Posts by Mikaere Curtis
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Really, the Independent is panicking about pot ?
When we lived in London in the mid-90s, the Independent on Sunday was running a campaign to legalise marijuana. They printed an excellent recipe for Chocolate Hash Afghans. They were excellent...
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Are you saying he's lost all right of reply when his personal life is being (from his perspective, unfairly) smeared across the House?
In a nutshell: yes.
The logical conclusion of your perspective is that as soon as an MP smears the personal life of another MP, then the first MP has to now STFU while all and sundry have carte blanche to make any kind of salacious insinuation, including inaccurate or patently false ones.
Which, of course, has an inbuilt feedback loop whereby any MP taking advantage of the open slather has no right of reply, thereby actively increasing the propensity for further attacks on themselves.
And then there's the "silence is consent" meme, which would cloak the insinuations in a kind of pseudo-veracity.
Have you really thought this through ?
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Cheers Kowhai.
Er, this is the same Trevor Mallard who baited Don Brash in the House ad nauseum about Don's marital woes???
Are you saying he's lost all right of reply when his personal life is being (from his perspective, unfairly) smeared across the House ?
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then you might not want to be standing for parliament
becuase it happens most every day in the houseSue, I plan to be standing as a Green. I would be obliged if you would descry a personal life / whanau attack by a Green MP either in the House or via media release.
We simply don't condone this kind of activity. And neither do the mainstream media, who apparently knew about Don Brash's alleged affair and decided en masse to not report it.
Sure, some of the bottom-feeding politicians will throw whatever they can rake up from one side of the House to the other, but surely the best response is to stack the House with representatives who refuse to countenance this behaviour ?
Thanks for the advice, though. Should I actually get elected (no sureties in the Green ranks), I'll be sure to take heed of your warning.
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As someone who stood at the last general election, and is planning to stand at the next, I firmly believe that personal life and whanau are completely off limits. So I can understand Mallard's reaction to Henare's baiting (as in, "let's get out of the chamber and have a verbally robust discussion where we can say exactly what we like away from the Speaker"). He shouldn't have allowed it to escalate beyond vehement discussion.
I regard violent anger as a choice rather than an automated response, so I see Mallard and Henare's subsequent behaviour as a rote playing out of an unfortunate male stereotype.
And euphemistic descriptions of violence as "biff" is part of the problem. The sooner we see this particular phrase (and similar responsibility-diminishing labels, such as "argy-bargy") consigned to the same linguistic dustbin as "domestic", the better. Violence-retlated cognitive heuristics are part of the problem; please stop using them.
Getting back to RB's original post, I disagree that the Maori party were either hysterical or cynical. Sure, the labelling the government as a "Minority Government" was labouring the point (no pun intended), but what exactly do you think Maori should have to say about a situation whereby a predominantly Maori township is "shut down" by a "ninja army" (sic), whereas no such widespread actions are taken when suspects are arrested/searched in predominantly Pakeha locales ?
To be frank, when Greg O'Connor starts justifying police intimidation (or outright violence), I begin to wonder if he is engaging in a PR arse-covering exercise.
I went to Saturday's protest, and got some interesting background on a couple of the defendants. I am still uncomfortable with they way the bail applications and hearing locations are being handled by the Crown. Which is why I marched, as opposed to some pro-apartheid wet-dream expounded by Wintson Peters. Of all people to gain oxygen from this whole sorry saga...
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Then there's Silverlight, the so-called "Flash Killer" by Microsoft. They guarantee it will work on IE, Firefox and Safari which is a sizeable proportion of browsers in use.
And you can program it using any of the .Net family of languages such as VB.Net, which leverages any .Net learning.
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At the start of the Digital Review, the entire paradigm shift caused by the digital revolution couldn't be anticipated ( we certainly never thought about bands like Radiohead making a business decision to offer their music on-line for no fixed price...).
Although it had been already done by a headlining act. In 2000 the Smashing Pumpkins released Machina II/The Friends and Enemies of Modern Music via the internet. Well, actually, they pressed 10 vinyl albums which they gave to their mates with the instruction to rip them and get them onto the P2P networks.
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Neil, teach her Visual Basic. Much as I hate to say it, it's a good learning tool for programming.
I'm planning on teaching my 10 year old daughter VB.Net, IIRC the Express version is free from Microsoft, although Linux users can use the Mono version. The amount of blogs / fora / MS articles on the net for .Net is fairly staggering, and there are usually answers to any tricky questions available within a few googleseconds, although the bias is squarely towards C# - which is not particularly n00b-friendly.
From the slideshow, KPL looks to have similar construction to VB, and I'll keep that in mind if she wants to try out a different language.
I've known Nandor for years and he is an excellent thinker and communicator. I suspect that a major factor in the misrepresentation / misperception of his public image is: Dreadlocks = pothead. Which, given his virtual non-use of cannabis, is highly ironic.
Wouldn't he make totally the best ever Minister of Justice ?
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Ah yes, that was why! Also his hakas were always OTT.
Um, I think that's the whole point of a haka. You don't perform a posture dance with the intention of maintaining a sense of humility.
I'm so glad that SA won. The thought of England mangling their way to victory was unbearable...
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Auckland can be a rather pedestrian unfriendly city.
My kids unit stayed at Waiapa Marae at the university at Matariki this year and planned on walking from there to the Auckland domain. There is no way to get there without at some point taking your chances with traffic. It's almost as pedestrians are an irksome afterthought.