Posts by Stephen Judd
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km: me too.
It's been how long now, and what have we got? Some minor firearms charges, which may or may not proven in court.
This massive demonstration of police power seems quite gratuitous at this point.
And what's with the "(sigh)", Andrew?
The great irony is that it is capitalism and democratic government that allow them the luxury of waving their placards (not slaving in the treacle mines) and not being shot (sigh).
For someone who's into democratic government you don't seem too into the values that maintain it.
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Are those advantages really peculiar to England? Iberia has all those advantages too - and that's why Spain and Portugal were serious contenders with the English for imperial dominance.
(Iberia also is rich in those important Celts...)
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Is it so hard to just Google up Jimmy Dean Sausage?
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In that case Ben, I would of course nominate toilet training.
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That's very interesting point, Bart.
You know what the very best thing I did as a child was, as far as my future mental development was? I learned the violin by the Suzuki method. That method demands that you learn every new piece by heart, from ear alone. So I learned to listen carefully and learn by rote.
If I do say so myself, I have a very retentive memory for difficult things, and a overdeveloped sense for patterns - really good attributes for a programmer, and for a lot of other skilled white-collar jobs. And I put it down to hours and hours over years and years of learning tune after tune after tune.
So if I make noises about teaching little kids to program, telling the turtle what to do is a treat for after they've learned their times tables ;-)
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When I was at primary school in the late 70s microcomputers were pretty much unheard-of in NZ. If anyone had got us access to computers, the only things that are still present and useful today are a) high-level programming languages b) keyboards for input and c) the Unix operating system.
By the time I left secondary school PCs had emerged, Apple IIs were fading. I'd had some short exposure to BASIC and Logo but no one had thought to teach children how to use applications at school - they were all thinking about how to use computers as teaching tools. I used a word processor on our Amstrad at home to do 6th and 7th form assignments. Again, pretty much everything that was in common use in 1986 is way obsolete now, apart from programming languages, keyboards, and Unix.
My daughter has spent her years at primary school learning how to use various applications to create presentations, do basic video editing, and drive a web browser. No one has taught her to type, to program, or about Unix. And yet I would lay money that by the time she's my age, knowledge of MS Office, Windows, OS X, and for that matter Youtube will be useless too. Probably only her experience of the mouse, and the concepts of copy and paste will have lasting value.
I work as a programmer now. My early, self-directed experiments with programming Sinclairs and Amstrads and Apple IIs were still of value years later. I don't think that learning to use WordStar or Visicalc would have been anything other than a big fat waste, except for the immediate value of being able to produce prettier work than my fellow pupils.
There is a tension between education and vocational training, and I see the sense in teaching teenagers how to use things that are likely to be still around when they leave for employment or university. But for education, and for the younger ones, I tend to feel that a lot of time and resources are misdirected into teaching children knowledge of pretty transient value. Bring back Logo, I say.
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It's ok Neil. It turns out that all those online terrorists are actually suburban housewives from Montana.
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But justice has to be seen to be done in the right place - in a court not right now in the media.
What I'm referring to is the suppression of all aspects of the bail hearing - the proceedings in the court. I'm not asking for a media statement from a police spokesperson, I want to know what was said in court.
It's unusual to deny bail on firearms charges. It's very unusual to suppress all information. We don't even know WHY the suppression.
The police are on the back foot in this respect because they cannot go public with all the information they have.
Maybe it's the other way around. The police cannot go public with all the information because they are on the back foot...
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t's not as though people who are well-thought of by friends and colleagues have ever turned out to be pedophiles, or wife-beaters, or serial killers, or rapists.
Ooh, I can play that game! It's not as though the New Zealand Police Force has ever made a mistake, planted evidence, exceeded its powers, or failed to convict either.
*cough*
Point taken. But if you're a betting man or woman, you'll go on past form, one way or another. Your pedophiles, wife-beaters and serial killers generally turn out to have form. The person I know does not.
Anyway, despite that, I'm not quite at the taking sides point either. Or at least, I will change sides as my understanding of what's going on changes.
Clearly we have several distinct things in play here:
- whether a serious crime has taken place
- whether a serious crime might have been about to take place
- whether police acted rightly on information about the above
- whether civil liberties are being abused (eg, serious crimes could be afoot AND police could be abusing civil liberties to deal with it).And so on. It's hard to see all those different issues in isolation.
Personally, I incline to a view, based in the information I have, and I find it a reasonable view. If I hear new information I will change it accordingly.
What's concerning me right now is the incredible secrecy - we don't know who's detained, and we don't know why they've been refused bail - and as Russell said, the leaks in that secrecy. I don't see justice being done right now, and that tends to make me feel like it might not be.
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My WiFi router's SID is my street address - sadly, no one's ever asked for a login. But I can see three other networks from home.