Posts by Russell Brown
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When I interviewed John Cale years ago, he confessed to getting cheques for JJ Cale's royalties from (as I recall) Switzerland.
You should apply for Parliamentary superannuation. What's the worst that could happen?
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I'll start.
I cantered through one Christmas present: Francis Wheen's How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World, in which the Guardian columnist gloriously skewered (it was published in 2004) religious lunatics, Thatcherites, new-agers et al, sometimes giving the impression that his own philosophies are above scrutiny.
He then went on to help create that masterpiece of mumbo-jumbo, the Euston Manifesto, which just goes to show.
Also, I'm still having 10 or 20 page snacks of Hamish Keith's memoir, Native Wit , which I'm enjoying as a thoroughly engaging personal journey through an emergent New Zealand culture. Oddly, he skimps a little on himself: anecdotes flow into little thinkpieces without, say, giving us an idea why the young art student was hired from Christchurch to the Auckland Art Gallery when he didn't even want the job.
And one of the other side of the ledger: avoid Michaelle Weissman's nicely-presented coffee book, God in a Cup . It's really nice that she had a great experience writing about the blooming of "specialty coffee" in America. Just a shame that she really cannot write well enough to be writing books. It's unreadably awful.
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So you're back at the desk under a buzzing fluorescent tube; the summer holiday has rushed away like a spilled drink on the deck. Cheer Up! You must have read something good. No? Discuss Christmas books and holiday reading here …
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One bright spark online noted that you can do a left at the motorway underbridge and follow a cycle path that is much flatter on the other sideof the motorway.
From memory, I think it ends at Bond St, which isn't all that helpful.
Another note which totally eluded me until I actually went online, was that the cycle route does not end at Newton Bridge. It sweeps down and underthe bridge, and ends at Upper Queen St, which is a much nice place to be on a bike than the bottom of Newton Rd.
You know, I never knew that you could continue under the bridge there. It's really not obvious.
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By 'a bit much' do you mean he might find it offensive, or use it as an excuse to hack into you again?
Nah, just that from my point of view the problem that might warrant such an action doesn't really exist.
In your case it could just be better to have this minor antipathy forever, it definitely gives you something to write about.
The alternative would be that it's a small country and everyone just gets over it eventually.
But I take your word as true that you actually think he has some real talent, which could be turned to good. Surely there's an opportunity there?
Heh. I'm seeing a whole new social marketing campaign taking shape here:
Don't let duff rhetoric and hackneyed opinion-writing get the better of you, or your media-wanker friends. I you see someone making absurd claims without benefit of evidence, don't just let it go. Pick up the phone and make that call.
Find out what's wrong before that person turns into Michael Laws ...
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Indeed it is. A better idea would be calling the guy up, offering to buy him a drink, to chat about what's really going on. You might end up friends that way. If he refuses, at least you tried. This approach has worked for me with workplace 'enemies'.
I think even that's a bit much. The last time I saw Ralston (at Prego, naturally) I said hello, and that was after_ his unfortunate afternoon radio episode. I'd probably do the same thing if I saw him tomorrow.
You can be rude about the other guy's rhetoric without actually disliking the person. New Zealand is too small for feuding.
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I got to explore the Oakley Creek path last week going uphill It was lovely, I was pretty much totally alone in the wilderness, cruising along quietly, heart at a pleasant 110 rpm, mind calm and focused on seeing everything, scenery and hazards alike. Downhill would be nicer for normal bikes, but every downhill has a corresponding uphill at the end ...
I love the Oakley Creek path -- it's just tricky enough to keep things interesting, although I'm not game to come down the side of the steps at the New Lynn end.
But it doesn't really have an uphill and a downhill as such, does it? And doesn't it rather defeat the point of riding an off-road track to be assisted on the slopes? Getting up Chinaman's Hill on the way to work in the morning though, sure ...
One of the ironies of riding around these parts is that the NW motorway cycle path is level and smooth for miles westward, but from the Springs to the city it turns into Kingsland back streets and has some quite steep hills, including a nasty little slope right at the end, which still only leaves you at the lowest point of Newton Road. Great for exercise, sucks for commuting.
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On Radio Live one of the hosts this evening said he would give $500 to the Autism New Zealand and $500 to charity of Bill Ralston's choice (proper charity not Prego Staff Fund) if Bill and Russell Brown would duke it out in boxing ring. Mike King has said would match amounts and be ref - (25oz gloves).
Gawd, that's tragic. Really tragic.
Think they have missed the point. Though their take is that Russell and Bill have 'issues'.
As I said, it's probably inevitable that people will think that. All I can do is keep it focused on the actual argument.
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Oh God. The tide of you-cannot-deny-this coolness flows yet.
Playing at the Obama Staff Ball, Arcade Fire covered Born in the USA.
Shame the guy holding the camera had to sing along for the first part ...
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And then Ars Technica has to go and spoil the story:
While several bloggers hailed Obama the Robot Fighter for paring down the site's robots.txt file, which tells search engines and archival crawlers which pages to ignore, Declan McCullagh notes that the previous version was longer mostly because it (properly) prevented search queries within the site from popping up in search results.
But the author is pleased about this:
More substantively, though, I'm particularly pleased to see that Obama is hewing to his previous pledge to establish a comment period for "non-emergency" bills, requiring legislation to be posted online for five days between passage and signing. From the USA PATRIOT Act to bloated omnibus spending bills, we've become far too accustomed to wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am lawmaking that enacts statutes before it's possible for the representatives voting on them—let alone the population affected by them—to have so much as read the text, let alone digested or analyzed it, especially given that statutes routinely function by making small but important changes to other, highly complex statutes.
Far freakin' out. So Americans now get a whole five days to examine the text of "non emergency" legislation before it's passed. Some bits of democracy appear to be still coming ...
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