NZB3

Into the Anglosphere

2006-05-18T11:50:00.000+12:00

I'm over here now.

Come visit. Don't be afraid of the other Silent Running bloggers, they just act tough.

[click on pic to go to Silent Running homepage]

Help Wanted

2006-05-10T08:30:00.000+12:00

My Labourite absentee co-blogger, Dominic, seems to have moved on to other projects.

In a spectacular display of good faith (not) he has renounced his co-ownership of this blog, blocked my access to all the blog files on the server and even my ability to view the blog from my home ip address. After trying to reach him in several different ways his only communication has been the comments below. Classy.

We started NZB3 together to be a non-partisan group blog all about life, New Zealand society, and everything. At first we were writing our own php substructure but then gave in to using Blogger to power the site. This worked out well, until the start of last month while technical issues made it advantageous for Blogger to also host the site. Then we came home.

Seems to me the domain name is mine all mine now but I've no notion of going on alone. It could be argued that I already have been blogging alone but I have always taken Dominic at his word that he was in an almost perpetual state of getting around to it. As now he is not, the project has come to an end. I don't expect to find another Dominic.

So, NZB3 has now been a podcast and a blog. Could be due for yet another incarnation? Just have to see what comes along. Any bright ideas, please email me at the address at the foot of the page or you can IM me.

MSN rickenterprises, ICQ 106623013, and all the rest.

See you 'round the blogosphere!

hurt

2006-05-09T15:00:00.000+12:00

Anonymous said...
Rick: Dom here. Got the email. You've noticed I'm not blogging anymore: well, that's not about to change. Thus me removing my ugly mug from the sidebar. I didn't feel right about ripping down the Labour logo that's so nicely arranged up the top, but you might like to.Yeah. The reasons? Who needs reasons when you've got heroin. That's right, I've taken up the scag. It's great. Also, you're a dick, but that didn't really come into my decision. Just busy I guess. It's hard to blog while desperately breaking into cars to finance your next fix.Anyway. I'm happy to keep the free hosting going if you're bandwidth usage doesn't grow any more than where it is now. I'll let you know if that happens: might be convenient to move to blogspot now. Whatever.Goodbye.

5/09/2006 12:49 AM
Anonymous said...
Oh, and with a nod to NZ artist John Reynolds, and his nod to Jonathan Rée, I'll leave you with this:What Kierkegaard said about God applies to politics too: whatever we think, we are bound, in the end, to be in the wrong.Although you, especially so. I kid.
5/09/2006 12:55 AM

Corruption

2006-05-09T14:49:00.000+12:00

Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely

- Lord Acton, British historian

I have never agreed with that, and for various reasons. But it does have a grain of truth pertienent to this post.

Laurel leaves are the most potent of poisons

- Annon, as far as I know

When I showed the following cartoon to my Hamiltonian mate, Manda, she thought it was about my girlfriend "Laurel" leaving me. Manda's not too bright sometimes (I can say that, she'll never read this.)

A garland of laurel leaves were, in the ancient world, a crown of power. You'll see pictures of Julius Ceasar with such a crown, and it's probably where the saying 'to rest on one's laurels' comes from. Laurel leaves, power, poisons the barer.

This I agree with. Power is responsibility, is burden. It makes you a target. Cares and worries, the demands and jelousies of enemies and friends, are a major drag. They kill you quickly and violently at best, softly and slowly at worst. Even though this quote is almost the same as the first, I interpret it differently.

Poision can be contended with, it has an antidote. One can take preventative precautions, remain vigilent. A ruler can have a close friend to ground them and make sure they don't get too high and mighty or become depressed or disenchanted with their endevours. But Lord Acton's quote represents the idea that corruption metaphysically follows empowerment, as night must follow day. I reject such determinism, for various reasons.

Having explained that, for any other Hamiltonians reading this, here's a cartoon. It's from a short series I did about a young Prince. This one's about yet another sort of human corruption...

^^ Click to enlarge ^^

Australian OE # 07

2006-05-08T19:37:00.000+12:00

Australian OE # 07: Tasmanian Rollers

That's what I'm talking about. Makes the Victorian version look like a rogue snowball rolling out of a Chinese-checkers game hall.

This picture was taken out of the main cop shop in Launcestern. A few klicks up the road, and one klick under it, in Beaconsfield, a couple of miners have been waiting a week and a half to be rescued from the shaft they're in. I'm picking they'll be free around noon on Tuesday.

Never saw many cop cars in Tas. I only assume they all look like the ones I did see.

Voted

2006-05-07T23:20:00.000+12:00

I can't fairly vote for what I can't see but take this one for free, Mr Hide.

The commodificaiton of value

2006-05-07T20:15:00.000+12:00

Lindsay Mitchell and Red Confectionery have both made mention of a US study reported on Stuff. I think they're lawyers, or something. They're seeking to put a dollar valuation on motherhood.

NEW YORK: A fulltime stay-at-home mother would earn $US134,121 ($NZ212,250) a year if paid for all her work, an amount similar to a top US ad executive, a marketing director or a judge, according to a study released on Wednesday.

Things like this are, in my mind, pretty stupid. A hypothetical second-guessing of the market value of a mother is next to meaningless. I say "next to" only because sticking dollar values on things like this does at least make you think about what we value.

As a fan of Adam Smith and Ayn Rand I naturally think that Motherhood, and love itself, is a commodity. And there is an appropriate currency for this. However, dollars ain't it.

In the philosophy of Ayn Rand every value, motherhood for example, has a set of corresponding virtues. Some values, by way of example, are honesty, pride, justice, rationality, independence. These sorts of things are the currency of motherhood. As well as leading people to a good life these virtues are distinct rewards, pleasures. By these qualities people can evaluate what's really giving value in each of our lives, what really makes motherhood (and just living itself) worth our while.

I once began writing a little 'book of virtues' that would match our many roles to the values and virtues that constituted them. Never quite got around to doing that yet though, but I was inspired by economist George Reisman who, in one of his books, offered such a list for the role of a scientist.

The values of a scientist- reason, observation, truth, honesty, integrity, freedom of inquiry.

Ayn Rand has done this for the values of man, ie of a human being, in her novel Atlas Shrugged...

Values for man- integrity, independence, rationality, justice, honesty, productivness, pride.

Being a mother, under this Aristotelian virtue ethic framework, is a happy and life-fulfilling mixture of values. Motherhood is a value itself, and the sum of lesser values that, together, constitute this role some women choose. What might they be, and why?

The right answer to these questions will show us the currency motherhood deals in. Just as the currency of the New Zealand dollar can buy and sell, so can motherhood be bought and sold. Children, friends, husbands, and other family don't pay with money though. They pay with their respect and their love and with the currency of family values- to the profit of all. If they did not it would hardly be worthwhile to be a mother, she should liquidate and move on. No amount of being tipped petty cash or put on a wage from her "client friends" and "client family" could possibly substitute. It's just the wrong currency.

This study's parameters completely missrepresent motherhood, and the stay-at-home mother, by attempting such monetary enumeration. All, I suspect, at the bidding of divorce lawyers in the service of homologous mothers.

Unbundled

2006-05-06T21:41:00.001+12:00

^^ Click to enlarge ^^

For non-Kiwis, this toon relates to this [link to Hidesight.]

The Chinese

2006-05-06T16:03:00.000+12:00

I thought Trevor Loudon was being a bit over-cautious about letting the Chinese have part-owership in Port Lyttelton. But now it turns out he thinks any trade with China is a security risk to New Zealand! Now that's going way too far, Trevor.

The only Chinese I've ever known were a couple who used to run the cyber cafe on Broadway in Newmarket, where I used to live. Very polite, very spick-and-span, reserved and quiet folks. I used to run into them at computer flea markets too, like the Greenlane one, and say "hi." Polite and quiet as mice. Koreans, Japanese, and Vietnamese kinda look the same but, to generalise, you can tell the Chinese apart from them by their polite, humble, and withdrawn baring. Same deal with the seamstress down Osborne St who used to do my sewing. Such has been my experience with Chinese.

However, for the last few weeks I've been working for a company here in Melbourne that imports a modest amount of aluminium from China. A few times I've trucked a load to Smorgon Steel, which is a huge place. You have to report to an office and be kitted out with safety gear and papers just to get in. Chatting to a Smorgon guy I learned that, in the past two years or so, a huge proportion of their ally has come in from China that used to originate from here in Australia. He also said the Australian quality was far better but he would say that, being an Ozzie.

Apart from what I've learned this week I know that huge amounts of manufactured goods and raw materials are coming in from China. As a student of economics I know Ricardo's lesson of the mutual trade benefits of comparative advantage. We too, as well as the Chinese, are making out on these [most volumous] trade deals- else we would not do it.

The blokes I deliver ally to span the whole of Melbourne. Some of these firms on-sell or transport the packs and bundles to other states of Australia. Some of the regular local customers I have delivered to only this week, for example, make ramps of all sorts, roofs, flagpoles, shop and home interior fittings, window louvers, window frames, white boards, washrooms, and campervans. I love being nosy and seeing seeing what's being done. They think I'm working for money? Hah, I'm working so I can get paid to listen to rock and drive around Australia peeking in on everyone's business! And loving it.

I get to see a myriad, though a tiny proportion, of what's going on with Chinese aluminium in this city- the product, the businesses, the people employed. Production is keeping us all busy building Melbourne, materially, into a better and better city and increasing the standard of living. Ah, the grace of capitalism.

If all of this is also making the Chinese more wealthy and prosperous too what's the trouble, Mr Loudon? Even if we do end up going to war within 20 years I think we should keep trading in the mean time. While their might is nourished by us, so is ours by them. Perhaps your quarrel is really with what we are doing with that might, millitarily, as compared with them?

And if there is to be war then all that trade will mean is that both sides get to do it at a higher level of comfort than otherwise. We'll both have lots of guns, but we'll also both have lots of butter and soft pillows and warm clothing to go to war with. If battle is coming, why not fight it at a higher standard of living, ah?

In other N.Zeal news, Maia at Capitalism Bad is linking in as an exclaimation of how not-scared of him she is. :)

Australian OE # 06

2006-05-06T14:00:00.000+12:00

Australian OE # 06: Accent

I know I already did accent. But the lesson does bare repeating.

I say again: Agggh!

And, in podcast news....

2006-05-05T20:18:00.000+12:00

The Watercooler podcast for the month of May (and the other great Voicebooth podcast, Roundup) is a money-spinner! I've just been listening to their latest podcast from May 4th.

Yip, those Christchurch buggers have found a way to make money out of their own radio show. Apart from being clever businessmen I suppose being professional broadcasters without any strong political colours makes them a bit more marketable than other podcasts I like to listen to. Cunning buggers!

Something else to look forward to, the Voicebooth Ltd have said that for every week of May [being New Zealand Music Month] they're recording a one-hour podcast-safe recording of a Kiwi pub band in Chch. That might work out rather well.

In other news Ben, a commenter to Kete Were, writes that libertarian blogger, The Whig, made his own podcast last year. Is that so? That'd be good. I'll have to see if I can find it.

Australian OE # 05

2006-05-04T23:00:00.000+12:00

Australian OE # 05: Rollers

Each state has their own police force in Australia. This is a Victorian cop car.

It's pretty gay isn't it? And I mean that in a bad way.

Doesn't exactly inspire fear and respect. After the Kiwi version it looks like you've got a checkered table cloth chasing you! (not that I'd know about that...)

See if I can find a Tasmanian cop car pic to blog soon. Their cars look like panthers.

Doing the best they can

2006-05-02T23:21:00.000+12:00

Sophia at Red Confectionary blog is taking cheap shots at Act Leader Rodney Hide.

They really shouldn't be doing that, especially not when their ugly masters are so vulnerable. But then, after recently having been delt a resounding blast for stupid feminist collectivism by the mighty forces of Right you can forgive the desperate lefties for resorting to such baseness.

Go ahead then Sophia. But don't think for a moment that we can't do it better. Checked out Gen XY lately??

Feminist Empire Strikes Back

2006-05-01T00:04:00.000+12:00

Heads up! Liberty is under attack from Kate Were blog where Xavier The Laborite has finally managed to muster a Leftist response to my deconstruction of Kate Sutton's Womansfest speech at Auckland University earlier in the month.

Xavier is a fairly reasonable guy, seems to have a functional mind down there under the leaden weight of dogmatic socialist thought patterns. Thus, he hasn't come up with much.

So, when I have a spare five minuites I'll give the bugger a thrashing. That is, unless someone takes care of him first. Save some for me though okay?

The New Hamburgler

2006-04-30T15:53:00.000+12:00

Does something about the MacDonalds Hamburgler look a bit different today? Who is that under that mask? Hang on, could that be Sue Kedgely?

You guessed it!

Stuff and Rodney both report on The Health Select Committee's deliberations next month, of which Green MP Kedgely is a part. Their particular concern will be regulating the marketing of food to children. Hamburgler Kedgley is trying to steal all the MacDonalds Happy Meals!

Kedgley and the Fat Police (ie the 'Fight the Obesity Epidemic' group) seem not to be met by any resistance. Jackie Blue of the Nats, also on the committee, says she has an open mind on regulation and banning toys. If this is so then what hope is there for stopping Kedgley?

How long is Sue's so-called obesity epidemic supposed to have been going on for? My earliest memories of going out to Kentucky Fried Chicken involve getting Buck Rodgers gear, and of Pizza Hut and getting little rubber poseable Mars aliens with stickers. There used to be great puzzles at Pizza Hut too, and nice little Pizza Hut pencils to complete them with. It's not new, so was the obesity epidemic upon us in 1982 or could we just handle "pester power" better back then?

Is "pester power new" too? Haven't advertisers long found their way to a parent's wallet via a child's wide eyes? Are parents so unable to parent these days that they need government to protect them from the pestering power of their own children?

Banning Happy Meals, and the like, represents a major governmental intervention. They hurt parents and the institution of parenting. They hurt kids. They hurt industry. They take food and health choice away from us all. But this is nothing, "Getting rid of toys is a little step in the right direction," Kedgely said.

Call me a radical extremist libertarian for worrying about this "little step" of the demise of Happy Meals. But perhaps after Kedgely's next step, and the one after that, you'll start to wake up New Zealand.

Libertarianz On Campus

2006-04-30T12:19:00.000+12:00

Since I used one frame from this old toon I thought I may as well blog the rest.

I was in the process of creating a series of these toons for the Libertarianz On Campus, which I once to belonged to. That being the student groups at Victoria and Auckland universities of the political party Libertarianz.

I think we had a fantastic revival in 2002 and became strong at Auckland. Toward the end of the year we decided not to keep up the good work, and I eventually became fed up and turned to ACT.

I think they're still going, if on low power. There are/were some good people on the books, but going to great waste. Libertarians are wasted in Libertarianz. :(

Australian OE # 04

2006-04-29T23:12:00.000+12:00

Australian OE # 04: Postbox

It's funny the things you miss.

I miss our postboxes, nice square and sturdy things made of some kind of super cement. They have contrasting colours.

Even after only 10 months, popping back to New Zealand in 2004, seeing a Kiwi postbox made me fell all happy inside.

These red tin things are all over this country and inspire no affection in me at all.

Australian OE # 03

2006-04-27T18:46:00.000+12:00

Australian OE # 03: Burnley Tunnel

I've got a new job as of last week, back to driving trucks again. Last last Wednesday I was delivering a big load of steel out west to Sunshine late in the day. It was a very wet day in Melbourne anyway, but heading back East around 4pm is a killer. Major traffic. Sometimes stationary. Nearly as bad as Auckland!

But I got to pass through the Burnley Tunnel, which is one of the highlights of driving in Melbourne. It runs under the Yarra river, under the domain which has Government House and the botanic gardens etc. The tunnel is a toll road, it's one of the places an e-TAG will let you go.

It's about as long as the Lyttleton Tunnel in Christchurch, except it's really two tunnels (one for east, one for west) with three lanes. I always beep my horn going through the Lyttleton, it's a bright, friendly and fun place but the Burnley Tunnel is big and dark that wont echo but just swallow any beeping right up.

One cool feature the Burnley Tunnel can boast is that it has its own radio station, kinda. The first time I went though it I deduced this, and felt rather clever about it some time later when it was confirmed. Being a deep tunnel you'd expect your radio to cut out, but mine didn't. This told me that they were re-transmitting the signal within the tunnel, obviously. Knowing this, I was delighted but not surprised when the usual radio in the tunnel cut out and an announcer came on talking about roading conditions. Nobody does that in the Lyttleton.

Anyway, I'll be going in and out of this tunnel again almost daily now. But back on wet Wednesday I used my mobile phone to record this Mp3 from the radio. Turns out to be the perfect song too! In a world blogging first (surely) you get to hear what it's like inside the Burnley Tunnel in Melbourne when the usual 80kph has been reduced to 60kph.

Break out the popcorn if you've got it. :)

Capitalism Bad; Tree Pretty: ANZAC Day

2006-04-26T22:43:00.000+12:00

Capitalism Bad; Tree Pretty: ANZAC Day

Oh good grief. What's happened to the Capitalism Bad blog? Maia is one of my special turn-left-right projects but how can I go on if she's shut off commenting to all but her inner circle?

Goddamnit. My comment was...

Some of the things you say are right. But how about you save them for the other 364 days of the year? There is enough virtue and respectability in our past wartime thoughts and deeds to fill in one day in April. I thank you for thinking, I don't thank you for offending me. Your understanding is incomplete, Maia.

[Update- okay, it's not so bad. She's just repelling spam attacks]

Australian OE # 02

2006-04-26T19:33:00.000+12:00

Australian OE # 02: e-TAGs

Here in Australia they've got some impressive roads. Melbourne especially. In NZ we've got highways and motorways, in Australia it's highways and freeways. Some freeway segments are tollways and require an e-TAG.

During my time here I understand the e-TAG has been made to work nation-wide, so the same little device will work wherever you travel. It's a pre-paied little ID for your motorvehicle, like a swipe card.

About the size of a '90s cell phone, the e-TAG is a Tesla Coil which beeps as you pass through a magnetic field beneath a gantry above the road. Thusly do the roading authorities know when a user has accessed the road-segment, and charge it to their account. There are cameras that read and match the vehicle's numberplate. If an unauthorised user accesses the road-segment they used to end up with a dirty fine addressed to them. However, this policy has changed so that even without an e-TAG or prior arrangments a driver can retrospectively pay a nominal useage charge by making a phone call and thus avoid a big fine.

It works just fine. All the toll roads in Melbourne use them. In Sydney and Brisbane, if you get in the correct lane, you also have the option of stopping at a booth and paying by coin. Either you throw your money into a chute or stop and actually do it at a manned toll booth.

More exciting Australian OE talk about roads, bridges and tunnels are sure to come!

Meanwhile, back in Colonial New Zealand...

2006-04-26T18:51:00.000+12:00

Getting a bit behind on my reading, so I cut and paste a whole bunch of blog reads onto my phone to read on the train.

So, on the way to Dandenong I noticed Lindsay Mitchell's words...

Emotions are running very high on TV One's Eye to Eye as Hone Harawira and Lindsay Perigo go head-to-head over banning tobacco. Hone says tobacco came with colonisation and Perigo says so did cars, refrigerators and tvs.

Ah yes, I remember that old line. Infact, it was the subject of my first attempt at a political cartoon [click image to enlarge]. I guess Hone Harawira's vision of our history looks exactly like that eh? What a nutter.

Least We Forget

2006-04-25T09:51:00.000+12:00

ANZAC Day, 2006

"Albert expresses it: 'The war has ruined us for everything.' He is right. We are not youth any longer. We don't want to take the world by storm. We are fleeing. We fly from ourselves. From our life. We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces. The first bomb, the first explosion, burst in our hearts. We are cut off from activity, from striving, from progress. We believe in such things no longer, we believe in the war."

- All Quiet On The Western Front

They disembarked in 45

And no-one spoke and no-one smiled

There were to many spaces in the line.

Gathered at the cenotaph

All agreed with the hand on heart

To sheath the sacrificial Knifes.

- Southamption Dock, Pink Floyd

Comrade, I did not want to kill you. . . . But you were only an idea to me before, an abstraction that lived in my mind and called forth its appropriate response. . . . I thought of your hand-grenades, of your bayonet, of your rifle; now I see your wife and your face and our fellowship. Forgive me, comrade. We always see it too late. Why do they never tell us that you are poor devils like us, that your mothers are just as anxious as ours, and that we have the same fear of death, and the same dying and the same agony—Forgive me, comrade; how could you be my enemy?

- All Quiet On The Western Front, Erich Remarque

I've just returned from the Dawn Service at Melbourne's Shrine of Rememberance. It was a cold 10 degrees, heavy with moisture. Still, lots of people out there but it was hard to see a thing. I wasn't especially moved this time. And every time I hear someone say 'least we forget' or 'we will remember them' I have to have a cynical smile. Of course we will, sooner or latter. We just hope it's not sooner.

I'm going back into town shortly for the parade, see if that's better.

I see The Whig and ACT On Campus have already paied their respects. I expect others are yet to come. I'm especially looking to Silent Running to make some remarks, this is something Mr Murray does best.

The Dirtwater Dynasty

2006-04-24T23:00:00.000+12:00

As promised, some more Hugo Weaving for you. Before he was in V For Vendetta, before he was in Lord of The Rings and The Matrix trilogies he was an Australian pioneeir.

Weaving played Richard Eastwick in the greatest mini-series I've ever seen, The Dirtwater Dynasty. This is the story of one man, Eastwick, from his life as a homeless urchin in England to the ancient patriarch of a vast Australian empire.

It is the first DVD disk, the first two episodes that impress me the most. Here Eastwick is the perfect Ayn Rand hero, he is the Howard Roark of The Outback. One individual, determined to stand up for himself against the forces of nature and the forces of other men.

He arrives in Australia with enough money to live for a week (which is more than I could say for myself...) and faces despair on striking out to the country to find no work, only abandoned dust and unimagined heat (been there too, done that). But Richard never gives up, he learns how to survive and his curious reasoning mind and determination allow him to gain and fight to keep advance after advance. When everyone else has given up he keeps going, proving his belief in himself well placed.

Eastwick embraces new technology, battles missionaries, droughts, family tragedy, and corrupt lawmen. This is just in the first two episodes. The remaining are about his family in changing times, the World Wars and the Great Depression. Richard the young hero seems to loose sight of his true goal in his fixation with building an empire, an Eastwick dynasty that his family can believe in as much as he. By the end of the series it seems that his origional ideal has decayed into a corruption, except that there is an unexpected final twist that saves the show.

Highly recommended.

Upham upherself!

2006-04-24T08:46:00.000+12:00

The main street in Amberley, North Canterbury, is a big wide straight and flat affair with...I dunno, tractor dealerships and general stores either side of it. And, a big bronze statue of WW2 hero Charles Upham- which I always spare a glance on my way by.

Many miles away, in Auckland, is a totally different main street. Parnell road is sometimes straight, sometimes very steep and always of regular narrow width. It's filled up with bars, restarants, and several exclusive fancy expensive shops that sell things like designer wool garments, rare books, or dresses. Of all the top Auckland bars along the leading one is George- which I also always spare a glance into on my way by.

Amanda Upham, daughter to Charles himself, comes from the former and now dwells in the latter surroundings, Stuff reported yesterday. What a contrast it is between these two places. Don't get me wrong about Parnell, which I haunted for over a year. It's a beautiful village thick with history and fun backstreets to explore and secret little short-cut allys and pathways to parks. Love it, and love the glamour too. But fine places like this also lend themselves to snobs, and that's what this aloof chain-smoking interior decorator old woman bloodywell is!

And so she might remain, and little would I care except that the fate of a national treasure is in her hands. Charles Upham is a New Zealand war hero, a unique double recipient of the Victoria Cross, an ass-kicking Cantabrian, a fighter, a real winner. Between battles he used to sneek off on his own to kill Germans, he was committed to battle like a true warrior should be. If I were on campaign I'd like to think his courage and extra projects are the sorts of things I'd get up to. Upham refused to sell his medals in his time because, to him, that transaction would represent turning in for mere money the higher value of what he and his mates suffered to achieve. But he's dead now, and the medals go to his three daughters- including the dispicable up-herself Upham.

It is grossly unfair, she says, that the Government refuses to shell out for them. She wants pay back! She says she has had to live with her Father's fame but never got paied for it!? I hate this woman. But what should happen to the medals?

Most libertarians, in answering this moral question, would answer politically. They would say "I don't care, as long as she's not hurting anybody else" and smugly retire as if that were the answer to all questions of moral judgement. Not me. The medals are private property, this business is up to the Uphams, but I'll be damned if I don't have a strong stake in this too as a greatful inheritor of their Father's handywork!

The Uphams should not sell them, it's the wrong thing to do. The right thing to do is to appreciate what they represent and accept the honor of being entrusted with their keeping (with a little help from Waiouru military museum.) If these ageing harpies can't see that then they should snap out of it. Wake up! Don't care? Start to care. They should.

They wont. They don't give a toss, Dad is dead and they see dollar signs they can appreciate in exchange for something they simply cannot. So I say give it to them, whoever wants to. I'd be glad to see the treasures out of their wrinkly old crone hands. They don't deserve them.

I'd be happiest for the State to look after them, but not at taxpayer expense. I'd also be happy for the medals to be in play in the marketplace where their symbolic value to New Zealand and the World, beyond the base materials of their construction, has a real and ongoing meaning to people.

WOMENSFEST SPEECH

2006-04-23T09:56:00.000+12:00

I shall now quickly fisk Kate Sutton's Womensfest speech to The Quad at AU a few days ago.

Of course it would have been better to be there, because it was a speech and not a piece of literature. These are just speech notes released on Red Confectionery. The hook, the catch, and the swearing make more sense as a speech. However, the non-facts can be shot down here on equal terms weather they be spoken or penned. So,-

I was invited to speak because I am a successful woman. I must say that this is very flattering, as I do not yet feel successful.

You're not a successful woman. Success is reward for dealing in values but political power is a reward for penalising, for dealing in fear. You are a successful paracite, if successful at all, but not a successful woman.

When told this I started to think about what success is – Sure I do many things. I am a former president of this student union, a current University of Auckland councillor, I am the chairperson of the Tamaki community board and I am a project manager for a charitable trust in South Auckland as well as sitting on about 4/5 other boards and committees.

I rest my case.

I wanted to speak about women overseas and their plight – the feminisation of poverty and how vital it is for us to understand what is happening overseas,

Note the abstract reference to women outside New Zealand and some kind of plight. What women? Where? What's their boggle? If it's vital for us to understand why is it left to the imagination? Are you talking about Australian woman? Who? What? Where?

the HIV/AIDS epidemic which affects mainly heterosexual females and their children.

So do hickups! So does getting hair in your soup and forgetting where you put your shoes! Some vast patriarchal conspiracy, Kate? No. It's just that most members of every population are hetrosexual females and their children. Think about it, you're talking crap.

it is not an equal or fair world for women overseas in our poorer countries who are raped, mutilated, tortured and without homes – they are victims not perpetrators.

Ohhhh, they're victims not perpetrators? Thanks for the correction, as if we needed to be corrected for thinking your poor abstract mutilated mystery women you haven't identified were guilty for being homeless and tortured. Shame on us. You really got us good with that one, Kate.

ask most women if they are discriminated against and most pakeha women will say no. The problem is that the statistics tell a different story 24.2% of judges, 19.2% of newspaper editors, 17.2% of legal partnerships, 18.9% of mayors are women.

What is this fascination with making men and woman homogenous in all industries?

People find their own place in the world without some Stalin conforming every pocket of society into a microcosmic duplicate of the national statistics. If 50% of New Zealanders are woman does it really follow that 50% of magazine editors need to be men? Does the number of percentage points by which we fall short of this really measure sexist discrimination as Kate suggests?

Why is it that 17% of professors and associate professors are women? But it that over 50% of general staff are women – its because there is still a hierarchy of jobs and there is a still a system where women have choices to move ahead - the boys network still exists in this university

Sexual dimorphism exists, celebrate it Sutton! Maybe "most pakeha women" don't wish they were judges, newspaper editors, and politicians? Men and woman have different abilities and tastes that don't happen to conform to what your numerical model demands they should be.

You just want to change the world into one giant game of Sutton Says.

I am passionate about good governance and directorship and I am trying to break the mold of these statistics and bring my sisters with me, but it’s a long slow battle.

I always ask people who produce this bullshit if they would also like to apply their golden median to the crime statistics. Is it also a problem for you, Kate, that insufficient violent offenders are females? Not enough drink drivers? Not enough white collar crime comming from skirts? Should we try to equalise those statistics too for the same reason you have for equalising it in the legal workforce? A television campaign or schools programme to get more little girls to go crooked? Well why not? Or could it be that there are other considerations to the desirability of this kind of equality you have neglected to include in your stupid inferences? Hmmm.

Date rape, gang rape, sexual violence are all a norm here – it’s a joke because men make it so and they are the blokes, the boys club and they are putting us down and taking our jobs.

Well you've got us there. But for a man to get to the bins where Craccum is kept you have to sometimes push girls out of the way, and down a flight of stairs. And as for gang rape, what else is there to do while waiting in those huge queues at the cafe? It's the norm, what can I say?

But, hey. I say again- they're not *your* jobs, Stalinette.

So the stats look bad, the story is still bad - what do we do?

Cut cafe queue times and hand out Craccum magazine to those who are kept waiting. Then I wont have any excuse for all this normalised raping I've been doing all the time and you wont have to think twice before going to luch.

We must encourage a culture of diversity and this starts with accepting women as equal in our society by providing them with equitable opportunity

Well they're not equal, unless you mean politically equal but you do not. "Equitable oppertunity" means whatever you want it to mean, which is clearly that girl% is supposed to go up and boy% down so we're all nice and symmetrical like.

You all have an obligation to wake the fuck up and realise how every thing that you have now, all the rights to be free to earn money to marry when you want, to gain an education, to control your sexuality and bear children when you want – all of these rights have been fought for by women and they can be taken away

Well that's it right there, isn't it Kate? You think you're Kate Sheppard and it's the 1800s, or that you're Betty Friedan and it's the 1960s. These were times for a'changin', for pushing the system the way you're still pushing now. But guess what Kate? It worked.

You are living in the past, still pushing. You still think the right to work, to learn, to invidivual sexuality, to mating and marriage choice are in immanent danger of being snuffed out. But they are not in any such danger, because we fought and won that battle together before you and I were even born.

And why did we fight for those thing? Wasn't it so we could enjoy them? Take your place in the world, woman. Stop squarking. Nobody is trying to make you have babies and steal your jobs, okay? Relax babe. You live in New Zealand in 2006. There are people who love you and could use your help and offer you theirs and share a community with you but if you can tell such people by the shape of their gender you're a better person than I am.

Kate Sutton

2006-04-22T23:24:00.000+12:00

Maybe I shouldn't say I've met Kat Sutton, except that I thought we were in a class together at Auckland in 2002. Seems to me she ran for student office in 2003 but then backed out of the race just before the vote. Can't say for sure, it's a very peripheral memory on account of my not giving a damn.

Had I not left New Zealand in 2004 I would not have failed to notice that this Laborite feminist became Auckland University Student Association President. That would make her one of the first Presidential unhappy inheritors of the voluntary student unionism I helped campaign for. Sorry about that, love.

But not too too sorry, because I hate people like Kate Sutton. First I like to meet them in person, then commence with the full-on hate. For now I've got a kind of provisional-dislike-but-I'll-hate-you-latter attitude going, and it's because she's one of those.

Gay? No. Feminist? No. Labourite? Nope, worse. She's a carear politician. Yuck! From the age of five these specimens gestate though the government primary, secondary and tertiary education system and then come out the other end to perpetuate that system. No life experience, no private sector trials, a bureaucrat born fully clothed into the world. Community boards, charitable trusts, wank wank wank. A tweenager with an MA in political studies from Auckland University out loose in the world.

:: Shudder ::

And that's the author of this speech, blogged on Red Confectionary, which I'll kick a few matchsticks out from under when I wake up tomorrow so we can see it all fall down. For now, time to catch some Zs.

ACT and Army

2006-04-21T20:01:00.000+12:00

Rodney Hide blogs that half of the ACT parliamentary team are signing up for the Territorials. Awesome. Tomorrow, Saturday, is open day in Australia (or Victoria, at the least) for Army Reserves. I'm not doing anything tomorrow so I might pop along and see what it's about.

Earlier in the week my old local MP (Waimakariri), Ron Mark, and my present local electorate MP (Epsom), Rodney, struck out at the Army News. The Army newspaper has been running a horoscope, paying an outsider $75 a pop for it. I think it has been going for 16yrs and cost $20,000 to date.

I just take if for granted that Ron and Rodney are right, obviously. But this is controvesial so I should blog something about it. It's hard to do that because I'm very tired from
a) Working very hard
b) Being shocked by working hard after months of...well of not
c) Not getting much time to sleep
d) Being shocked by less sleep time after months of sleeping in

Brain on low power. Must struggle through...

Lets go:

Rick: The Defense budget is for defence, if you please!
Giles: But entertainment is a valuable munition in any army!

Rick: Horoscopes aren't entertainment. And they derive their false value from false pretense.
Giles: Maybe this one is different.

Rick: Well I bet I could write a great one. Inside army jokes, topical and witty references to army personnel and happenings. That would be worth it. But this is just regular Woman's Weekly bollocks. You have to give it the onus of the doubt.
Giles: Probably you're right and it does just suck. But it didn't cost much.

Rick: Cost?! Every penny needs to be accounted for, particularly as this is stolen money. Every time the government spends money on something you gotta ask yourself: Would I kill my kindly grey-haired old Mother for this?
Giles: Yes, you got me there.

Rick: Of course I do. And isn't it in the defense White Paper statement, or something, that the army is supposed to live up to the capability standard of being able to step into any civilian role? They can write their own!
Giles: So they should too!

Rick: Good thing Ron is looking out for us.
Giles: And Rodney too.

Rick: People should be thankful.
Giles: They lack your virtue.

Ryan the Yankee

2006-04-20T23:47:00.000+12:00

I don't know who he is (or maybe I do but forgot), but I am most impressed by this comment left here yesterday by Ryan Gray. Thanks.

"If we want to defeat terrorist we need to “Westernize” Islam in the same way Christianity and Judaism were. The reason followers of Christianity and Judaism and not acting in the same way is that most ignore significant parts of the Bible that advocate and / or justify such violence (fine with me.) They pick the parts that are safe as bedtime stories for kids and tend to ignore what Moses did to the Midianites in the Book of Numbers. I think we need moderate Moslems (Moslems who ignore or downplay the significance of the parts of the Koran that justify violence against “Infidels.” We need them out there spreading their memes within Islamic society. Moslems thinking about killing innocents are far more likely to listen to a dose of reason from a fellow Moslem than from an Infidel. There will probably come a time when most Moslems are as casual about their religion as most Christians are about theirs. That time will not come however without people like Cat Stevens, Mohamed Ali and other moderate Moslems."

Australian OE # 01

2006-04-19T22:54:00.000+12:00

Australian OE # 01: Accent

From living in Australia I have learned that Australians think we are the ones that have an accent.

I know, I know. It's hard to believe. But I mean it.

Last year I lived in Brisbane and this is a picture [click to enlarge] of a billboard I took while I was there.

It's an add for Kiwi made Mainland cheese. Aggh.

The Whig

2006-04-18T21:10:00.000+12:00

Bugger.

Blair 'The Whig' Mulholland has defected to the National Party. Aaron Bhatnager is rubbing his hands together in glee.

Why? Why? Why has this happened?

For some time now he has been dissing the way The ACT Party does its business, particularly Rodney Hide. As a libertarian he believes the wider principled message is being drastically sidelined by the many spotfire liberties Hide seems to be focused on. Also, his new co-blogger is Robin Booth and he has been acting like an absolute prick talking down ACT with most every contribution to that blog. Never the less, my jaw dropped to learn of the switch- and for good reason.

In late 2002, early 2003 I'd about had it. My own political party, The Libertarianz, was finally starting to look like it was going nowhere. Worse, it didn't even want to go anywhere. So, I took a short stroll down to ACT HQ in Newmarket and up the stairs to see what my alternative was.

And who pops out to greet me but The Whig himself?

To start with he eyed up the radical libertarian in the offices as if I might go Jihadi at any moment. But I wasn't there to be provoked into hysterics, but to listen and ask questions and to get a feel for what made the ACT people tick. Whig made ACT attractive to me through his clarity and intelligence and ability to listen. Based on his face at the door I decided, after weighing things up, to go ACT. Libertarianz is more principled on paper but principle is hollow and insincere if not put into practical action. But that's what I saw ACT doing- acting! So I defected.

Whig gave me Roger Douglas' books to take home, Unfinished Business and a photocopied There's Got To Be A Better Way. We talked for a while and I promised to return the books when I was done with them...., a promise I'll keep one of these days too.

So, when I think ACT I think Whig. The party can't be totally buggered while someone like him supports and believes in it.

So much for that.

Venn For You

2006-04-17T18:45:00.000+12:00

They are muslims, which means they believe in and follow Islam. THey are already there with the so-called "Fundamentalist Muslims".

So Cat Stephens is your idea of a fundamentalist Muslim? How much thought have you put into this Richard?

Cat Steven is actually more dangerous than Osama Bin Laden, because he lulls people like you into a false sense of security.

Do you think he should be higher up on the Most Wanted Man list than Osama?

Why do you ask such a pointless question?

For the same reason that you don't answer it.

Redneck Twits

2006-04-17T16:54:00.000+12:00

I've been distracted from my blogging for the last week because I've been using my time up in debate on SOLO.

One mate of mine defends blanked hate-speech against all Muslims thusly..

Scorn is not meant to be a persuasive argument; it's meant to galvanize those already opposed to the object of scorn.

<-- To which I have this reply

Another chump on this matter defends The Free Radical's latest edition by saying...

The point being, that what any particular muslim thinks of Lindsay's editorial is, fucking irrelevant.

To which yours truely shot back: A just fate for ink I sincerely hope you're right about!

Why can't they just hate all Muslims, persecute all Islamists, and apply firm and sensible and reasoned persuasion to everybody else? Seems to me I can convince Joe et al to do that if I just talk slowly enough, so I'm trying.

Love and Grief

2006-04-17T12:34:00.000+12:00

DPF bloggs on the Daily Telegraph, specifically on a quote from our Queen...

Grief is the price we pay for love

I don't agree.

Grief is the price we pay for love lost. If love lost is the same as love then all love must fail.

Statistically that might be true, but philosophically that is immoral and metaphysically unacceptable. If it is the human condition that the destiny of our highest values is unavoidable oblivion then what's the point of living? Shakespeare was absorbed with this issue, which is exactly what bought him a ticket to condemnation in the Ayn Rand lexicon.

Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio..

thus: Alexander died, Alexander was buried,
Alexander returneth into dust; the dust is earth; of
earth we make loam; and why of that loam, whereto he
was converted, might they not stop a beer-barrel?
Imperious Caesar, dead and turn'd to clay,
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away:

O, that that earth, which kept the world in awe,
Should patch a wall to expel the winter flaw!

Since Elizabethan times our philosophy has moved beyond this dismal conception of life, even if the new Elizabeth hasn't advanced apace!

More on this subject shortly..

Dead guy on a stick

2006-04-17T10:15:00.000+12:00

"Murdering tall poppies -- that's what Easter is about"

Not for the first Easter has Peter Cresswell's blog pulled out that full compliment of nonsense. I far prefer the characterisation offered by Tom Pain in his latest SNN podcast (which is awesome).

"I hope you all had a good Christian Easter, Jewish Passover, or secular chocolate-orientated long weekend".

But lets fixate on the Christian Easter for a moment for the sake of PC's dead guy on a stick claim.

"Just think, Christians revere Christ as their ideal..And then they killed him."

Everybody knows the Christians didn't kill him, and that any serious Christian reverance kicks in some time after Christ has gone, come back, and gone again! Just think.

"..his perfection was an affront to their own imperfection; his nobility an affront to their own ignobility...[the good] are sacrificed to the rotten, the constant to the inconstant, the talented and inspirational to the lumpen dross."

But that's not the story at all! Easter is about Jesus comming back to life, hasn't PC heard the rest of the story? Christ's perfetion, nobility, and talent could not be defeated. Jesus didn't make a sacrifice at all, he had just lived a life of teaching everyone about life after death. He lay down his life knowing he could take it up again- which he did. So, what sacrifice is being worshiped?

Yesterday I refered to The Passion (this is what Christians call the entire episode of...well the entire episode that was made into a Mel Gibson movie called The Passion actually) as a fictional film. That's all it is to me, a work of fiction.

However, it's a fictional story that Christians believe in. If you're going to hammer Christian's belief then you may as well consider their whole story, no? How would PC like it if his beloved Atlas Shrugged were attacked because Francisco d'Anconia sacrificed his life and generations of his families works? If you only know the first part of Francisco's story you'd think of him what Cresswell thinks of Jesus too!

The Passion is a good story for Christ's sake! But not if you miss the ending!

PC demonstrates that you don't have to have a chocolate-coated shell in order to be an egg.

Daffy Duck is Jesus

2006-04-16T22:04:00.000+12:00

It's Easter time, and on TV tonight I'm watching what promises to be a crappy remake of The Ten Commandments.

Next up tonight is Mel Gibson's The Passion of The Christ, which has all the precussion of a slapstick sketch, without any of the mirth. If actor James Caviezel had only delivered the line "Oh mother!" [Ed- or is it "Oh brother" for Daffy?] with a wet lisp, he would have been a dead-ringer for Daffy Duck! The endurance for violence in the film is of Looney Tunes capacity, though with blood, without wit, and without total regenesis at every scene change.

A Christian is supposed to decide if they really want in with the bargain of this pain and carnage or to reject it for a more gentle world-view. Acceptance means toning up one's conviction/faith to match the repulsion of The Passion- a strengthening of one's Christianity.

A heathen, on the other hand, is supposed to be humbled. He is intended to submit to the ramifications of the closing scene of this fictional film.

At least, that's what I wrote in my diary in February 2004 having just seen the film here in Melbourne.

Silver Lining 2/2

2006-04-16T12:03:00.000+12:00

T'is an ill wind that blows nobody any good! Allow me to demonstrate.

The Silver Lining # 2:

Last week the Newstalk ZB podcast featured broadcaster Larry Williams interviewing Ray Spring of the Christchurch Cat Control Campaign.

I kept a copy of the podcast, take a listen to it. Listen to how this fruit-loop fanatical and his little gang are attempting to exterminate housecats back home in Christchurch.

I understand their perspective though. Beneath the soft and fluffy exterior cats are are violent preditors. Most people look at a housecat and see a sort of living teddy bear. This mob sees the dark side, the cold-blooded calculating killer. But both of these things are in a cat's nature, and I love cats for the whole. Many owners scold their cat for hunting and try to rescue the little mouse or bird. They are confounded that their 'teddy bear' has missbehaved. Not me! When cats I've known have brought me a kill I fuss over them in genuine appreciation. I pat them and they purr at the recognition, I'm as proud of what they've done as they are themselves. What an unempathetic rebuke it would be to reject them as a bad teddy when they've really been a good cat.

Anyway, these Christchurch extremists have no taste for such terrible beauty. People like this, pushing for law change, can champion their cause and usurp the private property rights of those who would let cats be cats. Listen to the podcast. They want cats registered and chipped and killed if caught out after dark. They want ownership restricted to only one cat per home and suggest cag-proof yard fortifications to keep cats confined! But this is exactly the pattern of bossy-boot busy-body political action group work that has lead to every other unrightful government presence in our everyday lives.

Silver lining: These extremist dorks, like the PC PCs of yesterday, go so far in their cause as to do actual damage to it. Cat-ignorant idiots (many are cat owners) would go along with moderate, though no less totalitarian, regulations. There is plenty of support for the thin end of this wedge, as long as the thick end of the wedge is denied- and it's really hard to for libertarians to oppose this. However, extremist crazies make wedge politics impossible! From the first they are disclosing the full naked motivation of their ambition.

And that is the silver lining. They're so damn trigger-happy they shoot themselves in the foot. To that extent those who want the cat-crazies to die out should finance and support the lunatic fringe. The damage they strike to their own stated intent is cheap at most any price!

ps Ray Spring is an ex-pat Pom. Aren't they always?!!

Silver Lining 1/2

2006-04-15T23:20:00.000+12:00

T'is an ill wind that blows nobody any good! Allow me to demonstrate.

The Silver Lining # 1:

Lindsay Mitchell blogs today of the English police emergency that had a Herefordshire shopkeeper rush to the crime scene, his shop, in a bluster. Turned out they wanted to impound three gollywog dolls in the shop window!

Silver lining: Days latter an embarassed constabulary return the toys and the politically correct police constables (PC PCs!) end up a laughing stock and actually hurt their stupid cause!

^^^ Click image to enlarge ^^^

[update- I have expanded on this on SOLO]

NZB3 comes home

2006-04-12T23:39:00.000+12:00

Ah, that's better!

The April 1st Blogger crisis has passed at last.

So far this month NZB3 has been camping out on blogspot, but now we're back home on our own server.

It's faster and just better! And the feed works again now too.

Outtakes

2006-04-12T22:08:00.000+12:00

I'm going through and squaring away my hard drive. Run accross these old files that were going to be part of the NZB3 podcast.

Not soon after I recorded them I found out I'd been announcing Julian Pistorius' name all wrong! But I'm glad I kept these files because they're funny to listen to.

Waste not want not!

http://nzb3.com/files/introclip2.mp3
http://nzb3.com/files/introclip3.mp3
http://nzb3.com/files/introclip4.mp3

Evil and Evil-doers

2006-04-11T22:25:00.000+12:00

I believe in evil, you should too, here's why.

All our actions are goal-directed actions. Open the window because you want some fresh air. Go to work to earn some money. But what goal does fresh air and money achieve? Is there some final goal that all the little actions and little goals are a means to? Yes there is, and that's living. Living is an end in itself for us.

Unlike all the other animals the prospect of living for humans presents a moral crisis. All the other beasties have their goals and actions set for life. Bees have to make honey, sea gulls scavenge, whales bob about slurping up plankton. We, on the other hand, have to pick our own means of living- it's voluntary for us except that you need to decide how fast because otherwise you'll die of procrastination- that bit isn't a choice. Most of the avaliable options end up killing us, that's what you call bad, and anything left after that's what you call good.

Being around these days in the Western world with our recorded 2000 years of handed-down experience at being intelligent to draw on is rather a good deal. Guys and girls before us have been sorting out this moral crisis about how to live and have eliminated lots of bad choices and recommended lots of good ones. Hat tips to Joseph Lister for antiseptics, Ben Franklin for electricity, The Beatles for the music. And a big thankyou to this year's Darwin Award recipients for showing us what not to do.

Yes, between capitalism and modern Western civilisation we've pretty much got this moral crisis each and every one of us is faced with cornered and wimpering in submission! If we keep this up our strength for living, and the corresponding joy in living, can only improve. But now I come to evil.

Using your intellect to exercise volition- that's the name of the game. So evil is what? Evil is force. Force and mind are opposites. Without our volition, without the ability to choose goal-directed action, morality comes to an end and with it your power to live. Force is the death of us, freedom is a moral imperitive. But now I come to evil-doers.

"My position was that you cannot divorce evil from its practitioners — evil is not a Platonic abstraction existing in some other dimension independently of the human beings who perpetrate it — and that it's perfectly proper to attack them personally precisely for the evil that they are perpetrating & provided one can show that they are indeed doing that, in which case the attacks are not gratuitous or ad hominem"
- Lindsay Perigo

This I fully agree with. Evil is a name for human goals and actions at their very worst misuse. The freedom we need is not freedom from the forces of reality (this is our volition's subject matter) but freedom from other people tampering with our capacity for morality. You might end up in the same deadly bind either way, perhaps holding onto a cliff by your fingertips. If your own free choices lead you there and to slip to your death then there's no evil, nobody else to blame. But if someone forced you into that same position against your volition then that is evil. Evil needs human beings to perpetrate it. There are no evil trees or evil spirits, just us.

To that extent it is perfectly proper to send these wishes to the following individual perpetrators of evil, looking them in the eye and to their faces:

"Death to Destiny Church!"
"Death to Scouting New Zealand!"
"Death to Shinto!"
"Death to The Salvation Army"
"Death to St Stephens Anglican Church!"
"Death to St Bedes Colledge!!"
"Death to Parnell Christian Woman's Knitting Circle (meets every second Sunday at Jubilee Hall, bring your own wool and scones)!! Yahh!"
"Death to Islam!"
"Death to Mothers For Environmentalism!"

That parishioner, that Scoutmaster, that Priest, that school teacher, that Muslim, that Mother: evil. Religion in all these forms is a kind of mental illness, a virulent force to attack intellect and volition. In no measure should it be tolerated. As to when, how, and if you break the news to these individuals- there are different schools of thought.

Dewy 330

2006-04-11T02:41:00.000+12:00

It may seem logical that the best books on economics will belong to the best economics school. However, my argument is that this is not so.

One does not become a true economist by becomming steeped the capitalist doctrines. Likewise, one does not become a true philosopher by dining only on the doctrine of Ayn Rand; Nor does one become wise in farming itself by tending a single crop or stock.

In every science or cognitive discipline there is an essence that transcends the state of the art. This is the same logos or scholarship or kernel that has been like a thread running through the thoughts of all thinkers on any given subject. In economics this thread was first created by Adam Smith, but it outlasted him as it will outlast the economists of today.

The highest economist is an economic philosopher. His subject matter, like all the great economists, is not a single doctrine but this special thread that runs though them all. He thinks about the essence of economics as if it's a mountain and he has to cut his own trail to the summit. He is not content to live off the scraps of begged opinion, he considers economics first-hand in the same way that the great economists considered them. By reading the works of great economists one studies not directly their practical use but their way of thinking about the problem. Economics is a very young science with much unmapped territory. The true course of econmics inheres in making new discoveries in that uncharted territory, not in simply learning by rote the lessons of a Keynes or a Friedman.

There is a hierachy of economists. There are underlaborers- econometricians, technitians of economics. There are students, there are teachers. There are workers, perhaps at the bank or in journalism where they apply economics. Higher still are the policy-makers, advisors to political leaders. But at the top of the heap are the very best, the great economists- the intellectual pioneers. Their thinking changes the whole world. Smith, Mill, Marx, Marshall, Keynes, von Mises, Friedman, and so forth. This is the best of economics therefore the subject of their great works makes for the best of economic literature.

What you aquire from studying the greats is hard to boast about. It is seldom taught at school and the value you get cannot be measured in course credits. Parents and teachers and friends will scoff and make you feel ashamed for spending so much time 'away with the fairies' 'just thinking.' All the same, the best economics consists in examining and truely understanding at the coal-face these fundamental premises. You're in a better position to understand your chosen school as well as to defeat the competing ones. And then, if you have talant, you could become a great economist yourself!

So, the best books are the economic histories. Dewy Decimal 330.

Schools of Economics

2006-04-11T01:39:00.000+12:00

I think most bloggers know there are many schools of politics. These we like to place on "the political spectrum." (recent writings on my reguard for the utility of that here)

Most everybody knows there are different schools of theology, from Buddhism to Christianity to Wicca. Many people know there are different schools of dance, different schools of psychology, of philosophy, of music, of physics. But did you know there were different schools of economics? It is so.

As a matter of interest, there are or have been different schools in most every subject. However, as a science or an art becomes better traveled the alternative schools tend to be cast asside. I don't know myself if there are different schools of mathematics anymore. But in the early days people used to get thrown overboard for suggesting the possibility of irrational numbers (this is what comes of arguing in boats).

^^^ This little tree is my understanding so far of the different schools of economics (click on image to view full size).

Economics, for me, starts with The Classicals- Adam Smith being the first of them. Marxism and Neo-Classicism for example are both schools that directly stem from the Classical school of economics, whereas Keynesianism stems from Neo-Classicism and is the scion of three more schools.

I'm quite keen on the Austrian school, but my second choice would be the Institutionalist school which takes its roots from a mix between Marxism and Veblenese economics.

What we're taught at school in New Zealand is actually drawn from every one of these schools. How else could it be, since all of these schools have great world-shaking ideas that cannot be ignored? But in the main our university lecturers tend to be dominated either by Neoclassical, Keynesian or Monetarist thought.

This table is only advanced as my own knowledge. As I understand more schools I modify the table. There is no place on my table the likes of Frederick Bastiat or the thematic school of Game Theory. The former is more of a gad-fly muse than any school, the latter is a system of logic that is compatable with nearly any school you please.

Planet Rock Evolution

2006-04-10T21:54:00.000+12:00

Every Sunday a rockumentary out of Canberra is simulcast accross Australia on the TrippleM radio network. And I listen to it, because it's very good.

Rob Duckworth has access to much music history knowledge and lots of interview tapes. Some tapes he has made himself in person with famous artists. He puts together a show where artists talk about their lives and their works, and then plays the music in that light.

This week the topic of the show is New Zealand rock!

Split-Enz, Dragon, Mi-Sex, and so on. It's good stuff, you should check it out (click on image above). But hurry up because it will only be online until Sunday afternoon when the new show updates.

ps This is a nice Libertarian way to get free music, see? Not like what Bad Dominic does.

Death To Hate Speech

2006-04-10T15:41:00.000+12:00

Chaos Theory has raised again the issue of how best to win this war for our way of life? Which war? The one with the Muslims of course, specifically with the fundamentalists but generally with the entire culture, entire civilisation, entire religion, of Islam.

The historiography rolls something like this:

Lindsay Perigo writes this on SOLO, then publishes it in The Free Radical magazine.
Not PC blog says yay.
NZB3 says nay.
A month latter PC blog has to say "yay" again.
This incites Chaos Theory to say "nay" as per above.
Kiwi Blog gives hat tip to Chaos Theory.
This, in turn, incites PC to say "yay again" again.

I have nothing new to say, but I did draw something...

<-- Click to enlarge

Shire Network News

2006-04-10T06:52:00.000+12:00

SNN; 6:20 mins

"Reasons to hate the United Nations, number 2375:

With Iran threatening to wipe Israil off the map, Al Zakawi busy with his start-a-civil-war-through-sectarian-murder programme. A genocide going on in Darfur, Robert Mugabie turning the former bread-basket of Africa into a basket case and Fidel Castro still inexplicably alive it's good good to see the all-encompasing moral authority of the United Nations being turned to the most vital human rights issue facing mankind today. I refer of course to giving New Zealand Maori more rights!"

SNN 42 is out, Shire Network News podcast that is. I'm just listening to it now. Apart from much other wisdom Tom Paine's item, which I quote above, caps off nicely the whole Marxist Sociology Professor from Mexico episode. Of course SNN tells it best- not only because they tell it last, and stand on the shoulders of the giants who have commentated all week before them, but because there's nobody else quite so terribly clever and amusing.

Another git from the UN stopped by NZ to reveal to us some bullshit wisdom, bullshit history and bullshit advice. This time New Zealand wasn't buying! On your bike Rodolfo!

The Lost Generation

2006-04-09T21:31:00.000+12:00

John Campbell has an interesting advertisment for his show (Campbell Live) on Monday night. Basically, it involves shots of the Big Day Out, with his voice questioning if 'Generations X and Y' aren't 'The Lost Generation'.

It's a shame that John and his team are eighty years late! The Lost Generation were the people who came of age during and just after World War One. It particularly refers to the expatriates - a group of American artists and writers living in Europe at the time. People like Earnest Hemmingway, Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot. They weren't just 'lost' because of the war - they were anomic (my favourite term), dislocated and disillusioned.

Campbell's list of things the Nova Lost are facing pales in comparison to two world wars and a depression that made a quarter of the workforce unemployed; apparently, we’re "crippled by student loan debt and living beyond our means", We're having to give up our "dreams of owning a home". Oh noes. Big deal.

I think there's often something useful in trying to condense down the spirit of the times (or of a generation) into a simple phrase or explanation: it helps in getting a sense of the general feeling, the intangible energy in the air. It reminds me of Hunter S. Thompson's account of what's sometimes now called the consciousness revolution: "that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. We were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark - the place where the wave finally broke and rolled back."

That's fantastic. But the temptation, all over the place these days, is to pick up whatever short term trend you want to hype, put it into the form 'The [your term here] Generation' and make a lot of noise about it. Perhaps I'm wrong but in twenty years we're not going to be known as The Lost Generation because of mortgages and personal finance.

Da Vinci Code

2006-04-07T00:17:00.000+12:00

Checking out showtimes, the Da Vinci Code comes out in May.

If I had a buck for every person on a train I'd seen reading this...

Remember South Park and the Bloody Mary episode?

I predict a run on dart boards with Tom Hanks' face as the bull's eye as Christians flock to persecute the poor Gump.

Frontline

2006-04-06T14:25:00.000+12:00

We don't know how lucky we are. We don't know how proficious are the circumstances, Kiwis.

I know that since I've been away Paul Homes left TVNZ, and for a while there were three post-news current affairs shows. But thankfully we in Enzed have not yet devolved to the state of presenting and consuming tabloid news shows among ourselves.

Australia does! Oh yes they do!

An example from Monday night, here on mp3.

In the '90s one of the greatest comedic television creations of all time was a 13 episode show called Frontline. Wow it was good. It totally blew the legs out from under the lie that finds its function in tabloid news TV. These Australians did a fantastic job with their show. With "A Current Affair" and "Today Tonight" in competition here in Oz for who can pull the most dirty laundry ratings every night we could use a few more Frontline episodes now!

The Holden Republic

2006-04-06T12:52:00.000+12:00

Constitution junkie Lewis Holden has added a quick guide to our 37 Prime Money Wasters to his blog. How come Mike Moore has panda eyes? What happened to Oscar Wild Street? And what RNZAF jet was named Spud One? What Prime Minister (who built his own house in Kaiapoi, my town) do 'some people think was killed by the CIA, but they're nuts?'

In other Holden news, an anti-Holden Republic blog has started up. Bill Wilmot, however, doesn't have the wits to be serious competition. Back home I used to listen to The Wizzard of Christchurch in The Square, and he would make some Royalist sense. Alas, he has deminished and we forgoe the debate we deserve in substitute for "God appointed the Windsor family to rule over his children on earth"-Wilmot.

Ah, one other thing. A very reliable source suggests to me that Holden may soon join Mike Heine's hallowed hall of 'what it means to be on the right' guest bloggers.

For the benefit of Shailynn

2006-04-05T20:09:00.000+12:00

This is the PC that blogs the blog that reports on the prank that Rick pulled.

This is the second draw that Rick filled up with saw and took a picture of to put on the the PC that blogs the blog that reports on the prank that Rick pulled.

And this is George's snap that caught Rick in the act, taking a picture of the second draw that Rick filled up with saw and took a picture of to put on the the PC that blogs the blog that reports on the prank that Rick pulled

Remember, remember

2006-04-05T13:57:00.000+12:00

Remember, remember, the fifth of November, The gunpowder treason and plot. I know of no reason why the gunpowder treason should ever be forgot.

V For Vendetta has been released, it's a good movie. Dominic says something he read indicated it was intended to be released on the 5th of November last year but was delayed 6 months. Shame about that, still the same thing happened to George Orwell but in his case it was 36 years between the title he wanted, '1948', and the title he got, '1984'.

We libertarians, we like the distopia genra. A world gone mad is what these stories show everyone- mad after the fashion we libertarians warn you about when the madness is knee-high to a grasshopper. So we hope you feel appropriate shock at distopic stories because in your shock is our retribution, our vindication, for all our hard work of looking out for you.

^^ Pic from my friend AnnaG

Every libertarian I know (except M) complains about this film for not being solution-based enough. It talks about society's problem, it takes it to the climax and then what? The movie, THEY complain, doesn't say what's to happen after the revolution.

I don't have a problem with that. It's not the anti-Seinfeld, it's not "the movie about everything." No, it's a film about Vee. It's tradgedy.

Here's a man who is damaged goods, they broke his wings. A failure? It's not a story about the beginning of the revolution, it's a story about the end of the tyranny. And what's so wrong with telling that story?

We're clearly told the 'frog slowly boiling' and the Orwellian language change stories. We get the propaganda, dissarming and surveillance and indoctrination of citizens. We're shown how the beautiful lives of a gay couple are cancelled out for being different. We see that there is something about life of higher value than merely being alive.

It's just not true that Vee doesn't "give a rat's arse" about his beneficiaries. Infact, he gave so much care to it that he leaves his final climax entirely to them to take or leave. The protagonist is a human scar, unfit for a land of milk and honey.

Harrison Bergeron, if you've seen it, and Atlas Shrugged, if you've read it, are exactly the same when it comes to this. Vee doesn't mean to rebuild mankind and errect new idols but to tear down the old idols- not unlike D'Anconia, Danneskjold, and Gault.

You want to know what happens next? The new regime? That, my friend, is another movie.

- More on Hugo Weaving (he played Vee) very soon

Blog Block

2006-04-05T13:02:00.000+12:00

This blog is powered by Blogger. They've got a great package that makes blogging easy and they let we many and various bloggers use it for free. I deduce they're getting something of value for themselves out of this act of global internet benevolence.

Being that it's free it's hard to complain, so we haven't (not that 5days of being unable to blog is much of an inconvenience to co-blogger Dominic!). Since April 1st the NZB3 blog and several dozen others at least have been unable to publish. I know Blogger are messing with their equipment. A couple weeks back Blogger blogs were having trouble adding pictures. So, I thought, lets just ride it out and it'll be fixed tomorrow.

Five tomorrows latter: this philosophy has failed.

Seems that only blogs that publish to their own servers are effected. Therefore, I have moved NZB3 onto blogspot.com hosting until this crisis has ended. We're back in business, you'll barely notice the changes but for one.

The feed wont be the same. There is a blogspot hosted feed now which is working, whereas the old one will not be. But I don't want to go advertising the fact since all this is temporary and we'll be back on our own server soon (right Blogger? right?) and back to normal.

The silver lining of all this is that it shows that Silent Running Murray has been shown to read NZB3 and misses it when it is gone! He's a very important person. We must not fail him.

April Fools Day

2006-04-01T04:07:00.002+12:00

George is working thismorning. This makes him my prey.

I took over the shift from him yesterday and placed myself between him and the computer so that he would leave it to me to log him out and log myself in. This I did, but not before changing his desktop background image to a montage of many piles of sawdust.

George will be very perplexed by this in a few hours time. He will then open the right-hand desk draw to locate the calculator, pens, stapler and so forth. All he will find in that draw is a large pile of sawdust.

I was thinking of filling all the desk draws up with sawdust, but settled only in filling up the left-hand top draw too which has all the current paperwork in it. Sorry, HAD all the current paperwork. He'll have to go fish for that now of course.

It's a very liberal dose of sawdust too. I mean, the draws are full to the brim. No half measures here, it's that little extra attention to quality that makes the difference.

Significance of sawdust? None. But you work with what you've got.
Could I have done better? Yes, for I have great and mischievious powers of imagination! But you have to understand that George, my co-worker, is a boring old sod and to his fastidious ways this will constitute a semi-crisis beyond anything rubber chicken chaos might have wrought.

Good.

Cut the bastards off!

2006-03-31T19:32:00.000+12:00

Both The Whig and Clint have been commenting, indeed defending, the great volumes of taxpayer money pumping into our past Prime Ministers.

On The Whig I've been patiently explainging to good old Aaron Bhatnager in the follow-up comments just what the libertarian perspective is on all of this..

Keeping up appearances? I want to keep down appearances! Let these dimming menaces fund their own parades now. We've already paied for their *democratic* victory laps once, in more ways than dollars can count, and now we have to do it undemocratically in perpetuity?

For more excellent Rick-points, follow the link above. Bhatnager's main defense for his position seems to be that I've yet to face my mid-life crisis and gone all soft and wishy-washy like he is!

[update- remasted those comments into a full opinion piece here]

Red Confectionary

2006-03-30T23:12:00.000+12:00

I know why I think this blog is called what this blog is called..

<--- Click here for animation

I've decided to add Red Confectionary blog to my watchlist. It's not because Ms Pamziwamzi has done anything to draw attention to herself. It's that a mate of mine mentioned to me meeting up with her in Wellington earlier this week, so I visited RC, and then I saw this.That tore it, and now they've bought themselves a ticket for Rickattention.

Other dark-side blogs I try to help reform for reason, as a public service you understand, include..

Capitalism Bad
Philosophically Made
No Right Turn

And, increasingly,...

The Whig

Good Old Shoe

2006-03-30T16:37:00.000+12:00

On behalf of Rick Enterprises Intergalactic, a big thankyou to my old pair of Tredlite steal-cap shoes.

"Why buy work boots?" it occured to me on the day I picked these up from a safety shop down Auckland's Panmure Rd. I love their covert nature. They function as work shoes and going-out shoes- and nobody at a restarant or bar would suspect I could kick a brick the length of Queen Street. That could come in handy in a combat situation.

With a bit of Kiwi boot polish and new laces now and again they've lasted a little over three years. I've given them hell and they've sucked it all up. Dozens of differnet jobs in New Zealand and Oz, wet and dry, rich and poor, they've carried me and never let me down. A thing well made.

Finally, now, the tread is comming away. Some particular foot peddles at work kept hooking on and have done them in at last.

My new ones are Aussie made, they're Oliver brand, from Ballarat. Had to get one size down to fit right, and they're great. You can get three styles in work shoe. Extra shiney is too pansy. Semi-shiney is what I got and it'll do but will scuff and show marks. I would have prefered to get the same style as I had before, the pebbley hide-texture.

Still, she's not a bad deal. $90 or so, whereas the old pair cost $80 NZ. And this time I'll remember to claim back the tax!

The Treadlites I plan to throw in the sea or a river, probably the Murry latter this month. They're too important to go in the bin, I want them to go on living and wind up on the end of someone's fishing line or something.

On being Right

2006-03-29T14:55:00.000+12:00

On The Right blog have been blogging for 10 years (not really, but something like that. I forget what) and are celebrating by accepting blog items from others on what it means to be 'on the right.' This link takes you to my contribution.

I decided to post it to SOLO, where you can read a slighly shorter and improved version.

If you get that far and want more, I've uploaded the Mp3 clip from Newstalk ZB's podcast of Deborah Coddington being 'right-wing'. I'd prefer to say she slipped from grace but it's nearer the truth to say she was never really quite there in the first place.

Tony Blair

2006-03-28T11:24:00.000+12:00

Britain's Prime Minister (for a little bit longer) Tony Blair is visiting Helengrad today.

The Herald Reports that one of the things he and our Prime Minister Helen Clark will be talking about will be the Kiwi OE to Britain.

Last year 4000 young New Zealanders obtained visas for working holidays in Britain without needing proof that they had a job or were going to study.

The British High Commission said last week that in the future New Zealanders might have to show they had sponsorship from an education or employment provider before being granted a visa.

Please please please don't screw this up Helen. Or what am I going to do in 2008? It's hard enough at the moment for me, buggering about finding a way to have my American adventure and to work at the same time. Let's not muck it up with the Mother country.

Shumpterian as heck!

2006-03-27T16:24:00.000+12:00

Joseph Shumpter was a funny old sod, also a very clever economist. An Austrian Economist actually, broadly speaking. Austrian Economics is a school of economic thought, as is Marxism or Monetarism or Classicism or Keynesianism for example. The reason this way of thinking about economics is called 'Austrian' is because it's origionators hail from Austria. Go figure.

One of Shumpters economic ideas was that of the product cycle.

It goes a little something like this. When a new product first comes into being it is only sold to a handfull of pioneering consumers, rich folks who can afford it probably. New Zealand is a good test market for things like this it is said. If we like the new cheesburger or softdrink or mobile phone accessory then that's a sign it's worthwhile investing more in the product and and offering it to a larger market.

Next stage, the product goes mainstream and satiates demand.

Next, the product becomes standardised and cheep. The people who were holding out now buy the product, thus the producer wrings the last few sales dollars out of his product- milking it for all it is worth.

Next though, clever manufacturers and marketing agencies work to postpone the day when the product has become yesterday's fad, yesterday's cool, yesterday's news. Even after this happens they will try to revive it, bring it back into fashion. Some how they manage to do this over and over again. They make old sunglasses from the 1920s cools again, they make 1960s bell-bottoms cool again. They revive ABBA. They make 'retro' into a virtue. Put your out-of-fashion clothing at the back of the wardrobe and wait around long enough, it'll all come back into style again- it's just ride out the product cycle.

For as long as anybody can remember, hoolahoops, and yo-yos and marbles have stormed the school playgrounds. Then the fad dies, time passes, the toys are discarded. Next thing you know some clever marketers have found a way to make them cool again, as cool as ever- and you have to buy them all over again.

In New Zealand at this very moment it is happening again. Not a yo-yo craze (give it time) though, no. Marbles are back in style! I got a call from a mate back in Auckland asking that I send over some of these new B'daman toys please, because the kids are mad for them but they're not yet avaliable in stores. Well they are now, within the last couple of weeks they have hit the shelves at Kmart stores if not elsewhere.

And what's a B'daman? I don't really know, but any 8 year old will tell you. Last time I looked it was Pokemon that "my" Auckland kids knew back to front. Pokemon is just a game of cards- another fad that rises and falls with the product cycle. The B'daman merchandise is marbles though, plain and simple.

How did the entrepreners make kids extatic and get parents paying big bucks for glorified marbles? Well, at 3:35pm on TV2 there's a TV show all about it for one thing. And for another it's not just glass spheres- there are plastic doohickies and rules and stories to learn. However, at the end of the day it is just marbles.

It's always just a hoola-hoop, just card games, just marbles, just a yo-yo, or whatever. It's as Shumpterian as heck!

I wonder which of the old favorites it'll be next, and I wonder how they'll manage to make it popular again. Rest assured, an entreprenerial imagination is already working on the solution.

Rodney's Rebbles

2006-03-26T13:05:00.000+12:00

Left-wing nuts your time is through,
Now you have to answer to...

Brand new ACT board elected!

Game on boys and girls!

(ripped off from New Zeal. He wont mind)

I expect big things from these people. They're going to cooperate and get the freedom message out and sink the ship of big government and make a mighty come back in the next election The Association of Consumers and Taxpayers.

ps New Zealand's other libertarians party, Libertarianz, just appointed a new president too.

What's with you people?

2006-03-26T00:36:00.000+12:00

Philosophical appreciation is not the same as biographical appreciation. Why do people keep mixing them up?

Let me tell you right now that, philosophically, I don't really give a damn what Ayn Rand believed. Likewise, when it comes to Scientology I don't give a damn what Tom Cruise believes. What I want to know are the premises, the reasoning and the conclusions. Is it sound? Is it valad? Does it wash out harsh stains and leave my dishes squeeky-clean?

Call me crazy, but I want to go out on a radical limb here and suggest that we qua Objectivists are wasting our time studying Ayn Rand. We should be studying Objectivism instead.

Zheng Heland?

2006-03-25T11:21:00.000+12:00

Maybe we should rename New Zealand "Zeng Heland" now then?

In today's Stuff news, Waikato Uni have been looking into an old old map. Chinese explorer Zheng He drew this map, maybe, after popping by Enzed around about 1418. Cool idea, huh?

1300 The Maori- I think...
1642 Able Tasman
1769 James Cook
1942 The Americans

Of course the idea that there's more to this narrative is not new. I've read a book by some guy that claimed we were visited 2000 years ago by the Phonecians- based on obscure rock squiggles. There are also stories about ancient Celts rocking by and some people even think there's a very large red-headed warrior grave paved over by the highway just out of Greymouth.

Radical alternative views like these are interesting! I file it alongside holocaust denial, haunted houses, and UFOs. I'll always go along to a haunted place every time I get the chance (not often enough!) to investigate. Why I take time for what would otherwise be foolishness is due to the benifit of what you can learn about your own beliefs (not to mention nerves) and those of others.

I really must try to get into the Old Melbourne Gaol before I leave here. It's supposed to be haunted to bits!

Ruth and Grass

2006-03-25T09:30:00.000+12:00

Chaos Theory theory,-

Take my advice. Do your best to remove the sons of bitches from your life. I don't care if they're your brothers, your fathers, your sisters, or what. Remove them. It's like rolling a car off of a piece of sod. Just as the blades that were under the tires will straighten and grow, you'll gradually feel the strength and hope flow back into you. ~ Steve H - Hog on Ice
And so it does.

Rick Theory theory,-

Remove the "son of a bitch" from the sons, daughters, sisters, brothers, fathers, mothers, and others in your life. What is needed is not new and faultless people we haven't met yet. What is needed is an improved relationship and appreciation with the folks we already know.

One of CS Lewis' short stories had it that, in heaven, even the blades of grass themselves would not yield or be bent by the prickled feet of sinners. If you make ME into, even an analogical, blade of grass then that's how it's going to be.

Property Rights

2006-03-24T20:56:00.000+12:00

Rick and I had an interesting conversation tonight: I was startled to find that Rick's a strong supporter of 'Intellectual Property Rights'. You might find this strange. Surely, that's exactly what is expected of a libertarian?: property rights are pretty much at the very bottom of their political ideology. The reason I found Rick's position on this point strange is that I genuinely believed that my stand on the issue is very compatible with libertarian views.

See, I make a very stark distinction by property rights and 'intellectual property' rights. There are two main reasons for this.

The first is that I don't recognise many types of intellectual property as being even vaguely related to the concept of physical property. In case you were wondering exactly what intellectual property is, here's a list of the things which make up IP:

Copyrights
Patents and design rights
Trademarks
Industrial secrets

It's imporant to note that this is all there is to IP. There's no general acknowlegement that ideas are property because, under law, they're not. Indeed, a patent is for a configuration of matter, a design or a process. It grants exclusive use to a way of doing something, not that thing itself, and not the idea of that thing. Similarly, a copyright is applied to a work of creativity, not the creativity itself or the ideas that creativity produces. In fact, I, along with many other supporters of Free (libre) Software believe that IP is a term made up specifically to undermine any discussion of the issue:

At such a broad scale, people can't even see the specific public
policy issues raised by copyright law, or the different issues raised
by patent law, or any of the others. These issues arise from the
specifics, precisely what the term "intellectual property" encourages
people to ignore. For instance, one issue relating to copyright law
is whether music sharing should be allowed. Patent law has nothing to
do with this. But patent law raises the issue of whether poor
countries should be allowed to produce life-saving drugs and sell them
cheaply to save lives. Copyright law has nothing to do with that.
Neither of these issues is just an economic issue, and anyone looking
at them in the shallow economic perspectives of overgeneralization
can't grasp them. Thus, any opinion about "the issue of intellectual
property" is almost surely foolish. If you think it is one issue, you
will tend to consider only opinions that treat all these laws the
same. Whichever one you pick, it won't make any sense.
- http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/freedom-or-copyright.html

My second reason for rejecting claims of intellectual property is related to the first. Just as it's distorting to treat IP as physical property, it's dishonest to portray what happens when IP laws are broken as akin to what happens when physical property laws are broken. I'm referring specfically to the concept that copyright infingement is theft, a type of theft, or even anything to do with that T word. Here's what Thomas Jefferson, himself a classical liberalist, had to say on the issue:
If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
This is what I believe. Thanks to electronic media, when I share the work of an artist with someone else, I don't believe that I'm infringing on anyone's rights: I don't recognise that any rights exist to be infringed upon. Perhaps that's a bit of a extreme view to take. Perhaps I shouldn't have expected to be agreed with, especially when Rick, expecting what I think he'd term socialist filth, was met with a view that's perhaps strikingly more libertarian on this issue than his. This whole issue just begs to be tied up in Cyberpunk mantras of 'information wants to be libre and gratis', but I don't believe I'll go there until I've seen Rick's reply.

A more modest conclusion, reflection on libre prehaps. Well there's a liberty I do believe in: my liberty to do whatever I'd like to in the comfort of my own home, when that activity doesn't adversely affect others. Copyright infringement doesn't. I'll keep doing it.

Sense Of Life Objectivists

2006-03-24T02:12:00.000+12:00

Objectivism. It's a philosophy. Mine.

A philosophy is just like a religion, except that it's non-deity based. Theology deals in a God or in gods, philosophy deals in reasoning. There are lots of both to choose from, old ones and new ones from all around the world. I picked Objectivism.

There are a couple of major Objectivist club-houses in the States and a very little wanna-be one overseen by Lindsay Perigo, a Kiwi incase you've never heard of him. His one, SOLO (Sense Of Life Objectivists) has been going for 5 years now and keeps on rising and crashing again. I could see that all along but joined up last year anyway, just before it went to hell again at the end of last year.

Once again, SOLO is up from the ashes and trying to make a go of things with the same formula as has lead to the previous booms and busts. At this stage it's not so much an institution for philosophical and social revolution as a glorified group blog. A home for people who aren't interested in the impressive Credo at all but in frivolities. The stock in trade is bashing other Objectivists and each other, and in piling sexual inuendo on to any message post (or message poster) than can bare it.

Pick this up and make it into a world class Objectivist fighting machine? They must be mad. They must be lemmings!

But.....but prompted by an anonymous commenter back here I emailed SOLO's new Exec and more or less had this conversation with him...(I'm Kirk, of course...)

Kirk: I take it the odds are against us and the situation is grim.

Picard: You could say that.

Kirk: You know, if Spock were here, he'd say that I was an irrational, illogical human being by taking on a mission like that. Sounds like fun!

In other words, I've just gone and joined Sense Of Life Objectivsts again.

Note to self: Don't say I didn't warn you about this in the first place, Giles. You lemming.

Bangladesh

2006-03-23T16:21:00.000+12:00

The other week I was blogging about
George, if you recall. George the economist.

I promised to come back to one of the very interesting points George made with respect to the global warming mumbo-jumbo and what it means for developing nations. Bangladesh, for example.

Have been waiting for a nifty lead-in but in all this time the best I can do is that No Right Turn and ACT On Campus have just done respective little environmental jigs. One is praising Michael Chrichton and the other is bemoaning the fact that the Gov isn't doing more to respond to climate change- take a wild guess for yourselves which blog is saying which!

So here's a new (for me) debating point from George Reisman. If we in developed nations already have more carbon emission than the planet can afford then not only must we cut back but those in developing nations better stay right where they are.

No economic progress for you Mr Nguyen- who keels over from a deadly infection for want of the price of a swab of Dettol! Try and understand sir, we might maybe could perhaps turn the planet into Keven Costner's Waterworld if we let you live.

"Please sir, may I have some more?" says a starving little Oliver Singh in back-water India. NO you brat! The Greenies wont let you! For an economy with that kind of standard of living we'd have to permit your nation to have a decent transport network and we 'friends of the earth' can't let you. Already too too much of that in the world now! How do we know we're not on a "tipping point" to another ice age? Your hunger might save the world- so starve!

Sorry Mohammed, you can't have literacy and safe-sex because that kind of standard of living is traded off in favour of saving us from a possible nuclear winter. Will your sacrifice prevent one? Well, we don't have a clue actually- so let's just stay on the safe side shall we? Continue living and dieing in filth therefore, okay? Jolly good.

Remember, the Greenies don't actually claim the world is heading for doom. When cornered, they only say that it might be and that we'd better not risk the unknown possibilities.

Hell, it's bad enough to consider that the "environmentalists" (I don't accept that you have to be a Greenie to be one) want to clip the flight wings of the West! But the Greenie agenda is seen even more truely as the horrific proposal that it is in this light. They want to ground developing nations before they've even gotten off the ground, and all on a hunch!

Steam and Religion

2006-03-22T12:15:00.000+12:00

As a spin-off from talking about The Root of All Evil, Richard Dawkins' new television documentary, the Julian Pistorius blog has called me out on my views on religion.

My respect for religion is like my admiration for a well-made steam engine. It's great what it can do, we're more powerful with it than with nothing in its place BUT it has been supplanted and the new way is better. But Julian comes back with...

"That amounts to saying that...the ball and chain you've shackled yourself to makes nice sounds as they drag along the ground."

Well he's right! Just as the limitation of steam-powered industry was a shackle upon further progress it too was a pleasent, even romantic, way of life- from which many "nice sounds" and stories are still with us. But like a ball and chain, the age of steam had to be cast off in order to be supplanted. Could we possibly have had Henry Ford's transport revolution and be getting by these days in steam automobiles? Could we have today's aircraft without the petroleum revolution? Could we send space craft to the moon with massive water-boilers as the prerequisite?

Steam, like religion, was a fine thing. Where would the Industrial Revolution have been without it? But, like religion, its time in domination has come and passed (all due respect to people who live in Huntly and Rotorua). Only someone who cannot admire something in a steam engine cannot either admire something in religion.

Julian says,-
"In my mind, religion is the careful avoidance of thinking about certain things...To believe in something with no ground in reality, to rely on faith, is just playing pretend."

Religion is not so one-dimentional as this. Epistemology asside, you've got to give religion credit for lifting us out of the muck. In the beginning humans were few in number, existing in small tribes that competed with the other animals to survive. Standard of living? What standard of living!? Life expectancy? What a joke! But this is the benchmark, it was as primitive cavemen that we lived and can live again. It's not our genetics that separates modern man from primitive man but the institutions that have been slowly put in place since those times and it started with religion.

For example, how long would the 1.2 billion Muslims survive without their religion? If you could strip it away and leave them with the primitive cave-man mindset they would all die. Cave-man sense is insufficient apparatus to support 1.2 billion people. Maori stone-age culture, in 700 years, didn't do much better for their prospects. Australian Aborigionals have been in action even longer than that and achieved far less progress for themselves and many continue to be "shackled" by it. Mere humans, however, with the addition of Islam have a social system that gets the food, shelter and clothing to many millions within many nation states. Islam is the firmament for an international airline and for the world's top oil producers. How much of the economic wealth in the world is traded into the hands of Muslims? Lots. What faith preserved and advanced the Western heritage when the West was in the Dark Ages? This one. Which conception of life can make primitive cave-men the major security threat to the superpower of the twentyfirst centurary? This religion, this culture.

Antiquated and inferior though it is, religion deserves our admiration for what it has done for us in the past and for what it still does for others today.

7. ONE CAN'T HIDE

2006-03-20T16:01:00.000+12:00

<---- Click to enlarge

"The seventh lesson I teach is that one can't hide. I teach children they are always watched, that each is under constant surveillance by myself and my colleagues. There are no private spaces for children, there is no private time. Class change lasts three hundred seconds to keep promiscuous fraternization at low levels. Students are encouraged to tattle on each other or even to tattle on their own parents. Of course, I encourage parents to file their own child's waywardness too. A family trained to snitch on itself isn't likely to conceal any dangerous secrets." - John Gatto

Great, just great.

"What's this?" Social Development Minister David Benson-Pope asked. "State-control of education is failing? That can only mean we need more of it!"

Q: Does the government that seeks to farm us ever consider that pulling the MORE-GOVERNMENT/LESS-GOVERNMENT lever to the high-power-for-Helengrad setting is the problem, not the solution?

A: Nope! More government is their ownly solution! Less government is their only problem.

And now, unless somebody does something, The Government is going to see that we don't mind them going ahead with this outrage and many others the same.

John Taylor Gatto, "The Seven Lesson Schoolteacher" from Gatto's book, "Dumbing Us Down."

Stuff news item

Lindsay Mitchell

2006-03-19T22:36:00.000+12:00

He who knows how to breathe the air of my writings knows that it is an air of the heights, a robust air. One has to be made for it, otherwise there is no small danger one will catch cold. The ice is near, the solitude is terrible- but how peacefully all things lie in the light! how freely one breathes!...Philosophy, as I have hitherto understood and lived it, is a voluntary living in ice and high mountains- a seeking after everything strange and questionable in existence, all that has hitherto been excommunicated by morality.

- Nietzsche, Ecce Homo

I was reading Andrew Falloon back-comments, as you do, and Lindsay Mitchell wrote...

Not even the driven snow is a pure as you Rick

A libertarian this wise & discriminating belongs on the NZB3 blogroll I think!

SXSW - Bruce Sterling

2006-03-18T18:40:00.000+13:00

Bruce Sterling, a Science Fiction writer famous for his cyberpunk work, gave this keynote speech at this years South By Southwest festival in Austin, Texas. The recording has been bouncing around the popular tech blogs for the last few days. It's wide reaching in scope, to say the least, combining discussion of Web2.0 (a kind of revitalisation movement in web development and design) with general observations of the strange anomic alienation that is slowly enveloping American culture.

We're seeing just frantic collisions of fundamentalist delusion with objective reality. We're on a kind of slider bar between the unthinkable and the unimaginable now; between the grim meathook future and the bright green future.

It's about fifty minutes long, and a very interesting listen. Bruce has a preacher's fire in his words; rightly so considering his audience are the people he is speaking about, not just to.

Saturday's Headlines

2006-03-18T13:46:00.000+13:00

>> STUFF

SEX-ABUSE INQUIRY DEMANDED Child-welfare groups are demanding a full government investigation into institutional care in New Zealand to prevent a repeat of rampant sexual abuse by Catholic clergy and brethren at a Christchurch home for troubled boys.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/hlc/1,,75570~3607718a10~,00.html

Macro-molestors asked to investigate micro-molestors.

>> NATIONAL NEWS

GUARD ALLEGEDLY SMUGGLED VIDEOS The Corrections Department has started an internal investigation amid allegations that a female prison guard was caught smuggling pornographic videos into Christchurch Prison.

>> http://webmail.clear.net.nz/webmail.cgi?cmd=url&url=http!3A!2F!2Fwww.stuff.co.nz!2Fhlc!2F1,,75570!7E3607720a11!7E,00.html

Hey, at least they're not smuggling it out!

DRUG KINGPINS TARGETED People have had a gutsful of gangs and their illegal drug activity and police are out to stop the kingpins.

>> http://www.stuff.co.nz/hlc/1,,75570~3607506a11~,00.html

What's this? So the police ARE going after Labour after all then?

MOTHER OF STABBED TEEN THREATENS LEGAL ACTION The mother of a Wanganui teenager stabbed through the heart is threatening legal action over a botched 111 call that she says could have saved her son's life.

>> http://webmail.clear.net.nz/webmail.cgi?cmd=url&url=http!3A!2F!2Fwww.stuff.co.nz!2Fhlc!2F1,,75570!7E3607578a6000!7E,00.html

Law and order still getting the time and attention it deserves, even though it has to compete with so many other simply wonderful invasive Government hobbies.

Nice one Dom

2006-03-18T12:59:00.000+13:00

Congratulations are in order for my co-blogger Dominic.

His Labour Government have managed to get away scot-free with over-spending more than .4 million dollars of taxpayer money on their re-election campaign. Remember that one, the one they only narrowly won?

Let's have a round of applause for Dominic and his party. Well done, well done.

No I'm not angry. Not as angry, at any rate, as many other right-thinking bloggers. After all, being a libertarian and a New Zealander is to bare witness to a seemingly endless flow of such blatent atrocities. This is not some isolated one-off incident at all! It has long been the very business of governments to rip off the taxpayer for their own self-serving goals. It's only that on this occasion the crime has been illegal, but those who are especially furious about that might improve the integrity of their consistency by applying their fury to the myriad of our Government's legal crimes.

Hudson Leick

2006-03-17T14:37:00.000+13:00

More thoughts on "powers that be" who think we mere mortals on the ground can't run our own lives with our own money.

<--- This is actress-sex-goddess-babe-evil-fighter-bandit-Xena-nemisis Hudson Leick/Calisto. Xena: Warrior Princess, we all remember, was a ratings hit involving our own Lucy Lawless. The Yanks made it, I think, in West Auckland or some such. It was a fantasy TV show set in a fictional Ancient Greece.

Calisto was our heroine's, Xena's, arch-enemy. She fought with her sword, her sexuality, and her dirty and siniser mind games- always driven by her vengeful lust toward Xgirl. She was sort of a cross between a hateful Drew Barrymore and a horny Wolverine. Powerful performance. I wish I watched the show more now....but I digress.

Below is a picture of Leick on another show around about the same time Xena was still on, Touched By An Angel.

I used to watch both of these shows sometimes, but the latter, the one about angels rocking down from Heaven and fixing our lives, dropped off my watch list one day. That was the day Ms Hudson Leick first joined the show and just ruined it for me.

This time Hudson was an angel, teaming up with that red-head young-motherly girl with the Irish ling. And it made me angry!

In this episode the angels were to be doing their 'touching' at 10,000ft in the air. They were deployed, Mission Impossible style in place of mere earthly air hostesses. This was because the angels knew (by angelic powers, duh) that disaster on this flight was imminent. The plane was going to crash or hit a duck or some such. As far as I remember that was it. It was just an airborne human crisis with human fears that called for, not human compassion but the sort of relief that only the true powers that be could provide. High as it was, even this plain was subject to a higher power!

Yes, and that's when it became all too plain to me that the premise of this whole TV show was that people cannot run their own lives for themselves! It wasn't so obvious when the angels were dressed in flowing dresses or slacks in the suburbs. They just delt with families and individuals then, fixing their lives. But when they infiltrate, IMF style, an airline's cabin crew that gives the whole game away just blatently doesn't it? I didn't watch that show the same way again (if ever).

It makes me angry, it should make everybody angry! The self-styled powers that be storming in and taking the place of responsible adults is an affront to our dignity and an incentive to us not to develope the virtue. If an angel came down here and tried to usurp your moral efficacy you'd punch her in the nose! Why then, when, as in my previous post, it's Dominic's Liarbor Government (far from angels!) do we vote them into power instead?!

What've you got to say about that Dominic?

The Day I Tried To Live

2006-03-17T11:20:00.000+13:00

Woke up. Read a chapter of "Speaker for The Dead." Sat at the desk, checked the nets.

The same as any other day, people are telling me how to live. Gosh, you'd think I'd'a lived long enough now to see that one comming.

Capitalism Bad and No Right Turn are all sad because Wayne Mapp's Employment Relations Amendment Bill is moving along, thanks to the Maori Party chipping in their votes. One of the things they complain about is how it provides a 90 day window for an employer to fire someone without recourse. Sounds fair to me! Employment should be flexible enough to cope with the ever-changing demands of the marketplace. The person who creates a position should have full discretion about who gets to fill it and not have to carry people who don't measure up. But the leftie blogs want to tell us how to live, make slaves of employers all for the sacred god of people having work.

Work!? If work were the answer to all our problems we could all just dig holes/fill them in ever other day, all day. That's work. That's jobs.

If a 90 day firing window (too short a season for me!) is unreasonable, I would like to know how Maia would like it if boyfriends and girlfriends weren't permitted to part once they'd been on a date? Shouldn't they get 90 days to decide if they want to be stuck together forever too? We don't have a law making them stick together, but if we did then Mapp's bill would be one asking for at least 90 days to break the relationship or forever hold their peace.

In other tell-us-how-to-live news, Rodney Hide bloggs that ACT were the only ones to oppose a law that would make (what?) sign language another official language. Official language! Good for ACT for opposing, but Rodney said it was on grounds of economics. Costing be damned! It’s liberty! A free market for transacting in language works for the same reason free markets always work! Language lives and changes today as it has long before anybody considered attempting to clamp laws on it. How vein these people are who think they can Canute-command our lives to make them better!

And then I got to the third thing. Three things and I blog.

On Stuff, Education Minister Steve Maharey has promised to use more tax money to combat bullying. Great, so the Government comes down to the playground into our lives and tells us how to live in yet another way. Instead of running our own lives and solving our own playground social problems and domestic conflicts the state is going to do it or, at best, be involved in our business. Their "help" will cost us and errode our responsibility to each other and it will cost us because we're funding their damned tampering.

Don't be getting me wrong now. I'm not against new employees (hell, I've had more casual jobs than pairs of socks!), I'm not against deaf people, and I'm not a patron to bullies. What I believe is that these things must never be the fodder for the abusive powers of state intervention, which causes great harm. Also, as far as solving these issues go it is imperitive that we deal with them on the personal level and not the Governmental level. Where we let Helengrad run our lives with our money we implicitly agree that they've got the right to do that and that we can't do it better for ourselves.

What kind of zombies have we become when we need to "dial 111-for-Government" to do what previous generations did naturally for themselves?

There's no rain

2006-03-16T14:09:00.000+13:00

I retract and recant.

New Zealand does have our own special fish on the Yarra, a John Dory. I still haven't found it but I was listening to Tripple R (RRR) on the radio while I was along the bank last night. They said it was there and every country had a fish, so okay. RRR weren't being paid to be nice last night! They were taking the piss out of everything that happened and kept saying "quick, let off some more fireworks, the act is dieing!!"

And the baton did go along the river platforms, fish and all! I was sure they couldn't do that. If you look again at the picture I took [below] there is a little walkway through the guts of each platform. Those footy players had to walk in a narrow straight line though, that's for sure.

And the rain did not come! It still hasn't, although the cumulous cloud is heaping up now. I think now that it wont rain until tonight or perhaps dawn tomorrow. I was sure all hell was going to break loose and the sky would open up. What we did have was cold, it hasn't been this cold in Melbourne for ages.

Plenty of people along the banks, I watched the batton go past me on my way to work. The flags were nicely visable if you were high enough. Lots of people in the city too, not watching the action. It wasn't too badly congested though. The mood was special, but not as special as could have been hoped for.

At work we were expecting to be busy but then the council pulled the plug after pissing too many people off. Two people turned up to get their vehicles back, one was a games official and another was games security staff. Great planning ah? The people supposed to be making the games work were kept up to the early hours fighting each other yet all of us being in the right and doing the jobs the organisers wanted us to do!

Will it be a washout?

2006-03-15T20:19:00.000+13:00

3 hours to go, and will it rain on the Opening Ceremony?

It's overcast and still and now a wind with that special certain something is blowing in from the North.

And the answer is "yes," it's going to piss down. I have a sense about these things, finely honed on the Canterbury Plains.

They're all gonna get wet. Oh shit, and me too.

Bendigo Report

2006-03-15T19:32:00.000+13:00

Things are warming up down the Yarra, I was there an hour ago. Cameras are being deployed, something new- little bubbled things (lights? cameras?) have been attached to the fish floats. And people have already taken up viewing positions. Not really very busy at 3:30pm, nothing like it's going to be latter tonight. I remember what New Year's was like. Poor Rick has to get through all that right in the thick of it all at 9pm because the city depot is charged with clearing the area of the running marathon tonight and is expected to be busy enough to call me in for extra manpower.

Meanwhile, here at Inner East HQ for towing there's bugger all going on. It's just the normal steady flow, I'm not being hit with heaps of council-sanctioned car impoundments. Not even Bridge Road is busy, which is what I was expecting to go nuts. Bridge Road runs up to the MCG and is the sort of place you might park if you were walking to the Opening Ceremony.

I think perhaps that Games staff are on patrol and warning people away from parking in the wrong places, therefore ruining the sport for the tow-truck drivers we've got out there.

These pics BTW are of Games venues in Bendigo, sent to me by my mate Kat who lives up there. Basketball and shooting are up her way.

The top pic shows that the road is closed (not a main one thankfully) and that everyone has to catch a free shuttle-bus to the shooting venue.

The next pic shows one of the floodlights that are on all night to keep the basketball venue secure.

She also has a picture of where the "athletes" are staying. It's all fenced up, but it's rather boring so I'm not blogging that.

This last pic shows the enterance for the basketball. There are two doors, one for those with bags and one door for those without. You've got to have your bloody bags serached if you want to watch the Bendigo basketball.

Thanks Kat.

Rickguide: Opening Ceremony

2006-03-15T14:00:00.000+13:00

It's all on thisevening. I'll be at work but watching it on TV with luck. Then again, I have to pass through the leftovers latter tonight to get to our city office so I might see some fallout. We're pulling extra hours at work because as a towing company we're part of getting events ready. Make sure nobody's parked where they're going to be in the way!

So, starting from Princess Bridge all the way along the 1km stretch known as 'Birrung Mar' we've got these 'fish' in the middle of the Yarra river as mentioned earlier.

This is a picture of the end of the procession. The last fish is the English roach before this layer-cake dais. Last time I looked there was a gap between the Roach, the dais and a set of stairs leading up out of the water to the Swan st bridge. The MCG is just a little ways off to the right of this picture.
Along the banks there are these signs telling you about the kinda 'fish' you're seeing out there from your side of the river.

These little signs wont mean bugger all tonight when the banks will be throbing with 600,000 people or so. Therefore, it must be intended that this fish business will be a permenant display for the course of The Games.

They're not to shoddy either, these fish. Must have cost an absolute shirt load for all the work that's gone into just this.

Allong the northern bank of the Yarra there are several towers of scaffolding spaced out. I would take it that these are for cameras to watch what happens below.

From what I've heard, the athletes (ours at any rate) play a small role in all this. They're out there for 27mins and that's inside the MCG itself. Like the Games at Turin there'll be all hooting and hollering and expensive nonsense in the name of art and then the athletes with their flags will hatch out smiling all the way.

The role the fishies and the flag platforms play is purely decorative. There's no chance of standing on them as the next pictures show.

These are some shots a couple days ago of these flag-things out of the water. NZ has a flag but no fish-thing of our own. I couldn't make sense of the order, sure ain't alphabetical. But I now understand that they're grouped from start to finnish by continent. We're in the third quartile.

You can't see these flags from the banks at all, just the name on the side. They're clearly designed for the TV cameras from those towers and from helicopters above.

As this picture shows, they're simply floating structures full of shiny reflective tin-foil with a flag stretched over the top like a drum. There can be no standing on them.

Ergo, all the jazz and kerfuffel will involve folks on boats juggling and dancing and throwing up fireworks making their way between the bridges. Then the athletes pop out, along with the help of CGA Assistents in some cases. Blogger Ruth Nossek, for example, gets to carry the flag for Botswana. Lucky girl!

And what this "giant flying tram" thing at the G is, I do not know. Probably no more than that!

Come to think of it, since fireworks are part of this thing it'll still being in full fling at 9pm when I'm trying to get from one depot office to the other. What fun I'll have trying to manage that...

Oh, and in other news I heard on Newstalk ZB that the Kiwi team are a bit pissed off that they have no feed of all these goings on tonight. They're just cooped up waiting to play their part and don't get to see anything of what comes before them. No TV for the athletes? They're not going to put it on the big screen at the MCG? Bit rough isn't it.

Is it Aquaman?

2006-03-14T19:00:00.000+13:00

Can somebody tell Radio Live it's the Commonwealth Games, not the Olympics?

Meanwhile....

Looks like the Australians are going to be swimming in suits eh? They look pretty good. They look a bit like comicbook superheros.

This kinda swimming suit jaz started out with Aussie super-swimmer Ian Thorpe (announced last week not to be competing) in the 2000 Olympics. I wonder if the idea has taken off anywhere else? Don't imagine there are any Kiwis dressed up this way, have to watch and see on Thursday.

One team that does it though is the Pakistani woman's team. It says in the Herald Sun today (cover above) that it's the reason they get to swim at all. Being Muslim, Pakistan never used to let women get involved. Showing off a woman's body like this is un-Islamic after all. However, thanks to the swimming-suits devout Muslim chicks are in the game. Good on them for that. If Islam was as bad as some would have us believe then it could easily suppress these girls from thinking up a compatable solution and, indeed, stop them from being able to petition for, and have their inclusion in, The Games granted. Yet here they are, devout Muslims and all.

Bad news for WIN

2006-03-14T17:12:00.000+13:00

The WIN Party of New Zealand and Geoff Mulvihill first came to my attention when party leader John van Buren featured in a a newspaper article reported on
NZB3 podcast #7.

I don't know why they call themselves "WIN" but they're a single-issue party (they deny this) that's all about the specific property right of 'smoke and let smoke' for any adult who wants to do it at no cost to anyone besides themselves.

According to the Herald Mr Mulvihill is a bit up shit creek now. After willfully resisting the "don't let people smoke in your own bar" rules his liquor licence for the Timaru Carlton Hotel is up for review. Sounds like he's not going to be renewed.

Sad news about that, since WIN are the greatest champions of liberty on this issue. But perhaps this is karma for not joining ACT or Libertarianz and shacking up with United Future instead ah?

The Islam Issue

2006-03-13T20:00:00.000+13:00

"Death to Destiny Church! "

"Death to Scouting New Zealand!"

"Death to Shinto!"

"Death to The Salvation Army

Death to St Stephens Anglican Church!"

"Death to St Bedes Colledge!!"

"Death to Parnell Christian Woman's Knitting Circle (meets every second Sunday at Jubilee Hall, bring your own wool and scones)!! Yahh!"

Just some of the possible Free Radical title-issues to come? Well why not!? If Lindsay Perigo's libertarian magazine can call for the death of Islam and the above possibilities, while perhaps not as urgent to Mr Perigo, are no less logical.

It was Mr Perigo and his 'Politically Incorrect' radio show that put me on to libertarianism and Objectivism. I used to think he was great but then silly ideas like this one cropped up. Of course he isn't calling for the death of people but for the death of a bad doctrine. However, it is not really Islam being referred to in these pages but, rather, Islamism.

Islam is culture, working machinery of everyday life that works for millions of families by keeping them safe and at peace in social cooperative local and international communities. We in the Western world once faltered into a Dark Ages and it was the Islamic world that took up the civilisation we passed away, added to it, and allowed us to take up our civilisation again hundreds of years latter. Some things about Islam could use improving but the same must be said for our own culture even though both serve us well enough.

Islamism, on the other hand, is the Ku Klux Klan of Islam, the crazy bastards going hyper-mental and blowing shit up all over the place. This is who The Free Radical should be directing vitriol against! That's who's really being written about, if unwittingly, but incorrectly being identified with Islam. You're attacking the wrong blokes Mr Perigo! Some Kiwi practitioner of Islam might be browsing the magazine rack and see the TFR's "death to Islam" jump out at him and be unjustly alarmed. He might even accept the TFR's false alternative and be forced to choose sides, throw his lot in with terrorisers.

Alexander Downer rightly said this at the end of last month,-

"To characterise this fight against terrorism as a fight against Islam is to invite not just a clash of civilisations but the broadening of support for terrorists."

I wonder if there's any TFR content about how to supplant Islam with an atheistic philosophy of reason? Not very likely. I think it's an exercise in yelling the words "Western" and "freedom" back at the people yelling "Jihad" at us rather than a project to improve the condition of civilisation.

Not Your Average Lawyer

2006-03-13T13:45:00.000+13:00

Roundup was late and I only just caught this story from the Auckland High Court now,..

An Auckland jury made legal history yesterday when it convicted an Iranian wrestler of importing more than a million dollars worth of methamphetamine before any evidence was called in his trial.

Sounded very suss to me! Has the world gone mad? Well yes it has a bit but this is another story.

Seems that the lawyer in the Iranian's corner, based on the admissibility of some evidence, had his mind made up from the outset that the case wasn't a winner and there would have to be an appeal. But, and here's the not-average bit, instead of marking time and milking the client for his money, instead of fritting away court time and jury time they just stopped.

The defense lawyer and the judge pulled the breaks on time-wasting and dispensed with the traditionally inevitable bollocks by asking the jury at the outset to just say "guilty" so everybody could go home. And the jury did. That's the first time this has ever happened. I guess it was the lawyer's idea, so kudos to him and the judge ah? I guess they've read Bleak House or something and got the point and perhaps I was a bit mean about lawyers last week.

On the other hand, does this set the precident of admitting that "innocence" or "guilt" are play-things for practical economy and not true judgements of justice?

The law journals must be all abuzz. Was this such a good idea or not?

Very Hush-Hush

2006-03-13T11:35:00.000+13:00

Things are going on.

Secret things.

Commonwealth Games Arrangements Act banned-from-reporting things.

There is a giant tram inside the MCG and there are dozens of 'fish' floating in the middle of the Yarra River. Things are getting ready for tomorrow, the details and pictures of which are not to be shared, hush-hush or the Victorian Government will get ya!

Anyway the ban is over now thanks, in part, to John Howard saying a ban like this was bullshit. Which it is! After all, anybody in town can see everything that's going on with their own two eyes!

There's a huge line of fish the whole way along the 1km of river between the Princess and Swan St bridges. I say 'fish' but in truth there's also a shrimp, a tortoise, a dolphin and a couple of whales out there.

Each fish platform has two 'fish', one facing each side of the bank and representing a totem water animal from a Commonwealth Country.

New Zealand doesn't get to have a totem animal. Hmph.

Yesterday other platforms were put together and towed out between each fish. These platforms have all the flags of the Commonwealth on them. Whereas the fish wont look like much from above, these flags are essentially invisible from the banks. But you can read the name of the country on them, and I did ID the Enzed one.

The parade of animals terminates in a floating dais and a set of stairs out of the river, up to the Swan St Bridge. The MCG is just along the way from there.

The last fish before the dais is the Roach, representing England. I think Lewis Holden would appreciate that. :)

The Kiwis Have Landed

2006-03-13T11:02:00.000+13:00

Ruth Nossek keeps a blog. She's a Commonwealth Games Association (CGA) Assistent, one of the local blue-garbbed volunteir staff. Ruth is support staff for the Botswana team, and they're New Zealand's neighbours at the Games Village.

She writes on her blog...

However, the village is now beginning to take on a life of its own. No longer is it just a shell ready to be occupied...

The NZ team have REALLY arrived. They have a very large contingency, and will be occupying a large block of houses near to the Botswana office (we share a Resident’s Centre with NZ and Scotland amongst others). Already their team officials (a fair number) have been ‘decorating’ each of the houses with large silver fern paintings hung outside for all to see. The NZ block is also covered with yellow signposts …

Good!

Games On

2006-03-12T22:20:00.000+13:00

Yeah, 18th Commonwealth Games is here in Melbourne BTW. I have noticed.

John Howard's down inspecting the premises, The Queen has landed in Canberra, odd goings on down the river, lots of volunteirs comming and going on the trains in their blue uniforms. And there were fighter jets above the CBD today too. Noisy.

When I was 3 years old the Games were in Brisbane. 1982. I can clearly remember from TV that there was a big kangaroo named Matilda. Her pouch opened up like a draw-bridge and lots of little (kangaroo?) people raced out to do things like jump up and down on trampolines. I was very impressed by the concept.

Matilda, BTW, now lives at Wet'n Wild. This is one of the big theme parks on the Gold Coast.

This whole Commonwealth Games jazz annoys me on several levels. For example, I don't like the State meddling in economic activity. On the other hand it is a nice internationalist event to have. But then again, it's going to bugger up our lives around here for the rest of the month. Although, it does give athletes a reason to exist. But I don't even like athletes because they're so often pushing a tiny part of their human potential at the greater expense of the whole!

So, my blogging about The Games for the next couple weeks is going to be as bi-polar as anything.

Small Minds

2006-03-10T13:46:00.000+13:00

Fantastic media coup in favour of The Libertarianz Party of New Zealand. The only bad publicity is good publicity, don't you know?

JulianP, speaking on the Census rebellion, ended up having his words twisted into their antithesis! Libertarians are the arch-enemies of racism. By what Socratic rhetorical spell did this quick-minded interviewer argue the libertarian into the racist corner?

It was a something along these sorts of lines...

Interviewer: But don't libertarians think the government should have a role in telling people what to think?

Libertarian: No. I don't like what you believe, but I defend to the death your right to believe it.

Interviewer: What if I believe in Christianity? In smoking cigarettes? That okay with you?

Libertarian: I have my own preferences for those things, but I'd never ask that they be forced on others.

Interviewer: Does this apply to racism also?

Libertarian: Yes it does. Real freedom is the freedom to be right AND the freedom to hold badly mistaken views.

Interviewer: Thankyou. And that concludes our interview with the Christian smoker racist.

News Headline: MoreFM, Northland: Libertarianz are racists! [mp3]

Capitalism Bad; Tree Pretty

2006-03-10T12:15:00.000+13:00

There she goes again. Here also. Maia, our Kiwi Feminist friend from before has refused to learn.

This time she's wondering why her tear-up-FHM-magazine and make-Motherhood-state-funded and I-hate-men philosophy isn't going down so well with the girls. Gee, that's a tough one.

She's also grappling with the question of what all this Feminism stuff really is anyway. Is it like environmentalism for society? Well I think I know, so I told her...

Feminismm is not a monolith, nor is environmentalism.

Some environmentalists focus entirely on the marine environment, some are tireless campaigners for global warming while other environmentalists are exposing it as a lie. So what is an environmentalist? What these various shapes and shades of environmentalist have in common is a concern (after their own fashion) for the environment (after their own conception thereof).

Feminism is the same way. There is no single feminist lense unless it is to look at the world through a masculine/feminine conflict discourse. In the course of championing this cause there is a major branch of feminism which engages in polylogism.

Polylogism- "Many logics." The idea that there is not one standard of logic for all but as many standards of understanding as there are minds in the universe.

I think the defeat of polylogism explains why some feminists have the 'fear of being called out as the frauds they feel they are' and the reason "that 30 years of calling sexist men out has got us precisely nowhere."

Modern capitalism has proven successful for both the masculine and the feminine, it has caused the errosion of class conflict and the waning of racism. It has been demonstrated for everybody more and more that there is one standard of justice, of reality, of truth, of rights for all. One standard of reason for all; Polylogism has passed away.

And that is why patriarchy discourse must also wither intelectually, and it is also the reason modern women cannot adhere to it and act on it without feeling the contradiction of the fraud.

Well, most modern women.

But let's hope Maia and co catch up with the rest of us some day soon.

Capitalism Bad; Tree Pretty: Many Stones Can Build An Arch; Singly None

George Riesman

2006-03-09T16:42:00.000+13:00

Well if No Right Turn looked stupid last week the latest from George Riesman blog today
has them looking even more stoopid now!

I'm all about economics, and of all the economists and schools of economics to pick from I go with the Austrian School. George Riesman is the modern-day torch-bearer for the kind of economics I like best. It is the economics of capitalism, the economics of rights, the economics of freedom.

Economics is not about dry and dusty trade figures or exchange rates. Don't be to thinkin' that economics is just about prices and what the banks get up to, there's far more! Economics is about the whole of human action. Not only does Riesman write about how money comes and grows but, as an economist, he has to understand environmentalism as well.

He makes several excellent points about the pro-global warming "environmentalists," here's one...

They tell us that if we destroy our capacity to produce and operate tractors and harvesters, to can and freeze food, to build and operate hospitals and produce medicines, we shall secure our food supply and our health better than if we retain and enlarge that capacity.

He makes another point, one I hadn't considered before. I'm going to blog about it above latter on but click on his link above and you can read about it right away.

It's not that those who don't fall for "global warming" want to poision the air. We don't believe that's what's happening. But even if we did, we would sooner poision the air than poision the engines of industry: The sources of all the prosperity that's now, and all that's yet to come.

Meet Dr Meat

2006-03-09T10:20:00.000+13:00

Dr Marc Wilson wrote back in response to yesterday's blog item...

Hiya Rick,

Golly! It warms my heart to know that my work has encouraged such debate (my thanks in particular to those who've taken the time to write me encouraging emails of the 'go back to the hole you came from' variety).

My position on the value of research such as that reported this morning is this - just because something is mundane and everyday, that does not mean that it is not worth investigating. Most people eat meat. Why? Most meat-eaters haven't even thought about it, and THAT is why I am interested. Might just as well ask straight people why they're heterosexual! We have a tendency to expect people who adopt a minority position to explain why they do so, without asking ourselves why the majority do something unthinkingly. At the same time the point of my research is not to link politics with diet - it's just the way that I do my research that allows me to do it :)

To soothe the savage beasts that question the value of their contribution to my salary - my research on diet is intended to allow a greater understanding of healthy diet decisions (meat consumption represents a single question out of many), or to understand a little about why people make the political decisions that they do. The fact that I tend to ask these questions at the same time means that I can have some fun and look at how they relate to each other - not that I'm actually intending to publish a paper on 'What your diet says about you!'

Deep in your hearts, you know the truth! When you go to a BBQ, who's standing around the fire, with a beer in hand? Of course masculinity is linked to meat-eating... It will come as no surprise, I'm sure, that meat-eating is associated (statistically, but not causally) with support greater NZ involvement in the Iraq war.

On that note,

Marc
http://www.vuw.ac.nz/psyc/staff/marc-wilson/index.aspx

P.S. Oh, and I am a committed meat-eater too :)

Liberty Fuel II

2006-03-08T22:41:00.000+13:00

Here's another one from last night, this time from the Christchurch Libertarianz

By this particular preparation of your census form you don't get to combust the actual form. Nevertheless, this liberty manufacturing machine displays your liberty just as well as a Wellington firebreather or a Northland BBQ.

You put in the symbol of statist control at one end, and in just one simple step the machine manufactures liberty at the other end.

If the libertarian of pure heart looks very very closely between the gaps in the shredded form- and even then this only works every 6 years on nights like last night- you can actually see your liberty between those gaps.

Thanks Barry!

Ever get the feeling everyone was out to get you?

2006-03-08T21:42:00.000+13:00

He's worried about Rodney... shit I'd be worried about the Soviets!!!

Sent to me by a spy, click image to enlarge. A rather unfortunate layout from NZHerald.co.nz on Friday last week. It'll be long gone now.

Yes, the worst thing in the world?

2006-03-08T20:20:00.000+13:00

I was listening to yesterday's Watercooler podcast (made in Christchurch) as per usual. The lads have been sent in a nice little song called Lullaby For Lawyers by Steve Newman.

Starts off like this...

There are rats
There are bats
There are stinky, mangy cats
But the worst thing in the world is a lawyer!

And it just gets better and better from there! :)

A song like this, I thought it was written 100 years ago by Gilbert and Sutherland or the like. But no, written by Steve Newman alright. Seems to be the best song on his CD, which you can sample on the Steve Newman link above.

But if you want to listen to the whole thing (you do, you do!) go listen to the tail end of Watercooler's March7 podcast. You'll be glad you did.

Liberty Fuel

2006-03-08T14:16:00.000+13:00

There he is in the Libertarianz' answer to a suit, the 'Politically Incorrect' Tshirt.

The rare treat of seeing your liberty shining by its own light and radiating its own heat: put match to the census!

More on what went down last night reported on JP and PC blogs.

Meat and Mushroom Clouds on Doves' Feet

2006-03-08T12:28:00.000+13:00

DPF at Kiwiblog, and commenters, have been reacting to the work of Dr Marc Wilson of Victoria Uni (and his student/s).

The Dominion today reports on Wilson's latest work into social psychological factors influencing peoples' food preferences. DPF says....

An academic study on meat eating has found that a partial reason why men eat meat is to "express dominance or masculinity".

Silly me. I thought I ate meat simply because I enjoyed the taste. But what would I know.

Well, actually, yes! SILLY YOU! Likewise the commenters on Kiwiblog bemoaning the decline of accademic standards and relevance. I happen to think that Wilson's work in the persuit of knowledge is perfectly legit.

It's not the big and obvious things that shape the world, and not big and obvious things that remain to be discovered. Of course we eat meat to fuel our body and because it tastes great, that's as obvious as a lion's roar! Duh! Revolutionary ideas, such as Einstein's Special Theory of Relitivity come from looking more deeply into the little things. The subtle and commonplace assumptions we make about space and time, for example, when questioned, produced a revolution in physics and gave man the command of nuclear forces that changed the world.

From small things big things one day come. As Nietzsche expressed it, "It is the stillest words which bring the storm. Thoughts that come with doves' footsteps guide the world."

So there's your historical and philosophical defense Dr Wilson, what about a specific one for your work?

Since I'm rather taken with Michael Foucault (philosophy), Thornstein Veblen (economics), and Desmond Morris (anthropology) when it comes to social psychology I don't have any problems thinking about what value Wilson's work might bring. Instead though I'm going to email him this blog item and ask for his own answer to the blogosphere.

NumeroNazis Have Their Day

2006-03-07T12:24:00.000+13:00

March 7th, come at last. National census day.

And why are New Zealand's true patriots kicking up a fuss about that?

In Christchurch, Wellington, and in Northland libertarians are shredding or fire-breathing or BBQing their census forms, each after their own regional appetite! The same civil disobedience will be carried out nation-wide by many other libertarians. Are these people mad?

Yes! Mad about liberty though, that's all. And if you're not why not? Kiwis who see their liberty stolen away and quietly cooperate are not patriots, they're traitors! It can't be that everyone who bends to the census is a traitor, so it must be they don't see what's happening here and need to have it explained.
Protection of people and their property is the name of the game. It is a principle of law that our rights belong to us and not to those whose greedy hands can take them away. Everybody knows that (although we may argue about what those rights are).

Government and law are the organisation of that principle. Government is a desirable thing and if it would just stick to this, its business, then peace and order would be all we'd ever know.

A nation run like that would be so simple, tidy, quiet and non-oppressive. We'd have the most just and trasparent government anybody could ever think up. And nobody would have any political favours to quarrel over anymore because there would be no privilages avaliable to co-opt.

Unfortunately for New Zealand we have given ourselves a government that does things the other way around.

Census day comes around every five years, and every five years all the libertarians in the country refuse to cooperate for the above reasons. The reasons come to two main points that strike me above all others.

1. Families and households are forced into being tax collectors and accomplaces to beurocracy. The Government makes us help them farm us, makes us assist them in perfecting their plans for greedy hands to finger people and property that they have no right to touch. Libertarians refuse to cooperate with or be a part of this undertaking.

2. They're not asking, they're ordering. Even libertarians, who are jellous of their liberty, would lend a hand or an answer to anybody who needed one. But the character of assistance to others is completely transformed when it changes from being a freely chosen voluntary offering into a contribution you are ordered to follow so no harm will come to you. We libertarians, we don't take well to ultimatums like that either.

"I am not a number, I am a free man! I will not be stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered! My life is my own! -- Patrick McGoohan, The Prisoner

NumeroNazis have their day today, sticking their skewers through every Kiwi they can in order to make a huge national abacus out of us all. And they would have completely gotten away with it too if it weren't for those darn libertarians.

Around the traps

2006-03-04T13:06:00.000+13:00

Adventures in the blogosphere this week...

David Farrar at Kiwiblog has blogrolled us without us having to even ask. Most pleased.

Impressed that Gen XY got their 'Animal House' [Ed- Bachelor Party] parody displayed in parliament. Still think issue makes an unfortunate display of our concern for muckraking vs real Kiwi life/death issues. But their Benson-Pope-On-A-Rope is pretty damn funny.

Pointed out on New Zeal that Benson Pope in the girl's dorm might have been a championing refutation that the highest authority and power in our society is that of a woman's body over a man ( paper beats rock). Oswald Bastable pointed out however that a bag of wetas could have cleared the dorm room and spared Pope his troubles (scissors beat paper). But man, unlike woman, is not afraid of the weta (rock beats scissors). An entire philosophical conception of the world emerges from this which clears alot of things up I suspect.

Came out in support of 'Fred Dagg Diplomacy' on The Whig. Reckon diplomacy should be done with ideas and words, not 'conspicious consumption'. If exporters want to put the razzle dazzle on foreign markets they can do it themselves, without the taxpayer provided in-house bloody chefs.

The only podcasts I listen to anymore, Shire Network News and the Voice Booth ones were both featured exclusively in Managing Information Strategies magazine, MIS.

Not PC said "Rick, that is possibly the most intelligent thing I have ever heard you say. Take a bow." Stoaked.

Idiot/Savant chickened out on discussing global warming on No Right Turn so I told him I'd have to go for a drive around the block a few times to cheer myself up.

"Never apologise for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologise for the truth ~ Benjamin Disraeli." Saw and stole this quote from Chaos Theory so I put it on my MSN byline. Just about everybody I chat to found it apropos and copied it for themselves.

Great Minds

2006-03-03T11:20:00.000+13:00

That's interesting. Cox and Forkum and Tremain have produced nearly the same cartoon within 48hrs. Great minds, they say, think alike.

Stranger Than Fiction

2006-03-02T12:34:00.000+13:00

When media fight! Kiwiblog has all the links.

The Independent reports that TVNZ and TV3 peeps got into a bar fight with each other on Friday!

This is just the sort of thing written about by such thinkers on human nature as Thornstein Veblen and Desmond Morris.

We are, they would say, the same territorial and violent savages humans ever were. Yes, it's a jungle of concrete and steel. Yes our furs are Armani suits. Yes our tribal call is a nation-wide broadcast. But we're still apes acting out the same play for all that. It's just that the costumes, the set, and the script writing has become more sophisticated.

I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind. That which is crooked cannot be made straight; and that which is wanting cannot be numbered.- Solomon

Of course this is bullshit. Veblen is especially seductive, and entertaining, but his savage philosophy can't counter the optimistic assurances of Objectivism. And poor old Solomon, he could have written a much more chipper Bible page if he'd had a dose of Ayn Rand.

Say no more

2006-03-01T19:30:00.000+13:00

I think I'll spare the Rand and the Mill.

If my 'toon doesn't explain what you ought to know
You can tell me all about it on the link below....

What better rebuttal to Dominic's item could I waffle?

Dominic's Theory of Labour Relations

2006-03-01T10:51:00.000+13:00

Click to enlarge ------>