Posts by Ben Chapman
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Hard News: Because it's about time we…, in reply to George Darroch,
Espresso is just one way to extract a bean with water, there are plenty others. I’d love for some of the NZ cafes to start experimenting with other methods (they probably already are, I speak in ignorance at the moment).
Customs and Memphis Belle in Wellington are pushing alternative extraction methods, such as Clover and Chemex, as well as resurrecting the plunger. Memphis Belle also produces cold-drip coffee (which apparently takes 12 hours to “brew” and is delicious.
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And it took me all of five seconds on Google to find out the correct pronunciation of the surname of the Chief Minister of Delhi. Dix-it not Dick-shit. Doesn't TVNZ have internet access on Sunday morning?
If her name is standard Hindi it would probably be दीक्षित and the closest way to represent it in English would be "Di-kshit". It could be the way the name is separated in syllables that makes the difference in how it sounds.
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It wasn't just that (as so many media stories have portrayed), it was his remark about the name being appropriate because she was Indian that I imagine would have aroused that culture's ire.
Possibly true, though it seems to be me that in general Indians take insults very seriously and they are quite protective of people in seniority, so laughing at a chief minster's name could come close to being a national insult in itself.
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So he turned around and blamed Hitler on Catholics... Fuck you, arsewipe -- nice of you to ignore the Catholics who were persecuted, tortured and murdered for resisting the Third Reich.
He wasn't blaming Hitler on Catholics. You could perhaps draw the conclusion that he was blaming Hitlerism on Hitler's Catholicism, though he wasn't implicating Catholics in general, and certainly not the Catholic victims of the Third Reich.
I think his whole point was about Papal hypocrisy. He showed the irony in Ratzinger blaming atheism for the actions of a Catholic and then attacked Papal doctrine.
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I guess it is a photogenic sport, but mlr's photos blow me away every time.
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Without worrying about what constitutes cheating exactly, surely the fact that a red-card offense typically carries a suspension, that is, an actual punishment beyond the game in progress, indicates that it is something that is discouraged and hence beyond the boundaries of the game.
In comparison, it is much easier to interpret an infraction as part of the game, since a free kick doesn't do much more than balance any advantage that might have been gained by the infraction (and a free kick isn't even awarded if the fouled team has the advantage).
I think we can be justified in not respecting a player who does something that gets a red card.
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This has to be one of the best Aussie NZ games of all time
http://www.cricinfo.com/ci/engine/match/65118.htmlYes! World Cup '92.
Watched it round at a mate's and we never even considered the possibility that we might beat Aus, even after Crowe's century, so we played cricket in the hallway for most of the Aussie innings.
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Part of the guttingness was that I wanted to hate PCR for being bad at SOMEthing, but I couldn't - they were good skaters with good tactics (and good uniforms). Grrr.
Isn't it the kiwi way to hate someone for being good at something?
It was gutting to see how wide the gulf between the leagues is, even though I was expecting it. But in a way that made the bout more exciting. You could really get behind the Richter City girls for the guts they showed. And it was truly exciting when they did get lead jammer or win a jam. And of course you could marvel at the skills of the Aucklanders.
It has been great following derby this year. I've enjoyed every bout. But being part of that crowd at Skate Highway One was the highlight. It was a great night.
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I should point out that I don't mind the colours the teams wore, both of them looked awesome. But what would be so bad about wearing yellow and black? Smash Malice did it all season.
I would have thought that the fact that one of the constituent teams had those colours would pretty much rule them out for the all stars team, unless they went for yellow, black and pink.
In my opinion, tradition and identifiability are not strong enough reasons to override forging their own identity or, perhaps more importantly, displaying some creativity.
Derby is an alternative sport. It makes a lot of sense for them to avoid going with tradition. And if we're going to get things coming out of the wider mainstream sports community like that piece by Stanaway, then a few potential insults thrown back might just be appropriate.
Also, there is a strong streak of expression in derby that doesn't exist in other sports. The Wellington Lions or the Phoenix don't make their own uniforms.
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Rod Oram talking to Kathryn Ryan, after utterly rubbishing the report and Don Brash's attitude in preparing it, made the withering observation that went something along the lines of "I think the great triumph of this report is that it will convince New Zealanders of the pointlessness of the exercise."