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| Acmlm's Board - I2 Archive - - Posts by Arwon |
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Arwon Zora Level: 35  Posts: 104/506 EXP: 278115 For next: 1821 Since: 03-15-04 From: Terra Australis Incognita Since last post: 5 hours Last activity: 10 min. |
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| I'm only thinking in terms of "big" acts here, because anyone can rattle off a list of underappreciated local/underground stuff they personally like. That's just obnoxious. I think Talking Heads are a bit under-rated, but that's just me and I think I like it that way. David Byrne himself is under-rated as far as the big old "god-heads" of music go - Bowie, Reed, Dylan, whoever else you care to name, probably because he's a bug-eyed weirdo who sings about television and peanut butter and beer. Byrne has aged far more gracefully than most - his latest album does NOT sound like that of a tired 50 year old. A band that springs to mind as really under-rated are the B-52's. Everyone knows 'Love Shack' and a lot of people know 'Rock Lobster' but their repetoire runs a lot further than that. Off-kilter, zany, always fun, quite original and unclassifiable compared to their contempraries... and they even rose from the ashes after their singer died. They're underestimated. They're still damn fun to see live, too, and apparently still all about the party well into middle age. Over-rated to me would be the quality of having a conventionally "good voice". This covers all sorts of crap. "Bad" voices usually have a lot more personality and style anyway. (edited by Arwon on 08-24-04 09:32 AM) |
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Arwon Zora Level: 35 Posts: 105/506 EXP: 278115 For next: 1821 Since: 03-15-04 From: Terra Australis Incognita Since last post: 5 hours Last activity: 10 min. |
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| The dumbest men in British rock versus wry Mod-ish suburban satire? No contest - Blur wins. They also win for making a neo-disco/dance song (Girls and Boys) seven years before it was "cool" in rock to revive that era. |
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Arwon Zora Level: 35 Posts: 106/506 EXP: 278115 For next: 1821 Since: 03-15-04 From: Terra Australis Incognita Since last post: 5 hours Last activity: 10 min. |
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| The tie-breaker for me is the fact that among Devo's deconstructive covers of these two, "(Can't get no) Satisfaction" (the Stones) is much more enjoyable than the also good "Are You Experienced?" (Hendrix). Stones win via Devo. |
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Arwon Zora Level: 35 Posts: 107/506 EXP: 278115 For next: 1821 Since: 03-15-04 From: Terra Australis Incognita Since last post: 5 hours Last activity: 10 min. |
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Originally posted by Trunxy/Dogan Carlos Moya is Spanish, and he got beaten by the Chilean, Nicolas Massu. He ended up taking gold and the other Chilean, Fernando Gonzalez, took Bronze. Also: Australia has 14 golds, 9 silvers and 14 bronzes. Once we handicap for population to bring them to parity with the US - we find that if Australia had the same population as America, we'd have 196 Golds, 126 Silvers and 196 Bronzes, for a total of 518 medals! Glad to see the team doing so well off-shore. Pity about the rowing disappointments but our cyclists are rocking the velodrome something fierce. Australia v Cuba for the baseball gold tonight, and I think Jana Pittman is running for gold int he 400m hurdles. |
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Arwon Zora Level: 35 Posts: 108/506 EXP: 278115 For next: 1821 Since: 03-15-04 From: Terra Australis Incognita Since last post: 5 hours Last activity: 10 min. |
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| "A champion team will always beat a team of champions" | |||
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Arwon Zora Level: 35 Posts: 109/506 EXP: 278115 For next: 1821 Since: 03-15-04 From: Terra Australis Incognita Since last post: 5 hours Last activity: 10 min. |
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| It was funny hearing the Australian commentators trying to disguise the giddy sense of glee in their voices as the US lost to Argentina. They were sort of trying to be objective journalists... but with their being involved with basketball, and having suffered many losses at the hands of the US Basketball team, they just sounded so happy that America lost. Particularly Andrew Gaze, former Australian captain, shouting "WELL, THE DREAM IS OVER". Women's basketball gold medal game tonight - Australia vs America. We'll see how that goes, though the US must be the favourites to win it. EmptyEye: I like that quote - what paper is it? Can you link to the article if it is online? |
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Arwon Zora Level: 35 Posts: 111/506 EXP: 278115 For next: 1821 Since: 03-15-04 From: Terra Australis Incognita Since last post: 5 hours Last activity: 10 min. |
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| I nearly protest voted against Ben Folds for that song 'Brick' which annoys me so. But then I remembered that he has since helped William Shatner put out a new album, so he can't be all bad. (edited by Arwon on 09-01-04 12:24 AM) |
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Arwon Zora Level: 35 Posts: 112/506 EXP: 278115 For next: 1821 Since: 03-15-04 From: Terra Australis Incognita Since last post: 5 hours Last activity: 10 min. |
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Originally posted by Raistlin the Red Robed Some nations do manage. Costa Rica manages with nothing but a National Guard type organisation consisting of just over 8000 people, in the middle of such turbulent and militarised countries as Guatemala and Panama. If you didn't have a formal military, or had a much smaller and weaker one, the National Guard units would probably end up the main repository of American military strength and be much better amred/trained etc. |
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Arwon Zora Level: 35 Posts: 113/506 EXP: 278115 For next: 1821 Since: 03-15-04 From: Terra Australis Incognita Since last post: 5 hours Last activity: 10 min. |
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| Costa Rica is probably very politically neutral and inward looking. They don't really have any "allies" in the way you mean as far as I am aware. I suppose that Guatemala and most other countries in the region are too wrapped up in their own issues (or wars with each other) to particuarly bother with a peaceful stable relatively (say, Brazil-level) prosperous country in their midst, especially when it's a pretty peaceful (as far as nation vs nation conflicts go) part of the world. Plus their neighbours are not that powerful, and the USA has never bothered to invade or intervene there, unlike most other Central and South American countries. Now, just to clarify, I'm not making any sort of moral argument here about the need for a large military or lack of need for one, or anything like that. Just arguing that "militia" are not inherently a "joke" and pointing out that if America didn't have such a large formal federal army it would have accrued strength through whatever it did have - be that a state-based militia or a semi-professional conscription-based force or whatever... I'm not even suggesting what I am speaking of as a viable alternative set-up in the present day, just another way things might have developed over the last 200 years or so in moderately different circumstances. (I imagine the Civil War was important to the primacy of the federal armed forces over any state-based forces, for example). (edited by Arwon on 09-02-04 08:55 AM) (edited by Arwon on 09-02-04 08:57 AM) |
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Arwon Zora Level: 35 Posts: 114/506 EXP: 278115 For next: 1821 Since: 03-15-04 From: Terra Australis Incognita Since last post: 5 hours Last activity: 10 min. |
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| I'm pretty genre-hopping, but in the age of the internet, who isn't? Let's say: late 70s Rock/Punk/New Wave, and other sorts of Rock - bunches of Indie pop stuff, and lots of stuff with sharp angular guitar with bounciness. And other stuff too, but broadly under the banner of "rock". I have no time at all for "loud and angry for the sake of loud and angry" and stuff like Korn and System of a Down and Slipknot and Limp Bizkit and so forth pretty much blur together for me as "Angstpop" and I have distaste for it. Also, lately I've been sampling and digging some various Classical (Mussorgsky and Shostakovich, for now - next project is acquiring some Mahler). But, of course, there's always expections to my attempts to describe my music in terms of genre and aesthetic. I haven't even touched on the Klezmatics, for example... (edited by Arwon on 09-02-04 09:20 AM) |
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Arwon Zora Level: 35 Posts: 115/506 EXP: 278115 For next: 1821 Since: 03-15-04 From: Terra Australis Incognita Since last post: 5 hours Last activity: 10 min. |
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| You guys need to separate the congressional races and the presidential race in your minds. They're two different elections that work differently. Congressmen are elected from a district or electorate, the President eis elected by winning the most electoral college votes which are somewhat determined by the popular vote but not really. The problem with the presidential election is it's an all or nothing proposition. Someone either wins the election or they don't. Ultimately a whole bunch of people aren't going to get their candidate in. This won't hugely change whether you go with the electoral college or popular vote. That's the problem with the executive branch in countries that elect one (ie, not Britain or Australia). To me, the far more important issue in the US is the lack of preferential (aka single transferrable vote, aka instant runoff) voting in any elections. This leads to the "A vote for Nader is a vote for Bush" thing because you can't indicate an order of preference for candidates, you just pick one and that's it. Oh, then there's the whole ridiculously low turn-out thing, and the fact that the Presidential cabinet is unelected and unaccountable, if you wanna talk about other things making the system less democratic. |
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Arwon Zora Level: 35 Posts: 116/506 EXP: 278115 For next: 1821 Since: 03-15-04 From: Terra Australis Incognita Since last post: 5 hours Last activity: 10 min. |
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| I, um, like the two really well known Outkast songs (BOB and Hey Ya)... yeah. I should sample some more, actually. Anyone got any other Outkast song recommendations? | |||
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Arwon Zora Level: 35 Posts: 117/506 EXP: 278115 For next: 1821 Since: 03-15-04 From: Terra Australis Incognita Since last post: 5 hours Last activity: 10 min. |
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| Firstly, there's the seemingly obvious point that you can't have a coalitional government in the office of president... Now, the thing to remember is that instant runoff voting by itself doesnt automatically result in more parties and coalition government arrangements. We have 3 major parties, but the Liberals and Nationals are in permanent coalition. Between those two and Labor, they hold all but 4 of the 150 seats in the House of Reps. This is partly because we use an electorate based system, like the US uses for congressmen - you vote for a congressman to represent your district. Most people in any given area vote for the major parties so except in rare instances the Libs, Nats or Labor win the seat. In the senate though, there's a proportional system by state - 12 senators from each state are elected, according to what percentage of the vote they get in the entire state (there's an obscure runoff system in place, too). Again, the major parties hold most senate seats but there are more minor party members of the senate (Democrats, Greens, and some independants) and between them they hold the balance of power. A couple of Greens or Democrats or assorted others usually win enough of the vote to get in, since if you divide 100% by 12, you don't get a huge percentage and even then it doesn't work out that you need exactly that many. This arrangement, brought in initially by one major party to screw over another (O the irony), forces the Government to negotiate with minor party and indie senators (or the other major party) to get legislation though, forming a fairly effective counterbalance to the power of the House of Reps. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~`` What I find interesting is how our system evolved differently, from similar origins, than Canada's or New Zealand's. New Zealand, I believe, is unicameral but elected paritally by proportional representation. Canada's senate of course very weak and a big joke really, while ours is very strong and robust, so their government of the day is probably stronger than ours. But, on the flipside, their provinces are a lot stronger against the federal government than our states are. We developed different to them for a variety of reasons, despite coming from broadly similar political and cultural traditions. This just goes to illustrate that structure and official reforms are only one part of what forms a political culture iin a country - tradition, precedent, convention, history and circumstance all result in different and perhaps unexpected outcomes from a given system. |
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Arwon Zora Level: 35 Posts: 118/506 EXP: 278115 For next: 1821 Since: 03-15-04 From: Terra Australis Incognita Since last post: 5 hours Last activity: 10 min. |
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| No, most of South America excluding Brazil, as well as Liberia (and I think the Philipines), also have broadly similar systems modelled on the US, wherein the President is both Head of State and Head of Government and wields a lot of executive power pretty much on his own. Most newly independent Latin American nations modelled themselves to some extent on the USA. This model is usually called the "presidential system" (or "congressional") of republican government, as opposed to the "parliamentary system" like say Ireland or India, where the head of the Legislature (Prime Minister or Premier usually) wields most of the executive power and the president is largely ceremonial, a figurehead who is very very beholden and answerable to the parliament (or congress, or diet). There's probably some specific differences between the US and those Latin American nations and Liberia, of course, as there are between any two countries, but they're, basically, pretty similar systems. |
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Arwon Zora Level: 35 Posts: 119/506 EXP: 278115 For next: 1821 Since: 03-15-04 From: Terra Australis Incognita Since last post: 5 hours Last activity: 10 min. |
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Originally posted by S-T/D Ikea, peace, and the Hives? Well, one out of three ain't bad. |
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Arwon Zora Level: 35 Posts: 120/506 EXP: 278115 For next: 1821 Since: 03-15-04 From: Terra Australis Incognita Since last post: 5 hours Last activity: 10 min. |
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| I voted America becuase I have friends there, and because California is a fun place. ...and because I hear that Sweden has a really high suicide rate. |
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Arwon Zora Level: 35 Posts: 121/506 EXP: 278115 For next: 1821 Since: 03-15-04 From: Terra Australis Incognita Since last post: 5 hours Last activity: 10 min. |
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| Apparently not, I just looked it up on the WHO's website. It's pretty equal to Australia's. Except Sweden has a few more girls and a few less boys kill themselves than Australia does. Statistics. Russia, Belarus, the Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Hungary, Latvia, Sri Lanka, and especially Lithuania, have much higher rates. (edited by Arwon on 09-08-04 06:19 AM) |
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Arwon Zora Level: 35 Posts: 122/506 EXP: 278115 For next: 1821 Since: 03-15-04 From: Terra Australis Incognita Since last post: 5 hours Last activity: 10 min. |
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| Um, Americans pay more per capita for healthcare and health insurance than every other wealthy country in the world... And, that "mix" is not a mix of oil and water... it's reality. Everywhere. Countries just get the ratios a little different. And finally, be very careful with the word "liberalism" because in Europe a "liberal" is either a centrist, a libertarian type, or a right-of-centre type or someting of a nexus of the three. They're generally pretty big on free markets. More like classical liberalism. (edited by Arwon on 09-09-04 11:49 AM) (edited by Arwon on 09-09-04 11:52 AM) |
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Arwon Zora Level: 35 Posts: 123/506 EXP: 278115 For next: 1821 Since: 03-15-04 From: Terra Australis Incognita Since last post: 5 hours Last activity: 10 min. |
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| What do you mean "you" social democrats? I'm Australian! We don't have a social democrat party! Now, health care. As you have pointed out, healthcare in the US is pretty inextricably linked to the massive sums of money the US govenrment provides for research and such. Given this, why not simply admit that America's health care system has heavy state influence like the rest of ours, taxpayers are footing the bill, and stop pretending like it's a free market? Maybe then with this admission, the govenrment could actually have some control to go along with its funding, there'd be more of a focus on the end user and better care for the average patient? And lower costs. ...and yes, as you point out, health insurance exists anyway. But you know what? 40% of Americans don't have it. Do you know how many Australians lack health insurance? NONE. We still have private healthcare and insurance for those who can afford it and can be bothered... and in many ways are that middle ground between the US and Canada/Europe. I have my medicare card, that entitles me to use the public health system. It's nice and simple, and I like that simplicity. But the difference is, that minimum medicare net is enough for a lot of people, and it is there for things other than "I just got shot and I have no private insurance". Know what it costs? 1% of each person's income - there's a separate levy to pay for it. Do the math - for someone earning 50000 dollars that's 500 dollars a year. Less than a third what the average American spends once you do the currency conversion. (about 1200 a year off the top of my head, in US currency, or about 1800 Australian dollars) No, the system isn't perfect, you can never cover every need of every person perfectly... but the system is humane and it functions adequately. In the end, I think it's the belief that this is a more important consideration than raw "efficiency" and picky notions of absolute freedom, or at least that these two things aren't the only considerations, that make a society a society rather than a group of unconnected individuals. Health insurance and healthcare and pharmaceuticals has always struck me as a massive market fKitten Yiffer, anyway, because those who need it the most can usually afford it the least, and because there's such a massive govenrment involvement pretty much inevitably because it's got so many non-economic factors involved. Like, you know, basic "people not dying in the streets" ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ And oil and water - who says you can't mix ideologies, why can't countries pull pieces from all different views rather than picking one ideology and applying it to an absolutist extent? Society and government are very multi-faceted piecemeal things, we do it everywhere, we all have mixed-market economies in every country, we balance different ideals, different points of view, limited resources, and the resulting morass somehow functions pretty well, whether it's in America's chosen mix or Sweden's or Australia's or whoever's. I'd also argue that "socialist" and "capitalist" ideologies (of course it's NOT an "either/or" thing and there's lots of different conceptions of "capitalist" or "socialist") aren't necessarily incompatible, they just focus on very different aspects of society. Speaking in broadest most stereotypical terms - the "capitalist" ideology is concerned with competition and the "top end" and has almost no answer for the "losers" and for poverty and anything noneconomic like externalities, views people as a resource and the environment as a freebie... while the "socialist" view couldn't care less about businesses and competition and markets, and instead wants basic standards of decency and humanity and, broadly, minimum standards - sees only the losers and the damages caused by market forces, looks out for those who can't compete, etc. And sees the environment as a freebie. They don't seem so incompatible to me - just different focusses and different strengths. (edited by Arwon on 09-09-04 12:45 PM) |
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Arwon Zora Level: 35 Posts: 124/506 EXP: 278115 For next: 1821 Since: 03-15-04 From: Terra Australis Incognita Since last post: 5 hours Last activity: 10 min. |
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| Been reading Ayn Rand recently, have you, hhallahh? Now, I usually launch into a rant about social contracts, why the government is slightly different to a pack of thugs that steals from you, etc, but I am tired and spent all my writing flair on a post about gun laws and the gun debate, elsewhere. Just assume I'm arguing that communities do exist, this objectivist selfishness stuff misses huge chunks of the picture - humans are social creatures as well as individuals, and governments and communal-good-minded notions are a natural and inevitable outgrowth of this every bit as much as ideas about individual liberty are. Assume I also make reference to how we tried it the other way in the 19th and early 20th centry, we tried it totally lessaiz faire, and it didn't work and life kinda sucked mostly, and lots of people fought to get to where we are today, with our "terribly unjust" minimum wages and our healthcare nets and our unemployment benefits and stuff, they didn't just spring up from nowhere - that "people don't die in the streets" is justification enough for all this, and that the radical libertarian/objectivist mindset needs to be tempered with some history. Griping about taxes is understandable but it's not a war of freaking liberation. Your argument that the ideals are incompatible flies in the face of manifest reality in every country in the developed world.The fact that we have market capitalism - I can go to the uspermarket and buy lots of different things - and that we also have socialistic programs even in America, pretty much is all the counter-argument I need. You say they're incompatable, I say look around you. (edited by Arwon on 09-10-04 08:36 AM) |
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| Acmlm's Board - I2 Archive - - Posts by Arwon |
