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A bit of fun | Jun 23, 2006 10:20
We've given you a lot to chew on this week, so I'll keep it brief: David Slack and I are hosting the morning show on Radio Live tomorrow. It's just a one-off until Graeme Hill starts next weekend and I'm quite relaxed about it.
We've set ourselves a theme of "New Zealand outside the mainstream", and between 8am and noon we'll be talking to (in order of appearance) John Campbell, David Herkt, Ans Westra, Graham Reid, Tim Shadbolt, Gordon Dryden, Sue Bradford and Ant Timpson. Should be fun.
Today's NBR carries a front-page story by my old mate Tom Frewen about TVNZ's "secret" satellite digital service, with information about channel offerings from "industry sources". Wow. If I'd known it was such a secret I'd have made more of a palaver when I wrote about it, told people where to buy decoders and listed the channels available
a year ago in The Listener.
Readers weighed in on the dog-chipping issue. Brendan Smith was first on the draw:
As I see it, it's a technology issue. All dogs have to be resgistered. We mark registered dogs by attaching a piece of plastic to their collar. Now that newer technology is available (and has been for some time), the bit of plastic will be replaced by a micro-chip. I can't see how so many people can make so many issues out of it.
Danielle doubted that the bill would fill its purpose anyway:
The point, of course, is that the people most likely to have dogs who run loose and attack anyone are also the least likely to microchip their dogs. How will microchipping help to prevent dog attacks?
It's probably a good idea for all sorts of other reasons - I'll probably end up microchipping both of mine. But as an attack-preventative measure? It's a stupid idea. Even if you don't care about dogs, the prospect of a law this illogically-reasoned should give you pause.
Bruce Thorpe said:
I read you do not care much about this dog legislation, but in fact like children, mortgages and people with disabilities, dogs are part of a lot human families, and probably have been since human beings branched off from the other primates. Of course humans are irrational about the whole subject, but that is not enough reason to ignore their genuine distress about this legislation. Like music, mind-altering drugs and sex, we are all a bit puzzled about the other guy's priorities, but it is part of a fair society that we actually try to live with other people's values.
Of course a lot of what is being said is strange and even weird, but so was the middle class mania that followed the attack by a registered dog in that park a couple of years ago, and the nonsense pushed by the RSPCA which is scientifically on the level of intelligent design. If only somebody would give a full discussion the sort of media space that "unbundling" has received, you might know better just why Parliament is in meltdown on the subject.
Ben Wilson was more in my court:
Yeah, ditto that. I'm inclined to let this one go as a glorious victory for the Opposition. They do need some bones every now and then, or the howling gets unbearable.
John Stulen said that if Sue Kedgley is right and we humans are next for the implants …
Look at the bright side - farmers (who really run our government) will probably lobby successfully to be excluded. So smart money may be on filling in your next census form (which itself may be microchipped) to say you are a farmer!
I'm not sure I could fake it …
Meanwhile, the news is already having a startling impact in that microcosm of New Zealand society, Moenui, where there has been a jump in the number of dogs seeking work.
And Simon Foggo gets the big girly swot prize for history, by drawing attention to the 19th century Dog Tax War in the Hokianga. That's actually really interesting - and possibly, as he notes, ironic, "now that the white-bread Federated Farmers are up in arms regarding the state regulating mutley."
And finally, if you haven't read David Haywood's interview with Iranian refugee Shahzad Ghahreman, please, make the time. It's quite inspiring and one of the best things we've ever published.
Have a nice weekend - and big ups to the lads from the Downlow Concept, representing Auckland in tonight's national final of the 48 Hour Film Contest, which is live on C4 from 8.30pm tonight.
I don't care that much | Jun 22, 2006 10:59
Somewhere, someone is mocking us: "New Zealand's government rocked back, parties split by dog control law." It sounds kind of daft, doesn't it? But the Greens - usually the most decorous about party discipline - were split by a last-minute defection in favour of National's amendment, leaving Jeanette Fitzsimons looking ineffectual and Labour ministers in what appears to be the government's position du jour: completely gobsmacked.
I confess, I've been struggling to work up any kind of feeling as tempers have flared and loyalties been strained over a proposal that didn't seem so controversial when it was first voiced amid the anguish of the attack on Carolina Anderson. I don't care that much, because - and I'm sorry if this shocks some people - I don't care that much about dogs.
I'm not even sure the law is really a good idea, but by gawd there's been some crap talked about it. Federated Farmers issued a release claiming that the SPCA had "publicly said" it opposed microchipping of all dogs, and this week National's Jacqui Dean issued a statement headed Dog tax a death sentence, blaming the recent flood of puppies at SPCA refuges on the prospect of the microchipping law.
In fact, the SPCA's animal welfare policy has long included the statement "The SPCA advocates the microchipping of all dogs" and if you take the time to visit its home page, you'll find the words: "Dog Microchipping. Forget the hype - read the facts in the Department of Internal Affairs information brochure." And the SPCA itself is blaming the puppy onslaught not on microchipping, but on people failing to have their dogs de-sexed.
But, perhaps inevitably, Sue Kedgley took the prize with this amusing bit of hysteria in Parliament:
We have to acknowledge that this is a surveillance technology—an Orwellian technology. As Tariana Turia said some time ago, it is dogs today, humans tomorrow. Actually, it is not even a case of it being humans tomorrow. In Mexico the Attorney-General has ordered that all of his 160 employees be microwaved—I mean microchipped, although microwaving might be next! He has ordered that his employees be fitted with a microchip that is the size of a grain of rice. Humans are also being microchipped in America. George Orwell warned about this. Let us realise that microchipping is a way of legitimising surveillance; it is Orwellian technology—dogs today, humans tomorrow.
As ever, Kedgley fails to distinguish between technology and application. Chipping dogs (and sometimes cats) is relatively common on either a compulsory or voluntary basis in a number of countries, but dogs are not humans. And until such time as we start, say, putting down homeless humans, it's bonkers to regard it as an inevitable precursor to the compulsory use of RFID in the human population.
The Mexican attorney general did have himself and 18 employees fitted with RFID implants in 2004, to allow access to secure areas and try and combat kidnapping. The story has since become a staple of the conspiracy websites that Kedgley appears to enjoy, and, of course, has grown in the telling. Note that the total number of employees involved was 18, not 160, as the prevalent urban myth has it. The RFID article in Wikipedia is quite helpful.
Kedgley presumably uses a mobile phone, and would probably be shocked at the extent to which that phone could be used to track her movements, without her even needing to make a call on it. The answer is not to ban cellular telephony, but to ensure that the technology cannot be used to infringe privacy in such a fashion.
RFID itself is quite a useful technology, but there are a number of social, political and technical issues to be worked through with its application, not only in human implants but in retail use, supply chain management, etc. I don't think that that process will be helped by MPs who believe everything they read on the conspiracy pages.
Thinking about the future now | Jun 21, 2006 10:26
Here's something new: Steven Price and I spent some time this year on a commission from the Broadcasting Standards Authority, jointly writing a paper called The Future of Media Regulation in New Zealand: Is There One? We were given a broad brief to draw out trends in electronic media use and abuse, especially on the Internet, and to speculate on what those trends meant for established ideas about broadcast regulation.
We looked at new media communities such as YouTube, examined the official approaches in Europe, Australia and the US - and repeatedly came down to the conflicting rights of individuals and democratic governments, as summed up in the paper's final paragraph:
In considering a response to the new environment, governments and regulators will need to balance two distinct philosophies: the traditional belief that democratic governments should regulate in the public interest; and the belief, embodied in Internet culture, that networks foster their own communities and that individual voices must be protected from authority.
There's quite a lot more in there - the damn thing came to more than 20,000 words in the end - and I was struck by the fact that I had to update my parts several times simply to keep abreast of developments. So you should feel free to download it and read it at your leisure. If you feel so moved, let me know what you think.
What is Murray McCully thinking?. And is it policy or just hot air? National's foreign affairs spokesman demanded yesterday that the New Zealand government start using aid and immigration policy as weapons after the disappointing votes of six small Pacific nations at the IWC meering.
Apart from being unethical in principle, this is nutty. It can have only two consequences. One is that we enter a bidding war with Japan (and guess who wins that?). The other is that we lose influence in the Pacific and - if a New Zealand government was truly to stick to such a policy - those small nations lose the support that helps keep them stable. Our biggest aid recipient in the South Pacific is the Solomons. Is McCully really seriously suggesting we pull the plug there? Goodness. Is this some sort of benign strategic environment thing?
There has been some interesting writing on the whaling issue in the past few days. Of all things, a Financial Times editorial emphatically concludes that "whaling must remain a historic industry", and author Brenda Peterson points out that given the level of contaminants such as mercury in whale meat, eat them is just a bad idea anyway. New local blog Meta_Analyses also has a thoughtful take on the issue.
I do think cetacean intelligence is an issue, whilst being aware that it is perilous to anthropomorphise animal behaviour to suit ourselves. There simply seems enough evidence of sentience among whales to make us cautious about killing them for food we don't really need, especially when such killing inevitably involves a high degree of suffering.
The Technsploder has an excellent analysis of the implications of the Commerce Commission's draft determination on mobile call termination charges. Bad for Telecom, good for consumer, basically.
And finally, I'm a big fan of Charlotte Ryan's Sunday afternoon show on 95bFM. And so, it would appear, is Keith Richards. During the wizened one's convalescence in Auckland, he called Charlotte - not to air, unfortunately - to say how much he was enjoying her work (and yes, it seems to have been a genuine call). Way to go Shaz!
Just to be on the safe side | Jun 20, 2006 10:37
There are cops everywhere around our way at the moment - and rightly so. The attempted kidnappings of two Western Springs College students have everyone on alert, and there are police cars quietly cruising the local back streets during daytime.
As serious as it is, the situation has its funny side. A relatively minor traffic accident on Great North Road yesterday was swarmed by three uniformed cars and an ambulance, and the scene as the college came out yesterday was bedlam. Concerned parents descended on the place to pick up their kids, just to be on the safe side. You had to be a bit careful not to crash into someone. And, of course, there were photographers, camera crews and dear old Bob McNeill there to get the story. I wish I had something to report, but I've seen nothing untoward and I suspect the perpetrators are either lying low or prowling around another school. Creepy.
If you missed Webstock - or just want to relive four days of peace, love and web standards - all the video and audio recordings are now online, thanks to the people at CityLink.. The video is high-quality and the file sizes consequently fairly heroic, but that shouldn't be a problem - unless you're connecting from TelstraClear's network, in which case you will probably struggle to download anything (things seem okay from Telecom's network). And this is the reality of de-peering: good-quality local content that some New Zealanders can't reach because a certain company declines to peer locally.
Redmer Yska at MCH kindly got in touch with a few interesting deeplinks into the new Earth, Sea and Sky release of Te Ara, the Encyclopedia of New Zealand online. They include …
The research behind the fact that left-foot jandals are more than twice as likely to be found washed up on New Zealand beaches than right-foot jandals. The West Coast's short-lived uranium prospecting boom. A picture of the multivirile flatworm. And more on Matariki, the Maori New Year.
Speaking of which, Tim Selwyn reiterates his call for Queen's Birthday to be replaced by a new, indigenous holiday to coincide with Matariki. I'd vote for that.
Kiwi Herald has a rather quirky take on Radio New Zealand's Defining Moments project.
MacOS Rumors is continuing to claim that the next major MacOS X release (10.5/Leopard) will ship with a system-level implementation of BitTorrent, with the idea being that users earn incentives for chipping in their upstream bandwidth to ease Apple's Internet bill. So Apple has clearly thought about things a bit more than the chumps at Warner Video, who plan to release movies via BitTorrent - but at the same price as retail DVDs and with DRM that allows the movies to be played only on the computer on which they were downloaded. So Warner uses your bandwidth for distribution and makes a big margin on a product that's considerably less useful than an ordinary DVD. Duh.
And, finally, the Auckland Great Blend filled up in under four hours yesterday (we may be able to free up a few more places once it all shakes out), but there is still a little room in Wellington if you're quick.
Bringing the danah | Jun 19, 2006 12:12
It's been a while between drinks, but we have a new Karajoz Great Blend for you all - well, those of you in Auckland and Wellington anyway. Our star guest this time is danah boyd of Berkeley University. She's probably the leading social commentator at present on MySpace and related phenomena. There's a Wikipedia entry for her, you may well enjoy Identity Production in a Networked Culture: Why Youth Heart MySpace, her address to the American Association for the Advancement of Science in February, and her blog is here (you may care to leave a comment welcoming her to Aotearoa). She's in Finland right now.
The Wellington Great Blend is on Thursday, June 29 at the Boat Shed (the building between Te Papa and Frank Kitts Park), and danah will be speaking and participating in a panel discussing online communities with Justin Zhang of SkyKiwi and Trade Me founder Sam Morgan.
Other informative entertainment will come in the shape of Matt Gibbons, the co-creator of Starlords, who will be talking about that project and video mash-ups in general (and maybe showing some new mischief), and Samuel Flynn Scott and Bunnies on Ponies. I'll also fetch up some more video entertainment for Great Blend TV.
The Auckland event is Saturday, July 1, at the Grey Lynn Community Centre. Danah will be joined there by Justin Zhang and Peter McLennan on the panel; Matt Gibbons and his Starlords collaborator Bruce Ferguson will be in the house, Great Blend TV will screen, and SJD will round out the evening playing songs from their next album. It's likely that I'll add a panellist or two, and there may well be a surprise guest with some things to say about digital media.
As usual, the events are free, we'll lay on some free food and excellent coffee, and the drinks will be at friendly prices. I may also add another panellist or two. Capacity is limited, so you'll have to get in quick at the Karajoz Great Blend RSVP pages for Auckland and Wellington. It should be great fun.
For various reasons, this one has been a bit of a mission to organise, but it's all on now, and I'd like to thank, as ever, Karajoz Coffee Company for having the vision to make the event possible, and the New Zealand Music Industry Commission for to allowing us to bring over danah. Big ups also to the Asia New Zealand Foundation and TVNZ for helping with some travel costs, and Monteiths and 42 Below for donating some of their fine products.
Is the Herald's "premium content" gambit likely to be abandoned? That's certainly the impression I got from a senior APN executive, who was at pains to emphasise that future online revenue would be coming from advertising, rather than subscriptions. It's covered, along with other APN Online plans, in my Listener column.
There have been some questions raised as to the likely compatibility of New Zealand Freeview digital decoders with those on sale in Britain. I've checked, and the situation is this: NZ terrestrial decoders may or may not be directly swappable with British ones, depending on whether Freeview NZ chooses MPEG2 (as in the UK) or MPEG4 video, and what API is adopted. My guess is that they'll got for MPEG4, but the decision will be left as late as possible. Meanwhile, Australian DVB-T decoders will be incompatible with ours, and nearly everyone else's, because the Aussies, for some weird reason, chose the VHF band for transmission, and not UHF.
NZBC's latest mixed lollies has some excellent stuff about Joyce, whales and newspaper corrections.
Check out Graham Reid's excellent new Music from Elsewhere project, and his blog explaining what it is and why he's doing it.
The White House's Iraq PR drive has been tellingly undermined by the leaking of a cable from the US Embassy in Baghdad reporting on conditions there. Marked "SENSITIVE", the memo depicts a deteriorating environment of harassment of Iraqi staff by Islamist conservatives ("some groups are pushing women to cover even their face, a step not taken in Iran even at its most conservative … staff members have reported that it is now dangerous for men to wear shorts in public; they no longer allow their children to play outside in shorts"), widespread "ethnic cleansing", disturbing behaviour by Iraqi guards at Green Zone access points, the rise of vigilante "neighbourhood governments" ("The central government, our staff says, is not relevant; even local mukhtars have been displaced displaced or co-opted by militias …") and more. It really does sound like a developing nightmare. You can read the cable here.
More happily, thanks to the Vodafone/Mango folks for inviting me and Paul to the Warriors game yesterday. Two late tries from the Newscastle Knights made it look closer than it really was: the Warriors were just too powerful for the Knights. We sat near the Warriors' wives, who certainly know their footy, and went up to the players' lounge later on for the presentations. It was an excellent day.
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