Hard News: A thing that rarely ends well
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The swanky coverage of Owen Glenn...
My wife and I both watched him on Campbell Live and observed 'there's a guy who left school at 15 and is now filthy rich and yet still needs acceptance'. Don't get me wrong, he seems a decent bloke and one who has done a lot good with his money.
But you can kinda picture him at his High School reunion giving all his old chums a Gold Watch and insisting it's no big deal.
Which is why the footage of Trevor Mallard clearly blocking Glenn from approaching the PM (at the opening of the new AklUni Bus Sch) was so awful. I have no problem with Glenn donating/loaning money to the Labour party, but Mallard's actions just seemed ... unseemly.
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What is meant by 'image'? Are you talking about tracking brain activity during various tasks?
Yes, there's been quite a bit of development in brain imaging techniques.
This is a bit old now, but the fact that we can observe people making a decision before they become conscious of making that decision is just fascinating.
The sense of consciousness as a separate entity distinct from the physical process of brain function, hence dualism, is just a convenient mirage. A story our brain tells us.
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I/O
I think you are correct
Forget the faux outrage about honours/consulates being boughtLook how Labour treats some one who donates serious money to Ack. Uniie and gives a helping hand ($100 000) when they need it
It just looks like bad manners,a bad look, the sort a kid would get repremanded for -
Bugger me, it gets worse
They are going to ask him for more money
Don't think I would like to overhear that conversation or rather the reply -
Look how Labour treats some one who donates serious money to Ack. Uniie and gives a helping hand ($100 000) when they need it
It just looks like bad manners,a bad look, the sort a kid would get repremanded forThey were clearly looking to avoid a photo opportunity. That may be yet more backfiring media management, but the fact that Glenn and Clark had a private chat on the same evening suggests outrage on Glenn's behalf is misplaced.
Bugger me, it gets worse
They are going to ask him for more money
Don't think I would like to overhear that conversation or rather the replyI can't imagine that would have been said without first being discussed during their meeting. They've had that conversation, I would think.
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On the subject of Consciousness.
I have always believed that consciousness was something that we belonged to, not something that belongs to us. This plays into the concept of god (or any higher "being" that you can imagine) Awareness, on the other hand is often confused or mistaken for consciousness. To say that someone is conscious of an emotion really throws the spanner to the monkey (with or without pants, but I think that comes from another thread that i am aware of)
The point of reference is how we feel about our existence in the perception of "our" universe. If you consider that the universe, as we know it, is merely an illusion created by the relationship between Time, Space and Energy then we can start to conceive of a situation where consciousness is actually the relationship that the universe has with itself. A bit like being aware of consciousness.
See here and here -
Oh yes, have you seen O' (jeez) Sullivan's column today?
Need I say more? -
While I'm here. I suppose I could try to unify this thread.
In the case of Owen Glen and the perceived corruption/conflict whatever...
It comes down to what you say/do and what others think you mean, is influenced by the beliefs/agenda of the listener (like beauty is in the eye of the beholder)
There's a saying.
If you're saying it right your singing,
if your doing it right your dancing
and if you believe your right your brainwashed. -
beauty is in the eye of the beholder
c'mon, we all know why those weedy little nerd boys are with those fat chicks, and it aint because 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder'.
Disclaimer: I have a preference for the more fuller figured woman myself - thin girls can't do nuthin' for me man. So, er, I've invalidated my own argument?
(I/O's got problems of his own) -
But seriously...
Oh yes, have you seen O' (jeez) Sullivan's column today?
Well of course I saw it, but I didn't read it. Must I?
They were clearly looking to avoid a photo opportunity. That may be yet more backfiring media management, but ....
That's what I found unseemly about the image of Mallard wedging himself between Glenn and the PM. One would think someone had forewarned Glenn that he shouldn't let himself be photographed with the PM, and that he'd get a private meeting later. Which makes me wonder why Glenn headed in that direction - did he think he was being sandbagged and he wouldn't get his meet with Clark later? or was he just mischevious/arrogant (as the mega rich often are, they can't help it) and wanted his damn photo with Clark on the front of the newspaper regardless?
I also wonder why Mallard had to be the wedge, but I suppose when you're that rich you can't send in a low level lackey.the fact that Glenn and Clark had a private chat on the same evening suggests outrage on Glenn's behalf is misplaced.
I don't think there's any 'outrage' on Glenn's part, it certainly wasn't apparent in the Campbell interview. And I totally 'get' that Clark was joshing with Glenn when/if she suggested he could be Transport Minister. For National to suggest there was some serious quid pro quo is ridiculous. And if they keep going on about it the public will be forced to wake up to the facts, and then National will look stupid.
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81st
From my POV I'm curious about what you mean when you say "getting dynamic systems to implement digital style thinking processing" the concept seems to turn my brain to fudge.
OK, by digital I mean as in not-analog. If you think humans are dynamic systems, then clearly there's one system capable of digital thought. Most of our mental processes are probably not digital, but a lot are - reading for instance. When you see a letter, most of the time you know what letter it is beyond all doubt. There is no continuum of possibilities - it's a T or it's not a T. It's well understood and well defined what that symbol stands for, and our ability to recognize it is digital in it's clarity. There's still plenty of writing where you're not sure, just as bits are lost in digital signals all the time. But those are considered just as 'bad' in a TCP/IP packet as they are when you are reading - when you can't tell what letter it is it's not 'half T and half F' or something like that. You just accept that data is lost, and try to find a way to compensate - request it again, pick it up from context, etc.
Flipping a coin is another example. It will almost always end up in one state or the other. And if by chance it ends up in some other state like on-it's-side, or fell-down-the-drain, you discard the outcome and try again. That's a digital signal, with nothing the least bit electronic about it.
In general, the universe is analog. A computer is made up entirely of analog components, which create digital outcomes. My take on dynamical systems is that they are saying the fixation on digital can be misleading, that it is only one method of data representation, leading to a view of all knowledge as facts and rules, where that is not really that useful a way of thinking about a lot of things we do with our brains. We don't necessarily flip to anger in presence of x stimulus, and all other emotions flip to off. Maybe our emotions are related in a complex and not rule-driven way, a continuous movement of chemical levels, pushing each other one way or another constantly, rather than in discrete steps.
But as I'm sure you know, if you make discrete steps small enough, they look continuous. Digital systems can model analog ones, often better than any other way of doing it, since your level of granularity can be controlled. We model weather digitally, even though it's not much of a digital system, something that frustrates everyone. "Is it going to rain tomorrow?". The answer is not yes or no, unless you are very, very clear what is meant by raining. As in, exactly how much and exactly where and for how long.
Did that clarify at all? I'm basically saying that it's a striking and powerful feature of human brains that we can go digital on so much stuff. Surely everything I've typed here to you will enter your mind in a digital way at some level - all of the correctly spelled words will be identified as words you know. A great deal of what I've said you could say back to me, and I'd know for sure you've got it. But then there's also a lot that's not digital, like how you 'understand the meaning' of what I'm saying. I'm sure your internal representation will be entirely different to mine in many ways, which will lead in to different conclusions when applied than what I might think of.
We can mislead ourselves into thinking that rules and facts, because they are such a powerful tools, are the only ways of thinking. They're actually quite late inventions biologically, and they are completely swaddled in all of our prior means of thought, which handled a great deal of the most difficult aspects of survival, like seeing, hearing, moving, remembering, wanting. The proportion of our thinking used in that rules-and-facts step-by-step way is probably tiny. It's very useful, particularly for communication, but not on it's own. It takes up a lot of energy, too, where the more automatic processes just seem to run themselves.
How the two different ways of thought intermarry is beyond me. It seems clear that the logical functions of the brain must be implemented directly in the non-logical parts through training. We can clearly learn rules and abstract them and as we do it, it becomes more and more effortless, until they seem to just fall into the backdrop of our minds. They seem to push their way right back to our perceptual boundaries, so that our very perceptions are molded by the rules we have learned. After a certain age, it is extremely hard for people to even hear the really different sounds in a foreign language, for instance. Our ears have learned to filter those sounds as irrelevances. They also push towards our physical control systems too - I don't think about individual letters when I touch type, I think of the whole word or even sentence, and the fingers seem to just dance it out themselves. It seems like some of the processing has actually been offloaded to nerve centers which are physically closer to the fingers, maybe even in the muscles themselves for certain movements that are simple and very frequent.
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the pixies have never been confirmed
>but that would make the entire grunge movement >a hoax...
the Zen approach to consciousness
Nirvana?Maybe they have Bar Mitzvah instead of confirmation?
Humidity turns me into a disrag and all I can do is procrastinate and avoid all the course outlines that I have to read. Really interesting thread, this one. Must... find... energy... to... participate... again...
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I also wonder why Mallard had to be the wedge, but I suppose when you're that rich you can't send in a low level lackey.
He's minister for the environment. Could that be why he oversaw a potentially hostile media environment. He could also now be an expert when dealing with the media,what with all that he went through recently.; )
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Russell
"They were clearly looking to avoid a photo opportunity"
Well two of them were but I don't know about the donor and by his movements I doubt that he knewIt seems to me the left just don't get how bad this looks to the ordinary citizen who just watches the news and has not been following the "beltway" coverage
And now it is rumoured that Mike Williams is blogging under an assumed name, hope he is and good on him for getting stuck in
We need a bit of passion in this electionTime for a recipe RB, your mum’s chops, coffee maybe, artificial intelligence and distraction perhaps
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Time for a recipe RB, your mum’s chops, coffee maybe, artificial intelligence and distraction perhaps.
Oh bugger off, Raymond, that's really cheap. My post on this matter was my own, frank opinion. Read it again if you like. It's hardly a glowing review.
I just can't summon the same indignation as you over something I didn't even see. And neither, it would appear, can the alleged victim.
If I'd been running the spin, I wouldn't have bothered. Right from the start, the pointless evasiveness has been damaging. But I'm not outraged by the avoiding of a photo-op.
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Oh, if anyone's puzzled about the chops reference it's a meme spawned by David Cohen in a column in 2004.
Supposedly, rather than dwelling on Labour's foul weather (the hikoi and a bad poll) I kicked for touch and wrote about my mother's cooking. Kiwiblog types regularly invoke this, invariably without having read the post in question.
Which is here.
It leads with my call (correct as it turned out) that the Daily Mirror's sensational prisoner abuse pics were fake, announces the arrival of The Fundy Post, notes the importance of which way Nanaia Mahuta would go on the F&S, criticises Clark for the "haters and wreckers" line and then gets to the recipe my mum taught me (she'd been staying with us for a week, and I had the satisfaction of making it for her, hence the mention).
The day after I wrote a loooong post about the hikoi.
So sorry if I was a but snippy above, but it's a bit lame. And Old Faithful Chops is a fucking good recipe.
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Nothing wrong with your mum's recipie Russell
And I apologise and withdraw
I have been a long time follower of you blog and that was uncalled for from me....a bit too personalI was addressing the left as a whole not you personally
I am not outraged or indignant just feel it was a poor look -
Who is this mysterious "left"? IMHO, neither major party can claim to be truly left or right of centre. But since the economy is doing quite well, I guess some polarisation of the population is just what Granny Herald and TV3 ordered. Honestly, I'm not reading or listening to any political news at the moment. I just can't be bothered with what, to me anyway, seems to be a systematic undermining of the Labour Party, and the glorification of John Keys. I will never vote for National - for one very simple reason, and it's very personal. Trevor Mallard made sure that kindergarten teachers recieved parity. I don't trust John Keys' party to value my profession in quite the same way.
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I have been a long time follower of you blog and that was uncalled for from me....a bit too personal
No worries. I think I was a bit surprised at it coming from you, and was thus snippy in return.
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I just can't be bothered with what, to me anyway, seems to be a systematic undermining of the Labour Party, and the glorification of John Key.
Tom Frewen wrote a good column in Friday's NBR about the gallery's fixation on The Race, which creates its own narrative. The government has announced a lot of policy lately: is it any good? Who knows?
Labour is showing wear and tear all over the place, and the past week's fuss has put Clark in the position where she always looks her worst: fighting fires.
But by the same token, Key's press in particular continues to be staggeringly soft. He's routinely hailed for being basically average.
I think I'll blog this a little more on Monday.
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I have no problem with Glenn donating/loaning money to the Labour party, but Mallard's actions just seemed ... unseemly.
Meh... That's what a 'handbag' is for, but I have to agree its usually much better handled. I remember a damn cringe-inducing photo at some Fashion Week even were Clark and Don Brash were ostentatiously trying to ignore each other, and it was plain bloody embarrasing to all concerned. I heard there were a couple of minders whose chances of becoming employee of the month became very long indeed.
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But by the same token, Key's press in particular continues to be staggeringly soft. He's routinely hailed for being basically average.
Um, 'hailed'? Well, I guess leading a National Party where half the front bench isn't spending more time in the Press Gallery urinating on the rest of the front bench than doing their bloody jobs is quite an achievement. It's a bit like the ALP: I don't quite understand why most of the Aussie media apparently want to have Kevin Rudd's babies -- and he hardly ran on the most substantive platform in Australian political history. But you've got to admire the guy for imposing some discipline on a party that usually makes a pack of starving dingos look domesticated, and not being a barking loon (yes, Mark Latham - I'm looking at you).
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And Fallowell's right -- his book has been "absurdly distorted". That's a polite way of putting it. I think that everyone who got worked up about it and attacked him now owes it to him, and themselves, to actually read the book and assess it. There was a weird, defensive, ugly nationalism playing out there.
Meh... I kind of agree with you, Philip, and said as much in my PA Radio piece. I ended up buying the bloody thing, and couldn't finish it not because my sense of national pride was outraged beyond endurance but because I can't stand his kind of piss-elegant prose for more than ten minutes at a stretch. There's something badly wrong when you're reaching for Proust on a long train-trip just to get some relief.
Still, I'm glad that Duncan found the trade up to snuff. I guess it doesn't matter how badly dressed pretty boys are, if you're angling to get 'em to take it all off as soon as possible.
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I'm way late on this, but what is the basis for "the hasty flushing of National's anonymous trusts in December," - they put a lot of money in or what?" Can't seem to find much other reference to this elsewhere on the web...
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