Archive for the ‘Encouragement’ Category
Let’s make it an even 5-million views … Leonard Cohen
When I watched this, it was sitting at 4,956,083 views on YouTube. I’ve seen Leonard Cohen perform this song LIVE twice: Montreal, Canada and Wellington New Zealand. What a legend. (Yeah, I’m a fan.) Apparently there’s a new collection coming out: The Complete Albums Collection while we’re waiting for a new album. – P
Sue Kedgley on trench warfare and the value of MMP
A worthwhile interview between Sean Plunket and retiring Green MP Sue Kedgley was broadcast on The Nation today. I’d seen reports of her valedictory statement with ‘parting shots’ about Parliamentary ‘trench warfare’ and nodded in agreement. Much of the time it’s trench warfare in here,” she told Parliament. “The aim is to do battle, to [...]
Authentic use of a following …
Brooke Fraser gets the value of using her ‘brand’ … and putting her body in the space to support good causes. Here’s what she says about the poverty of Africa, on her way to Ethiopia: “This is my eighth visit to the continent but my first to Ethiopia and I’m expecting it to be a [...]
The gods will offer you chances … for inspiration
OK, I can see I’m the three-million, thirty-seven thousandth (plus) viewer of this Levis ad on Youtube, and sure, it’s corporate propaganda/advertising dressed up in a call to self-expression, inspiration (and, if you’re a paranoid conservative Glenn Beck, a message ‘glorifying revolution’) … but, hey, it works for me. Reminds me of Apple’s ‘Here’s to [...]
Against expectations
Watching the Wallabies go down to Ireland in their Rugby World Cup pool match last night one couldn’t help thinking, Oops, that’s not what the Australians expected. Full credit to the Irish, and the inspirational, courageous Brian O’Driscoll. – P
An apology should cost you something
Wow. Things have been going off the rails for Johann Hari since he got ‘busted’ massaging quotes in his interviews. Now he’s issued an apology and given an explanation (again) for his lack of truthfulness, and touches on some of the points I try to make here now and then about the generalised loss of [...]
Getting to be a habit
Enough with politics! Contention can become addictive. Here’s Diana Krall, looking every bit as good as the right-wing vixens I referred to earlier … but sounding way better.
Tribalism
One of the perennial themes of this blog is an exploration of the ‘reasons’ for prejudice and conflict between different groups. See my 2009 post Q: Where does conflict come from? which records Tajfel’s social psychology experiments … Henri Tajfel is perhaps best known for his minimal groups experiments. In these studies, test subjects were divided arbitrarily [...]
Is there anything you’d like to share with the group, Cathy?
Was/wasn’t ACT list candidate Cathy Odgers (Cactus Kate) recounts the wearying psychological impact of poor opinion poll results on ‘tribal’ political party volunteers … from her own direct experience as a student volunteer in the early days of the minor right wing party (currently running something like 1.7% in the polls). Fine, emotionally honest writing [...]
Cactus Kate: ACT Hollow Man or Black Widow?
ThePaepae.com ISN’T a political blog. There are plenty of those, and this year being election year in NZ, we will all be swimming (drowning?) in political commentary soon enough. (God help us.) Nevertheless, I want to share some thoughts and attempt to put a punctuation mark at the end of Cathy Odgers’ (Cactus Kate‘s) supposed [...]
