Headline of the week

Tasers safe despite death, says Police Association

Age is no limit for tasers either, as this cop who can't subdue a 72 year old lady without some help from his taser shows:

Lord it's hard to be humble...

... when Wellington City Council follows your advice almost to the letter. In my submission on whether to allow buses through Manners Mall, I argued in favour of the plan with a few observations. One was to "encourage" private road traffic onto the Dixon/ Victoria/ Wakefield/ Taranaki loop, leaving Manners St for buses only. As a trade-off to opening up Manners Mall to buses, lower Cuba St should be fully pedestrianised.

Well bugger me with a police baton, that's what's happening. It makes sense if you look at this map, which shows that by extending Cuba Mall down to the Michael Fowler Centre, you can link it up with the Waterfront walkway. This stands in contrast to the status quo, where "Manners Mall links Cuba Mall to ... nowhere for pedestrians." There's even my cunning plan for making Mercer St (between the Civic Square and Willis St) more pedestrian friendly, thereby formalising a link to Lambton Quay that plainly doesn't exist at present.

Here's hoping the expansion of foot traffic down lower Cuba will entice the building owners in that part of town to dolly it up a bit more. It's a bit shit, but nothing a lick o' paint can't fix.

Live blogging a revolution

A flock of seagulls has hit the fan. Nico Pitney at Huff Post is live blogging the fallout from the Iranian elections. Gripping stuff. No word from Murray McCully on whether NZ is accepting the result. Nothing from Labour either, but that's probably unsurprising as all the foreign affairs wonks in Labour have hangovers this morning.

At home with the Black Hats

Inventor of the term "lateral thinking", Mild cigarettes (those tiny little holes around the filter? That was him) and all-round shit-stirring genius Edward de Bono is visiting our shores.

Kathryn Ryan has a word with him the other day on NatRad, while David Cohen is drooling over the anticipated mind meal in person at the Human Resources Institute gig. Fair point too. De Bono reckons the best thing NZ could do to help the Middle East situation is to export a few tonnes of Marmite to them, seeing how they need to zinc up their unleavened bread a bit.

But no-one has a monopoly on wisdom. This was apparent when Ryan basically asked him to the answer to the ultimate question and got a variation on 42. NZ are well-known Black Hats. In de Bono's Six Hats scheme of things, we are a nation of knockers. If there's a hole, we'll find it. If you need a cloud for your silver lining, come to us.

There's a quote I've been saving up for bloody ages. I was going to use it to start my never never novel, Kiwianatopia. It's from Richard Feynman when he came to Auckland University for the Douglas Robb Memorial lectures in 1979. It's about 20 minutes into the first lecture:

"I've been here three days. It's beautiful, there's not too many people. I thought you'd be happy here. But everyone talks themselves down. I dunno, something must have happened to it. At least you had Rutherford, so it's OK."

If only we spent a few more hours worshipping ideas and not bloody rugby, we might generate an easier way of life. Here's an idea, fresh off the lobe. Get people interested in science by hauling this guy from Oz across here one summer and have him perform with his Tesla coils down at the waterfront. That'll impress them.

Free and fair or flee and fear?

One day we shall call
Together all human beings
With their (respective) Imams:
Those who are given their record
In their right hand
Will read it (with pleasure),
And they will not be
Dealt with unjustly
In the least - Section 8, 17th Sura, The Qur-an

While the petit election in Mt Albert settles into its own fait accompli, less passe elections in Iran are happening. With record turnouts around the country on Friday, expectations were for a rally in the vote for the un-Ahmadinejad candidate, Mir-Hossein Mousavi. So reports that Ahmadinejad has received 65 percent of the vote with 80 percent counted, the provisional result of the grand election in Iran is raising eyebrows.

Mousavi is trailing at 32.6 percent, leaving Ahmadinejad the "definite winner" and avoiding a run-off in a week's time. The result also means that the other two candidates, former Revolutionary Guard commander Mohsen Rezai and former Speaker Mehdi Karroubi got less than 4 percent of the vote between them.

Compare this with the much more fractured first ballot from the 2005 elections:

While pre-voting polls mostly favored a run-off between Rafsanjani and Mostafa Moeen^{[citation needed]}, the actual vote counts from the Ministry of Interior unexpectedly put Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Mehdi Karroubi in second and third places. Rafsanjani and Ahmadinejad led with respectively 21.0% and 19.5% of the votes, and were followed by Karroubi (17.3%), Moeen (13.93%) , Ghalibaf (13.89%), Larijani (5.9%), and Mehralizadeh (4.4%)

The election is run by Iran's Interior Ministry. Not sure what access party scrutineers have in polling booths, but international observers are banned from reporting on the transparency of election results. RealClearWorld has a list of ways the vote could be rigged, y'know, if one was tempted. Memri has more.

The Huff Post has a good round-up of the current shape of things:

Mousavi appealed to Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to intervene and stop what he said were violations of the law. Khamenei holds ultimate political authority in Iran. "I hope the leader's foresight will bring this to a good end," Mousavi said.

Mousavi said some polling stations were closed early with people still waiting to vote, that voters were prevented from casting ballots and that his observers were expelled from some counting sites.

Authorities "should not assume that by manipulating people's vote and staying in power for a day, for a year or two, (they) can win people's satisfaction," he said.

During the voting, some communications across Iran were disrupted. Internet connections slowed dramatically in some spots, hindering the operations of news organizations including The Associated Press. It was not immediately clear what had caused the disruptions.

About a dozen Ahmadinejad supporters pelted a Mousavi office in Tehran with tear gas canisters, but no one was injured, said Saeed Shariati, head of Mousavi's Web campaign. The attack could not be independently confirmed.

It's not over til the Ayatollah signs. There's got to be a recount. The human record cannot be dealt with unjustly, otherwise you might as well do away with elections. If they're not free and fair, what are they?

What buggered the buggies?

How does a supposed NZ export dream go so wrong? Mike Booker at Idealog looks at why the wheels fell off Mountain Buggy. Read of distribution agent nightmares, brand dilution and what is rising from the ashes of the old company. There's lessons for everyone from small business start-ups through to Fonterra in there.

I don't think research that came out last year showing that "children benefit from facing and interacting with the person pushing them (usually the parent); that children facing forward may be emotionally impoverished and isolated" would have helped either.

Return of the stump speech

If any good has come out of the Mt Albert by-election, it's that of an interested and galvanised political spirit in the greater Auckland region. If one were to find one event that summed this all up, it was the Backbenchers episode at the Neighbourhood Brew Bar the other day. There was many a sleb and media personality locked out, let alone the teeming masses of plebs who came along for the hell of it, stuck on the footpath as fellow outsiders. It was like a Telethon up there.

Next time, we're gonna need a bigger pub and Wallace needs a bigger bell. Screw the booing. Get that floor manager setting the rules of engagement a bit clearer beforehand. We don't get this crap at the Backbencher in Wellington. And please, champagne flutes not corflutes in a pub. Don't block other people's light.

Same same but differently, Colin Espiner pointed to an audience with John Key he helped organise down in Christchurch earlier in the week. This is a fine example of Being There media, away from the spin and bullshit of soundbite platitudes, away from the painted pantomime of studio interviews and back in front of an audience.

If the Press continue video coverage of events like that, they'll be giving the network news and current affairs shows a run for their money soon. Any NZ on Air funding available for that kind of stuff?

Blame it on the 80's

Paul Krugman reckons Reaganomics has a lot to answer for, if the question was "Who really caused the Great Recession?" Me? I blame uninspiring US economics teachers in the high schools and their bored, uninterested students. Take note of this clip from Ferris Bueller's Day Off. All this seems horribly relevant now:

"If they don't cheat, Mousavi will win"

Foreign Policy has an excellent photo essay on this week's elections in Iran:

More than 450 Iranians registered to run for president, but the 12-member Guardian Council only gave its seal of approval to four, pictured above. Clockwise from top left, they are: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the current president; Mir Hossein Mousavi, a reformist who was prime minister from 1981 to 1989; Mohsen Rezai, a conservative and former commander of the Revolutionary Guard; and Mehdi Karroubi, a moderate and former speaker of parliament. According to Iran's Constitution, candidates must be politicians or clerics, hold Iranian citizenship, and be Shiite Muslims who believe in the principles of the Islamic Republic.

It looks like there's a strong Mousavi Green scene in the students and urban middle classes, but it's not over til those votes are counted.

Burger Wars

There's a food fight brewing over the increasing role of attack ads in the franchises, according to The Economist. Pizza and sandwich makers are trading insults, Maccas is getting snarky with Starbucks. Take this example of soup stirring:

Campbell’s, for example, launched a campaign last autumn for a new line of ready-made soups. These asserted that a rival, Progresso, used monosodium glutamate (MSG). Progresso responded with an ad saying that Campbell’s also used MSG. In the end, many analysts say, both firms suffered.

And now, here's some old school banned comic strips:





Heh. One man's 2T-FRU-T is another's H1N1.

The Misanthropic Principle

Just having one of my turns. Here's some of the medicine I've been taking:

Arts & Letters Daily points to an existential explanation from John Gray as to why I am having difficulty getting out of bed at the moment.

A few gems from Boing Boing. Spatial gymnastics of Julia set transformations:



And ten things you don't know about orgasms, including differing opinions on the Upsuck Theory and how (and why) to titillate a pig:



On the subject of pigs, how to make homemade bacon and a business scheme where one can delegate the spadework to bring home some organic bacon.

Bernard Hickey saves the taxpayer spending truckloads of dosh with Treasury, Tax Reform oligarchies and special consultants by listing ten ways to clean up the tax code and stop Industrial Disease. All good points, but am curious about the Hong Kong property tax as opposed to a capital gains. Neville Bennett goes on about it a bit over at Ratesblog too.

And oldie from MacDoctor, but a telling chart of how residential electricity prices have been trending ever upwards since 1984, while commercial and industrial users have remained relatively flat. I write this literally crouching over the 1kW oil column heater gripped between my legs. Can't wait for that insulation, eh.

In as much as it could be compared with the change in residential and commercial rates differentials in local council budgets, both trends show households taking over the burden of infrastructure and social spending, whilst businesses get their tax deductible rates bill cut. Time for some quid pro quo, and something to keep in mind over the Super Auckland plans.

Whose favourite punchline is "I didn't do it, no one saw me do it, you can't prove anything"?

a) Bart Simpson
b) Richard Worth
c) David Bain

And finally, everyone else is doing it. Here's the results on the latest Political Compass meme doing the rounds, as well as the Facebook schema:

My Political Views
I am a left social libertarian
Left: 3.65, Libertarian: 5.37

Political Spectrum Quiz

Worthy Irony

It's not a good look for an Associate Minister of Justice being investigated for perverting the course of justice. One law for all, except when slebs beat up plebs. Not good at all.

Key agrees to Goatse on Government

Word just in from Audrey Young, John Key has felt the breeze and agreed to look into making Parliament subject to the Official Information Act. With the Greens playing good politics and leading by example on providing expenses details, as well as the British clusterpluck continuing to denude the UK legislature, Audrey Young concludes Key may not have had much choice in the matter.

US and Them again?

Bernard Hickey has posted up a vicious and eloquent economic argument on why NZers should fall out of love with President Obama. Here's a sample, but go read the whole thing:

It’s clear to me he is a liar and a fool. New Zealanders should protest his economic and trade policies at every step. Our Prime Minister John Key should use one of those precious few minutes on the phone with the gilded one to tell him to rack off with his protectionism and his bailouts. They damage America and they damage the rest of the world. The honeymoon is over.

He is a liar because he promised a change to the status quo in Washington and he promised not to make the same mistakes from the 1930s that helped turn a recession into a depression. Yet he has done just that. He is a fool because he appointed exactly the wrong people to run his economic policies and has not intervened to stop them doing even more of the ruinous things started under Bush and Cheney.

There's increasingly smaller differences in the political management between the Bush/Cheney years and the Obama regime. Bush put up steel tariffs. Obama is protecting the sacred cows of US Dairy and the dogs of automobile manufacturing:

Mr. Obama and his advisers expect G.M. to emerge from court protection in a few months as a new, radically smaller company owned by the federal government, the United Automobile Workers union and its bondholders.

The economic damage is going to be painful enough, but there is little hope or change elsewhere either. Airport security continues to devise more circles of hell, from naked body scanners to fingerprinting outgoing Americans. Wiretapping of US citizens is continuing. There's talk of rape photos from Abu Ghraib being suppressed by the White House, on the grounds that they would "further inflame anti-American opinion" and "put our troops in danger."

Israeli PM Netanyahu has ignored Obama's call for a halt on new settlements on Palestinian land, favouring "natural growth." You'd think that with America's budget worries, there would be justifiable pressure brought to bear on Israel, seeing how Israel relies on the US for money just like Cuba used to with the Soviet Union.

Because only Jews are allowed to criticise Jews, here's Jeffrey Goldberg summing up the settlers' logic:

The settlers are arguing that their human rights would be violated if they were made to move to Israel. That's right. It used to be that a person could fulfill his Zionist destiny in a place like Petah Tikva, but no more: Now, it's a sin against God, apparently, to live anywhere but in a government-subsidized trailer on a barren hill in the mountains of Samaria.

Is Obama's hand constrained by Chief of Staff Rahm "son of Irgun" Emanuel at all? His brother, Ari Emanuel, is the inspiration for Jeremy Piven's Ari Gold character in the TV series Entourage. Clearly there's enough Cheney-like arrogance in the family to get what they want:



So I'm with Bernard Hickey. President Obama, the love has gone. I'm looking forward to hearing Terry Michael, founder and executive director of the Washington Center for Politics and Journalism, at the inaugural American Politics Appreciation Society meeting tomorrow. The subject is Obama's first 100 days. Should be fun.

Happy Three-weeks-til-Solstice holiday!

Today's national day off recognises that Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year, is only 21 days away. In less than a month, the days will start getting longer. Hooray for Three-weeks-til-Solstice holiday! I must admit, Matariki might roll off the tongue better...

Oh, and Happy Unbirthday Freddie Mercury: