Posts by BenWilson
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Hard News: Schools: can we get a plan up…, in reply to Glenn Pearce,
Isn't St Mary's still single sex?
-
Hard News: Schools: can we get a plan up…, in reply to Graham Dunster,
WSC is not unisex, it’s mixed. There are plenty of unisex schools in the CBD etc area, not so many mixed.
Yet another victim of the ridiculous word “unisex”, which pretty much means “mixed”, despite what it looks like. Stoopid English language.
ETA: "Unisex" does not mean "single sex". It means "one for all sexes". Which is the exact opposite.
-
Hard News: Diverse Auckland: are we…, in reply to alobar,
Indeed, or one could even argue that the causation works the other way, that high levels of trust cause monoculturalism. Or even that they are simply correlated without any causation. But to even get to discussing the correlations, we need numbers, and to get numbers we need an agreed framework for the numbers, what they actually mean, how they're being counted.
From what I can tell, diversity is quite a difficult number, because it's a measure of two entirely different things at the same time. The first is the total number of categories of the thing you're looking at (say, culture, or race, or species), and the second is how evenly the population is spread across them.
So there two big difficulties when arguing about them. Firstly, defining the categories. How far should one subdivide? Secondly, larger populations probably contain more total categories, so they'll be more diverse on average, if other factors are equal, so how meaningful is it to compare differing population sizes?
All that said, I still find it plausible that less diverse places are more socially coherent. This doesn't necessarily make it better to be that way. I'd expect a stronger, but more rigid society. So, good for some things, some purposes, no good for others.
-
Hard News: Diverse Auckland: are we…, in reply to alobar,
Yeah, but they're all "Pakeha", so no diversity there :-). Which is just to show that diversity is in serious need of definition. It depends on what you count as a different category of individual, before you even start putting them into a table of counts to find proportions, total number of categories and then doing your sums to decide what the level of diversity is. Are those "American draft dodgers" one race? Or should they be counted as one culture, where in America each one might fit into a different culture? Are "ethnic Germans" from the North coast even really that different from the Swedes on the southern coast, given a maritime connection over hundreds of years? Are ethnic Germans the same as each other, even, considering the number of different German tribes/kingdoms that made up modern Germany? Do Turkish "gastarbeiter" Germans count the same?
It might seem like a hair splitting question, but people are throwing numbers at this question like they mean something. So far, most of the numbers tell me more about the quirky rulers than the things they're measuring.
-
Hard News: The Internet Party, whatever happens, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
Any ship with Horan aboard is destined for troubled waters. We're talking a guy who always thinks he's the captain.
-
Hard News: Diverse Auckland: are we…, in reply to M Steinberg,
Were you able to understand how diversity is quantified in the study? Talking of links between greater diversity and x suggest that the diversity was actually quantified. But I'm yet to get any answers to this question on this thread.
It's a pretty important question, especially considering the possibility that the quantification of diversity involves the total population size. Because those studies are comparing the USA with Europe, and I can't tell if they mean "all of Europe" or "Individual countries in Europe". If the former, then the idea that there is greater social cohesion is very hard for me to accept. Europe has in living memory had multiple massive wars sweeping across it killing millions. If you could find a more stark example of the breakdown of social cohesion, have at it. Within Europe, in the last 20 years, there has been actual genocide. Right now, there's a chance that the Union might even fall apart completely due to the collapse of a number of its nations economies.
If it's talking about individual countries, then comparing with a giant country like the USA is rather spurious. The USA maybe has higher diversity because it is much bigger, and that's pretty much the whole story. So they could have just substituted "bigger" for "more diverse" and had all the same findings. This is why I keep hammering: How is diversity quantified? How can you have a meaningful discussion without this extremely basic point being agreed on in any way?
-
Hard News: The Internet Party, whatever happens, in reply to Emma Hart,
It's a bit too early to say what their natural demographic is. I bet there's a lot of kids who yell "Gay!" every time they get fragged in there.
-
Hard News: The Internet Party, whatever happens, in reply to netcoach,
It's hard to see the use of Horan to IP, unless he can win an electorate. The same goes for pretty much all the sitting MPs. This makes it hard to see how a National or Labour candidate would be any use, unless they were in themselves extremely popular. Otherwise they'll just lose when they're replaced in the area by National or Labour.
The ideal person to him is someone who can win an electorate on their own merits. Currently I'd say only Harawira fits that bill.
For the rest, the list, Jesus, it could be anyone. That's how it seems to work in the minor parties (with the exception of the Greens). No requirement of any experience, no talent, no political ability of any kind. Horan could fit, but it's really up to KDC and whoever the electorate clincher is to choose their "minions".
-
Hard News: Spring Timing, in reply to bmk,
Yes, and they get the half of 1%.
-
Hard News: The Internet Party, whatever happens, in reply to Grant McDougall,
It's hard to see any common ground, that's for sure. Harawira alone with the IP, maybe. But Bradford and Minto with KDC? Only if the brief of the IP were basically limited to "free internet infrastructure and opposed to abuse of state power with respect to internet use". Which are both righteous, of course, but I expect KDC has more in mind.
Last ←Newer Page 1 … 274 275 276 277 278 … 1066 Older→ First