Posts by Isaac Freeman
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OnPoint: Dear Labour Caucus, in reply to Bart Janssen,
A minor point but I’d argue that isn’t true. financial imperatives tend to drive towards stories that offend the fewest number of people. A stories of very strong interest to many people is likely to offend some people. For MSM it is more advantageous to avoid offend than to promote interest.
I'll quibble on that quibble. What's being sold to advertisers is the attention of viewers. Avoiding offense is a valid strategy for maintaining attention, but so is stoking controversy. For every person like me who switches the channel when Paul Henry comes on, there are apparently others who will stick around to see whether he's going to say something racist. So I think it's more accurate to talk about holding interest rather than avoiding offence, if we allow that the interest might not always be completely sympathetic.
This is a very pedantic distinction. Which is to say, the best kind of distinction of all.
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OnPoint: Dear Labour Caucus, in reply to Damian Christie,
Maybe it’s because I’m not as left as some people here (nor am I as right as other people elsewhere, and I probably vote the same as most of you anyway), but I find it hard to completely dismiss one side as being completely devoid of policy, theory, ideas and just popular because someone smiley is the leader, while the other side is an awesome policy machine with a doofus, and the media won’t let them win.
Everyone has theory and ideas, but how much policy you have can be a matter of principle. If your politics hold that government can be used to do good, you're liable to have a lot of policies about the good things government should do. If you believe that government should be small and keep out of people's way, you probably have a smaller set of policies.
Labour will always tend to be a better policy machine than National, but that's not a fair criticism of National. Ducks will always tend to look like ducks quack like ducks.
I’m not trying to be glib, but it is worth pointing out that Labour ran the country for 9 years until quite recently, and that the media hasn’t changed a lot in that time. So it’s not that stacked against the left.
I doubt that the media as a group of people are particularly biased, barring noticeable individuals. However, a commercial media will usually be biased by financial imperatives towards stories that interest the greatest possible number of people. Stories about detailed policies aren't the strongest contenders. Therefore, it seems like there'd be a systemic bias against parties who spend a lot of time trying to promote policies.
If all of this hangs together (and I'm not saying it's a particularly rigorous argument), then the media would be somewhat against Labour.
Which is not to say there aren't other systemic factors that work against National.
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OnPoint: Dear Labour Caucus, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
(as if it was the RWC entertainment rounds and they pick Narnia cos they’ve got a cool flag)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narnia_(country)
The basic rampant lion concept is sound and well-rendered, but red on green is a terrible combination and it needs a lot more contrast to be legible from a distance. Completely hopeless for the colour-blind.
I give it a three out of five.
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Hard News: News media meets new media:…, in reply to Lilith __,
It would be so great if the PAS experience* could be replicated elsewhere on the web.
I'm sure it's been said before, but the best online communities seem to be ones where a significant proportion of the people involved have met in person. Not that everyone needs to know everybody, but you need something to continually reinforce the idea that people are real.
It's probably also valuable to have a wide range of topics to discuss, so you can see people as more than just a position on the current thread.
I think some degree of private backchannel communication is also important. We don't see the little messages saying "go easy on so-and-so, you don't know how bad a day she's having" or the phonecalls saying "am I being a dick on this thread?", but they have a big cumulative effect on the overall tone.
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you may be conflating interesting and sexy
Always have, always will.
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Church Corner also has Patisserie Yahagi, the award-winning Japanese cake shop.
Over our side, Alvarados is open again, right by Lancaster Park.
Oh my god oh my god oh my god! Alvarados is back!
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So, just to be clear, you're only open to listening to men's opinions about what women do?
Not all men. Only the ones who keep proper log books. Some men make all sorts of wild claims about what they've seen women do, but you can't verify them because they neglected to record the serial numbers.
Also, a lot of women have short hair these days, and it's easy to assume that they're men and give undue weight to their opinions about women. A chap shouldn't be offended if another chap asks him to prove that he's not a lovely lady before he gives a lecture or magic lantern show about women.
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But... but... it's still too early for how much this hurts my brain. This is like "the most common reason for having a caesarian is having already had one".
I suspect that actually it's an incremental layering of small ambiguous interpretable gestures. Was that a look? Did he brush my arm on purpose? Was that double entendre deliberate?
Yeah, it builds up. And although it's the most significant factor across the whole population, that doesn't mean it's the most important factor for every individual. Some people are going to love you for your sexy elbows and marvellous taste in scarves regardless of whether you show the slightest interest in them.
But it's interesting because it's something that is, at least to some degree, under your control. Perhaps you can't control your pupils dilates or the way your tongue unrolls across the floor and sparks come out of your ears, but you can treat people as if they're interesting and increase the change that they'll find you interesting. Dale Carnegie and so forth.
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Up Front: The Up Front Guides:…, in reply to Emma Hart,
people are always going to respond more strongly to someone they think is interested in them.
There is a reasonable body of research indicating that this is the single most important factor in starting relationships. More than anything else, people are attracted to people who seem to be attracted to them.
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Hard News: The Next Labour Leader, in reply to Joe Wylie,
I really can’t follow you there Isaac.
I suspect this might be because you want to hold public servants to account and get institutions working for people again, whereas I want to get institutions working for people again and hold public servants to account.
That is, I think we're in agreement about the situation, and merely emphasising different aspects of what needs to be done.
To me the primary concern is that we treat the performance of those who supposedly serve the greater good as a matter of state interest, rather than as the private affairs of a despot.
I do have a bad habit of taking it as read that I agree with things and writing a "yes and" which sounds like a "yes but". So to be clear, that is an admirably clear statement of a position I am in complete agreement with.
What I'd add is that in practice we never get a binary distinction between purely selfless public servants and purely selfish despots. Neither do we get perfectly competence or absolute incompetence. When things go wrong, there's liable to be a mix of good intentions, self-interest, honest mistakes, vindictiveness, laziness, inattention, miscommunication and desperation.
Given that human motivations are complex, I'm wary of a common trap in thinking (mine as much as anybody's): assuming that problems can be solved by identifying a single person responsible and removing them.
I should add that I'm not accusing you of thinking this way. I just talk and write like a teacher: trying to sound like I know what I'm talking about when I'm figuring it out as I go along. But my self-justification makes boring reading for everybody else, and I feel I've hammered away at this point for long enough.