January 31, 2010
TV hates good teachers
It appears that television shows that have a school as part of their setting have an aversion to “good” teachers. If ever a new or previously unseen teacher comes to the fore as an inspirational, entertaining, wonderful figure, he (it’s always a he) is actually a bad person and will be discredited and shooed off in short order. My personal theory about this is that:
- it's not dramatic to have something bad happen to a normal or bad teacher, because no one will take their side in the first place; and
- the writers have no idea what a school would look like if such a teacher stuck around and had an influence on the children.
Of course, as far as I can remember I am basing this entirely off an episode of My So-called Life and an epidoe of Veronica Mars, but I would be not at all surprised to find it elsewhere.
September 13, 2009
New Urbanism lecture
I recommend this lecture on urbanism by Andrés Duany. While the talk centres on suburban sprawl in the USA, it is relevant and interesting in other contexts.
September 07, 2009
Heard on the bus
Two young women, after a tentative back and forth about whether each went to church, and what sort of church (one used to go to a Catholic church, then to a Presbyterian one because it was the only one nearby), the following:
But they said that my family was going to Hell, and I didn’t want to be the only one in Heaven, so I stopped going to church.
I really want to hear stories about the good clergy, the insightful priests, the pastors who care for their flock and follow in the footsteps of Christ.
August 14, 2008
Why listen to this man?
In an interview on Shine TV (an evangelical Christian station) with John Key, conducted by Bob McCoskrie, John Key had the following to say about legalising prostitution:
There was a part of me that said, well look, mainly women but woman and men find themselves in that position and it’s a terrible position and how can we help them. But then on the other side of the coin I thought, what sort of message does it send when parents have to go and tell their children, well technically it's legal and it sends completely the wrong message in our society in my view.
I don’t know, maybe it would send the message that you care about helping people who need help? And society frowns on or would rather not have lots of things that aren’t illegal. Should we think of the children and make being poor illegal? How about divorce? How about telemarketing?
And really, if you’re going to spout off on morality, legality and prostitution from a position of privilege, the least you can do is ask, “what would Jesus Christ do?”, and then shut the fuck up because you’re a sanctimonious hypocrite.
John Key, you fail at living according to Christian principles, at being a decent human being, and you fail at thinking clearly.
May 14, 2008
I am a convert
Since I first learned anything about web statistics (that is, statistics relating to website usage), I have treated them as tainted goods, and — perhaps as a consequence — been forced to generate and interpret them as part of work since 2001. This has only increased my loathing, not so much of web stats, as of those who have any unalloyed appreciation of them.
However, I have finally seen them in their true glory. logstalgia presents Apache log files as a game of Pong — which can be run against live server logs. This is sheer genius (a request that returns a 404 passes through, rather than bouncing off the bat); the only thing that it lacks is sound.