Kiwiblog

Just been told that Monteiths are giving away a free case of (24 stubbies) beer to the best commenters on blogs in the Ffunnell advertising network, that contribute to their Worth Talking Over site.

Their site grabs contributions from the various blogs, and puts them into speech bubbles, as a way of highlighting the debates. The site is very well done – in fact it pulls contents from blogs. from Twitter and even the old Usenet groups.

Anyway what it means is I get to pick a commenter who will get two dozen stubbies as a prize. Sadly I can not pick myself

If Expat can send me by e-mail their name, address, phone and a statement they are aged over 18 (this is a legal requirement), then they will get a pleasant delivery in a few days.

A friend sent me a link to these photos.

Well you can’t tie me kangaroo down, but you can try and eat a wallaby if you are a greedy snake.

Now you look at that and think no way is that snake going to fit that wallaby inside him/her.

Score one for the snake.

Another year gone already!

The consumption pattern has been:

1. 2003 – 325 bottles (0% stelvins)
2. 2004 – 393 bottles (0% stelvins)
3. 2005 – 392 bottles (3.8% stelvins)
4. 2006 – 456 bottles (17.7% stelvins)
5. 2007 – 496 bottles (21.9% stelvins)
6. 2008 – 512 bottles (46.9% stelvins)
7. 2009 – 517 bottles (76.3% stelvins)

I hasten to add these are not all mine, but from a group of us!

People are welcome to guess (by 18 Feb) the total number of stoppers, and also the percentage that are stelvins.

Couldn’t get a close up, but these guys and gals have done a great job with their Avatar costumes.

Dom Post also has photos here.

That’s a great costume, captured by the Dom Post.

I suspect Cops quite enjoy being scheduled on for Sevens duty!

The NZ Herald also has photos here. Also here.

A Herald photo. Very cool costumes that probably were quite easy to do.

Also Scoop has photos.

Being a Sevens photographer must be a fun job!

I’ve been asked to blog to see if there are many Mainlanders who would be keen to emulate Auckland and have a regular drinks gathering for bloggers and blog readers in and near Christchurch.

If people are keen, can they comment here and/or e-mail Mark.

Mark suggests a initial gathering in late February, while the weather is still good.

If they get off the ground, I’ll try and co-ordinate my travels to coincide where possible.

A friend e-mailed this to me. I have excised the name of the poor seller!

Beerologist Neil Miller asks the politicians their favourite beers. In summary:

• John Key – Bath Gem, a tasty ale from Bristol
• Phil Goff – Emerson’s Pilsner
• David Garrett – Stella Artois and Macs Gold
• Jim Anderton – Speights and Stella Artois
• Peter Dunne – Guinness, Heineken and Macs Gold
• Russel Norman – Founder’s Redhead and Tall Blonde
• Metiria Turei – Green Man Pils

A reader highlighted the post at the Volokh Conspiracy:

In a decision issued today (here is an alternate link to the decision), the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld a Wisconsin prison’s rule forbidding inmates to play Dungeons & Dragons or possess D&D publications and materials [HT: Josh Blackman].

The prison’s rationale for the ban is that playing D&D might stimulate “gang activity” by inmates. But the government conceded that there is no evidence that Dungeons and Dragons actually had stimulated gang activity in the past, either in this prison or elsewhere. The only evidence for the supposedly harmful effects of Dungeons and Dragons were a few cases from other states where playing the game supposedly led inmates to indulge in “escapism” and become divorced from reality

Hell now I know one can be banned from playing D&D in prison, I’m going to start obeying the law. No more bank robberies for me if it means I can’t visit the Prime Material Plane!

Mind you I am surprised the prison authorities needed to ban D&D playing in prison. I would have thought the high risk of being beaten to a pulp by the other prisoners would be a suitable deterrent!

Cactus Kate names her number – 15, while commenting on Warren Beatty’s number of 12,775. Cactus notes:

And before he blogs on the subject, six of the 15 men know David Farrar hence why I am very nice to David. He is above all (and remember this girls) a very good referral source and dating agency as he knows a huge amount of centre-right wing thinking men . Being exceptionally nice to him assists in keeping his gob shut.

Heh. She makes me sound like a pimp.

As I have been single the vast majority of that time, the reason the count is not higher is the difference between men and women I guess. I just can’t be bothered. That is, I would rather repeat with one of the 15 I know and actually liked than find new ones.

This is a big difference. Unless you are in love/lust with someone, a guy often loses interest after the score. Not all men of course, but a reasonable number. To some degree it is built in I reckon for the survival of the species – we’ve just learn over the centuries to practice monogamy.

The Sydney Morning Herald (h/t Lindsay Mitchell) reports:

As we all know, hooking up for casual sex is bad for young people because it causes emotional or psychological damage.

Right?

Well, actually, no. At least not for young adults between the ages of 18 and 24, according to a new study by University of Minnesota researchers.

Even they found the results startling.

They asked more than 1300 young Minnesota adults about their most recent sexual encounters, their self-esteem and their emotional wellbeing. Interestingly, only about one-fifth of the subjects said their last encounter was casual. But their overall emotional status was no different than the four-fifths who said they were in committed relationships with their most recent sexual partner.

“We were so surprised,” said Marla Eisenberg, an assistant professor at the university’s School of Public Health who studies adolescent and young adult health.

“The conventional wisdom is that casual sex, ‘friends with benefits’, is hurtful. That’s what we’ve been teaching kids for decades,”, she said.

So friends with benefits is now officially deemed beneficial!

A wee while ago I was approached by Asia Pacific Breweries Ltd and asked if I would like to host a “responsible drinking” or “drink savvy” party, and blog about it.

This sounded a fun challenge, even without the chance to win a trip for two to Aussie thrown in. Any excuse for a party, as they say.

Now a drink savvy party is a bit more of a challenge than a normal party. Anyone can arrange a normal party – just just text a dozen mates and say BYO

So a planning committee of myself, Chris and Amie was convened. We decided to hold it at Chris and Amie’s as they have a sheltered back yard, ideal for parties.

The first decision was the date. Initially I was thinking New Years Eve, but figured that it is more fun on NYE to just head into town for the big parties. So we decided to have the party on New Years Day itself – a sort of recovery from the night before party.

Figured after NYE, people wouldn’t want to be up too late, so we have gone for a start time of 4 pm – enjoy some afternoon sun.

Then came the big challenge. As readers will know I’m not greatly into nanny state restrictions around alcohol sales etc, and am a free market sort of person.

So that got me thinking – free markets work best with perfect information. So the drinks for the party would be clearly arranged to allow party goers to make the best decisions for themselves, rather than nanny state.

We decided to put together three mixtures of punch:

1. A non-alcoholic punch, knowns as the drivers’ punch. Very yummy but alcohol free, so drivers of all ages are safe to drive
2. A punch with a bit of a kick, known as the passengers’ punch. This would be ideal for those who just have to get into and out of a car to get home. Allows them to have fun, without worry.
3. The third punch would be an in-between punch – alcoholic, but not too strong. I wanted to call this the cyclists’ punch , but in the end we settled for calling it the pedestrians’ punch. If you are walking home, you want to be happy, but not too happy.

Following this theme, we also went for three types of beer:

1. 1% low alcohol beer
2. Normal 4% beer
3. A few selected bottles of Bavarian beer – details in a later post

So I got dispatched to the supermarket for the party purchases. The list:

• 2 kg of oranges
• 2 kg of lemons
• 1 kg of limes
• 1 bag of mint
• 1 cucumber
• 2-3 large bottles of Chi
• 2 bottles of Schweppes Classic Dry Lemonade
• 1 vodka
• 1 Jack Daniels
• 1 large bottle of Ocean Spray cranberry juice
• 1 large bottle of pineapple juice
• 300-400 grams of passion fruit pulp
• Assorted Beer
• Diet Coke
• Apple Juice
• Lots and lots of cheerios
• Three big bag of chicken drumsticks

Took me a while to find the mint (I mean seriously!) and got the purchases back to the venue:

Hopefully the weather will be as good tomorrow as it was today.  We then discovered a threat to the party:

Chicken drumsticks and CoCo the dog make a bad combination. We managed to rescue the chicken in time, and gave her some cheerios instead.

Tomorrow will be the making of the three punches, and then the party itself.

Am using the holiday period to go through my inbox of things sent to me in the last four months which I wanted to check out but did not have time at the time. Above is one of them – the winner of Ukraine’s got talent.

AP reports:

HYDERABAD, India (AP) — The 86-year-old governor of a southern Indian state resigned Saturday, a day after a television news channel broadcast a tape allegedly showing him in bed with three women, an official said.

Gov. Narain Dutt Tiwari’s office has denied the allegation, denouncing the tape as fabricated.

Tiwari, a veteran governing Congress party leader in Andhra Pradesh state, sent his resignation letter to the Indian president on Saturday, citing health reasons, a state official said on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to talk to reporters.

I’d say he appears to be in pretty remarkable health for an 86 year old!

A great classic.

And a more modern song.

Enjoy.

Stuff has a story:

Dogs have long been labelled man’s best friend, but it appears that pet pooches are also helping us hook up with other humans.

Romantic or otherwise, relationships are being fused between those who frequent dog parks for more than just the fresh air and exercise.

Melbourne-based town planner Virginia Jackson says dog parks have become social networking hotbeds, bringing together people from all walks of life in a kind of informal social club.

She spent more than two months interviewing 150 Melbourne dog owners, quizzing them on the social dynamics of their local dog park.

Almost 95 per cent of respondents said their dogs were a conversation starter, while 38 per cent said they had developed friendships that were stronger than an acquaintance.

Having gone out with friends who have dogs, I absolutely agree it canbe a great way to meet people – you end up conversing with all the other owners as your respective dogs lick each other all over.

However what amused me was the photo with this story:

The caption is “BEST FRIENDS: Take your pooch out to improve your social life.”

In her case, I don’t think it is the fact she has a dog with her that improves her social life!

Stuff reports:

A Taiwanese man has become the first person to finish nearly everything in the popular online game World of Warcraft, according to an online report.

The MMO Champion website reported the man’s character “Little Grey” is the first to complete every achivement in the game, reaching 986 out of a possible 986 points.

Along the way he’s virtually slain 390,895 creatures and died 8,543 times while completing 5906 quests, an average of 14.6 quests per day. That means he’s played for about 400 days.

I have luckily resisted every playing World of Warcraft.

Oh this is quite adorable. The police officer shows remarkable patience as the cat climbs up!

The Daily Telegraph reports:

Women should wear clothes that bare 40 per cent of their flesh to maximise their chances of attracting men, new scientific research indicates.

Not just that, but more:

The study, published in the journal Behaviour, found that the most popular women combined the 40 per cent rule with tight clothing and provocative dancing. The 15 per cent that combined all three criteria were approached by 40 men each.

Who would have thought – showing some flesh, tight clothing and dirty dancing may attract men. This is world class research from the University of Leeds.

They do find that there is such a thing as too much flesh:

Women who revealed around 40 per cent of their skin attracted twice as many men as those who covered up.

However, those who exposed any more than this also fared worse. Experts believe that showing too much flesh puts men off because it suggests they might be unfaithful.

Oh wow, really? That girl wearing the belt pretending to be a skirt isn’t going to want to settle down with me and have five kids?

This is almost too bizarre to be true:

Visitors to Kelly Tarlton’s Underwater World were stunned to see one shark give another shark an impromptu caesarean section.

Staff were initially dubious when visitors came running to tell them there were baby sharks spilling from a wound in a female school shark’s stomach – courtesy of a large bite by another shark.

But they found a female with a large gaping stomach wound and four babies swimming in the tank.

A shark as a surgeon – no need for all those years at medical school.

I had never heard of Tripit, but saw on my Linked In updates that a couple of peopel I knew were using it, and beign curious I checked it out.

This is one of the most useful websites I have experienced. It basically allows you to enter in details of a trip, and it produces an itinerary that you can not just print, but share with family and friends.

You can also have it automatically place into your calendar all the major events.

But that isn’t what is so cool. It is the user interface.

Even entering in flights manually is easy. Just need the airline code and flight number and the date. It then looks up (for every airline in the world) the departure and arrival times, the type of aircraft, a seating plan for the aircraft, the terminal you leave from etc etc.

But even that is nothing compared to the e-mail interface. Just e-mail your airline tickets confirmation e-mail to their e-mail address, and they automatically add it to your trip schedule.

And you can do the same with your hotel booking confirmation. One e-mail, and they list your hotel, its address, when you can check in and check out, what room size you have.

Forward to Tripit a dozen of your confirmation e-mails, and bang your multi-week itinerary is put together.

It is also smart. It adjusts your check in time to take account of your flights. You can also add on things like rail or rental car bookings, tour packages etc. They have interfaces to over 500 tourism companies.

They also automatically generate local maps, including routes between airports and hotels etc.

This will save me heaps of time planning future trips. It just brings all your travel arrangements together in one place, and of course you can then access them on your iPhone or Blackberry also.

Green MP Kevin Hague talks about National Penis Day. It was like Movember, to raise awareness of men’s health issues. I guess a National Vagina Day is unlikely to catch on!

Hague is taking part in Movember – good on him.

Damien Christie has set up a campaign to convince John Key to grow a moustache for Movember. Now personally I am not sure it is a good look for NZ to have a PM who looks like a paedophile (I think most men with moustaches look that way) and that it is a bit undignified, but Damien has made the point that going on Letterman wasn’t exactly dignified, and this is for a good charitable cause.

Anyway Damien has set up a Facebook group called I’ll (at least consider) voting for National if John Key grows a Mo’

So if you want to join the campaign to have John Key do Movember, join the Facebook group and promote it to your friends.

I’ve never met Peter Zohrab, but most people online in the 90s would have seen his posts on Usenet about the feminazis. Anyway, at the weekend I happened to be searching the NZPA database on my name (looking for an old article) and I saw an article with a quote about how I should be convicted for my comments re Clayton Weatherston.

I thought I would recall such an article, so I opened it, and it turns out it was a press release (NZPA carry them if you pay for it) from a “PeterDouglas” which I am sure is abbreviated from Peter Douglas Zohrab.

I enjoyed his press release so much, I just had to share it.  The amazing thing is he turns up to select committees also, and uses much the same language. Extracts:

The female-dominated professions of Psychology ( http://equality.netfirms.com/ispsycho.html ) , Law ( http://equality.netfirms.com/islaws.html ) , and Journalism ( http://equality.netfirms.com/ismedia.html ) have generally very low standards of intelligence and non-existent standards of political objectivity. This no doubt results from being dominated by women who are more interested in people than in ideas, and who see a clitoro-centric universe as their Feminist birthright.

A clitoro-centric universe!

Now, this Associate Professor of the scientific study of the human mind and its functions, especially those affecting behaviour in a given context finds it “hard to imagine” why a man would not act like a robot in an extremely stressful immediate context, which itself was the culmination of an extremely stressful ongoing context.

This just reinforces my impression (from long and varied experience of them) that Western universities ( http://equality.netfirms.com/iseducat.html ) are little more than instruments for the fulfilment of Lesbian Feminist fantasies. It is impossible for men to do well in universities, when competence in man-hating is a prerequiste for achievement and promotion. Universities should all be abolished, the staff sacked, and the education system rethought from square one.

I’m curious as to what is a lesbian feminist fantasy, and you subscribe to it on Sky?

Michael Laws is an honorary girl. Of course, he is — otherwise the female-dominated media wouldn’t allow him to have a newspaper column.

Of course that is the reason!

I keep saying location based services are the next big thing and a Kiwi company is proving me right:

US mobile search pioneer GeoVector is turning heads with a New Zealand-developed application that allows people to discover businesses and landmarks and call up information on them simply by pointing their smartphone in any direction.

The application, World Surfer, works on the iPhone 3GS and smartphones running Google’s Android operating system.

Both have built-in GPS chips and compasses, so that they can work out where they are and in which direction they are pointing.

The software calls up information from web sources such as Google Maps, Microsoft search engine Bing and Wikipedia, and in New Zealand, details of restaurants, accommodation and landmarks stored in the database of local electronic mapping company GeoSmart.

I’d use an application like that all the time, when not at home.

Chris Keall blogs at NBR:

A group of Chinese students have created a programme that can take a simple free-hand drawn sketchy, then turn it into a photo montage using images pulled from the web.

Check it out. Now that is true innovation.