Open mike 16/06/2010

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, June 16th, 2010 - 64 comments
Categories: open mike - Tags:

Open mike is your post.

It’s open for discussing topics of interest, making announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose.

Comment on whatever takes your fancy.

The usual good behaviour rules apply (see the link to Policy in the banner).

Step right up to the mike…

64 comments on “Open mike 16/06/2010 ”

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  1. Dean 1
    15 June 2010 at 11:40 pm

    [lprent: Are you looking to get a ban? Read the section in the About on the topic of telling us what we should do. Authors write on what they want, you have zero say in that. If you want to raise a topic, then that is what Open Mike is for – but you don’t frame it as even remotely suggesting what the authors write about.

    Fuck it – I suspect that you are too stupid to learn from a mild reminder – have a one week ban as a less gentle reminder. ]

    You aren’t at all angry, are you LP.

    [lprent: chessplayer has been around for long enough to know that I always respond harshly to people trying to tell us what we should do on the site. I would have probably let it pass if it was in OpenMike – but in a post about something completely different. It is a self-inflicted martyrdom by chessplayer.

    See my comment below.

    This is moved to OpenMike as being off topic here – comment under discussion is here ]

  2. Jenny 2
    16 June 2010 at 8:10 am

    Foreshore and Seabed agreement set to give iwi mining veto.

    If this is true it is tremendous news,

    Of course the mining and oil companies will try to bribe Maori to get their way.

    But as Maori actually have to live with the results, and in light of recent revelations about politicians spending I think more people would trust Maori with our marine environment than parliament.

    • jcuknz 2.1
      16 June 2010 at 8:51 am

      Not this person becuase really the majority of them are squeaky clean in the recent furore and of those who stepped wrong it was a case of having two or more cards and using the wrong one for convienience rather than wrongdoing. Squaring things up later, which is fair and above board in my books. Some with the pressure of work may have had to be reminded but that is also quite understandable to me.

      • Tigger 2.1.1
        16 June 2010 at 9:57 am

        Who are these ‘Maori’ you speak of? You mean iwi elite I suspect…

        • Bill 2.1.1.1
          16 June 2010 at 10:53 am

          The Iwi Leadership Group perhaps?

          The group that says it’s not interested in leading?

          The group that says it is representative of Maori but not seeking to represent Maori?

          The group that headed by Ngai Tahu chairman Mark Solomon and includes:
          Tainui chairman Tukoroirangi Morgan,
          Ngati Porou chairman Api Mahuika,
          Whanau a Apanui chairman Rikirangi Gage and
          Ngati Toa negotiator Matiu Rei.

          Those Maori?

          The one’s who have become rather more powerful as a result of all this recent F&S b/s?

          Here’s a link (repeated)

          http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/politics/3352361/A-new-power-in-the-land

          • pollywog 2.1.1.1.1
            16 June 2010 at 11:02 am

            and just wait til post treaty settlement Nga Puhi and Tuhoe can sit at that table as equals…

            …there’ll be hell to pay

  3. sagenz 3
    16 June 2010 at 8:37 am

    lynn – well done on the free speech thing, respect! Y,know. chess player is well out of order with a pointed question, not a statement. Did your education system teach you the difference?

    [lprent: A pointed question in a post about something different is just a statement as far as I can see. If he wants to do something like that, then it can be raised in OpenMike – that is what it is for.

    See my comment below.

    Moved this into OpenMike – comment under discussion is here. ]

  4. sagenz 4
    16 June 2010 at 8:42 am

    Before/when you ban us can you point me chess and dean to the part of the policy that forbids this comment?

    [lprent: Moved this into OpenMike – comment under discussion is here. ]

    • felix 4.1
      16 June 2010 at 8:58 am

      He linked directly to the relevant part, retard.

    • lprent 4.2
      16 June 2010 at 12:13 pm

      The policy is a guideline to boundaries. If you want to act like a lawyer and treat them as a body of law, then I’ll ban you and let you appeal it 😈

      That said – there is this section in the About (which I think I pointed out)

      No you must .

      Have you read this page? We must do nothing. The posters post on the topics they want to (with a few limitations from the sysop). If you really absolutely want your ideas to be heard, then start a blog and start learning to write. You can probably find a more compatible blog on our blogroll. Or you can comment on the posts that our posters write and follow our rather lenient rules.

      And this in the policy

      A partial list of these self-martyrdom offenses include:-

      * Abusing the sysop or post writers on their own site. This is viewed as self-evident stupidity, and should be added as a category to the Darwin Awards.

      I view telling us what we should or should not write about as abusing the site and the authors. It is one of the things that I’ve always come down on the hardest.

      It is a hell of lot of work to run a blogsite and write the posts especially when all of the authors and moderators do it in their ‘spare’ time (as you are probably aware). I’m uninterested in some self-appointed dipshit (who doesn’t even write particularly interesting comments) telling us what we should or should not do here. Suggestions and corrections are fine. However in my opinion (and that is the only one that counts when moderating) chessplayer was trying to tell us what we should write about. If he wasn’t, then his framing of the statement let a lot of be desired. That is unacceptable.

      If you don’t like what our authors write or don’t write here – then start your own blog. You’ll find out how hard it is to write material that gets and retains an audience.

      • lprent 4.2.1
        16 June 2010 at 7:37 pm

        Looks like sagenz was whining about free speech at his own hole. The lack of policing on the munsters probably explains a lot about their declining viewership.

        I responded thus:-

        I suspect that sage was just short of material to write about today – the material on the about and policy has been there for a long time. There has been previous instances of pathetic whining on this site about the rules that we follow at The Standard – so it shouldn’t be a surprise that we police the site quite thoroughly. In a large part it is the reason that there are a lot more people reading the site and the numbers of comments keep rising

        Just to fill out the discussion, because it appears that sagenz hasn’t bothered to read my response at The Standard.

        //============

        sagenz
        16 June 2010 at 8:42 am

        Before/when you ban us can you point me chess and dean to the part of the policy that forbids this comment?

        [lprent: Moved this into OpenMike – comment under discussion is here. ]

        //============

        lprent
        16 June 2010 at 12:13 pm

        The policy is a guideline to boundaries. If you want to act like a lawyer and treat them as a body of law, then I’ll ban you and let you appeal it 😈

        That said there is this section in the About (which I think I pointed out)

        No you must .

        Have you read this page? We must do nothing. The posters post on the topics they want to (with a few limitations from the sysop). If you really absolutely want your ideas to be heard, then start a blog and start learning to write. You can probably find a more compatible blog on our blogroll. Or you can comment on the posts that our posters write and follow our rather lenient rules.

        And this in the policy

        A partial list of these self-martyrdom offenses include:-

        * Abusing the sysop or post writers on their own site. This is viewed as self-evident stupidity, and should be added as a category to the Darwin Awards.

        I view telling us what we should or should not write about as abusing the site and the authors. It is one of the things that I’ve always come down on the hardest.

        It is a hell of lot of work to run a blogsite and write the posts especially when all of the authors and moderators do it in their ‘spare’ time (as you are probably aware). I’m uninterested in some self-appointed dipshit (who doesn’t even write particularly interesting comments) telling us what we should or should not do here. Suggestions and corrections are fine. However in my opinion (and that is the only one that counts when moderating) chessplayer was trying to tell us what we should write about. If he wasn’t, then his framing of the statement let a lot of be desired. That is unacceptable.

        If you don’t like what our authors write or don’t write here then start your own blog. You’ll find out how hard it is to write material that gets and retains an audience.

        //=======================

        Since you have access to your own wee blog – albeit with some rather weak posts and by the look of it some quite moronic commentators. I’m sure my partner would be surprised that she is now expected to have a dick. I’m sure you know what I mean – this site isn’t exactly increasing in popularity..

        • sagenz 4.2.1.1
          16 June 2010 at 8:02 pm

          Lynn – Rolling on floor laughing. Do you ever get the feeling someone is simply taking the mickey and does not really care about the outcome?

          On the odd occasion it is fun to wind you up. I must be careful not to make a habit of it.

          • lprent 4.2.1.1.1
            16 June 2010 at 9:32 pm

            Yeah right. Explains why my comment got zapped by the whiskey snorter (aka Barnsley Bill)….. And Psycho Milt, who seems to think that 6 month old stats are meaningful in the world of blogs. You guys seem to have entered some kind of groundhog day for the last year.

            On a side issue – what is it with Tumeke stats anyway? They seem to have died. Tim Selwyn is lauding the blog awards with comments about his stats page – and it is 6 months out of date.

            • Dean 4.2.1.1.1.1
              17 June 2010 at 1:47 am

              “Yeah right. Explains why my comment got zapped by the whiskey snorter (aka Barnsley Bill) .. And Psycho Milt, who seems to think that 6 month old stats are meaningful in the world of blogs. You guys seem to have entered some kind of groundhog day for the last year.”

              See guys, he’s not angry in the slightest. He’s so not angry that he goes to other websites, riding in on his digital horse being a white knight, defending The Standard’s honour.

              PS, LP: the last time anyone used the word “sysop” to refer to themselves was back in the days on BBSes. Perhaps it’s time to revise that policy?

  5. True Blue 5
    16 June 2010 at 8:51 am

    I see cry baby Len Brown had a melt down last night, just another trougher.

    • prism 5.1
      16 June 2010 at 9:02 am

      Yah boo True Blue. You write very well for a primary school pupil. But your comment sounds like a schoolyard jibe. Are you one of those bright precocious children with Asperbergers or Tourettes? When you grow up you will be able to provide better analysis and comment after having had more experiences and maturity.

    • burt 5.2
      16 June 2010 at 11:28 am

      True Blue

      The guy is left leaning and therfore should be exempt from accountability. Remember Labour good, National Bad…. I wonder why we don’t just say the rules were confusing and others were breaking them as well so we need to move on ?

    • Lew 5.3
      16 June 2010 at 1:03 pm

      Partisan gloating aside, Brown’s done what everyone implicated in this scandal ought to have done: called in the authorities, said “do your worst, and may the good people of Auckland judge me on election day”.

      If the A-G finds substantive wrongdoing, then as far as I’m concerned he can swing in the breeze. But the only way he could have handled this better was to not have done anything wrong in the first place.

      One day, maybe it’ll be so.

      L

    • Daveosaurus 5.4
      16 June 2010 at 7:16 pm

      Speaking of troughers, is there any truth to the rumour that Bill English is trying to get the name of Wellington changed to “Dipton North”?

      • felix 5.4.1
        16 June 2010 at 7:32 pm

        Yes it’s true. And Parnell is to be changed to “Helensville East”.

      • burt 5.4.2
        16 June 2010 at 10:31 pm

        Yes, linguistics trainers have material already prepared for schools to firmly instill the Dipton dialect into all of NZ… maw ha ha ha.

  6. prism 6
    16 June 2010 at 9:07 am

    I liked this item on RADnz news this morning. A giant statue of Jesus near Cincinnati in Ohio has burned to the ground, as a result of being struck by lightning. The final line was a cliche but perfect. ‘ The insurance company considers it an Act of God.’

  7. prism 7
    16 June 2010 at 9:56 am

    Did anyone hear David Carter Ag Minister slag off Greens this morning? The criticisms he used were actually more applicable to himself and the NACT Party. Pity they are so blinkered they cannot assess their own behaviour.

    I have been trying to access it on the RADnz news but can’t see it referred to,
    although they have made much of Chris Carter and his demotion. Funny to hear Tau Henare so vocal about it, he is such a paragon of virtue.

  8. The Mambo Ninjas 8
    16 June 2010 at 12:39 pm

    Given it seems like like BP are going to get roasted for cutting corners, is there a danger that other oil companies will be able to dismiss criticism of the industry by labelling BP bad apples, and not representative of the industry as a whole?

    Or will they just keep their heads down?

    Will be interesting to see who first trots out this line of spin….

    Will Brownlee use it to deflect more criticism of the Petrobas issue?

    • Pascal's bookie 8.1
      16 June 2010 at 12:58 pm

      Good call…

      http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/16/business/16oil.html?hp

      Until now, the other major oil companies had provided technical assistance to BP and refrained from criticizing the company’s handling of the disaster. Even as they watched their offshore rigs idled and their stock values fall, they had presented a united front.

      But that unity crumbled Tuesday before the House committee, mirroring growing private frustration with being linked to BP. Some executives have been angered at BP’s efforts to paint the gulf accident as an industrywide problem that will require industry-wide reforms.

      The executives of the other companies asserted Tuesday that they believed BP was an outlier, cutting corners to save time and money in ways that they would not tolerate.

  9. freedom 9
    16 June 2010 at 2:50 pm

    to believe the others are innocent of the exact practises BP has fallen to, is naivete of the worst kind.

  10. Pascal's bookie 10
    16 June 2010 at 4:01 pm

    General debate is typically rich in wingnuttery. Don’t know who it was but some tory just gave a speech that politicised the All Whites game, seem to call for wage slashing as a response to the recession, and finished up quoting Thatcher.

    More from him please, front and centre.

    • Lew 10.1
      16 June 2010 at 4:09 pm

      That was Michael Woodhouse. Talking about health. He was the CEO of the private (but non-profit) Mercy Hospital in Dunedin.

      L

      • Pascal's bookie 10.1.1
        16 June 2010 at 4:18 pm

        God. I was reading winnie-the-pooh to master bookie so only the rhetoric filtered through. First thought was to see if santi or bruv was posting during the speech.

  11. Lazy Susan 11
    16 June 2010 at 7:06 pm

    Just caught Len Brown’s address to Manukau City Council on TV3

    Some quarters of MSM seem to be portraying this as some sort of disturbing self abuse. My impression was quite the contrary. It was a refreshing change to see an impassioned, emotional speech from someone who appears to actually believe in what he is saying.

    Contrast this to the painfully controlled delivery of Banks. He always gives me the impression he’s having to think through every word for fear of saying what he believes rather than what he thinks the electorate wants.

    Be interested in other’s thoughts

    • ianmac 11.1
      16 June 2010 at 8:25 pm

      I agree Lazy Susan. Curiously maybe that is the element of Key popularity. The fresh-faced openess and he is one of the ordinary folk. Or seems so. (I just don’t trust people who smile all the time.)
      Yes to “It was a refreshing change to see an impassioned, emotional speech from someone who appears to actually believe in what he is saying.”
      Unfortunately people like Banks seldom slip up and if he does he faces the listener down. (Wouldn’t it be interesting to have a look at the Banks Admin books. No Credit card but the costs of trips, dinners etc must appear somewhere.)

      • sagenz 11.1.1
        16 June 2010 at 9:41 pm

        Susan – EMO! That was a complete emotional meltdown from an elected politician, live on tv. Funniest thing I have seen in ages. Contrition? My arse. He was sorry he had been caught. “I should have spent more time in my office doing administration”. No, you should have paid for your own lunch while you were out in public doing your job.

    • Armchair Critic 11.2
      16 June 2010 at 9:51 pm

      John talks slowly because he has to try to break the habit of saying one thing and doing another. It’s a prerequisite for being a minister in a National government. Like here, where he broke his word and cost everyone in Auckland City $6,000,000. Thanks John.
      And as for his expenses as mayor, well, there was $8k for him to be able to park his Bentley here and the upgrade to business class travel on the very next page. I have a Toyota Corolla that he could have for used, free of charge, to save the cost of the modifications to accomodate his monstrosity of a car.

  12. Salsy 12
    16 June 2010 at 8:28 pm

    Len looks on the verge of another heart attack, why cant the left learn to roll with the punches? Carter in a similar state. The only politician able to convert right wing attacks into political gain is Jones. He should run seminars for the rest. John Key must be laughing in his sleep.

  13. NickS 13
    16 June 2010 at 10:33 pm

    http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/maori-mp-draft-bill-banning-1080-3591117
    /facepalm

    Well, looks like my idea of getting a post published here on anti-1080 stupidity keeps becoming even more topical 🙁

    Oh, and why is MP Rahui Katene sounding like a moron to me? It’s down to economics, mainly as it is far cheaper and much more easier to cover large areas via helicopter 1080 drops than it is with paying people to lay and maintain trapping lines, especially in the more remote areas, and even in the closer to home, rugged as hell terrain that our geological history has given us.

    On top of this is the ye olde “it builds up in teh soil!” canard (that’s DDT with it’s poly aromatic rings you nitwits, 1080 isn’t exactly chemically stable given the acetate it’s built from + the reactivity of fluorine/it makes a good leaving group…*) and a failure to understand that by timing pest control to mainly coincide with breeding season, any bird kill is typically mitigated by very statistically significant increases in chick hatching and survival for threaten species**.

    And then there’s the massive damage possums cause to the canopy, which I saw quite starkly last year east of Hokitika, in which the DoC admined reserve had few skeletons in the canopy, compared to the other ones we saw with abundant dead trees. Plus deer and pigs significantly alter the under-story structure, removing habitat for natives and altering future forest structure by eating seedlings. And it doesn’t take a massive population density to do this either.

    Oh, and I’ll have a nice crop of references for the full post, also, as it’s 10:26pm, and I still haven’t used Mendeley to organise my pdf library, complaining about “lack of refences” for the above will get you snarked to death.

    Also, if anyone has a copy of “Poisoning Paradise” they can loan me (I can pick it up if you’re in Christchurch) I’d like to know, as I’m slowly gearing up to get into this properly, and by properly I mean 3 windows of firefox + multiple tabs + pdfs + word docs and Whittaker’s dark chocolate as I go into OCD research mode.

    *I did organic chem for two years /shudder

    **And yes, I know about the issues with Kea, but that is why science is so “fun” at times, due to things coming up and biting you on the arse and making you realise your bait design needs some further work…

    • lprent 13.1
      17 June 2010 at 12:06 am

      I have exactly one glitch to get around between me and multisite. I went to WordPress 3.0 RC3 after the wee server glitch on the weekend.

      There is one plugin that is pretty crucial – it is the one that informs google/yahoo/ etc about updated posts and also maintains the (virtual) robots.txt to keep the spiders and crawlers at bay. It doesn’t run on 3.0 multisite. Chasing the author at present (for the last 3 weeks) and reading the code as a backup.

      • NickS 13.1.1
        17 June 2010 at 12:20 am

        Here’s hoping the author gets back to you, hunting through Cthulhu knows how many lines of code for bug does not sound particularly enjoyable…

        • lprent 13.1.1.1
          17 June 2010 at 1:11 am

          It isn’t a bug. It just hasn’t been built for a multi-site configuration. It doesn’t look too hard to do, but it would suck up a weekend – which I have in short supply.

  14. Croc 14
    17 June 2010 at 12:12 am

    Why won’t the Standard publish articles on 1080? Did this even happen?

    • Marty G 14.1
      17 June 2010 at 12:19 am

      If you want to see a post on 1080 write it yourself in the contribute form and it may well get published unless it’s nuts.

      There’s no editorial policy on 1080.

      The topics that get covered are the topics that writers or contributors decide they personally want to write about.

      • Croc 14.1.1
        17 June 2010 at 1:58 pm

        Apologies that wasn’t meant to be a dig at the Standard I was just wondering if Nick S claims of censorship held any water. Looks like they don’t.

        • NickS 14.1.1.1
          17 June 2010 at 2:03 pm

          Lolwat?

          I made no claims of censorship, I don’t even know how the hell you pulled that out of what I wrote, and my brain’s working rather well at present.

          • Croc 14.1.1.1.1
            17 June 2010 at 3:05 pm

            Jeepers looks like a bad case of wrong end of the stick on my part.

            Apologies. Carry on.

            Well, looks like my idea of getting a post published here on anti-1080 stupidity keeps becoming even more topical

            Took that to mean topical with the standard, not in general.

            complaining about “lack of refences’ for the above will get you snarked to death.

            Thought you were referring to the standard.

            • NickS 14.1.1.1.1.1
              17 June 2010 at 3:42 pm

              Thought you were referring to the standard.

              There’s about 6 different areas in that post to research, which some I already have the resources for, but would still need to look for updated ones and others more easy to understand and try and find the not-stuck behind paywalls version of any peer-reviewed ecology articles I referenced.

              And that’s about 2 hrs of hunting, thinking and writing, and editing.

              The stuff I don’t presently have (economics of aerial drops, 1080’s chemical properties + environmental chemistry) will likely take me a day or more to do, mostly as I need more solid evidence for the economic argument. While for the chemistry side of things, I need to hunt down some old 2nd year organic chem stuff on reactions and leaving groups. And then I need to break it down and produce a fairly straight forward explanation that makes sense to someone with no background in organic chemistry, let alone anything past year 11 / 5 form science. Which isn’t nice and easy to do.

              Hence the “snarked to death” statement, since that post was more of a quick-fire comment late at night.

              Thinking before posting is generally a good thing to do 😛

        • lprent 14.1.1.2
          17 June 2010 at 3:08 pm

          Where exactly did Nick purportedly make these claims?

          He was complaining that there wasn’t enough written on 1080 and saying he’d write a post, probably on the scitech blog after I get the last tech glitches out of the way or on this site if he dumbed it down a bit for political folk.

          We were encouraging him to write such a post because none of the authors or guest posts had done one previously. Either we have no interest or have no knowledge. There was barely a page of comments in the search (which surprised me – thought it would have been more topical)

          • NickS 14.1.1.2.1
            17 June 2010 at 3:54 pm

            …if he dumbed it down a bit for political folk.

            It sort of needs to be dumbed down given the lack of background in chemistry and ecology most people have 😛

            And the fact I’ll probably chuck this at my tramping club as much more stripped down version, so I sort of need to simplify it.

            Not that actually having a background in those entirely stops people from making dumb arguments, as two of the darlings/scientific authorities of the anti-1080 movement, those names escape me at present, have nicely shown.

            There was barely a page of comments in the search (which surprised me thought it would have been more topical)

            Yeah, I was quite surprised to see only that little, though that might be due to them not venturing out of their usual spots + the locals seeing it as a fringe issue, that pops up from time to time with people threatening to idiotic things.

    • NickS 14.2
      17 June 2010 at 12:33 am

      Uh what? No one else here has felt like writing about it, and a search for “1080” brings up only one page of results.

      And lprent has been working on adding a scitech.thestandard part to this site for bits and pieces which don’t quite fit with politics…

      Meh, it’s 12:32am, I need sleep.

      • lprent 14.2.1
        17 June 2010 at 1:10 am

        Its mainly a political site. If you look at the posts you’ll find that even the science posts are usually ‘political’.

        Thats why I want a scitech blog. Where I can do a rave about my new iPad and how I’m using it (and why iTunes sucks for handling music). Why I love the boost libraries and what is painful about them. The interesting things about touch screen variants. The interesting things about last seasons ice cores from Antarctica and Greenland. The mating strategies of some fish. etc.

        Then I can come back refreshed with some straight political posts.