137 posts tagged “jack yan”
For overseas friends who would not have seen it live, here is the link to my TV3 appearance this morning on Sunrise. Props to Helen Baxter, to Ali Ikram and Carly Flynn on the programme itself, to Lars and Frankie at the Wellington studio, to Claudine for my make-up, and to Alison for the contact. Only one quip about the mayoralty; the rest was about Facebook and the dangers of having your photographs uploaded to it.
While I wouldn’t consider myself a “birther” (I am far too left-wing, relatively speaking, for that), there’s a part of me that wishes the American president would show his birth certificate, just to silence a good group of his critics and get them focusing on more important matters. I publicly said so at the time when the matter first came up and yes, it did seem odd, even if his challengers in the courts’ system had fairly ill-prepared cases.
However, I remember how John Major, then PM of the UK, resisted showing his O levels, which he also had sealed, because he felt they weren’t important. Eventually, he released them, and his marks were unremarkable. They made absolutely no difference to his authority and it was a “nothing” story that the British media were good at pushing. Maybe President Obama is taking a lesson from a conservative politician: showing it would be a waste of time.
I imagine in the US, things are so divisive politically that if President Obama were to show his (original, long form) birth certificate, there would still be people saying it was faked. I have read some comical criticisms even of his certification of live birth, pointing out the colour differences between ones they had seen and the one on the President’s campaign site. I guess those people have never used more than one scanner, or more than one digital camera.
The political right, even if its case had merit, kept shooting itself in the foot with some of the less thought-out theories. I admit there is a question that could be easily cleared up, but Obama’s own critics are clouding the issue. While they’re doing that, then the President and his allies can sit back comfortably.
Still, just to get a bit of closure as I potentially enter local politics, here’s a 37-year-old piece of paper (in fact, it is 37 years today that Dad had my birth registered):
An interesting little application on Facebook:
Gender breakdown: 43% female / 57% male
Relationship status: 58% single / 42% taken
Political breakdown: 87% democrats / 13% republicans
Geographic distribution: 34 countries, 30 states
Most common zodiac sign: Libra (99 friends)
Favorite music: Jazz (27 friends)
Favorite TV show: Lost (22 friends)
Favorite movie: Shawshank Redemption (17 friends)
Favorite book: (14 friends)
Favorite activity: Reading (32 friends)
No book was listed, which might mean 14 of my friends are illiterate.
The sample was my c. 1,300 Facebook connections, and I imagine it only took information where it was available.
A lot of it was expected: as someone who has been to two dozen countries, having contacts in 34 sounds reasonable. I have been to 10 US states, so having contacts in 30 also sounds reasonable. I have noticed I have a lot of Libran friends, long before Facebook came along. I am surprised about Lost, since I have not watched it since the second season; as well as The Shawshank Redemption featuring on 17 friends’ lists.
What was a big surprise was the 87 per cent Democratic proportion. I admit to having many leftist ideas, but in other respects I am quite centrist. I have friends on both sides of the political divide, as the comments on this blog alone illustrate. I figured Dems would outnumber Republicans, but not to a nearly seven-to-one ratio.
Any graphologists want to take a stab at psychoanalysing me based on my handwriting?
Now that an ex-girlfriend’s name has disappeared from the tags, I can paste these without censoring: my tag words for Vox.
I find this quite fascinating. I must have posted a lot about the US remake of Life on Mars, because actor Jason O’Mara still figures in this, even though I stopped blogging about that show around the time of its cancellation. Obviously, Lucire, Wellington and New Zealand figure in a big way, including the Māori names for the city and country. Computer bugs and errors have dominated my blogging, enough for those topics to make it in to the keywords this time around. No surprise about cars and fashion being regular blogging topics.
One fascinating thing is the appearance of Deutschland, so Germany must have been a regular enough subject. Mercedes-Benz is the most tagged car brand, but that’s more to do with its sponsorship of New York Fashion Week; however, I was interested to see that BMW is present and Audi not, which gives you an idea of who has been loaning Lucire more vehicles this year.
Facebook beats Twitter, even if most of the posts were of me bitching about Facebook being buggy; Philip Glenister beats Jason O’Mara and Barack Obama; and the 1970s beat the 1980s.
If other Vox friends want to paste theirs, I’d be interested to have a gander!
Thanks to Coby at Mercedes-Benz for my transport last week: a new E350 Coupé with Distronic (the cruise control system that slows down if the traffic in front slows). Lucire review to follow. It looks much better in the metal than in the photos (where it looks fussy and rear-heavy). In fact, of all the coupés I have driven, I really began to feel “at home” with this one.
I was going to get an early night, but really couldn’t let the day pass without writing an editorial about 9-11. I remember going to bed in the small hours of September 12 (NZST) thinking that nothing was happening. Was I ever wrong. By 6 a.m., a friend had already called me to tell me what had happened in New York and the Pentagon.
I put it up at Lucire, since most of (our) September 12, 2001 revolved around fashion, both at New York Fashion Week and the Wellington Fashion Festival. Your thoughts on the piece are welcome.
If anything, this post was an attempt to figure out whether Vox had been fixed or not. The ‘Compose’ screen came up pretty quickly this attempt, though an earlier attempt resulted in a blank screen after a minute.
Here are some rare cars from Autocade, anyway, since I’m not going to waste the opportunity to blog something. When I started Autocade, I expected some old cars that were around before my lifetime; what I didn’t expect was actually covering a good number of them. Here are some for those pub quiz nights.
Italia 2000 Coupé. 1959–62 (prod. 297 approx.). 2-door coupé. F/R, 1991 cm³ (4 cyl. OHV). Hand-made, rebodied Triumph TR3, with attractive Michelotti-designed bodies by Vignale, shown at Torino in 1958. Made under contract to Ruffino SpA. Never officially a Standard–Triumph model, particularly after Leyland Motors’ takeover and the company’s withdrawal of support. Often referred to as Triumph Italia. Very expensive when new, and not popular; underpowered considering the price, though reasonably competent.
AMC Marlin. 1967 (prod. 2,545). 2-door coupé. F/R, 232 in³ (6 cyl. OHV), 290, 343 in³ (V8 OHV). Marlin shifts to the full-size AMC Ambassador (1967–8) platform, but production dropped further due to poor sales. Deleted after one year. Price up from 1966 as Marlin became a full-size car, with more luxury appointments.
Ford Anglia Torino. 1964–8 (prod. over 10,007). 2-door saloon. F/R, 997 cm³ (4 cyl. OHV). Rebodied Anglia, with body made by OSI of Italy. Created for markets which might have found the original 105E to be too unconventionally styled, but export plans were never realized and the car remains very rare. Doors and front windscreen shared with English Anglia, but other panels new. Michelotti design: attractive to some, ugly to Angliaphiles. Two one-litre engines: standard tune with 41 hp and Torino S with 52 hp from 1965.
Volvo P1900. 1956–7 (prod. 67). 2-door convertible. F/R, 1414 cm³ (4 cyl. OHV).
Flimsy fibreglass convertible from Volvo, with uprated engine shared
with export model of PV444, developing 70 hp. Inspired by American
roadsters of the 1950s, but killed off after new Volvo boss, Gunnar
Engellau, felt the quality was under par.
Oh, wonderful. I can finally get back in to Vox’s compose page. Since my last post, I have written to Six Apart directly, so hopefully they are now alerted about Vox’s recent and frequent problems.
Below are some images I wanted to share. These are from a website at aharef.info, and are plots of the various web pages I fed in to them (see my post at my main blog here). Most of these are web pages our company made or is associated with. Head here to make your own.
To further this point, I made two extra shots since my blog post yesterday. The first is from the Lucire ‘Insider’ page, which is run off PHP:
In 3 News today:
Tomorrow, Labour MP Phil Twyford is putting a private member's bill
before Parliament to protect Auckland’s assets like, for example, Ports
of Auckland. The idea is to require a referendum before any such assets
are privatised when Auckland becomes a single, super city.
He argues the architects of the super city, politicians like ACT’s Rodney Hide, want to sell these assets off.
I guess we never learn.
Oh, didn’t I predict this some time ago?
I remain sceptical. Some feel the amalgamation would make the city less accountable
to ratepayers. Some feel that it’s an excuse to sell of Auckland’s
assets to foreigners, continuing policies that have not enhanced New
Zealand’s industry or society. …
It is nearly never good news if a foreign-owned newspaper reports something as a fait accompli in its headline when the article below it offers nothing to support those words.
Which made me wonder: what agenda does an Irish–Australian newspaper have in this whole thing?
If
you begin looking at it from that point of view, it gives a little bit
more, albeit not much, suspicion to those people who have their doubts
about the technocrats.
A pity, then, that chief among the technocrats philosophically is Labour’s own leader, the increasingly unpopular Phil Goff.
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