Posts by giovanni tiso
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Hard News: Limping Onwards, in reply to Danyl Mclauchlan,
I think the social value of people going to university and studying literature, philosophy etc is currently a negative value, since the net result is generally a person who is unable to communicate their ideas about art/philosophy/whatever to a non-academic audience.
What bollocks <cough>.
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Hard News: Time to get a grip, in reply to Jacqui Dunn,
Perhaps she's still not quite up to par?
Well, maybe the New Zealand Herald newsroom has also been affected by a virus for the last several years. Have you ever thought about that? It would explain so much.
Seriously, though, folks, I understand that a large sector of the media went to lunch on this thing, but if Tizard had been more disciplined and loyal none of this would have happened. She didn't open her mouth but to hurt her own reputation and the party last week. The race to finding excuses for her seems a little odd to be honest.
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Busytown: A new (old) sensation, in reply to Jolisa,
Except sometimes, when I'm not.
I didn't mean that you don't pan, rather that you don't strike me as the person who would count it as win. For instance I seem to recall you were positively pained by having to remark how clunky The Trowenna Seas was - which goes entirely to your credit incidentally.
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Busytown: A new (old) sensation, in reply to Jolisa,
And there you are, surrounded by books! (Is it silly that I feel like waving?)
Wonderful!
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Busytown: A new (old) sensation, in reply to Jolisa,
And there is such good stuff out there, it's worth panning for gold...
Plus if the gold is not found you can just pan. It's win-win for the reviewer! (Except, not you because you're too nice.)
The Okarito Project" which he accomplished in during the year 2007 - a photo of everyone resident in the village that year, in their homes, all taken from the same camera, at the same height & angle.
This sounds great! I couldn't find it on the website though, maybe he changed the configuration? Or I'm just a klutz.
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Busytown: A new (old) sensation, in reply to Islander,
There is still high craftpersonship done here insofar as bookbinding (in the traditional sense) is done. Ask my friend Andris Apse, whose wonderful trilogy of Fjordland photographs (a major part of his life's work) was bound in CHCH (at enourmous expense.) A copy of this, gifted by Andris & Lynne, is one of the treasures of my house...
Yes, I mean that regular commercial publishers don't do it anymore. I don't mind spending a bit more for a nice hardback edition back home, but they tend to be properly bound.
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Busytown: A new (old) sensation, in reply to George Darroch,
There's a lot to be said for a book that has genuine physical beauty and which is an ease to read, but damned if I have to pay above $50 for the hardback just to experience this.
And they in the Anglo-Saxon world books are not properly bound anymore, it's glue all the way. I can't stand it.
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Hard News: Limping Onwards, in reply to Kyle Matthews,
It's the convenient answer to the challenge "but fees and lack of allowances mean people can't afford tertiary education".
Yes, loans are there to give the illusion of meaningful democratic access to our (public) universities. They make sense, insofar as we have also abandoned progressive taxation, so why should the high earners of tomorrow not pay for their own education? But once you go down that road, you've already conceded the whole argument. You're right to note that the privatisation of public education needed to be stopped before we reached that point.
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Busytown: A new (old) sensation, in reply to Hilary Stace,
I realised I haven't read any fiction, let alone a New Zealand novel, for months or possibly years.
Tell me about it. I am terrified somebody will come to my house and strip me of my degree in, whatchamacallit, English Literature. Then they'll give it to somebody else who actually reads the stuff.
Wait: maybe that's how those online PhDs work.
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Up Front: Where You From?, in reply to dyan campbell,
Giovanni, you do know that I’m from Vancouver, which is more than 4,600 km from Ottawa?
Fine. Is anybody allowed to say anything about any other part of Canada?