Puffin stuffed

TV's most famous Tourette's Syndrome reality show host, Gordon Ramsey, has got into trouble with animal rights activists for hunting puffins in Iceland. And ripping out the heart of a recently deceased puffin and eating it. There's even a marinated puffin recipe on the F Word website.



Don't see what all the fuss is about. Icelanders eat puffins as part of their diet. In the battle between the survival of the hungriest versus the survival of the cutest, hungry wins every time.

Ramsey didn't escape unharmed. One chivalrous puffin bit him on the nose, requiring three stitches to Ramsey's proboscis. He almost drowned as well.

First Among Equals

The ten candidates for the position of President of New Zealand have been announced. Chosen by you, the people:

• James Belich
• Jim Bolger
• Sir Douglas Graham
• Sir Robert Jones
• Sir Kenneth Keith
• Don McKinnon
• Claudia Orange
• Vincent O'Sullivan
• Dame Kiri Te Kanawa
• Sir Wilson Whineray

Not a bad list. Trust the people. They aren't morons.

The great kiwi archetype runs through all nominees. Am looking forward to the next round of voting. I nominated Jeremy Wells, so it will be interesting to read the candidate profiles before the next vote.

Mucking In for the Olympics

Foreign Policy lists the Top 5 reasons why Beijing Will Be the Biggest, Baddest Olympics Ever. The New York Times tells the story of large teams of bricklayers being deployed to mask some of Beijing's rougher edges at the last moment. From the accompanying slideshow:



Sometimes, only a billboard is needed:



Then there's the lingering problem of lingering smog. It's not smog, according the the official Olympics blog. It's mist. Oh, and the small issue that media freedom has an uncommonly narrow definition in China. Reporters Without Borders is not at all impressed with China or the IOC.

Why so various?

Alan Bollard's speech on monetary issues was a spot on precis of monetarist policy. TVHE yums it up but, as Bernard Hickey notes, Bollard talks the talk but he doesn’t walk the walk. The speech is at odds with the actions.

Debt is still too cheap, and many households are chalking it up bigtime to soften the impact of inflation. They are buying today on tomorrow's money, and this should be discouraged in the strongest terms possible.

Hickey sez:

Bollard doesn’t inspire confidence when he says inflation expectations “appear to remain anchored…though there is a slight upward drift.”

So, we're hanging our hopes on a convenient coral reef for our anchor to trip over. Has the RBNZ been selling any $NZ lately? And what's going to happen to the price of oil once the Northern Hemisphere winter hits?

The need to anchor inflation expectations is not helped by the continuing fallout of the finance industry collapse either. As an economy, investors are staying out of it until things smooth down again. In order to encourage stability and encourage greater overseas investment, the cash rate should go back up.

The most worrying conclusion that could be gleaned from the speech is: "Help! Help! Cullen's got me held hostage! If you don't promise to vote Labour, he'll drop the cash rate by 25 points in September!"

Be very afraid.

It's not about Winston II

Israel's PM has announced his resignation:

"After months of mounting pressure over corruption allegations... Last night's announcement came as a surprise but hardly a shock, given the accumulating weight of comment that he could not go on in the face of a slew of police and judicial inquiries."

Life & Vision

Take a break from the rain and get over to Te Papa for the Rita Angus collection. It's free and on til October 5. If you're not in town for it, have a wander through the excellent virtual galleries (not PicLens enabled).

Dead as a Doha

The inevitable has occurred and another WTO round collapses. I saw this coming ever since attending a meeting at James Smiths corner in 2006. Observers had just returned from a Green Room session and were struggling to give any good news. It's affirmed, a new unilateralism and isolationist policy is setting in. Not good.

For New Zealand, that means that very soon we will be forced to choose sides. A small 'a' ally in the Pacific translates into client state status. As such, one does not have the luxury of completely independent foreign policy. There are some very big questions up ahead.

Large Hadron Rap

The Large Hadron Collider is almost ready to roll. The New York Times gives a rough timetable of the warming up, with the first proton expected to launch the weekend of August 9, September 2 or 3 for the first lap of the racetrack. October 21 is when many of the launch parties kick in and the "pilot physics" begin.

Alpinekat, a CERN writer, has made a rap vid explaining what the LHC is all about. "Unlike the first rap video about the neurochip, there was no tequila involved.”




UPDATE: New Scientist's Blog has a less fuzzy version of the video here.

The restaurant at the end of the union verse

Within 15 years, many NZ service workers (and their unions) will be decimated as their jobs are replaced by technology and overseas outsourcing. The Telecom call centre moving to a folder in Manila is just the start. Watch these BBC vids on a supermarket and restaurant to see where things are heading.

It's not about Winston

"Ted Stevens, the longest-serving Republican senator, was yesterday charged with seven counts of perjury for concealing gifts valued at more than $250,000"

Too Much Information

The Independent's headline story is a report into the UK's DNA database. Seeing how keen the powers that be in NZ are to replicate this unfortunate experiment here, it's prudent to see how the UK operate their DNA library. Badly. Very, very badly.

"Britain now has by far the largest DNA database in the world. It includes an estimated one million people who have never been found guilty of any offence, some 100,000 of whom are children. About 40 per cent of young black men have been forced to provide samples, compared with 13 per cent of Asian men and 9 per cent of white men.

Genetic material is now taken from all people arrested by police, regardless of whether they are subsequently charged or convicted, and remains on file for life. Offences covered include begging, being drunk and disorderly, taking part in an illegal demonstration and minor acts of criminal damage caused by children kicking footballs or, in one instance, throwing a snowball.

...It registered alarm over the "very lax security" protecting the database and concerns over "who had access to samples and profiles and for what purpose"."

New Zealand's DNA database needs to be kept on a very tight leash, and it certainly should not have its reach broadened to include anyone ever busted. I've heard enough stories of cops here heavying arrestees to provide DNA even when under the law they aren't obliged to. I do not trust the police with this level of personal detail, and if this plan to expand NZ's DNA database goes ahead, I fear it will all end in tears.

Jury rigged

The latest legal horror story has been pointed out in this interview with bFM and Auckland University Associate Professor of Law Scott Optican. Not content with the destruction of centuries-old precedent with majority juries, police access to potential jurors' criminal records strike at the very heart at who is on trial here.

"The Supreme Court has been asked to determine and has granted an appeal on three questions of law. Number one, can the police supply so-called vetted jury lists to the Crown, to assist the Crown in deciding whether or not to challenge a prospective juror in a criminal case? The answer that is yes.

"The second question is should the vetted jury list that is supplied to the Crown, also be made available to the accused? And the third question is, can the Crown peremptorily challenge a prospective juror, on the basis of information contained from a vetted jury list."

J Fogarty raised the issue in February, dismissing the practice which various police districts had been using, giving these vetted lists over to the Crown. I agree with Fogarty on this. Jurors are not on trial, and if previous convictions for the defendant were inadmissable (this too is changing, but that's another story again), what the hell has a juror's past got to do with it?

The Court of Appeal overturned this in April, stating that there was no specific prohibition on the practice of supplying vetted jury lists, nor that there was any onus on the police sharing this information with the Defence.

Clearly, the Court of Appeal shared the police's view that an abuse of priveleged information to assist a conviction is OK. Optican gives the example of a juror's previous drug conviction being of material interest to the Crown's ability to dismiss that juror during a drug trial. He is personally in favour of the American system, which allows far more cross-examination of prospective jurors.

There are several very wrong things about this. Most obviously, it allows stacked juries in favour of the Crown, which is a horrendous abuse of fair justice. Secondly, it makes a mockery of the intent of Nandor Tanczos' seven year forgiveness law. Crime is temporary but the punishment is permanent.

The most harmful impact of this decision will strike at the very core of our democracy. Many people aren't on the electoral rolls already, because these publically available documents are very handy for debt collectors. If the public discover that their private lives are being rifled through when chosen for jury service, then you may very well see a large drop-off in electoral enrolment.

Furthermore, the casual dessimination of personal details to police exposes law-abiding citizens to having these details land up in a landfill/gutter. The next time a gang-raping police officer goes on trial, pray that you don't get called. Only a lemming would return a guilty verdict.

The Wrong Headline

War on Drugs continues with a New Plymouth growhouse raided by cops. Way down in the story is this little gem:

"Police also found dried cannabis at the address and a small amount of cannabis resin, but no other drugs, money or firearms were located."

This grower should be applauded for their ethics, not thrown into jail! Growers aren't just your typecast gang profile. Most of 'em are law-abiding and peaceful medicine men and women.

There is no R in Schools

The three R's of education (reading, writing, arithmetic) have taken another blow. Reading has been in decline for some time, and calculus is currently thought to be a cast member of the Transformers movie. Seems now the kids can't even write these days, which is a bit of a bugger come exam time.

Is TVNZ cursed?

It's off-putting enough to witness adbreaks on TVNZ, what with all the government ads saying I drink too much, drive too fast, smoke at all, and beat my missus (even though I'm a bachelor). But what is it with TVNZ's news sponsors?

Capital+Merchant, as well as Hanover Finance, sponsored newsbreaks for some time, as Matt Cohen points out at throng. These days, there's that spooky fucking National Bank horse before all the TVNZ news webisodes. Well whaddaya know, ANZ National's horse has just bolted.