment, i'll take that as progress...
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Hard News: America: Chill out!,
good speech, i thought... nice to see a little of Candidate Obama back on display...
minor WTF moment though, after Obama finished speaking and Brian Williams and Chuck Todd started talking... were they even listening to the same speech?
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Island Life: There is no alternative,
So that's my take: free education, ban faith based schools unless they promote equality of all faiths and none (so that's the Catholics out), ban charging for education.
Hear hear. I'll take this at black market prices RIGHT NOW, thanks.
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Hard News: New Zealand Weekend Television,
Telethon ?
Does this presume that TV occupies the same cultural and community role that it did in the past ? One might speculate that a whole generation might fail to notice this at all. Though of course I do wish them luck.
I think there might be something to this... I honestly did not know anything about any Telethon until about 5 minutes ago, reading Russell's post.
Although, funnily enough, I did get an email two days ago from a friend apologising for a delay in posting me something with the phrase, "sorry, was busy preparing for the Telethon"... I thought it was odd at the time, and since he spends most of his time in England now, I turned to my partner and said, "hey wow, they're having a Telethon in Britain... I thought that was just a Kiwi thing?"... Apparently there's a picture of me in the dictionary next to "oblivious"...