Posts by Evan Yates
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The Hamilton 400 had on-course commentary and jumbo-vision screens visible from the grandstands so you got more than just a stream of cars whizzing by every minute-and-a-bit and then disappearing...
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@Sacha
I read somewhere recently that two thirds of the population earn below that "average" income, but sorry no time to find reference.
I'm not sure if you are using this as an indictment of the maths ability of journalists, but there is nothing wrong with that statement.
Scenario:Person 1 salary = $10,000
Person 2 salary = $10,000
Person 3 salary = $100,000Average salary = $120,000 / 3 = $40,000
2 out of 3 people are below the average = two thirds of the population.
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The Treasury web page that I/S linked to is a great resource!
From it I learned that the 22% of wage earners who earn more than the average wage (I rounded to $50k to fit with the chart bands ) actually pay 66% of the total tax take... Cool!
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And when a party proposes policies with the primary aim of enriching its supporters at the expense of the majority of New Zealanders or of future generations, that's not something we should politely look the other way on.
And if sufficient people were adversely affected then that party would not have a hope of getting another go at the steering wheel. Great thing about democracy. If you tramp on the majority, then they can get rid of you. Maybe not straight away, though.
The trick to doing this is to hoodwink the masses into THINKING that they are being looked after.
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the hoons (a venerable kiwi word sadly fallen on tough times)
I once submitted a movie review of "Goodbye Pork Pie" to IMDb using the term hoon to describe Gerry (Blondini 1).
The yankee editors changed it to goon, and there didn't seem to be any way to get it changed back (Admittedly, this was in the early days of IMDb ) -
@Craig
As I've said elsewhere, I wouldn't mind the business community being told to take their begging bowls and fuck off - just once.
Unfortunately the ones now with their begging bowls out pay the salaries of a lot of the downtrodden masses.
I'm not really smart/rutheless/brave enough to go it alone at this stage so I'd be happy if my employer didn't decide to give me the arse because they have to savagely cut staff to stay afloat.
I know that popular opinion is that the fat cats need a whippin' but there are quite a few innocent kittens hanging off the teat...
Wait! Is that the sound of the world's smallest violin playing just for me?
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@Stephen Hill
More random research findings: people's self-ratings of their face recognition abilities have no relationship to their actual performance on lab face recognition tasks.
Does this mean people who think they are good at face-recognition are actually not so good? Or people who think they are crap are actually better than they think they are? Or both?
I realise this thread is getting old but I hope you can answer. Does that test at Face Blindness Testing have any relevance to the true nature of someone's actual ability? (especially the Unknown Faces test)
To assuage my vanity, I'd like to able to infer that my 88% result in that test supported my original premise that I was good at facial recognition... Mebbe not?
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I have come to the conclusion that when someone I know addresses me with a non-name specific greeting ("Oh, hi!") they can't remember my name. If I'm in a good mood I remind them who I am. If I'm not, I let them squirm.
I knew a guy whose substitute generic term was "rooter" for men and "chick" for women. e.g. "Gidday, rooter!"
Despite this he was actually a good bloke and a very successful businessman.
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I'm exactly the opposite to RB (and a lot of other PAS posters so far). I am great with names and faces but am not "naturally sociable and at ease in conversation with strangers". I can almost always correctly say "Gidday, John/Jane" even after not seeing them for 10 years.
I drive my wife batty by recognising bit-part actors in movies and letting her know what other films they have also been bit-part actors in.
I can do the small-talk thing if I really work at it, but it doesn't come naturally. (Why, yes! I do work in IT...)
In the faceblind test I scored 88% on unknown faces and 97% on famous faces (Tony Blair threw me)
No Brown syndrome here...
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And we have the editor on the panel.
Whoops. Apologies. I didn't read yesterday's PS. very well, did I?