Author Archive
When friends try to ‘help’
I was at a book launch with my pal and fellow publisher Roger on Sunday afternoon at the excellent Women’s Bookshop in Ponsonby, and saw this saying in a book of reflections on quotations by Elizabeth Smither. 1 It’s a sentiment which I have expressed many times over the years, usually in bewildered exasperation — […]
Guest post: Andrew King responds to Dean Letfus feature
You may recall my post The trajectory of property spruiker Dean Letfus which was the blog equivalent of a sharp intake of breath at the positioning of Dean Letfus‘s smiling face on the cover of the NZ Property Investor magazine. I wasn’t the only one surprised at that placement, or the soft ride he was […]
Trust us …
No further comment necessary. – P
McDonalds putting their best foot forward?
I like this behind-the-scenes approach to marketing. Good on them. But I’ll never forget the author of The E-Myth Michael Gerber’s description of McDonalds food as “an acceptable level of mediocrity”. via Mashable
Implications of recent internet gagging attempt
UPDATE June 2013 — There have been developments on this. See this post: Is this what we want? Internet ‘take down’ and indefinite gagging orders? The decision in a recent court case involving allegations of harassment by blog post is instructive on all sorts of levels for what it tell us about the state of […]
Assange allegations deeply fishy with dangerous undertones
I’ve always said the allegations (not actually criminal charges) against Julian Assange seemed like a jack-up and a smear campaign. What do you think?: 2) The process by which Assange was accused, cleared, and then re-accused of these incidents beggars belief. Two women went to a Stockholm police station one Friday afternoon in August 2010, […]
Default search engines, privacy … and trying alternatives to Google
As I’ve indicated, I’ve been steadily making my web browsing footprint lighter and checking out alternatives to Google search — which, as well as trailing us all, spectacularly broke trust with users by circumnavigating (read: disobeying) explicit instructions in preferences to ‘block third party cookies’ by ‘unfair and deceptive‘ means (see Another Google privacy FAIL […]
Negative campaigning
There’s a fantastic article about negative campaigning in this month’s New York magazine… Frank Rich: Nuke ’Em Why negative advertisements are powerful, essential, and sometimes (see “Daisy”) even artistic. It includes this distinction, which touches on some of the discussion we’ve had here earlier about political activists like Cameron Slater purporting to be ‘media’ when […]
Alan Bollard’s doppleganger is Sheriff Joe?
In the news for keeping the Official Cash Rate low at two-point-five percent and pushing out the track for future rate hikes … In the news, justifying the arrest of a six-year-old girl (an alleged illegal immigrant) … Wow.
Deploying his establishment charms
Andrew Gimson, writing in The Guardian, displays a decent, honourable amount of cynicism (in my opinion) describing the efforts British Tory PM David Cameron exerted to try to ‘hose down’ his obviously-cosy-to-the-point-of-symbiotic relationship with News International’s Rebekah Brooks standing in for Murdoch. Her text (SMS message) with words to the effect of ‘professionally we’re in […]
Blind trust? Hang on, isn’t that a ruse?
I was part of a brief Twitter conversation about the use of trusts to keep assets out of the clutches of creditors which included this … @badtom “I want to slap their tax-dodging babyboomer snobfaces.” Fine epithet. There are less foul reasons to establish a trust @keith_ng — Peter Aranyi (@onThePaepae) June 11, 2012 “I […]
Lady Gaga – what a trooper. (Ouch!)
Ouch! This is footage from last night’s Lady Gaga concert at Auckland. Watch and you will wince when the star of the show gets banged on the head with a steel pole! Nasty. She doesn’t miss a beat. Respec’ Gaga. She’s tough. (Hope she’s OK.) – P via NZ Herald
Two good US politics reads
Steve Schmidt (former McCain campaign manager) A Career Resurrected After McCain and Palin – New York Times 8 June 2012 Woodward and Bernstein: 40 years after Watergate, Nixon was far worse than we thought – The Washington Post 9 June 2012 Worth reading, and if you’re like me, worth archiving. I’ll fold some of the […]
Artificial intelligence rebels again …
Remember the last Siri spoof? The garage band guy who wanted his phone to call him a ‘rock god‘? And this, harder-edged one‘? Here’s another take-off of an Apple iPhone ad … (If you’re having trouble viewing the video, try watching at the Team Coco site) via Huffington Post
Catchy, Carly Rae. Really catchy.
Ha! Carly Rae Jepsen’s smash hit ‘Call Me Maybe’ … performed in a make-up room with Jimmy Fallon and The Roots. A month or so ago, I saw her official music video (click image below) wherein she affects to lust after her buff, hunky neighbour who [SPOILER:] turns out to fancy other men … and […]
