Posts by Stephen Judd
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Top skills, logo finders. Now, who just knew those logos, and didn't google for them?
My point is not that logos are useless, but that they don't deserve to have public resources thrown at them in any quantity. They don't actually contribute to the brand of the city, and the few that are recognisable are based in images that were already iconic for the city.
Giovanni: I know the wolf suckling Romulus and Remus, and Bull etc are iconic images for those cities, but all I could see when searching around for things with an official imprimatur were bland-looking coats of arms that didn't feature those images.
-
And apropos my snark about island names:
Inasmuch as Pakeha culture has a charm, it is in reticence, self-deprecation, and litotes. Seen in this light the plain (but linguistically quirky) North Island and South Island are a perfect fit. Changing these names is consistent with the Roberts philosophy that if only you choose the right lipstick the pig will actually change into a human.
I would buy a reversion to Maori names, but the brand genius thinks that "Maui" would be a good name, evidently unaware that a) a short form of the Maori name Te Ika o Maui ought to be te Ika, and b) there is already a well-known island of that name with a strong brand of its own.
-
(My tooth aches and I will not be seeing a dentist until later in the day. Crotchety commenting may result.)
-
Does New York have a logo?
Does London have a logo?
Does Paris have a logo?
Hell, does Sydney have a logo?
Does any city of any note anywhere in the world have a logo you can remember?
Logos are simply not a worthwhile civic amenity.
-
The Fed is a privately-owned institution which takes some direction from the USG. I accept that they return profits to the Treasury (I was not aware of this) but they don't have a shining history as an impartial creator of monetary policy, either.
Dude, the head and the governors are appointed by the President. That's not "some direction". If you're thinking about crony capitalism, which is not unreasonable, the cronyism isn't in the ownership or management structure per se: it is in the appointment choices made by the president. Which in the US would apply if the Fed was purely publicly owned. It is honestly irrelevant.
-
I originally hated him for the Saatchi-led trend to repackage my best memories of the NZ past for marketing campaigns to sell me shit. Then the whole goose thing, with its unpleasant totalitarian undertones got to me. But what really pushed me over the edge was "Lovemarks" and the fawning press that accompanied it.
I do not want to love entities that I have commercial relationships with, and I do not want such entities to try to persuade me to do so, and I especially hate the puffery and the bullshit.
A man who can sincerely write "could we please have new names for the most exciting places with the dullest names on the globe, the North and South Islands" knows nothing about this country worth knowing.
-
A website I frequent has one of those communal tagging folksonomy thingies, and a tag we see from time to time is batshitinsane.
I would welcome any charitable foundation that sought to establish a peaceful asylum where the Friedmans and Roberts of this world could be confined, so that they could live out their lives without causing INTENSE MENTAL PAIN to those of us for whom literacy is otherwise a blessing.
-
I'm sure he is. It's a lousy plan for lots of reasons that have been well-canvassed. Paulson and Cox and Phil Gramm and all the rest of those well-heeled pigs are about to take the American taxpayer for a ride so that they don't have to give up their private jets.
That doesn't mean we have to sling outright untruths around about how central banking works in the US.
In my online reading experience, claims like Duncan's are usually followed by appeals to Austrian economists, then calls to go back to the gold standard, then social credit, and ultimately fingerpointing at the international Jewish conspiracy are, depending on your level of scholarship.
-
Duncan, Mark: simply not true.
The Federal Reserve itself pays all profits back to the US Treasury.
The member banks are not operated for profit. They do pay a 6% dividend back to their owners, which is a mingy return on capital by banking standards, and set by law.
You sound like conspiracy nuts, frankly.
-
I occasionally make some after ripping the skin off a couple of chickens which I'm preparing (we call these "Chicken Itchings" in our household),
In Yiddish they're called gribnes and they are a delightful side effect of rendering chicken fat ("schmaltz").