Posts by giovanni tiso
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She's also done a *lot* to raise most of the rest of the money, got into an extremely prestigious university, won a Fulbright scholarship...I think that moves it a bit beyond great networking skills.
Yes, but presumably other people vying for that money also worked hard, right?
But mostly I'm mystified by the idea that we need to send our young promising journalists to Columbia university. That seems like such a superficial technocratic recipe to get us out of our troubles, without even having to point to the fact that the US media aren't exactly a paragon of Socratic discourse, in spite of being lousy with Columbia graduates.
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In other words: she's got great networking skills! Nothing wrong with that, I presume it's how you win these things - it is, as the post points out, a popularity contest.
I find some of the stories of the people with under ten votes extraordinary. Can't they all get a bit of money?
Okay, shutting up now.
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If it wasn't for how many users I've known (of alcohol inclusive) who have ended up either ruined or dead, I'd wholeheartedly subscribe to that angle.
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It might turn into something other than fun -- and people who take P may find it turning into something else quite quickly -- but we'd have a better drug debate if that simple truth was borne in mind.
We use to have an anti-drug campaign in Italy years ago going by the slogan "chi ti droga ti spegne", "drugs switch you off". Comedian Paolo Rossi pointed out I thought rather cogently that they switch you on first, at least for a bit, and that so long as you don't acknowledge that fact we're not going to go very far.
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I remember when people started asking people to vote for her - was it on Facebook? I'm pretty sure it was on Facebook - and I duly went to Nicola's page and there wasn't a single explanation of why we should vote for her except she obviously wanted to go to Columbia. The reason given now strikes me as somewhat patronising, and kind of thin to be honest given that the outcome is to decide a fairly important competition. Is there a single New Zealand journalist who left school with the intention of writing story after story about process and petty sideshows, and not focus on the issues? Of course they all want to do good reporting. Who's the editor who's going to allow them and in fact encourage them to do that, seems to me to be the issue. The problem has never been that we lack able journalists.
This is sort of by the by. I applaud Nicola's obvious mad networking skillz, I'm sure she has this thing sown up now. And maybe she'll come back, become an editor and change the way we do journalism. In the meantime, this exercise strikes me as a little icky.
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Indeed the Woody Allen book that the quote comes from is called "Without Feathers".
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I was working my way up to the kidney stone crisis. You'll understand.
I know, I know, I tease. Now excuse me while I go drink half a gallon of water.
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After seeing 'Once Upon A Time in The West' in it's full Civic glory
I saw that in Italy many moons ago. Sigh.
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I'm still waiting for my DVDs from last year :-)
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except for perhaps the 1994 one
I think it was miles better than 1994. You can't really compare any tournament with the shambles that was USA 94, possibly the worst major tournament of any global sport in history. The atmosphere was terrible, the level of play was terrible - and couldn't have been otherwise, since the games were scheduled for the European prime time which coincided with the middle of the day in mid July in some of the hottest places on the bloody planet. The final: in Pasadena, at noon. Crazy stuff.
I actually liked this world cup, although I struggle to explain to myself why. Perhaps it's just that I had lots of work and so following all the games in the background (I only missed Paraguay Japan) would have been a pleasant diversion anyhow.
I thought there were some great games in terms of drama if not technical quality - Netherlands v. Brazil, Ghana v. Uruguay, Spain v. Germany - and the demolition of Argentina and England by Germany was very spectacular. There were good stories, interesting contrasts in styles. A final between two teams who had never won it. An African nation in the quarterfinals that very nearly made it to the semis. The final was a disappointment, granted, but so it was in 2006. I wouldn't think the tournament in Germany was better than this one - and my team won it! 2002 was very poor, a shambles in some respect. You'd have to go back to France 98 I think to find a better tournament.