Monthly Archives: July 2011

Jul 31 2011

I support the All Blacks….


Well no, I appreciate them, but being English I’ll support England first. Sure I know the names of the All blacks, and can even pick some of them out from their pictures. But it’s not really support is it.

It’s like the Ford/Holden thing, you pick one that you support, but when it comes down to it you’re picking based on it being a V8 supercar not the Ford Fiesta, or Holden Vectra, and most likely you show your support by driving Nissan or Mazda. (I prefer Ford, I drive a Holden).

Support for a team though, if you get the support thing you’ll  know that it’s a lifelong thing, you don’t chop and change as it suits. I’ll always follow Crystal Palace, always. I’m a Ford man. I’ll never stop following North Harbour, and the Warriors will be my pick to win every time.

If you support something you do always, loyally. But you know what you can’t just pick the national team, that’s just being patriotic, You can support national team if  it’s Wellington Phoenix, Breakers or Warriors, but they play in Australian competitions so that’s a bit different.

My support of Crystal Palace, it’s like a tribal thing, You pick your colours, team name, mascot, ground, sometime based on locality (almost always based on locality) and that’s it you’re in. Some of you might think you support Manchester United, or Arsenal, you don’t you follow them, it’s different (ok if you’re English and they’re you’re local team then you can, I concede). In NZ you’re a follower. And in NZ you don’t get many opportunities to tribal up (unless it’s city based rivalries.)

But I’ll tell you what you can’t do, create some competition, in this case Netball, and come up with some schmanzy names like the Mystics, Sting etc and expect it to catch on. There is no connection to anything, you can’t just invent names to suit a franchise you must have a base line and existent place to build from. I can’t get the Netball name thing, that’s whacked, and for that reason I can’t see myself supporting something I don’t or can’t connect with.

What would separate the follower from a supporter? Well it’s not wearing the replica jersey. It’s a life long thing, you can’t waiver. Patriotism isn’t support, support is following your team, thick and thin. The All Blacks will always have support and carry a nation that’s not in dispute, but if the number of shirt sales depends on their success, and not how much you want you want to look like them then that’s not support that’s like a disapproving parent and a child.

So I support England, and anyone playing Australia (in any sport). And I always will.

Jul 30 2011

Which superpower would you want most?


I’m calling bullish*t on this one. Where is the ability to see through clothes ?, C’mon you’re not telling me you never wished for that one? Ok I’ll  tone that down to be “x-ray vision” but who never wished for that?

“Of all the powers of all the superheros in all the world, film fans think the most impressive is the quick healing ability of Wolverine, according to a poll”via Which superpower would you want most? | Stuff.co.nz.

The results are;
1. Accelerated healing – Wolverine, X-Men (22 percent)
2. Telepathic/psionic powers – Professor X, X-Men (21 percent)
3. Power of flight – Superman, Superman (15 percent)
4. Super-strength – The Hulk, The Hulk (11 percent)
5. Invisibility – The Invisible Woman, Fantastic Four (8 percent)
6 & 7. (joint). Weather control – Storm, X-Men (7 percent) and Flame-on! – The Human Torch, Fantastic Four (7 percent)
8. Supersenses – Daredevil, Daredevil (4 percent)
9. Web-slinging – Spider- Man, Spider-Man (3 percent)
10. Super-speed – Dash, The Incredibles (2 percent)

Jul 30 2011

Science Fiction. What’s not to love?


Blogging is a bit of a self discovery, I thought that i’d scratch at things I like. Or precisely a thing I like.

Science fiction. Films.

There is one film that I’d go back to, and one of the few dvd’s I own, and that’s “The Man Who Fell To Earth” Which fascinates me.

On many levels, and possibly because you always remember your first love. Not coincidentally the album “Station to station” is also amongst my “go to” albums from about the same time.

There are other films that  I would pick in buy list, and these would include some old and some newer. The Film “Outland” for instance is one that I’d revisit, but I’d shy away from “Blade Runner” for instance, not that it’s a bad film but it’s been over-cooked.

“The Man from Earth” is also a wonderful film, a man who apparently has lived a long long time, he lives in history, he’s met Jesus, fought in wars, lived through the great depression etc, but he can’t predict the future, he lives in the now.

“The Impostor” is also another film that’ll make you go mmm.

Philip K. Dick is responsible for many great stories that have been made to movies, you’ll know many of them if you go check him out, they include “Total Recall” “Blade Runner” “Adjustment Bureau” and “Minority Report”.

Yes of course I love the original “Star Trek”, but I also really enjoy the original “Thunderbirds” and “Joe90″ as well as the most excellent TV series “UFO”.

So why? what is is about improbable premise that makes it compelling. Well some of it is not that improbable, Star Trek featured tablet based computers for instance, but equally as improbable was the sheer scale of the adventure.

There are a heap of other titles and films that I’d be happy to recommend, I might get to them one day. One final though is this; Why is it that in a film where space ships approach planets or earth or other space ships it’s always on the same plane or orientation. Space ships never approach each other upside down to each other, or at 90 degrees to each other, and I’ve never quote figured out why.

Oh and finally, a bit more, the series, and film “FireFly” had the most accurate space thing going on, there is no sound in space you can’t hear explosions and engine noises, and they are accurate in depicting that (oh FireFly is cowboys and indians in space - awesome)

Oh and the final final thought on alien vusitations and completely off topic, is; Why are they visiting here? Douglas Adams had is right, they might be building a super highway, but then he was always one step ahead.

Jul 27 2011

Suicide and punishing the dead by punishing the living.


This from the National Newspaper today Maori MP: ‘Condemn’ suicide victims

Q.How far up your own arse does your head have to be to not think like Waiariki MP Te Ururoa Flavell?

Waiariki MP Te Ururoa Flavell suggested a “very hard stand” should be made on suicide. “If a child commits suicide, let us consider not celebrating their lives on our marae; perhaps bury them at the entrance of the cemetery so their deaths will be condemned by the people,” he wrote. “In doing these things, it demonstrates the depth of disgust the people have with this. Yes it is a hard stance, but what else can we do?”

What the heck has remembrance of a dead person have to do with punishing the relatives and friends by making them suffer indignities?

How does making an example of a dead body by castigation and lack of respect improve things?

How does condemnation and shunning someone aid, assist or promote suicide or suicide prevention?

What cockery is it that denying someone dignity is the cure for suicide?

Any free-thinking, forward thinking society should be able to come to terms that we fail people. We fail young people. As parents we are failing children who commit suicide, as peers we are failing children who commit suicide, as a community we are failing children who commit suicide. Feel free to substitute the world children for people.

Taking your own life, by design or by accident, is horrific and confusing to us. It tortures our own beliefs and boundaries, and causes us to question many things about ourselves, whilst at the same time questioning the motives, mindset and reasons that someone has chosen to end their life.

If you’re of a religious bent then you’re more than horrified, you’re mortified by the sin of it. A ridiculous place to find yourself in, and leaving you to punish the relatives, friends, peers and memory of the deceased.

The continued stupidity of ‘leaders’ who stick blindly to dogma and ‘protocol’ are doing themselves and the people they represent no favours. It’s not the 17th century where we can make a blood sacrifice to your own deity, it isn’t.

For you,Te Ururoa Flavell, it’s about punishing the dead by punishing the living, and in the end it makes not one blind bit of difference if you bury a person outside the gates, whether you mourn only for 1 day not 2 or 3, and if you deny the dead person the dignity of remembrance, in the end it’s about how you’ve let that person down by not caring enough to prevent their death.

And that Waiariki MP Te Ururoa Flavell is the bottom line.

Jul 26 2011

Things that never occurred to me #2 – Psychic Fraud


These are the people who think they can talk to the dead, get cryptical messages from the beyond, can pass on messages and give guidance on where to find things that are lost. For realsies. 

But of all the deluded people who think they can why is it that there is not one instance of a psychic fraudster? One that has used their “powers” of “seeing” to gather information about you. Say your bank account number, or credit card details or even your eftpos card and pin number. Ok so getting your eftpos card is plain old theft, and I’m sure there are plenty of instances of fraudulent and thieving psychics that have used their conniving ways to get money out of people.

But you’re telling me that of all the criminals in the “afterlife” are reformed, and that not a one of them is willing to torment and wreak havoc on the living by passing this type of message to the “seer”

Of course not. They can’t talk to the dead.

Jul 25 2011

Things that never occurred to me #1 in a series


I was listening to a podcast today and they mentioned something that made me go huh!

Colours. We all know what they are,and can name many of them.

But what they said was that colors are a function of the brain. Our brain interprets what we see and we identify it as e.g. Red.

However there is no way of knowing, or indeed comparing what I consider to be red, with what you consider to be red. I know that you see red and I see red, but there is no way to tell if we see the same red.

We can identify by pointing a colour swatch what we see as red, or blue or green, and you can do the same. We both point at the same “red”, and we agree and we carry on. Red is red is red, by popular decision.

It just made me go huh is all, and I wonder what else it is that is obvious when someone mentions it?

Jul 24 2011

On death, dying and the ever after.


Personally speaking aside from brief moments of fear there isn’t much else but death. Death in it’s finality. The end.

We’re on the earth to make more of us. That’s all. More of us by procreation. Ensuring the existence and continuation of the species. That is all.

No big plan, no grand design. And no ever-after.

We’re remembered if we’re lucky for a few years or so, by an large, unless you’re someone famous, and then your name and deeds may live on in folklore.

However ashes to ashes and all that, and that’s all there is. There is no other place we go to, no afterlife where we hang around handing out cryptic messages to dodgy people who claim to be able to talk to the dead, none of that.

We stop, it’s over. We lived we died, we laughed, we cried. That’s all there is.

And I think that’s where we hang our hat on the after-life or reincarnation or whatever our personal belief system is. We think we’re more significant, special, and that means that there must be more right? Nope.

I get the need to believe that there is more, I get that some people think they can talk in cryptic to the dead, I do. However you’re all having a laugh, and you need to exercise you’re imagination a little to ponder why it should be that after your four score and ten on the earth you get a couple billion years in some other place?

Oh of course I could be wrong, but then it’ll be that’s pleasantly surprised and if I’m right we’ll never know.

Jul 23 2011

On politics- CGT


It’s nearing election time, and so we move into the silly season. The government of the day announced the election date ages ago, it’s to be in November (isn’t it?) and after the RWC.

There is always a lot go “the government” aren’t doing enough of this or that stories, there are a few of ‘ra ra’ stories where the government appears to have got something right.

There are circumstances where the government of the day have to either be the nail or the hammer as the situation falls.

The big battleground then appears to be Capital Gains Tax. Well that’s what the opposition party would have you believe anyway. The big plan is to recover the economy by taxing capital gains made on the sale of primarily property. It’s a bit like death/estate duties, but works every time you sell a house.

Not your family house, but all the other houses you have. Because we’ve all got more than one house.

The value will be decided on day 1. Thats the line in the sand. Then if you sell it you will pay a tax on the difference between the value on day one and the day you sell it. On your other houses, not your family house that is, and we’re all about selling our other houses.

Couple of problems with this that seem obvious to me. I don’t have other houses. So I’m in favor of this tax.

The other problem is that it relies on a growth market in housing to return anywhere near any dollars in tax, and we’re not really poised for another big boom in house prices. Oh not never in Christchurch they’re exempt from this tax, besides which it’s not on the family home.

So realising  your investment will cost you a small matter of a tax, it’s not going to depress the house prices, and will inflate pricing if people do what I would do, and that’s top up your ask price by the amount of tax you’ll pay to be a zero sum game. Just a thought.

Jul 21 2011

Faux outrage, Faux compassion and chipping in!


or slamming and damning, counselling and group grieving and how I learned to react in a group.

Led mostly by media snippets and reporting (often poorly repeated, and incomplete, inaccurate and angled for spin) the collective ‘we’ is often to quick to anger. Twitter is the new benchmark, Facebook pages would be next. You never hear of a TXT based outrage campaign though.

The hive mind is quick to pounce on indiscretion and verbalise their thoughts. Woe to anyone who swims against the tide. Someone often leads the charge and will whip a horse to death, but then we all have a ‘thing’ that does that to us (that’s a whole new subject).

We’re morally indignant about infidelity, as if we’re all whiter than white, we’re dumbfounded by misogyny, as if men have never leered at a woman of used a stick mag, and we can’t belive that a school would add a computing device to the compulsory list for stationery.

We definitely cannot belive  that the Israeli’s in Christchurch are tourists, although this seems to be a media hobby-horse and not a hive mind collective.

Anything the Government of the day announces can be negative, mostly negative. The twitterverse will be abuzz with the newly disenfranchised in minutes, spreading like a wildfire, it is to behold!

Similarly with a death. the hive mind seems to get it into its head to want to grieve. Mostly for people they never met, didn’t know and didn’t much care for before their death. particularly but not limited to children, young pretty females and young males. This is more a Facebook thing. But we’re all hectored and badgered into having to be part of a group that mourns, without really understanding why. Hey it’s a young person they died in some way or other and we should all feel some collective guilt.

Sure death is tragic, children dying is tragic, young people getting into situations where they kill themselves and others is tragic. It happens daily, worldwide, a lot. Old people die too, but then they had a life already get over it. I don’t need to join a Facebook group or have some faux emotion based on an out of context picture in the press or on Facebook. Ge over yourselves.

As for counselling. What an industry that is, we have to take into personal consideration the thoughts and actions of everyone. This will and does and can lead to sheeplike behaviours and group feelings. Individually no, group yes. Naturally I’m not a psychiatrist or behaviours expert but I’m happy to bet cash on this being true.

So Faux Outrage and Grief, the latest big thing, or just the big thing.

Makes it sound like I’m not on any bandwagon, trust me I get on them, and then I get off most of the, some I just sit on for the ride.