Posts by tussock
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Anjum ... John Taylor Gatto has written extensively on the source of low self-esteem, bullying, hyper-conformity, and so on in modern schools.
In that, breaking naturally independent people down, turning them into obedient workers and blind consumers is largely the point of the modern structure. It's interesting to look at social engineering that way for me, considering my own school-years experiences.
-
Peter Montgomery misread the screen display for the rowers. They leave the position number blank when it's a photo, so he read the lane numbers instead, which happened to be 1 Germany, 2 Britain, 3 NZ. Poor little guy missed his nap.
Dysdale should've stayed at the Olympic villiage, or at least not drunk from the slime-infested backwater they where rowing in. Getting a stomach bug during Olympic competition is piss-poor on someone's part, and that lot should be seriously examining how they came to throw away a couple million dollars worth of gold medal.
The Street interview: glad I'm not the only one who tried to find somewhere to hide when the "so many quick black men, you're surrounded by them" thing came out (the poor guy just looks stunned for a moment). Though one could read something else into that, other than bland old kiwi racism, if you know what I mean.
Best athlete: Kenenisa Bekele by far, backup and double. Bolt in London if he can back one up. Honorable mention for 18 yr old gold medalist Pamela Jelimo in the 800m, only competing in the event for six months after stepping up from 400m because she missed selection for her normal event, fastest legit time ever.
Weirdest shit about these Olympics: public events from which the public were excluded. The marathons, the walks, the road races, the triathlon. Really creepy.
Or perhaps the "normal citizen" in the bright red suit chanting the praises of the Olympics on command, as a few real people looked on in the background careful not to make a noise or show any emotion.
Maybe how the unemployed homeless man who stabbed a foreigner to death before committing suicide had "nothing to do with the Olympics", except perhaps for the closing of hundreds of factories for months and demolition of tens of thousands of houses without compensation just to run the Olympics.Or, well, actually, two weeks of "one world" from Communist China makes me think it should be more "free China" than "free Tibet".
The commentary during the closing ceremony had a few hints that a great many of the "volunteers' were really paid government minders meant to keep an eye on everyone and track all their movements. Will make surveillance-mad Great Britain with it's ASBO spam in four years time look quite sensible and sane by comparison.
Drugs? Who's anyone kidding? They're all doing something very strange to their bodies compared to everyone else in the world to make them do those sorts of times and distances. -
Sniff.
-
Perhaps people realise perfectly well that truckies "paying their share" actually means the general populace paying more for everything via increased prices.
Bullshit. You pay the fair price, or you pay a higher price through subsidies.
Now, poor people gain from subsidies by paying less of the tax relative to their consumption of basic needs (or so the story goes), but there's benefit to society overall with no cost to the poor to cut the transport subsidies while increasing benefits and lowering taxes at the lower end of the scale, because transport will quickly change to using the truly cheaper options (like not trucking all supermarket goods up to Christchurch and back to save on distribution costs in the South Island, like crazy people).
If people think otherwise, they're not thinking at all. Then again, no one's offering the option of lowering taxes on the poor and raising benefits, at no cost to the rich once the waste dies out of the system.
-
Craig, when the lady sits in the mans lap with no clothes on like that, it's often because they're having sex.
And yes, Asperger's faulty-logic crime waves coming your way soon (because it's strong emotive displays that prevent crime!). See also Psychopaths who don't understand people but are really good at planning. Or the lawyer gentleman who seems to have every disorder imaginable, but no apparent learning difficulty.
Those TV writer guys should grab a DSM IV at some point, or even try talking to some affected people. -
Someone asked what the SST would expect in regards crime rates. I would think it obvious that they expect crime to go up so as to help fill all the new private prisons. By which I mean PPP Prisons, or P4's.
I wonder, if someone in a PPPP on P charges is paroled, does that make them a P6? And will Intel still sue?
-
Most hilarious thing ever.
National deliberately breaks the law by overspending at an election, but no one investigates, time runs out, so never mind.
In addition, National spends the same money everyone else does on the same stuff, but does it a couple weeks earlier, and the law gets retrospectively reinterpreted to neatly make everyone but National's spending suddenly out of bounds in a way that requires a quick parliamentary fix. Even though everyone else spent the right amount, and National blatantly cheated.
It's tidied up to make the technicalities reflect several cycles of practice by all, but National's high price media campaign plays it that the money was "taxpayer money" and should be returned, except for the same money that National spent a few weeks earlier than everyone else, which was equally legal but more "OK". Ha. National breaks the law, but everyone else is at fault.
Only it catches on, and they all pay it back, though there's no legal requirement whatsoever to do so. The media literally say "no, they don't have to, but public opinion wouldn't like it", but which they mean, "shit this is funny, look at us make the monkeys dance".
Only Winston does his own dance steps. So now it's "Huh, we never would make that one do the same steps as the other monkeys, I wonder if anyone will notice how much bullshit this all was the first time".
And now we return you to your regular election year monkey antics.
-
Heh. $1k/yr for TV. Thanks guys, nice to know how much money I'm not pissing away.
He says, while paying $540 a year for the use of an ancient copper wire, and $40 a year to run a net connection over it. Guess which one's monopoly owned.
-
Hmm. Where to start.
As others said, the Maori party would die a quick death in an FPP system, as a Brash/Key National government would have been in power the last three years and already done away with the Maori seats, most of treaty, the tribunal, and other things they happen to care about.
As others also said, the actions of a democracy can produce anti-democratic results, and a government that cares for democracy would not put such options up for a vote. It seems clear by any analysis FPP's flaws are far more undemocratic than MMP's.
...
uroskin: regional interests should be valid in any representative democracy, and regional representation seems a good way to keep a basic check on that, by multi-member seats, an MMP system, or both.
Obviously, we should have Condorcet voting or larger multi-member seats in the electorates themselves to get rid of the old plurality issues, but that's another story.
-
Bloody raggedy hippies with their long hair and their hippy music. No, wait, bloody bomber-jacketed wearing crew-cut rebels with their rock and roll. No, wait, it's the bloody wig-wearing young brats with their waltz. No, wait, it's bloody Ug's son Ug Jr. with his club and that deliberately threatening look he gives you.
Whatever stupid-ass gene provokes that sensation in people needs to give it a rest already. We're not in small tribes of hunter-gatherers any more, not by a long shot. Stupid evolution and it's inability to conform to this week's model society.