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Not so much evil as stupid ... | Oct 10, 2007 09:37

No Right Turn is declaring the resurfacing of "the Brethren hack" as a mysterious billboard campaign targets City Vision in the Auckland local body election.

Cars towing around large mobile versions of the billboards are apparently owned by Giltrap Prestige, and it would seem reasonable to assume that the company's owner, Colin Giltrap, is involved. So, anonymous big money tries to buy an election?

Hmmm. I'm not sure evoking the Brethren is a good idea. And as I/S notes in an update to his No Right Turn blog, this would appear to fall well within the relatively loose restrictions of the Local Electoral Act 2001.

Rather, what it speaks of to me is the relentless banality of the campaign from the right. I've already noted the nutty tone of the leaflet C&R is distributing in Western Bays. Now Giltrap (or whatever mystery individual is writing the cheques) floods the city with ugly-ass billboards reading "Keep Auckland Fryer free," in a reference to City Vision councillor Glenda Fryer, "Don't vote City Vision. They are the fun police."

The best guess is that Giltrap still hasn't got over the V8 race not being staged. But are we supposed to be inspired to vote by this shit?

Technical problems and a sheer lack of time have kept from from doing much with the humans.org.nz site lately, but we're fully back in action this week, with a remarkable personal account from Mel, an Asperger Syndrome mother from Britain, a look at the phoney election campaign in Australia, where -- incredibly -- autism education support is becoming an election issue, Lesley Maclean notes some good radio on the topic, and Hilary Stace outlines the goals of the Inclusive Education Action Group.

If you know anyone who's on the spectrum, or has friends and family who are, you could do me a favour by letting them know we're rolling again and pointing them to the website.

In the US, lapsed Republican blogger John Cole has been on fire lately, first with this scorcher on the hysterical campaign sparked by Barack Obama's failure to wear an American flag pin on his lapel:

For starters, people got tired of being associated with these drooling retards. Then, when they realized that these drooling retards had ideological allies running the show in the Bush administration and then began to experience their idiotic policies, they moved from disgusted to outright hostile.

Like me. It had nothing to do with Burke, and everything to do with what the party had become. A bunch of bedwetting, loudmouth, corrupt, hypocritical, and incompetent boobs with a mean streak a mile long and no sense of fair play or proportion.

Seriously- what does the current Republican party stand for? Permanent war, fear, the nanny state, big spending, torture, execution on demand, complete paranoia regarding the media, control over your body, denial of evolution and outright rejection of science, AND ZOMG THEY ARE GONNA MAKE US WEAR BURKHAS, all the while demanding that in order to be a good American I have to spend most of every damned day condemning half my fellow Americans as terrorist appeasers.

And then this commentary on this week's scarcely believable wingnut outrage, which has seen swarms of bloggers led by the ghastly Michele Malkin stalking the family of a disabled 12 year old boy who appeared in a health policy advocacy ad they didn't like. Then Rush Limbaugh joined in. They seem to have long since passed the point where gibbering political bigotry trumps common decency.

We were in fits this morning listening to the Morning Report item on the unfortunate mislaying in Winston Peters' office of a Threat Assessment Report on Air New Zealand Australian troop transport charters. In truth, my mind still goes blank when I hear Murray McCully speak, but Sean Plunket's interview with Peters himself was a classic of its kind. Yes, it is serious -- shouldn't someone have the wit to tell the boss about this stuff? -- but damn, it was also funny.

The Slashdot thread about the possible rapprochement between Peter Jackson and New Line, to allow Jackson to make The Hobbit after all is also both funny and informative. I particularly liked the post about how The Hobbit might turn out if various other directors got the gig, and this was interesting:

Technically, MGM owns the production rights to The Hobbit. New Line and MGM currently have a partnership agreement to produce The Hobbit, but the rights revert back to Saul Zaentz sometime next year if principal production hasn't begun. Since Michael Shaye (president of New Line) has been such a dick to Jackson in recent months, it makes total sense for MGM to stall the process until the rights revert, then MGM and Jackson can repurchase the rights and make the film(s) Jackson wants, which will please the fans and cut New Line out of any revenue from it.

The fans, MGM, and Zaentz all want Jackson to direct.

And, if you will forgive me, three little things about the rugby. Revelations about World Cup referee organisation that say nothing to me so much as what a colossal fuckup.

Murray Deaker, well past his use-by date, sticking the knife in and telling your kids all the wrong things about loyalty and grace. Deaker's had his own public falls: he can just count himself lucky that people around him weren't as stupid and unpleasant as he has been on the radio this week.

And, finally, the most soulful meditation of them all, from Inky. I'll buy that man a drink next time I see him.

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A fairly weird encounter | Oct 05, 2007 11:22

Would you vote for an Auckland mayoral candidate who didn't know who Doug Howlett was and had never heard of Bro Town? Is there some minimal level of engagement with popular culture that constitutes a qualification for office?

Radio New Zealand's Pacific issues correspondent Richard Pamatatau interviewed the Auckland mayoral candidates and gave them a multi-choice test on Pacific culture and politics.

None of them did wildly well -- Alex Swney confessed he was shocked at what he didn't know -- and Banks, after stumbling on Howlett (what island ethnicity does he identify with?) and Bro Town (in what suburb is it set?) actually refused to complete the test. It sounds like a fairly weird encounter.

Meanwhile, it was slightly ironic that Colin Espiner could greet National's foreign policy "discussion paper" on Tuesday with the words "It must have been a relief for the party to deliver a chunk of information without making a major gaffe," only to see John Key making a major gaffe hours later.

Of course you can argue that the Iraq war is over if you define war only as the one-sided fortnight preceding the occupation of Baghdad in 2003, rather than the longer, messier bit since, in which perhaps hundreds of thousands of people have died and four million fled their homes. 2007 will be the worst year yet for US casualties in Iraq and they are, frankly, running out of army. If a hypothetical Prime Minister Key were to call up the White House and ask if they had any bloody, intractable wars they wanted a hand with, I'm sure they'd be pleased to hear from him.

I think Espiner's also right to say that National's plan to allow private developers to build and run schools "really does seem to be a solution in need of a problem". It's not intrinsically bad, but as the New Zealand Treasury report on public-private partnerships pointed out with admirable clarity, the real, practical advantages over conventional procurement don't always stack up the way their cheerleaders say. In particular:

• There are other ways of obtaining private sector finance without having to enter into a PPP;

• most of the advantages of private sector construction and management can also be obtained from conventional procurement methods (under which the project is financed by the government, and construction and operation are contracted out separately);

• the advantages of PPPs must be weighed against the contractual complexities and rigidities they entail. These are avoided by the periodic competitive re-tendering that is possible under conventional procurement.

So whatever you might gain in access to private finance, you stand to lose in contestibility. Perhaps, in the case of very large projects whose long-term maintenance requires skills outside the competence of government, a PPP is a good option. But we're talking about building and running a school, not Vector bloody Arena.

There are contrary arguments, but I fear that Key isn't your man to make them; I can't ever recall thinking he was passionately all over a policy sector the way that various senior Labour MPs were in Opposition. And I think his utter flub over a foreign policy paper that actually had something to recommend it -- broad political consensus over foreign policy is indeed a good thing -- further demonstrated a weakness that will not have been lost on his opponents. Even this far in, we still don't know a lot about what Mr Key really thinks.

Okay: weekend mode now. I'm actually feeling pretty good, having finally delivered a discussion paper on the theme of public broadcasting in the digital age to NZ On Air: all 17,000 words of it. I daresay it'll be available soon, along with many more thousands of words gathered in the survey on the same topic that hundreds of you dear readers participated in a couple of months ago.

I also helped with the launch of the new Triangle Stratos channel this week, as MC. The turnout was very interesting: three Cabinet ministers, senior execs from both the major freeot-air broadcasters, and several lovely people from out of town community broadcasters. I also had a chat with Surya Patel, the sales and marketing director at Radio Tarana, the Indian radio station currently pulling a 5% share in the Auckland radio market -- which anyone who knows that market will recognise as remarkable. They're presently just trying to keep things stable and bed in their success.

By the time I introduced Triangle's Jim Blackman during the speeches, I thought he was going to cry. And why not? It's been 10 years, and for Jim to see his ideas for a national backbone for all regional broadcasters actually become real is a remarkable thing.

I knew, but I was slightly surprised to hear him say it on the day that Stratos, the pride of Freeview, will also be available on Sky channel 89. It's a practical and inevitable decision for Jim, but it puts quite a weight on the Freeview-only channels to woo the public.

Speaking of which, I've been doing some Freeviewing, and I'm enjoying it. TVNZ 6's programming is quite smart, and I enjoyed The Gravy and The Living Room being shown together on Wednesday night. But I bet they wish they'd had their Showcase idea before Sky's Documentary Channel snaffled a lot of the good stuff. Only major glitch so far: a B&W episode of It's in the bag going out without sound. I think even the old days, we had that …

Anyway: by June next year you can expect to see new TV sets with built-in HD tuners for Freeview; next-generation PVR-style decoders for both Freeview and Sky, probably with IP and home networking functionality. It'll take years to bed in, but viewers are increasingly likely to make less distinction between traditional broadcast content and internet video.

Wanna know the rest? You'll have to wait a little …

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Ten Times Warmer | Oct 02, 2007 08:49

If you read nothing else today, read Shifting Targets, Seymour Hersh's lengthy update on the status of the Cheney White House's plan for Iran. Hersh's contention is that the administration has pulled back from its original plan in favour of a proposal for "limited", "surgical" strikes not aimed at nuclear facilities.

He says:

The shift in targeting reflects three developments. First, the President and his senior advisers have concluded that their campaign to convince the American public that Iran poses an imminent nuclear threat has failed (unlike a similar campaign before the Iraq war), and that as a result there is not enough popular support for a major bombing campaign. The second development is that the White House has come to terms, in private, with the general consensus of the American intelligence community that Iran is at least five years away from obtaining a bomb. And, finally, there has been a growing recognition in Washington and throughout the Middle East that Iran is emerging as the geopolitical winner of the war in Iraq.

And further reports:

"They're moving everybody to the Iran desk," one recently retired C.I.A. official said. "They're dragging in a lot of analysts and ramping up everything. It's just like the fall of 2002"—the months before the invasion of Iraq, when the Iraqi Operations Group became the most important in the agency. He added, "The guys now running the Iranian program have limited direct experience with Iran. In the event of an attack, how will the Iranians react? They will react, and the Administration has not thought it all the way through."

That theme was echoed by Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former national-security adviser, who said that he had heard discussions of the White House's more limited bombing plans for Iran. Brzezinski said that Iran would likely react to an American attack "by intensifying the conflict in Iraq and also in Afghanistan, their neighbors, and that could draw in Pakistan. We will be stuck in a regional war for twenty years."

On which note …

The adviser said that he had heard from a source in Iran that the Revolutionary Guards have been telling religious leaders that they can stand up to an American attack. "The Guards are claiming that they can infiltrate American security," the adviser said. "They are bragging that they have spray-painted an American warship—to signal the Americans that they can get close to them." (I was told by the former senior intelligence official that there was an unexplained incident, this spring, in which an American warship was spray-painted with a bull's-eye while docked in Qatar, which may have been the source of the boasts.)

"Do you think those crazies in Tehran are going to say, 'Uncle Sam is here! We'd better stand down'? " the former senior intelligence official said. "The reality is an attack will make things ten times warmer."

Ironically, there will be a separate parallel universe in which the US nukes Iran, and one in which everybody just gets on and has cups of mint tea. Well, that's one reading of some remarkable new maths from Oxford University …

And, to conclude on a happy note, the first 2008 Big Day Out announcement has just been made: Bjork, Arcade Fire, LCD Soundsystem, Billy Bragg, Dizzee Rascal, The Clean … and Rage Against the Machine, who did nothing for me last time they played. But I know someone who will be very, very excited.

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Connecting the Box | Oct 01, 2007 07:53

What with the new channels arriving, I thought I'd better get down to it and install the Freeview decoder yesterday morning. I prepared myself for a lot of mucking about trying to make the MySky and the little Freeview decoder play together, but it turned out to be entirely straightforward.

Not that the support material filled me with confidence. The two pieces of A4 paper that came in the box with the Zinwell indicated I should run the cable from the satellite dish into the Freeview decoder, then "loop out to another receiver". But the "troubleshooting" guide on the Freeview website said: "To connect both a Freeview set-top box and a SKY decoder to one dish you need to use a single power pass splitter and connect the power pass side to the SKY decoder as shown below."

No I didn't. I just screwed the cable into the Freeview box, then out of that (using a handy length of cable that came in the box too) into the MySky, then connected the Freeview box to the TV with the composite video cables and standard audio with RCA plugs. I didn't bother arsing about with the RF aerial lead, which stayed in the back of the MySky. I had to do a soft reboot on the MySky, but after that, everything just worked. They should tell people that.

A replay of the All Blacks' game on TV3 offered a good opportunity to compare the two services. Conclusion: both the video and audio quality are appreciably better on Freeview (which uses MPEG4 rather than MPEG2), and the Freeview electronic programme guide is quite attractive and even offers picture-in-picture while you browse the listings.

Correction: The current Freeview satellite service uses MPEG2, and it will be the terrestrial version launching next year that uses MPEG4. The current different in sound and picture quality is down to Sky using a lower bitrate so it can squeeze more channels into its satellite capacity.

The only downside was that I realised how annoying I find television without a PVR. I don't really understand why Freeview couldn't have anointed a couple of PVR devices along with the vanilla decoders in the shops at the moment. But I gather that's coming.

Installing Freeview was what I did instead of going to the launch of TVNZ's first new Freeview channel, TVNZ 6, at the museum events centre. I did say I was going to go, but they were pushing it a bit having a launch at 9am on the first day of Daylight Saving Time the morning after an All Black test, weren't they?

Speaking of which: although Glenn Anderson's Daylight Saving Time patch thought it had done its job, my new iMac didn't move forward an hour overnight. The other Macs in the household did the adjustment fine, so I wonder if there's something different about these new iMacs. Anyway, I'm living on Samoa time for the next week.

Correction: Oh God I'm an oaf. I forgot that I hadn't restarted my iMac after patching (hey, I was too busy loving it) and it all actually worked fine.

These new iMacs are, let me tell you, very fine. And they seem very good value to me too: there's quite a lot of computer here in one sleek, slender case for $2800 (actually, retail is $3049 if you take 2GB of RAM, which you'd be silly not to, even though that makes it a build-to-order spec, which means you have to wait up to two weeks for your computer).

I got quite excited about how cool Cover Flow looks in iTunes (which gives you the option of downloading all available cover art from an Apple server) on the new screens, and (once I'd sorted out a little software glitch) Leo was struck dumb by the way World of Warcraft looked. The Safari 3.0 beta runs very fast indeed. It looks and feels like a significant step up from the 20" loaner iMac I'd been using.

Or, rather not using, the loan machine having suffered a critical hardware failure and spent the better part of the last two weeks being diagnosed and restored. I was in danger of getting a bit dark on Apple. And then Steve lays this insanely great computer on me, and I wake up and find myself right back at Cult of Mac Central.

Karl from CactusLab brought around his iPhone on Friday, and I can see an obvious connection between the tactile UI on that and Cover Flow -- one that will be further enhanced with the arrival of the Core Animation API in Leopard. I do think they're going somewhere with this stuff.

Anyway, the other reason I wasn't going anywhere early today was that I went to see Blam Blam Blam play at the King's Arms. I was all set to take the easy option and stay in, but my Big Cool Friend picked me up and dropped me off. I'm glad I made the effort; or, rather, that she did.

I always see Blam Blam Blam as our version of one of those art-protest bands they had behind the Iron Curtain, but we got a much better deal than the Russians. Theirs always seemed to be unlistenable theatre bands fronted by bald chaps; we got invigorating agit-pop.

But there's the same sense of music made before the wall came down. Blams songs like 'Blue Belmonts', 'Respect' ("I didn't appreciate that crack about the Prime Minister!") and, of course, 'There is No Depression in New Zealand' are all about the fin de siècle years under Muldoon.

We arrived just as they started, and by the time I'd fought my way to the bar, they were playing 'Thomas is Guilty'. Listening to the lyrics, it occurred to me that the same song today would be about Ahmed Zaoui. Then, when I got back with the drinks, I looked to my right and there, looking slight and rock 'n' roll, was Deborah Manning. I smiled and raised my drink to her.

There was a lot of misspent youth in the room. There was also Barry Jenkin, who raved away madly but looked as fit and well as I've seen him. Not content with owning the Waiheke radio station, he now has a wireless ISP, with 78 customers on the island.

The Blams were great. I think there's a point where people get past any reticence about playing the songs they wrote when they were 20, and just embrace it. Creative people sometimes throw good shapes when they're young; shapes worth revisiting. The songs are still in those odd time signatures, and some still sound like experiments. They certainly didn't just get up and play them like the old days: I recall 'Bystanders', for example, as quite an oblique song, but at the KA they worked it up into a bit of a monster.

I thought it was a big step up from their first public get-together, at the St James a couple of years ago. They've clearly been practising together, and whatever they might have lost in mad youthful energy they pick up in just being able to play their instruments better. I hope they'll continue to pop up every now and then. Because Blam Blam Blam really are a very promising outfit.

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