Posts Tagged ‘criticism/reviews’
Steven Price: ‘wider factors to consider’ in recent online gagging order
So… it’s not just me who feels uneasy about aspects of the recently-released blogger restraint & gagging order I discussed in my post ‘Is this what we want? Internet ‘take down’ and indefinite gagging orders?‘. Steven Price is a media lawyer, a law lecturer at my alma mater Victoria University of Wellington, and a legal […]
Is this what we want? Internet ‘take down’ and indefinite gagging orders?
I didn’t want to be the one who ‘broke the news’ that, as the Herald on Sunday‘s Kathryn Powley put it in her story ‘Blogger told to stop‘: a blogger has been ordered to remove dozens of posts and comments from her website and issued with a restraining order against a lawyer she harassed on-line. […]
Whoa! As a critic, this popped me between the eyes.
“Every time I assume a talented person isn’t painfully aware of the flaws in their work, I am wrong.” That’s a line in the middle of a thoughtful review/first impressions account of the pre-release iPhone/iPad software iOS7 by Frank Chimero. But as someone who is critical, sometimes repeatedly critical, of various people and institutions, his […]
A good, measured response to personal criticism
Criticism of Welsh opera crossover singer Katherine Jenkins — whom I last mentioned (respectfully) here: Using your marketing ‘assets’ — makes Daily Mail columnist Jan Moir look petty and shabby. Apparently the beautiful and talented Ms Jenkins used her participation in the recent London Marathon (impressed yet?) to raise £25,000 for a cancer charity. Ms […]
John Key toughens up? “Forearmed is forewarned (sic), I’m going to change.”
I enjoy the rough and tumble of Radio LIVE’s duo Willie & JT. I’ve said before their ‘political hour’ is a highlight with its irreverent argy-bargy. Who can forget Willie Jackson’s rejoinder to Matthew Hooton “right wing fascist mongrels like you”? They’re an oasis. The show offers a refreshing, robust counterpoint to the earnest, often […]
Vi Hart’s Guide to Comments
If you’ve ever felt a sting from someone knocking your creative work (or your expressions of opinion, comments about people you like, or the way you approached a situation*), here’s a wonderful ‘guide’ from Vi Hart. – P *I copped a bit of what she calls ‘disappointed high-horse’ (5:10 in the video) from Ivan the […]
We are ALL self-righteous hypocrites
So, I’ve finally found the space to read Jonathan Haidt’s masterpiece The Righteous Mind which was a much-appreciated Christmas gift. I’m enjoying it. Very persuasive. A slam in the early pages is this: “… the take home message of the book is ancient. It is the realisation we are all self-righteous hypocrites.” Well! OK then. […]
Let a little air in, @BarnsleyBill
This evil-looking device (right) is a Trocar self-piercing ventilation tube, used in medical procedures where inserting one of these into a patient’s infected body will help save their life through ‘aeration’ or by helping with ‘drainage of secretions’. I bet inserting one of these hurts like hell. But it beats suffocating … or festering in […]
Parasitic bloggers – yes, John Armstrong is right. Exactly
It was good to see some ‘pushback’ from the NZ Herald‘s veteran political columnist John Armstrong against second-guessing armchair critics (who happen to be bloggers). In an article originally titled:Blogging parasites don’t let the facts get in the way with the subtitle: Cheap shots at press corps based largely on ignorance and show no regard […]
The D-word. Name-calling in place of intellectual debate
A nice line from Stanley Fish’s New York Times review of right wing polemicist Dinesh D’Souza’s ninety minute anti-Obama campaign ad masquerading as a feature film … … While a viewer could certainly disagree with D’Souza’s analysis of the genesis and emergence of Obama’s views, it is nevertheless an analysis to which one could respond […]
Acknowledgements page as self-promotion and commercial message. Ha!
For my author friends … a description of the ‘undercurrent of faux-modest self-promotion [which] runs like a viral strain throughout every acknowledgments page’. (We refer to them as ‘Ackowledgements’ — an inside joke after an unfortunate and undetected-until-too-late typographical error.) A lively, little-bit-snarky, enjoyable read: Against Acknowledgments by Sam Sacks at the New Yorker magazine. […]
Please read this post
This one: ‘Everything we know about you guys is wrong‘ Sometimes I feel I can’t improve on a thought, or how I expressed it first. – P
Criticism or demonisation? Thoughts about The Standard’s treatment of the Paganis
I personally still don’t buy the ‘left wingers making death threats’ spin promulgated recently with faux ‘outrage’, ‘sympathy’ and ‘concern’ by certain right wing political propagandists. (see: ‘Wailing about death threats, forgetting what they’ve written themselves‘) They’re just exploiting the evident divisions between some on ‘the left’. As they do. Making hay while the sun […]
