Posts by Jason Kemp
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I would love to see this version of HE TOKI HUNA: NEW ZEALAND IN AFGHANISTAN but as it is only being shown once in the Skycity theatre that is not an option.
I get the irony of its screening in Skycity but I'd just as sooner not watch any films there because the leg room is only good for children never mind I don't like giving $ to a casino.
The Jon Stephenson court case has now concluded with a pathetic hung jury not able to decide on the defamation claim despite the NZDF admitting its lies.
Now its over to the PM to apologise but given that he can't even sleep straight in bed that is not going to happen.
On the NZIFFI did get to see an excellent Palestinian film called Omar at Skycity (which is why I say the leg room is hopeless) While is is a fictional account it does capture the war on truth that is always part of these conflicts.
One of my friends worked for 3 months on the West Bank for an international project. Each morning he went through the gate into the West Bank and out again each night. Sadly he found it an impossible situation with no resolution in sight.
The context of conflicts like Afghanistan ( & Palestine) is that we need to support journalists like Jon who make very real sacrifices to report back. I hope NZ film can be screened again and at a theatre that is not part of a casino.
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There is (of course) more than one dashboard. The other stat not mentioned is the divorce rate among those who do get married.
Looking around at my peers the children whose parents didn't get married or have divorced often get more attention then they might in the more conventional setup. This is because both parents are more aware that the mythology of happy families is broken and we all have to work a bit smarter /harder to nurture our loved ones.
There are multiple family models out there now and the ones that work are those where the platitudes have been dropped in favour of caring and sharing regardless.
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I seem to remember many years ago that Pakistan banned GSM mobile technology on the grounds that it could not intercept communications. GSM is encrypted and has been from the start. probably there is some work around but that seems to be an obvious example of a use case where citizens routinely communicate privately as they should.
What I liked about this hearing is that Thomas, Michael, Jordan and others all stepped up and provided eminently sensible and reasonable rebuttals of much of the context and the wooly thinking around the current bill.
If only the questions from the PM betrayed some sense of insight or simple understanding of the reality of the situations and scenarios.
It very much seems that the PM and other politicians have misunderstood ( wilfully or just ignorance?) what is involved here.
So on behalf of NZers who weren't able to travel to Wellington yesterday - thank you.
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That looks like the start of an amazing band tree
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Loving the photos especially & don't mind spotify although I'd rather not be stalked by fb on that count so here is hoping
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I wonder if the sale of WeAreHunted to twitter earlier this month will add some sparkle to the music app discovery space. Bandcamp is an awesome service and with the right "front end" it can work very well for musicians. I think the community is still out there - it is just much more fragmented and unless you are a fan already the best places is something like soundcloud.
I have been working with a director who is selling quite a few DVD's to the 40+ crowd and it is surprising that many still want a physical file format. Partly that is because NZ broadband caps & speed still means that full length videos are still a bit tricky for the average user.
When I was growing up music and especially radio was the real soundtrack for life. Music TV came a bit later. I can often remember all the details of where I was when I heard a particular piece of music the first time so it then becomes a bit of easy time travel as it gets overlaid with other more recent memories and associations.
BTW @Dave Patrick - the Sounds guy you mentioned was probably Robin Lambert. I met him years later and we laughed about how much I had bought because he made shopping an actual experience.
One of the music store experiences I remember was in a Record Warehouse? in the old His Majestys arcade. That store had a grand piano all decked out in fake snow for the release of SuperTramps "Even in the Quietest Moments" album which came out in 1977.
That was a great store owned by Guy Morris and a number of others who were real music enthusiasts and collectors. Guy had something to do with a music magazine called Hotlicks which came before Rip it Up.
It turns out that Simon Grigg has already written about some of these stores over here
[ [ http://opdiner.com/2013/theres-a-stack-of-shellac-and-vinyl-which-is-yours-now-and-which-is-mine-45/ | There’s a stack of shellac and vinyl / Which is yours now and which is mine? / 45 ] ]
Unfortunately the link doesn't want to work for me so just dropping it in as is.
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Thanks Colin for putting an alternate view out there. There are plenty of churches out there with members and supporters who are more relaxed about this change.
In my experience there is a huge diversity of political views inside churches of all kinds and these span the entire spectrum - not just conservative as many seem to imagine.
From my observation a fair number of my friends are somewhat bemused that anyone actually still wants to get married.
Ironically that gay people want to get married seems more like it will have a stabilising effect pretty much any way you want to measure that. Marriage to me seems like a very conservative thing to do.
A quick look at the actual numbers Civil Unions and Marriages (Provisional) shows since 2006 that there are about 23,000 weddings each year( for the past 6) including civil unions.
Civil Unions between same sex and hetero have been in the order of 200-300 each year which is a tiny fraction of the 23k.
It may be that a high percentage of the civil union folks will want to get married but even if that is the case the numbers are tiny in comparison to the number of other marriages each year which end in divorce.
I'd guess that regardless of what any particular group thinks about marriage I'd hope it is much more optimistic than what they think about divorce.
On a more personal level I know some of the people who want to get married and I'm happy for them and wish them all the best.
I do feel a little bit like some of this is like the Faulty Towers Germans episode where Basil says "Listen, don't mention the war! etc.
In this instance marriage is not about the ceremony it is about much more and anyone who really wants to join the club should be encouraged.
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If MegaBox is still going to be launched then it needs to be reviewed separately from the circus around Kim. He is a fun guy but there are always consequences and while some of them might be unintended they still need to be evaluated.
Any redirection of the sort mentioned above for MegaBox / or Key ( no pun intended) doesn't look like a fair idea. At the moment though the spotlight is on the file storing.
Have there been any useful comparisons of say Dropbox and the new service yet. As a dropbox user hypothetically I can post almost any files there - however in practice I don't use it that way.
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BDO also seems to have created a fair number of NZ fans overseas from various bands and their friends who heard about NZ because they had played at the BDO. Not so long ago (ok early '90's) travelling as a NZer the typical reference point was sports related people that they knew about from NZ.
More recently in the US I met some musicians who had played at the BDO and just loved being here. Indirectly BDO ran an unrecognised music based cultural exchange programme which is why so many bands actually like coming here.
Not so much Pure NZ but as the stories / memories show it was very much a 2 way exchange of goodwill.
Hats off to Lees & West - it is a very long time to be in the festival business and they went above and beyond in making sure NZ shared in the Aussie circuit.
I know a fair number of Aussies coming here for Homegrown in Wellington and BDO also gave a big hand up to many NZ bands here and in Oz that contributed to that and other festivals as it should.
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Hard News: The file-sharing bill, in reply to Russell Brown,
I stand corrected. Clare Curran has done well but I was talking about the bigger picture.
hmmm
and the
"111-11 vote against Gareth Hughes’ amendment to the bill removing disconnection as a penalty?"
how does Labour explain that one?