Kiwiblog

Got sent this by email. Very good. Especially like the fake dinosaur fossils album.

From The Standard.

Someone has designed a Facebook quiz on Which National MP are you?

I got:

David took Which National Party MP are you? quiz and the result is Murray McCully

You make Machiavelli look like an amateur. You are crafty, scheming and a world champion greaser. There is no lengths you wont go to, not to be in power, but to be the power behind the throne. You are a survivor. But look out, you also have a list of enemies growing by the day…

Jordan Carter commented that he was not surprised by the result

Interesting NZPA article:

A High Court judge today approved the serving of court papers via Facebook, the popular social network web site, in what is thought to be a New Zealand first.

The High Court in Wellington was told that Axe Market Garden is trying to sue Craig Axe who is alleged to have taken $241,000 from the firm account.

Counsel for the company Daniel Vincent said the plaintiff was effectively Axe’s father John and there were difficulties in serving papers on his son.

Craig Axe was known to be living in Britain but his exact whereabouts were not known.

Mr Vincent said Axe had corresponded via email and was also known to have a Facebook site.

He asked associate justice David Gendall if he would take the unusual step of approving a secondary service order on Axe via Facebook and email to avoid him frustrating his client’s court action.

Justice Gendall did not bat an eyelid in the court room when approving the order after being assured that newspaper adverts could not be effectively targeted.

Good to see the Judge being flexible. Will be rather funny when someone checks their Facebook messages to find legal papers!

The HoS editorial approves of a new service:

Every so often an invention comes along which is so brilliant that we wonder how we ever got on without it. Fire is an excellent example. Ditto the flush lavatory and sunglasses.

A new reminder service established by an enterprising American might not beat, say, child immunisation as a contribution to human civilisation, but it has to be reckoned a contender.

PMSBuddy.com, a website on which you can sign up to be sent an email alert that someone in your life might be approaching a particularly tricky time of the month, has received more than 100,000 enrolments. Men who enter the date and length of the last menstrual cycle of up to five women, will receive timely messages like “She’s on yellow – tread carefully, fella”. The founder of the free service, 28-year-old Jordan Eisenberg, says he hopes to launch it as an iPhone application soon – presumably a must for subscribers who don’t check their emails regularly.

Rejoicing in the slogan “saving relationships one month at a time”, the website should prove a boon for men who lose track of time while trying to work out what they did wrong two weeks ago.

This reminds me of an incident at Otago University. One day, one of my good friends, Jo, snapped at something I said or did. I was, as usual, being provocative and deserved it but normally Jo was very placid and never responded to my stupidities. I was surprised she did and cracked a time of month joke. She responded that it was in fact that time, and that might be why she was cranky.

Anyway I said that it is more fun when she bites back at my hassles, so I wrote up on my wall planner her cycle dates, so I would know when to best hassle her. Jo was there when I did this, and was laughing. We were good mates, but totally platonic.

Now what I didn’t consider was how people might react, without knowing the context of it being a joke between Jo and I. Anyway the next day we were having a party in my room, and suddenly one of the attendees asks whether Jo and I are sleeping together.  We both basically call him crazy and say how in hells name led him to think and ask that. He then pointed to my wall planner and asked why did I have Jo’s cycle marked on it for the rest of the year.

We both looked at each other and burst into hysterical giggles. This made everyone more suspicious until we explained. I’m still not sure everyone believed us!

Anyway back to the main topic of PMS alerts, I was about to joke that there is probably a Facebook application that allows you to notify certain friends of your timing. And to my astonishment, there actually is. It has 791 users!

The stupidity award goes to the 21 year old alleged burglar in Queenstown who removes his balaclava while trying to break into a safe, giving us his picture on the security camera.

The smartness award goes to the Queenstown Police for putting the photos up on their Facebook page to see if people recognised him. They did and he was arrested.

Lots to cover in brief. First the Australian political party leader who told off his 17 year old daughter on Facebook, exposing her drunken party photos to the world! Also wonderful is the conversation between two of Alexander Downer’s children on Facebook about why he was so pompous in a photo

Bernard Hickey complains (as I often have done) that we are paying $79 million into TVNZ6 and TVNZ7 yet they won’t make them available on Sky TV. He quotes former TVNZ Head of News Paul Norris in support – they have a reponsibility to make them widely available and could extend them with a flick of a switch to 700,000 households overnight.

Andrew Bolt has a fascinating exchange with an academic over the “stolen generation”. While there certainly is much in Australia’s past that was deplorable (as in NZ), it is apparent that certain portions of it such as the “stolen generation” have been over-hyped. He cites the example of one Aboriginal leader who claimed to be part of the “stolen” generation who was “taken from my family” but in fact was put up for adoption by her father who could not cope with five children.

Lindsay Perigo writes a moving account of his last face to face meal with Anna Woolf, who is dying of brain cancer. Even just reading his account makes the eyes water – I can’t imagine how hard it is for those who are close to Anna, let alone Anna herself.

The Telegraph points out that if Michael Phelps was a country, he would be coming 5th on the Olympic medal table – ahead of Italy, Russia, Australian and Great Britain.

Frog Blog joins Nick Smith on wondering why DOC is spending so much money on a new corporate brand, when it has just laid off 60 workers to save money.

Liberty Scott exposes Sue Kedgley’s scaremongering over cellphone towers. Good God, this debate was settled over a decade ago in terms of science. I’d be more inclined to take Sue’s campaign against the towers seriously if she’d give up her cellphone.

Lindsay Mitchell covers the launch of a second Maori based party. The Hapu Party is led by David Rankin, and three policies to date:

1. To have Maori eligible for the pension at age 56, because of the lower life-expectancy of Maori
2. To introduce a flat rate 18% personal tax and GST rate.
3. To immediately allocate all treaty settlement money directly to hapu and marae

They have me with policy No 2. Policy No 3 is between Iwi and Hapu to resolve in my opinion, and Policy No 1 has no chance. Worryingly for the Maori Party, Rankin also talks of financial irregularities with a Maori Party MP and a SFO complaint.

For those who are on Facebook, you can join the Kiwiblog Network on Facebook.

Barnsley Bill blogs on the 35 kg stone which was flown first class to China as it was culturally insensitive to have it in the hold.

Frog Blog has a look at parties on Facebook. Frog has even found a Winston for PM group – but with slightly less members than the Bring back the Good Night Kiwi group.

American Thinker mentions NZ’s Trevor Loudon, and his work on Obama’s past.

Dim-Post looks at the options for Labour with the ETS:

1. Rush the hastily amended, highly complex legislation into law by buying off the Greens and Winston Peters, paying a high political price now and ensuring at least six months of dire headlines as horrible mistakes and unintended consequences in the law are bought to light repeatedly embarrassing the government right in the middle of an election campaign they’re already losing.
2. Admit the bill is dead and face a couple of days bad news focusing on the failure (which you can mostly blame on National).

And his prediction:

Scenarios like this are when Clark’s ultra-competitive personality undermine her own self-interest and that of her party – she’ll press for a parliamentary victory even if it is spectacularly pyrrhic one.

No, no don’t let it happen. Microsoft is hinting it may wish to buy Facebook, after their bid for Yahoo failed.

I do not want to have to have a MSN Passport to use Facebook!