New Year's revelations 2011

I used to try new years resolutions and even had long lists of them.

This year I wanted to do New year's Revolutions instead but seizing control of the winter palace seemed a bit out of reach, (but probably more likely than resolving and then succeeding not having any chocolate this year).

Instead I am opting for revelations.

These are the sort of revelations we humans have that go something like:

"oh you've had a hair cut"

"is that your car?"

'Oh did failing off that balcony hurt?"

"it's raining."

"that'll be the phone" etc....

But heaps more profound

1  Annual Resolutions are inhuman.

There is clearly something wrong with resolutions as we can't keep them.  With the best of intent we start out committed to adopting and following goals we set ourselves and within 2 weeks it's like they never happened.  My hypothesis is we're not hardwired to keep resolutions, but we are hardwired to delude ourselves with no memory of previous years failures.

2  Accepting that resolutions are meaningless we should go for the doctor when we make them

NB I wondered if I could work the expression 'go for the doctor' (meaning go for the maximum we can get) into conversation so this can be it.

If it's clear we can't keep resolutions, but it's accepted we make them, we shouldn't limit ourselves to ones that are possible.

I'd suggest if you want to make NY resolutions go for:

• I resolve to be 10 cm taller this year
• By 12 February i will have absolutely no body hair and will grow a seal -like wet suit instead
• I will win lotto first division every week for 6 months
• I resolve to bring peace to lebanon and broker an agreement on whether their breads should be thin for wrapping round things or big fat onces you can cut in half
• I will ensure all episodes of Ben 10 and that Jenna Elfman comedy are destroyed forever

Dream large.

3 People will forget you made resolutions

This is a blank cheque to impress people later in the year.

"Oh yes I resolved to not buy any new trousers till 11 March and see I achieved it!"

"I'm very proud as at new year I said I wouldn't steal anything unless it was a (insert description of item your stole here)"

There's a lot to be said for resolutions made in hindsight.

4 Bad stuff will happen - it's not your fault

Despite having huge respect for Gandhi, Mother Theresa, Jeremy Clarkson and Nelson Mandela the idea we can all change the world is deluded. The idea that each one of us is a powerful God-like agent of change is twisted. So bad stuff will happen. We can have our own peace-making, recycling cottage-domination movement but the world changing stuff only works if you define the world in terms of a small number of observer (usually no more than 3).

So this year do what you can.  But don't sweat the rest.

5 The world won't end this year. Probably.

I'm no expert (on anything at all actually) but there have been doomsday and end-times prophets since ... they first appeared. One day they'll be right and the world will end. Mostly though they've been wrong. Yes: the north (and south) Koreans are behaving like 4 year olds; yes Muslim, Jewish, and Christian militant fundamentalists are all insane (oh sorry except the Muslim ones);  yes the climate is in a really really bad way with global warming; and yes we will probably lose the Rugby World Cup BUT we will probably get through another year.

6 Life happens.

I used to have an album by the Ozark Mountain Daredevils, folk rock bluegrass hillbillies, who had a song called 'It'll shine when it shines". they were right. Sometimes it shines and sometimes it doesn't.

This year it's best just to take advantage of it.

 

  

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stupidness and realistic expectations

The poor woman - why do we expect beauty contestants to know anything beyond how to dress themselves and buy diet pills?

We don't expect diplomats to walk down a catwalk practically naked in high heels.

 

 

Venezuela's former Miss Universe Alicia Machado closed her Twitter account after being mocked for confusing the Koreas with China.

Concerned by North Korea's artillery attack on a South Korean island, the 1996 beauty queen winner got muddled when tweeting for world peace via her @aliciamachado77 account.

"Tonight I want to ask you to join me in a prayer for peace, that these attacks between the Chinas do not make our situation worse," she wrote late on Tuesday.

Her gaffe unleashed a rush of insulting posts, prompting her to go offline. "I now have a lot of psychopaths on the account and it's best I start another one, kisses," she signed off, according to Venezuelan media.

Machado is no stranger to unwelcome attention.

She caused a media furor by gaining 10 kilograms right after her 1996 triumph and Miss Universe organisation president Donald Trump called her an "eating machine."

http://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/celebrities/4389824/No-peace-in-Miss-Uni...

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Which Versus That

Which versus that (in case you were wondering)

Restrictive clauses are introduced by that and are not separated from the rest of the
sentence by commas.

Non-restrictive  clauses are introduced by which and must be separated by commas from the rest of
the sentence.

Which just about covers that topic.

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GeoNet – Recent New Zealand Earthquakes

via geonet.org.nz

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Great Spam con ideas #43

I got this today, brilliant!  Best one I've seen in ages.

 

"We are the domain name registration organization in Asia, which mainly deal with international company's in Asia. We have something important need to confirm  with your company.

On the Oct. 21 2010, we received a formal application from a company called "Snatchry International Holdings Ltd" who are applying to register "greeneggs " as domain name and internet keyword.

 After our initial examination, we found that the keyword and domain names applied for registration are as same as your company's keyword and trademark.We don't know whether you have any relation with them. These days we are dealing with it.If you do not know this company, we doubt that they have other purposes to buy these domain names.If they are your business partner or distributor in the asia,we will automatically confirm application from your business partner after this audit procedure. Now we have not finished the registration of "Snatchry International Holdings Ltd" yet, in order to deal with this issue better.Please contact us by email as soon as possible.

Sincerely,

 Heroes.yi

Sponsoring Registrar: SK CHINA TECHNOLOGY LIMITEDHongKong Office
Tel:00852 956 60489
Fax:00852 306 96940
Email: heroes.yi@skdmrc.org
Web: www.china-sk.org"

www.china-sk.org is the real deal.

Searching the domain skdmrc.org and googling it was the key.

Clearly the dialogue is supposed to result in me paying them to resolve a dispute or secure my domains.

Brilliant!

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Sam’s Mediterranean madness salad

 Summer is coming!

 

·         1 x 330-500 ml container plain unsweetened yoghurt

·         half a cup of vinegar  (you choose, white vinegar is good)

·         two tablespoons of dried or fresh chopped mint

·         packet of pasta seashells

·         celery - say 6 big stalks

·         parsley - a handful

·         half a green or red capsicum

 

Start by mixing 

the vinegar and mint together and microwave them together (I throw it in for around a minute - you may want to manage it a bit better).  Let them cool. You might want to do this an hour or so before you do the rest.

Boil the pasta shells until are cooked.  Set them to one side to cool.

  

Chop the celery and parsley with the capsicum.  Chop them finely.

 

Mix the cool vinegar / mint mixture together with the yoghurt.

 

Combine the cooled shells, the vegetables and the yoghurt together. 

 

The salad should be tangy, tart and astringent.

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Suckers - the problems with Malls

The latest proposed expansion to St Luke's Westfield in Auckland is bad news.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10675209 

The residents are opposing on the grounds it's an ugly monolith. Canadian author Douglas Coupland (who wrote Generation X) said Malls are like the Emperor's new buildings. Because they are beautiful and exciting inside - apparently-  people tend to ignore the huge tilt slab exteriors as if they weren't there.

And while this is all true; they are very very very very ugly that's not the main problem. 

The artificial interior is also ugly, but in a much different way, but that's not the problem.

Another issue is the parking and the noise and congestion around where they go.  But that's not the main problem.

Then there's the long hours people are made to work - all businesses are forced to be open when the mall is, and in small retail that can be very long anti-social hours that mean that families and kids get neglected for low paying jobs. This is almost the biggest problem, but again not quite.

The problem is what it's doing to our standards of living. In New Zealand all the big malls are owned overseas. When I see a big mall I see a huge money vacuum cleaner that sucks money and puts it in foreign bank accounts. I can hear it sucking and almost see the the notes and change out of the roof and into the sky. Next time you get near a big mall, blink three times to wash away the magic pixie dust and  see if you can see how ugly it is. Then stop and listen carefully and see if you can hear New Zealand's future being vacuumed up.

The rents for the businesses in them are high and often the staff inside are paid very low wages while the goods fetch premium prices... and then all the profits are sucked up and sent offshore.  The earnings are 'repatriated' and sent to Australia or wherever.  Actually it is Australia.  So all this spending is going offshore and worsening our balance of payments and making New Zealand even less profitable than it already is. The more malls and the bigger they are, and the more we shop in them, the lower our standard of living, especially so if you're a serf that works in one. It gives the phrase 'shop till you drop' new meaning.

I'd like to put a tag here - 'steps along the road to banana republic status'. Really the big sucker here is us. 

 

 

 

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recipe: Indian Summer bacon cabonari

 

 

4 bacon rashers

200 gm mince

6-8 capsicums (or substitute some broccoli)

250 gms sour cream

4 mushrooms

2 tablespoons ready made mild mustard or equivalent

mustard powder made up.

1 teaspoon rosemary

1/2 teaspoon sweet basil

cracked black pepper to taste

500 gm packet of pasta.

Other vegetables.

 

Chop the bacon into rough pieces, 2 cm square and fry

with mince.  Fry until browning, but before they become

crispy.  Say ten minutes.

 

Put on the pasta while the bacon and mince is cooking.

 

Finely chop the mushrooms and add with the herbs and the

pepper.

 

When the mushrooms have also browned add the mustard, and

then when it has mixed through add the sour cream.

 

While this is cooking put on any other vegetables you

intend to have.

 

Finally add the capsicums (and broccoli).

 

Let the mixture cook for 5 to ten minutes.

 

Drain the pasta and the other vegetables.

 

Serve together.

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Columns not up to Herald publication #1

This is unpolished and was never going to work for the Herald on Sunday or anywhere else. And now it's dated by the iPad release

 

We all know it’s been a long cold winter.  The surprise this week is that there's probably ood reason.  According to NIWA, the New, um, International Weather Authority or something, Hell has possibly frozen over.  Well NIWA says they don’t know. Some El Diablo or something from South America creating, unusual, isobaric, influences…. Actually it doesn’t matter what exactly it is in weather terms. The discussions have turned to the place where science meets Women’s Magazines: it’s a religious omen. 

 

Seeking sense I decided to see what New Zealand’s main religions could offer to explain the phenomena. What I sought ways to stop the cold or at least keep warm. The first religion I turned to was Rugby; New Zealand’s orthodox church. Bishop Henry believes it is because people have lost faith.  Apparently the worship of false Gods; Netball, league and, apparently soccer has caused severe upsets in the heavens. Now fully a third of the population are not worshippers any more and unless we return to being rugby-fearing the weather will only get worse.  His answer was to watch more rugby, buy tickets to the world cup and wear black.

 

The devotees of Apple and things beginning with small ‘i’ s have a strong code; the problem is personal,  Nirvana will be achieved when we all have Apple everything.  Currently awaiting their next major religious festival – the arrival of the iPad – the AppleMac-ites aren’t eating, sleeping let alone thinking about the weather. I tried to question one disciple but had to let him talk for 37 minutes about the arrival of the iPad, the models and their capabilities, which store he’s going to camp outside, and how early he thinks he’ll need to be to get one before Bevan.  Breaking his religious euphoria by asking whether it was a virus on a Mac that stopped the aliens in Independence Day, I asked about hell freezing over. It seems in Mac worship the idea of buying a PC and hell freezing over are linked.  

 

The new religion on the block and one that will be interesting to track in the 2011 Census results is Social Media.  While there are many sects in Social media the three largest; Facebook, LinkedIn, and the Tweeps have very few shared views on anything.  The key tenet of faith is that social media is the future, it’s all about social media and the rest of us don’t get it.  I put the question of Hell freezing over to a range of congregation members and all I got back was some virtual crops; a connection to a marketing manager in Tucson; and a 140 character rave about how stupid I was for not having full time staff on Twitter. I did get some responses on hell freezing over but the messages went back to comments about what’s for dinner and a quote from Shirley Maclaine. 

 

I did also look at web pages devoted to the Holdens and the Fords, the Tweedledum and Tweedledee of Westie-based religions. Both worship declining quality Gods which apparently both handle better than the other in bad weather, so more a religion to cope with, rather than address, the cold.

 

The Homeopaths, a religion devoted to medicine not working, believe the way to freeze hell over is to drop a lighted match in it. Conversely if it is cooling dropping a splinter of an ice cube will keep it as a blistering inferno.  Didn’t seem right to me but then I’m not a believer.

 

In the final analysis there should be signs that confirm that hell has frozen over. 

The signs I’d be looking for are, for example, Rodney Hide being in Cabinet, New Zealand beating the world champions in the Football World Cup, TVNZ admitting they were wrong and rehiring Mike Hosking, and the Coach who lost the last Rugby World Cup coaching the All Blacks in the next one.

 

 

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Herald on Sunday columns

I've got a 4 week gig writing columns for the Herald on Sunday.  'That guy' Leigh is away so I've had an opportunity to get back into writing humour. The Herald on Sunday is newspaper of the year and I have to say I always enjoy getting it as it is a good read.

Felt a bit rusty and I'll be sad when the last one is in this coming week, but it's been good.

This week: Vampires - when did they become the goodies?

http://tiny.cc/027lp

Last week: A  bit on fflexible working conditions

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=10656294

Two weeks ago: Kiwi sports fans can ditch their bad-weather gear

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/sport/news/article.cfm?c_id=4&objectid=10654688

I've really enjoyed the stint. I haven't done my best work I have to say, re-reading older columns I don't feel as funny as I used to, BUT as I said I am rusty and instead of repressing my take on issues I need to get back to writing things down as they occur.

 

 

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The dreaded new computer

Changing over computers should be easy. Buy a new one plug a cord from old to new, push 'new computer' and in a few minutes, maybe an hour, the new computer will start and look like your old own with all the files in the right place, connectivity set up, email running etc........ the same but better.

Instead.... days of heartbreak and hours of fevered hunching and stress.  Missing passwords, thinks that just won't work, lost files.

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the dreaded new computer

 Changing over computers should be easy. Buy a new one plug a cord from old to new, push 'new computer' and in a few minutes, maybe an hour, the new computer will start and look like your old own with all the files in the right place, connectivity set up, email running etc........

Instead.... days of heartbreak and hours of fevered hunching and stress.

nice post from 'Where's my Jetpack' blog

I tried to share this but all the share button offered me was the video embedded in the blog. so here it is:

 

http://wheresmyjetpack.blogspot.com/

Monday, May 03, 2010

Social Media Mission Control

 

Sold on the idea that they absolutely just have to be involved in Twitter, Facebook and probably Foursquare at this point, businesses still fail miserably when it comes to social media. It's not really their fault. I blame the clowns at the agencies who made them believe how important it was in the first place.

I tweeted recently about my disappointment with my insurance company - by name. (Hint: You're not really in good hands with them.) Within a day and a half, which is a long-ass time in social media, I got a reply on Twitter, though I'm sure they thought they were being quite timely. It was a very bland and corporatey response, something to the effect of, "Sorry. How can we help?" But the truth is, that's all they could say. Unfortunately, there is nothing they can actually do to help and they know that. They sent an adjuster out to the house who denied my claim, so I said they sucked on Twitter. Is their Twitter Response Team going to overrule the adjuster? Of course not. They responded just for the sake of responding, to avoid looking like an uncaring corporate entity with little regard for their customers' petty complaints. They call it Brand Reputation Management, which is a nice way of saying "Spray the Dog Shit with Lysol." It will stop stinking for a little while and maybe people will walk through the room and not notice it. Eventually it will dry up and stop stinking altogether.

I'm sure there are others out there who griped about an airline and maybe got a few free miles out of the exchange, but those cases are rare. Personally, I'd rather go back to the days (two years ago) when companies just let the complaints happen, not worried what one little tweet was going to do to their brand. One little tweet won't do shit to your brand, unless it reflects a huge and catastrophic fuck-up on your company's part, like maybe you lost a child on one of your airplanes. You got sold on "Being in a Conversation" with your customers, which is utter bullshit. You may now appear to be in a conversation, but you don't give a rat's ass anymore than you ever did. There are other insurance companies, but this one gambles that I will probably not go to the trouble of switching to another just because I have to pay for my own claim now. They're probably right, but their fake caring response had nothing to do with that. They should stop worrying about it and stop pretending to care.

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Where's My Jetpack?

via wheresmyjetpack.blogspot.com

When I clicked share all it would post were the imbedded videos off the site so I have cut and pasted this from http://wheresmyjetpack.blogspot.com/

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Angels and Demons - movie comments

I would have put 'spoiler' on this but really you can't spoil this movie, that would be the equivalent of rotting plastic fruit.

I watched this movie last night - it was on and I was in front of the TV. 

Knowing very little about the fabled Illuminati turned out to be far too much to watch this film.

The movie makers (as Dan Brown's book has different events) want us to believe, among many other things, that:

1)  a man branded with hot irons, on his chest, could half an hour later run, fly a helicopter and then parachute onto a square in an urban area.

2)  an elderly man branded on his chest with hot irons then weighted down underwater for a minute could appear on a balcony and talk to 200,000 people within 12 hours.

3) the College of Cardinals could have 4 votes for a new Pope within 12 hours.

And to quote a line in the movie: May God have mercy on all our souls.

 

 

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Nothing to do with work - SamNZed's peanut chews

 

115gm (4oz butter)

60 gms (2+ oz ) cocoa powder

2 eggs

230 gm (8+oz) caster sugar (Maybe use some brown?)

1 tsb vanilla essence

Cup of cornflakes

Tablespoon milk

4 tablespoons crunchy peanut butter

55gms (1 and 3/5ths ounces) plain flour

 

Cream butter and sugar – add eggs, cocoa vanilla, cornflakes, milk and peanut butter. Beat. Add flour. Use milk if mixture too dry – should be sloppy not solid.

Bake @180 C for 20 minutes (or until fork comes out clean from centre)  in a square tray.  Tray should have greaseproof paper

 

When cooked take out of tray and leave to cool.  Ice when cool

 

ICING

 

175 gms (6 ozs) Butter

500 g (1 lb) Icing sugar

3 Tspoons (or more!) cocoa or melted chocolate

2 teaspoons vanilla essence

2 Tablespoons peanut butter

 

Cream butter with icing sugar add vanilla and chocolate or cocoa mix, add peanut butter. Beat well. Icing will keep in fridge.

 

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Why I don't talk endlessly about my work - but just on communication without the s

I quite enjoy a lot of the perspectives I get on Twitter, Facebook, the news and blogs I read covering PR, internal communication, corporate communication, social media yada yada yada. BUT it's the industry I work in and I like to think about other things, many related, tangentially, and directly and others because they're funny.

I could try and write here everything I've learnt and experienced about communication but it would bore me, and if I'm bored it doesn't seem fair to bore you as well.

 Today though; trapped in my own pedantic enclosure: PR it's communication not communications.  Communications are phones, messages and computers and perhaps tactics of communication. Communication is strategic and about the art of communicating.  I have no sympathy for a PR marketing business who call themselves communications and get rung about computers or telephones. It might be they are only a communications company who wordsmith communiques and create design but really mostly people think they're in communication from a strategic perspective (whether they are or not).

Anyway if nothing else it is important to understand the language you're using because in thinking about it you can achieve greater clarity and generate work with more value.

Communications

Communication

and stolen from Nasa

askmagazine.nasa.gov/.../25s_communicating.html

 

 

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And now for something completely dissonant

I'm getting old.

The hold music on business phones is getting very noisy and particularly ugly.  I'd tell you what I had to listen to most recently IF I knew what it was.  I know it was rap. I spose if they idea is to get the customer all riled up for a good fight leaving you on hold and playing rap at you is a pretty good way to set it up.  'hey arsehole - wat's ur dis?'

Worse still now when I ring Telstra Clear they'll answer in Manilla. So bad music AND people who don't understand how I talk.  Digressing, an 018 call (Telecom) I had some weeks ago the woman corrected my pronunciation of the word science (I was ringing the Science Media Centre).

Business phone answering music is hardly ever right.  I didn't mind the National Bank in the 90s playing the Four Seasons over and over but I got tired of Orinoco Flow with the power company I had at the same time and all were  better than the clunky bells version of Greensleeves which is destined to become a classic cellular ring. Today it's sort of bad modern grunge and rap on the utilities I have to wait for.

You know a nice quiet buzz and the occasional  "i'm sorry you really are important to us, but not enough to hire local staff and support the local econony or to hire enough people to answer your call, please just sit there doing nothing till we find a serf to not understand your accent," would be better than having music.  And it would be more honest.

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No regrets? Really?!! - do you live in a bubble?

Every now and again I see or hear an interview where someone says they have 'no regrets' in their life.

I think I'm supposed to admire them for their steely determination or Ayn Rand-ish self-assuredness, but actually I either shiver or do an intellectual double-take.

In my mind the only people with a right to have no regrets died as infants. It seems to me at best people who claim this are confusing self-forgiveness with having no regrets and they run the gamut from stupid, through unaware to narcissistic.  I'm sure Gandhi and Mother Theresa had good reason to have fewer regrets but I'm sure they would have a lot more than the rest of us. 

In my mind it comes back to the golden rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you.  I know there is a very strong new-age thing about 'you can't emotionally hurt people; they do it in themselves via their reaction to what you do to them', and while there is some truth in that, it is horsefeathers to suggest it allows impunity to bad behaviour.

While I might understand why I have done certain things in my life, because I was young, unaware, hurt, misguided, drunk etc....but there are many things I regret. Things I've said, done, and condoned. And to get specific: I mean times where I have insulted people, undermined them with other people, lied, stolen things, done things I knew were wrong, including getting involved in relationships and situations that I knew were not right, cheated, manipulated and misrepresented things.  Almost always for some reason related to my ego; being liked, putting myself above others, getting something, and so on. And while I may have done some pretty bad things I doubt anyone I will ever come across has done nothing bad.

Sure I can forgive myself but really, it's not about me. It's about the world I create around me, the effect I have on people.  If I behave like a jerk, for whatever reason, no matter how others take it, it's not making the world a better place; for them or (to reflect my 70s upbringing) me.

When someone says they have 'no regrets' anything else they say disappears in my listening, what I hear is "I behaved badly to maximise things for me and stuff everyone else". Which isn't what they think; probably, but I really decide they are have low self or social awareness or are arrogant.

And I don't care the last person I heard say this on the radio was a sweet sounding 100 year old woman.

 

This post brought to you to preserve words like gamut and horsefeathers and trying to use more ';''s rather than dashes.

 

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Internet technology still at Morris Minor stage

I've been having a number of 'connectivity' issues lately. In particular having sent and received emails 3 weeks ago my phone stopped being able to send them. So after a week of messing around and seeking help voila! I can send emails, but then 2 weeks ago I was suddenly able to send and  but not receive.  Several hours of talking to technicians later I still can't receive.

At the same time I've been having problems with internet browsers, no matter which one I use I get blank internet pages. Yes I've removed and reloaded my anti -virus and looked at my add-ons and cleared my cache and blah blah blah.

My conclusion is that this doesn't feel like a 2010 Toyota Corolla or a 2009 Mitsubishi. Internet and more generally computers feel like a 1965 Morris Minor or 1972 Morris Marina technology with a long way to go.

I'm expecting a one button connectivity system which re-engineers settings and just goes, and a computer which isn't overloaded with anti-virus settings and makes all programmes work seamlessly together. 

Anyway - back to the phone and another call to Vodafone and then Telstra.

 

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Paradise Lost

There have been many 'techtonic' changes in my lifetime.  By techtonic I mean ground shifting in a metaphorical sense. Although with the number of tragic earthquakes and tsunamis we've had lately and person-made disasters maybe techtonic in several senses.

One example I thought of recently - what did we do in our rooms when I was a student? When I was a student some people had little or big stereos, a great flat was one with a microwave (although I didn't know anyone who lived in one of these), and one person I knew had a VHS - the rest of us used to rent them with the videos we hired. A room in a student hostel or flat might have a tape deck, radio and a torch.  Now a typical student room has a desk top, iPods, games consoles, stereos, cell phones......

Actually I do know what I did in my room; drink.  And entertain young women. Playstation does seem lame in comparison.

But the more important change is the domination of our lives by scarcity.

When I was about 6 or 7 I had a friend who's parents were supporters of a political party called Values - more or less the Greens but before them. They recycled, reused and ate bean sprouts. Among the many interesting things they had was a board game based on zero sum philosophy.  As I remember it if you did any business development it killed trees or animals and made it harder to live. It was an odd game with a long apology from it's inventors about using cardboard to make the game. In those days progress was a good thing, as was science, so this all seemed like it was from another planet.

In those days we tossed everything in the rubbish, (except organic material that went into compost).  My grandmother on the other hand, shaped by the great depression and WW2 hoarded and reused everything.  When she died around 1000 neatly folded paper bags she'd got from the bakery (long since closed by this stage) were sent to a 'nice farm in the country'.

I grew up sending everything to landfill and with no worry about the planet - the ozone layer, the air, the ground, the oceans, food supply or anything else. The big issues were nuclear or chemical war which oddly now seem benign in comparison to oceans rising, food running out, the planet frying in it's own juices and being buried in a pile of rubbish which has leached through and poisoned the very ground we walk on.

In my most conscious moments eating a tin of tuna, for example, I wonder how many tins of tuna the planet can support and whether this may be the last one I'll see.  Eating anything I consider the impact on the environment in terms of pollution, poverty and things running out. World population explosion, greenhouse gases, toxins, animal extinctions.... it's exhausting.

I saw some footage of hotels in Las Vegas on TV the other day and although I've always thought the way they spend squillions to get water pumping all over the place ludicrous I now consider it obscene.  Here I am washing and recycling tins (is washing them worse for the environment than just recycling them dirty? why are they in cans? why do these products exist at all?) yet very rich companies are pumping water with lights through it around for effect in a desert, and if the water is recycled what about the power?  Swimming pools are starting to provoke a similar reaction in me now.

There was something beautiful and foolhardy about the 70s where, like the fool, we danced by the side of the cliff unaware of the disaster and catastrophe that awaited us all. In those days we believed we could eliminate hunger and poverty. Bono thinks we still can. 

My thought for today is, yes the planet is in a huge mess, yes we're all going to die, and yes it's all our own fault but if I'm careful about my own practices, (in some areas), can I just not think about it today?  I want to just pretend it's going to be all right and we do still live in paradise.

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NZ Black Caps to work on programme of easy competitors to boost morale

Apparently NZ Cricket spirits are high as the Black Caps are about to complete an unbeaten  series with over Bangladesh

From the TVNZ site: "The day-night fixture at AMI Stadium presents the New Zealanders with a golden opportunity to complete a rare 3-0 series whitewash, something they also achieved over Bangladesh at home in late 2007."

http://tvnz.co.nz/cricket-black-caps/black-caps-look-complete-whitewash-3360153

Information to hand suggests that this morale booster will be followed by a season playing other teams starting with the Maldives Only 11, moving to a team from Andorra (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/992562.stm) , then San Marino (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/2669927.stm), and ending with a series against a Woollongong under 15 team.   All of them will be home games in New Zealand to minimise chances of an energy depleting upset loss of any games, although cricket officials concede the Woollongong Schools' Team series is unlikely to be a whitewash.

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Posts I would have liked to have made - but too busy

I'm busy so haven't had time to post lately.

 

Burning issues I thought about posting:

• why it's okay for a good portion of charity money to go to talented people who can create more for the charity by using their skills tather than leaving the work to impoverished slaves (again)
• why personal brand is a new tyranny
• what is the current definition or rules about keeping in touch in the era of SM
• why the US is so obsessed with creating its own royalty eg Paris Hilton, Brangelina, Disney princesses
• while Taylor Swift is a lovely and talented young woman do I have to see her every day? (and isn't John Mayer a cad and a bounder)
• why the Middle East will never have peace - a study of my neighbourhood and adjoining properties
• fighting the inner pedant
• a list of people who clearly would rather be right than happy 

I may come and backfill these at some point

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Hot for Firefighters

http://slatev.com/player.html?id=61346720001

I love these 50 cent interviews

They've been going for years as far as I know - I've been reading them for 3 or 4.

 

 

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What is the correct plural of conundrum? | Notes and Queries | guardian.co.uk

via guardian.co.uk

For some reason I love this stuff. Unfortunately I am nowhere near knowledgeable enough to contribute. And while I have a higher than average pedantic streak I know language changes and evolves so my stance is always a lot about what works.

One good thing about English is it is almost totally unrecognisable from 800 -1000 hundred years ago (I have a middle English Dictionary) and even from Shakespeares time it has evolved significantly.

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