Posts by Moz
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Speaker: The plan against the rebuild, in reply to Eric Crampton,
Paveltich tends to say, on the edges of town, let anybody develop suburbs anywhere so long as they're willing to front the infrastructure costs via MUDs.
I haven't heard him say anything about public transport that could be construed as positive, making the whole "push them out of town" approach to low-cost housing a bit of a disaster. The idea that you can just drop a new suburb in farmland and walk away counting your profits isn't working in the USA right now. A lot of local governments (Paveltich's "suburb owners associations") are either bankrupt or forced to "tax" their poorer residents through the police force they own because the residents with money won't pay. Ferguson is an example of this, notable mainly because it's drawn media attention to a common problem, rather then because it has the problem. Detroit is a larger example of the same problem.
The underlying issue, as I understand it, is that because the whole suburb is built at the same time everything tends to break down at the same time. Roads, water, sewers etc are all designed for 20-30 year lifespans, then they can be run down for another 10-20 years and that time is up. But fixing is expensive, and for the first 30 years it's not popular to tax everyone and build up a giant fund to pay for the infrastructure that's slowly wearing out. For the constructor, and also each resident it's better to get out just as the problems start, leaving the new residents with the problem. In Australia they've recently been forced to bring in laws on the size of the sinking fund for strata (multi-title) buildings to address this issue. In the USA they're letting "the market" sort it out.
So no, let's not build cheap suburbs out past Rolleston then leave the CCC with the bill for supporting them. Either build them properly under the control of the council, or make them genuinely independent enclaves, responsible for everything from sewerage to transport. Real gated communities, in other words. Despite Paveltich's optimism, I predict that if they were built they'd be yet more enclaves of overpriced, covenanted mcmansions.
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Speaker: The End of Trust, in reply to Howard Edwards,
Howard quoting some useless numpty from Te Hereld:
media could not afford to be wholly dismissive, he said, because they needed people who were intelligent and articulate on screen
Articulate, informed people are so terribly hard to find that media are just forced to go to PR flacks? Really? That's all you've got?
If that's the best they can do perhaps they should do a stint with one of the university magazines or community radio stations. Then, once they've learned how to find interview subjects they could have another go in the bought media?
My experience is the complete opposite: the bought media really hate having intelligent, articulate people turn up to express informed views. They act decisively to filter them out at every step, and if one somehow gets on live air they'll shut them down unless there's a huge problem (in one case, I got ~20 minutes of drive-time radio because there was a TV crew filming the announcer side of things in the studio).
But heck, if ever someone wants a decent interview subject on bicycle riding or related subjects, I'm happy to speak up. I can also point you to female, non-anglo and disabled cyclists who will also be happy to chat to the media. Unfortunately if you want the usual "bikes bad" or "more roads good" angles I can't help you. That's usually what media mean by "we can't find anyone to talk about cycling".
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And here's a nice example. Normally-respectable Australian site The Conversation (that aims to be the PA of Australia :) has an article up talking about the NZ election and Scottish Referendum, but using Curia polling and PR as the basis for their analysis. Given their take on Scotland I suspect they've used a similar source for their Scottish analysis.
I've commented that using a National Party PR company for your data is perhaps not ideal, and should at the very least be disclosed in the article rather than making people chase it up and draw the necessary "obvious if you know" inferences.
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Southerly: Sign this Petition, in reply to Jake Starrow,
When the media, whatever branch it maybe, reports on the dismal performance of the Labour party and then apportions blame in editorials etc, that is not showing bias but simply reporting the situation as it is.
Sure, that's true. But when the exact same media gloss over the dismal state of the National Party and leap to close off disasters that National create as quickly as possible that is bias. There have been more than a few instances noted here where Cunliffe commits some gaffe and most of the media are all over it, but then later in the week Key does something worse and the same media don't report it at all.
The Lui letter was a simple example: Cunliffe signed a form letter supporting a constituent, but then couldn't remember it 11 years later. The very same week Key could not remember whether he'd been briefed on actions taken by the SIS within the last year, despite him being legally required to be briefed. Both of those are an important part of the job, but one was much more recent and more important to the running of the country. Guess which prompted media calls for a resignation? Is that bias?
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Up Front: Oh, God, in reply to Emma Hart,
However. I have a column on a much more delicate and sensitive subject to go up early next week, and I'm quite tempted to close this discussion thread then.
We'll be good.
Closing it would not be a bad idea, I suspect the silliness will wear off fairly soon.
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Kim Dotcom: rub my belly to receive wealth and good fortune.
John Key: "I will return to lift you up"
Laila Harre: "blessed are the little children"
I can't help thinking that The Greens would come out as some kind of Rangi and Papa type spiritualists. But I can't think of an apposite quote or aphorism.
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Up Front: Oh, God, in reply to Bart Janssen,
there is simply nothing more pointless than arguing with a religious zealot, it makes nobody happy and resolves nothing.
I dunno, I pop in and out as the fancy takes me. It's amusing thinking up smart remarks that won't upset Russell too much.
The idea of a democratic collection of gods appeals to me for much the same reason that Pratchet books do (and that's what the earlier stuff reminded me of). The whole "small gods" book revolved around that idea. Albeit in a much funnier way than the ugly ones writings.
I vote for Cthulu, safe in the knowledge that he'll be a minor party in a coalition of more sensible gods. I wonder how many nominal Christians or Muslims would actually vote for their god to be made real? "vote Christian. Listen to the burning bush, it knows the truth!" (note: Jah Rastafari was wrong about which sort of bush) ... bring on the fire and brimstone, and hope the Seventh Day mob are wrong about heaven only having space for 144,000 souls.
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Up Front: Oh, God, in reply to Dismal Soyanz,
Schrodinger's God?
Sounds like one that Gareth Morgan would support :)
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Up Front: Oh, God, in reply to UglyTruth,
"your God’s existence is democratic" ... I never said that.
except here, where you said:
which is a more irrational position given the number of witnesses who support...
Can you explain how your statement is not equivalent to "this factual question can be answered by counting the number of supporters of each answer"? Even using "witnesses" instead of people, the underlying principle remains that of counting people. Viz, democracy.
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Up Front: Oh, God, in reply to UglyTruth,
it doesn’t change the fact that the there is no available evidence against the proposition that deity exists.
I'm sure you meant "for or against the existance...", because that is after all the more accurate statement.
There's a name for the "no evidence therefore..." fallacy, but most of us know it as Occam's Razor (you claimed that was valid back on page 6). In the absense of proof, the simpler explanation is more likely. Does the FSM or whatever deity you care about exist? There's no evidence either way, so it's more likely that it does not.
Even using your non-factual criteria of "who beleives", it was about 100 comments ago that I pointed out that the overwhelming majority of both theists and atheists beleive that every single deity does not exist. I doubt there are many Jews, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus or Chuthulu cultists who believe that the Flying Spagetti Monster exists, for example, so we can rule that right out. How about Jesus the incarnation of God on Earth? Nope, Jews, Muslims, Hindus etc all agree, not the Son of God. So that's right out. Shiva? Similar problem, just about every theist agrees that Shiva does not exist.