Posts by BenWilson
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I can't see practically how a splinter group could form in the center. The centrists in the major parties are usually the leadership, so they're not going to splinter from themselves. Which means National and Labour are always adjacent, barring the Peter Dunne oddballs. They could easily form a coalition between themselves - this is the true safety valve against tail-wags-dog situations. If either party splintered badly, or both were eroded by strong minor parties, a grand-coalition would be a centrist option.
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Hard News: Popular Paranoiac Politics, in reply to Lucy Stewart,
There wasn't a window to escape out of? Maybe an air duct?
My cousin had been cornered by the same guy as me. But he said he did about a third of the questions, then just bolted when the guy's back was turned.
I'd have done the same, but I'd been snared by a falsehood - they claimed they would put the personality test through their amazing computer system, and give me a printout of the report. That piqued my attention, and the form had those circular color-in options which suggested automated processing. So I stuck it out.
The guy then sat me down and began reading the form. I asked him if he was going to feed it into the computer, and he said he was doing just that. "This computer", he said, tapping his bald pate. I was tempted to give it Benny Hill slaps. "The printout" I asked, wistfully? He waggled his pen.
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Oven-fresh cookies for everyone!
For me, they are only a sometimes food. Nom, nom!
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Hard News: Popular Paranoiac Politics, in reply to Lucy Stewart,
I don't get why he didn't just ask to be in the ACT party. Surely there's a huge gap now? Mind you, it would be shameful to have once been the head of the National Party, and to end up scrapping with Rodney Hide over who gets to be King of Act.
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Hard News: Popular Paranoiac Politics, in reply to Sacha,
Yes, Coddington seems to have lifted her game dramatically this year.
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This is an entire argument for the public library system, right there.
Yes, freely appreciating good books is only half of it. Freely debunking utter shite is also important.
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Heh, they needed a special comment to explain after all the leading questions that 52% of respondents still rated National's performance as "average to excellent".
The questions reminded me the those notorious "free personality tests" which were a ploy to get you in a room to hassle you into buying a Scientology book. So long as you are only asked how close to perfection you are (and display normal human modesty), then the form is designed to make you feel stink about yourself. They were more careful about asking questions that actually outright asked you if you wanted to buy a book about Scientology, to which the answer 100% of the time would be "Hell, no". I really put the guy out of kilter, though, when he produced the book, and said it could help me with all my problems if I just bought it, when I responded (truthfully) "I doubt it man, I got that out of the library years ago, and it obviously hasn't helped". Same answer could actually apply to the formation of a new right wing party. It happened years ago, and it hasn't helped.
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Hard News: The Public Address Word of…, in reply to Jackie Clark,
Profane? That does seem to specialize as a word in irreligious swearing. The dictionary uses vulgar for generic swear words. Coarse? Obscene? Indecent?
But I'm glad you've been enlightened on scat. That could have got embarrassing. I'm sure we've all done it. I spent several years in my mid-teens thinking "Cracking a fat" was "doing a fart". This led to some embarrassing occasions, but people were too embarrassed on my behalf to tell me, just in case I had actually cracked a fat.
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To continue to play devil's advocate for one final post for my own amusement, deliberately sinking a warship is also tantamount to a declaration of war. As is shelling a town. Although I suppose since they technically never finished fighting the civil war they started in 1955, it's a bit different.
Yup, it's also a different country being attacked there - South Korea really is scared of war with North Korea. I'm not sure Japan feels the same way. It's not like they haven't got a history of putting down hard beats on flimsy excuses. Give them a decent excuse, and I expect the North Korean regime doesn't want to find out what they're capable of.
Edit:
I'm just wondering what would happen afterwards.
My gut feeling is that Japan would attack them and destroy their airforce, then sue for peace.
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We've known that for a very long time; what Columbus discovered was that the spherical Earth was much larger than he anticipated.
Yes, Columbus didn't actually go around the Earth anyway, so he proved nothing about the roundness of the Earth. What he did discover was America.
As for the size of the Earth, I've seen amazingly accurate calculations made in the ancient world using some very clever techniques. Basically, measure the angle from straight up that the sun is simultaneously at different points whose distance apart is known. Assuming a spherical world, the rest is just maths. But there's nothing like trying it out to see.
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