Posts by Moz
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I dunno, JPSE... I'm fond of "I like rain" but boys with guitars is not so much my thing, and I was working O week when they were in their "loudest band ever" phase which didn't really endear them to me.
One great memory from those days is Shona Liang playing orientation at Canterbury and being booked into the upper level, which has a capacity of about 200. By the time she started the queue went down two floors worth of stairs and out into the main area. People were (rightly) pissed that she wasn't moved, but the organisers only really realised she'd be that popular when the queue formed. And you can't really kick the headline act for the night off the main stage. IIRC she was also flying off the next day to another O week, so we all lost out. Well, lots of other people missed out (I had already arranged to have a slot spare in my lighting schedule so I could just watch her perform. And being a senior volunteer I could just wave my pass and use the "staff only" lift to bypass the queue :).
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Up Front: The Kids are All Right, in reply to BenWilson,
It's an interesting thought experiment that we could have no voting age whatsoever, nor any other restrictions.
I think restricting it to people legally in NZ would be desirable, but otherwise yes, all for it.
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Up Front: The Kids are All Right, in reply to Hilary Stace,
I wish we had the political will to move the voting age down to 12 - could be done gradually.
Over several weeks? Or just drop it to 16 and see how that goes before dropping it further? Beware the slippery slope, next you'll be letting dogs vote.
We've talked before about a competance test, which some people object to on the grounds that it could be abused. My answer is "right now people are 'helped' to fill out a voting paper they can't understand, and some vote multiple times because their helpers don't communicate with each other" (the latter is one of the most common causes of multiple votes in Australia).
Arguably, the voting test should be more rigorous than the citizenship test. But since for most people that test is "is it alive?", that's not hard. I'd favour a test along the lines of "what system of government does NZ use" ... "democracy". "do you want to vote" ... "yes". "are you legally in NZ"... "yes". "here's a voter registration pack, if you need help filling it out, ask".
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Up Front: The Kids are All Right, in reply to Emma Hart,
Voting age is one of those things we need to be challenged on, because while it seems quite natural if you don't think about it
I love explaining to 17 year olds that like the criminally insane, they're not considered fit to cast a vote.
It still amuses me that we only have one voting age. You can be so decrepit that you're not allowed to drive, live by yourself or even manage your own money, but you're still allowed to vote.
My arguments for voting are made somewhat easier by Australia's "compulsory" voting, even though it's easy for youf to skip enrolling which makes you most unlikely to be fined. But really, it's not a big effort (they put more work into choosing a cellphone) and it does affect which government we get (although in Oz right now we have two federal oppositions, which is kind of the worst of the available options).
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Thomston sounds interesting, pity he only put mp3 into soundcloud.
I don't have vinyl any more, but this was one of the albums that introduced me to the famed "dunedin sound". The Chills tracks are still good, the Verlaines "Cheat Yourself" is still one of my fav tracks. The Sneaky Feelings tracks don't really stick with me, but they persuaded me to buy their other albums so they can't be all bad. And the album art was great, it's very teenager-accessible.
I expect I'll be buying the FLAC version this time, it's about time I went shopping again.
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Hard News: Members of the Press, in reply to Matthew Poole,
The Press Council having more say over where compelled notices of correction/retraction are published is a great development.
That is very good news. Having had that experience, another common one is to put it in a couple of lines at the end of an editorial. Complete waste of time for all concerned, except the lawyers.
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Up Front: Floodland, in reply to Hebe,
Suffice to say: if you're buying in Christchurch, get a thorough building inspection done, especially sub-floor.
Download and watch some "Holmes Inspection" the Canadian TV series. Their foundation problems are normally in-ground basements with frost issues, but the general picture that you have to do a bit of research into what to expect from a home inspector and how the sort of house you're looking at usually fails is there. I'd really like something like that here.
In Australia the real estate industry gets around that problem by focussing on auction sales and not allowing independent inspections before the auction. Afterwards... well, you already agreed to buy it at that price, and you can't bid "subject to inspection".
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Busytown: School bully, in reply to Jolisa,
when talking with anyone who just, y'know, "can't quite see the problem with testing kids and using those tests as measures of progress, because what's wrong with a few little quizzes here and there?"
I can't see the problem either. If that's what was on offer I'd be all for it :)
The big one to me is what the test is supposed to measure. I suspect that "teacher competance" and "pupil knowledge" are corellated but not especially tightly, and a test designed to show one may well fail at the other. Especially since they're apparently trying to measur teacher output by measuring net change in pupil knowledge, putting them even further off course.
I suspect that at one stage in my schooling my "net gain in knowledge" of the subject in question was inversely correlated with teaching input, because my experience of that input was profoundly negative. And it's open to gaming... if there had been a test or exam to evaluate their teching I would cheerfully have written "I dunno nuffink" on the paper under my name and handed it in (and likely have encouraged others to do the same). My academic career wouldn't have been affected unless it was the final year external exams.
And anyone who wants my adademic transcript as part of the job interview process... good luck. I spent 3 years after my masters degree enrolling in interest papers then either dropping out or getting mediocre marks in them. My "GPA" is probably a bare pass if I'm lucky, but I learned an awful lot.
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Hard News: Taking a very big gamble, in reply to ,
and ways had to be found around the regulations.
That's what I like to see, the leaders in a rules-based enterprise leading by example.
I read that, and I think "so what other rules are subject to that sort of creativity", but then I realise "love thy neighbour as thyself" is probably top of the list.
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perhaps an Alliance-style structure encompassing two parties with a shared disdain for John Key. Lord knows.
Lorde knows?
I love the way Dotcom so frequently brings out the contradictions and nonsense in whatever legal environment he operates in,