Posts by Jason Dykes
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Heather:
I wanted to join KAOS, but being an avid follower of jesus at the time, I made the mistake of praying about it first.
How do you know that was a mistake?
PS: I am getting concerned about degrees of separation and convergence in this community.
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My only experience of a scouting-like group was during my brief membership of sea scouts when I was 8 or 9. The appeal was that I'd get to go sailing, fishing or swimming. I started attending the group's weekly meetings and we did stuff such as lighting fires, camping and first aid. All good, but not sea-related. After six weeks we still hadn't left shore.
One afternoon before the session began I decided to swim out to the platform anchored out in the bay. Older kids were already there. It was a lovely summer's day and as I came back to shore I felt very pleased with myself. I thought the scout leaders would be impressed, but apparently I had broken a rule. So I was kicked out of sea scouts for swimming. (And soon made friends with a kid outside sea scouts who had his own boat).
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Craig:
OK, so the PM got to put up some unchallenged spin of her own.
Have been away on work for a while but as this is a subject that matters to me I'll add something more at this late stage.
Craig, I don't think your example is appropriate. While "spin" is in the title of this discussion I think you're introducing a new subject. Yes, spin is carried out by Labour as well as National. But everyone spins their (or a parroted) version of a story. The issue is whether the reader is given enough information to understand the potential bias of the story. We assume readers are smart enough to draw their own conclusions if given the sources.
If the PM is quoted saying something, I assume she could be representing the Labour party. If on the other hand if I read an article prompted by a news release and there is no attribution of the argument/data provided by the news release to the people/organisation who wrote it, I might assume the journalist came up with the story (and accompanying angle) from their own investigations. This in turn might lend more credibility to the story than it might deserve.
I have no problem with news being provided to journalists by professional media relations people (up until several years ago I had jobs that included media relations responsibility, and I think I wrote well sometimes). The issue is whether journalists writing stories prompted by such material acknowledge (and maybe quote) their source. If they pretend the story is their own they are doing their readers a disservice.
It used to be that if you regularly ripped off stories from other media organisations or parroted news releases as your own without adding any breadth or depth or new angle, you would lose credibility among your peers and with your boss. Now it seems the (big) boss wants content and volume over quality. I don't like to hear people calling journalists lazy. Journalists work bloody hard in a dire situation where every day they have to provide a lot of copy with minimal resources and backup. It is one of the hardest jobs out there if you want to do it right. And there are many sacrifices made along the way.
But imagine if media organisations were compelled to disclose if articles in their publications were mostly written or initiated by other parties. It would show how few resources were put into news and might give good journalists a break!
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... media releases: where once we only had the mediated version via the newspapers, we can now consult the original on Scoop.
Can't agree more. Scoop is necessary reading if you want to know where much of the news comes from. Course it doesn't catch the more selective releases.
It would be interesting if (like travel stories) news stories had to be accompanied by a note advising if they were initiated by a news release and/or sponsorship of some kind.
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Go far enough south and they may not even know what Auckland or Hamilton are. I remember a conversation I had with a farmer in Southland one holiday season. After asking me what I thought of the quality of their roads (they were remarkably free of pot holes) and learning I was (at the time) from Christchurch he said, "Ah, Christchurrrch. I been there once. I don't like the big city."
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One year I made Christmas day last about 44 hours by flying from Auckland to Canada. I had already had most of a Christmas day in the sun before boarding the flight, had about 20 hours of Christmas in transit (counting the stop at Los Angeles), and after that still had a few hours to share presents and food with family.
It was all surprisingly low-key if somewhat surreal. The airports were very quiet. The flight crew out of Auckland wore Hawaiian shirts and were particularly generous with the bubbly and free chocolates. No-one on board was overly demanding or whiny. The only unnerving thing was the nun with guitar sitting a few rows back from me - fortunately she didn't sing and nothing ill came of it. I arrived safely to a white Christmas in Vancouver. We had a barbecue.
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From beginning to end - a burn in a nice place: Whisky.
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Unshaken, unstirred, unbeatable.
Whisky Galore - no mixed feelings. -
Russell B: Everyone else can feel free to keep trying for next week's fine whisky from our sponsors.
Alright, wrong end of the week for this, but since no-one else is having a go:
On the All Blacks' side by day
On the Speyside by eveningIf you think a DRAM is about computers
Drink againIf you think a DRAM is about computers
Give yourself two fingersForbidden fruits are best served with
The water of lifeThirsty minds drink
The water of lifeArrgghhh ... drink.
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BW: Yup, but have a guess which societies moved towards secularism first?
I suspect some of the comments in this thread have been influenced by Dawkins and Hitchens, so to continue in that vein, I think they say the rediscovery of ideas from the Greek philosophers was more important than Christian culture to the birth of the enlightenment and rise of science in Europe. The old works had been destroyed by early Christians but survived in translation elsewhere and re-emerged many centuries later. Christian scholars attempted to head off the competing (and scientifically more powerful) ideas by applying the new logic to their faith, believing both logic and faith would prove (Christian) God's existence, but unwittingly (maybe not in all cases) started a philosophical chain reaction that ultimately proved the opposite.
The Age of Discovery and rise of trade also played an important role as Europeans came into contact with new peoples and ideas that challenged the superiority of their own cultures.
Ironically the Middle East started out more secular than the Christian West but moved in the opposite direction.