Posts by JackElder
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now that Aviator sunglasses ... are no longer really acceptable in public
Oh noes! When did this happen? Why did noone tell me?
Aviator sunglasses have never been acceptable unless you are actually piloting something capable of either bombing or strafing.
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So what were the other 28,000+ doing? On the bootle perhaps?
They were on the other foot.
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I was once approached by an anti-smoking advocate (from ASH) who was doing the rounds of tables at a cafe at Vic Uni. He was so annoying that you could track his progress through the room by watching people deliberately light cigarettes to get him to go away. I saw several people I know to be nonsmokers borrow ciggies and dramatically puff on them. Ironically, I was with a friend who had given up smoking the week prior - she relapsed almost immediately, just to get back at this person. One of the worst advocates for a position I've ever seen - an exemplar of "I passionately agree with you but you're such a dick I'm thinking about changing my mind" syndrome.
Ahem. As you were.
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As a UK citizen (don't ask) I'm eligible to vote in the general election. Unfortunately, I missed the cut-off for a postal enrolment, which was some weeks ago. Now, thanks to the Voter Power website, I find out that it wouldn't have made a blind bit of difference anyway - my vote would only have been worth .226 of an 'average' vote.
Which is pretty astonishingly bad.
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A good friend of mine was once part of an interviewing panel for a job. When one applicant left, they discussed their impressions, then moved onto the next applicant. "I didn't like him", his manager said, "he kept staring at my boots." "Well, that's not that big a deal, is it?" he replied. "You don't think that's a problem?" "It's a little odd, but I thought he interviewed well otherwise." Odd look from manager.
Twenty minutes later, midway through the next candidate's interview, the penny dropped. He turned to his manager and blurted "Oh, you meant BOOBS!"
True story.
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end up buying a road bike and the habit becomes really destructive.
It's only destructive if you start getting into carbon fibre, man.
10km? Goodness I don't feel anything until at least 20km, and I thought I was super soft.
20k? Just wait until your first brevet.
Anyone else planning to ride Taupo this year, by the way?
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Just as an aside...
One of my hobbies is the cultivation of perfectly legal tropical plants. I'm not too hardcore, but back in the 90s I used to hang around the "scene" (it wasn't big, but it was there). It was perfectly normal to go around to a mate's place and inspect the awesome tropical rainforest tank system set up in their underfloor space. Again, all plants entirely legal in NZ (carnivorous plants, if you're wondering), but requiring rather a lot of equipment that is more commonly used for slightly less legal cultivation activities. It was a generally accepted fact that once you had a reasonably large set-up, after a while you'd somehow get on some list, and the police would occasionally pop around for a brief chat on some pretext or another. Many people had stories of police seeing the grow set-up, watching their eyes light up with an easy bust, and then slowly extinguishing that light over the course of a half-hour tour of the differences between cultivars of Heliamphora clones from Brazil.
Certainly, it was commonly accepted that the police kept tabs on people buying lots of grow equipment, and would come around and occasionally search the place.
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Imagine drinking wine, that has no labels; Wine from a brown paper bag..
I do that all the time (well, the no labels bit, not the brown paper bag). Cleanskin wine - it's the surplus from various vineyards, sold cheap in bottles with plain white labels giving you the year, grape variety, and region. You have absolutely no idea who made it. It's great: you're forced to form an assessment of the wine based solely on how it tastes, rather than preconceptions based on the label. It's a bit of a lucky dip, but I've never had a bottle that I wouldn't happily have paid at least that much for if it had a label on it. And with the overproduction at a lot of vineyards in the last few years, there's some damn good stuff going for $12 in a white label.
Also: that liquor baron who died in a plane crash a few years ago had an interesting business model. He made money hand over fist selling alcopops with absolutely no advertising budget. Didn't spend a penny on ads. He just priced his stuff slightly lower than the brands that did advertise. The target market for alcopops is extremely price sensitive - he reckoned, and was proved right, that the average teenager would see an ad for an alcopop (say, Smirnoff Ice), go to the liquor store, and see that the one next to it was slightly cheaper... and buy that instead.
So I'm not that convinced that removing alcohol advertising would have that huge an effect on problem drinking patterns.
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Is this the right time to mention Panopticlick's browser uniqueness test?
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"attention-seeking slut" hate mail..
Clearly, we need a TLA to go with APBs here. Now, what would the TLA for Attention-Seeking Slut be...