Most Evil Supermarket - Take Your Pick

This week, The Warehouse Extra introduced a third supermarket option to New Zealanders for the first time in many years. Glossy brochures from Progressive flew into our letterbox and cosy duopoly prices flew out the window. But I won't be going to any Progressive stores; my resentment is too great at the ease with which they could match TWE's pricing (but curiously only at the Sylvia Park store).

I had barely come to terms with my fury at being overcharged all this time when Foodstuffs made their bid for The Warehouse. There was nowhere left to go but apoplexy over this news. Fortunately they failed to make a significant dent, not even reaching a position that would prevent a takeover by another company.

I guess Progressive will have to be subbed off and replaced by Foodstuffs in my boycott team.

Road Pricing Study for Auckland

Congestion control feels like a secondary consideration in this document. It's very clear that Treasury refuses to allow debt to be taken on for public transport capital expenditure, so it has to be funded from taxes. Frankly Treasury can kiss my furry little butt.

But in the event that their intrasigence wins the day then I would plump for a daily parking surcharge because it would be cheap to administer and has at least some correlation to congestion (as opposed to a fuel surcharge). It would have to apply over a large proportion of the region to be fair and effective.

Businesses will howl because they'd find it difficult to pass the cost on to employees and customers without losing them. Too bad I say - so many employers make no effort to promote public transport usage. I know of unenlightened employers who reimburse employee parking costs but not public transport costs.

It would be infuriating if any of this money got diverted into things other than public transport. Actually I think it would be untenable for any non maintenance or safety related road spending to take place during the pt infrastructure buildout. So just hand it over Transit :)

In Praise of Top-Posting

• Threads are structured according to relevance.

Top-posting effectively provides a drill-down structure with the most recent messages at the top. If you don't care about the context, the latest info is right there in front of you. If you do want to see the history, the scrolling effort is proportional to how far back you want to go.

• Messages remain coherent instead of being scattered throughout a thread.

There are many instances where the exact content of someone's message needs to be referred to, complete with header. How do you do this if the message is inline-scattered?

I'm not aware of any commonly used messaging system that manages individual points and replies within a message. And why would it? The elements of a thread are individual characters grouped into messages. Any intermediate groupings would be totally arbitrary.

• Weak-brained people who can't mentally flip mirror images or visualise the fourth dimension are screwed.

Reverse-order contributions seem to throw some people, particularly Usenet old-timers. We need less of these people contributing to threads anyway :)

The law maketh the man

I'm rather too quick to slag off New Zealanders in general and Aucklanders in particular as being deeply suburban and too unsophisticated to invest in anything other than property. In truth their attitudes are the result of severe biases in the tax system and town/transport planning.

Deaf culture isn't listening

In my teens, I felt insecure, unpopular and poorly equipped for social success. In my misery I reached out to music that spoke to me, and what it said was "I'm insecure, unpopular and poorly equipped for social success, but I'm not apologising to anyone!" I had found the emotional crutch I needed to help me out of my rut.

However it was very easy to become dependent on such a helpful prop, and part of my personality was shrivelling as a consequence. It took me until my mid twenties to finally cast it aside and accept that I shouldn't limit myself by identifying so strongly with my shortcomings.

The analogy to deaf culture should be obvious.

World Baseball Classic...can't wait.

Apparently, in March there's going to be a Baseball "World Cup".

In the words of Maurice Le Point: "there is a fine line between playing baseball and standing in a pasture dressed like an idiot"

I've found the evil prick who created Family Health Diary

But no-one else seems to have. Go visit and write him a nice comment, he doesn't seem to have any.