Posts by JackElder
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It's interesting that a rather itinerant sort like Fairburn could have afforded that house back then, but now it would only be within reach of someone who makes money from money.
Surely the reason that he could afford it was that, at the time, it was way out in the sticks, where no sane person would actually want to live? And then as the region slowly gentrifies, the prices rise and force the poets and the hippies out. You can certainly see this effect in, say, Eastbourne in Wellington. In the 70s it was way, way out past the black stump, with prices relatively cheap because it wasn't fashionable. These days it's one of the most moneyed parts of Lower Hutt.
Which is to say: I'm sure there are places the poets can afford, they're just further out still.
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This reminds me of an acquaintance of mine (well, FOAF) who used to decant marmite into an appropriate receptacle and sell it to teenagers as "very sticky cannabis resin".
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We're easy to tell apart: Hadyn's the one with the tattoos.
Counter-counter-point: So do you. Unless you going for the uberpedantry of "tattoo" vs "tattoos".
Spent about six hours under the needle yesterday. In a lot of pain right now.
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Who doesn't check out the shower pressure when investigating a house? I make a point of running the shower for a minute or two to check it out.
We bought a house because we could afford it, we figured it was a good investment, and we were living in a town where finding rental accommodation was a big pain (Cambridge, UK). Fiscally, great decision: we bought at the start of the housing bubble, then moved home shortly before the price crash started.
But, that said, if we'd been renting that house, we'd have left after a fortnight. As it was, we had to stick it out and grit our teeth until the issues were resolved - which caused a very large amount of stress. And the issue was something that no house inspection would have ever turned up - the neighbours. Turned out that our next-door neighbour was what the local council politely referred to as a "problem tenant" - came around at all hours asking to "borrow" things, use the phone, etc, burned rubbish in her back garden, had kids who broke windows in our car, etc. If you're renting, you can just swear a bit, call the moving firm back up and hightail it out of there - if you're the owner, the stakes are a bit higher.
And as regards the suburb thing: I find that there's nothing like actually buying a house to make you realise quite how little the relative trendiness of suburbs matter. When we moved back to NZ, we ended up buying in Newlands (Wellington) - a suburb that I had previously considered the back of beyond, but which I soon realised had all the amenities you need for a young family, plus excellent cycling/public transport links for the CBD. So, y'know, it does pay to expand your horizons a bit.
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My five-year-old daughter loves Spirited Away (dubbed, not subtitled). She spent the first half of the movie asking for it to be turned off every 10 minutes because it was too scary, then 30 seconds later saying "I'm ready for it again."
And my nephew, who is half Japanese, does a good line in taking providing simultaneous explanation (like translation, but a bit more general) when watching unsubtitled Japanese DVDs with his grandparents.
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I think Mike Brown makes two very interesting points above (particularly about the hypocrisy around gambling funding). One other thing I'd like to pick up on is the effect that funding has on ability. It's all very well to say "they should just pick the best athlete and fund them", but part of the effect of the funding is that it allows the athlete time to train and improve. So there's an effect on who actually becomes the best in their sport, if you see what I mean.
But I think Robyn's nailed it above: the guy's using the sport angle to advertise his new business venture, rather than the other way around. Voila, lots of free publicity for his new knob-polishing operation.
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Aren't athletes already generally judged on moral grounds? "Conduct likely to bring the sporting body into disrepute" is AFAIK a fairly normal and generally accepted reason for cutting ties to someone (certainly, I've worked several jobs that had that as a get-out clause in my employment contract). That certainly covers a lot of activities that are legal, but which society may have qualms about. See for example various sanctions applied to athletes for legal, but dumb, booze-fuelled antics.
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WWZ...
Indeed -- but I'll be damned if I can see a way its going to work as a conventional feature (and with a budget lower than the GDP for a medium-sized country) without carving out everything that's interesting about the book in the first place.Agreed. WWZ could work really, really well as a TV miniseries. Specifically, as a "historical recreation"-style miniseries in the mode of Band of Brothers. Much of what makes the book worthwhile is the little touches, the depths of thought into the actual implications of a zombie apocalypse and how to deal with one. Condensing it down into a two-hour feature would leave you with just a lot of blood & guts; still fun, but probably nothing we haven't seen before.
Blood: my previous workplace used to have people who came around and cheerfully guilt-tripped everyone into donating. Which is a good idea, but did mean that every four months I had to explain to a new chirpy bird that no, I can't donate blood, I've tried and they don't want it. No, they really don't.
Anyway, it means I can keep up a regular 3-monthly tattoo appointment cycle without worrying too much that I'm doing someone out of lifegiving fluid.
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Hadyn - can I ask you to cast a critical eye on the team strips in this year's Tour de France? My own view on it is...
Columbia: FAIL. Yes, it gets points just because it's on Mark Cavendish, but faux sixpack abs on the strip = I don't think so.
Garmin: Would be reasonable if the orange wasn't so close to permatanned skin. Seriously: in the time trials, the skinsuits just look like a bad suntan and forearm wamers.
Saxobank: WHY? WHY? Saxobank are basically team CSC with a hat on and a new name sponsor. CSC had, hands down, the best team strip for each of the past six years. So why is Saxobank's strip so bland? It's not good, it's not awful, it's just a load of corporate logos on a white background.
Astana: actually quite nice. Bonus points for big use of national iconography rather than corporate sponsors.
But the clear winner, to my eyes, is Cervelo. Big, simple, graphic, and you can spot them easily in the bunch. I'm sure Hayden Roulston is holding his head a little higher in this strip.
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Existence isn't meaningless. It's just that there's no external source of meaning. Things only have meaning and force insofar as we give it to them. So go on, make your life meaningful.
(I know this sounds like annoying hippy drivel, but I do actually believe this.)