Posts by Terence Wood
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Hi Craig,
I'm happy to read across the political spectrum but if it's right wing I'm reading I want smart right - like the Economist or Tyler Cowen - not Joanne Black who, as the extracts up thread show, doesn't have a functioning analytical bone in her body.
I guess the other thing that rankles about the decline of the Listener is that we don't have any left-leaning major magazines in New Zealand anymore. It would be nice to have at least one Nation or Guardian or something.
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Regarding Jane Clifton - now she writes well.
As for her take on politics I always thought I could detect a slight centre-right bias in her writing. At the same time though, I figured that that sense might itself have stemmed from my own lefty views. This changed somewhat when I read her 'no, nothing to see here, move along' piece on the Hager book. This sort of writing, I thought, could only come from someone who was fairly pro-National. Not that that matters, I guess; everyone's entitled to their political colours.
The thing that bugs me more about her writing is the 'politics is a game' cynicism. I can imagine that covering the political beat for so long could easily instill that in a person. But, nevertheless, there are genuine differences between our political parties, and their different positions are not just matters of spin but have real world consequences. So it would be nice to read the actual issues analysed every once in a while.
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For what it's worth, Pamela Stirling writes well enough and I wouldn't pick her as right wing (as alleged up thread). Her political analysis isn't always great but hey. Joanne Black, on the other hand, is right of centre, but that's not the worst of it; what really rankles is the fact that she so rarely actually knows what she's talking about.
Overall the Listener ain't what it used to be but some of the articles and columns are still worth a read, I think.
As for Subway, I just wish that I used to eat there so I could stop now.
Graeme E,
The police always prosecute 'shop lifting' (which is what is alleged), there are plenty of other areas - the speed limit springs to mind - where they don't. So your analogy with S59 is misplaced.
I'm happy to join you in a boycott they continue to press charges though. How do you suggest we go about it - perhaps you could get arrested, and then I'll refuse to recognise the fact that you have been?
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oh my misplaced commas! there oughtta be a law against that...sigh...
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Craig and Graeme et. al.,
Sure police discretion isn't perfect (despite the fact that we live with it in all sorts of areas of our lives already - without the sky falling) but, in this case it, is the least worst option. The current law, riding crops and all, needed to change. And if your aim is to reduce violence against children by sending a strong message via the law, an amendment which defines just what sort of hitting is ok, seems pretty counter productive to me.
Danyl,
Granted it's their right to vent their spleens over at Kiwiblog but that thread is one of the ugliest things I've ever read in the NZ blogosphere. Particularly, when a "father's rights campaigner" gleefully admits to earlier threatening to beat up a 15 year old blogger. It's not the only threat of violence on that thread either.
Personally, I think that if these are the sort of people that John Key has alienated by taking a moral stand, he's done his party a favour.
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replace 'reliant' with 'resilient' and my last post would almost make sense...
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Robyn,
subsequent to the publication of Freakonomics another researcher found an error in Levitt's code. Levitt corrected the error and his data still seemed to show the 'abortion effect'; however, people who know much more about econometrics than me (such as the blogger Daniel Davies over at Crooked Timber) claim that whether you get the 'abortion effect' from the data in question is now much less reliant to changes in regression specification. So Levitt's case is not the open and shut one it appeared like it might be at some time.
As far as I'm aware two factors that tend to correlate well with violent crime are inequality (perhaps, more accurately, relative poverty)* and demography. The very high levels of violent crime in the US that trended downwards from the 1990s probably were also a result of the crack epidemic. (The Long Boom's impact on unemployment must have helped too).
Oh, and everyone else, this blog post from the Nation's website suggests that the American public aren't as wedded totheir gun law as one might think.
*Richard Wilkinson's book the Impact of Inequality makes this claim along with others in arguing the inequality matters.
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James,
John Lott, your second source, is simply not credible in the gun debate.
see:
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/lott/more_guns_less_crime/
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/lott/cherrypicking/
http://timlambert.org/category/lott/
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/lott/misc/
http://timlambert.org/category/lott/cherry-picking/
http://timlambert.org/category/lott/more_guns_less_crime/And most of the other stuff on Lambert's website under Lott.
If anyone's interested, Tim Lambert has a whole heap of good stuff on his website countering the more guns less crime argument.
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MikeE,
The reason they have gun free zones around schools is not to stop massacres but to stop eveyday shootings, which, in the United States, kill a lot more people.
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gnngghh!
I've just started reading one of the Kiwiblog comment treads on the shooting.
Here's tim barclay
The shooter is a socialist going on about rich kids. This is not the first time that despicable philosophy has been acted out at the barrel of a gun.
[still lost for words, gives up and presses the 'post' button.]