Posts by BenWilson
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I think the YouTube link is wrong - it seems to be looking at crime reporting rather than the campaigns. Old episode?
Curious consequence of using MySky - I haven't yet seen one party political broadcast, except at x30 speed. Can't say I miss it. Have they ever been informative? The interest, if there is any, is in rating how well you think they would influence other people. Their influence on me can naturally be none at all since they don't contain any information I'd use in the decision about which party is likely to offer policy that I hate less.
At x30 speed I can glean:
-Labour reckons Key is two-faced
-Greens think of the children
-National thinks their future will be brighter. The polls agree -
Personally, it struck me as a contest that told me a bit about where the respective candidates are at personally, but remarkably little about where they're going politically
I doubt even if they did say things of substance that I'd believe them. It boils down to this - vote for Labour and get more of the same. Vote for National and who knows? Which is better? No one knows for sure, nor could they.
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No ISP will ban anyone if they can possibly avoid it, since that's lost revenue. So the key question is 'how easy will it be for the ISP to refuse to act on the complaints?'. So long as they have a 'reasonable plan', that should be easy enough - they only need some semblance of due process as policy, that puts a whole bunch of the onus on the accuser to prove guilt, and that's the end of it. If that isn't enough they can also drag the chain on acting on complaints while they're at it.
Basically, their real policy won't change, which is to sell bandwidth as dearly as they can to as many people as possible.
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Yes and no. For the past two decades the US has had the world pretty much to itself.
They seem to think so anyway. But things continued as they had before the fall of the Soviet Union, with terrorism substituted for communism as the great threat. Yes, the US has whaled with impunity on what they could, as they always did. But 'what they could' turns out to be surprisingly limited. Their whalings are no more impressive except in their financial cost than the whalings of other superpowers on their local whipping boys.
What has changed, I think, is that the Chinese saw the wisdom of the Japanese idea that if you can't have the most guns then having the most money is almost as good. This is the challenge that the US has no answer for, that their projection of military might is hideously expensive, and now the other superpowers have decided not to bother with it. The exact strategy they used against the Soviet Union is now castrating their own economy, by their own choice. The longer they insist on being powerful beyond all conceivable need, the quicker they will find themselves second richest, and then I guess it's likely that second most powerful will follow.
Can Obama change any of this? A little, I'm sure. It would be good if he did. Good for people who aren't me or anyone I know, mostly.
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I would too. But only slightly. Imperial collision with America is not a new phenomenon either, and the same comment about the power of existing institutions and their plans still holds. I would expect that no matter which president is in, if China rises to near-US levels of military power, then the playbook of the Cold War will be pulled off the shelf and dusted, and the terrorism one will slip under a pile of old Time magazines.
But I would be less afraid if it was Obama doing the talking on the TV at the time. Unless he does a Tony Blair, always a possibility. Power has swelled the most level heads, and POTUS carries the feeling of ultimate power (if not the reality).
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The last two elections have made me extremely cynical, to the point that I'm now rather torn between the "please don't fuck this up (again)" camp, and the "I don't give a fuck" camp.
I'm in both. The depth of feeling is proportional to the chance of any change that will be meaningful to me or anyone I know, which puts it in the "don't give a fuck" camp. But it is still certainly and decisively a "not republican again please".
That Obama is who he is will make American political news more interesting than it has been for my whole life, but regardless of who is surfing the democratic landslide, it's still the same mountain of the same old democrats underneath, all the same institutions in place carrying on policy that has been decided outside of public scrutiny for the longest time.
There will still be a military industrial complex waging some strange war in the Middle East, American goods will still be overpriced and they will still have high tariffs to protect that fact locking us out of their markets. America will still have veto power in the UN and will still use it against any steps towards world peace made by any or all of the other nations. They will still have the monopoly on violence and will continue to use that fact to dominate all of their foreign policy. They will still not give a damn what anyone else thinks about it.
Of course many Americans will experience real change. For their sakes I wish they come to their senses. Personally I don't know any, and I do actually know a lot of Americans. The ones I do know will be mostly unaffected except that they will have a new government to complain about.
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Just a bit of international perpective on this. Where a Kiwi will be disgusted that the police didn't render timely aid to an injured victim, my visiting relatives from Australia have roughly the same response to the routine deaths of people held in custody in Ozzie due to beatings. I don't think our coppers suffer anywhere near the lack of confidence they feel over there, and for good reason.
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But eventually, he admitted that what he'd really like is this. So I went to the iTunes Store and bought him an entire Breaking Benjamin album for his new iPod. It sounds fucking awful to me.
What's not to like about grating heavy metal set to a surreal and improbable swords and sandals battle sequence?
It's strangely fitting. I think the idea of metal is an expression of anger, and the way that particular film put it, the 300 didn't have any other emotions. It's not surprising their culture did not last. However ridiculous the film was, I actually think that may be indeed how the Spartans would have thought about it. Treat it as a mythopoetic rendering of an actual event, and you can sort of giggle along.
Pity though, with modern techniques they could have tried to do a serious rendering of a real hoplite battle, which would have been no less gritty for being actually realistic. The battle of Thermopylae is amazing enough as a true story, without all the fantasticalizing. But I guess it's harder for an audience to appreciate the idea of a dense mass of sweaty Greeks (who surely would have worn breastplates FFS), crushing tired enemies underfoot.
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Hoodies obscure the face and there aren't many other garments that share that purpose.
What about glasses and hats? Then there's beards (I've always been suspicious of them!) mustaches, long hair and makeup. All sus.
What the hoodie does add is the total disguise, you can't even see the hair, even when it's long, or the ears. The angle of view is really narrow, no other garment obscures the head so totally. It really is a perfect choice for someone up to no good.
A small gang of hoodie teens just walked past my house when I was getting my mail a minute ago. One of them jokingly asked where my car was. I did the experiment of trying to make a mental record of what they looked like. All I could say with any certainty was that there were 5 of them. The car joke suggests the entire look of gangsta menace was quite deliberate, that it wasn't enough that I'd seen the group, but I needed to also pay attention to the potential threat they carried. Perhaps I just didn't look frightened enough. Not that I think they'll do anything, a real crook would not draw attention to themselves like that.
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Wait a mo', just to play devil's advocate here, I do find the casual misogyny, homophobia and glorification of black male dysfunction of much hip-hop culture repulsive.
I find it disturbing too.
I find it no more or less laughable than all the fashions of my lifetime. It does seem to have had remarkable staying power, though, rivaled only by clothes which have their origins in white gangs. I guess in 20 years hoodies will be what old farts wear.
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