Author Archive
‘Wretch of the week’ — that’s a nice phrase
I enjoyed satirist Steve Braunias talking with Radio NZ’s Jim Mora on his Eight months to Mars slot this week. As part of it, Steve described his own ‘The Secret Diary of …’ column in the Sunday Star Times as ‘Wretch of the Week’ and disclosed that in getting the voice of the subject right […]
Not a bad ‘hands-on’ review of the iPhone 4
New iPhone 4 – the verdict is in By Stephen Fenech, National Technology Writer The Daily Telegraph (AUSTRALIA) July 30, 2010 WE’VE heard a lot about the iPhone 4 ahead of its launch in Australia today – and not all of it has been good. I knew it would be impossible to review Apple’s new […]
Pattern recognition
An ADHD friend of mine, a medical doctor from New York, once described medical diagnosis as ‘pattern recognition’. That’s why, he said, a competently written computer-based questionnaire can actually be more effective at diagnosing medical conditions than a human being: because the computer will ask ALL the relevant questions, not skipping some that don’t seem […]
Impressive
Blimey! Kiwi super hacker wows Vegas By Alice Neville | NZ Herald Thursday Jul 29, 2010 Kiwi Barnaby Jack wowed an American crowd this week by making cash spew out of an ATM machine like magic. But although he was in Las Vegas, Mr Jack is no magician – he’s a super hacker. … A […]
Why speak up?
Recent events have seen me revisiting a theme (or meme?) of this blog — and central to my own thinking: WHY SHOULD one speak up about perceived wrongdoing? Let me start by saying this: Life is complicated. Sometimes people and things can appear to be one thing on the surface but as you look closer, […]
Ode to a whistleblower
I’ve only met Bruce Sheppard once — at a Howick school gala one wet Saturday, but I’ve read his columns and long admired his outspoken advocacy for small shareholders. Now, apparently, he’s been snaffled up to be part of the new Financial Markets Authority’s establishment board and is leaving the Shareholders’ Association. Sheppard said he […]
Tumbleweed Dean Letfus pitches the next ‘goldmine’
I take no satisfaction in being proven right (again) about ‘Tumbleweed’ Dean Letfus, the itinerant get-rich-quick spruiker who from time to time features in these pages. I observed earlier “He seems to flit hyperbolically from one cash flow generating event (for him!) to the next without much regard for consistency …” This afternoon a friend […]
Still one of the best
This back page ad from TIME magazine is still one of the most memorable for its ‘tone’. It was part of a ‘A True Story’ campaign in the late 1990s by the mighty American Express to show their services are more than just a credit card…. that they really do try to serve international travellers’ […]
Why not say it with style?
Here’s a funny and pointed video making a series of good points stemming from the unrealistic, unattainable ‘beauty’ images young women are presented with every day … and the ‘deception’ effect of make-up. How to trick people into thinking you’re good looking is a good-hearted (be warned: foul-mouthed) ‘tutorial’ for young women by Jenna Marbles […]
High profile conman jailed for at least 10 years
Apropos my comment yesterday about liars being stopped in their tracks: Go on working your con-game and feeding your lies to anyone who will listen … until you are finally exposed by inconvenient truth (like Bernard Madoff?) and STOPPED IN YOUR TRACKS. I heard this guy (below) speak once. He was very memorable. Highly engaging, […]
How liars deal with a challenge
Rachel Maddow telling the truth to Bill O’Reilly … gee she’s good at this stuff! Spot the pattern: Rather than contribute to a debate about ‘the facts’ Maddow asserted about him and Fox News, (e.g. ‘This is why what she’s saying is wrong…’) Bill O’Reilly merely whacked Maddow’s sincerity (‘you have to be kidding’) and […]
Good writing
This is a very good article/profile by Miranda Sawyer from The Observer (via NZ Herald) of this complex artist M.I.A. Worth reading. I personally like this kind of semi-gonzo journalism: While Maya is talking, I think: she’s nothing like I expected. She’s gentler, more smiley, more discursive. Still, it would be easy to pull out […]
The rush to certainty …
A WHOLE lot of wisdom in one bite-sized blog post from Dave Pell, internet superhero: That’s an apt description of the new national pastime: Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and making determinations and judgments without a full set of facts. When confronted with the realtime web’s constant flow of incoming information, who has time for […]
Yet another good graphic …
The latest in my series of graphics that communicate … This one from a brief article, ‘The Mental Anchor of Money Mistakes’ by Carl Richards in the New York Times:
