Posts by Russell Brown
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meanwhile, on the outer edges of the Lunisphere a blogger at National Review on line is wondering why the kids weren't brave enough to rush the guy.
He's not the only one either. What lovely people.
That second one, from the guy at Human Events Online, is the most unspeakably disgusting things I have read in a while. WTF is wrong with these people?
It should be noted that this wasn't just some crazy commenter but a regular writer for a publications that bills itself as having been "Leading the Conservative Movement Since 1944".
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Wikipedia, inevitably, has a comprehensive entry on school shootings:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_shooting
The majority (75%) of all school killings worldwide since 1927 are said to have happened in the US, but not always at the hand of students. Last year particularly sucked:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_School_Shooting_Outbreak
I wonder whether it's not simply the availability of guns but some lowering of the social sanction on firing a gun at another human being. Most of us can't imagine bragging about it (although Whaleoil managed something of the kind recently), but it's not hard to find online discussions where Americans loudly testify to their willingness to blow away someone who threatens them, or even pisses them off.
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I might add it is easier to buy a firearm here (once you have the necessary paper work) than in just about any US state
Not quite the right way of looking at it. You can own a hunting rifle or shotgun plus ammo here with a standard firearms license, which requires background checks etc. But the 3% of gun owners who have pistols or semi-automatics require a separate, much stricter license and are subject to rules about gun storage etc.
The kind of weapon you can buy and own in most places in the US - without impediment if it's a "personal" transaction at a gun show - is in another realm.
The way the famous hunter Jim Zumbo was crucified by the NRA last year when he opined that he didn't much approve of people using military assault weapons ("terrorist rifles" was his phrase) for hunting underlined the mindset. The response was unbelievably vicious.
I know I said I wasn't going to bother arguing, but I just don't understand it.
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Yes, comments on how the US should be run are never welcomed by Americans. The rebuttal that you're free to leave is somewhat compelling. However, this kind of incident does give us plenty of ammo to say that *our* countries needn't model our gun laws around the US.
I think part of the problem is that they can't undo the firearms proliferation they have now. There are just too many guns already.
But would any sane government move to create such a situation? Not in a million years. Even the Sporting Shooters Association of New Zealand seems to have lost the vibe. Their website hasn't been updated in more than a year.
It still does, however, display a badge on its home page for the Second Amendment Foundation. WTF? Whose constitution is this?
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Public Address's Keith Ng discusses his story on the mounting crisis in the eastern Sri Lankan town of Batticaloa, where tens of thousands of refugees have fled the government assault on Tamil separatists.
This is the longer, unedited version of the interview that played on Public Address Radio on Radio Live on Saturday April 14.
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Seven ages: first puking and mewling,
Then very pissed off with one's schooling,
Then fucks, and then fights,
Then judging chaps' rights,
Then sitting in slippers, then drooling.
That’s Robert Conquest’s précis of Shakespeare’s ‘all the world’s a stage’.
So what happens when all the world’s a website? Puking, drooling and various other bodily fluids you can’t mention on the radio — — and internet pioneers Tim O'Reilly and Jimmy Wales aren’t impressed. They recently proposed a ‘civility code’ to try and banish offensive and abusive comments from the net and the response… Well, imagine standing behind a jet engine as a truck of bovine excrement gets thrown into the works and you’re getting close
Sanctimonious wannabe Net Nannies crushing free speech, went up the cry! A desperate attempt to save the net from turning into a broadband sewer, came the response!
There’s a point that gets lost somewhere in the middle.
The internet has its virtues – and I’ve been on both sides of the blogger/commentator divide. But I’m also extremely sceptical about any utopian vision, because human beings just don’t play along. Jerks, like the poor, are always with us – especially when they can do so anonymously, and safely out of range of the law or a good right hook.
Russell Brown’s take over at Public Address-dot-net is worth a read and (for once) there’s very little I’d disagree with. Part of me cringes at the mindless vomit that passes for rational argument, especially in local political blogs. Too often an interesting debate devolves rapidly into a screaming match at the Christmas party from hell.
Is a highly procedural "code of conduct" much more than smugly preaching to the converted? I don’t think so. Like Justice Potter Stewart's infamous definition of pornography, I can’t describe civility, but I know it when I see it.
Here’s my modest proposal, and nobody should be surprised it’s a market-based consumer-driven response.
Free speech is a precious thing worth dying for – even when it makes you wish you were dead. But that freedom doesn’t oblige anyone else to pay attention. Witless tossing off isn’t only bad manners, it’s bad business – even in the marketplace of ideas.
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It's all trouble and maitais in pineapples as Russell Brown and Ryan Hutchings step out with the team from the capital city community blog The Wellingtonista.
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A chat with a few of the nearly 500 members of the Wellington Flickr Group at the Paramount theatre bar, scene of their exhibition, Online to On the Wall.
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DVD? When does it hit YouTube? :)
It would look seriously sucky on YouTube - it's ultra-widescreen.
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__regulation tends to distort market forces. Distortion of market forces tends to lead to inefficiency and inefficiency tends to create opportunity for exploitation, which seems to require more intervention.__
That can be true but it's through regulation that property rights are enforced.
Yes. And the very invention of copyright could have been seen as an outrageous market intervention at the time.
For all that we complain about copyright, it's not all about rights creep at the malign hand of corporations. It feeds a few people I know in entirely justifiable, market-oriented, ways.
One outcome of the resale royalty would be the creation of a collection agency, which would become a new lobbby group, for visual artists. This isn't necessarily a bad thing.
When the New Zealand domain name registry wound up with the .nz revenue stream, it almost went horribly, horribly, horribly wrong. But what emerged, Internet NZ, seems to operate efficiently and provides a really useful voice. APRA, representing songwriters, has also grown in to a useful advocacy role for New Zealand music -- and unlike certain other rights bodies, has a rep of being straightforward and realistic on licensing issues. I think one key thing for such groups is that they respresent local interests.
I seem to be convincing myself on this ...
PS: For those who read this comment earlier, on consideration, I added another "horribly" to my assessment of how horribly wrong the whole .nz thing almost went. Two just didn't seem enough. And anyone who is inclined to think poorly of David Farrar should be grateful for his role in the democratic coup that saved us all ...
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