Posts by chris
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Hard News: We are all Twitter, in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
who might scare them off:
Again, regardless of how much I enjoyed your post in 2008, it seems the case invariably necessitates recourse to them….these…those… weak willed straw men and lasses. Considering our votes are confidential, if someone is campaigning for a particular candidate, how would it be in their interests to scare anyone off voting?
Furthermore, what would scare you off voting Graeme?
If serenity is the seller, I would suggest posting a special vote and a day trip in your national park of choice.
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Hard News: We are all Twitter, in reply to Sacha,
You’ve been living in China too long, sir.
That's beside the point Sacha ; ) There are countless democracies without this kind of law. When we take a macro view of our own, who's to say the system is any fairer with this anachronism. My main peeve with it is that it implies that New Zealanders are inherently fools, gullible and easily swayed off an opinion by any old gambit, which A; I've found not to be the case, and B; is not a lot to live up to.
To laud such a law is almost to deny that people possess the intelligence to vote responsibly. If you believe people lack the intelligence to vote responsibly, then why live in a democracy?
The most ludicrous aspect being the legal perception that these fools are most at risk of stupidity in that minuscule window that is 24 hours surrounding an election.
Which in its way begets this kind of thought process (joke or not):
You could report 10,000 people :-)
One hopes at some future point, good sense will prevail.
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Kind of difficult to figure out who would be harmed by twittering on election day.
The law itself seems to imply that last minute electioneering is unfair in some mysterious way, to whom?
Quite. The law is bordering on the superstitious and clearly lacks the spokes to roll in the 21st century, do away with the law, problem solved.
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Would be interested to know what you think of the pilot though. I understand it’s the same story as the aired version, but I understand the BBC thought the storytelling and character development felt a bit rushed.
Despite obvious differences in the premise, following Guy Richie's macho update effort a few years back, I feared the worst.
A minute in I was moaning at blasphemous name dropping. Five later I was hooked, it was bloody brilliant; dark, claustrophobic, paranoid (no unfiltered daylight shots throughout as I recall). As a lifelong fan I'd even suggest the rushed character development was a plus, it also necessitated some pretty fantastic yet brutally economical writing and staging. Thanks a lot for the heads up on the running order Craig, much appreciated.
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Quite -- would be very interested in seeing the 60 minute tabloid-enraging pilot version of 'A Study in Pink' -- which is an extra on the UK-US DVDs but wouldn't assume would wash up in R4. (For that matter, I'm still pissed the backdoor pilot of Being Human isn't on the series one DVDs.)
Dilemma of the modern age: I blundered by watching the pilot first, I'm unsure in what order to tackle the three aired episodes, any suggestions welcomed!
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Yes Jessica, that's the epithet we want the world to see and remember!
Despite personally being 99.9% against "New Zealand's Eiffel Tower", with all this highly publicized controversy, it'd make an interesting tale for would-be tour guides to dish out along with the intimation that more or less everyone in the country holds an opinion on the piece.
"Most people hate it"
It could thus serve as the perfect ice breaker for any visitor wanting to strike up conversation with the locals who (it has been said) are quite an insular bunch.
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Ok how about this then, the folks there decided that some people didn’t like walking through clouds of smoke to get into buildings. They put a proposal to the city council, it was put out to public ballot and the majority imposed their tyrannical will on the minority.
In New Zealand's case, rawly, that'd be a majority preferring its air served with vehicle emissions isolé.
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Hard News: The witless on the pitiless, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
Re: Team Te Whiti o Rongomai. Yes!
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Thanks for taking the time to reply there Russell. Respect.
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Hard News: The witless on the pitiless, in reply to Steve Parks,
It’s hard to tell what you’re on about here, but Russell wasn’t “imposing” his perception of Osama’s thought processes. If you’ve got evidence to suggest OBL held quite different views to those attributed, feel free to share.
I’m simply suggesting Dr Ranginui Walker, Willie Jackson, and all who never met the man don’t have enough first hand knowledge to make any strong case on this subject. Leaders have been known to make compromises in exchange for support, as well as exhibit hypocrisy
Where Russell said:
No, about their culture. He would have despised it, for the reasons I noted. Do you seriously think he’d have embraced a culture in which music plays such a part? In which carvings, and whole houses, are imbued with the wairua of ancestors?
Despising something requires a very strong emotional bias, What are the lesser of the comparative evils? Certainly he may not have been an avid fan of Māori culture, but would he have despised it? Would the Māori resistence and resentment towards the imperialist colonialists not count in their favour? Or would Cultural features such as art and music simply overshadow this?
Who’s to know?
OBL was as nuanced as anyone else. Certainly he rejected music, but would he reject a culture because music played an important part? Why whittle Māori culture down to its music and its carvings to make a case for why one would despise it. It’s not as if sections of Māoridom and the Colonial imperialists haven’t stood toe to toe on countless occasions.
But most poignantly, If he really despised music that much, why would he tolerate sharing a city with fahadthakur100, in a country with a rich and varied architectural and musical tradition, home to Peshawar (a hub for Afghan musicians and a distribution center for Afghan music abroad),Lollywood, and Alam Lohar, a nation which counts cricket as its most popular sport?
Any port in a storm. We’ll never know.