Posts by BenWilson
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Anyone familiar with the story of the Zaxs?
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One thing's for certain - With all the trolling going on here, my bet with David Slack on the Casino thread is looking pretty safe. Now all I have to do is get SkyCity to shut down...
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Gio, I'm thinking you must love the idea of the printer - a device to take electronic info back to forms appreciated by the unconnected.
Personally, I'm still a big fan of the pen. The more idealistically inclined of my friends frequently deride me for writing things down and handing them over on a piece of paper, insisting that I send a text, etc. I resist.
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I struggle to see why having a cycleway up and down the country is not a freaking fantastic thing. Really.
I think that really depends on the nature of the cycleway. If it's done on the cheap by simply painting lines on the road then it seems like a nutso way of appropriating commons that were used by many to only a few. If they actually make something new, though, then I'm all for it. Ideally, it would be physically separate from the road, and double as a pedestrian way.
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They also give the impression they'd rather see original masters rot than have Archives NZ store them. Sigh ...
Seems vaguely analogous to people who object during inorganic collection season, to people sifting through the stuff and taking things, which seems to me to be the ultimate form of recycling.
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Yeah, lucky a snippet of Aristotle's writings survived to have that influence.
Thanks Ben.I'm sure if he didn't say it, it would have been rediscovered, since it was a very compelling scientific argument. I point it out to counter your apparent claim that there was no science going on back then, because it was religiously motivated. I think there's little doubt that a great deal of the work of the Pythagoreans was religiously motivated and yet they made enormous advances in some sciences. They also reputedly drowned someone to hush up the discovery of irrational numbers - in doing that they were wicked fools.
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I'm wondering how much of a lead Key is taking from Alan Greenspan, who became wearied by the fact the economy could be moved around by the merest twitch of his facial muscles, and kept his comments bland and wore a poker face. Didn't stop him fueling the current crisis to a great degree.
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Your doctor knows it's best to wait until you're lying down before he raises bad news.
I had this same conversation with my dentist, who has the advantage that you are always lying down, and you often can't talk back.
He diagnosed that my sensitive teeth were stress-related. He'd been getting a real spike in this particular problem and had had the same in 1987.
Buffett has a much better track record than Friedman. Famously, Buffett sticks to his "circle of competence" and refuses to step outside it, whereas Friedman has a bloviation for everything. If Friedman has hit on something correct, it is only because he fires indiscriminately.
Warren Buffett is definitely a genius, but I don't think he has any better feed than any one else into the future at this point. Yes, the problem is fear and confusion. But that mean there's a clear solution. The wrong government action could easily create a lot more fear and confusion. Furthermore, if it starts looking like the events that are unfolding are far too massive for any particular government to solve then how much can the government, even the US government, do to quell fears?
To me the economy is looking like the front line in a battle. Everyone knows that if you follow orders, lock ranks, keep your eyes forward, aim low and wait until you see the whites of their eyes before firing, then you are going to be a far more effective fighting unit. But very few people want to be killed, and when you're faced with a sudden and alarming surge of enemies, and start hearing the screams of the dying all around you, then running is not entirely irrational. Being routed is a very frightening and humiliating experience. But it's not the worst thing that could happen. You could be slaughtered. If you run, you could come back to fight another day. It doesn't always mean you are a coward, or that you are letting everyone down.
Red Badge of Courage is a good look at the psychology of this. Or if you prefer film, try The Thin Red Line . Of course the leaders are going to say "Drive forward, God DAMN it!". They're not the ones who are going to eat the bullet.
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Whilst I was quoting you, rob, I was actually talking to everyone.
I get your point, it seems also to be Gio's point, that account must be taken of losers as well as winners. This comment goes for everything we do in life.
BUT
Then you have to actually act. You have to decide what to do, and sometimes things do boil down to a "how many winners vs how many losers". The default position is not to fail to act. That is a fairly active choice in itself. There is no onus either way. To fail to move in a direction that benefits a majority (or is likely to in the long run) and hurts a minority is not clearly a good thing to do.
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I'm wondering if I fit the title from the Your Views parody thread "Pointless Peacemaker", but:
your posts come across as lectures, you're not asking questions, you're telling it how it is, there by representing the truth and there by representing everyone.
you rarely, if ever say "in my opinion"I don't think he should actually have to. You can read a lot more into Mark's tone than is necessarily there. He's just putting his case strongly, showing his level of conviction about this. Let's get back to the topic rather than the personalities?
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