Posts by B Jones
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I read something in a different context yesterday (cancer prevention) which reminded me of this discussion - the just world fallacy. Good things don't happen to good people, therefore if something bad happens to you, whether that's cancer or assault, perhaps you did something wrong. Otherwise known as kicking someone when they're down to preserve the fantasy that if you do all the right things, bad things won't happen to you. See also: karma, and the argument from evil. It was interesting to see it lifted out of a gendered context and not look that different, although here, gender plays a role in defining what the right things are.
It can be hard, if you're really committed to the just world fallacy, to justify charity on the ground that the worst off must have done something to deserve it. Sort of a dark side of morality.
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Hard News: The Crazy Gang Nation, in reply to Kyle Matthews,
That wasn’t an electoral outcome brought about through FPP though.
No? I thought Bob Jones' party siphoning off 10% of neo-liberal votes off the Nats had something to do with it. He explicitly set up the NZ Party to get the votes of people who disliked Muldoon's controlled economy but wouldn't vote Labour, and disbanded it once his goal was achieved. It wouldn't work like that in a MMP environment - he'd be in parliament rather than pulling the strings from outside, and people would feel differently about casting a protest vote as a result.
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Hard News: On Telly, Telly Off, in reply to Martin Brown,
they shouldn't have missed anyone
Not if they did it right. But you'd need a hands-on, low tech communications strategy tightly geared towards older viewers - going viral on twitter won't reach them.
The degree to which this will inconvenience people without a lot of other cheap accessible entertainment makes me uncomfortable, even as one of the likely beneficiaries of better cellphone signals. I'm probably in one of the many Wellington pockets of bad signal, so I don't stand to benefit from the TV signal.
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Hard News: No Red Wedding, in reply to Bart Janssen,
The problem is that the left leaning National voters can be scared away by some of those policies.
You reckon? I know people who vote more to the right, but are all about alt med. The anti-folate business was backed by both the Nats and the Greens (in Sue Kedgley's time). Frame it as health freedom rather than taxpayer's expense and it's a natural alliance.
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Hard News: No Red Wedding, in reply to Andrew Geddis,
I suspect the reference was to this part of the Green’s Health policy platform:
"Establish a Complementary Health Care Unit within the Ministry of Health to facilitate the integration of selected complementary health practices and therapies into the public health system."
There is already a Chief Advisor with this function.
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Hard News: Friday Music: History, motherfuckers, in reply to Rich Lock,
Yeah, but the Commies and Nazis being 20th century guys, the pay's not that good. There's only one ghetto blaster for drowning out the boy music that we all secretly realise is the only good stuff and would just take over if we let it; and the Alanis cassette's starting to wear out.
Someone else can do the Ironic joke.
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Hard News: Friday Music: History, motherfuckers, in reply to Lilith __,
Lorde’s talent endorsed by a fairly big name .
Lena Dunham tweeted positively about her the other day. Someone else who is ridiculously talented for her age.
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Hard News: Friday Music: History, motherfuckers, in reply to Heather Gaye,
computer programming job / Regurgitator
I thought we were builders who listened to Melissa Etheridge. Now I'm confused.
The idea that anyone's faking outrage because we don't like Simon whatsit is nuts. I'd never heard of him, and I've only just barely heard of Lorde, but anyone writing about a 16 year old in those terms is prima facie a dickhead. If he wants launch a defence to that, he's welcome to, but I'm not going to assume he had a good reason, just because. Prima facie, again, it reads like someone who's secretly bummed he wasn't discovered at age 16 and decided to paper over the cognitive dissonance by assuming nobody is worth discovering then, and if you are, it must be because you're unfairly attractive.
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Hard News: Friday Music: History, motherfuckers, in reply to Dean Papa,
The ugly truth here is that aggressive feminists can be incredibly mean when they want to be. Far meaner than innocent blokes like Simon could ever be. You need look no further than what that horrible woman Germain Greer said about poor Steve Irwin after he died for proof of that.
She called him wank-fodder for men who like Farmers catalogues?
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Hard News: Friday Music: History, motherfuckers, in reply to Dean Papa,
Perhaps, after much research scrutinising the scientific literature with respect to psychology and evolution, and even from conducting my own scientific experiments, I have determined that there is some truth to the assertion, based on a statistical analysis of metadata, I may have, through the scientific process arrived at such a conclusion. Do I then not have the right to publish my results because it offends a few aggressive feminists? Alternatively I could have just pulled the statement out of my ass, but it shouldn’t matter how I arrived at my conclusion.
You don't know much about how science works, I'm guessing.