Posts by Andre Alessi
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Hard News: Popular Paranoiac Politics, in reply to Paul Webber,
Where is that party?
Well, technically ACT is as close as it gets. New Zealanders don't fight over social issues with the same passion as many other democracies, so social policies tend to be largely fair weather constructions. Hide has deliberately downplayed that aspect of ACT's policies to the point where the perception has become the reality, and ACT no longer believes in its own liberalism.
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Hard News: Popular Paranoiac Politics, in reply to Russell Brown,
I recall many years ago being stopped by a Scientology recruiter on Queen Street and allowing myself to be subjected to their personality test. The man got increasingly irritated at my insistence on answering the questions in a cheery, confident and optimistic fashion. I became increasingly amused by him.
I had exactly the same experience about 13-14 years ago. The very determined surveyer (who was writing their survey on blank bits of recycled newsprint) thought it was odd that my response to her question "What do you need to make you happy?" was "Well, nothing."
For some reason, this inspired her to escort me to a nondescript office building on Queen St, force me to watch interminable Scientology promo videos about volcanoes, take budget lie detector and IQ tests, before spending about 6 or so hours trying to get me to sign away all my worldly possessions and join the Church of Scientology as an employee (who wasn't even guaranteed minimum wage, by the way.)
I really wish I was exaggerating.
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None of this is to deny that Mikey has sometimes driven me nuts as a listener...
I had the misfortune of stumbling upon his "chats" with Simon Praast a few months ago. I'm reasonably sure my ears still haven't forgiven me.
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Field Theory: Home by the sea, in reply to Hadyn Green,
I liked that hipster joke about three years ago, before anyone had told it.
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Hard News: Wikileaks: The Cable Guys, in reply to Johnny Wharton,
He is clearly a little unhappy about that, but not unhappy enough to block the NYT’s exclusive access to the current dump of documents.
Only the NYT didn't get the documents from Wikileaks, they got them from the Guardian.
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Hard News: Wikileaks: The Cable Guys, in reply to Idiot Savant,
I suspect we’d also find they’re not safe to release. The US may be the Evil Overlord with poor fashion sense, but they can’t get away with just murdering leakers. Whereas it happens on a monthly basis in Russia.
I'd be surprised if the release of classified information would put anyone else in Russia in danger that wasn't already. It's the people with access to classified material who arrange the political killings anyway, so there shouldn't be anything new for them.
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Up Front: The Up Front Guides: How to Be…, in reply to Bart Janssen,
As long as you refer to them as "bros" instead of "partners", you'll get 95% of the male population behind the idea.
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Hard News: Where nature may win, in reply to Neil Morrison,
I remember reading in one of the early articles that SOP for the mine was to wait one hour from the time contact was lost with workers before emergency services were notified (I'd imagine losing contact wouldn't be all that uncommon, relatively speaking, given the conditions.)
Stuff has a timeline, but they haven't updated it for a few days.
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Hard News: What about that Welfare…, in reply to Russell Brown,
Update: Gah! Supermodel is not loading.
I have the same problem. I seem to have been downgraded to a regular without my consent.
(Just kidding, Poppy! Please don't kill me.)
As for the WWG-it'd be nice to see recommendation that focused on practical help instead of ideological nose-in-the-air nonsense. Whatever reasons you believe lead to someone needing to apply for financial support, it seems inherently contradictory to demand that other people "take personal responsibility" for their situation. Personal responsibility is not something that can be enforced by an external agency-that's rather the point of the "personal" bit.
(I won't even begin to go into the problems with the idea that people choose to be poor, which is what underlies this whole debate.)
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Hard News: Where nature may win, in reply to Matthew Poole,
I think that maybe the Business section gets a slightly better class of commenter.
As long as the discussion doesn't touch on welfare, taxes or social policy.