Posts by BenWilson
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If a rule is there, then exploiting it is generally fair game. Being a sportsman is a fine thing and people will admire that in itself, but ignoring it will win games and professionals are paid to do that. Most people watching are amateurs, though, and highly respect sportsmanship, so a player does have to consider how unpopular it might make them.
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I don't think you really need a particularly sound reason for making a rule against something in a sport. So long as there's a rule, there you go. That's the sport. I expect the rules against living off blood bags during a race would be because widespread usage would bring the sport into public disrepute. How's it going to look when your star athletes hold up their winning trophy with a needle tracked arm like some junkie? The ick factor is enough.
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. But, you know: it's YOUR blood. What's the rationale behind stopping people doing this?
Good taste?
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There is nothing anywhere in the road code that obliges cyclists to pull aside for other vehicles (except the stuff about emergency services vehicles that applies to everyone). And trust me, the road shoulder around the south coast road is pretty dodgy if you're on a road bike.
Did you read all of it? I did yesterday, which is why I remember this snippet:
Always ride as near as you can to the left side of the road. If you are holding back traffic you must move as far as possible to the left side of the road to allow traffic to pass, as soon as you can. However, you do need to cycle in a sensible position on the road to keep safe. See Cyclist responsibilities for more information.
But clearly the rules are different for racing events. Drafting people would be illegal otherwise, as the 2 second rule applies to bikes too.
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And where do freelance journalists fit into the mix?
That was why I said a large organization to buy the stories was needed. Yes they could sell direct, if they were specialists in self-promotion and distribution, rather than writing and investigating.
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It may be however that the Web has accelerated some of the trends that were already in place.
Well it drove down the cost of delivering shite. That's sort of good. If we have to eat shite it should at least be cheap. Are you suggested it may have led to people developing a taste for shite? Or a taste for cheap, which implies shite a lot. Could be.
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I haven't been in New Zealand for long enough to judge long-term trends, but I find the quality of the reporting and especially of the commentary here to be an embarassment. But that perhaps is just me.
It's not just you. I'm changing my tune a little here to say I agree that the quality of investigative reporting has dropped. That sort of thing needs a large organization behind it, to buy the stories.
But I don't think it's the distribution model at fault. I think it was a trend well before the internet became a major source of news. It's about the cost of that, and the return from it. Not enough people are paying over and above what they'd pay to hear Deborah Hill Cone for that kind of journalism to make it financially viable.
I think the problem is actually consumer driven. The internet is not at fault for driving the quality down, it's just the natural place for the alternative to arise. But it wasn't going to resurrect public interest in investigative journalism.
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See, that's just madness. News is not a scarce commodity, but good reporting is, and the problem of how to pay for it is a very real one.
I don't think good reporting is anywhere near as scarce as it was. There is just more bad reporting so it makes the average look bad. It's a saturating market in every way.
It's rough that it's getting harder to profit from quality. But only for the journalists and newspapers. People wanting news, including quality news, have never had it so good.
It's tough, but that's capitalism - journalism is a massively oversupplied product, so it's hard to make a good profit. You have to be really, really good, not just good. The only way to reverse this would be to cut/control supply. Which I can't see happening. It's too big.
It's analogous to getting paid for being able to write at all. In the ancient world it was one of the most lucrative trades. Now, it's a basic requirement. No one is going to pay you heaps just to read and write, they expect serious skills on top of that.
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The internet killing newspaper profits doesn't really seem like that bad an outcome to me. News is simply not a scarce commodity anymore.
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Heh, that's a pity, the closest pickup spot is at the start of Tamaki Drive (there's always several bikes there).
It's a bit of an oversight of them not to have a collection/dropoff point in Mission Bay - Tamaki Drive is one of the most popular rides in Auckland, and people stopping in Mission Bay tend to want to linger.
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