Written By:
notices and features - Date published:
6:00 am, October 31st, 2016 - 104 comments
Categories: open mike -
Tags:
Open mike is your post.
For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy).
Step up to the mike …
[In order to keep Open Mike and Daily Review free for other conversations, please put all comments, link postings etc about the US election under the dedicated US Election Discussion Post here.]
https://player.vimeo.com/api/player.jsKatherine Mansfield left New Zealand when she was 19 years old and died at the age of 34.In her short life she became our most famous short story writer, acquiring an international reputation for her stories, poetry, letters, journals and reviews. Biographies on Mansfield have been translated into 51 ...
The server will be getting hardware changes this evening starting at 10pm NZDT.
The site will be off line for some hours.
John’s Key’s New Zealand.
A better future.
Amount of methamphetamine seized at NZ’s borders skyrockets.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11738898
Love the way the are firing customs staff… another ‘bright’ idea from the Natz. Surprisingly more P is being imported, who could have predicted it??? sarc.
Along with PSA
This is the sort of news the New Zealand media should be telling.
Paul Craig Roberts: We all might be dead soon
Not this
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/sport/news/article.cfm?c_id=4&objectid=11738801
or this
http://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/beauty/85868130/miss-iceland-quits-beauty-contest-after-she-was-told-she-has-too-much-fat
Tell you what though, shes pretty damn hot and absolutely not fat at all (not that having a bit of fat on you should be considered a negative) but that’s not to discount her personality and intelligence
lol, got all the bases covered there PR?
Im sure the Editors of the NZ media appreciate your feedback on how you believe what they should run in their paper / website etc, and are probably at this very minute changing the stories on the front pages based on what you think they should be publishing.
Not forgetting of course that there are a lot of people who look at their sites / papers for a variety of reasons all differing by audience. Some want hard news – others light entertainment and many in between.
If you want “news that Paul approves of” – prehaps you should start your own blog. Im sure it would be an amazing success.
What would Paul’s paper be called
The daily Misery would be appropriate or maybe The morning Moron or possibly the Express Depress
Actually The Morning Moaning has a ring to it 🙂
Leading thinker makes brave “captain’s call” re untermenschen
When this brave, brilliant fellow gets the sack, the ACT Party might like to recruit him. He has much in common with their ex-leader Jamie Whyte…
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/oct/20/kalgoorlie-mayor-singles-out-aboriginal-people-over-antisocial-behaviour
Agribusiness advocate and chief EPA ‘scientist’ Jacqueline Rowarth nailed by Sharon Murdoch.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cv4TfFHUkAA_zv2.jpg:large
What you want to watch in your considerable spare time is your business Paul, interesting description though, Freudian slip maybe
I’m afraid to click the link now…
Interesting discussion/puff piece about online voting.
http://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/internet/online-voting-isnt-as-flawed-as-you-thinkjust-ask-estonia
The security details are way beyond my negligible expertise, but I note the Estonian system also relies on everyone been required to have an electronically readable ID card. Hmmm…
@Andre – electronic voting is completely subject to complete tampering unlike paper votes.
When the government can’t even get a simple payment system to pay the teacher’s, they are certainly not ready to be trusted with democracy.
Both systems have their flaws and advantages. The idea is to weigh them up and choose the best one.
You don’t just use scaremongering.
If we want democracy then we must go to online voting as it’s the only one that allows us to vote on each policy.
The government may have signed off on it but it was actually the private sector that failed to deliver what it promised.
I’m pretty sure that the rich are thankful for your support for them remaining in power in our elected dictatorship.
Apply block chain principals to voting, decentralise network and use mining and hash functions to verify votes
That’s an excellent article clearly outlining the challenges and possible solutions to those challenges. There’s still risks involved, there always will be, but they’re not as high as some people believe.
I note that everyone already has such a card – it’s their credit card. In fact, I’ve got four in my pocket ATM and one of them’s my library card.
Interesting results in Iceland’s election. Shows how tax cuts and economic recovery inched ahead in the election results, of public anger. I’m not sure that NZ public is so desperate for tax cuts, but I defiantly don’t like the idea of tax increases… How about Labour and Greens harnessing public anger about corruption and unfairness on those offshore tax cheats while keeping taxes the same for the resident population… Also explained in one sound byte not some complicated policy…
“The Pirates, founded four years ago by a group of activists, anarchists and former hackers, tripled their share of the vote to 14.5%, and together with an alliance of three left-of-centre parties won a total of 27 seats – five short of a majority in the country’s 63-seat parliament.”
“The centre-right Independence party, however, won almost 30% of the vote and a total of 29 seats with its coalition partner of the past three years, the Progressive party, which was badly hit by this year’s Panama papers scandal and lost more than half its MPs.
In a campaign whose early stages were dominated by public anger at Iceland’s traditional elites and a strong desire for political change, the Independence party promised to lower taxes and keep Iceland’s economic recovery on track.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/30/iceland-elections-ruling-centre-right-party-pirate-party
Well, I suspect that Iceland are about to find out that those two are mutually exclusive.
Your are probably right Draco! My point is that the idea of stability and tax cuts does seem compelling…. hopefully NZ labour have some good research into how much debt National has put the country in and how that might raise interest rates for homeowners in the future cancelling out any tax cuts…. unlike when Labour was in, and bought down the debt so we were in a good position with GFC.
They just transferred government debt to private debt, and weighted economy in future with 2 stupid policies, free student loans and working for families Hardly any thing to Crow about
Where are those who were saying a few days back Pirates were going to be largest party and go into government ?
10 seats out of 64 !
Yes but with a coalition The Pirate party were only 2 seats from winning so pretty close I would think to come, out of nowhere.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=11738693
Theres a big name announcement and a challenge for the seat
Chester Borrows thinks the folk filming bad farming practice are the threat….
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/farming/85615590/mp-chester-borrows-says-hidden-camera-footage-threatens-new-zealands-economy
That’s because Chester Brown is a idiot. OK lets leave aside his anti-democratic principles for a moment.
The problem with Chester is that when ever this type of thing happens, it makes him and his look like weak and dishonorable, so they have to reach for any old chest nut spin merchants trick to get back on top of the debate.
Auto Que – dumb reactionary economic arguments. These guys are so predictable.
What happened with Chester’s court case for running over the protester?
“The judge suppressed all matters relating to Monday’s hearing.”
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/85423176/whanganui-mp-chester-borrows-in-court-on-careless-driving-charge
National sees Borrows as an oaf-like character they can use to push policies and to say things it knows are outrageous and unacceptable while at the same time coming off squeaky clean as if the policies aren’t really theirs. Quite remarkable, really, but Borrows is the the kind of idiot that allows them do it. If he couldn’t provide this service to the government he’d be quite useless to them and would’ve been jettisoned long ago.
On one hand he’s saying that criminals shouldn’t be reported and on the other he’s saying that they should be.
Doubt if he sees the contradiction in his stance though.
So Bathurst and Talleys buy 3 coal mines.
I am sure that is going to be popular around here :-/
Coal – NZ’s dirty future under National.
Yip National supporting business and employment. Whatever next.
Sad to hear Talleys are just passive investors in this tho.
In fact, climate costs are increasing rapidly – the economic damage is already significant. Not to mention the poverty National’s economic incompetence always brings with it.
As their slavish follower, I expect you’d prefer Talley’s to be more involved because of their human rights abuse.
Next time a Talley’s worker loses an arm – they can mail it to you David C! All part of our lovely Neoliberal Dreamworld where workers or clients dying should not really ruin a good year for executives.
Is is just me, or does anyone else see the irony of Talley’s getting into coal mining at this particular point in time?
Perhaps this venture has been in the pipeline for a while…but was the announcement delayed until a Certain Person was safely out of the way?
Sure as eggs, she’d not be happy about this….
Perhaps TS could run a “What would Helen say about this?” post?
One thing Helen would say is that Talley’s started as minority shareholders in AFFCO too. Sadly for the workers there, they moved from silent backers to majority bullies in just a few years.
Yes but food processing is their core business, coal isnt near it.
seems like a favour for national party who dont want Solid Energy to smack them in the face again.
“Yes but food processing is their core business, coal isnt near it.”
Sure, but fucking more and more workers over to satisfy their ever-increasing greed is their core business, which means they’re always on the lookout for new ways to do that.
Why did not the union and workers not buy in on Affco if they could run it so much smarter, the unions are so much better at running businesses, osh programs ect especially after the event, why are they not pushing worker cooperatives and buyouts, and utilising the immense talent of those who run unions to foster as such, they always seem to have the answers, it would beat thier current strategy of constant bleating
If all workers were united they probably could.
Unfortunately Union membership is low. One factor in this being management ‘encouraging’ workers to sidestep the unions. Then there is the issue of workers having to move around a lot due to poor wages, uncertain working hours, less than satisfactory housing. It makes is hard to convince workers to operate as a group and buy out their bosses.
Worker Co-ops overseas have been successful in factories where the workers are all long term employees and have a history of being united through Unions..
And then prevent new membership when the cost of a new member is more expensive re value lost by existing members than hired labor, where all capitalist at the end. These model also tend to fail ie Israel, Italy and Spain when cost of external monitoring and decision making makes them uncompetive to other forms of organisation, fonterra a classic case been a supplier coop vs a workers coop
Utterly incoherent 😆
I’d stick with the ad hominem flailing if I were you.
Why don’t people hardly making enough to live on buy out the businesses they work for? I dunno, it’s a complete fucking mystery of the universe, that one. I guess we’ll never know.
If it stacks up a union could raise external finance to takeover business and replace ownership of firm from capital to workers. I would expect immediate increase in value of the firm accruing to workers as we all know a union really know how to run a business better
This must be on Planet Ignorant Right Wing Fuckwit, where unions are flush with cash.
Bleating.
What did your Quiisling sycophancy ever do to keep forestry workers alive?
The New Zealand Government is out of the coal mining business, for the first time in about a century. Which was the plan all along.
But they’ll make it work for Talleys using taxpayer funds naturally
This fustercluck has not happened by mistake, months of dedicated effort have gone into making it as bad as possible:
https://www.odt.co.nz/opinion/plea-humanities
Otago University is cutting the humanities budget severely. For over a year now they’ve been making a hash of it, keeping the faculty uncertain about their fate – freezing positions, offering and then demanding early retirements, then stalling. Now there’s talk that who departments may be “invited” to re-apply for their jobs.
The university admin has acted in bad faith with added incompetence for good measure.
You can forget any myths you may believe about “Ivory Towers” or security of tenure. Universities in New Zealand are shitty employers with bloated management, underpaying staff and rife with bullying of faculty and students that is condoned and exploited by management to keep them “in line.”
This would be the same Otago University which responded thus…
https://www.odt.co.nz/news/campus/university-of-otago/protest-against-uni-animal-lab
to anti vivisection protesters….
“A cardboard heart representing each animal that died in University of Otago teaching and research last year was hung on the building site of its new animal research facility yesterday.
The 11,358 hearts were placed by the New Zealand Anti-Vivisection Society and other animal rights activists early yesterday.
Within two hours, the hearts had been removed by university cleaners.
“We are really concerned by this reaction,” Miss Jackson said.
“If animal-based research truly was the best and most advanced research method that the university had access to, why would they feel the need to hide it so quickly?”
A university spokeswoman described the hearts as “graffiti”.”
I bet those pesky protesters are/were Humanities students.
(11,388! That’s one hell of a corpse count!)
Its a sign of the shitty times we are living in.
The Visigoths really are at the gates of Rome.
Even subjects percieved as ‘elitists’ by some are seemingly seen as a threat to the modern neo Liberal capitalist agenda. Basically anything that involves ‘thinking’ outside of obvious comercial requirements is under threat.
Of course, ignoring the fact that most of the ‘best minds’ studied arts and humanities.
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/oct/21/its-a-crying-shame-teachers-on-scrapped-a-level-subjects
Urban myth
A pretty silly list…but in keeping with your response..
http://time.com/3964415/ceo-degree-liberal-arts/
Is that violins I hear, if money is going to more practical degrees, great, arts degree possibly should be relegated to hobbies and full user pays
Those who think most humanities degrees aren’t practical are those in most dire need of a BA.
BA Problem is limited use in modern economy, engineering science maths the way to go, critical thinking and ideas no longer in short supply, ability to execute and realise ideas are
“execute” in every sense of the word.
Which is why we need the BA.
It’s interesting to note that when Otago last to a machete to its humanities division, it cancelled its Russian degree and department. A month or two later “G7” became “G8” to admit Russia. Today we have NZ soldier and diplomats in the same theatres as Russian soldiers and diplomats. Think language skills might be useful?
Not when in the not so distant future an app will come out to translate any language on the spot
Nice. You want to trust NZ’s diplomatic future to the equivalent of Apple maps.
And that does nothing about shortcomings and missed opportunities we might have today.
Do a post grad business degree focussed on internationsl business and emerging markets, read Tolstoy in your spare time, take your translation app, you will be fine Possibly and under graduate degrees in engineering would help, Russia more than most countries values sciences and engineering, it is a throwback to commie days re rapid industrialisation and materialism over hocus pocus fluffy stuff
Apart from the fact that your translation app will tell you nothing about the culture or historical references, you’d be lost with local idioms, you won’t have the connection one gets actually conversing with somebody (or listening to their small talk), you’ll stand out as a foreigner snapshotting every street sign and staring at your map app, so you end up mugged, in a strange land, no app because your phone was stolen and some other bastard who could communicate directly with your prospective clients got the fucking contract.
Oh, you’ll be okay most of the time. You might even get work. But someone who actually knows the language and culture, as well as their product, will always do better than a dickhead with an app.
You don’t need to go to uni to learn a language, I know plenty of expats who cope just fine and learn a language and culture through immersion very quickly, likewise read a book helps, you don’t need 5 years in Russian history, language and literature, in essence you become more Russian then the average Russian
Likewise your view of advancing technology is very constrained
Yeah, you can learn a lot at the time, but it’s better to know it before you need it. Or, more specifically, it’s better to know something more than your colleagues/competitors when an employer needs it.
But that’s just “practical” knowledge. The real value of an arts degree is that it gives you a wider perspective, while trades-obsession gives one a narrower perspective.
That’s actually my role for a few things at work – I’m not the best coder in the world but I got the job because I use things out of spec in an unorthodox manner. Actively disrupts the problem-solving groupthink from all you folks with a “practical” education.
Trying reading a book called systematic innovation by Darrell Mann or google TRIZ it may open your mind to that innovation is not as creative or arty as you think. I think you clearly underestimate sciences and other practical degrees from a critical thinking, innovation perspective
Did someone pretend that the Arts are the sole source of innovation? No.
Red’s herrings are starting to smell. Again.
And I think you undervalue the contribution a halfway decent history degree can make.
It actually didn’t suprise me that TRIZ was initially developed by Soviets – that should give you a clue about the limits of scientific methodology. Sciences without the humanities are doomed to failure, often in pretty catastrophic ways. Although a lack of sciences gives us an average lifespan of 40.
edit: seeing as we’re suggesting material now, try “All watched over by machines of loving grace”, a documentary that covered various attempts to engineer societies in the 20th century.
I think you are wrong, Red, about how well expats learn languages through simple immersion. Without any formal training in the structure of the language, they tend to be limited to a pigeon-slangy version of the language. They get by in conversation as you say, but eloquence and refinement is rarely attained.
Not when in the not so distant future an app will come out to translate any language on the spot
Hilarious. In reality, computers will soon be able to provide better engineering, science and maths capability than humans, but will still make shit philosophers.
well said
The we can all live in liesure and virtuous contemplation as Plato insisted , either as stoics, epercurians , skeptics or cynics, unless the machines take over and we all become slaves or fuel cells , I’m off to do my BA
Yeah, the world needs more Jamie Whytes.
You can only teach so much to fuckwits.
Anakin whytewalker? 🙂
Exactly
Too funny. Mathematics is a BA subject. Fine art is consumed almost exclusively by the wealthy. Hence the prices. You really haven’t got a clue, eh.
Oh, and why do you hate the film industry?
Gibberish must be an arts major
Yes, your opinions are gibberish, and you aren’t even smart enough to be embarrassed by them.
Projecting again little man, own your inadequacies and anger
All my remarks at 10.3.1.1.2 are true, as shown by the links provided. My inadequacy is still more than enough to bury your drivel.
Who do you think is going to write for the film industry then Red? Who is going to do all that PR that Natz love so much. How will the developers fill their walls with art or journos do media.. How will the Natz be able to steal some music for their promo videos?
All Red’s taste is in his mouth. I wonder what the world would look like now if people pursued ‘practical’ endeavours only.
Only during work time, the rest of the time we can sit back and contemplate or what ever rocks your boat ie your hobby, if you monetise your hobby great but don’t ask others to pay for it
Some one will invent an app shortly 😁
Can’t be violins. There would be none if you had your way.
You have a point thier but do you need a BA to play a a violin, I am sure plenty of engineers can play instruments, music and harmonics of course is described in mathematical terms 😁
Humanities degrees are a great starting place for engineering degrees.
Good news, the market is working ( the economist)
THE battle between clean energy and dirty coal has entered a new phase. The International Energy Agency (IEA), an industry forecaster, this week reported that in 2015 for the first time renewable energy passed coal as the world’s biggest source of power-generating capacity.
The IEA, whose projections for wind and solar energy have in the past been criticised as too low, accepted that renewables are transforming electricity markets. Last year 500,000 solar panels were installed every day around the world. In China alone, home to a whopping 40% of the 153 gigawatts (GW) of global growth in renewable-energy installations, two wind turbines were erected every hour. Based on existing policies, it forecasts that from 2015-21, 825GW of new renewable capacity will be added globally, 13% more than it projected just last year.
Timelapse video of Arctic ice melt over 32 years:
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/world/watch-staggering-extent-arctic-ice-decay-captured-in-timelapse-video-v1?autoPlay=5190695651001
One is fact the other is opinion based on incomplete model trying to replicate and extremely complex system, let’s celebrate some good news for once over Doom and gloom
Physics is not an opinion, dipshit.
It is when you are making prediction of complex systems little man
If you had anything substantive to say, a denier fuckwit such as yourself would have already said it.
The forecasts made by global circulation models are not opinions either: that’s why they come with confidence intervals.
It’s quite clear that tying your shoelaces is your idea of a complex system.
Settle petal you with give yourself an ulcer💕
Need to get reference little man but tied to chaos theory, Lorenz and determinism
The prospect of the current hiatus lasting until the mid 2030’s (as per the stadium wave and related theories of natural variability) is a decisive test for IPCC’s AGW detection arguments. Detection of AGW is a prerequisite for the IPCC’s attribution arguments. The IPCC’s statements of 95% confidence that most of the warming is anthropogenic, and expectations of substantial warming between now and 2036, has the IPCC skating on very thin ice,
Plagiarism is dishonesty: you can’t even acknowledge your source, which is Judith Curry’s blog.
Even funnier, the full quote ends “in my opinion”, which makes you a hypocrite as well as a plagiarist.
Oh, and the IPCC doesn’t author any GCMs, so statements of opinion about the IPCC are utterly irrelevant to the point, which is that mathematical models are not opinions.
PS: that doesn’t mean that models are right: to the contrary: all models, no matter how useful, are wrong. You cannot grasp this simple concept – you are incapable of understanding it.
Well, either that, or all your bullshit about models is cynical dishonesty. Charity demands I assume you’re a fuckwit rather than a liar.
Aaaaw your so cute when you talk tough, all puffed up, vien popping, hyperventilating little man
Have you not read the policy? If you are going to attack a commenter directly you might have to be a bit more subtle.
Aww you’re so feeble when you respond to substantive arguments with ad hominem attacks.
*you’re
*vein
Semi-literate too: thanks for making my point: you really don’t understand how models work nor what they’re for. No anger here, just ridicule 😆
Angry little man 😁
Just curious, Red, did you check when those words were written and what’s happened to global temperatures since then?
[In order to keep OM and DR free for other conversations, all comments, link postings etc about the US election now need to go in the dedicated US election discussion here.
If you are unsure, post in that thread rather than here. It’s not possible for moderators to shift comments from OM to there, so any comments here may get deleted – weka]