Author Archive
Your tax dollars at work
This is how democracy should work. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. Good on the Labour and Green MPS for pushing the issue. [NZ Parliament’s] Speaker Lockwood Smith has caved in to pressure to release MPs spending on their travel perks after political parties rebelled against his initial stance by releasing their own expenses. Today Dr […]
Let’s be reasonable…
Here’s a sign from the San Francisco satellite rally of Jon Stewart’s Rally to Restore Sanity, inspired, I think, by a line he delivered on The Daily Show. I think it’s just brilliant. In my dealings with those with whom I strongly disagree about things that are important to me, I make a real effort […]
Jon Stewart’s closing remarks at the ‘Rally to Restore Sanity’
I was impressed with this (I’ve left it out of blockquote to help readability. It’s all Jon Stewart, including his description of the media as a “24-hour, political pundit perpetual panic conflictinator”): “And now I thought we might have a moment, however brief, for some sincerity. If that’s okay — I know that there are […]
The superlatives still run hot for Leonard Cohen
Another night, another happy and satisfied bunch of Leonard Cohen fans. My pal Graeme went and sent me a text at the intermission, saying ‘Now I know what you were talking about!‘ Cool.
Nice to be clear – Mark Coker on e-Books
I enjoyed a fascinating and informative day at the NZ Society of Authors seminar, Publishing for Authors — the whole picture yesterday. One of the keynote speakers was Mark Coker of Smashwords who talked about the past and preset of e-books, trends in the market, and the mistakes he sees US publishers making that perhaps […]
Why do you think we call it a struggle?
I referred earlier this week in ‘Words that may not be spoken‘ to what I see as a subversive, long-running and concerted political campaign which aims to suppress Maori culture in Howick, Auckland, where I live. That’s how I see it. I’ll explain why. Along with the rest of New Zealand, we’ve just had local […]
Words fail me
Not a good look for the Serious Fraud Office. Disappointing is an understatement.
When the brand is smokin’ hot …
You might remember my post ‘Talk about product placement!’ which featured President Obama demonstrating a new government health website on a MacBook Pro with the Presidential seal over the Apple logo… Here’s today’s NZ Herald displaying no such coyness — in fact the article is about kids wanting Apple products for Christmas. (Enthusiastic consumers of […]
Cher Lloyd: Good on her
A friend of mine spotted this young woman on YouTube — Cher Lloyd — she’s a contestant in the current British ‘X-Factor’. Watch her audition. I like it that she credits the artist, Soulja Boy … and the Keri Hilson ‘version’ of Turn My Swag On she performs. Nice. I like her a lot. She’s […]
Farewell Limewire
As noted in this earlier post, high profile file ‘sharing (or stealing?) service’ Limewire lost a federal case brought against them by outraged record companies. The death blow/shut down order was suspended in May while the victorious owners and licensees of the intellectual property at issue and the thieves who built a business distributing what wasn’t […]
Bruce Sheppard — closing thoughts?
This looong blog post by Bruce Sheppard is worth reading in its entirety. Part of it reflects on the baby boomer ‘inter generational wealth transfer’ conspiracy promoted by Bernard Hickey et al. A bunch of kids were born in the 1950s mostly, and as a result nappy valleys appeared all over the western world, schools […]
Feeling uncomfortable about Google, yet?
Oh, life was so much simpler for everyone when Google wasn’t sending its spies out into the world, ‘sniffing’ and STORING our private data, photographing our homes and scanning our books in public libraries without apparent regard for copyright. Now, to make it all better, they’ve appointed a ‘director of privacy’ (sigh) and say they […]
