Posts by Stephen Judd
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That newish bar upstairs on Featherston St, down from Leuven but on the same block, has Bookbinder on tap. Name escapes me for the moment.
Re quiet bar for serious drinking and conversation: I fear that is something like the non-smoking bar before the anti-smoking legislation. Lots of people say they would patronise such an establishment (including me) but either they are telling lies or there is a market failure.
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One of the best use cases for cheap broadband for business is backups. Offsite backup to someone else's storage is safer, cheaper and easier IF the bandwidth is there.
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"we didn't abolish the divine right of kings in order to fall down before the divine right of experts. This is a public policy debate."
Right, but expertise informs that debate.
Climate scientists surely don't get to weigh policy outcomes, goals, etc, but their assessment of the state of affairs surely counts for more than some other random party? On what other grounds should anyone's opinion be privileged for broadcast? Big breasts and a lost dog, perhaps?
I would regard it as an advance if the news media consistently identified who was actively working and publishing in their field, who was a think tank member (whether funded by Exxon or Greenpeace) and who had business interests at stake (whether in carbon generating industries or in mitigation).
Finally, yes self-identified climate change skeptics may well have come by their opinions honestly and without financial incentives. Unfortunately, the history of things like the lung cancer-tobacco connection, with its front groups and industry-funded jiggered research, tends to make me skeptical of those skeptics, and wonder whether they aren't useful idiots.
It amazes me that journalists' cherished skepticism isn't automatically aroused after the long history of corporate bamboozlement in other fields where science is disputed.
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And Tom: WTF? Howick Hizbollah? That's... a pretty vile slur on a bunch of people you don't even know.
I am an atheist and fundies give me the heebie jeebies, but if that's how that community copes best with the arbitrary unfairness of the universe, I'm not going to criticize. And I'm certainly not going to compare them with terrorists.
If I were you, I'd ask Russell to delete that comment, and this one. It does not reflect well on you.
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Apropos Mary Wilson, I live for the day when someone waits quietly for a question that actually sounds like one. In the event that I ever end up on Checkpoint that's what I plan to do.
I have heard her interview people for whom English is a second language who were clearly non-plussed by her quirky statement-as-question style. It drives me nuts.
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The cynical part of me says that's exactly what the media is after in some cases, fanning the fires of hysteria and fear in parents and others.
I used to think it was cynicism, but that's probably too harsh a view. It's more that people are hard wired to be more interested in some things that others, react more to some things than others, and the media (which is really just a bunch of people too anyway) just reflects that.
A lot of reading I've been doing recently suggests that our instincts about risk and danger are just crap. Complete crap. We get wound up about things that aren't very likely and stay casual about present and serious dangers.
Asking yourself "how likely is this event, really" is an important part of media literacy and maintaining your sanity, just like asking "what is this trying to sell me" and "what are the hidden messages."
Yeah, news about hurt and sick children gives me the screaming heebie-jeebies now too. Which is why I practise being an emotion-free android, otherwise I'd go nutes.
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Augeas had the horrible stables, that's why they were Augean. I imagine there are stables all around the Aegean that are quite pleasant.
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I met this really interesting chap over Easter who was doing fantastic stuff with martial dance theatre. A budding expert in South Indian martial arts, someone who's helped take kapa haka offshore to foreign success. He was telling me about his PhD work. "That's neat!" I said, "I want to hear more about that." "Well", he said, "I don't know if you will, because I'm only part-way through and they're closing my department."
How the hell can you close a department that has working PhD students? Appalling.