Old news

No news today, so here's some old news:

From Cracked, Five Government Programs That Backfired

Before smoking caused blindness, masturbation was also a well-known path to blindness. New Scientist has a gallery of unusual medical devices from the past:



The Guardian's Deaf Section

72 year old milkman convicted for selling cannabis:

"I don't think what I was doing was that wrong. A couple of them have got MS and others have got arthritis. I was just giving them something to help...

Holding said his oldest customer had been 92 but was "no longer with us". Although he is teetotal and does not smoke, he began dealing in cannabis after being horrified to hear how much one of his elderly customers was paying for the drug.

"She had arthritis and her husband had MS and was in a wheelchair," he said. "They wanted it for the pain relief but it was costing them a fortune. I would sell them an eighth of an ounce for £4.10." The street value is £9.

How to feed a family of 6 for $2.50 a week; What the World Eats Part I.

Canned

Obama has cancelled free trade talks with NZ. Does that mean we can can 92A now?

Tagged and bagged

Oh dear. More cops spying on protest groups. This time it's in everyone's favourite CCTV police state, Britain:

The Guardian has found:

• Activists "seen on a regular basis" as well as those deemed on the "periphery" of demonstrations are included on the police databases, regardless of whether they have been convicted or arrested.

• Names, political associations and photographs of protesters from across the political spectrum – from campaigners against the third runway at Heathrow to anti-war activists – are catalogued.

• Police forces are exchanging information about pro­testers stored on their intelligence systems, enabling officers from different forces to search which political events an individual has attended.

It's almost enough to make you want to stake out police bar carparks and gather dossiers on cops. And while we're sticking it to the Brits, a company is facing prosecution for selling secret data on employees:

Around 40 construction companies who subscribed to the scheme would send lists of prospective employees to The Consulting Association, who would then warn them about potential troublemakers. Some of the notes uncovered by an ICO raid on the association's offices included descriptions such as "ex-shop steward, definite problems", "Irish ex-Army, bad egg"...

Not only was the database held without the workers' consent, but the existence of it was repeatedly denied... Data included information concerning personal relationships, trade union activity and employment history, it added. Employers paid £3,000 as an annual fee, and £2.20 for individual details, the ICO said.

Not far wrong

The well-respected Agenda got the boot last year. Too expensive, eh. Of course it would be much cheaper to adopt the same format but with a new name and set, starring Herne Bay chihuahua Paul Holmes.

From John Drinnan:

TVNZ will be paying Holmes much more than it paid Rawdon Christie under the old format, but the question is how Holmes adds or subtracts from the appeal of the old show to serious political junkies... The new show is to be produced by Mary-Anne Ahern - a longtime friend and admirer of Holmes who is steeped in old-school current affairs. Ahern has been working on Backbenchers - the rather overwrought Wellington-focused political show on the TVNZ 7 Freeview channel.

Nothing wrong with Backbenchers for what it is, but heavyweight it is not. And at least Backbenchers features new talent. The new show isn't hosted by Jason Gunn as I predicted, but I wasn't far wrong. Expectations have been lowered accordingly for Q&A's debut on March 22.

SuperTED

If you like TED, you might be interested in this League of Extraordinary Gentlemen:

A Celebration of Discovery from the Universe to Humanity
Origins Symposium
April 3-6, 2009

The Origins Symposium will inaugurate the new Origins Initiative at ASU. It will bring together 70 of the world’s leading scientists and scholars to explore key outstanding Origins issues and will be capped by a series of remarkable public activities.

The highlight is Monday April 6th:

On Monday April 6th an unprecedented public event to inaugurate the new Origins Initiative will be held April 6, 2009 at Gammage Auditorium, and broadcast live on the web. We will assemble in one place a group containing the most well known scientific public intellectuals in the world.

Speakers will include:

• Stephen Hawking
• Steven Pinker
• Richard Dawkins
• Craig Venter
• Lawrence Krauss
• Brian Greene
• Donald C. Johanson

A Nobel Panel, including:

• Sheldon Glashow
• David Gross
• John Mather
• Frank Wilczek
• Walter Gilbert
• Baruch Blumberg

Also, a panel on Science and Culture featuring several famous filmmakers, authors, and scientists, a performance by the World Champion of Magic, and more..

Hat Tip Nine to Noon, featuring Kathryn Ryan talking with 'rock star' physicist Professor Lawrence Krauss.

Eat the telly

The UK Times has the story of how, despite low overall inflation, the cost of food is rising at 9 percent a year there. The same thing is happening here. The CPI is dropping fine, but the cost of food keeps rising close to ten percent a year.


Sources here and here

Faced with rising unemployment and stagnant wages, it's getting harder for people to put bread on the table. From Stuff:

Paymark chief executive Simon Tong said: "The feedback we've had from people in the game is that people have moved toward the home brand products in fact, retailers have been racing to get more of those on the shelves and typically people are buying more in bulk.

Told ya so. The Stuff story goes on to say that fast food outlets are raking it in. If it gets as rough as I think it's going to get, this illusion of a meal is a purely temporary phenomenon. It's merely a comfort stop on the way to the reality check.

It takes 12 to Quango

Be careful what you wish for. After asking for the doc behind this story at Macdoctor's, subsequently taken up by DPF, I have just been brain raped by one of the most fist-chewingly turgid and inane reports I've read. And I read a lot. It's all thanks to the 2007 Annual Report to the Minister of Health from the National Ethics Advisory Committee.

The NEAC was formed by Labour back in 2000 and is a classic quango. For one thing, it looks like a quango. It is armed with obscure and ineffable purpose, with undue power over their unknown subordinates, and a budget. It talks like a quango. Some examples:

Ethical values for a pandemic

An influenza pandemic would be likely to involve high levels of illness and death. Pandemic planning aims to prevent a pandemic when possible, and to minimise negative impacts where prevention is not possible. Considering ethical issues as part of pandemic planning will better equip us to react to a pandemic by acting on shared values using common sense and imagination, even when we have little time.

Sub-quangos to appeal quango decisions:

Sub-Committee on Appeals

The National Ethics Advisory Committee will convene a Sub-Committee on Appeals (the SCA). Whereas the main statutory function of the National Ethics Advisory Committee is to advise the Minister of Health on ethical issues of national significance regarding health and disability, the function of its SCA is to review particular proposals at appeal.

Goobledegook:

The SCA may only hear appeals in cases where a second opinion from the Health Research Council Ethics Committee has been sought (by either the original ethics committee or the researcher) and received, and the matter reconsidered by the original ethics committee. All appeals will be from the decision made by the original committee following the second opinion.

Glidetime rules that would make blue collar workers weep in envy:

There is an expectation that SCA members will make every effort to attend all SCA meetings and devote sufficient time to become familiar with the affairs of the SCA and the wider environment within which it operates.

But with much better compensation:

The Chairperson will receive $430 per day (plus half a day’s preparation fee) and an allowance of two extra days per month to cover additional work undertaken by the Chairperson. The attendance fee for members is set at $320 per day (plus half a day’s preparation fee). The Ministry of Health pays for actual and reasonable travel and accommodation expenses of the National Ethics Advisory Committee members.

Now quangos by and large aren't all bad. The old man was once member of the Casino Control Authority. From memory, members were renumerated $500 a day for Authority work, excluding expenses. I remember this because the old man used to grumble about time to and froing to meetings from out of town. But this was complicated work with millions and millions of dollars at stake, inventing casino regulations out of nothing, and there were stuff all lawyers queueing up for what amounted to a full day's work for an hour's pay.

But this NEAC is rubbish. By wielding its undeserved power over what sounds like a jumped-up science fair experiment goes too far. If a quango can't add value, fair go. But when a quango actively gums up the wheels of research instead of greasing them, it's got to go.

Bailout Bingo

How much is that Mascot Finance in the Bank Deposit Guarantee window? According to Bill English, around $10 million plus. It could have been worse, what with Mascot having 2,558 debenture holders with NZ$70 million invested. According to Bernard Hickey, it won't be the last stuffed toy that gets a bailout, but at least most of the big ones are already dead:



Understandably, the main banks are bolshie at paying the guarantee fees while tin-pot property fronts get a free ride. Who's next? Pick your favourites from the approved list.

And if you haven't read it, have a read of this Vanity Fair piece on Iceland. More NZ parallels than you can shake an icepick at, right down to the elves. Hat Tip Dim Post.

And finally, Tyler Cowen links to some cogent arguments on why grad school is an expensive waste of time right now. Quite relevant to all those Icelandic fishermen with PhDs in economic theory.

Big BORA fly in the 3 Strikes ointment

Constitutional legal brain Andrew Geddis has a ripper post on Garrett's Three Strikes Bill and the Bill of Rights Act:

Sitting opposite [Garrett] in the caucus room you’ve got John Boscawen, who has spent some tens-of-thousands of his own dollars going all the way to the Court of Appeal in a vain effort to have the now-repealed Electoral Finance Act declared inconsistent with … that same Bill of Rights Act.

Then you’ve got Rodney Hide and Heather Roy, who in 2007 voted to extend that same Bill of Rights Act to protect private property rights.

A very good read.

Try not to breathe

Bob Clarkson MP may be gone, but his misplaced spirit lives on in the form of new Act MP David Garrett.

First term MPs are advised to breathe through their noses. It's sage advice, which only a very few first-time MPs have ignored successfully. Louisa Wall comes to mind, and look what happened to her. David Garrett is not one of these exceptions to the rule, which means he comes across as a bit of a mouth-breather.

Garrett gets a few points for fronting up at Legal Beagle to defend the 3 strikes proposal. However, several million points off for the fundamentalist hubris of saying that the Bills of Rights is wrong:

David Garrett dismissed a report by Attorney-General Chris Finlayson that found three strikes had an apparent inconsistency with the section of Bill of Rights protecting New Zealanders against cruel, degrading or disproportionately severe punishment.

Mr Garrett had not read the report, but told of its findings yesterday said: "So what?"

While Garrett insists that this curtailment of rights is more than justified by the amount of murders prevented (78 at last count), he neglects to point out just how many other non-murderers would be locked up as well, and at what cost.

Depending on what statistic you refer to, keeping someone locked up in prison can cost between $50k to $80k per inmate per year. That's well above the average weekly wage, without including the cost of building the prison in the first place. It's around ten times the amount we spend per child on primary or secondary education per year.

Under the 3 strikes law, this would be a strike. So would this. Painting all these petty thieves as tomorrow's Graeme Burtons is misleading enough, but casting the net so wide means there is going to be one hell of a blowout with prisons. The corrections department has enough problems as it is without doubling their workload, and the next ten to fifteen years of budgets are going to tight enough without sinking vast chunks of cash into it as well.

So, seeing how subtlety is lost on David Garrett, let me say this: Fuck you, Mr Garrett, and the horse you rode in on.

That old Super Gorilla

There are interesting rumbles from both Laila Harre and Tracy Watkins about that old gorilla in the room, the Retirement of the Boomers.

From Laila Harre (from 18:38 minutes in):

The older generation haven't helped themselves a whole lot... That was an interesting sleeper issue at the summit. I mean, it didn't actually come out officially but I heard a number of conversations where there were issues raised about the retirement age, the ability for people to stay in the workforce..."

Matthew Hooten pointed out that "the baby boomers will never accept any changes to their superannuation entitlement."

From Tracy Watkins:

There has always been an argument about the fairness of today’s workers not only funding the cost of today’s pensions, but pre-funding the (partial) cost of their own pensions as well. That of course is a philosophical debate, rather than an economic one.

AND pre-funding ACC AND pre-funding infrastructure (under Cullen's cash accounting system), AND Dagg knows what else. There's going to be a point where the philosophical and the economic clash with the political. Sounds like the intergenerational superannuation skirmish is getting louder.

Reverse Reverse Psychology

While we wait in anticip-pation for the Law Commission's Misuse of Drugs paper, please content yourselves with a trip to the casino and this Public Service ad (Hat Tip Spare Room):

Copyfight headlines

Canada ISP Videotron pushes for 3 strikes copyright law:

Quebecor [owner of Videotron] argues in favour of certain instances of ISPs controlling content, including anti-spam or child pornography blocking. Moreover, it suggests that copyright policies that build upon the graduated response policies in other countries should be added to the list of content controls that benefit society.

Nicholas Sarkozy, whose government is also trying to pass a "3 strikes and you're disconnected" law, is being sued by US indie band MGMT for copyright infringement. Sarkozy's party has offered to settle for one Euro:

The party has admitted to using the popular track, Kids, at its national congress in January, in two online videos and in political advertisements. But it claims this was an unintentional mistake and offered the band a symbolic €1 ($1.43 Cdn.) for copyright infringement.

John McCain is still being sued by Jackson Browne for copyright infringement of his song "Running on Empty" which was used without permission during the presidential campaign last year:

Browne argued that copyright law protects his song even in the context of a political ad. "Defendants flood the court with paper and essentially argue that because they are politicians and political parties, they have an unfettered right to use musical compositions in political campaign commercials, and to associate themselves with any person they want to, with or without consent.

This brings to mind the little problem National had with a certain Coldplay song on a certain DVD not so long ago. Not that Coldplay haven't got issues too, mind.

Spock's Gambit

Maureen Dowd quotes Barack Spock on the withdrawal from Iraq:

“This is a human enterprise,” he told Lehrer. “It’s not going to be flawless.”

Mad dogs and Englishmen

It seems that the UK Department of Health is following Homepaddock's advice on dealing with the summer heat:

Under the plan, people in areas hit by heat waves will be advised to stay indoors during the middle of the day — in effect, taking a siesta — and change out of formal clothing such as suits and avoid hot food. They will also be advised to stay cool by using fans, shading windows and drinking lots of water.

Well, they close schools and stuff when there's too much snow. Why not close when it's too hot? Will the Brits swap the bowler hat for a sombrero?