Posts by Bob Munro
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Not to diss the folks at clicksuite too much but why make the most prominent feature signing up ? I want to play....
That was my first reaction too and I didn't bother going any further. In selling anything that first instant impression is what counts. With this site you are made to jump through some of the web designer’s hoops before you are allowed into their playground. I could put up with this if I had a need to visit the site but in this case the need is all SPARC's. They want the traffic and the kids to get engaged.
Why not have something completely enticing on the front page... like a prize, like... I don't know .. a cool training book mimicking the training regime of say Dan Carter or Valerie Vili...that gets posted to you and when you have filled out the diary after a few weeks you post it back and go in the draw to win something really cool like... I don’t know …an afternoon training with Dan Carter or Valerie Vili and the whole thing is tied into 'What Now' (is that still running?) or some other kids programme with the winners shown training with their idol.... or some other of I'm sure hundreds of good ideas that could work. But it has to happen the moment they arrive at the site.
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Now, we might have reasons to subsidise truck transport over other forms, but lets be clear and realistic here. We're subsidising trucks by a huge amount. And that's before we include the externalities, which are quite substantial.
Can anyone explain why we have road user charges still? I thought it was originally to differentiate between diesel vehicles used off road e.g. tractors and diesel vehicles used on road.
Wouldn't it be easier to just include taxes on diesel the same as petrol and then give dispensation to the farm only vehicles? -
If you are interested in how things are going in the power savings/lake levels game you can watch progress at this nifty daily storage graph.
And whether it’s actually raining in the largest lakes : Lake Tekapo has a wonderful web cam you can point yourself. Check the Godley- Macauley valleys for the headwaters. (For some reason I can't link direct to the cam at present, just go from the 'whoops' page.)
There is also a webcam in Aoraki/Mount Cook Village. so you can see whether any moisture is heading towards Lake Pukaki.
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A proper use for an urban SUV :)
Ed Murray said he was woken up on Tuesday night by the sound of cars doing burnouts in a tennis court carpark near his Welcome Bay home, in the Bay of Plenty.
He told the Bay of Plenty Times he had dealt with the problem for five years and was no longer willing to put up with it.
"I jumped in the Nissan, shot over there and they were doing donuts in the tennis courts," Mr Murray said.
"I put it in 4WD and smashed it right into the front of their car."
He pushed the car across gravel for about 15m, through a neighbouring property's fence, then jumped out and yelled at the driver.
The police turned up and the boy racers scattered, but Mr Murray has not had charges laid against him.
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Watched Grand Theft Parsons last night. It starts with GP dead and finishes with the fire in the desert. It’s played like a conventional police chase /road movie and the incidents are fictitious.
It’s pretty lame. Christina Applegate as a girlfriend after GP’s money plays it up as best she can but the rest of the cast are curiously wooden. It’s done on a budget so there are never any other people in the background, so it has an odd Sci-fi feel to it as if it’s taking place in a de-populated world. Even the music is just used in snippets or caught in the background so doesn’t feature any more than say Dylan’s does in North Country. Phil Kaufman was obviously the only one of the original players to be involved. After seeing the documentary you could see that family and friends were probably appalled at it. I think Johnny Knoxville is wearing the same denim jacket that Kaufman does in the doco. He rides his original 3-wheel motorbike too. It has been beautifully restored but looks out of place in the same way restored vintage cars never look quite right in period films.
The sound track album has a lot more music on it than is in the film I see. Gillian Welch’s lovely Hickory Wind isn’t in the film, yet Springsteen's Blood Brothers is in the film but not the album.
So overall no need to bother with this one but the BBC doco is superb.
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Watched the BBC doco last night. It’s very comprehensive; nearly two hours long, extended interviews with all concerned including a warm and articulate Keith Richards. How that guy didn’t go the way of Hendrix, GP, et al is a wonder. The accounts of the body stealing and attempted cremation are pretty appalling. Several people can still hardly bring themselves to talk about it. But Phil Kaufman is completely unrepentant. He even goes along to Joshua Tree to do a stylised re-enactment for the cameras. The closing is a night time helicopter shot of a fire burning merrily at the base of Cap Rock. No mention of what the National Park Rangers made of that.
GP’s true talent is shown in the sequences with Emmylou Harris and The Fallen Angels tour. She recalls the on stage magic and the off stage chaos. Incidentally, Sean Curnyn at Right Wing Bob claims the duet of Love Hurts is proof positive of an Intelligent Designer.
Emmylou sang this back in the 1970s with Gram Parsons, on the Grievous Angel album, and their performance of it stands, in my opinion, as one of the precious few absolutely perfect recordings ever made, by anyone. Ever. In the universe. One of those proofs that God exists; i.e. that it is just absurd to think that random chemical reactions could have produced amoebas that would have ultimately resulted in Emmylou Harris and Gram Parsons making this record together in just this way. Ludicrous.
Graham at Elsewhere has a review of Emmylou’s latest album:
Harris always traverses emotional territory (the stunning closer Beyond the Great Divide is as moving a funeral ballad as you will ever hear) and yet she does it with poise where the breaking heart is just kept in check.
Maybe we will have to check that out before we check out so to speak? :)
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Yes - Alice in Videoland has the BBC doco Gram Parsons - Fallen Angel. So have ordered that too, thanks very much.
It appears GP lead a sing along of__Farther Along__ at Clarence White’s funeral
One of my favourite versions of it is on the Ralph Stanley album Clinch Mountain Sweethearts where he duets with the great Lucinda Williams.
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Thanks Paul. Looks like the film is available at local Christchurch treasure Alice in Videoland so will get it out.
For myself I would just hope that after the initial formalities are over no-one at my funeral would be 'encumbered by sobriety'.
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Sean Wilentz, professor of History at Princeton... lays out the case that Obama can't win.
Thanks Danyl
The thrust of the argument in the article is that if Obama is the nominee (not confirmed at time of writing ) he doesn’t stand much chance of winning without the white working class vote which is explained in some depth both historically and it’s continued importance to the present election.
This is typical of the argument.
While recent studies purport to show that the white working class has, indeed, shrunk over the past fifty years, as a political matter its significance remains salient, especially in the battleground and swing states--states like Ohio and West Virginia where Obama currently trails Senator John McCain in the polls. One of the studies that affirms the diminishing proportion of blue collar whites in the electorate, written for the Brookings Institution by Ruy Teixeira and Alan Abamowitz,concludes nevertheless, that "the voting proclivities of the white working class will make a huge difference and could well determine who the next president will be.
I see Obama has already visited Virginia since securing the nomination so maybe his organisation had taken more on board than Wilentz gives them credit for?
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"[Bassett] told me at one point that he would never speak to me again unless he had to, so the news was not all bad."
A good example of why he was idolised.