Posts by John Armstrong
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Capture: Down With The #OGB, in reply to John Armstrong,
For what it's worth my mental image also has you square of jaw and blue of eye. Like a German submariner but without the scar.
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Capture: Down With The #OGB, in reply to BenWilson,
No no, nothing to do with blondeness in that sense! I think it arose more from a confluence of preconceived conceptions about cyclists and science-fiction buffs. You know, young and outdoorsy..
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Capture: Down With The #OGB, in reply to Kumara Republic,
Fair enough, although I think it was the consistently empathetic and reasoned tone that did it for me:) For what it's worth, my mental image of Sacha is now of a bloke with long hair; an admittedly sexist and often uncomfortable compromise.
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Capture: Down With The #OGB, in reply to Russell Brown,
Oh. I'll have to adjust my mental image of Ben now, which hitherto has always, for some reason, included blonde hair. Along with my reluctant acceptance that Sacha is male, this might take some time.
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Hard News: Briefing, blaming, backing down, in reply to Russell Brown,
We need people to stand for office in a democracy.
Yes, and we need them to vote too. That would happen more if people understood that some politicians actually justified the effort.
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Hard News: Briefing, blaming, backing down, in reply to Bart Janssen,
We select for people who can shout down hecklers in public meetings and who can appeal to the lowest common denominator.
At risk of sounding like a politicians' apologist, characterisations like this and others made in this thread, in my experience seriously understate the abilities of many (but obviously not all) of our politicans. Through a family connection, I have known one current Labour MP personally for a few years now, and could not imagine a better qualified or more able person for the job. Several of his colleagues that I have met leave a similar impression.
I just don't know if the 'they are all hopeless' narrative is all that productive. It certainly doesn't do much to promote political engagement, which, IMHO, is one of the more serious issues in contemporary politics.
(PS, more, and more, I feel a need to clarify that I'm not the John Armstrong from the Herald..)
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Speaker: The Voyage: The Engine Room…, in reply to BenWilson,
so I'm going quiet now.
No, please don't. You are gold.
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And the two cents from Hamilton: Sunday morning Farmers' Market on River Road is by far my favourite food experience around here; lots of samples (I find taking my cute three-year old with me helps in this regard), fantastic free-range sausages etc from the Soggy Bottom Holdings stall and everything else meaty from Wholly Cow. Great Ciabatta from Volare, and a great range of fresh veg / fruit / other tasties. And buskers. Awesome.
On the retail side, Vetro is great for Mediterranean ingredients (great service too) and the Ham East Greengrocers on Grey St makes you want to linger too. I should like Nosh more than I do. It just feels a bit - chainy? Staff going through the motions unlike the Vetro folks who seem happy to stand and compare food stories. The older I get, the more important service becomes.
Our Farro closed, or at least was 'converted' into a Trader Jacks, a couple of weeks ago. The owners issued a hilariously weasly statement which did everything it could to say that Hamiltonians just didn't know about quality food without actually saying that Hamiltonians just didn't know about quality food. Apparently we are instead 'discerning buyers with a keen eye for value' or something.
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OnPoint: Student Loans are Loans (Duh.), in reply to Russell Brown,
The Oatmeal
Made my day.
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I wonder if this (very interesting) impasse could be partially resolved if we just agreed that particularly brilliant people are useful because they save time. Ben's contention (if I understand it) that one brilliant person could be replaced by several diligent people with a bit more time implies this anyway, and Bart's experience confirms it.
The debate seems to turn on the point of quantification. For what it's worth, I'm not sure that most decisions around hiring / funding etc really require a precise quantification of ability, as Ben is demanding. In most situations, a comparative judgement seems to be enough. A gets job or funding over B because s/he is better, not because s/he is 1.8 times better.
I know that 'better' is problematic and unsatisfactory, but the reality is that in any given field (science, rugby..) there are so many qualities contributing to the overall package that quantification is impossible anyway. In both fields, for example, the value of forming good 'combinations' is every bit as important as brainpower or speed, but far harder to quantify. Or at least, harder to quantify to those who don't understand how the combinations work. Which I think is the point Bart is making about accountants holding the purse strings..