Posts by stephen walker
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I don't buy this argument (which I'll call the "it's happening too much to do anything about it" argument).
I also don't buy it for decriminalisation/legalisation of drugs.having some drugs legally available and others prohibited for quite arbitrary reasons just encourages people to say "f**k the law, this is no worse than x". and it creates huge revenue streams for organised crime, in case you hadn't noticed. y'know, counterproductive, to say the least. the arguments for legalisation do not rest very much on the "everyone's doing it" assertion but more on the "wouldn't this give a much better outcome" line...imho.
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@WH
i think people are pretty blase about the impacts. that is, until it's way too late. there's only so many times you can warn people they are being overly reckless. i men, look at the real estate crash, or mortgage and credit derivatives...? wall st meltdown!? no one saw that coming, did they? </sarcasm>@Ben
yeah, cycling is very efficient in compact cities and towns. encouraging more creative ways to harness that efficiency would be a good move, imo. -
Whatever, but it'd be nice to be able to move beyond the hype-ridden and dehumanising language of marketing.
yes. baby boomers, gen-x, gen-y, gen-jones (???), blah, blah, bollahh. 95% meaningless bollocks, imho. and essentially US-driven bollocks, too. and btw, the 1981 tour broke the "old national consensus"? ah, the consensus that we all hated muldoon? or all loved him? or that Norm Kirk was a hero? or that he was a dirty commie? or was it the consensus that Maori should just accept their post-colonial fate? or was it the consensus that rugby is more important than anything else? hmmmm...
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i think one of the points of David's post was that there seems to be a lack of "Big Ideas" to see us through the current economic turbulence and prepare us for a slightly different world just over the horizon.
the "jobs summit" and the govt in general doesn't seem to have generated much to really inspire. a cycleway is great but it is a relatively modest infrastructure project to be carried out over 10 years or more. it could be used by tourists or locals, but i don't think cycle-touring people will be that interested in staying on a "main route" like this for a large proportion of their time. but it will be useful and well utilised if it is built, imo. i'd suggest the challenge is to route it as near to as many hot springs as possible. there is no depression in the spa pool, don't y'know. but i digress.
imo, the future for nz will be better if we start setting good examples for the world again. actions speak louder than words, etc. energy technology is a key area we should look at. especially renewable, clean energy technology. wind, wave, micro-hydro, geothermal, biomass, etc. energy efficiency too. energy-efficient houses and buildings, energy efficient transport infrastructure, energy efficient urban and rural planning. you know, why not make energy efficiency and resource sustainability the cornerstone of our industries--primary, secondary and tertiary? that would be in contrast with the Fed Farmers' apparent philosophy, which i would paraphrase as "who gives a fcuk about the fcuking environment, we want to make a shit load of money, now!"
trash the country for a few extra billion dollars worth of milk solids? sheesh. and how long will that last, mate? there are lots of bold moves the govt could get behind, if they had the vision (oh no! that word!)
just my 2c worth.
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as soon as we had an AM radio/cassette recorder, maybe around 1974, “everything was free”. but “everything” was still quite limited—to what they played on the radio. and you had to have your blank tape ready and your finger on the button ready to start recording if they played the song you wanted to record, and you had to put up with DJs talking all over the intro and outro…blah, blah. and the mono sound quality was crap. but at least you could play it at the beach or in your bedroom. a little while later (1976?) we got a radio/record player/tape deck stereo system. so you could borrow records from people over the back fence and record them. y’know, killing music. as young kids, we didn’t have much money to buy records. a single was $1.49. an album was about $7.99 or something. i bought singles occasionally, and my older sister bought albums and singles. especially “20 Solid Gold Hits Volume 7,435” (the quality of those pressings was fcuking appalling, btw). anyway, we wanted to buy stuff. And as we got older and had more money, we bought stuff, a lot of stuff. It was much nicer to own a piece of vinyl with a nice big artily designed sleeve to show off to your friends and play in real stereo than some crappy recording off the radio or your friend’s LP. If you were a real fan, you bought the records. Simple as that. Even though “everything was free”.
These days, the problem seems to be that a large minority (?) of people do not see great value in buying a legit CD or legal download track. The free stuff seems to be enough for them. Why has this changed? Do they spend their money on other stuff? Do they have less money? Are they not “real” fans? Is the legit product unattractive? Is it unavailable in shops (physical and online)?
Personally, if I really like a CD or track, and I can buy it legitimately, there is no way I would just get an unpaid copy and be satisfied with that. It would not seem right. I would not be a “real fan”. Am i in the minority? Do younger people not think this way in general? Just because you can get something without paying for it, doesn’t make that right, imo. But a big distinction for me is if you can afford to buy it. Yeah, we taped friends’ records, if we couldn’t buy them ourselves. Personally, I think people who spend a lot of money buying music legitimately should be cut some slack to have non-legit copies of a bit of stuff lying about. They are doing there bit, but they can’t afford to buy everything, right now. Maybe later. Maybe they will buy the same song several times over in many formats. Give them some time, I reckon.
A friend of mine runs a small independent label. File sharing definitely cuts into his sales, so it is tough to sell CDs. But some people might never have found his stuff if they hadn’t bit-torrented some tracks. And some of them might buy legitimately later on. So it’s not all bad. But what really shocks me is that major media organizations rip him off all the time. They use his tracks as background music on TV, etc., without any licensing fee. No matter how many times he politely asks them to pay. They just tell him, politely, to fcuk off.
(pls excuse the extended ramblings. I will cease and desist, forthwith.) -
@Michael Holt
Time to get over it Stephen
thanks for the advice. going right into the top of my in tray!
The Nats won
thanks for the news. i'll put a post-it on my computer screen, just so i don't forget!
and are doing pretty well for the most part
thanks for the opinion. it is so reassuring to hear!
Stop carping on about the politicians
thanks for the order, sir! permission to ask what "carping on" means, sir!
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diss him? i thought i was being harsh on the gumboot...
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Grant Robertson: What, given that answer, is the Minister’s definition of the core public service?
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: The bit that is not going to be cut.
and 45% of people who bothered to vote voted for a party whose number-three-ranked MP has the intellectual prowess of a gumboot. well done, NZ.
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Hon Jim Anderton: What items on the list of things the Government has made its higher priorities in Government will do the most to reduce the impact of global recession: bringing back knighthoods, a national cycleway, or privatising prisons?
Hon JOHN KEY: All three can play a part in helping our economy to grow.
eh?
millionaire banker, you say? smartest guys in the room. -
David,
it's interesting that in this case Thomas Friedman appears to be talking sense while Warren Buffett is talking complete bollocks. i despise Friedman but what he is saying in this case (i have only read the quotation you cite) is essentially true.When can you last recall so many hundreds of thousands of jobs vanishing so swiftly into thin air?
the 1970s? 1982? we may be about to overtake those recessions on the straight as we accelerate towards 1933...
I wonder if the local banks are playing hardball because they don't believe they will be able to roll over the billions that expire this year.
re the Aussie-owned NZ banking oligopoly, your observation is very astute, imo. the dairy and housing bubbles from which they have profited immensely are collapsing by the day, and will continue to do so for quite a while yet, despite the daily pronouncements in the Herald that might lead one to believe otherwise. if dairy farm incomes keep falling and unemployment rises and wages stagnate while the exchange rate sharply pushes up import prices, the banks could get quite uncomfortable, i reckon.
In so much of this, we are mere bystanders
yes and no. we cannot change what is happening in the global finance and credit markets, but we can prepare ourselves psychologically and practically for "not business as usual".