Posts by Brent Jackson
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Lil p,
Your excessive verbiage, and your lack of punctuation and well-formed sentences, make your posts very hard to decipher. (In fact, so much so, I usually do not bother reading them).
For example, you wrote :
the principal, minimal requirement for anything one can properly call viable science, ie, independent-of-culture and ultimately transmissable across all of them, is the ability to make statements suffiicentlly generalized as to freely obtain out of any *context*
Having now read this 6 times, I think I have an idea of what you're getting at, but I am not sure (No, please don't explain it for me).
If you were to write more clearly, in shorter sentences, in shorter posts, and use punctuation and capital letters correctly, you may be taken more seriously.
Compare your posts to others. Although you may understand what you are alluding to, your purpose in writing is to communicate your thoughts to the reader. You are not doing that very successfully (if at all).
Hope this helps.
Oh, and preview is your friend...
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My, albeit limited, understanding is that prizes (apart from the jackpotted 1st division) will tend to be smaller when more people buy tickets. My reasoning is thus :
- more people buy tickets => larger pool
- only x% of the pool is returned (where x is 40 or 60 or similar)
- the number of winners at each level is proportional to the number of people buying tickets
- therefore, each winner is likely to get a smaller pay out (eg 60% larger pool spread over twice as many tickets).I agree that the jackpot limit is way too large. I reckon $5m is about right.
Cheers,
Brent. -
Kerry Weston quoted Anthony Smith thus:
"An ethnic community is a named human population with shared ancestry, myths, histories and cultures, having an association with a specific territory and a sense of solidarity" (Anthony Smith).
What I find interesting about this definition is the use of the word "named". I believe that we are actually looking for the "name" for an emerging ethnicity of a "person whose ancestors arrived in New Zealand a number of generations ago (4+ ?), who no longer associates themselves with their origins, but only with New Zealand".
And the candidates are :
New Zealander - not useful, because it is indistinguishable from nationality
Kiwi - better, but still no good because New Zealanders of other ethnicities (eg Maori) also consider themselves to be Kiwi.
New Zealand European - a bit of a mouthful, and disliked by those who no longer believe that they have any affinity with Europe.
New Zealander of European descent - okay, except for the fact that it is too long, and, arguably, still has too much emphasis on Europe.
Pakeha - this has the problem that in Maori it means non-Maori, and hence equally applies to an American tourist, an Asian New Zealander, and a 5th generation New Zealander.In most English dictionaries there seems to be two meanings given for pakeha (eg the American Heritage dictionary) :
A New Zealander of European descent; a non-Maori New Zealander.
Perhaps we should, by using it as such, try to make the first definition more dominant.
There is also an argument that we shouldn't have to use a Maori word to describe our ethnicity. I would argue that by taking and using a Maori word you are actually showing that you really do associate yourself with New Zealand culture.
To my mind, the only viable alternative to "pakeha", is to make up a new term to describe this ethnicity. I think it would be unlikely to be able to define a term which will gain widespread acceptance. My offering is "kiwitea", meaning "pale Kiwi".
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Emma asked :
So, what word do we use for something that evokes both 'that is beautiful' and 'that is sexually arousing'?
I always thought that "erotic" covers this - although dictionary definitions seem to focus on the "sexually arousing" part rather than the "beautiful" part.
If something is sexually arousing, but is not beautiful, would it be described as erotic ? I don't think so.
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dc_red wrote:
If anyone has any advances on: "take foot off accelerator, point wheel in direction you'd ideally be going, resist urge to slam on brakes really hard, hope for the best" ... well, I'm all ears.
This may apply for rear wheel drive cars (depending on the cause of the skid), but for front wheel drive cars you should point the wheels in the direction you are trying to go, and keep your foot on the accelerator (but not too much) so that the front wheels are trying to drag the car in that direction.
Lifting off the accelerator in a front wheel drive car while going around a corner, is asking for the back wheels to overtake the front wheels. Stay under power, and resist the temptation to turn the wheel more and more if the front wheels are sliding. Try to drive out of it.
(Here's hoping no-one ever needs to put this into practise :-).
Cheers,
Brent. -
Of course I'm not happy with your Monteith's sponsorship, since I'm currently boycotting DB beers for their trademarking of radler, and the stupid things their Marketing Manager, Clare Morgan, said over the issue:
"Our consumers remain as passionate about our brands as we do," she said. "We believe they are capable of making their own decisions about what they do and don't buy."
Too right we do - and my decision is to stop buying DB beers in my attempt to penalise them for their arrogance...
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Great night ! Thoroughly enjoyed it.
It is so good to be able to celebrate geekery (or is that geekness ?).
Really enjoyed the Ignite presentations. Can we please have a final list of the titles and presenters so we can better remember them (perhaps links would be good too - for those who didn't have a notepad handy - of course a true geek should have no difficulty remember a dozen web addresses...).
Cheers,
Brent. -
Steve Parks wrote :
Am I the only person who took the puzzles seriously?
I was familiar with both puzzles so it'd have been pointless to simply write down the answers without letting people have a crack at them.
With regard to the Pizza puzzle, I find that analysing the start and finish conditions shows most easily where the money goes, namely :
Start : 3 guys with $10 eachFinish : 3 guys with $1 each
Waiter $2
Restaurant $25This makes it obvious that the $2 should not be added to the $27 paid, but subtracted from it to find the amount that the restaurant got.
Keep working on the other puzzle - its a good one, and quite simple once you know the trick.
Cheers,
Brent. -
Thank you Tess for your openness and sharing.
I disagree with you, but really appreciate your detailed explanations of your beliefs and how you apply them.
(Though I cannot comprehend why any intelligent person would choose to align themselves with the Catholic Church...).
Thanks,
Brent. -
I saw the LTSA advertisement in the local paper this week - boy did it annoy me. Paraphrased :
- we support your right to protest
- safety is most important
- no we will not close off the clip-on so that you can use itThat is just so effing arrogant ...
I wish I could have been there - would've loved the opportunity to cycle the bridge.
I'm really interested to know whose decision it was to close all four lanes. There was always going to be the possibility that some would try to get onto the bridge - surely the sensible option would be to plan to close the clip-on should that occur.
By blocking all four lanes, it seems to me that there was a deliberate attempt to provoke anger in the inconvenienced motorists, to try and get negative publicity for the getting across movement.
I wonder if any journo's will follow this up.
Cheers,
Brent.