goNZo Freakpower Brains Trust

No thunder, no fire, no rain

2009-12-04T19:39:00.000+13:00

Boing Boing points to Henry Rollins' article in Vanity Fair looking at Bhopal 25 years after the lethal Union Carbide leak which killed, and is still killing and maiming, thousands of neighbouring households.

Wikipedia notes that the death toll is approximately 20,000 so far, with another 100,000 to 200,000 people permanently debilitated. The average payout to affected families so far has been around $20,000. No-one has been prosecuted for the tragedy.

If you ever need an example of what a world with complete trust in corporate responsibility and minimal government regulation and enforcement looks like, this is it.

Art for art's sake

2009-12-04T13:53:00.000+13:00

Thistle Hall is holding a $100 art sale today between 6 and 8pm today. There's an album of what's on sale here, including this nice Paua Mandelbrot necklace. HT Wellingtonista.

This it what happens when you zap a block of acrylic with a particle accelerator. Here's the Telegraph with a gallery of Frozen Lightning.

Wall St meets Main St

2009-12-03T19:13:00.000+13:00

A commodity broker gets an unexpected comeuppance when an errant programming error lands him with a real, honest to god commodity; 28,000 tonnes of coal:

For once, Brad was speechless. He had absolutely no idea who that man was and he could hardly understand a word he said. Plus, there was that gargantuan vessel that was slowly moving towards the building. “Uhh,” he stuttered, “wait. Are you delivering… coal? To… uhh, us?”

“Well, yeah! Twenty-eight thousand tons of the good ol’ black gold!” The workman sarcastically furrowed his brow adding, “I mean, we did get the right address, har har. This is Æxecor? And this is Pier 53? And you are Brad, the fella who ordered it, right?”

It was that moment that Brad’s palm almost immediately made contact with his forehead. He realized that something must have really gone awry: instead of virtually trading 28,000 tons of coal, Brad had somehow ended up with 28,000 tons of real coal.

It turns out that Brad found it more difficult to sell actual coal than the virtual variety. Welcome to Main St, Brad.

A life less pleasant

2009-12-03T15:06:00.000+13:00

Eric Watson and Russell Crowe duke it out

Bruce Sheppard has poked a stick at the hornet's nest of passive aggressive vigilantism facing ex Bridgecorp director Rod ~~Petrolhead~~ Petricevic. Seems that the hospitality environment is becoming less hospitable for this suit.

Bruce warns on trying to pick a fight with Eric Watson though, citing one alpha-maleness showdown with Russell Crowe which featured the Crowemeister coming off second best. So be warned of possible violence. Send in the women to accidentally spill their drinks on him in bars and clubs instead.

Wellingtonista Awards

2009-12-03T11:58:00.000+13:00

It's voting season at the 4th Annual Wellingtonista Awards. Head on over to Wellingtonista and vote for the best bits of Wellington. Winners will be announced at the awards ceremony at Mighty Mighty on December 17th.

Pirates, porridge, death and taxes

2009-12-02T21:07:00.001+13:00

It has been a good week for porridge recipes. Earlier in the week, Don Brash unveiled his porridge of the future, which is based on a predictable twenty year old recipe he copied off Roger. Porridge judges John Key and Bill English commented that this recipe was too politically hot for the body politic. Cactus Kate had to present an even spicier dish just to make the 2025 Taskforce's 48 declarations seem insipid in comparison.

There are a few points of interest in the 2025 report that might bear closer inspection, moments of lucidity if you will. But the unrelenting zeal of means and ends has been so mangled with benny bashing, 90s Russian Roulette sell-offs, added pork flavouring and a sprig of gerrymandering, it makes it all too easy to dismiss as the bizarre and disjointed ravings of rich old white men hankering for devilled kidneys.

WTF = Russian Roulette sell-offs? Well, that whole sell-off of SOEs for the hell of it, offload all the furniture and hope this thing floats with nothing left in it. Selling TVNZ right now would get nothing more than chump change. Shutting down the long con of the Cullen fund right now and paying down debt at the worst possible part of the cycle is also counter-productive.

Pork flavouring, you say? What has Zespri's monopoly on kiwifruit marketing got to do with enriching the masses? Didn't Turners and Growers, well known associates of certain Taskforce 2025 compilers, merge with former apple and pear monopoly Enza not so long ago? That isn't a productivity strategy, that's special pleading.

The gerrymandering is obvious for what wasn't considered by the taskforce as pivotal to NZ's future. There's the stunning omission of any form of land and capital tax. They lost the argument right there. In the face of the finance company implosions, there's no sign of corporate regulation. Even Alan Greenspan admits that that argument is lost.

And quite how you hack off some 15 billion dollars of government spending in three years without setting off an internal economic shock, I don't know.

So, dismiss that bad bowl of porridge from the Goldilocks menu. While we're waiting for the Tax Working Group to put the finishing touches on its porridge, Gareth Morgan has put out an appealing, tax neutral recipe sketched on the back of a napkin. This one looks much more appetising.

First, let's exile all the B Ark Golgafrinchans. Introduce a Minimum Guaranteed Income of ten grand a year and screw the other paperwork. Kill the overhead non-jobs right there. Introduce a tax free threshold of $40,000 per annum for every man, woman and child. Slap the equivalent of a 25 percent flat tax on everything. Including the family home, LESS the average indexed home price.

In one fell swoop, Gareth Morgan has done what seventy-odd thousand taxpayer dollars on the 2025 Taskforce took months to accomplish. Something realistic, novel and lateral-minded at bugger all public expense.

The 2025 Taskforce can blab all it likes about property rights, but they never talk about the price of property freedom. Taxes. The opportunity cost of holding onto vacant land here right now is sweet FA. As far as I understand matters, vacant land and buildings is actually a tax write-off.

That's not right, especially when housing affordability it at the usurious levels they are at present. I'm not talking interest rates here, but the glutinous appetite of the NZ small investor in haggling each other up into absolutely stupid prices on property. Wars have been fought for less.

The Romans, the British and the Maori have this in common; a use it or lose it principle to property rightsholding. A land tax makes landholders think twice about holding onto under-utilised land when others go wanting. A land tax is certainly much more politically palatable than the other alternative; legalising squatting.

I'm not kidding. Every time I walk past the old Molesworth Tavern, I'm reminded how absolutely mental our property rights are in this country.

View Larger Map

Yeah, it's Thailand government land technically, and probably beyond NZ law to do much about. But awful fucking eyesores like this, right down to For Lease signs elsewhere on empty shop fronts, makes me grit my teeth. Call it a broken windows policy for tenancy, but something has to be done to leverage the landed gentry to yield to more productive usage.

Gareth Morgan has made a better porridge base for the Tax Working Group than Brash's mob. Clean, bold flavours without the bitter after taste that permeates Brash's corned beef palette. I have high hopes that the Tax Working Group will find a porridge recipe that will taste just right for the voters.

Sending rainbows

2009-11-30T14:39:00.001+13:00

In the not too distant future, data might be stored in rainbows. In some ways, it already is. Turn a CD over and there's a rainbow, disproving generations of science teachers. The angle of incidence does not just equal the angle of reflection, but is more accurately the sum of all possible pathways.

Instead of trapping this rainbow on a plastic coated slice of silicon, try a glass convex mirror with some gold trimming. According to New Scientist, it can be done:

According to Gizmodo, this is a good thing for optical computing. I bet there'd be a lot less redundancy and error correction with rainbows. Data crystals and laser nets can't be too far away.

Luckily, I happen to have a laser pointer, convex lens and a mirror handy. So, I just had a go at replicating it. Unfortunately, I have no gold, it is a red pointer not a white light one, and it's a convex lens held up to a mirror, not all-in-one. But it did trap the red light somewhat.

If one can split white light right, then this could be big. Think of a heliograph that can transmit Megabytes more than Morse Code.

Dubai or not Dubai

2009-11-30T11:46:00.000+13:00

While Abu Dhabi ponders bailing out its prodigal neighbour Dubai, a constitutional crisis for Dubai's leader is quite possible if a debt default does occur.

Dubai law throws debtors in prison. Dubai law also states that it is "illegal to produce a derogatory image of the ruler or to deface his picture." As Head of State, the buck for the possible debt default stops with Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. If an $80 billion debt doesn't get you into debtors' prison, what does? But isn't the leader beyond reproach?

Abu Dhabi has Dubai over a barrel. But even a sovereign wealth fund such as theirs will still feel the pain of bailing out what is essentially junk assets. What price will Abu Dhabi extract from Dubai? Emirates Airlines is just a start.

Back to Zippy's

2009-11-29T11:05:00.001+13:00

Lazy Sunday:

Rising tides

2009-11-28T10:41:00.000+13:00

The BBC has a slideshow showcasing some of the ideas Rotterdam is considering to adapt to flooding. There's everything from Hundertwasser rooftops to floating houses. I'm particularly impressed with the lateral thinking involved in "water plazas," which act as playgrounds when fine and emergency flood tanks during deluges.

Linkorama

2009-11-26T22:20:00.000+13:00

# MoJo looks at the growing water problem in the California New Mexico region:

The Central Valley, the thin, fertile band running down the middle of California, has long boasted the world's richest agricultural economy, reliably producing more than a quarter of the nation's fruits, nuts, and vegetables. But it's done so in defiance of ecological reality. The 70-year-old irrigation system that has pumped water into the otherwise arid valley is proving increasingly vulnerable to shifting weather patterns. It now appears that waterwise, 20th century California was an anomaly, a relatively wet period in the midst of a historical cycle of severe drought.

# The Mandelbrot bulb has appeared everywhere from New Scientist to Boing Boing. Beautiful complexity and depth:

# The Nine Nations of China, described by The Atlantic.

# A Dummies Guide to The Authoritarians. Covers all the bases, from God to Milgram.

# The Large Hadron Collider has finally powered up and successfully completed a low-impact collision. Familiarise yourself once again with what it is all about with Wired's guide to sub-atomic elements, presented as a reality show cast list.

# Wired also has a good guide on choosing a #$&%ing strong password.

# 2010 looks like a make or break budget for National. Ratesblog looks at Bill English foreshadowing the spending cuts putting an end to Labour's reckless last five years. Guess which minister managed to get a 2220 percent raise in spending for his portfolio under Helen.

# The Big Squeeze? Ratesblog also looks at the latest Household Economic Survey, which shows that median rents increased 9.5 percent over last year, even as average mortgage payments dropped. Squeezing pennies or frontloading the almost inevitable end of the LAQCula scam, who knows?

# And finally, one more gem from Wired. Petrol fumes may fan road rage.

Up shit creek

2009-11-26T13:44:00.002+13:00

It's a shame to see that the mighty Manawatu River, the old man who carved the Manawatu Gorge, is among the most polluted rivers in the Western world. Frogblog is rightly doing their nut on the matter, making me give pause to the free range cows comments I made earlier in the year.

Under a system measuring oxygen changes in water, the Manawatu has by far the highest reading, almost twice as much as the next worst. The Manawatu measured 107. Anything over eight is considered indicative of an unhealthy river ecosystem. A measurement of 0–4 is considered healthy.

I grew up alongside the Manawatu. I have toured Palmy's sewerage plants as a kid, never realising quite how much ended up tipping into the river. The Mangaone stream has long been recognised as befouled, but as a kid never realised just why it was that way. I assumed the water was bad in the same way as the water beneath Ketitahi Springs in the Tongariro National Park was fouled.

It turns out the Mangaone is not naturally bad, but merely part of the run-off from Palmy's oozing crap. 75,600 ~~kilometres~~ cubic metres of crap a day is allowed to be discharged into the Manawatu River. That's just under one square metre of crap per Palmy person per day. And Feilding somehow manages to have a hugely disproportionate leeway, which is permitted to throw in about double that per head of shit into the river further upstream.

WHAT IS POLLUTING THE RIVER?
* Farm runoff from fertilisers, and animal waste such as cow dung and urine, leach into the river.
* Treated sewage discharged by councils
* Treated industrial effluent including wastewater from Fonterra, New Zealand Pharmaceuticals, Tui Brewery
* Sediment washing into the river from overgrazed farms or eroding countryside alters the natural habitat for native bugs or fish

I'd like to know how the scientists tell the difference between human and animal byproducts. There's a lot of nitrogen in human piss too. Fonterra have Longburn, the Pharm boys are probably Bunnythorpe with Tui down the road at Mangatanoka.

It would be interesting for someone to do a graphic of the Manawatu's toxin levels taken from the source up in the Tararuas down to the Tasman Sea at Foxton. That would put some blame where it was due.

Poor bloody Foxton Beachers. No digging for toheroas next year. Whitebaiting mustn't be so much fun either. As for Palmy, I think old man Manawatu will have the last laugh as the gorge funnels the wind over the stagnant banks and wafts it over the city. Nothing worse than Old Man BO.

Horses for causes

2009-11-26T10:31:00.000+13:00

Another Onion classic:

First Openly Gay Racehorse To Compete Sunday

Tonedeaf Rhapsody

2009-11-25T16:34:00.002+13:00

My singing voice has been compared to Mark Knopfler doing a duet with a tomcat thrown in a gorse patch. While I'm waiting for Tom Waits Singstar to be released, here's The Muppets singing Bohemian Rhapsody:

Monday Funnies

2009-11-23T19:55:00.000+13:00

Nothing like a bit of cartoonish subversive storytelling to wash off the Monday blues:

Yellow Cake from Nick Cross on Vimeo.

Getting tougherer on crime

2009-11-21T19:09:00.003+13:00

Gareth McMullah, head of lobby group the Rational Sentencing Institute, called for courts to adopt a new policy of medical disfigurement for violent criminals at the March for Freedom rally today.

"Rapists should be castrated, aggravated burglars should have their hands cut off and murderers have their legs amputated," said Mr McMullah in a speech to an audience of around 3,000 people holding placards and waving small children above their heads.

The policy follows similar statements from the RSI earlier in the year, which included the right to assault children and a return to capital punishment for violent offenders. However, this is the first time the RSI has publicly supported dismemberment as an alternative to prison sentencing.

Mr McMullah also mentioned that RSI researchers are putting the finishing touches on their minor crime platform.

"Recent studies at Leviticus University in Alabama have shown that breaking a tagger's fingers is a much cheaper and more effective deterrent to future criminal behaviour compared to fines or community work," said McMullah enthusiastically.

A spokesperson for Police and Corrections Minister Judith Collins has said the minister, emboldened by the passage of her car crushing legislation, is open to other new and old ideas for cruel and unusual punishment.

Easy pass

2009-11-20T14:18:00.001+13:00

Auckland University wins this wet bus ticket for their behaviour trying to smooth over Witi Ihimaera's plagiarism. It's not easy being a writer. Just ask Alan Duff. Ihimaera is doing his best to make things right, but there's no excuse for the alleged bastion of novel thought holding a member of faculty to a lower standard of truth than an undergraduate.

Goff loses chess game to analogue computer

2009-11-20T10:42:00.000+13:00

Opposition Leader Phil Goff was humiliated today after being beaten by the Reserve Bank's Monetary National Income Analogue Computer, the MONIAC.

The Labour leader had declared the end of the consensus of an independent Reserve Bank earlier in the week. The Reserve Bank MONIAC, through its curator Dr Arnold Quasibollard, accepted Goff's challenge to a game of monetary chess.

Dr Quasibollard primed the water and pump driven computer to the current monetary layout and left Goff to defend his ideas against it. Unwilling to turn the game his way by tightening the government spending spigot, or sacrifice his tax rooks, Goff conceded the game within minutes.

Goff later went on media interviews explaining his loss, saying that gravity had played a substantial handicap to his strategy. He sees this as evidence that it is "clearly time to dismiss the consensus on gravity". Goff said that his party intends to release its new theory of gravity sometime in the next eighteen months, and will campaign on it at the next election.

As seen on TV

2009-11-20T09:42:00.004+13:00

Operation Cobra launches a round of drug raids in the Wellington region. Stuff's Emily Watt goes advertorial-aggressive as the valiant embedded journalist for the drug warriors.

It could be any office meeting. Morning sunshine streams through the window, staff are sitting around the table flicking through reports and nursing mugs of instant coffee, a manager uses a laser pointer as he talks through slides.

But instead of suits, staff are festooned with weapons and gear – canisters at their chests, pistols at their hips, sledgehammers at their backs, their large semi-automatic weapons laid on tables.

It could be Fallujah.

The armed offenders squad is briefing for Operation Cobra in Wellington. Six teams of police are about to search 60 properties in seven days. Fifty-five people will be arrested, and $100,000 worth of drugs and $200,000 in bank accounts will be seized. The squad is involved in a handful of the most dangerous or potentially volatile searches.

It could be GI Joe. No, it's just Paraparaumu and the cops on a drug bust, with a branch of AOS for insurance.

Thanks mainly to Jan Molenaar, the exception has now become the rule. Just like American reality TV show COPS from the 90s, the police have now fully embraced the para-military lifestyle.

The briefing is meticulous. Detectives have spent three months gathering intelligence on the suspects. They know the layout of the homes, likely occupants, what drugs they are expecting to find, and they have detailed plans and backup plans for entry.

This is grist to the mill for those Search and Surveillance powers currently being reviewed by parliament. Clearly, the cops do not have access to very much information at the moment, eh.

Two hours later, two large black vans with a squad of masked, armed, anonymous officers clinging to the running boards storm through a quiet middle-class suburb. Mothers walking their kids to school gawp at the unfamiliar sight, small children wait patiently at a temporary roadblock, wondering if their bus will come and if their teachers will believe the reason they were late.

Two black vans with masked men armed to the teeth speeding through suburban Mum 'n Dadland. Roadblocks not too dissimilar to the Ruatoki raids of yesteryear. Why not order the NZ Navy off the coast to provide bombardment support, just to be sure?

Detectives wait at a safe distance while the AOS swoops on the house and batter their way through the front door.

Boy, this is just like CSI. They aren't cowards, they're just cautious. There might be Weapons of Mass Destruction in there.

They find the occupant naked at the sink, apparently trying to flush objects down the drain. A powerful air rifle, similar to that used to kill undercover officer Don Wilkinson in Auckland in September 2008, is lying on the couch in the lounge, and amateur do-it-yourself surveillance has recorded their approach and any other sound outside.

While I wouldn't put my chances on a game of scissors paper rock with Clayton Weatherston, I'm pretty sure ninja beats naked man in the game of citizen armour drone. Hey, isn't John Key keen on buying some drones for NZ?

And a "powerful air rifle" is also no match for a Bushmaster. Don Wilkinson died because his attacker was lucky. Take enough pot shots, eventually you might hit something vital. A glorified BB gun does not justify David Gray-at-Aramoana strength equipment.

In the lounge, the plasma TV cycles through photos – a smiling baby oscillates with blurry-looking partygoers, fast cars, and young blonde women flashing their breasts. The life of an alleged drug dealer in a slideshow.

Outrageous Fortune DVD set not pictured.

Million-dollar homes in suburbia are a relatively rare target for the AOS. Everything else about this drugs bust is routine. It goes like clockwork.

True, you don't see the AOS in Paritai Drive very often, except maybe at parties. I'm sure there's space for a gun room at Mark Hotchin's new pad. Ah, but who needs a gun to rob people these days?

Once armed police have secured the site, detectives come to search the property. It is painstaking work. Every room from the laundry to the garage is meticulously scoured. Every drawer examined, every paper and magazine opened. Every pocket of every item of clothing is shaken out.

A specialist firearms dog is brought in to sniff out weapons. The wheelie bin of rubbish is tipped and searched. It is not a glamour job.

Once the unnecessary AOS teams go home, with much less fanfare than their arrival, the police clean the house, pick up the laundry and confiscate everything inside.

Officers find the drug fantasy, a methamphetamine pipe, and more than $10,000 in cash. A man is arrested and charged.

$10,000. And how much did the raid cost? Once the inevitable court and possible imprisonment costs are added, is it all worth it?

The same morning in a different part of town, another team has found a sophisticated marijuana-growing setup. The garage in the waterfront property looks like a blokes' paradise, with boats, tools, wetsuits and fishing rods. Buried in the back is a room with 15 healthy plants nurtured by UV lights, a watering system, a carbon filter to extract the smell, and a camera so the grower could keep an eye on his crop on his TV from upstairs. The plants' street value is difficult to estimate – probably about $15,000. In a setup like this, money grows on trees.

Kiwi bloke (likes his outdoors, no guns mentioned), gets done for 15 plants, with a laughably estimated value of $15,000. Average haul of a hydro is 2 ounces of head. $700 per plant retail, once everyone down the line has taken their bite as well, it's not much in it for the grower. I'd call 15 plants personal use.

Police say there is a notable difference between search warrants for different drugs. Morphine dealers are often users trying to fund a habit, whereas cannabis or methamphetamine are often run by organised gangs who have higher security and involve higher risk.

Dudes, morphine is in a class of its own. Seeing as how Tasmania makes shitloads of the stuff legally, why not fund some decent rehab and be done with it? Do you wonder why Christchurch is full of skagheads? Because they're too isolated down there to get anything else. Why do you think Christchurch went nuts on BZP? There's some good money to be made in a Christchurch scam.

The death of Don Wilkinson no doubt still weighs on some minds, but it does not deter the officers.

In the past five years, Wellington police have kicked in 300 doors and arrested 400 people in seven such operations. Some of those arrested during Operation Cobra were caught in earlier operations. Others were on parole and were recalled to prison as a result of the sting. Thirteen of the arrested were known gang members. In the latest raids, police have seized four homes and frozen $200,000 in bank accounts under the Proceeds of Crime Act, which allows them to seize ill-gotten gains till the accused are either convicted or freed. These powers will strengthen under new laws in December.

Yep, this is the start of a long campaign by Judith Collins to crack down on drugs. That, or she's hoping to crash the courts and prison systems. Little wonder Simon Power, the Law Commission and the police are looking at ways to cut corners all around the place.

Operation head Detective Inspector Darrin Thomson says the results are terrific. "We have caused significant disruption amongst those people involved in the drug trade and I am sure this operation sends a clear message."

Yes. It sends the message that the MSM has completely lost its objectivity and become part-time PR people for the Police Association. It sends the message that the police have given up chasing burglars and instead gone into the selective burglary business too. It sends the message that police are nothing better than a bunch of raping thieving cowards. Just the people who they were supposed to protect the community from.

That takes the bikoi

2009-11-17T20:22:00.000+13:00

There's a saying in Wellington; if you don't like the weather, wait half an hour. Earlier in the day, when the sun was still shining and before the overcast skies came over, I was enjoying getting lost in Tane's labyrinth:

In between dodging joggers and watching the ferries to-ing and fro-ing, I noticed a dazzling sight where the caketin concourse usually stands. Of course, it was the bikers protesting the enormous jumps in registration costs under Nick Smith's ACC plan.

Instead of rattling their dags outside of parliament and being accused of being a bunch of faggots, the protest organisers wisely had all the motorcycles park up at the stadium and have the protesters march down to parliament on foot from there. Good move. The NZ Herald has some images.

While most marches occur through the old Civic Square - Lambton Quay route, this new concourse idea has great potential. One day in the future, the stadium could act as a public forum with the option of marching on parliament. That'll put the willies up the lawmakers.

Woowar retrospective

2009-11-17T19:43:00.002+13:00

Ending of The Wicker Man. The good one.

With Stewart Copeland theme music and a decent pay packet:

Taking the piss out of both Callan and The Wicker Man, Ewar Woowar in Hot Fuzz:

4:20 News

2009-11-15T16:24:00.000+13:00

# The biggest news that has been in the headlines recently is the rolling storm after the sacking of the government's chief drugs advisor Professor David Nutt. The day prior to this news, David Nutt had appeared in the BBC headlines for accusing ex-Home Secretary Jacqui Smith of "devaluing" the copious evidence on drugs. An Op-Ed column from David Nutt also appeared in the Guardian, pointing out that in spite of all the skunk hysteria, the evidence doesn't back up the rhetoric.

Incidentally, Jacqui Smith resigned her ministerial office after a scandal involving parliament funds for porn.

The day after the dismissal, the Guardian launches a stinging editorial. The same day, scientists gather in support of Professor Nutt. The next day, Sunday 1st November, the Independent reports that six members of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs threaten to resign.

On Monday, the Home Secretary who had fired Nutt was revealed to have ordered a review of the ACMD. Actually, a review has been on the books for a while, but the search for more elastic yes men has been kicked up a couple of notches.

By Tuesday, the government's chief science advisor was publicly backing the sacked professor. Wednesday had Professor Nutt appearing in New Scientist. Clive James tackles the whole drugs trope on the Friday.

The following Monday, Kathryn Ryan catches up for a chat with Professor Nutt on NatRad's Nine to Noon. The next day, three more advisors quit in protest. Wednesday, it's back to Johann Hari at the Independent who draws strength from the controversy to push the whole war on drugs argument down to dust.

# Meantime in the US, President Obama has issued a directive to federal authorities not to prosecute drug users where state laws allow it:

In a sharp policy shift, the Obama administration told federal attorneys not to prosecute patients who use marijuana for medical reasons or dispensaries in states where it has been legalised.

# The federal pull-back gives these others chance to breathe easier. A NYT editorial backs the policy. Prior to this, the New York Times had looked at the only person in America who has a state license to distribute marijuana. There are other places which did so under constant threat of arrest, such as compassion clubs. This Heat Off card will give them some peace of mind.

# The American Medical Association has changed its policy and asked for the illegality of cannabis to be reconsidered:

The American Medical Assn. on Tuesday urged the federal government to reconsider its classification of marijuana as a dangerous drug with no accepted medical use, a significant shift that puts the prestigious group behind calls for more research.

# A Colorado newspaper has signed on a critic to exclusively review marijuana.

# According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), NZ gets the bronze medal for cannabis per capita usage. Only the United States and Australia beat us to the bong. Of the Europeans, the Danish are the biggest stars in the union:

We beat those Euros in the "ever used" department though. Over half of NZ has tried the wicked weed.

# Speaking of smoke-offs, Snoop Dogg has confessed that the only person he has met who can smoke him under the table is Willie Nelson. HT Boing Boing.

# The Daily Dish has the stats on the most deadliest drugs in the UK, courtesy of Information is Beautiful. Marijuana is less dangerous than aspirin:

# Speaking of drug deaths, the widespread use of anti-psychotics in rest homes has been linked to around 1,800 needless deaths.

# In the trippy department, scientists are looking at studying the health benefits of LSD and Ecstacy. National Geographic goes inside the head of a tripper. If our scientists in NZ are ever allowed to have a go with it too, I volunteer to be a lab rat.

# The Boston Globe's Big Picture looks at the graphic reality of the war on drugs. NSFW pictures are clickable, but it's all very vivid.

# And finally, Transform has released 'After the War on Drugs: Blueprint for Regulation'. Pdf here.

The man in the Faraday Suit

2009-11-14T17:43:00.000+13:00

Dr Megavolt plays with his tesla up close. People, do not try this at home without a PhD in Physics. Someone should really get this guy over for the Wellington International Festival of the Arts.

Oh no, not again

2009-11-13T18:50:00.001+13:00

Yes, dear readers. It is going to be yet another blog post about the Top Secret Copyright Treaty known as ACTA. Firstly, here's the only civil society observer who has actually read the proposed ACTA treaty in full explaining why this is all so important:

According to Michael Geist, participating countries in the ACTA agreement, including NZ, have agreed to signing the ratified document as early as next year.

If there's any more evidence required that ACTA is yet another underhanded over-zealous reaction by multi-national conglomerates to hold on to an extinct branch of the distribution model, have a read of Colin Jackson's guest post at Public Address:

If I come over as a little irritated about this, that's because I'm seethingly angry.

Colin Jackson's not wrong and he's not alone. The NZ Pirate Party, the Creative Commons Foundation, InternetNZ, Geekzone, and a fistful of ISPs are also seethingly angry at the lack of say that NZers have over this secret deal. The plebs with pitchforks and torches won't be far behind.

I'm surprised there's not more seething from Mike Moore, former head of the WTO, on the matter. The proposed treaty circumvents the World Intellectual Property Organisation, making it the most overt and least legitimate grab for power since Blackwater became the United States' preferred mercenary.

And, if you're still not convinced that the ACTA treaty will contain some very thorny thorns for everyone, here's BoingBoing with the latest news:

The MPAA has successfully shut down an entire town's municipal WiFi because a single user was found to be downloading a copyrighted movie.

A year from now, it might happen in a city near you.

UPDATE: This just in from Geekzone:

© kiwiright from fyminc on Vimeo.

Interesting rhyming couplets

2009-11-11T21:14:00.002+13:00

# Sleepwalking into the surveillance state headlines - Woman Loses Job Due to Error in FBI Criminal Database sez Wired. The Guardian looks at how the UK state intelligence actively monitors political activism.

# Economist dolphins and Doctor sharks. HT DPF for the latter (that went global quick, eh?)

# Interweb wars - Gripping Hand and Aardvark take a couple of bites at the Orwellian Top Secret ACTA treaty. Steven Price's Media Law Journal points to a very interesting symposium. Next month, the Law Commission, InternetNZ and the Ministry of Justice are hosting a seminar on the Internet and the courts. It will be looking at issues such as:

• Undermining of suppression orders
• Lack of jurisdiction over material hosted outside NZ
• Online discussion of crimes and trials potentially being a contempt of court
• Jurors who “Google”
• How deleting a story doesn’t remove it from caches and syndication feeds
• How do media and Internet publishers find out what actually has been the subject of a suppression order?
• Online criminal offending databases, and the right to a fair trial
• Is education or incarceration needed for Internet publishers who commit contempt

# The collected unconscious - Jung's Red Book has finally been released. The New Yorker features some of Jung's fascinating drawings, while Charlie Kaufman interprets selected images from Jung's head live on stage.

# Goldman Squid - The improbably named Lloyd Blankfein, head beak of Goldman Sachs, has been on the charm offensive. He has classed his minions as the most productive people in the world and calling it all God's work.

# Speaking of squid, I had some time to kill yesterday. After I finished my cigarette at the waterfront while schoolgirls were celebrating the end of uniformity, I went to visit Te Papa's big squid. Sure, I was expecting it to be bigger, but it was an unexpected pleasure that old school TV star Roger Gascoigne was explaining that as underwhelming as it is, it is the biggest captured so far. Do you know how hard it is to catch a big squid?