Posts by Keir Leslie
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But that's not right: we can clearly measure `values' in some sense. We can say: that child is more moral than that other child. We could divide them into moral/immoral. Or even if we can't do that, we could surely talk about actions being moral or immoral.
So it can't be that these things are absolutely immeasurable.
And by the way Gio, he did say medicine as well. I shouldn't think medicine isn't science, but them I shouldn't say medicine is science either.
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But if you invest in a property you actually get a property, which has some value
How do you mean? If you live in the house yes, there's value in that. And you can rent the house out as a productive asset. But then, shares return dividends and so forth. Property isn't valuable in some magic inherent way.
(Yes, there's the use-value, but the accounting for that's different from the accounting for investment.)
If you want safe, there's gilts.
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But it is safe. you won't lose your money because the managers are crooks and the market rigged in favour of insiders.
Really quite untrue by the way. Sometimes properties sell for less than you paid for them. This isn't a huge problem in NZ, but it can and does happen, and it is a big problem in Southern Europe.
Pretty much all investments carry risk. There's no way out of that, and as a rule the rate of return is closely related to the risk involved.
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Do universities even take individual grades at 7th form/year 12 (or whatever) in to account anymore for entry into specific papers?
Depends on the paper; there's been a big shift to open entry over the past couple of decades. (Partly to allow people from non-traditional backgrounds better access to higher education, partly 'cause bums-on-seats.)
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And yet for graduate school, grades mean almost nothing because so many people have straight-A averages due to grade inflation.
I did read someone once argue that in the case of A Levels, grade inflation tracked productivity gains reasonably well. (Mind you he went on to point out that the Gold Standard was a truly abysmal idea, so why do people talk about gold standards in education so much etc etc.)
That's the other league table issue; without really strict monitoring, in an environment of competition for students, everyone just nudges up their grades to make themselves look better. Which entirely fails to solve the problem national standards were meant to address.
Yep. And the required strict monitoring needs money, which isn't free. At which point, wouldn't you be better just spending the money on the schools?
It all seems to be policy in search of a point.
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There are stupid but lazy officers who should be found jobs out the way; there are clever and energetic officers, who should be given important jobs; there are stupid and energetic officers, who should be got rid of as fast as possible. But the officer who is clever and lazy! Ah, for him it is the highest Staff appointment.
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The prospective University isn't going to adjust your kid's marks because he went to some under-achieving hicksville school.
Depends. In America they do; admissions officers at US schools will look at an A from a Chicago inner city school a lot more favorably than an A from New Trier. That's because American schools are funky, of course, but if NZ schools go down that path the same sort of thing could happen.
More importantly, here's my poor kid, let's stick him in with the rich kids, is a real zero sum game. It's not good public policy to encourage that sort of thing.
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Pardon me for being cynical, Russell, but I don't think there was any alternative, process or degree of 'consultation' that would have made it anything else.
Telling Hone Harawira to stay clear would have been a huge help in avoiding the CoI stuff, which is the real wtf thing for me. The rest seems to me like someone else's argument which I have no interest in getting involved in, but the copyright thing is stunningly bad.
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Well blow me down:
It's impressive incompetence tho'.
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Most people seem to agree the flag should change eventually, can we not just get it fucking over with
Because the current New Zealand flag is, although a bit boring, competent and dignified. Most of the alternatives are gimmicky crap out of advertiser's offices. We will likely keep whatever the flag changes to for several centuries. We should take our time over it, and not rush around because the Herald wants a sales boost.