The New Zealand labour movement used to have its own newspaper. A group of us thought that now might be a good time for it to be digitally reborn: The Standard v2.0.
A recent neurobiology study suggests that liberals tolerate ambiguity and conflict better than conservatives.
The result seems to be strongly tied to low-level brain activity and suggests that political orientation could be related to differences in how the brain processes information.
The study asked paricipants to tap a keyboard when an M appeared on a computer monitor and to refrain from tapping when they saw a W. Liberals had more brain activity and made fewer mistakes than conservatives when they saw a W.
[R]espondents who had described themselves as liberals showed “significantly greater conflict-related neural activity” when the hypothetical situation called for an unscheduled break in routine.
Conservatives, however, were less flexible, refusing to deviate from old habits “despite signals that this … should be changed.”
I just watched a fantastic Danish documentary, “Good Copy, Bad Copy”.
The hour long film is about art, culture, copyright and freedom - itself available as a free download.
The producers talk to musicians, artists and music industry officials from all around the world about copyright, its effects on artistic production, and the changes that the electronic frontier is bringing about.
Two short clips are available on YouTube (below) and the streaming movie is available via the Good Copy Bad Copy site. Neither medium does the film justice. If you’re on a decent connection download and watch the whole documentary in its high res cinematic glory.
McCarten’s column in the Herald today asks readers to get out and vote in local body elections - particularly for candidates opposed to privatisation.
The National Party has shown its hand in testing the public mood for asset sales. A strong vote for all the centre-left candidates in the region will ensure that any secret campaign to privatise assets will be thwarted at the local level… A strong vote for candidates opposed to asset sales will send a strong message to Key and English to back away from the failed policies of the 1980s.
Police Minister Annette King has sensibly decided to wait for a police report on their trial of the Taser stun gun before making any decisions about whether it should be added to their armoury.
Predictably, NZ First MP, Ron “knee-jerk” Mark, has demanded that police immediately issue them to front line staff as a result of the Stephen Bellingham incident on Wednesday.
Elsewhere in the blogosphere, self-proclaimed “reasonable conservative” blogger Jon Swift wonders on the back of the story about a student being tasered at a Kerry speech whether, in fact, we’re tasering *enough* people…
I am 100% in favor of tasering obnoxious people, whether they are conservative, liberal or radically moderate. In fact, I don’t think we are tasering people enough and that this country would be better off if we had more tasering not less.
…
Taser International is marketing a fashionable pink taser [pictured] for women that should keep overly flirtatious men in check. And widespread use of tasers would reduce the number of both surly waiters and annoying customers arguing over every little charge on their restaurant bills.
The Herald DigiPoll survey puts National on 44.8 per cent support, down 5.5 points on the August poll. That’s its lowest rating in the survey since February.
Labour is up 2.8 points to 39.6 per cent.
This is a dramatic closure. The Herald puts it down to “a month when National’s leader, John Key, has not been in the media spotlight nearly as much as Prime Minister Helen Clark”.
We all know there’s more to it than that though. Apparently this poll was taken before the Nats revealed their true agenda on privatisation and increased costs for doctors’ visits - so clearly the public were tiring of Key and National’s failure to release any substantive policy. It’ll be fascinating to see how the polls respond to their more recent right-wing admissions. Any guesses?
We’ve just been introduced to a blog we think you might like to meet too: Kiwiblogblog
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Kiwiblog is a New Zealand blogging phenomenon. It’s hard to say why. It’s certainly not the most well-written blog in the Kiwi blogosphere. David’s posting style is a little too reflective of its author: short, unpretty, rushed posts that borrow heavily on the thinking of others. The posts are also not that insightful. For all his vaunted Wellington connections DPF’s blogging is remarkably light on genuine insight. Oh, occasionally he picks up on parliamentary scuttlebutt - but his partisan credentials and unwavering loyalty to the National Party mean he hears little scandal from the left and is probably unwilling to publish rumours from the right.
Rightly or wrongly, Kiwiblog certainly pulls the punters. There’s is an active participating base of well over 600 contributors and it draws in a much larger viewing audience. Perhaps the blog does well because of the passionate thread commentary. Although many conservatives deride Kiwiblog as being a “Troll farm” because of the tendency for a few intelligent liberals to challenge the cacophony of boorish stupidity oozing out of the blog’s more extreme characters.
In this blog, we hope to discuss both David’s posting and some of the characters that pop up in the threads.
Here’s one for the books. Matthew Hooten on 9 to Noon this morning:
PRESENTER: Ah, right, we better start with climate change policy announcement… How do you think it went, Matthew.
HOOTON: Well, I have to say it was probably the most successful policy announcement by a government in a democracy that I’ve ever heard of.
And later on, commenting from his background of involvement as a lobbyist for the forestry sector:
So what the Government has able to demonstrate here is it did take into account what it heard and that gives people confidence, I think, not just in climate change, ah, but across the board that the Government will listen…”
Here’s an interesting article from The Economist entitled “The truth about recycling”.
It sets out to answer some of the big questions about the World’s renewed to push to use less and reuse more in the wake of climate change: Is recycling worth the effort? How does it work? Is recycling waste just going into a landfill in China?
Britain’s recycling efforts reduce its carbon-dioxide emissions by 10m-15m tonnes per year. That is equivalent to a 10% reduction in Britain’s annual carbon-dioxide emissions from transport, or roughly equivalent to taking 3.5m cars off the roads.
…
But the practice of shipping recyclables to China is controversial. Especially in Britain, politicians have voiced the concern that some of those exports may end up in landfills.
QUESTION: Do you think there’s a risk of a recession? How do you rate that?
BUSH: You know, you need to talk to economists. I think I got a B in Econ 101. I got an A, however, in keeping taxes low and being fiscally responsible with the people’s money.
Someone (Michael Roston) actually checked though and it turns out that Bush received grades of 71 and 72 in Economics — a grade that “would correspond with a C-”
The Christchurch Press reports that Public health groups are angry at National Party plans to remove caps on doctors’ fees if it wins next year’s election.
Union and Community Health, which has two Christchurch clinics catering to lower-income Pacific Islanders and Maori, said removing fee caps would be “catastrophic” and increase the “gap between the well and unwell” in New Zealand.
Yesterday the PM helped launch Cityhop - a rental car company who park their cars around the Auckland CBD. The cars can be hired by the hour with the swipe of a card.
They call themselves a “self-service car share company”. The hope is that - as it seems to have worked elsewhere in the world - the scheme will encourage people to take public transport to work, knowing that if they need to use a vehicle urgently in the middle of the day they have the option. The Herald article is here.
Of course if you think you might be able to give up your car completely here’s a story about a family in the US who have managed to recoup 35% of their income after ditching the family car for bicycles and a greener lifestyle.
Understand, this was not a family that donned Lycra bike shorts each Sunday for a jaunt down PCH. They didn’t own bikes. They hadn’t ridden bikes in two decades.
One year earlier, Erick weighed 355 pounds. He’d worked off 100 pounds in the past year, however, so was prepared when Jess replied not, “Are you insane?” but rather, “How can we do this?”
If you’re in Auckland make sure you get along to tomorrow’s rally supporting the Burmese people in their courageous struggle for democracy. These people are standing unarmed against a vicious dictatorship that has a history of massacring its own people - the least we can do is stand with them to show our support.
The Government has been dying for National to make this kind of error for months, but when it came it was even better than it had hoped. Not only was National planning to let doctors charge what they liked, it was trying to pull the wool over the public’s eyes by not telling them about it.
…
For old hands the press conference brought back memories of some of Don Brash’s more disastrous stuff-ups during his time as leader, such as the time he forgot what National’s health policy was, or the time he referred to Bob Clarkson’s private parts.
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In being ‘economical’ with the truth, Gordon Copeland struggled with what some would think was a pretty easy biblical edict - don’t lie.
How hard would it be to follow say, 700 of the Bible’s rules?
After A. J. Jacobs spent a year reading the entire Encyclopaedia Britannica for his book “The Know-It-All,” he figured he had the yearlong experiment thing down. How much harder could it be to follow every rule in the Bible? Much, much harder, he soon discovered, as he found himself growing his beard, struggling not to curse and asking strangers for permission to stone them for adultery.
The Herald reports that Graham Stairmand, president of Grey Power has sent National a stern warning.
He believes the Nats’ proposed partial privatisation of SOEs “will seal the fate of the National Party… Nobody will be naive enough to believe that this is not going to be a step to full privatisation.”
At last the National Party has done something to differentiate itself from Labour and to put paid once and for all the epithet “Labour Lite” which has been applied to John Key and his team by some of our less perceptive political commentators.
Of course, after the first paragraph or two it turns into the normal Tory rant. On the upside I suppose that’s two decent paragraphs more than usual.
At Columbia University on Monday, the President of Iran, Mr Ahmadinejad said homosexuality did not exist in his country: “In Iran we don’t have homosexuals”.
His response was to a questioner who accused his government of executing gay people. A special report in the Guardian suggests an alternative explanation.
Iran has between 15,000 and 20,000 transsexuals, according to official statistics, although unofficial estimates put the figure at up to 150,000. Iran carries out more gender change operations than any country in the world besides Thailand.
In Iran, homosexuality is illegal but transsexuality and sex changes are tolerated and encouraged.
Newsweek’s Steven Levy does a quick video preview of the OLPC laptop, writing that “The $100 (well, $200) laptop is ready to change the world, if people will buy it for the kids who need it.”
From the OLPC foundation website - the people responsible for the machine - their mission is to “ensure that all school-aged children in the developing world are able to engage effectively with their own personal laptop, networked to the world, so that they, their families and their communities can openly learn and learn about learning.”
To make this a reality the foundation has designed and manufactured a laptop that they hope will eventually cost about US$100 to produce.
To help them reach that goal they need to have them produced in huge numbers. To get the ball rolling on Nov 12 the foundation will launch a “Give 1, Get 1″ programme.
If you buy one of the OLPC machines for US$399, another will be given free to a child in the developing world. More details here.
There’s been a bit of debate on The Standard about what National actually stands for. Up until now there have been those who have bought the Nats’ “moderate” rebranding. Yesterday though, Key and Ryall let the cat out of the bag. They haven’t changed at all. They’re the same old National Party.
In what marks a clear return to the failed health policies of the 90’s Key said “the market” and competition will set doctors’ fees - if people don’t like the price, they can “go down the road”.
Watch the look on Key’s face as the Nats real health agenda is accidently revealed. It’s the same stunned mullet look he produced in the house when his contradictory remarks on Iraq (link to YouTube video) were revealed. Move over blue steel.
First it was forgeting his view on the Springbok Tour (turned out he was “quietly pro”), then it was his place of residence for electoral purposes (the jury’s still out on that one), and now it’s the details of his health policy.
The National Party and John Key today released a 45 page health policy discussion document which mysteriously forgot to mention the fact that they plan to remove the cap which limits the size and annual increases in doctors’ fees.
The fees were originally capped by Labour to prevent continuing gradual rises in fees that were discouraging people from going to the doctor.
It was just amazing to watch John Key squirm under a barrage of questions from the media on TV this evening. I’m actually not sure he ever really answered a question - Tony Ryall seemed to want to jump in at every opportunity, perhaps not confident that his boss even really had a decent grasp of the policy.
Having forgotten his policy, and then his lines, Key seemed to spend a lot of time just standing there to one side of the lectern with his trademark blank look (illustrated above).
I’ll post the video shortly.
Update: here’s the link to the tv 3 coverage. Since the Nats are effectively proposing a move to the American Helath System model you might also want to check out the preview of Sicko below. Highly recommended.
A recent neurobiology study suggests that liberals tolerate ambiguity and conflict better than conservatives.
