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If you hum it ... | Oct 27, 2006 11:49
Okay, I can't hear the mysterious Auckland hum. Too much rock 'n' roll, probably. But whatever bedevils the residents of the North Shore has many precedents. The hum has been heard in Vancouver, Albuquerque and, well, lots of places.
New Scientist has run quite a few hum stories over the years, blaming traffic and factories in 1992, suggesting in 1995 that the earth's humming heralds earthquakes, and noting in 2004 research suggesting that "enigmatic humming sound made by the Earth may be caused by the planet's stormy sea."
NPR has a link the sound. Who'd have thought the Earth would hum in RealPlayer format?
Whether that's what folks on the Shore are hearing is anyone's guess. Anyway, the UFO folks have reached their own conclusions.
It's good to see that Act's Heather Roy is prepared to call Tony Ryall on his scuzzy behaviour over the MeNZB vaccine.
Jose at bFM promptly got Mikey's Mad Boo-cha jam on the wires at my request. Most excellent.
Robert Harvey noted an intriguing, and quite well-informed, discussion on Slashdot about where else in the world Americans might happily live.
With the mid-terms looming, the gaping holes in the US electronic voting system are back on the agenda. According to Ars Technica, things are as bad as ever.
Rolling Stone's Worst Congress Ever cover story makes for alarming reading. As does the magazine's list of The 10 Worst Congressmen.
And to conclude, some responses on the drinking age debate. Peter Belt said:
If an 18 year old lies comatose in the park, or wakes up in their lounge in a pool of vomit, I can accept that.
If they kill themselves, their passengers or other road users on the way home in a car, I can not accept that.
The drinking age by itself isn't a big deal.
Add driving, and the whole issue isn't that simple anymore. At the ages we're talking about, drinking and driving are very much related.
On average, young people's judgements are not as good as they have a smaller experience base to draw on, they're ruled by hormones and live in a culture of dare and bravado.
Add another judgement-impairing agent - alcohol, and you have to ask yourself: should we not at least try to keep them alive a little longer?
You've got kids - how do you square that one away?
Bart Janssen lamented:
I don't know that we'll ever get alcohol right in NZ. It's just part of the kiwi culture. I personally don't think any age ban will work.
So long as alcohol is seen as the holy grail of adulthood then the youth (of any age) will be determined to prove their adulthood early. When you combine that with the simple fact that getting tipsy is just plain fun, and even getting drunk (occcasionally) can be enjoyable (providing you have good friends around you to watch over you). And add the fact that many alcoholic drinks taste good! Then expecting our youth to drink this illegal product "sensibly" is fantasy.
Compare our attitude to alcohol with our attitude to coffee. In days gone by coffee was strictly a grownups' drink. But now the espresso machines in Auckland spend half of Sunday morning making pretend coffee for kiddies. Preteens know what crema is and by the teenage years most know how much coffee they can drink without getting the shakes and also know the pain of coffee withdrawal. They also know where to get the greatest pleasure for the coffee dollar and coffee houses (even Starbucks) are social gathering places for teens all over.
Is coffee bad for you? Sure under the wrong circumstances coffee is not ideal. Do we want 10 years olds with a 10 espresso a day habit? No - but we have very few of those. Is coffee enjoyable in the right dose? hell yeah. And the thing is most teens know pretty well what their own optimal coffee intake is and mostly stick to it.
How did they learn that, and so miserably fail to learn how much alcohol to drink? Would a barista ever make an eight year old a double espresso? No, and yet there is no law preventing that.
No, I don't think we can get away with treating alcohol the way we treat coffee. I don't think we are "grownup" enough as a society. Our barmen and women don't have the same attitude to their product that baristas do. But maybe if we could figure out a way of teaching our kids how to treat alcohol the way we've taught them to treat coffee?
But for me the law just won't really help change the culture. So I'm kind of neutral on the law change. I don't think it will make any difference.
Nigel was with me on the idea of a split age: 18 on premises, 20 to purchase liquor for consumption off premises:
This issue is very relevant for me, as I have two mid-teens daughters. Some of their friends are already drinking heavily (at 14/15 ), I actually talked to my 15 yr old about the issue this weekend & she was really keen on the 18/20 split & I personally think you could go 17/20.
The split is such a good idea it confounds me how a logical argument can be made against it. I wonder if anyone has done any surveys on the teenagers this will affect, if my daughter is any indication the split would have real support & it seems to me it's such an elegant way to encourage (mostly) responsible drinking.
Mandy too:
I heartily agree with you.
I grew up under the old system and never had a problem getting alcohol from the age of 13 or so. It is ridiculous to still enable rabbles of drunken youth, whilst not allowing them to drink in the relative safety of bars.
They will learn much better how to handle their alcohol drinking with people of all ages, and going and seeing live music.
And learn from their elders - in theory anyway. As a well-educated, artsy, 35 year old my own peer-group still has some pretty appalling drinking habits, myself included, those "how we are drinking" ads are pretty effective)
But Conor Roberts had his doubts:
Your solution won't work. The report also takes note of the 2003 report by the Alcohol Advisory Council of New Zealand, which states that only "13 percent of 14- to 17-year-old current drinkers said they had bought alcohol themselves. This means that 87 percent of supply came from parents, friends, siblings, other family members, and strangers. The report also states that 84 percent of current drinkers aged 14 to 17 years said that on their last drinking occasion, a parent or guardian was aware that they were drinking."
The distinction in the age allowing 19 year olds to drink in the pub but not at a party is not going to stop them getting alcohol. As their younger brothers have already shown, they will just get the folks to get it.
On another note, what I don't like about this debate is that the "de-facto drinking age" has dropped down to 13 or some such age. Well, if that is the case then perhaps we should raise the actual age up to 25 so the de-facto age rises up to an acceptable 18 or so?
In the end dropping or increasing the age you can buy piss is not tackling the roots of the problem, which is that people like getting out of it every weekend and half the week.
Hamish saw it as a civil liberties issue:
Isn't banning one section of the adult population from a socially acceptable activity on the pretext that some of them act irresponsibly in any form inconsistent with the liberal democracy ideal?
While there are many "happy compromises" we could make, they all ignore the fundamental arguments: that such laws set dangerous precedents for how society treats its members. Okay, not exactly "slipperly slope" stuff, but the 99% of responsible under 20 year old ADULT drinkers will be wondering why they are made to suffer the consequences of statistical profiling in (what I would hope was) one of the most egalitarian places on Earth.
The amount of hard evidence is underwhelming and you have to wonder how many MP's will be voting purely on anecdotal accounts of youth drinking (courtesy of C4 no doubt). Score one for treating your voters like children.
(btw, I'm 24..)
Paul Rooney offered his experience:
The major issue involved in the drinking age debate is not the age itself but the enforcement of the statutes. Presently in New Zealand the policing of the liquor laws is non-existent, therefore there is no control on behaviour.
Example: 16 years ago as a 30 year old I was asked to supply ID at the door of a bar in Los Angeles. I asked the doorman why he was being so zealous. He stated that if the police came to the bar and found an under-aged person or drunk on the premises the bar was immediately closed and the owner had to re-apply for his licence. Which could take months. It was really bad business to have minors or drunks on the premises. There were no warnings or don't do-it-again-mate. The doors were closed there and then.
Regarding public drunken behaviour it was again a change of statute that lead to the mess you see now in every town in New Zealand after about midnight on weekends.
Once, there used to be the Police Offences Act 1927, I think that was the year, where there was an offence for being drunk in a public place. Drunks were picked up off the streets to stop them getting beat up or doing any beating up, taken to Vincent Street, sobered up and fined $10 by the legendary Judge Hector Gillian on a Saturday morning.
Then bloody politicians gave the New Zealand public the Summary Offences Act of 1981, which came into force on 1982. There was no offence for drunkenness but instead the government was to provide "detox centres for drunks" - the police were to take the drunk there where he was sobered up and presumably the food would be better then Vincent Street.
Unfortunately that was in 1982, I have been out of the police 3 years now and there are still no detox centres - so the cops just ignore drunks spewing on street corners, where they become targets or cause problems.
New Zealand has a high rate of criminality exacerbated by alcohol abuse. If people want access to liquor they should be prepared to have the statutes regarding this product strenuously enforced.
That includes the seller and the purchaser. There should be a negative reaction for any negative behaviour.
And finally, some refreshing honesty from rumoured contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, Barack Obama. Bailed up about admissions of youthful drug use in his new book, he quoth:
"I inhaled - that was the point."
Wow. Equally remarkably, Obama resolutely refuses to play the God card. He told the same interviewer:
"Evolution is more grounded in my experience than angels."
That kind of talk, combined with the fact that he's black, will limit Obama's prospects this time around. But he's going to be interesting to watch.
His Bobness | Oct 26, 2006 10:08
Most of us can probably agree that Annette Presley is annoying. Having sat next to her on live television, I can personally report to that effect. And Bob Jones' tirade against her to Graeme Hill on Radio Live (now showing on YouTube) is shockingly funny. But can we further agree that Jones is a bit of a dick too?
The dispute centres on Jones refusing to turn up for a charity event in Greymouth on account of his fellow Dragons Den panellists breaching a written agreement not to use their mobile phones in his presence. Jones gave his side of the story as a follow-up in the Sunday Star Times - ironically, the paper claims it was unable to reach him on two different phone numbers before it ran the original story - and insisted that rather than merely receiving calls, Presley and Julie Christie had the temerity to initiate calls while in the car with him (Christie told the Star-Times that Presley was concerned about her five year-old daughter, who was "in A&E" with tonsillitis.)
The endless availability implied by the mobile phone has certainly required some new etiquette, but most of us have a feeling for when they're rudely used: loudly or at length over the lunch table, for example. But in the car on the way to the airport? What else is there to do? Were the ladies supposed to confine themselves to genuflecting towards his Bobness?
Meanwhile, poor old Simon Power gets it wrong again: in this case in his pursuit of National's present Parliamentary pantomime. Power collapsed a select committee meeting because its chair, Labour MP Martin Gallagher, was late - his flight from Hamilton was delayed - and even though Gallagher arrived as Power and two other National MP were walking out, he was unable to persuade them to continue. This was jolly bad luck for the submitters - including senior police and the head of the Serious Fraud Office - who had their time and money wasted. Power later denied he was grandstanding.
As did Tony Ryall, whose attack on the government over the MENZB vaccine seems purely cynical. In a bizarre appearance on Morning Report today Ryall claimed to be raising an issue of informed consent (an odd approach, given that by definition the 33 adverse reactions acknowledged by ACC occurred after consent had been given) but said that he would still have his own children vaccinated if had to make the decision again.
Readers may recall that I was critical of the level of information provided by the Ministry of Health during the vaccination campaign, and if one girl's development of a blood disorder is related to MENZB then that is a serious matter. But Ryall's attempt to score points by alleging a cover-up is just plain shabby. National MPs seem so gorged on the success of their campaign against Labour's credibility that they have begun to forget the purpose for which Members of Parliament are elected.
Meanwhile, National's caucus prepares for the bizarre - but necessary and inevitable - prospect of changing leaders while it's miles ahead in the polls. No argument from me: whatever Dr Brash's personal qualities might be, the political culture around him sucks. A National government led by John Key could be quite interesting. One under Brash would simply be alarming.
One more thing: The Bush camp's apparent belief that it could just do the old Jedi mind trick - claiming that the White House had "never" used the phrase "stay the course" in relation to Iraq - is indicative of either hubris, a belief in the enduring stupidity and suggestibility of its voter base, or both. Here's a YouTube reel of some of the instances.
The Upside of Doubt | Oct 25, 2006 08:58
I forgot to mention yesterday that Frontseat's Greatest Line in Kiwi Film vote is a bloody swizz. I say this because I was a judge, and none of my fellow judges - not one! - agreed with me that this line, from Goodbye Pork Pie, is in fact the greatest to be uttered in a New Zealand film:
"There's only one thing certain in life, Blondini, and that's doubt. I think …"
I mean, c'mon! That's not only clever, it's laconically evocative of the national character. As I have pointed out in an actual book, doubt is that which distinguishes us from the Australians. It's suffused through our arts and letters: where would McCahon have been without doubt? Besides; Tony Barry's character utters the line as an act of philosophy while driving a car and smoking a joint. Isn't that Kiwi enough for you?
Oh alright, there are half a dozen excellent runners-up awaiting your vote on the Frontseat website. Have a go, then.
By the way, the best line to have aired on New Zealand television this year came in episode three, season two of Outrageous Fortune. Van (the stupid twin) is asleep in bed when Draska, his crazed ex-girlfriend, breaks into the house, sneaks into his room and under his blankets and starts giving him head (a practice they greatly enjoyed throughout their engagement to be married). Van stirs a little, smiling and murmuring. Eventually he wakes up and demands to know what she's doing. Well, she points out, he was enjoying it.
"Well … yeah - but only because I thought you were Hayley Westenra!"
Genius.
Meanwhile, the chatter on the official discussion boards suggests that that Claire Chitham has finally escaped Waverly. The punters are loving her Aurora character.
Staying with the comedy, thanks very much to everyone who emailed in on the matter of NZ On Air declining further funding to Off the Wire on account of it being not New Zealand enough. Your views will be parcelled up in persuasive fashion and forwarded to the authorities. And in the meantime, the last Off the Wire for a while at least is being recorded at 6.30 this evening at the Classic Comedy Club in Auckland.
I'm on the panel, along with fellow heavy hitters Mike Loder, Jon Bridges (whose new Listener column is jolly funny) and James Coleman. It's free: just email tickets@thedownlowconcept.com or, if you forget, just turn up.
Spare Room has the gen on me old mate Glenn Eliiot, whose can-it-really-be-real doco/mocko Wayne Anderson: Singer of Songs is turning into a surprise ratings hit for TV2. Having taken a good deal of convincing to screen the thing in the first place, TV2 should just turn around and run the whole series again, so that latecomers can pick it up from the start.
Errata: I got a couple of things wrong in yesterday's post. They've been amended, but for the record: Bryan Sinclair was involved in John Banks' 2001 Auckland mayoral campaign, but not the 2004 campaign where Banks lost to Dick Hubbard. And I imperfectly recalled Don Brash's September 23 Agenda interview: I said that Sinclair did not fly over from Australia to advise Don Brash on his personal troubles at the expense of the party or the public, but at Dr Brash's expense. Actually, he paid for his own fare. Duh. My apologies.
PS: Still trying to find a download for the bFM breakfast mash-up of 'Drop It Like It's Hot' featuring Havoc as the Mad Butcher (sorry, Boocha …). You need to hear it. Oh, and I'll convey some of the interesting responses on the drinking age issue next time I post …
Confusion? | Oct 24, 2006 10:07
In the ongoing debate over the proper drinking age, I have repeatedly heard and read explanations why what seems to me a reasonable solution - fixing an age of 20 for purchase of liquor for consumption off the premises, and 18 for purchase and consumption on licensed premises - cannot be a starter. And they have never made sense to me.
The report from the law and order select committee on the private members' bill seeking to return the age to 20 does it again. On page four, it ventures that such a proposal "would re-introduce some of the complexity that the 1999 legislation was designed to eradicate. Some people suggested that the different age requirements would initially generate much confusion. They consider that a split age will make enforcement more complex and difficult. They note that enforcement is crucial to the success of achieving the bill's aim of reducing harm, and that a single consistent purchase age simplifies enforcement, making it more effective."
And yet, a new law restoring the age to 20 would include a welter of exceptions - all of them relating to consumption on the premises - that is surely, to any sensible observer, more complex than a clear, simple rule: off-sales, 20; on-sales, 18.
The report also notes that a split age "may be perceived as inconsistent with the aim of reducing harm to youth from alcohol consumption." But doesn't the same apply to those various exceptions allowing under-age consumption?
The report further observes that the Ministry of Health doesn't support the split age, and "is not aware of any evidence that a split purchase age reduces alcohol-related harm."
Well, why not? Isn't this a fairly obvious avenue for research? Shouldn't we know where and how dangerous drinking is taking place?
The ministry also, the report says, "notes that, although on-licensed premises can provide a safer environment for young people to drink, this is reliant on adherence to host responsibility guidelines, which it cautions are not always followed."
Nonetheless, I think we can assume that the 18 year-old buying a beer at a bar whose licence is contingent on the demonstration of host responsibility is a hell of a lot safer than the 18 year-old buying cut-price hooch and guzzling it in a park (and, it should be noted, potentially handing the bottle to the nearby 16 year-old). On the other hand, the assumption that parents and guardians will be more responsible than licensed hosts would seem to be undercut by the fact - as we are often told - that most teenagers drinking dangerously obtain their liquor from parents.
My particular interest here is that most live music is presented in licensed premises. If the age is raised again to 20, a teenage band will be able to play in a pub, but their friends won't be able to hear them - unless accompanied by a guardian (it might be more correct to say "former guardian", given that these people would be considered adults under virtually every statute bar the liquor laws). Given the joy that live music offered me as a teenager (it was easier to sneak into pubs back then) I think that's sad.
Voting on the liquor bill will come down to the wire. It seems a shame that it will be either-or, while a prudent middle way is ignored.
Meanwhile, a new report in Britain identifies the phenomenon of "paedophobia" - the British are increasingly fearful of their own young people.
There's quite a lively discussion on No Right Turn following a post noting that in a Radio Live interview Don Brash "admitted that he had used National's Parliamentary Services budget to pay the salary of his chief election strategist, Bryan Sinclair." It should be observed that Sinclair was not officially an election strategist, but Dr Brash's "personal adviser". But the idea that anyone would hire a political fixer like Sinclair to conduct Parliamentary business is a bit farcical.
The way that Brash was at pains to emphasise that no money was paid to Sinclair to provide advice when his personal life hit the news recently suggests that Sinclair's role (as illuminated in some of the leaked Brash emails) remains controversial within National itself.
National has not been found in breach by the Auditor-General, because he looked only at advertising expenditure, but he did say that "in a broad sense, the inquiry does pose questions about the appropriateness of other expenditure incurred by the Service."
Well, yes: when the Green Party publishing a monthly newsletter is deemed unlawful, but the spending of taxpayers' money on the dubious services of Sinclair is not, things seem a little skew-whiff. There's no question of this going further, but you might think it should temper a little of the moral outrage from the right, which has lately reached the point of hysteria.
The polls: while a yawning gap between the major parties opens up in the latest Colmar Brunton poll, a Roy Morgan poll taken before the final A-G's report found National and Labour neck and neck.
One more comment on the Herceptin hype issue, from my doctor mate Rob:
Bandolier do great evidence summaries. The bottom line is that it's an impressive drug, but you still need to treat ~15 women with early breast cancer to prevent 1 recurrence, and at NZD$70,000 per course thats about a million dollars per recurrence prevented, and for that money you could get much better health outcomes if spent elsewhere. It's a little more cost effective for metastatic disease but here it is mainly prolonging life rather than curing. The final problem is that all the data is short-term (1-3 years) and while it's likely that 5 or 10 year data will be even better it's not assured (strange things happen in medicine) so it's difficult to make accurate estimations about how effective this drug is.
And, finally, thanks for everyone in Nelson for a brief, pleasant trip south in the course of which I: stayed in the very pleasant Cathedral Garden apartment (turned down by Joe Bennett because he need somewhere he could smoke in bed!); saw a very enjoyable show by Don McGlashan and band (excellent falsetto in 'Bathe in the River'); shook a little booty to Grant Smithies (the track listing by overhead projector was a nice idea) and spent 90 minutes on stage over brunch discussing blogging, the media and Public Address with Matt Lawrey. That's a good little festival they've got going there, and the people who make it happen are really quite lovely.
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