Telling stories

Prime Minister John Key warned Labour yesterday against pressing for any disclosure of the Endeavour Trust documents of Finance Minister Bill English over his Wellington home.

Responding to calls from Labour's Pete Hodgson to see the trust documents or the minutes of its meetings, Mr Key said:

"I caution the member if he wants to have an open disclosure of every trust document and every superannuation document of every single member of Parliament, it would be a very interesting road to go down."

It is at times like these that you find out who people really are. That nice Mr Key, it turns out, is really not that nice at all. Mr English is a crook.

It is only because Honourable Members can make the rules to please themselves that Mr English is at liberty. Anybody else who pretended he had no financial interest in his own family's trust would be laughed out of court, which is where he deserves to be. And yet Mr Key is backing him to the hilt. One wonders what hold Mr English has over Mr Key; after all, it is common knowledge that they cannot abide each other and they are seen together rarely. Perhaps it is Mr English's knowledge of the details of that other trust -The Waitemata Trust by which National's backers make their anonymous donations - that keeps him where he is. Or perhaps it is something to do with the Hollow Men scandal.Or perhaps neither of the above. Perhaps it is simply that sense of entitlement, which motivates Mr English to take what he wants and Mr Key to do what he wants.

In any case, it is a shame that Mr Goff is about as useful as a one-legged man at an arse kicking party. And it is a shame that his is an arse-kicking party. We wait for that moment when Mr Goff will take command and show his principles and his vision, but it may never come. When Mr Goff muttered about smacking, lightbulbs and showerheads it showed no more than his lack of substance. The only political idea with which he has been associated is Rogernomics, a dogmatic attachment which mysteriously did not prevent him achieving the leadership.

One ought to say something about Mr Goff's deputy, international woman of mystery Annette King, but it difficult to think of anything she has said or done.

So Mr Key can continue to do whatever he likes, safe in the knowledge that Mr Goff would not be so impolite to make any real objection. Mr Key also has the support of Rodney Hide's Two Percent Solution, and of the Iwi Party, who have their own corporate interests to serve – as was shown by their recent reinterpretation of the phrase bottom line. Even the Green Party has sold its birthright for a mess of pottage - an organic, fairtrade mess, but pottage nonetheless.

Which leaves you and me. Cold out here, isn't it?

The Charlatans

Pedantry for pleasure and profit

Man came on the radio to tell us about Zimbabwe. It was Adam Mynott, of the BBC. This of itself is unexceptional, but at one point he used the phrase "the wheels of industry are grinding slowly forward." This seems a peculiar metaphor. The sort of wheels that grind are those found in mills, for the making such things as flour or coffee; these wheels do not move forward. The sort of wheels that move forward are usually the sort that propel vehicles; but these do not usually grind, unless they are moving on roads made of grain or coffee beans.

Mr Mynott, of course, is using a confused adaptation of the metaphor "the wheels of justice grind exceeding small." This, in turn, is an adaptation of the phrase "though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small," which is a translation by Longfellow of a verse by Friedrich von Logau.

I thought you should know. Carry on with whatever you were doing.

The bully pulpit

Larry "Seething" Baldock has submitted his latest CIR question to the Clerk of the House, as Idiot/Savant reports. Apparently, this is standard procedure. The Clerk is now inviting comment on whether the question should be such as to:

• convey clearly the purpose and effect of the indicative referendum,

and

• ensure that only one of two answers may be given to the question.

So, what happened last time? Why did we spend all that money and effort on a question that made no sense?

This time, at least, Mr Baldock's purpose is clear: "Should Citizens Initiated Referenda seeking to repeal or amend a law be binding?" He wants a CIR about CIRs, a meta-CIR if you will. Having failed to bully the Government into overturning the "anti-smacking" legislation by means of a referendum which almost half the elecorate ignored, he wants to make his silly stunts mandatory. Before us, we see a political landscape of constant referenda, on any subject which irks Mr Baldock and his miserable band of Christian Rightists. Doubtless, he would try again to have the Prostitution Reform Act abolished; doubtless too, he or others like him would try to have abortion made illegal and capital punishment revived.

It may be worth noting that we live in one of the world's most democratic countries, with short-term Parliaments elected by proportional representation. Despite this, the Christian Right's attempts to establish a bloc in Parliament have failed, because the electorate do not want that sort of thing. So Mr Baldock wants to force his odious views through by binding referenda on questions that he sets, aided by the forces of talkback radio and the grumpy old men who dominate public opinion.

I wish he would go away.

Lorem Ipsum

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The phrase metasyntactic variable (pronounced /ˌmɛtəsɪnˈtæktɪk ˈvɛəriəbl/) is a neologism that is used in some programmer communities to describe a placeholder name or an alias term commonly used to denote the subject matter under discussion or an arbitrary member of a class of things under discussion. The term originates from computer programming and other technical contexts, and is commonly used in examples by hackers and programmers. The use of a metasyntactic variable is helpful in freeing a programmer from creating a logically named variable, although the invented term may also become sufficiently popular and enter the language as a neologism. For example, in Terry Pratchett's book Men at Arms, the dog Gaspode says, "Clothing has never been what you might call a thingy of dog wossname", and then adds, "Two metasyntactic variables there. Sorry." The word foo is the principal example.

Wikipedia: where the simplest ideas are described by the clumsiest definitions (and a reference to Terry Pratchett).

Here is a cartoon called ASDF; it was made by a PhD student in the Low Countries, and was made known to me by Cass Goodwin.

A heartbreaking poem of staggering genius

Why is poetry so awful these days?
I only ask because
I was listening to Jenny Bornholdt on
Nine to Noon and thought to myself
"This is crap."

I blame the Montana Book Awards
They encourage this sort of thing:
Me Me Me poems
which state the bleeding obvious
in words the People can understand.

So its all "everything is sad" and
"bad things happen," in blank verse
without difficult words, or metre:
the Nouvelle Hallmark style.

Of course, Nine to Noon
is all hospitals and Tragedy
and Heartbreak these days;
I would use the word maudlin
but that would be elitist.

Under the mountain

At the most basic, vulgar level, landscape expresses itself in a specific price: the added cost of a beautiful view in real estate, the price of a plane ticket to the Rockies, Hawaii, the Alps, or New Zealand... at the same time, landscape represents itself as "beyond price," a source of pure inexhaustible spiritual value... an "ideal state" quite independent of "real estate"... the land, real property, contains a limited quantity of wealth in minerals, vegetation, water and dwelling space. Dig out all the gold in a mountainside, and its wealth is exhausted. But how many photographs, postcards, paintings and awe struck "sightings" will it take to exhaust [the value of iconic natural landmarks]?

Thus wrote W J T Mitchell in Landscape and Power (1994, University of Chicago Press, p15) as abridged by Claudia Bell in Inventing New Zealand (1996, Penguin New Zealand, p34). I only mention it because it was written by someone from Overseas, and New Zealanders only take notice of the bleeding obvious when it is said by foreigners, so quoting it here might have some effect.

Or not, as the case may be. For the Government's simple plan to dig up the Conservation Estate to see if anything shiny can be found underneath is motivated as much by spite as by greed. Spite, after all, is an essential component of Government policy-making. It could be seen in the decision to bring back the Knights and the Dames: the Labour-led Government had done away with pomp and circumstance, so they must be brought back; and, as a bonus, the people who were honoured during the Interregnum were given the opportunity to upgrade their awards to Business Class. Spite guides the the odious lifeform known (for the duration of its stay on this planet) as Gerry Brownlee: digging up the bush will make some people very rich indeed, but it will also annoy the Greens.

Because if there is one thing the Right hates more than Labour, it is the Greens. The Grumpy Old Men who dominate the daytime airwaves attest to that. They demand the removal of the Resource Management Act, so that men like themselves can chop down trees and cut up hills. They call for the building of nuclear power plants, not because there is any need for them here (there is none) but because they cannot abide this country being nuclear-free. They scoff at schemes to limit plastic bags, as if the livelihoods of humble plastic-bag makers were threatened by middle-class environmentalists with hessian sacks.

More reasoned voices of the Right have rushed to the Brownlee's defence. That Mr Hooton was on the radio last Monday, to tell us that there would be no damage to the Environment, because the miners would not set foot on the Conservation Estate: they would mine under it. Of course! How silly of us to think otherwise. Mining operations could be based in some undesirable part of the country - Penrose, for example - and miners could commute to their work through tunnels leading to resources under the National Parks. On the other hand, Mr Hooton could be talking out of his adit.

Mr Farrar, on another hand, takes the view that we will lose only piffling amounts of clean and green New Zealand. It will barely be noticed. Besides,

A conservationist will look for the balance. They may say okay that 11 hectares of land has huge economic value. What if we purchased 500 hectares of land over there to replace it in the conservation estate. The conservation estate gets to grow, we get the economic benefits of the land’s economic value – a win/win. That is what we should look for.

Yes, that's it. Let's replace these 11 hectares of native bush with 500 hectares of farmland. We can grow a new bush on that, a bigger and better bush. If we don't, then schools and hospitals will suffer.

You see, the problem with the natural environment is that it is not economically useful. It is all just unimproved land, slovenly wilderness, sitting there and contributing nothing to our standard of living. It really is time the environment bucked up its ideas and started making an effort. And it really is time the Greens had those smug looks taken off their faces. There is gold in them thar hills and there are Greens in Grey Lynn who are going to be very upset. At the end of the day, it's a win/win.

Competition is killing our kids

Mr Pilbrow insists its concerns about regulation are valid. Vodafone had "educated'' the charity on the issue. "They asked us, if we felt compelled to be involved, then they would appreciate our part of the argument. "They said we raised valid concerns and they needed to be heard and it is a lot easier for us to say those things than Vodafone, because if Vodafone say things like that, [people] would say it was just Vodafone saying that.''

In which Parents Inc, the ever so slightly creepy charity run by Ian and Mary Grant, is shown to be owned by its sponsors; Hat-tip to Mr Farrar. Meanwhile, Megan Wegan has much to say about the Grants' new book.

Is it just me, or does Parents Inc look more like a business than a charity? And does it have any factual grounds for the assertions it makes - that women should get back to the 1950s? And do the Grants have any real knowledge to bring to their chosen field, or is it all prejudice?

Answers on a postcard to the usual address. In the meantime, I shall be looking for a new phone provider.

Allo Allo!

There is a muttering campaign amongst members of the pro-child abuse community, to the effect that Te Government is using various diversionary tactics to avoid the consequences of the referendum on child-beating – the imperative of changing the Crimes Act to allow Christian Fundamentalists to torture their children with weapons (as James Dobson – principal sponsor of the No means Yes campaign – once said, "a little bit of pain goes a long way"). The mutterers further allege that Te Government's agents of influence are complicit in these stratagems.

J'accuse, M. Farrar! Your attempt to divert readers with Nancy Wake clearly is one such move. There is nothing (apart from kittehs) more distracting than honours and awards. War heroine - SS - French Resistance - airmen - Gestapo- RSA - this will keep them busy for weeks. Of course, it is outrageous that she has not been given the highest award this country can offer; {sotto voce} until one remembers that she was two years of age when she was taken from this country by her parents.

Just follow the thread, children, and don't look around you.

"

Better living through chemistry

Existing tests also may not be appropriate for diagnosing disorders like social anxiety and premenstrual dysphoria—the very types of chronic, fuzzily defined conditions that the drug industry started targeting in the '90s, when the placebo problem began escalating. The neurological foundation of these illnesses is still being debated, making it even harder for drug companies to come up with effective treatments.

What all of these disorders have in common, however, is that they engage the higher cortical centers that generate beliefs and expectations, interpret social cues, and anticipate rewards. So do chronic pain, sexual dysfunction, Parkinson's, and many other ailments that respond robustly to placebo treatment. To avoid investing in failure, researchers say, pharmaceutical companies will need to adopt new ways of vetting drugs that route around the brain's own centralized network for healing.

As reported in Wired, expensive drugs are failing in tests against placebo, an inexpensive non-drug. The pharmaceutical industry is in a panic. No wonder. For what these disorders have in common is that they were invented by the pharmaceutical industry in order to sell drugs. Social Anxiety Disorder used to be known as shyness, before it became a Disorder that required treatment with chemicals. It is curious that the Wired author notes that these targeting of these new disorders and the growth of the placebo problem both began at the same time, but fails to notice that a connexion might exist.

Hat-tip to Graeme Edgeler

Questions for written answer

Not that I voted in the referendum: it was a silly question, so I refused to answer it.

Should a smack as part of good parental correction be a criminal offence in New Zealand?

Well, of course not: why should anything that is part of something good be a criminal offence? Stands to reason, doesn't it? But then again, what is good parental correction? And is a smack part of same? And are we talking about smacks exclusively, given that the No campaign's poster thugs included a man who repeatedly pushed his seven year-old son to the ground because the wee chap refused to go on to the rugby field, and a man who punched his son in Christchurch?

And how is it that the proponent of this referendum is the No campaign, that the answer they wanted you to give to the question they proposed is No? People who campaign for change usually want you to answer Yes. But this campaign had nothing to offer, except fear.

And how is it that the proponent of a referendum question is allowed to set that question? Rather than having us spend $9 million answering loaded and incoherent questions, somebody in Parliament could be given the job of making a neutral and sensible question. Should not a referendum question have a clear and present purpose, to discover whether the People want a law changed?

And how is it that Larry Ballcock thinks he has the nation on his side, despite only half that nation voting? No, don't bother answering that.