Written By: - Date published: 3:33 pm, April 25th, 2020 - 60 comments
We put in guest posts occasionally. These days I’m the person who runs the email account and sees the general ones. Mostly I don’t give any feedback as much as anything else because a lack of time. But I should. This is the first to get that editorial attention. The topic itself is worth discussing. What is the process of raising debt for the cobid-19 economic response.
Written By: - Date published: 9:05 am, April 20th, 2020 - 37 comments
I missed it, but we got the new electorate boundaries on Friday. Now electorate boundaries simply don’t matter as much as they used to because of MMP. These days mostly the only people who notice them are electorate MPs, political parties that are too close to the 5% list party boundary, and of course sock-puppet parties like Act and their National party hand. Plus of course political blog sites.
Written By: - Date published: 3:42 pm, April 18th, 2020 - 93 comments
Don’t plan on a vaccine or persistent natural immunity. Unless we’re incredibly lucky, neither are very likely for much of the coming decade. We don’t have the bat immunity systems. Learn to embrace the bets of the future rather than the clinging to the comfy blanket of the past that has now gone.
Written By: - Date published: 10:32 am, April 8th, 2020 - 62 comments
I feel that many kiwis are quite unaware exactly how exceptional our plague performance has been so far. It is interesting reading the perspective published in the Washington Post by a recently returned kiwi. Less interesting was the mathematical illiteracy on the MP David Seymour who managed to ignore all medical facts while advising on how to bulk kill our citizens.
Written By: - Date published: 9:56 pm, April 5th, 2020 - 37 comments
Bill and Melinda Gates have been plowing wealth into mitigating and preventing epidemics over the last decade. Like the World Health Organisation and just about anyone with any sense of medical history, he predicted very accurately the type of epidemic we are now facing – a worldwide respiratory pandemic. He talks about the current pandemic, and how to prevent the next one.
Written By: - Date published: 11:09 am, April 5th, 2020 - 113 comments
I’m always intrigued at the capacity of most humans to be self-delusional in the way that they favour to believe regardless of facts. Nothing else could explain the delusional idiots like David Farrar and his mischievous minions wanting to go back to their business as usual – their ministerial scalp collection. It’d be nice if such dimwits thought and established facts before they wrote.
Written By: - Date published: 10:15 am, April 3rd, 2020 - 31 comments
As is typical these days, I heard about the Bauer magazine closures by a link in social media. My initial reaction was shock, but then I considered when the last time that I read them. No-one links to these publications. They were as invisible on the net as the NBR. Or as NZ Herald is starting to be. Realistically no real loss to the general debate.
Written By: - Date published: 12:27 pm, March 29th, 2020 - 45 comments
Anyone who has read even briefly into written human history is going to be aware that it is as much defined by our epidemics and pandemics as by any of our technical and societal achievements. This post is essentially a quick range over the history of pandemics and epidemics with links and some focus on COVID-19.
Written By: - Date published: 8:29 am, March 26th, 2020 - 69 comments
Waking up this morning was a bit of an eerie feeling. The alarm went off as usual at 0700 (and the 0880 one just clicked over). Very little traffic noise. The quiet sound of the workstation and server fans was louder than the the remaining white noise from the traffic.
This post is here for you to share your first day under lock-down.
Written By: - Date published: 3:56 pm, March 25th, 2020 - 10 comments
Gotta love parliament – James Shaw “there are no fiscal conservatives in a foxhole”.
Anyway, parliament in the chamber will be going dark for a few months. So will parliamentary TV (but you can still get that live).
Have a look at the archives from today- there are some politicians who are on form..
Written By: - Date published: 2:50 pm, March 23rd, 2020 - 147 comments
Heading into phase three, moving into phase four 48 hours later. Here is the video briefing and the quick analysis.
Written By: - Date published: 11:40 am, March 20th, 2020 - 14 comments
Five days ago Mike Hosking was representing his paymasters with his reflection of their basic ignorance of history. Then demanding caution in dealing with covid-19. Yesterday he panicked for immediate action to close the borders which government did anyway later that day. It is just dangerous to give a public platform to a dithering moron who be at home in 1918. Perhaps he should read the pandemic plan?
Written By: - Date published: 1:49 pm, March 17th, 2020 - 2 comments
As a programmer, I’ve had a lot of experience with working from home for work, last time was about 13 years ago. Yesterday we got shifted to working from home. The toolkit has changed a lot even in the last few years. What is going to be interesting for me is to see how companies disperse their employees out in the same way over this pandemic – that will be a real test of productivity.
Written By: - Date published: 11:08 pm, March 14th, 2020 - 103 comments
Juice Media on the essential facts about the spread of Covid-19. It concentrates on the United States, where personally I’m picking the US, by the end of the year, as being the biggest medico-political screw up world wide after Iran. Early wishful thinking and a lack of transparency cost lives. Pathetic bullshitting simply doesn’t help.
Written By: - Date published: 8:24 am, March 10th, 2020 - 15 comments
Previous readers of this site will be aware that I’m not a particularly enthusiastic supporter of the police. I’m more in the order of regarding our current police of a necessary burden on society that could do with having considerable improvement. While I find most police members to be what I can respect. I find the organisation protects some real idiots. I pity a commissioner having to deal with this.
Written By: - Date published: 8:54 am, March 5th, 2020 - 33 comments
The basic problem with Bernie Sanders campaign is that his sole political role since the start of his career has been as the archetypal outsider. He injects ideas into the political debate that didn’t get play time, but he didn’t concentrate on making those things happen. Now it is costing him.
Written By: - Date published: 7:41 am, February 25th, 2020 - 62 comments
Stuff has an article up about last years local body elections in Auckland. As usual the interesting parts are at the end. But I have to reiterate – online voting isn’t the answer. As a programmer, I’d just call it stupid and dangerous.
Written By: - Date published: 8:16 am, February 14th, 2020 - 80 comments
The rapid demise of the single use plastic bag has just left one hole in my life. I haven’t (so far) been able to replace the one and only second life use that I ever found for them. They were great at keeping the broccoli and carrots from going limp in the fridge.
Written By: - Date published: 8:24 am, January 22nd, 2020 - 63 comments
The hypocrisy of the defenders of Trump defenders in the US Senate is providing grist for comedians and satirists. Here are a few examples looking at Trump supporters in the US Senate.
Written By: - Date published: 9:58 pm, November 19th, 2019 - 95 comments
It has been ironic at our media frenzy on political ‘donations’. I suspect that our legal structure has been setup for bribing politicians with ‘donations’. Let us just make all politicians and donors guilty until proven innocent of false reporting of ‘donations’. It’d be more interesting than the current farce. Start with Simon Bridges – currently still under investigation by the SFO.
Written By: - Date published: 11:05 am, October 29th, 2019 - 14 comments
I was reading one of Chris Trotters reflections which looked at the Corrections Amendment Bill 2018, that just passed its 3rd reading. “Putting The Check In Right-Wing Prisoners’ Mail”. It sounded odd and oddly lacked detail. I came to the conclusion taking press releases at face value without thinking was a very bad idea.
Written By: - Date published: 8:11 am, October 24th, 2019 - 21 comments
One of the less endearing traits of National is their ability to screw almost anything up for short-term advantage regardless how it impacts long-term. Usually this comes from the results of in-fighting within the party. The agricultural emissions deal is likely to get caught again.
Written By: - Date published: 8:19 am, October 22nd, 2019 - 37 comments
That free-to-air TV are getting creamed doesn’t surprise me. TV3 is essentially being given away (or closed). Blame the broadcast model, the pain of noisy advertising and the rush to bottom in taste by chasing the few remaining people who won’t change the habits of a lifetime. What does surprise me is just how fast it is changing.
Written By: - Date published: 7:46 am, October 21st, 2019 - 13 comments
As a direct result of the lack of trust by a majority of parliamentarians about how committed Boris supporters are to the process of parliament. They want to see the details of the legislation, debate and pass it before the actual Brexit. Details are the job of MPs.
Written By: - Date published: 9:35 am, October 18th, 2019 - 17 comments
It has been an interesting few days looking at political reality kicking in on politics and the net in the UK and the US. The first story I read yesterday was in the US, about one of the lying dimwitted conspiracy nutcases who claimed that the 2012 Sandy Nook school massacre never happened, but was […]
Written By: - Date published: 5:16 am, October 18th, 2019 - 45 comments
In the UK, Boris Johnson has just had a rather nasty setback in trying to get support for his Brexit package. It looks remarkably like the last one – which failed three times in parliament. It looks like the clone with tweaks will fail again.
Written By: - Date published: 8:10 am, October 14th, 2019 - 42 comments
Amid calls to install online voting from the technologically illiterate who are appear to be unaware of the risks, there is clear disagreement from those who do know the risks. Politicians should listen to them. While postal voting is an expensive and failing system, online voting as a system is certain to be way worse.
Written By: - Date published: 9:38 am, October 8th, 2019 - 33 comments
Stuff had an interesting piece looking at rates, taxes and local infrastructure “Rates are much lower than you think, and they’re responsible for miserable growth in cities”. They just missed out one crucial factor. The way that PPP debates often block infrastructure. Interesting that got missed..
Written By: - Date published: 8:25 am, October 1st, 2019 - 66 comments
Good to see that the courts upholding the right of venues to decide how they are able to use their facilities and assess risks. There is no ‘free speech right’ in our law including the Bill of Rights Act that overrides owners assessment of risk. The rights that are in the BoA are not exclusive – anyone can express their opinion peaceably – including protesters like myself at the doors of bigots.
Written By: - Date published: 8:44 am, September 30th, 2019 - 51 comments
Occasionally, this site puts up a video from parliament. Probably happens a few times per month at best. Not a whole lot of interest. It is put up for the public to observe parliament when required. While it’d be fun to make clips mocking National politicians – why should the public pay to provide feedstock for juveniles to do that? Either have and follow the simple rules similar to every other content provider or shut down parliamentary TV.
Written By: - Date published: 10:10 am, September 27th, 2019 - 35 comments
Anyone who has been around tech for the last couple of decades will be aware of the liberating and industry disruptive effect of batteries. This caught my attention – “Tesla May Have Invented a Million-Mile Electric Car Battery”. It was well worth the read.
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