I don’t disagree with that. It’s true. But my point wasn’t that the GI Bill led to the US producing a few great scientists. My point was that it led to producing a whole bunch of competent experts in many different fields. An order of magnitude more than previous. A few great scientists are a wonderful resource but they can’t, by themselves, enable what happened in the US starting in the 50s. It takes a whole bunch of competent scientists, engineers and other experts.

And I’m not so insular as to suggest that the US is unique in this respect. I’ve no doubt that similar episodes have occurred in many places. I’m just talking about the US GI Bill and how positively effective it was.

“The Crusaders made mistakes too”, yes, but very few of them. The Crusaders are a team that when a chance presents itself they take it and score in most cases. And indeed the Lions did not do that. As you said, they dominated possession, but (again as you said) the Crusaders defense kinda knew what would happen next. That is ‘defensive intelligence’. And I said their defense was very solid. That was an understatement. Their defense is outstanding, the best in world rugby, by far.
What distinguishes the Crusaders from other teams? First, of course, ball handling skills, most teams could learn a lesson there. Secondly the intelligent and highly effective defense I referred to earlier. Thirdly a creative attack that translates chances into points (although some other teams are good at that too). And last, but not least, a humungous amount of confidence (for any other team that would be misplaced).
I think (sorry for repeating myself) that the Crusaders are the best now, and they are the backbone of the All Blacks. That promises for the Nations tournament due soon.

We used to have a Ministry of Works that did all building, maintenance, and infrastructure (incl roads, railways etc) for the government. It was expensive and inefficient. There was a huge improvement in cost and quality when the government began to use private contractors. However, 45 years on, there is a bit of a problem when it comes to big, especially tall, buildings. There are very few companies in NZ capable of doing the jobs and so they cut their margins too tight in order to win the contract. Then as soon as something goes wrong, they go bankrupt. Another one closed the doors last week, and other big building companies are struggling. The govt, which contracts c. 20% of big projects, needs to pay more or risk NZ not even having any companies capable of building the really big projects.

Seriously, the US has produced some, nay many, great scientists, but my point was that they also attracted a lot of scientist from all over the World and gave them the opportunity to do great work, from Fermi and Szilard to Mayr. Immigration has been Great for America, and America has been Great for immigrants, until now, it seems.

Still, would it not be possible to present a programme that is ‘tough on prisoners’, while still trying to rehabilitate? Must be. I mean, being a prisoner, having your liberty of movement and schedules taken away is nearly by definition a serious punishment (one of the best descriptions I know is by Herman Charles Bosman- a very under estimated author- :”Cold Stone Jug”).
Although there are certainly some real sociopaths, that are basically impossible to rehabilitate, I think a majority of criminals are not. Privatising jails will not improve that distinction. There is an ‘undue’ interest. Private prisons have an interest to have as many prisoners as possible, so they have a strong incentive not to rehabilitate.

How to formulate it, it is still tentative, but I’m trying to find some heuristic for where privatasation might be useful or not (you may call them nicky’s rules of the thumb, but I’m sure greater minds have pondered about it and formulated it much better):
1 – Any institution/service that virtually needs a monopoly to be used is not a good candidate for ‘privatisation’ (eg. water)
2 – Any institution/service where success reduces it’s necessity, is not a good candidate for privatisation’ (eg. prisons, but the same would go for eg. abortions, make them lucrative, and the incentive to reduce the numbers disappears).
3 – Any institution/service that is basic and where privatasation risks of leaving large swats of the population unable to access is not a good candidate for privitisation (eg. education, health care)
These are all negatives , of course, I’m still pondering about what conditions would make an institution/service a good candidate for privatisation.
[Re privatisation of warfare, we do have Blackwater and mercenaries more generally, nothing new there]

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We can both agree the Aussies are mostly useless, and they’re just there for NZ and SA to fine tune their tactics against each other! Ha ha!

I agree. Lions’ wasted passes, such as the two times they just threw over the sideline. They had a huge advantage in territory and especially possession, but seemed unable to make use of it. That ball that wasn’t kicked dead was another silly mistake.

The Crusaders knew their strength in rucks and scrums were something the Lions relied on and so had tactics ready to counter them. There were times when the Lions would have scored against any other team, but the Crusaders were ready for them.

The Crusaders made mistakes too, but the Lions didn’t appear to have a plan ready for when that happened. It seems to me there wasn’t enough analysis of how to counter the Crusaders.

Having said all that, they played really well, were a really tough opposition, and the game was closer than the score indicated. (And my brother won $50 on the game.) He took his 8yo daughter as well as his son, and they had a wonderful time, which is what it’s all about in the end.

The Crusaders are the most successful super rugby team ever, not only did they win 9 times, the came in second 4 times, and third 4 times, so they ended in the first three in 17 of 23 tournaments.
Compare that to the second best team the Blues, won 3 times (last in 2003), second once and third once.Or the third best team, the Bulls, won 3 times (they never lost a final) and once third.
The Lions are closing in on the Sharks by ending second 3 times, the Sharks ended second 4 times. The Brumbies also ended second 4 times, but did win it once.
The closest score in a final was in 2014, when the Waratahs beat the Crusaders by a single point (33-32), the largest point difference was in 2009, when the Bulls beat the Chiefs 61-17.
(I simply know you like these trivia).

37-18, as expected the Crusaders won. They are simply the best team in world rugby, an ‘oiled machine’. They won 9 of the 23 titles, and looking at their performance today one wonders why they didn’t win more 🙂
The Lions committed quite some unforced errors, and their driving maul from the line-out, one of their great weapons got nowhere, nor did their reputed scrums. I do not think the Lions played their best match today, far from it, but all credit to the Crusaders. They truly deserve to be the Champions.