Legitimate science funding

As I bask in the afterglow of a most excellent Christmas, an old New Scientist tells that scientists have been researching the effect of lying to children about Santa.

Santa is a time-honoured cultural conspiracy that most of us grew up with; a tradition that makes Christmas a magical time for youngsters. But is it really just harmless fun? Is it right to systematically deceive children, only to shatter the illusion later?

Clearly, in a world coming to terms with massive global warming, population growth and food security challenges, it is crucial for science to spend those vaunted research dollars on something worthwhile. Something useful. Examining the fallout from lying to kiddies about Christmas = money well spent!

I'd like to know, though, where the mandate for this research comes from. Who are these parents who are so concerned with the veracity of their children's worldview?

"Well, Timmy, Santa isn't real. And if he were real, he'd be seriously compromised by the effects of global warming on his North Pole home. Further, in order to produce and deliver that many presents he'd have an army of elves - underpaid, exploited workers from the second or third world, and that's even if they made it across the border. Then, he would have to get round the polar bears, and let's not forget, they themselves are very hungry, due to the decimation of their habitat. Assuming he clears the bears, the reindeer must take care to avoid having their antlers peeled for velvet, which, as I am sure you can imagine, Timmy, is very painful. And they have diseases. Any questions?"

Christmas dog

He is so proud to be a dog right now....

Has anyone seen my keys?

Today's SMH has an article about discrimination against pregnant women in the workplace.

Some employers still assume pregnant women can be more "irrational, forgetful and emotional than their fellow employees", it says.

This comment is emblematic of 80’s shoulder-pad feminism, where women argued their workplace value on the basis that they were the same as men. Well, we aren’t the same as men. When pregnant body shifts from doing one job, to doing two. Figuring out new and baffling places for unseemly hair growth is a task in itself. Many women do, in fact, become tired, forgetful and emotional when pregnant. Personally, I think the latter stem from the former; extreme tiredness makes everyone ‘baby brained’ and ratty. Men do it too, although you seldom hear of men suffering from ‘12-beers-and-a-fat-spliff-on-a-Tuesday-night’ brain.

“Women-are-just-like-men” was a necessary stage of the feminist cause. Building on the equal pay for equal work movement, it took women’s careers further into the realms of highly skilled work. The sheer variety of roles now held by women are not only attainable, but commonplace and expected, because many women blazed a trail, slogging through their pregnancies and juggling work and childcare responsibilities with their partners and families. In an expanding skilled-work economy, women’s contribution has been, and continues to be, a valuable one. The economy is now dependant on women’s contribution. Most businesses now employ women for their skills rather than a commitment to some fuzzy notion of equal rights. This also means that, at the skilled end of the employment market, many businesses are prepared to negotiate and accommodate women’s parenting choices. They might prefer to employ a man on the grounds that his tenure is more predictable, but the simple fact is, they often don’t have that choice – it’s all about demand. When you need a civil engineer, you need a civil engineer.

I’m not being a traitor to the feminist cause. It’s a simple fact. Most businesses want the most committed, most predictable employees. Men are often considered more reliable than women, because men don’t have babies.

We need to grow up, to accept and celebrate the reality; women have babies. Employers hire women to perform specific roles, and rely on their performance. Many employers already accommodate the needs of female employees, in the same way they accommodate the special needs of men who have heart attacks, or worse, family commitments. Simply, it is now worthwhile for the employer.

But it bothers me when I still hear comments like the one above. Feminism shouldn’t be about pretending it’s easy to be pregnant, or feeling like a failure because it’s suddenly bloody hard to get through a board meeting without spewing on the carpet. It should be about making the most of women’s skills and abilities within the constraints of pregnancy and parenthood. And, in terms of the workplace, they are very real constraints. The ability to have kiddies is a most excellent thing, but it isn’t always simple.

The real shame is that many of the women mentioned in this article aren’t in a position to negotiate. They’re not civil engineers or surgeons. Their skills are relatively easily replaced, simply because it’s less hassle to employ someone less duffed. These women are being screwed – pure and simple. It’s these women who seriously need workplace protection. But it shouldn’t come at the price of lying about what it means to be pregnant.

Two full cream and a sticky bud please

A milkman who supplied cannabis to elderly customers to ward off their "aches and pains" is facing a possible jail term in Britain.

Robert Holding, 72, pleaded guilty in Burnley Crown Court to two counts of supplying and possessing the drug, newspapers reported on Tuesday.

From the SMH

There is something seriously wrong with the medical system when elderly milkmen are peddling pot to seniors. I simply cannot fathom why medical marijuana isn't available in countries like Britain, Australia and New Zealand. Access is limited if available at all. The simple truth is that marijuana is a relatively safe, relatively natural drug. It can be self administered and most importantly, it works! It really really works.

Pain relief is one issue - pot is safer than morphine or brufren based drugs, which are often synthesised. For ongoing chronic pain, pot can be a really good tool in a pain relief arsenal. I've also seen it work wonders in MS patients, enabling wheelchair bound patients to walk for a while. It was like watching some kind of religious healing ceremony, only not fake.

But finally, marijuana can significantly help deal with nausea, typically associated with chemotherapy. It doesn't work for everyone, but there's so much evidence that it works in many cases that I am just baffled that it remains illegal for medical use. For me, this is the medical establishment at it's most cruel. Not only does the patient have to deal with the prospect of a life threatening illness, they have the added cruelty of throwing up constantly and feeling appalling. It's a special kind of torture.

It is simply outrageous that we can regulate drugs like morphine and other opiates for medical use, but get antsy about pot. I'm not saying that pot is completely harmless, but neither is cancer. Once you've made your deal with the devil you might as well get the fringe benefits.

Paul Holmes

Paul Holmes has retired. For Australians, Paul Holmes is a New Zealand 'broadcaster' - one of those twitchy midgets with odd glasses and a contrived persona, much like Derryn Hinch. Paul Holmes was alright,I suppose, just not quite rolling around on the floor screaming in flames enough for my taste.

If anyone's asking...

I found the coolest Christmas present EVER at dirty old Kmart. It's a replica four stroke engine. It breaks all my killjoy hippy rules - it has batteries and is destined to be just another pile of plastic shit resembling a car in about two months, but hey, if it's good enough for the US government...

It even has a transparent block so you can see the action of the pistons, with 4 little LEDs that light up mimicking spark plugs (unless you get the Italian version, which only has three). You build it yourself and although you only build it once, you'll get paid for three more if you join the right union before you begin. I got so excited in the shop, drawing more than one or two odd looks as I got all misty eyed about the cute little gudgeon pins.

Secret men's rituals.

"I think it's coming from under the plasticky bit, Sharon..."

Summertime in Australia means road trips. With the family. For some families, this means standing for hours, in the baking heat, on the side of the road. Today I drove past two cars with their bonnets up, their engine bays quietly digesting fat white blokes, headfirst.

The breakdown is a classic example of anthropological ritual. Most cars on the road in Australia were built after 1995. This means they have anywhere between 20 and 60 sensors that control their operation. Further, every component is engineered with one zillimeter's clearance between the next one. Modern cars are TIGHT. Then, the entire block and transmission is shrink wrapped in thick black plastic. Modern engines are a secret world. Their only ingress is a hole for the petrol, oil and water, and even then, they can be tricky to find. (Tip, always check the glovebox for release buttons: engineers are twisted bastards)

And yet, despite the impermeability of today's modern engine, almost all men conform to a comforting ritual when faced with a breakdown. They get out, pop the bonnet and have a 'bit of a poke around in there'. What ARE they looking at?

"Yep, Sharon. The engine's definitely still in there...so, well...ah...it's not that then..hmmm"

Once you've checked to make sure the battery terminals are still connected, there's precious little you can do.

And yet, there they stand, like conquering heroes, peering under the bonnet, while their wives wander aimlessly beside the road and wait for assistance.

I can only imagine this Bonnet-sweat ritual is a hangover from the days when men could, in fact, pull over and fix the car. Before 1990, there was a fighting chance that your ignition system was mechanically operated by your engine. A Hall effect or transistor assisted ignition was as close as you got to electronics. A man could search for the bit where the turny turny stopped making the sparky sparky, sometimes even testing the leads on the block, producing entertaining fireworks for the children. What fun!

Nowadays, the sparky sparky is controlled from a computer, which uses millions of sensors, that test everything including your manifold air pressure, camshaft position and even the amount oxygen in the exhaust, amongst ten million other things. If your car stops, and there's no steam, or fire, there's no smell of barbequed roo, and you don't appear to have water outside the windows, then it's pretty safe to assume that the only thing you can fix is the radio station. If you have ACC power.

Stand there and wait for the NRMA. And when they get there, don't say; "Yeah, mate. I reckon it's the valve shims. They've been waiting to go".

Incredible

I've been following the case of Murunji Doomadgee, an aboriginal man who was killed in custody on Palm Island, Queensland for almost four years. For those of you keeping score at home, here's a summary;

Murunji was arrested and detained in a jail cell at the Palm Island police station. He was being drunk and potentially violently pesky. Sgt Hurley of the Queensland police beat him, and Murunji died shortly after.

Four police, friends of Hurley, "investigated" Murunji's death. They found no wrong doing on Hurley's behalf.

The death was referred to the coroner, who said Hurley had, in fact, caused Murunji's death. This recommendation was sent to the Public Prosecutor. The public prosecutor said a coroner's report that conclusively stated that one man killed another was "not enough evidence" to bring a case against Hurley.

Outcry resulted in a review, and the public prosecutor's decision was overturned. Hurley went to trial. He was acquitted. It seems the jury agreed that although Hurley's beating caused Murunji's death, Hurley wasn't culpable. He was then awarded a compensation package from the Queensland police.

He then appealed the coroner's findings that he killed Murunji (you can do that when a jury finds you not guilty). The coroner's findings were overturned. Hurley was totally exonerated.

Thankfully, someone in Queensland has enough balls to call a nightstick a nightstick;

North Queensland state MP Mike Reynolds has called for the original police report into the death in custody of an Aboriginal man on Palm Island four years ago to be made public.

I am still baffled that a policeman can beat a man to death, be investigated by his mates and found not culpable, then found utterly culpable by the coroner, then considered culpable but not worthy of prosecuting, and THEN, after being forced to trial, found not guilty and getting the coroner to apologise.

It's trite, I know, but it's hard to not think this would be different with a dead white guy in custody.

Sigh...

I've not looked at the news in New Zealand for ages, so I checked in this morning. It's still there. And it's still profoundly depressing. One article asks; "Could your dog be a kiwi killer?" and is accompanied by video of mauled kiwis being patched together. The answer is, OF COURSE. Show me dog that doesn't start salivating at the thought of a flightless bird, and I'll show you a fish in really convincing drag. And everyone knows endangered is the by-word for tasty. I know people are attached to their dogs, which is why I assume the news story left some room to defend Roxy and Tipp. But really, if you live near the bush, and you have a dog, then it has eaten every kiwi it can get its jaws around.

I don't know what the solution to this problem is - tighter controls on dogs is a joke. New Zealanders can't stop them chewing kiddies faces off, let alone the wildlife.

The second story is an absolute shocker too. The NZ police paid an informant $600 a week to infiltrate and spy on the Greens, mostly at one of their party offices. He attended protests and planning groups, and probably even wore beads.

The thing that disturbs me is that this is the government using the police to spy on the opposition. Feels a teensy bit Soviet for my liking.

Apart from anything else, the Green party operates with maddening democratic transparency. On the one hand, this makes for frustratingly tortuous progress, but it does lead to very well thought out action. It is also incredibly transparent. Fuck, if you wanted to spy on people breaking the law and trampling on people's rights, then investigate the ACT party, all frantically hiding each other's money and routing the development process. Oh hang on, they're the government.

I am an angry feminist!

This appeared in the SMH today;

Queensland Premier Anna Bligh has joined a chorus of criticism over comments by her attorney-general that some rapes have only a "minor effect'' on women.

While the premier stood by Kerry Shine, she described his comments as "insensitive''.

Mr Shine was interviewed on ABC Radio in Brisbane today about recent figures on the rate at which rapists were jailed.

Figures for 2007-08 showed one in eight people sentenced for rape or attempted rape avoided jail.

Mr Shine said the figures partly reflected the fact that some rape victims were not as traumatised as others.

"You have to look at the various circumstance of each case - some rapes can be of minor effect on the victim ... some circumstances can be of minor, some can be of major, damage to the victim,'' Mr Shine said.

"They do vary in intensity from time to time.

"For example, a digital rape is a technical rape, but that is far less serious than an aggravated form of rape.''

"What I was simply trying to do was explain that the legal system has different sentencing for different offences.

And then this facile, unhelpful comment from the opposition;

Opposition deputy leader Mark McArdle said Mr Shine had trivialised rape.

"Rape is always a serious crime,'' Mr McArdle said.

Hetty Johnston, from the child protection group Bravehearts, said the comments were disturbing.

"If they (the government) don't understand the impact of this crime then we are all in a lot of trouble,'' she said.

And finally, we get to the crux of the issue, in the last sentence;

Ms Johnston said mandatory minimum sentences were needed in sex cases. But Mr Shine said such laws took away judges' discretion and undermined their independence.

Mr Shine is a judge. He has a range of sentencing option available to him, and the discretion to decide what "kind" of rape was committed. The media is making it sound like he has a laissez faire attitude to rape, which is disingenuous. Shine is simply spouting the law. And the law recognises that there are different kinds of rape. The question, that has been almost completely ignored, is whether we think the law should in fact, treat all rapes the same, or, as the last sentence says - mandatory sentencing. If the law needs changing to consider all rapes as the same, then we need to have this discussion.

Personally I'm less interested in having a discussion about changing the rapiness of rapes, than about sorting out the judicial system regarding sexual violence. The adversarial system simply treats rape victims appallingly. If the media are looking for an issue to bitch about....this is it.

Don't forget America gave us this! Muppets 2.0!

found on boingboing

Dooce

OK, So like does it come in any other colours? Green is so, like, yukky.

Many people have referred me to read a very popular blog called Dooce.com. It's written by a "Mom" living in Utah. She's a good writer, and I did in fact used to read her blog often. Basically, she writes about everyday life with her family. I stopped reading her blog when I moved to the US - I got busier, but also I think the novelty of an everyday American life wore off a little as well. A week ago a friend recommended I read her blog again, but I couldn't. And here's why. In the middle of last year I tried picking up the blog again, and was greeted with a post on environmentalism.

Last week the price of gas forced us to switch cars, and now instead of driving around in our mammoth SUV we're folding our bodies to fit inside the two-door 2000 Honda Civic that has been parked for months inside our garage. It is a car I could fit in my front pocket. We tried this about two years ago and gave up after a few months because of the subsequent back aches, but this time we've promised ourselves that we'd give it a more hearty go. For me that meant we had to recharge its ailing air conditioning unit, but for Jon this meant we had to upgrade its stereo. That right there is a pretty clear delineation of our varying priorities, that I would prefer the family not die of heat and he'd prefer that if we did at least we'd go out keeping it real.

Her enormous family consists of two adults and a four year old. Outrageous!

When I lived in the US, I spent a goodly period of time living in a Honda Civic. And I am just as damn tall as this whining American, if not taller. Not only did my car contain a skinny mattress folded in three sections, it also contained an entire complement of kitesurfing equipment - all of which had to be shunted into the front seat when I wanted to go to sleep. My concession to Burning Man was a large, beige elasticated car cover that stretched over the entire vehicle. This meant I could leave the windows open without becoming completely caked in playa dust. The downside of course, was access - I looked like I was being swallowed by a pair of control panties. Then again, there's a tent for that at Burning Man, so no-one raised an eyebrow.

Dooce's post above highlights a fundamental difference in thinking about cars for Americans. The normal American car reflects American values - it is a small, air conditioned shopping mall on wheels. Her Honda Civic dilemma summarises what I found to be a completely different regime of understanding about consumption in the US. Everything is bigger - and the American people themselves appear to be equalising.

Not all Americans think like this, of course. I lived in San Francisco amongst some of the most environmentally frisky people you could find. But, as San Franciscans proudly told me, San Francisco is not America.

Cheezels

"Multiples" is a term used in history, and refers to the relatively common occurance where a confluence of ideas results in the same discovery, but in unconnected circumstances*. Grey and Edison, for instance, came up with the same kind of revelation that Alexander Bell did about how to make a telephone work, at the same time. Call it zeitgeist, call it providence, but I was standing in the supermarket today mulling over the decline of the Great Barrier Reef (having just read this), when I noticed that Cheezels contain no artificial colourings. That's right, those bright orange rings of lard-blasted corn extract are naturally coloured. And I thought; Since when did Nature adopt the safety vest? Man, are the zebras going to be stoked about this...Seriously though, I couldn't figure it out. Where do Cheezels get their 'all natural' colouring?



*Here's an article about multiples - it's interesting.

Marketing

I bought underpants yesterday. I never buy new clothes, instead trawling about the place looking like that big creature out of the Fraggles that dispenses advice and is made out of rubbish. But yesterday I finally realised I was down to only two pair of undies, and it was time to take action.

The knickers I chose had a round sticker on them informing me that these undies were "medium control". What does this even mean? At the counter, the girl gave the me the standard speech;

"No returns on underwear"

"But what if they're not actually medium control?" I said

She looked vexed. I continued, "What if they're actually firm control? Or lax control? Or not paying attention at all?"

She smiled a little and wondered why these dirty fucking hippies always came in on her days at work.

Smoking

I smoked for 8 years, and have not smoked for ten on top of that. So I'm out of touch in the cigarette health "warnings" arena.

When I smoked, each packet of Drum rollies (I was skint) had a tiny little message on it that said; 'Smoking might be bad for you if you're born on a Wednesday in the Ascendant Hall of Aquarius, And Even Then, it's Probably Fine'. At the time I thought they could make smoking altogether less hazardous to my health just by printing the warnings in bigger text - I had enough trouble driving and rolling a ciggy at the same time, let alone squinting at a health warning.

Then the warnings got all straighfoward on the matter; Smoking causes cancer. Not a lot of wiggle room on that one. These were good warnings. Most people I knew struggled with two syllable concepts, but cancer was someone everyone knew about. Simple. You smoke = you could get cancer.

Fast forward ten years to last night, when I was sitting at a dimly lit table surveying a selection of cigarette packets. The first warning said; Smoking causes peripheral vascular disease. What? What happened to good old cancer?They might as well say; Smoking causes arthero-sclerotic degeneration, myopia and galloping Cartesianism. The smokers were going around the table reading out their warnings out like the Christmas cracker jokes;

"I've got; "Smoking causes....ah...What's vasec-cular?"

"I don't get it"

"No no no, I get it. I've had one of them. It's when you don't want to have any more kids"

"Ahh. Well, this seems like a nicer way to go" he fished around in the packet for a another pinch of baccy.

Australia, the movie

Random Play reviews the new Australia movie. According to him, Australia is formulaic crap. I was heartened to discover, however, it inspired a Nicole Kidman hate site.

I don't normally support this kind of behaviour, but something about her pinched, squinty little face, and breastfeeding-proof waistline makes me want to run her over. I preferred her when she still looked like a person. In the interests of comparison, here are two pictures of her, taken 20 years apart. She doesn't look 20 years older, just, more sort of....flensed.



See...?

Anyway, the movie review asks what the movie New Zealand would look like;

It is the late 19th century and Lady Jane Champion from Rutland has to rush to New Zealand where her husband Vincent has been injured in an accident while breaking in land near Wardville on what was Maori land.

The first three minutes deal with her six month journey to New Zealand and the hardships on the way: on the ship a woman dies in childbirth, a drunken sailor throws a little boy and his cute dog overboard and they drown slowly, a mysterious Maori man inhabits her dreams and she wakes up screaming . . .

Lady Jane arrives in Auckland and for a few days stays in a boarding house run by a woman who plays divine piano and performs abortions on the side. A woman dies during a procedure. Another two women in the boarding house are secretive lesbians who have murdered the husband of one and now live with the shame. It rains a lot.

One night the husband of the woman who owns the boarding house comes home drunk again, beats up his wife, and cuts her fingers off with a butcher's knife. The lesbians kill him. Lady Jane witnesses this and flees in the rain.

She heads down to the farm where her husband is now slowly dying surrounded by a pinch-faced Bible-quoting pastor, and sympathetic and handsome Maori -- and one who looks suspiciously like the man in Lady Jane's dream.

The farm is on the picturesque West Coast. Denniston in fact where it rains constantly and women die in childbirth. Children work in the coal mines, men get drunk and beat up their wives.

Vincent dies, Lady Jane decides to stay and work the land with the help of a young artist called Colin who has A Dark Secret and paints landscapes of black mountains and grey skies. He never speaks. It rains constantly.

A sullen Maori man called Heke is carving a canoe for reasons which are never explained.

A dark stranger arrives in Denniston. We see him kill some chickens.

The pastor berates Maori for their godlessness, Heke kills the pastor and pushes out to sea in his canoe. He drowns.

A little girl disappears from a nearby village and suspicion falls on Colin. The moronic looking villagers surround his hut intent on killing him and only disperse when Lady Jane appears and speaks to them sharply.

The mysterious stranger confesses to murdering the little girl and is thrown down a mine shaft by the villagers, a woman dies in childbirth while calling out for husband who turns out to be the pastor, there is a mine accident and many children are killed, Lady Jane and Colin help the survivors and fall in love -- but he dies the next day of influenza.

At the end Lady Jane is standing on the farm when the mysterious Maori man appears and smiles at her. She smiles back and knows she's found her home at last.

The rain stops.
Then it just fucking buckets down again and the village is washed away.

It's called New Zealand -- and it has been in a cinema near you. Far too many times I suspect

.


Enthusiasts will of course recognise one film in particular, in this rendition. The Piano, but with slightly less rain.

(Thanks Teena for the review link)

Everything that is wrong with the US, in one handy article!

Popular American website Boing Boing posted this story about a woman who is auctioning off her MRI scan on ebay because the image of the Virgin Mary is visible the centre of picture.

Pamela Latrimore has been sick for years with cancer, arthritis and a series of serious ailments she blames on a childhood in Jacksonville, Ark., a place that has been investigated by the U.S. government for possible dioxin exposure. Dioxin is a toxic chemical linked to a variety illnesses including cancer and liver problems.

Boing Boing posted the story because of the Virgin Mary angle. But look at the circumstances. Latimore lived in an area that has been investigated for possible cancer causing dioxins. The unbiased results of inquiries into environmental pollution, especially ones that concern possible litigants, are filed along with investigative reports into the tooth fairy. Environmental and population health requires a finessed approach, one that isolates causes and effects. Any room for interpretation can be easily manipulated to protect industries and authorities and it frequently is. Poor people, living in health damaging pollution, should not expect to be vindicated.

Next up is that fact that Latimer comes from a working household, and yet they have no health insurance. It has been proven time and again that many working Americans cannot afford health insurance and about 45 million Americans are uninsured. And before you think it, no, most of these are not illegal immigrants. Most are naturalised Americans.

So who comes through for you, when environmental science and economics are both routed by politicians, leaving you sick and poor? The Virgin Mary, of course!

Touche

Click on pic to enlarge and read text

Sensationalism

It's summer here in Australia, and summer means carnage. This morning I woke to an article in the Sydney Morning Herald (9 Dec 08) telling me that a kitesurfer had "…peeled off half his face" at a beach just north of Sydney. Initially I thought, what's new? Half the blokes in Sydney have had a face peel, it's just that kind of place.

But then I read further; the kiter was dragged off the beach and into a fence, and then through a sign. He was very badly hurt, although it should be noted that despite the sensationalist headline, the article went on to state that he "nearly peeled off half his face". This is the kind of irresponsible reporting one expects from the Australian media. There's a big difference between nearly and actually did. For instance; I have nearly done the dishes. These headlines put me in mind of those Women's Weekly headlines; 'Thatcher's joyous baby surprise!' when in fact, it simply means that Baby Surprise was on the Thatcher's menu on Wednesday night.

Sensationalism aside, I feel quite sorry for the man who nearly ripped half his face off, right after he nearly pulled his release, and shortly after he nearly checked the wind.

An outcry of internet discussion often follows these unfortunate events. Conjecture, moralizing and self important declarations about one's immunity to accidents flow freely. Here's the thing; Kiting, is, by its nature, a bit sketchy. It is, in fact, dangerous. And it pays not to be a dick when doing it. Mr Face Peel might have been following all the "Safe Kiting Guidelines" and still gotten hurt.

Ironically, I blame safety. The early days of kiteboarding ran like a form of medieval waterboarding. It was terrifying. Back then, kiting was so dangerous your face peeled itself in anticipation. You started screaming before you even got out of the car, just to save time. I watched bones breaking, noses exploding, and more than a few cattle stare at the colourful new addition to their paddocks. One memorable afternoon I was staring out at the water and heard a loud crack. I turned to see my friend sitting, quite still, in the carpark. He seemed fine. Until we realised we'd just heard his pelvis snap in two as he slid sideways into a post. Traction kiting (as it was quaintly known in those days) was precisely that; designed to leave you in traction.

The quick release was a timely and exciting development in kitesurfing. Suddenly, your chances improved from "compost" to "gentle maiming". Nowadays, however, kites are safer. Much safer. Bow kites, depower systems, fifth lines and all over stability have all improved the usability of kites hugely. Unfortunately, this increased confidence in safety resulted in some of the crappiest safety releases on the market. It's not unusual to discover that your safety release doesn't, in fact, release under load. In the old days, things happened so fast, and so brutally, it a was well recognised fact that you might not even hit your release. But if you did, then you made sure it worked. Many releases were home-made; if you could get to it, you really, really wanted it to work. Yet, kiters today are spoiled. They are filled with a sense of security because today's kites simply aren't as dangerous or twitchy, and many kiters today are totally unfamiliar with that feeling of being on the edge of a catastrophic f**cking. As a result, many quick releases are now 'slow release', like a weak analgesic.

What no one wants to acknowledge about Mr Face-Peel above, is that he may well have become a victim of good, old fashioned spanking. The kind of spanking that used to happen on a daily basis. The kind of spanking that many kitesurfers, and kite manufacturers like to pretend is completely avoidable. The simple fact is that kiteboarding is a tricky business. It's not simple to learn. You are hooked up to a machine that can drag and lift your entire weight in the blink of an eye. It's like wakeboarding, but you're doing both the wakeboarding AND driving the boat. Normally, if you're wakeboarding, and the driver of your boat driver decides to open a beer, veering off like a madman, you can simply let go of the rope. With kiteboarding, the guy opening the beer is you. This can come as quite a shock and you almost certainly won't be finishing that beer.

Kiteboarding is not safe, it's just safer than it used to be. Pay attention.

(This article is getting published in an upcoming kiteboarding magazine)

What I learned today...

About half of the money spent on supporting Proposition 8 (effectively banning gay marriage in California) came from the Mormons. Talk about insult to injury.

I find it profoundly sad that thousands of gay couples happily marched off to get married only to have their marriages effectively annulled by the state. And it's more than just once. I know that for most gay couples, it doesn't make much difference to their relationship - they'll still live together, put out the rubbish, pay the water bill - get on with the everyday reality of living with their partner. But there's also some really insidious implications, like the ability to adopt children. These are really personal, emotional issues and it guts me that the state thinks it's OK to fuck with people's lives like this - and so often. And to have your personal life judged by a bunch of Mormons is particularly galling.

I guess the upside of this is at it is becoming increasingly clear that gay couples will become more and more franchised. Gay marriage will become increasingly accepted and common and the anti-gay movement increasingly routed. I mean, when you have to recruit Mormons you're really scraping the bottom of the barrel.

LOTR!

I watched the Lord of the Rings last night. The last film I think it was, I’ll never know because I didn’t make it to the end. Most New Zealanders have seen the Lord of the Rings, but I haven’t. It was odd to see the Rakaia gorge and Erewhon station all tricked out with medieval bits and pieces. But ultimately, it was the fantasy wargaming speak that did me in;

I am LoudHinge of Screendoor. I bring news of the Peaches of Araluen.

What of them? Are they ripe?

No. They are not but ripe. Looking like about mid-December

You just know that every one of those actors spent the next three years of their lives fielding letters from chunky girls in crushed velvet.

RMA what?

The Oompah Loompahs head off for another day of environmental destruction at Newcastle

The Resource Management Act is a sprawling piece of legislation that has governed the modification of environments in New Zealand since 1991.

The new "government" has promised to scale back the RMA consents process, in the interests of cutting down on 'red tape', where red tape is a by-word for concern for the environment. The RMA recognised that there are numerous values embodied in the landscape and the alterations need to consider the interests of the eco-system, which includes the humans that live in it. It is an unwieldy piece of legislation but basically it enables people to have a say about the degradation of the environment.

Here in Australia, there is no RMA. Over at RealDirt (link on right), James has an article about coal mining in Australia. Here in Australia, coal companies are mining under and around rivers. This results in the almost complete destruction of the river, the surrounding bush and the catchment. Particularly odd is that Sydney has recently approved a zillion dollar desalination plant for drinking water, while the mining companies poison the catchment that supplies water to the city.

Living in Newcastle, (as I did) you get a very clear picture of mining pollution, but the baffling thing is that state governments seem utterly complicit. I'm still surprised that coal mining companies are a law unto themselves. There is simply no sanction, no protest, no consideration of the effects. Coal doesn't even taste nice! Even somewhere like Newcastle, people are still suffering the effects of mining pollution.

The message is clear, you better hope you're not living on a coal seam.

Times a-changing

And if I squint on this angle I can almost see!

Many things have changed since I was a teenager. Politics, world affairs, wars and environmental issues. Perhaps the most consequential change I've noted though, is the attitude of young men to haircuts. In my day (which wasn't actually that long ago), teenage boys would rather peel their own scrotums than submit to a hairdresser. If one was forced into the swivelly chair, then the hapless victim would run from the salon and dive headfirst into the first available pile of salty shit like a sprung Labrador. Teenage boys prevented complete hair-blindness by submitting to their mothers' scissors once every six months (and then heading straight for a pile of salty shit).

How things have changed. I live in a surfing community, just like when I was a teenager. But nowadays teenage surfer boys are all sporting boofy hair-dos, fluffed up, streaked coifs that wrap around their chubby little faces like windblown cotton buds. They wear short boardies too, and tight pink neckless tee shirts. In short, these young men take special pride in their appearance. In my day, teenage boys thought a full set of fingers was accessorising.

I remember moving to the city and telling my mother that my male workmates were all gay. My evidence was that they all seemed to wash more than twice a month. (Yes, I was this stupid). And now, I can walk past a group of teenage surfer boys and hear them all spitting out the most eye-watering anti gay vitriol from between their heavily glossed lips, while they gently push their neatly blow-dried fringes out of their eyes. It's all gotten very confusing.

It seems that young men today like to dress how we thought gay men dressed Back In The Day, only now it's become fashionable to hassle one another very cruelly about being gay. I preferred it when the gay boys dressed so people knew they were gay, (if they wanted people to know, which a few at my school did) and the straight boys didn't really dress at all, and the two groups more or less ignored one another in sulky teen style. It was simpler and the abject snarky cruelty was left to the girls. The grown up in me tells me that discrimination was no different back then, or perhaps even worse. But was it? One of my best friends at school was gay. It wasn't a secret. I hung out with him all the time and I never remember hearing the kind of shit I hear today. Am I being nostalgic?

Where was I? Oh yes...something about hair...

Right! Science!

I love the old "Can you travel directly downwind faster than the wind" question. Intuitively, you want to say no. You know you do. The good people at Mythbusters recently took five minutes out from calibrating the exact displacement of human flesh caused by high powered weapon #37568 to invite people to submit videos that prove the downwind theory. That is, to prove that you can, in fact, move downwind faster than the wind.

I remain agnostic on this issue. My rudimentary physics tells me that you can't, but then I've seen 'apparent wind' in action, and I know that it increases in oomph* with speed. This is why kites pull you harder the faster you are traveling along the water. And so that makes me think...hmmm. Maybe....



Most of the shit I see on Mythbusters is so facile, so flawed, it is embarrassing. Most of the time even I can see the problems with their questions, and I am mostly hair. That said; I'm watching this video and I am intweegued. Times like these I wish I'd gone to school.



*Technical term number 467.

Contrary to popular belief..

I haven't died. I have had four things to do; final work on my thesis draft (v.time consuming), a wavesailing competition in the Deep Southern Freezingness (last week), another Big Thing I am writing, and blog posts. Guess which one falls off the bottom of the list?