The seriously unfunny Kiwi parliament

Kiwis have lost flight

It is a bird and it cannot fly, no, it does not have a big backside and it is not extinct like the dodo. It belongs to a distant group of islands that are fast losing their sense of humour that is if they ever had any humour at all. It is the land of the kiwi and the humanoid Kiwis are beginning to look like birds that cannot fly.

All that feet stamping and making funny faces when the players of their most popular sport meet with other nations leaves me almost ready to laugh but I am not impressed at all, the haka is no more a challenge and hardly a dare anymore.

Can't say this of politicians

Why are the kiwis at this end of a mild vituperation? Because their representatives, politicians who have become too much of themselves to be spoken about have promulgated a law that bans political satire - or rather politicians in parliament can no more be butts of jokes or elements in a satirical commentary.

As it stands, broadcasters or anyone else to cannot use footage of the chamber for "satire, ridicule or denigration", rather than get creative with satirising parliament, we must now watch a live feed on television of Kiwi members of parliament in ridiculous states of debate and appearance doing everything to denigrate themselves and abrogate whole free enterprise of democracy.

Democratic death throes

For a once lively democracy to arrogate to themselves the equivalent of lèse majesté laws beggars belief and it would definitely encourage despotic rulers pretending to lead democracies to enact even worse laws of sedition and stifle the freedom of the press. A democracy without satire might as well be an autocracy.

When men have lost the ability to laugh at themselves or cannot abide the occasional snigger and would be offended by a guffaw at their expense, they have definitely lost the will to enjoy life, if not the will to live.

Bad news from NZ

But New Zealand is now in the news and this new law is an excellent way of designating it a backwater in the middle of nowhere which probably is in the Southern Hemisphere.

Americans might know New Zealand for being the land where the Lord of the Rings was filmed, it is definitely now below middle-earth and the orcs have laid siege on parliament with tyranny - what can one say than for God to save the sheep from murderous laws.

No safer than a bridge of rotten planks

Lay me down before it lies down

Many would have hummed if not sung along whenever the whiff and strains of the Simon & Garfunkel classic Bridge over Troubled Water song comes to ones hearing.

The calming effect of relaying the importance of humans to other humans would really make you want to lay down in the comfort of comatose repose away from the troubles of this wicked world.

At last count, five had entered into permanent repose as strains of neglect found them on a troubled bridge over roaring waters as their confidence in being borne over a solid structure from one bank to another over the Mississippi River was dashed as the structure gave way to lay down onto land and water below.

Falling apart, falling down

Alas! This is no unique event but a litany of events that are beginning to catch the eye of those who really matter; American infrastructure built by generations long gone is coming apart.

It would appear that regimes of inspections over the proper repair of these infrastructure has lead to assessments of "structurally deficient" but seemingly posing no immediate danger to the public.

The American Society of Civil Engineers has been warning of these problems, they have become more of an activist agency for a change of perspectives, but the political masters have ignored these men of "bricks, mortar, concrete and steel" because there is no need to panic.

But, panic we must, because, for a major bridge and traffic artery to fall to pieces without the influence of unusual weather patterns or some seismological event on a cool calm day in a major metropolis or two as is the case of the twin cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, there must be something seriously wrong.

Bridges, rails, roads and dams

We saw the breached levees following Hurricane Katrina, dams are falling and quite a few, a third of recent rail accidents have been due to track failure, a bursting steam pipe in the middle of Manhattan and we begin to see a trend, a pattern and something endemic.

If all this does not in some way fall under Homeland Security, I would wonder what does if people are afraid to go out or even stay in for the fear of something collapsing, all because it has not been proper maintained.

In the midst of this quagmire, the contract probably still exists to build the "bridge to nowhere" rather than larger contracts to service and repair the many thousands of bridges to somewhere in America where you can safely go to work and return home to your loved ones.

This is an emergency as major as any war America has ever fought, it should not take the demise of a landmark bridge like the Golden Gate or the Brooklyn before these structures are propped up and self-supporting under maximum strain by the sweat and blood that built the great nation of the United States of America - Get to it and fast.

References

Broken Bridges, Lost Levees and a Brutal Culture of Neglect

States with the most deficient bridges

Historical collapses

This gas flare marks the North Pole

Planting a stiff flag

If civilisation ever does come to Rossiyskaya Federatsiya, it probably would not be in this century. I never thought anyone could go lower than a snake's belly but at the top of the world they got into their Kursk-like bubbles and descended 4.2 kilometres to the seabed under the North Pole and planted a rust-proof titanium metal Russian flag. [BBC News Story].

When Hillary (New Zealander) and Tenzing (Nepalese) planted a British and possibly a Nepalese flag at the summit of Mount Everest in 1953, it was not claimed as land belonging to the great British Empire and neither are the British taking tribute for the many that get dragged up or piggy-backed up the mountain.

Time might even come when getting to the summit would be a simple chopper ride from the sunny climes of the Indian subcontinent for a three-minute photo opportunity to hug someone in the late stages of pulmonary oedema and taking a last message back to loved ones becomes a more laudable quest than mountaineering.

Proximity for conservation

There is no doubt that Arctic and Antarctic facing countries and the some wayfaring countries of old have bases on the lands of the earth's poles and they all conduct research quite relevant to understanding how our stewardship of the world's resources and ecosystems might be failing.

But to then go round planting flags and laying claim to land or seabed just because you got there first in an area that is essentially in keep for the whole human race with the view of exploiting the resource for selfish national profit smacks of 15^th Century adventurism in the paraphrased words of the Canadians.

Results of the scrambles

It reminds one of Africa where the seeming orderly alignment of country borders in the 1880s is aptly called the Scramble for the Partition of Africa, nothing could have been more savage than to observe the savagery of seemingly cultured Europeans corralling "savages" into pens which are now called African countries.

Worse still was the pox and syphilis that Europeans brought to South and Central America that wiped out vast civilisations for which no reparation has been made or the indigenous tribes of North America whose only claim to the land is the footprints of reservations dotted around the landscape where the excess of gambling trade is the only economic development available.

The last insult is where the invaders having attained population superiority over the last few centuries of wiping out every vestige of the indigenes now have the effrontery to want to make English the National or even Official language of the United States.

Stop this nonsense

This race to the partition of the poles should and must stop, if anything must be exploited of those vast resources that have turned the energy megalomaniac Russians into resurgent but irrational global power brokers, it must be done under the auspices of the United Nations for the benefit of the whole world.

Frankly, the resources must be left well alone as the stability and equilibrium of our existence is already under threat from the abuse of the resources we already have access to, more of the same abuse for the accumulation of wealth to weald undue influence around the globe is not good for humanity and I hope that would become the civilisation of Russia.

This is the time for the United Nations to become seriously relevant and rubbish this quest without equivocation, before the poles become a centre of atrocious nuclear grandstanding between world powers whose coup de grace in terms of global warming might as well be a gas flare sited on the North and South poles.

In the name of science, misplaced national pride or apish chest beating, I am not impressed with this development. No, not at all.

News: Chasing the thrill

News or views?

As I write there are live reports from the collapse of a bridge over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis (Twin Cities) in the United States.

Sometimes I wonder how much more analysis I want from a simple news story - tell me what happened, probably how many people are affected, who to contact for information and where to go for information - like a website, then offer an update at intervals.

It begins to sound like a broken record as the rolling news coverage moves from news to eye witness accounts that so vividly paint the picture that one is almost at risk of reliving the tragic incident from the comfort and safety of one's armchair at home.

This whole idea of throwing journalists into the thick of it is going to the extreme; embedded journalists in war zones, news correspondents waist-deep in flood waters very much like the CNN sport news advert of Terry Baddoo fully dressed in a suit with a wired microphone in a swimming pool interfering with the swimmers.

Getting in the way

Interfering is the word - the iPod generation - people completely out of the circumstance developing an ambulance-chaser tendency to record a clip of the scene on their rotten mobile phone cameras for onward transmission to some gluttonous news channel with the insatiable lust for viewer ratings.

Nowhere has this "close to the event" madness become more evident than in police car chases which started with the O.J. Simpson , the viewing of Michael Jackson on the way to his acquittal or the return of Paris Hilton to the courthouse.

The O.J. Simpson chase

Last week, they became the tragedy, two helicopters from rival new agencies covering a police car chase on Phoenix, Arizona collided midair with the loss of 4 lives, methinks the excitement of the moment most of gotten the better of reporters and the pilot - such unhealthy rivalry leaves one both sorrowful and entirely unimpressed with an unnecessary pursuit of a non-news matter which had become a reality thriller event.

The helicopter crash

I really am not cut out for edge-of-my-seat news and commentary like a tense football match; it should not be like I am watching a penalty shootout.

As my sympathies go out to the families of the dead, what would be too absurd for expression would be to attribute the death of these journalists to the criminal being chased by the police and bring charges to that effect; his business was with the law and his attempt to escape its long arm, as for the news helicopters chasing after him, they really had no business being there.

References

2 Who Died in Phoenix News Crash Mourned

A London for yesterday

Not incapacitated by half

Londinium absorbs guests with interesting aplomb as one's hotel room on the eleventh floor beside the British Library is a completely enabling paradise - handle bars by the lavatory, a seat in the shower, a bench in the bath tub and red strings that activate alarms to call the SAS to the rescue.

All this for someone who just uses a cane? Must have another look in a full length mirror, must be missing something. However, it became clear that the obvious concealed a sinister message when one's check-out survey indicated one had left a day before one was ready to leave.

Not the way to San Jose

Leaving a gentlemen's club and that was not the Athenaeum, a horde of minicab drivers sought custom only to find that out of the 8 who swarmed only one really knew how to get from South of the River to the British Library or even King's Cross St. Pancras.

How anyone could enter a trade and be completely oblivious of the means, in this case directions to landmarks in a city where one plies hackneyed carriage escapes me - they were all Nigerian and more than half Yoruba, it was both alarming and saddening.

It makes Black cabs more a convenience than a luxury along with decent conversation about what really is happening in London.

To the butler, the bottle

Twice even, 805 received custom, with Chxta for pleasant company, the first time, however, the need for a butler and possibly a cook rather than a chef - in residence - is all too obvious as one desired that the waitress open a bottle of Perrier and this for the second time, one's grip of these physical twists fails all too frequently as they all had a brief laugh at one's expense.

This is an organisation that knows its trade and does excellently with friendly staff, prompt service and an accommodating ear, one is wont to tip quite generously, in ones opinion highly recommended and it is Nigerian owned, definitely impressed.

The oil of bergamot

Ah! To Fortnum & Mason on Piccadilly for teas mainly Earl Grey, jams as jelly and Dundee cake, a look in the Royal Academy where the courtyard exhibits non-art so metallic masquerading as large dinosaurs and more eye sores on Burlington Arcade and luxurious New Bond Street as doormen to all that glitters at great expense do up all the buttons on their single breasted jackets.

All but one had a top hat and more formal attire, the dumbing down of London continues apace as chavs blot the landscape with fashion that makes one want to sniff chloroform from a pocket square.

The bus stops hum with Polish and the buses blare out with Nigerians on the blower oblivious of others.

One would think London has a way of exposing the snob in many. Certainly not! Backhand to the titled forehead as one swoons into a business class seat. Bliss!

Lèse majesté comes to the Netherlands

Handle your hands with caution

Something is happening in the Netherlands and creeping upon us as we live in our comfort zones with alarming indifference.

I am not one for rude hand gestures or the use of expletives in expression, but I was bit taken aback with the sentencing of a man a few weeks ago for making a middle-finger gesture at the Netherlands police.

Now, in irreverent Netherlands, a country that is hardly given to obsequiousness, a man has been fined for seriously insulting the Queen.

He will also do a week in prison even though the Justice department had asked for him to do two weeks.

Police complicity?

Now, I would take serious exception to people spouting unwarranted abuse at public figures, though I do note that the police were in some way involved and insulted in this setting.

He apparently got involved in an argument with the police and somehow the police might have been a tad tactless in allowing the argument to degenerate to the level that the man offered a Nazi salute, verbally abused the police and the maligned with a sexual obscenity the authority from which the police receives license - The Queen.

The man originates from Suriname which was once a colony of the Netherlands and this vented hatred of the Dutch and what they represent is an interesting read on the issue of relationships between old colonial powers, their recently independent states and their citizens.

It does not say whether the man had once before had encounters with the police or the law, but it should not be surprising that such hatred cannot be fostered in isolation of a causative scenario or experience - anyway, the man was wrong and his lawyer tried to excuse this on his inebriation and disorientation.

Socially critical commentary

The point of law on which this case was decided is the most interesting part of this story, whilst public figures should be thick-skinned enough to absorb such offence "the sexual insinuations make it clear that the man was not uttering commentary of a socially critical nature".

You really have to read that again and again and wonder where uttering commentary of a socially critical nature crosses the line to Lèse majesté.

It might well be that republicanism should be tempered with polite and temperate language.

God save the Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands.

Naijalive: Apology accepted but ...

NBA down again?

As one writes this, the Nigerian Bloggers Aggregator (NBA) brings more grist to the mill of the Naijalive Project which goes by the name of The Nigerian Super Blog (TNSB), such is life in the cut and thrust of Internet businesses or services.

A click on the NBA link from my blog presents this error

Failed to execute the SQL query

update item set unread = unread & 30

Error 1194: Table 'item' is marked as crashed and should be repaired

It makes you wonder what is going on in the Web 2.0 world of NBA that in less than a month we have had two major failures that are taking days to clear up.

Given that the proprietors are busy, this has become a service that cannot be managed with levity anymore, it is a non-profit thing and it is time that the owner got other people involved in some voluntary and community service role to ensure the service continues to function lest these operational lapses contribute to ruining the reputation of otherwise resourceful minds.

Apology accepted

After my last blog on the Naijalive comments , I received another message from the Project Co-ordinator of Naijalive, which summarily was an apology along with an explanation as to why the quality of exchanges had developed into a kind of confrontation.

I accept the apology wholeheartedly, I also reserve the right to use my forum to address the concerns I still have with the Naijalive Project, I might yet ask to be registered in that service sometime in the future, but for now, I have serious concerns.

Cached material or stale material

First, I do not fully understand how their system of aggregation works because it is either caching or saving separately blogs published by others - inconclusive, but the permanent link does not return to source.

We are all aware of how the Web 2.0 phenomenon has exposed people to unfortunate circumstances like universities trawling the web to find ill-disciplined students, employers sanctioning staff for sailing close to the wind with their opinions and so on.

On the 23^rd of July 2007, Chxta posted an article on his blog titled Some UK varsities in critical condition? [Post now removed on TNSB but a link to the captured graphic appears below]. After a few comments, he decided to take it down with a notice Post Goes Down, we, his readers remonstrated strongly about this action and left it at that.

It would appear whilst the post is already down, at least not available for public viewing on Chxta's World , it is quite available on the TNSB but only without the comments that lead to Chxta taking down the blog in the first place, this really bothers me.

Relinquishing control

This presents serious issues of control and informs my concerns on the quality of aggregation, if an item disappears from public viewing at a source, should it not reflect at the aggregator after a refresh of feeds?

Now, I would not know if Chxta moved that post into a draft repository which hopefully is not set to publish feeds or deleted it entirely.

Google does have a feature for caching websites such that the data is viewable long after the source has completely disappeared, but that is a service that should be inherent in sophisticated search engines not aggregators.

Serious legal implications

The more serious implication of this observation is where a legal requirement arises for a post to be taken down completely from a blog site and the litigant still finds traces of the grievance matter linked to the source even though the originator has no control over that "duplicated" material.

Now, I am not sure of full technical scenario of this observation, but it means Chxta either has to do something about it or TNSB needs to introduce some sophisticated code to rid their site of material that has been archived when the source has withdrawn an article.

Now, archiving is another matter but it is important the originators retain control of their material, if we must publish, so be it, but definitely not be damned by the actions of others.

Addendum: Added after Naijalive comment

Naijalive have commented on this matter and this is what they say.

Chxta's post is still showing up because feeds imported into the SuperBlog are automatically cached and archived and unless we remove them manually, they remain there.

They are working on ensuring that posts removed at source are automatically removed on TNSB, I commend them for looking seriously into this, but would having symbolic links to the source not be better than the additional management of cached and archived material?

I worry, I really do worry, but would patiently wait for their solution, I suppose I would be addressing the interface, navigation and user-friendliness when i next touch the topic of Naijalive. They are learning and improving.

References

I love this website

The truncated part of the Chxta's article as it appeared on TNSB - Captured from viewing TNSB as evidence supporting my observation.