Posts by Caleb D'Anvers
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United Future Party:
Fad Tenuity Rupture
Funerary Tepid Tutu
Denature Purify Tut.If that's not the essence of Peter Dunne right there, I don't know what is.
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... there are some interesting trends in the domestic and international markets: what might be the start of a long-term slide for the gossip-oriented women's mags, lad mags [g]oing down the toilet ...
Much and all as I'd personally welcome these trends, I do wonder about the wider implications. Both those forms of publication are quintessentially 'light' reading. Like the cheap Victorian yellowback, which was designed to be read on trains, they're meant to be glanced at -- leafed through -- during brief moments in between other things. Now, with the advent of text messaging, I wonder if that mode of light reading has started to disappear. If you're on a bus, say, you're much more likely to check your messages than take out a magazine (as you might have done five or ten years ago).
And perhaps there's a wider demographic shift here too. Lad and gossip mags have traditionally relied upon a young readership. How many of the cellphone generation, though, read traditional print media at all, or indeed anything other than text messages from their friends?
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It is one thing to point out problems that you think need to be addressed in your country, but quite another to denounce your country as "down right mean" and many other such epithets. Especially when Americans, far from being mean are actually by far the most generous in the world by many measures.
Yes, and let's not forget the incredible generosity of Americans in inviting so many African people to come and work in their country. Why, some were even allowed inside! How dare Michele Obama be so ungrateful for all that's been done for her people?
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There's also something else, and that is the service to the country. We recognise it in our fallen soldiers when Anzac day rolls by, even in pacifist ol' New Zealand.
Sure, but it's the universalism of that 'we' that gets me. It's too redolent of that old cultural nationalist cliche that our (that word again) identity was shaped in the crucible of war. It's the concentration on individual suffering which allows questions about the legitimacy of the wider conflict to go unaddressed.
It's the same thing with McCain. He is trying -- with some success -- to use his forty-year-old experiences to deflect political criticism being aimed at him in the present. And on the wider level, abstracting or idealizing soldiers' experiences in terms of 'sacrifice' or 'service' or 'character' again allows Americans to avoid thinking too hard about the Vietnam War itself. Because, frankly, I don't think the USN's actions in the skies of North Vietnam in 1967 were especially honourable.
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I find Americans' evident fascination with McCain's ex-POW status deeply odd. Maybe it's part of the post-Vietnam US obsession with victimhood -- the idea that having suffered makes you a better human being.
There's something deeply masochistic going on here. It's like McCain's experiences give his supporters an excuse to revel in victimhood -- to claim the status of victim for themselves. Because being a victim means never having to say you're sorry.
I know McCain's bondage and subsequent return, with its obvious Christian overtones, is meant to seem mythic and powerful, but to me it just seems pathetic and weird. Because, honestly, what is so heroic about being shot down and captured? I just don't get it.
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Caleb, excellent, thanks for the links. Monbiot's argument is consistent with most of the Australian commentary also.
Thanks, Paul. I really do wish there were more NZ journalists reporting on and critiquing this stuff, seeing the way both Labour and National seem to be going on the issue.
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Getting back to the Public-Private Partnership issue, here are a couple of Monbiot pieces on nightmare outcomes in the UK. Monbiot's basic argument is that, without rigorous contractual oversight, private-sector partners can and will take public entities for the proverbial ride.
For anyone interested, this is the Office of the Auditor General's 2006 report on PPPs in the New Zealand context.
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The way the earning threshold for student allowances is enforced is just contemptuous. I know a lot of people who've spent their twenties being shadowed by IRD over quite minor sums of money 'misearned' in this way. If I were being cynical, I would suggest it's another example of Baby Boomer generational warfare. Sure, we spent our twenties being irresponsible and out of control, but we're damned if we're going to let anyone else do it.
I'd suggest also that Mora and the other charmers on the Panel are another manifestation of this trend. Haterz.
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rodgerd: that's hilarious.
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They don't serve anything for free on Pacific Blue. Except, that is, for the jokes. Clearly, part of what Richard Branson's airline is selling -- apart from the basic airline functionality of getting you from A to distant B in a safe and timely fashion -- is its hard-case cabin culture.
I know it's about brand differentiation and is supposed to make people feel comfortable, but Pacific Blue's ha-ha-we're-so-funny schtick had just the opposite effect on me, the one time I flew with them. I'm a nervous flyer at the best of times, and having the head stewardess doing a whacked-out, E'd-up Hillary Timmins routine during the in-flight safety demonstration just terrified me. All I could think was, You're not going to be of any help at all in the impending aviation disaster, are you?
It's not funny; it just makes the crew look like a bunch of light-weights -- a bit like Branson himself, really. And after all that, my flight was 40 minutes late. Never. Again.