Posts by Stephen Judd
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Too bad Greenspan couldn't come out with those opinions when it actually might have made a difference, eh?
As to the technomological cluelessness, my interactions with reporters over the years suggest to me that it's actually just normal. With a few shining exceptions, reporters make mistakes and exhibit ignorance all the time, but we only notice this where we have personal knowledge or expertise.
(This is not because reporters are bad or stupid, but because they're short on time and resources, not rewarded for getting it right, and importantly, no smarter or more expert than the rest of us).
If I wasn't trying to knuckle down on something else I would compose a mock-Edwardian newspaper fragment bungling all the facts about radio and telegraphy. Just pretend I did.
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I woke up this morning realising that I hate it when people use "refute" when they mean "deny."
I blame David Benson-Pope.
What he should have said was: "I deny those allegations. And I intend to confront the alligators."
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D'Audney, like my late Mum who was also a -dee person, went to Epsom Girls Grammar, and I would be highly surprised to hear any ex-EGGS girl of that generation who wasn't exceptionally well-spoken.
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I once met a chap who had worked for GCHQ in the UK. When I pulled his leg about the bumbling image of spies in recent times, he looked at me archly and said: "__That's what we want you to think.__"
Mmm.
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You mean it's not a random draw? Curses!
(twists moustache evilly, slopes off to plot mother of all comments).
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I have a sad, near-empty bottle of Glenfarclas sitting at home right now. How lovely a replacement would be, and the 20th of the month is so far away...
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If we're going to be mocking the denizens of Kiwiblog, the thread on impending moderation is comedy gold.
# Redbaiter Says:
September 10th, 2007 at 6:12 pm“I’m all for something that should improve the quality of the comments”
If all the insufferable self righteous and partisan bores like you stayed away it would do so immeasureably.
Redbaiter is an artist.
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The thing that drives me batshitinsane listening to Wilson is her habit of phrasing questions as direct statements, with only a rising intonation and a prosecutor's pause to tip you off. This:
- closes the question off because it's really only answerable by yes or no
- puts words in the subject's mouth
- sometimes actually puts the subject into stunned silence as they try to figure out whether they were asked something or not.I live for the day when I'm interviewed on Checkpoint. I intend to wait until she's forced to repeat herself, and then say "I'm sorry, was that a question?" until she breaks and asks questions like any other English speaker.
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Two thoughts on the most viewed list:
1. There's a feedback loop in that list. Once something is on the list, it'll attract more clicks, and stay on the list, maybe rising higher. And then if editorial staff base placement of stories on the site on previous "most viewed" results, the site can skew quite heavily based on originally random input from the very first "most viewed" list.
2. Disregarding that, suppose that a few evergreen topics are most popular. It doesn't follow that those are the only ones worth covering. I'm having trouble expressing this, but I suspect that there isn't much commonality outside the "core", so a fair coverage that meets, say, 80% of people's interests will have to extend way outside the core. And it maybe that the most popular topics along, while popular in themselves, are not compelling enough for the majority of the audience. Focussing on the core is the kind of Pareto-worshipping accountantism that leads to Whitcoulls having 1 million copies of the Da Vinci code and a container of New Weekly magazines and nothing else.
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