Archive for the ‘Encouragement’ Category
All the best for the coming year
Best wishes. – P Pic: For those who prefer blue flowers. (Mudie St, Hutt Valley.)
A few more thoughts about honest debate
Occasionally I cop a wee bit of chastisement for being ‘reasonable’ — being open to hearing other people’s expression of their opinion without responding with immediate and trenchant denigration; acting as less of a ‘culture warrior’ than some of those who seem to try to frame any debate as a hillbilly feud, responding with knee-jerk [...]
Take it easy this Christmas.
Best wishes. – P Pic: One of the old Pohutukawa trees at my place. Its red signature appeared, suddenly, over the last few days. (I feel so lucky to live where I do.)
Ha! Who would be a politician, huh?
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so the proverb goes. It seems it’s the same, too, with perceptions of political ‘performance’. (Whatever that slippery term means.) This week, I made a judgement about Justice Minister Judith Collins and her handling of the Bain compensation report. See Current affairs through partisan filters. David Bain [...]
Dealing with sensory overload. Find some empathy.
Being primarily an auditory learner (as well as linear, logical ‘left brain’, blah-blah) has served me well. It seems the traditional education system is built for people who display those preferences, like me. But that ‘sound sensitivity’ can be a curse too, and far more than just a physical thing — as this video snip [...]
Lighting a candle versus cursing the darkness
A friend I respect asked me today why I write here about some of the subjects (and people) I do. What do I hope to achieve? Coincidentally, I saw this (below) in the latest Parachute music festival magazine just this morning: That’s a different spin on Edmund Burke’s much-quoted saying: ‘The only thing necessary for the triumph [...]
Confusing jingoism with patriotism.
From a good profile of actress Claire Danes, currently gripping segments of the intelligentsia/viewing public (including me) with her role in TV drama Homeland, this excellent distinction. “The first time I realised I was patriotic was after September 11,” she says. She was living in Sydney at the time. “I couldn’t have been farther away, [...]
A second apology (this time from Apple)
Apple’s iPhone Maps application (in iOS6) was delivered half-baked. That seems obvious. Here’s Apple CEO Tim Cook apologising for (shock, horror) ‘the debacle’. Good on him. Will it pull the sting? My first reaction to the shortcomings was to install a bookmark on my home screen for the web app of Google Maps (see below). [...]
Scratch testing an iPhone5. Gulp.
Holy cow. I’ll be getting one of these phones … but I’ll treat it a little better than THIS: I don’t expect my gear to be literally bulletproof. But wow, the internet is FULL of drop-tests-to-destruction … is there a name for that? Shiny-gadget-bashing-porn? – P UPDATE: From 9to5 Mac Shocker!
Ruby Sparks. A nice story, beautifully told.
I loved this movie. It’s deft. Trust me, see it. – P
‘The problem with any ideology’ — Bill Clinton
I heard this in Bill Clinton’s interview with Jon Stewart 20 Sept 2012 talking about finding solutions for economic challenges. ‘The problem with any ideology is it gives you the answer before you look at the evidence. So you have to mould the evidence to get the answer that you’ve already decided you got to [...]
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 [...]
