Kiwiblog

An Irihsman is upset because when he asked at a bomb scare, what is going on, he was told “You should know with an accent like yours”. Oh that naughty police officer.

He says he can’t understand why someone would make a comment like that. Well maybe because so many Irish used to blow things up!

And no I am not suggesting all Irish are IRA supporters. But just as Kiwis have to put up with jokes about sheep shagging, Irish have to put up with bomb jokes. It’s just the way things are.

Good to see some common sense from ALAC who warn that one can’t just turn the clock back by raising the drinking age.

They point out that before the law change, 2,000 18 and 19 year olds were done for drunk driving every year, despite being under the legal age to buy alcohol.

Remember the old D&D alignments. Well you can do an unofficial test here. I thought I might be more Chaotic Good than Neutral Good, but knew I wouldn’t make Lawful, as I disrespect far too many laws for that.

Hey on the official D&D alignment test, I am Neutral.

Neutral-Good 62% Good, 54% Chaotic

I’m starting a longer version of this test, and I would REALLY appreciate some suggestions for questions from members of all alignments. Please email me with a suggestion, along with the alignment you scored on this test. THANK YOU!! I will make it a seperate test and will include tendencies, kinda like the “Long Scientific Personality Test vs. the Quick and Dirty Personality test. Plane of Existence: Elysium, “Blessed Fields“. Description: The plane of peace. Notable Inhabitants: Guardinals – noble immortal humanoids with bestial features. Examples of Neutral-Goods (Ethically Neutral, Morally Good) Cloud Strife (FFVII) Boogenhagen (FFVII) Mother Theresa Ghandi Sidhartha Gautama (the Buddha) Gandalf Bilbo & Frodo Baggins Samwise Gamgee Indiana Jones The Dali Lama Ben (O-Bi-Wan) Kenobi Luke Skywalker Harry Potter Hermionie Dumbledore Often goes along with the laws and desires of the group as being the easiest course of action, but ethical considerations clearly have top priority. May pursue quite abstract goals. Often aloof and difficult to understand. Will keep their word to others of good alignment Would not attack an unarmed foe Will not use poison Will help those in need May work with others Indifferent to higher authority Indifferent to organizations Neutral Good “Pure Good” “Benefactor” A neutral good [person] will obey the law, or break it when he or she sees it will serve a greater good. He or she is not bound strongly to a social system or order. His or her need to help others and reduce their suffering may take precedence over all else. Neutral good [people] do good for goodness’ sake, not because they are directed to by law or by whim. This alignment desires good without bias for or against order. Other Alignments and Tendencies (Tendenices are what you would more often sway towards; esp. for Neutrals): 0-39% Good, 0-39% Chaotic: Lawful-Evil 0-39% Good, 40-60% Chaotic: Neutral-Evil 0-39% Good, 61-100% Chaotic: Chaotic-Evil 40-60% Good, 0-39% Chaotic: Lawful-Neutral 40-60% Good, 40-60% Chaotic: True Neutral 40-60% Good, 61-100% Chaotic: Chaotic-Neutral 61-100% Good, 0-39% Chaotic: Lawful-Good 61-100% Good, 61-100% Chaotic: Chaotic-Good

The NZ Herald has done a poll on clothing. Pleased to see that only 25% of people think men should have to wear a tie in an office. Hear hear.

In the same poll 23% of men and 18% of women say women are taking more seriously if they wear trousers. Good to see such small proportions for such a silly view. As Ali Mau says, you should judge people off their skills not what they wear.

Admittedly if someone turns up to work in a micro-skirt and singlet every day, then they may have some issues, just as a guy in gym gear would also.

Richard @ Philosophy, et cetera proposes NZ should have compulsory voting. His reasons are well stated in the post.

I am against compulsory voting. If you make something compulsory it means you fine or sanction people who don’t do it. I don’t think fining hundreds of thousands of NZers for not voting is a good idea. Likewise I don’t regard fining adults who don’t wear a seat-belt as a good thing. I would however support insurance companies having exclusions for injuries for people who don’t wear one and get injured in a crash,

Anyway back to compulsory voting. For a start it doesn’t always get huge turnouts. In Greece in 1996 turnout was only 76%. Now they only make it compulsory for those under 70, but still a low turn-out. It also highlights the issue of age – do we really want to fine the 88 year old who decides not to vote because it is freezing cold outside, and they don’t have a car? Will that reason be accepted as why not to vote?

Even in Australia where federal election turnout is over 90% due to compulsory voting, the state election turnouts can be as low as 17%, even though they are also compulsory!

Again in Australia, 95% of those who don’t vote offer an excuse for not voting and are not fined. Do we really want an army of bureaucrats deciding whether or not an excuse is good enough, so someone isn’t fined for not voting?

Finally there is a much more fun way to encourage people to vote

Dilbert is a compulsory daily view for me, and it is great that one can get an RSS feed from Daily Dilbert so one has it delivered to you. I also love Calvin & Hobbes which has sadly ended.

Anyway apart from getting Dilbert every day, it’s creator – Scott Adams – also has a blog. I’ve been reading for a few weeks and it’s great. You can see how his mind works, which leads to the genius which is Dilbert.

Today he suggests that to liven up the next gathering you are at, you should ask the adults who is holier – Mother Teresa or Bill Gates, and ask the kids who would win if Santa Claus fought Jesus – and then tell Grandpa the answer.

Heh heh. Great ideas.

MSN Messenger users beware. That MSN Messenger 8 beta is probably a virus.

Fran O’Sullivan writes about how the BNZ is not only failing to heed the requests from the Reserve Bank to reduce household debt, but is taking an ultra-assertive stance with their staff being encouraged to push loans even at Xmas Parties and summer BBQs!

I think the Reserve Bank has a problem. It failed to act when it needed to, to keep inflation low, and now that it is over 3%, it is being ignored by the banks (which is their right).

One of the Liberal Party Vice-Presidents has resigned his posts, after media highlighted his blog postinsg which included comparing NDP candidate Olivia Chow to a dog called Chow Chow.

Stories like this one really rile me. Just as some Muslim groups in the UK tried to get rid of Holocaust Memorial Day, a collection of “cultural organisations” in Canada is warning the Governor-General off being the patron of the proposed Canadian Museum for Human Rights.

Why?

Because they think there will be too much focus on the Holocaust.

God forbid a museum dedicated to human rights have a focus on the Holocaust. Perhaps like their friend, the President of Iran, they deny it ever happened.

The Google staff get to do fun stuff. They pooled in for a big order of silly putty and ended up with 250 pounds of it. Messy!

The (conservative) Media Research Centre has published its annual awards for the year’s worst reporting. There are seven pages (pdf) of winners and runners-up.

Classics are:

“The day I say Dick Cheney is going to run for President, I’ll kill myself. All we need is one more liar.” – Hearst White House columnist Helen Thomas

CNN’s Jack Cafferty: What should Karl Rove do if he is indicted …?
Blitzer:But, you know, it’s still a big if. It’s still a big if.
Cafferty: Oh, I understand. I’m, I’m just hoping, you know. I love, I love to see those kinds of things happen. It does wonders for me.

“I don’t have a clue as to whether [former House Majority Leader Tom] DeLay violated the law or not, this very old Texas statute that he’s been indicted on, but I do know it’s he first time in 200 years that the House of Representatives has been run for a whole decade, or almost a decade, by corrupt zealot.”- Nwsweek Senior Editor Jonathan Alter

FNC reporter Steve Harrigan: I think there’s going to be a bloodbath on Sunday….All over the place, especially in Baghdad and a few other cities.”
On FNC’s Fox & Friends, January 28, two days before Iraq’s largely peaceful elections.

And finally we have this from the founder of CNN, on how good life is in North Korea:

Ted Turner: I am absolutely convinced that the North Koreans are absolutely sincere. There’s really no reason for them to cheat [on nukes]….I looked them right in the eyes. And they looked like they meant the truth. You know, just
because somebody’s done something wrong in the past doesn’t mean they can’t do right in the future or the present. That happens all the, all the time.
Wolf Blitzer: But this is one of the most despotic regimes and Kim Jong-Il is one of the worst men on Earth. Isn’t that a fair assessment?
Turner: Well, I didn’t get to meet him, but he didn’t look in the pictures that I’ve seen of him on CNN, he didn’t look too much different than most other people.
Blitzer: But, look at the way, look at the way he’s, look at the way he’s treating his own people.
Turner: Well, hey, listen. I saw a lot of people over there. They were thin and they were riding bicycles instead of driving in cars, but-
Blitzer: A lot of those people are starving.
Turner: I didn’t see any, I didn’t see any brutality….

UPDATE: Francis Till also has awards for the most skewed and biased coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Yay it snowed. A proper white Christmas. A very quiet day where I spent around an hour playing with Molly in the snow, and otherwise just read books or viewed DVDs.

The family I

I can’t believe Wanganui Police charged a man with careless driving and a woman for not wearing a seatbelt, just because they were, umm, on the same seat. Hey let them enjoy Xmas!

Apart from some DVD shopping (can purchase legal DVDs for under $10 each) I finally got to see The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. It was as I expected

The Whig has started up a Hayley Westenra for Ralph Campaign. This has been a long running obsession of his

Only caught up with this today, as I had been away from news for the last two days. His final hours are recounted here.

Some of his better quotes are here.

Packer may not be a household name in NZ, but in Australia he was huge. Purely on the wealth side he clocked in at A$6.5 billion. He once lost A$28 million at casions over three weeks, but also once made $33 million at anotehr casino.

As a media owner he had most of his fame. When Australia’s Naughtiest Home Videos had its inaugural appearance on one of his stations, he disliked it so much he called them up and demanded they stop showing it mid-broadcast!

He also helped bring about a revolution in Cricket, the one-day game.

Reuters has an article on UN funding. A group comprising of the EU, Japan, US, Canada, Australia and NZ have agreed to six months of funding capped at US$950 million, while a group of 133 countries are demanding that nine months be committed. The former group want to use the time limit to keep reform on the agenda.

Now how much does each group contribute, well here we go:

EU 35%
US 22%
Japan 19.5%
Canada 2.8%
Australia 1.6%
NZ 0.2%

Total 81.1%

So the 133 countries which contribute less than 20% are demanding the countries which contribute over 80% must commit for longer. Hmmn sounds like taxation almost

Murray at Silent Running has been building. I suggest that if you ever see one Murray near the Beehive with this, one evacuates it

In reading the article in which London Mayor “Red” Ken Livingstone condemns the RMT transport union for their planned New Year’s Eve strike, I do have to laugh at the irony of the unions pissing off even Ken Livingstone. I mean he has been as far left as one can go without being George Galloway.

Well I never said it was all bad, having to spend Xmas in Canada

This is Kelly, who apart from being a charming Hooters waitress, is also a wrestler!

Heh and one has to laugh at the sign at the entrance
(more…)

Fascinating Joi Ito reports the French National Assembly has legalised non-commercial file sharing, in exchange for an annual fee which would go to copyright holders. Sort of like the old TV licence fee.

It may yet be over-turned. Not sure if I quite support a general annual fee, but I certainly want to see a system where one can pay and download legal TV shows, music and movies. Until people have the legal alternative, illegal file-sharing will flourish.

Parking Wardens are not my favourite group of people. Only their cousins in the tow truck industry are less likely to have my favour.

However the Police are IMO absolutely correct not to be prosecuting some Wellington ones for not ticketing each other’s cars etc.

These may be employment issues, but not criminal ones. The bribery allegations sound serious, but as they say we are talking about a couple of non-organised incidents. And wardens do get a lot of pressure not to ticket someone.

Tyler Cowan at Marginal Revolution has a short interesting piece on the commonality of some people not liking blogs and Wikipedia.

He concludes it is “Because these systems operate on the alien logic of probabilistic statistics, which sacrifices perfection at the microscale for optimization at the macroscale.”

He gives a plain English translation which to my mind is essentially true.

Generation XY has some end of year top ten lists which are a fun read:

* Top Ten Kiwi Males (I’m No 5, only somewhat spoilt by Michael Laws being No 7)
* Top Ten Kiwi Chicks (Cactus Kate No 2, Hayley Westenra No 7)
* Top Ten Pussies (David Benson-Pope No 1)
* Top Ten B**ches (a well known speedster in No 1 for preferring books to rugby!)
* Top Ten Dumb Xmas Presents for Women (Gym Membership is No 4!)