A Message for the All Blacks

Gentlemen to bed…

Thought for the Day

On the day when that vicious Muammar Gaddafi got his just deserts from the Libyan people who were actually oppressed and who had real cause to protest and rise up – and did with the moral and real support of Nato I came across this quote by Karl Popper, which seemed to fit since there are also more ridiculous protests worldwide – on the news tonight in Melbourne, having started in Wall Street, and with a branch here in Auckland also – against corporations. I mean really, if you don’t like them don’t buy their stuff. And if you object to their influence in politics and the bailouts then you should have voted for more libertarian candidates who understand Austrian economics and not that Keynesian bollocks.

Democracies have serious drawbacks. They certainly are not better than they ought to be. But corruption can occur under any kind of government. And I think that every serious student of history will agree, upon consideration, that our Western democracies are not only the most prosperous societies in history-that is important, but not so very important-but the freest, the most tolerant, and the least repressive large societies of which we have historical knowledge…One must fight those who make so many young people unhappy by telling them that we live in a terrible world, in a kind of capitalist hell. The truth is that we live in a wonderful world, in a beautiful world, and in an astonishingly free and open society. Of course it is fashionable, it is expected, and it is almost demanded from a Western intellectual to say the opposite.

The best juxtaposition you will ever see.

Here is an real, unmodified, screenshot of my twitter feed. Read from bottom to top. I don’t think I’ll see a better conincidence than this in my lifetime.

An Increase is Not a Saving

Rodney Hide on the benefits of his “Super City” before the merger.

There will clearly be substantial savings in the years ahead from the slimmed-down council.

This is what actually happened – Mayor Len Brown in the Draft Annual Plan Summary.

And after the amalgamation that would have seen a 9.4 per cent rate increase, we are working to identify efficiencies to bring that down to 4.9 per cent

Rodney, however, still kept singing the same tune.

By removing the duplication of functions across the previous eight councils, the unified council structure means ratepayers will enjoy a massive $65.5 million saving from a 13% drop in staffing levels – this will increase to 16% , or a $91 million annual saving, by the end of the transition period in July 2012 … Aucklanders can expect a rates increase 2.1% lower than the 6.1% average increase projected by the old councils.

If you went to a car yard and saw a car at $30,000, and then went back a month later and saw the same car (a pedant might say a larger, less responsive car) now labelled with “Massive $5,000 saving – only $35,000 for this car!” you would think the salesman fucked in the head if the excuse he came up with was that “you’re saving $5,000 because we could have increased the price to $40,000”.

If Auckland ratepayers suffered by having too many council staff, then wouldn’t your first thought be “what are all those staff doing, and do they need to be or doing it?”, especially if you are the leader of a party whose stated goal with local government is to Abolish the local government power of general competency, wouldn’t you think? Coming up with the solution “Let’s make a council bigger than the Moon, that still does the same stuff poorly – Part of the “$60 million investing in IT to run the new council and its support structures” certainly didn’t include replacing the random number generator that councils used to work out Resource Consent and Development Contribution charges – and increases rates higher than the rate of inflation” would be a fucked in the head solution.

Photo of the Year

Bibi Aisha

World Press Photo – if you can’t guess, an organization for photojournalists – has just held their awards for the best photo for 2010. The winning photo by South African Jodi Bieber is above. According to the commentary on the World Press Photo website the poor girl in the photo is Bibi Aisha formerly (thankfully) from Kabul.

Her winning picture shows Bibi Aisha, an 18-year-old woman from Oruzgan province in Afghanistan, who fled back to her family home from her husband’s house, complaining of violent treatment. The Taliban arrived one night, demanding Bibi be handed over to face justice. After a Taliban commander pronounced his verdict, Bibi’s brother-in-law held her down and her husband sliced off her ears and then cut off her nose. Bibi was abandoned, but later rescued by aid workers and the American military. After time in a women’s refuge in Kabul, she was taken to America, where she received counseling and reconstructive surgery. Bibi Aisha now lives in the US.

Profane

‘Tis Official! You can now swear at other people and even police officers in Pennsylvania and not get sent to the House of Many Doors thanks to the folks at the American Civil Liberties Union.

The Pennsylvania State Police has agreed to stop citing individuals for disorderly conduct for profanity and to provide mandatory training to its officers about free speech as part of a settlement the agency reached with the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania. The settlement enabled the ACLU to voluntarily dismiss a federal lawsuit against the state police over this practice today.

…

As part of the settlement, the PSP has agreed to:

• Notify its troopers that they cannot issue citations solely for the use of profane or offensive words or gestures, even if they are directed at law enforcement personnel;
• Provide additional training to all troopers and cadets on the First Amendment right of individuals to express themselves using profane language or gestures;
• Develop a mandatory training update for new and continuing state law enforcement officers about this policy; and
• Revise existing training materials on the disorderly conduct statute to clarify that the term ‘obscene’ in the statute does not refer to profanity, indecent speech or gestures.

If only George Carlin were alive, he’d be down there in a flash belting out the seven words you can’t say on television and until recently in Pennsylvania.

 

Neck Massager

If, after reading this story about a woman who died by way of neck massager whereby “The massager got entangled with a necklace, and it probably caused her to black out very quickly,” according to Jim Leljedal of the Broward County Sheriff’s Department, the first thing I think of is this:

 

Does that make me a bad person?

Dear 2010

Regards, 2011.

Denis Dutton

Denis Dutton died yesterday, bugger.

Denis Dutton

It is through his recent book The Art Instinct – as well as Arts and Letters Daily that he is most known. However I first heard of him through what I think is one of his greatest achievements, the New Zealand Skeptics. Though he wasn’t as active as he was when he helped set it up in the mid 80’s he retained a skeptical mindset…for example take this cartoon he put on his personal website.

I’ll leave it to Carl Sagan, a Skeptic par excellence to deliver a eulogy of which I have no doubt Denis would enjoy.

Further Reading:

Vicki Hyde

Reason Magazine

3 Quarks Daily

Virginia Postrel Column

Cover Biography

Comet Hartley 2

This is one of the most phenomenal pictures you will have seen this year.