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Pick your own price for Radiohead album
Written By: - Date published: 2:49 pm, October 1st, 2007 - Comments Off on Pick your own price for Radiohead album
If you read yesterday’s post about music and copyright this might be of interest. If not, umm, well sorry. Radiohead are about to release their new album: In Rainbows. They’re pre-releasing it via their website where you can choose to purchase it as a special boxed set with vinyl and other goodies or as a […]
Liberal and conservative brains differ
Written By: - Date published: 7:26 pm, September 30th, 2007 - 5 comments
A recent neurobiology study suggests that liberals tolerate ambiguity and conflict better than conservatives. The result seems to be strongly tied to low-level brain activity and suggests that political orientation could be related to differences in how the brain processes information. The study asked paricipants to tap a keyboard when an M appeared on a […]
Good Copy, Bad Copy
Written By: - Date published: 12:36 pm, September 30th, 2007 - 1 comment
I just watched a fantastic Danish documentary, “Good Copy, Bad Copy”. The hour long film is about art, culture, copyright and freedom – itself available as a free download. The producers talk to musicians, artists and music industry officials from all around the world about copyright, its effects on artistic production, and the changes that […]
McCarten on privatisation
Written By: - Date published: 11:46 am, September 30th, 2007 - Comments Off on McCarten on privatisation
McCarten’s column in the Herald today asks readers to get out and vote in local body elections – particularly for candidates opposed to privatisation. The National Party has shown its hand in testing the public mood for asset sales. A strong vote for all the centre-left candidates in the region will ensure that any secret […]
Tasers for every man, woman, child?
Written By: - Date published: 1:44 pm, September 29th, 2007 - 1 comment
Police Minister Annette King has sensibly decided to wait for a police report on their trial of the Taser stun gun before making any decisions about whether it should be added to their armoury. Predictably, NZ First MP, Ron “knee-jerk” Mark, has demanded that police immediately issue them to front line staff as a result […]
Does recycling really work?
Written By: - Date published: 4:05 pm, September 28th, 2007 - Comments Off on Does recycling really work?
Here’s an interesting article from The Economist entitled “The truth about recycling”. It sets out to answer some of the big questions about the World’s renewed to push to use less and reuse more in the wake of climate change: Is recycling worth the effort? How does it work? Is recycling waste just going into […]
Traveling green(er)
Written By: - Date published: 2:31 pm, September 28th, 2007 - Comments Off on Traveling green(er)
Yesterday the PM helped launch Cityhop – a rental car company who park their cars around the Auckland CBD. The cars can be hired by the hour with the swipe of a card. They call themselves a “self-service car share company”. The hope is that – as it seems to have worked elsewhere in the […]
Espiner on National’s health policy
Written By: - Date published: 5:46 pm, September 27th, 2007 - 2 comments
From Colin Espiner’s blog: The Government has been dying for National to make this kind of error for months, but when it came it was even better than it had hoped. Not only was National planning to let doctors charge what they liked, it was trying to pull the wool over the public’s eyes by […]
Biblical living
Written By: - Date published: 5:03 pm, September 27th, 2007 - Comments Off on Biblical living
ÂÂ In being ‘economical’ with the truth, Gordon Copeland struggled with what some would think was a pretty easy biblical edict – don’t lie. How hard would it be to follow say, 700 of the Bible’s rules? After A. J. Jacobs spent a year reading the entire Encyclopaedia Britannica for his book “The Know-It-All,” he […]
Iran really non-gay?
Written By: - Date published: 1:14 pm, September 27th, 2007 - Comments Off on Iran really non-gay?
At Columbia University on Monday, the President of Iran, Mr Ahmadinejad said homosexuality did not exist in his country: “In Iran we don’t have homosexuals”. His response was to a questioner who accused his government of executing gay people. A special report in the Guardian suggests an alternative explanation. Iran has between 15,000 and 20,000 […]
One Laptop Per Child project
Written By: - Date published: 12:57 pm, September 27th, 2007 - Comments Off on One Laptop Per Child project
Newsweek’s Steven Levy does a quick video preview of the OLPC laptop, writing that “The $100 (well, $200) laptop is ready to change the world, if people will buy it for the kids who need it.” From the OLPC foundation website – the people responsible for the machine – their mission is to “ensure that […]
Emperor’s new clothes
Written By: - Date published: 5:56 pm, September 25th, 2007 - 3 comments
From Colin Espiner’s blog, his comments on English’s “gaffe” about privatisation: One of the problems of being a party without any policies is that when the leadership so much as raises a suggestion of what the party might do, it is scutinised within an inch of its life, as opponents and the media try to […]
McCarten on religion and politics
Written By: - Date published: 1:11 pm, September 23rd, 2007 - Comments Off on McCarten on religion and politics
God has spoken this week. It’s clear that he doesn’t want Gordon Copeland, Brian Tamaki or Taito Phillip Field representing him on Earth. Here’s the full piece from the Herald.
Trotter on the Electoral Finance Bill
Written By: - Date published: 7:37 pm, September 22nd, 2007 - 7 comments
For those who haven’t seen it yet, Chris Trotter had a great piece in yesterday’s Dom Post about the Electoral Finance Bill. In it, he takes issue with the narrow legal definition of freedom of expression taken up by the Human Rights commission in its submission on the bill, and in doing so reveals the […]
Espiner and climate change policy up a tree…
Written By: - Date published: 10:13 am, September 21st, 2007 - Comments Off on Espiner and climate change policy up a tree…
Colin Espiner seems to think the government’s done ok with its climate change policy: While I can’t confess to yet having had time to read every line in the stacks of documents the Government dumped on reporters today (I’d like to see a carbon audit of how much energy was expended in printing it for […]
Shopping our way to carbon neutrality
Written By: - Date published: 11:18 am, September 18th, 2007 - Comments Off on Shopping our way to carbon neutrality
From The Guardian: It isn’t easy being green. You have to turn the thermostat down to a chilly 18C in winter, spend ages taping up draughty windows, eat nothing but muddy parsnips all through February and wear charity shop cast-offs instead of proper clothes. Oh, the horror. Not so fast, say today’s big high-street chains. […]
Two birds, one stone?
Written By: - Date published: 4:16 pm, September 17th, 2007 - 1 comment
An American doctoral student has found that there may be a silver lining when it comes to higher petrol prices – they might help people lose weight. Perhaps this is the policy solution to fighting climate change and obesity? 😉 Courtemanche’s study found that a US$1 rise in gas prices could reduce obesity by about […]
Personal politics
Written By: - Date published: 1:59 pm, September 17th, 2007 - 8 comments
Colin Espiner writes in the Press that “Prime Minister Helen Clark has become a polarising figure in New Zealand politics, but voters have yet to make up their minds about John Key, a new poll shows”. Hardly a surprise. As far as I can tell he’s keen to say as little as possible. Steve Braunias […]
Lest we forget
Written By: - Date published: 5:45 pm, September 14th, 2007 - 1 comment
Earlier this week I posted on National’s attempted inoculation of the “nuclear issue”. Chris Trotter’s just written a related analysis of Key’s comments to the NZ/US Partnership Forum. In it Key states: “I have little interest in debates, either economic or political, that simply relitigate events of a quarter of a century ago… I realise […]
Prius schmius
Written By: - Date published: 11:18 am, September 14th, 2007 - Comments Off on Prius schmius
Feeling guilty after watching An Inconvenient Truth? Want to do your bit to help save the planet but don’t have the cash to buy a hybrid? (and too lazy to walk or ride a bike?). Perhaps you should consider becoming a “hypermiler”. The best of these guys can apparently get up to 25km per litre […]
Sicko
Written By: - Date published: 1:01 pm, September 13th, 2007 - 3 comments
A reader just sent me a link to a piece in The Guardian entitled: “First world results on a third world budget”. It’s an investigation of Michael Moore’s claim in his recent documentary, Sicko, that Cuba’s health system puts America’s to shame on just an annual per capita health expenditure of US$260 – less than […]
Freegan living
Written By: - Date published: 1:18 pm, September 12th, 2007 - Comments Off on Freegan living
The LA Times has a story today about Freegans – “a growing subculture of people who have reduced their spending habits and live off consumer waste”. I’m probably not quite ready to forage for my food just yet, but the article’s a good read. The picture is from the LA Times (photographer: Carolyn Cole) – […]
Jordan Carter on electoral finance
Written By: - Date published: 3:52 pm, September 2nd, 2007 - Comments Off on Jordan Carter on electoral finance
Jordan Carter at Just Left injects some sense into the debate on the Electoral Finance Bill running at Kiwiblog: In 2005 National tried to steal the general election. It did so by hiding its links with a shadowy sect, the Exclusive Brethren, with whom it collaborated to run a million dollar campaign against the governing […]
Trotter on Key’s conference speech
Written By: - Date published: 4:12 pm, August 22nd, 2007 - 1 comment
Further to ZKM’s post below it really was a great article last week from Chris Trotter on John Key’s weak National Party conference speech that asserts: A disastrous speech to the National Party conference puts an end to John Key’s honeymoon with the voters. I normally just link to the complete article but the online […]
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