Daily Review 20/03/2018

Written By: - Date published: 5:30 pm, March 20th, 2018 - 37 comments
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Daily review is also your post.

This provides Standardistas the opportunity to review events of the day.

The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy).

Don’t forget to be kind to each other …

37 comments on “Daily Review 20/03/2018 ”

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  1. Cinny 1
    20 March 2018 at 5:57 pm

    Question time today appeared to read like a contents list of kiwblog posts/counters. Opposition should find better material, what a circus.

    • Kat 1.1
      20 March 2018 at 10:10 pm

      Even the Greens so called “patsy questions” would have fared better than that limp attempt by the opposition at holding the govt to account.

  2. Wow 2
    20 March 2018 at 6:38 pm

    More on Jordan Peterson, maybe if he kind of makes sense sometimes but he also kind of gives you the heebie jeebies somehow.

    https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/03/the-intellectual-we-deserve

    It’s a long piece but I liked this bit: “(Peterson): “…Have you cleaned up your life? If the answer is no, here’s something to try: start to stop doing what you know to be wrong. Start stopping today… Don’t blame capitalism, the radical left, or the iniquity of your enemies. Don’t reorganize the state until you have ordered your own experience. Have some humility. If you cannot bring peace to your household, how dare you try to rule a city? … Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world.”

    Note: perfect. And since one’s house can never be in perfect order, one can never criticize the world. This is, most obviously, an invitation to total depoliticization and solipsism. But it’s also a recipe for making miserable people even more miserable. “

    • Draco T Bastard 2.1
      20 March 2018 at 7:40 pm

      Sounds like someone who wants the status quo to remain.

      • joe90 2.1.1
        20 March 2018 at 8:00 pm

        More fuckwit best ignored, I reckon.

        Following Carl Jung, Peterson identifies “archetypes” in myths, dreams, and religions, which have apparently defined truths of the human condition since the beginning of time. “Culture,” one of his typical arguments goes, “is symbolically, archetypally, mythically male”—and this is why resistance to male dominance is unnatural. Men represent order, and “Chaos—the unknown—is symbolically associated with the feminine.” In other words, men resisting the perennially fixed archetypes of male and female, and failing to toughen up, are pathetic losers.

        http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/03/19/jordan-peterson-and-fascist-mysticism/

    • JanM 2.2
      20 March 2018 at 8:19 pm

      Sounds like a fundamentalist God-botherer to me -ugh!

    • Babayaga 2.3
      20 March 2018 at 11:47 pm

      I do believe it’s a metaphor. Peterson brilliantly applied a similar commentary to 16 year olds trying to tell their betters how to run a country when they can’t keep their room tidy. He really is magnificent.

  3. Johnr 3
    20 March 2018 at 6:49 pm

    I hear Shane Jones on the radio having a swipe at Air NZ for closing regional routes.

    Perhaps it’s time for the govt to sell down it’s 51% in Air NZ and use the money to reinvent a regional airline (NAC).

    • Draco T Bastard 3.1
      20 March 2018 at 7:38 pm

      Better idea for the government to buy back the 49% at the same price that it was sold for and turn it back into a national airline providing a service.

      • DoublePlusGood 3.1.1
        20 March 2018 at 8:40 pm

        The side benefit of that for Shane Jones is then he can get rid of the board of directors who had a swipe at him.

    • monty 3.2
      20 March 2018 at 9:06 pm

      From memory the govt owned 80% as a result of the investment (bailout) when the company was in danger of collapse.

      I believe they still own 53% but I could be mistaken.

      When you look at kapiti I kind of get it, its a small airport close to Welly. There is rail links to welly and Palmy airports that have both Air NZ and Jetstar flying out of them. It would be like putting a regional airport in Pukekohe doesnt make sense to me.

      Sometimes you have to be rational and take the emotion out.

      • One Anonymous Bloke 3.2.1
        21 March 2018 at 8:01 am

        Sometimes you have to be rational and take the emotion out.

        Oh really? Tell us how you do that then, and don’t forget to explain why the separation of emotion and rationality isn’t a false dichotomy that completely ignores neuroscience.

        • Monty 3.2.1.1
          21 March 2018 at 1:02 pm

          We are very capable of doing it.

          Courts for example have to remain neutral and base decisions on fact as opposed to emotional influences. In the business world when a direction you want to take is dismissed you have to accept it and the reality of what is happening.

          I don’t have a neuroscience degree or much knowledge of the chemical and technical application. But if you are expert in this field I would ask you share that knowledge so we could all learn.

          • One Anonymous Bloke 3.2.1.1.1
            21 March 2018 at 2:09 pm

            Courts: the longer it is since the judge had a meal, the longer the sentence handed down.

            In the business world, the “meritocracy paradox” illustrates another example of feelings taking precedence over rational decision making.

            The fact is, every thought you have is preceded by an emotional response which dictates how the process unfolds. What we think of as “rational thought” is merely rationalising.

            …decision making involves not only the cold-hearted calculation of expected utility based upon explicit knowledge of outcomes but also more subtle and sometimes covert processes that depend critically upon emotion.

            Naqvi et al 2016 (pdf).

            I’m no expert in neuroscience, I’ve just been paying attention out of personal interest. Check out the relatively new subject of “Neurolaw”, for example.

            • Monty 3.2.1.1.1.1
              21 March 2018 at 3:38 pm

              Very fair points you make there. I do agree with what your saying now.

            • McFlock 3.2.1.1.1.2
              21 March 2018 at 3:42 pm

              The other thing with courts is that the jury system takes 12 people, and they agree on a decision. So you get “12 angry men” syndrome where a few dominant speakers end up driving less confident people to a verdict.

              What they should do is take a majority verdict, but not let the jurors communicate with each other during deliberation. Not really workable in the real world, but there you are.

            • mikesh 3.2.1.1.1.3
              21 March 2018 at 11:29 pm

              That judge in America who handed that chap Nassar a 175 year sentence must have been so hungry I’m surprised she didn’t die of starvation.

    • patricia bremner 3.3
      21 March 2018 at 8:07 am

      Most people remember Air NZ struggling, and we the public opened our purse and saved them. I thought as shareholders we have input surely? Or don’t they need us now? I agree with Shane Jones. They and National don’t care about the regions, or the “Loyalty” factor.

    • newsense 3.4
      21 March 2018 at 1:16 pm

      Well when you spot AirNZ twitter publicising a snub to Ardern with Key, and spawn Max with former POTUS Obama. Throw in Thiel, Palantir, a defense force keen to lie to us, Warner Bros and Oh, the fact that the opposition in the states has been bashing Trump mercilessly for being a lazy elitist golfer.

      The National Party Air NZ much.

      Brave Sir John! Planter from a merchant bank. Would be a pity if his fav courses became affordable housing developments., rather than Auckland’s public course. Would be electorally difficult, but I’d enjoy the schadenfraude.

  4. Draco T Bastard 4
    20 March 2018 at 7:35 pm

    Reading Why We Can’t Afford the rich. Decided to share a couple of quotes:

    Many are unemployed because there are not enough jobs to go round. This is the glaring fact that neoliberals and a largely uncritical media always resolutely avoid. In the last three years, estimates of the ratio of jobseekers to vacancies in the UK ranged between 5 :112 and 8 :1. In some localities, for every vacancy there are 20 people looking for a job. No matter how hard they work on upgrading their skills, the ratio is unlikely to change

    As the Christian socialist R.H. Tawney put it in 1929 (hence the gendered language): ‘The man who lives by owning without working is necessarily supported by the industry of someone else, and is, therefore, too expensive a luxury to be encouraged.’

  5. Anne 5
    20 March 2018 at 7:54 pm

    If there is even a modicum of truth to the linked Guardian article the world-wide ramifications could be immense:

    https://www.theguardian.com/world

    Cambridge Analytica boasts of dirty tricks to swing elections.

  6. joe90 6
    20 March 2018 at 10:13 pm

    It waz Beelzebub!

    Appearing on the radio show hosted by Trump-supporting pastor Carl Gallups, the editor of the End Times blog outlined his outlandish theory.

    “So, in 1942, that is when Billy Graham’s ministry really takes off, and who do you think was born in 1942?” Shoesmith said last week on a radio show after the famous physicist’s death. “Stephen Hawking. Stephen Hawking comes from a long line of atheists — his father and all these people — so I believe the devil said, ‘OK, this guy was just born and I’m going to use this guy. This guy is already primed to accept my message that there is no God. He is already primed for it, he is going to be awash, immersed in atheism all his years as a child, I’m going to take over this guy’s life.”

    “I believe Stephen Hawking was kept alive by demonic forces,” the PNN executive editor said, referencing Hawking’s ALS. “I believe that it was the demonic realm that kept this man alive as a virtual vegetable his entire life just so he could spread this message that there is no God.”

    https://www.rawstory.com/2018/03/christian-website-editor-stephen-hawking-kept-alive-satan-counter-billy-grahams-gospel/

    • mikes 6.1
      20 March 2018 at 10:39 pm

      “I believe Stephen Hawking was kept alive by demonic forces,” the PNN executive editor said, referencing Hawking’s ALS. “I believe that it was the demonic realm that kept this man alive as a virtual vegetable his entire life just so he could spread this message that there is no God.””

      And where, (you might wonder) was God when all this devilish stuff was going on… Let’s face it, he (whatever) must have known this was happening (being God means knowing everything) so why did he just let it happen? Let me guess, another test? Or just another mysterious way?

    • Psycho Milt 6.2
      21 March 2018 at 8:43 am

      Based on the above quotation, I’d say this guy calling Stephen Hawking virtually a “vegetable” may be the Dunning-Krugerist example of the Dunning-Kruger effect that anyone is ever going to come up with.

  7. patricia bremner 7
    21 March 2018 at 8:08 am

    Most people remember Air NZ struggling, and we the public opened our purse and saved them. I thought as shareholders we have input surely? Or don’t they need us now? I agree with Shane Jones. They and National don’t care about the regions, or the “Loyalty” factor.

    • Draco T Bastard 7.1
      21 March 2018 at 10:16 am

      AirNZ was a great example of private sector management then requiring government bailout.

      Then there’s the GFC and the government bailout of banks and financial institutions, farmers whenever there’s a drought, and Telecom after they failed to do the necessary investment in the network.

      Really, the history of private management is littered with examples of businesses getting government handouts either as bailouts or prop-ups.

  8. Philg 8
    21 March 2018 at 11:43 am

    EPA Chief scientist Dr Rowarth stands down from top Agri business role.
    https://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/audio/2018637004/former-epa-chief-scientist-undermining-trust
    Too many embarrassing instances? People were losing faith in our EPA (leadership) Another USA legacy from Key?

  9. joe90 9
    21 March 2018 at 11:12 pm

    An actual Illinois nazi.

    .

    Republican candidate Arthur Jones, a Holocaust denier who has been disavowed by his own party, will be the GOP’s nominee in a suburban Chicago congressional district after he ran in Tuesday’s primary unopposed.

    Jones’s campaign website contains a section called “The Holocaust Racket” in which he argues that there is “no proof such a so-called ‘Holocaust’ ever took place anywhere in Europe against the Jews” and that Jews are “directly responsible for the murder of at least 300 million people.”

    Jones in February told the Chicago Sun-Times that he’s a former leader of the American Nazi Party.

    http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/379439-holocaust-denier-wins-gop-nomination-in-heavily-democratic-seat?

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