Posts by Konrad Kurta
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Post-truth has to be it. Or "Trust me".
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Speaker: David Shearer: The one that…, in reply to Bart Janssen,
The media’s inability to present anything other than trite meaningless soundbites …
There I fixed that for you
Touché. An unfortunate reality of modern media and politics. He seemed at home as far as informed dialogue and discussion were concerned. Knowledge and understanding aren't the zeitgeist, unfortunately. See: US election.
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I think you've hit the nail on the head. For the short time I produced his show at Planet FM, he always came across as a non-politician. He seemed real - in precisely the way David Cunliffe didn't when he appeared on the show. Nuanced, as you say. And he's a genuinely good bugger to boot. But he was also hesitant in front of the microphone, and I believe that's what ultimately did him in - he'd have made a great PM, but his inability to connect with the public via concise media soundbites was always going to hamstring him.
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It’s rather a depressing argument: that no matter what we think or why we think it, we should just buckle under and shuffle along with the crowd. As an assertion of national identity, it might be a bit too telling
Euch. My opinion of New Zealand summarized in one depressing passage.
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A close family member lost most of her retirement savings in Hanover. To think that as she was staring down the barrel of an extra ten years at work, these guys were trying to undermine an investigation into how it happened... To say it makes my blood boil doesn't really do it justice.
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Hard News: Never mind the quality ..., in reply to Rob Stowell,
I'm mystified as to how 'the general public' don't seem to give a shit about blatant lies being told to their faces. Key, Slater, Collins et al have been lying non-stop ever since the book came out. Is anybody keeping a tally? It's unbelievable that people would actually swallow any of this.
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Hard News: Auckland's future: Keep calm,…, in reply to Russell Brown,
That's actually disturbingly accurate. I can't understand how Orsman gets to write editorials that are so mind-numbingly stupid and misleading in the country's biggest newspaper. But I guess the man knows his (white, wealthy, disgruntled, middle aged) target market.
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Hard News: What Hekia Parata actually said, in reply to Chris Waugh,
it's still very much a system based on passing exams and collecting up magic pieces of paper
Korea was the same - kids are stuffed full of information that they passively regurgitate onto pieces of paper. Most students I encountered know grammatical theory, but can hardly speak a sentence in English.
As for Hekia's assertion that Asian schools aren't all about rote learning... bullshit, at least in general terms.
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Hard News: Friday Music: Going Large, in reply to JonathanM,
Distributing audio for final listening purposes in 192/24 is ridiculous. Distributing for remixing/remastering/further processing, that may well make sense, particularly if the individual tracks (i.e. pre-mix) are distributed.
Why? Science. http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html
If anything, 48kHz/24bit would be the sweet-spot at providing just a little more dynamic range (not that we don't have a heap already at 16bit) while still covering what we can actually hear.
This. Thanks for digging it up!
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Hard News: Friday Music: Going Large, in reply to Russell Brown,
Even after a good D/A converter, I reckon the difference is negligible.
To be fair, he has a long history of obsessing about audio fidelity.
The "More barn!" story.
Yeah, I've read a lot about his views on high fidelity audio - I still feel it's largely a pointless exercise. I read an article somewhere that the human ear can't even distinguish between CD quality and super ultra HD audio, though I can't remember who wrote it. I'll see if I can dig it up.