The Ann Coulter vs Hitler showdown

Quite a challenging quiz from Giveupblog that asks you to assign various quotes to either Ann Coulter (an American female wingnut commentator with an Adam's apple bigger than Bush's) or Adolf Hitler.
I got only three wrong - without actually having read any of both authors' works, which means it's either not that challenging or I'm good at distinguishing the American fascist from the German one.

Monastic life as it should be lived

Who said Poles didn't have a sense of humour? Certainly not those who condemned the video:

“I know who did this clip,” the ‘Przeor’ of the Dominican monastery in Krakow Adam Sulikowski told the daily newspaper, Gazeta Wyborcza. “It was very wrong.”
However, many Polish people are reported to have thought the video to be very funny. But some Polish politicians from the League of Polish Family Party have said the film is “scandalous and promotes homosexuality inside the Catholic Church”.

From UK Gay News

Stranded on an island again?

Another party weekend is upon us on Waiheke and Fullers have been putting up posters on the ferry "advising" party goers to return on the 8.15pm and 10.15pm ferries. The only proper response is a Tui ad.
But it shouldn't be rocket science, really. Why not run an all-night boat, say, every two hours, so party goers can relax and enjoy themselves in the knowledge they can get back home at some stage? Basic good customer service and what a ferry service should be there for, I would have thought.
Let's hope the Red Cross is ready this time with blankets and hot drinks for the stranded.

Fullers prepares to trial smart card ticketing

One of our island newspapers reported:

Fullers is getting ready to start trials of a new smart card ticketing system that may see passengers pre-paying fares and receiving special offers at the click of a button.
Fullers chief executive officer Doug Hudson announced plans for the card to members of the Ferry Users Group (FUG) at a meeting on Friday, last week, and discussed using their help with trials in May.
The system will allow a much more flexible charging structure and provide possibilities not currently available, such as variations in fare structure on different sailings, special discounts for regular ferry users, and online payments for tickets.
Hudson said Stagecoach had already been trialling the card on its bus services in Wellington but the new system would be the first of its kind in Auckland and only the second to be trialled nationwide.
The new system would involve staff using portable “swipe” machines for the cards, which would enable fares to be collected and might also be used for purchasing drinks and food on board.
He said a two-month trial period would be needed to collect data on monthly and 40-trip tickets and to find out how the system would work best for the company and its passengers.
“The trial would last for two to three months but it will take another three or four months after that for us to scope the project.
“We won’t know what the options are until we find out what the customers want and their usage patterns. At the moment, we’re kind of second guessing,” he added.

I think that's not a bad idea per se. It should also be expanded priority boarding, free refreshments and a Koru Club for cardholders. After all, if you're spending $3,600 a year on a transport company, you would expect to be treated as a first class customer, no?

The earth did move for me again

Three earthquakes struck last night just north of Waiheke Island, but we only felt the biggest one. A sharpish jolt which sounded like some heavy object falling against the walls of the house. No shaking or rattling though, no pictures swaying on the walls or plates rattling in cupboards. No tsunamis either even though the quake was under the seabed.
It was quite surprising because it just happened instantly without any rumbling warning. The few previous earthquakes I have experienced here in New Zealand have been of the swaying kind, where the buildings I was in started swinging slightly from side to side, but not dramatically enough to move objects.
New Zealand's alternative name is the Shaky Isles anyway.

Stating the bleeding obvious

There was loud wailing in the corridors of power this week and much gnashing of teeth over a UNICEF report [PDF] that places New Zealand (and a few other Anglo-saxon countries) near the bottom of the list of child welfare in developed countries.
But when the newspaper headline on the same day said this:

Teen driver defied parents and took car with no warrant
A 15-year-old learner driver who ploughed into a group of children had been given strict instructions by his parents not to drive his new car because it had failed a warrant of fitness.
But the teen defied his parents after deciding he wanted to go and buy fish and chips down the road.
His decision to get into the unwarranted car on Thursday, despite being on a learner licence, has left a 3-year-old girl fighting for her life and four others nursing a range of injuries.

you can't miss the bloody obvious: children in New Zealand get killed in accidents in large numbers because they are allowed to drive cars from age 15 and are not safe on the roads due to lack of separate foot and cycle paths and a viable public transport system. Not rocket science.

Pay for your sins

Another one of those memes (linked via Gazza) that are kind of fun to play.
Tick which sins you have committed in your life from he list below and tot up the total fine you'd pay. List your total in the comment box. My fine only runs up to $420.60, which would qualify me to be an altar boy?
As an aside, I think the $80 fine for anal sex is far too steep.

THE LIST:

Smoked pot: $10
Did acid: $5
Ever had sex at church: $25
Woke up in the morning and did not know the person who was next to you: $40
Had sex with someone on MySpace: $25
Had sex for money: $100
Vandalized something: $20
Had sex on your parents' bed: $10
Beat up someone: $20
Been jumped: $10
Crossed dressed: $10
Given money to stripper: $25
Been in love with a stripper: $20
Kissed some one whose name you didn't know: $0.10
Hit on some one of the same sex while at work: $15
Ever drive drunk: $20
Ever got drunk at work, or went to work while still drunk: $50
Used toys while having sex: $30
Got drunk, passed out and don't remember the night before: $20
Went skinny dipping: $5
Had sex in a pool: $20
Kissed someone of the same sex: $10
Had sex with someone of the same sex: $20
Cheated on your significant other: $10
Masturbated: $10
Cheated on your significant other with their relative or close friend: $20
Done oral: $5
Got oral: $5
Done/got oral in a car while it was moving: $25
Stole something: $10
Had sex with someone in jail: $25
Made a nasty home video: $15
Had a threesome: $50
Had sex in the wild: $20
Been in the same room while someone was having sex: $25
Stole something worth over more than a hundred dollars: $20
Had sex with someone 10 years older: $20
Had sex with someone under 21 and you are over 27: $25
Been in love with two people or more at the same time: $50
Said you love someone but didn't mean it: $25
Went streaking: $5
Went streaking in broad daylight: $15
Been arrested: $5
Spent time in jail: $15
Peed in the pool: $0.50
Played spin the bottle: $5
Done something you regret: $20
Had sex with your best friend: $20
Had sex with someone you work with at work: $25
Had anal sex: $80
Lied to your mate: $5
Lied to your mate about the sex being good: $25

Cowbell clanging, horn blowing and sodomy

Those Swiss. The film censor in Zurich has decided to ban an old Pier Paolo Pasolini film "Salo o le 120 giornate di Sodoma". The film is from 1975, so you would expect everybody to have seen it all before. But no, even after several decades the old rogue still manages to rile the Alpine bourgeois sensitivities. The French Swiss, on the other hand, have now set up a committee against censorship, and good on them.
The film itself is hardly a masterpiece in Pasolini's oeuvre but that's really not a criterion to ban it. It's amazing how many other countries it has been banned by and later re-classified. In Australia it apparently was re-banned after a brief period of certification. Must be one of Johnnie Howard's bright ideas.
In New Zealand it was only classified in the mid-1990s after a ban. I discussed this with the NZ Chief Censor at the time, Jane Wrightson, but it took a few more years before New Zealanders were allowed to see it. I, of course, had watched it a few times in Europe and since I hadn't turned into a crazy zombie by the experience I could relate that to Jane, lest she was scared of unleashing a horde of new Sade fans.
If you haven't watched it yet, I wouldn't really bother, but read the Sade book instead, one of world literature's finest work on sex and power.

UPDATE: Zurich police has rescinded its ban and the Xenix cinema will now show the film.

Godless instead of clueless

Americans' increasing acceptance of religious diversity does not extend to those who don’t believe in a god, according to a national survey by researchers in the University of Minnesota’s department of sociology.
From a telephone sampling of more than 2,000 households, university researchers found that Americans rate atheists below Muslims, recent immigrants, gays and lesbians and other minority groups in “sharing their vision of American society.” Atheists are also the minority group most Americans are least willing to allow their children to marry.
Even though atheists are few in number, not formally organized and relatively hard to publicly identify, they are seen as a threat to the American way of life by a large portion of the American public.

From the American Sociological Society.

Gosh, I suspect that they won't let me into the States ever again now that they know am not only gay but an atheist too, even though the altar is anywhere I kneel (to paraphrase Camille Paglia). I have seen gods in the streets many times and even seen them coming through a small hole in the wall.

Stranded on an island (update 2)

The plot thickens (via TV3):

"It has emerged the skipper of a ferry that last weekend left over a hundred passengers stranded on Waiheke Island, had refused to return for them.
The passengers couldn't all fit onto Fullers' last sailing.
The company says it's looking into why the skipper ignored a manager's request for him to make another trip.
And he says Fullers is making sure visitors to the Island's annual food and wine festival today are well catered for."

The gossip I heard on the ferry home last night was that some of the crew on the last vessel that night refused to return to Waiheke to pick up the rest of the passengers because in a previous instance last year they were not paid by Fullers for the overtime they put in then. So, if true (if Fullers management reads this, please feel free to clarify the issue), the complete fault lies with Fullers management, and not with the crew in question. Nobody is obliged to work for free, surely.
And now instead of fixing Fullers problems, such as running all night boats during summer weekends when a lot is happening on Waiheke, Fullers' owner Infratil resorts to a more effective weapon against its customers: blackmail:

"Listed infrastructure investor Infratil could exit its $250 million bus and ferry services if radical transport proposals are pursued by local government.
Infratil director Tim Brown said the proposals would ultimately see the country's bus and ferry networks run by bureaucrats who would collect the fares and pay private operators a fee to provide the service.
They would also have the right to buy the business if it did not meet local authority targets."

Stranded on an island (update 1)

The Herald ran an editorial on the issue:

"This is not the normal culture of a business that runs a public service; it is not even the culture of state-owned service providers these days. Fullers' behaviour last Saturday night was a throw-back to the days when so-called public servants would close the counter on a queue of customers if the clock struck closing time."

Indeed, and even writing letters to Fullers results in patronising and nonsensical replies, but which you're not allowed to make public!

Stranded on an island

It's not often Waiheke Island makes the front page of the largest newspaper in New Zealand two days in a row. The last time was when the foot & mouth hoax hit.
But this weekend it was all fun and games, what with several - newspaper reports say 120, my fellow ferry commuters this morning said there were only about 20 - Fullers ferry ticket holders left stranded on the island side after a good night out at various functions, parties and weddings. The ferry company neglected to provide sufficient capacity to take back all passengers, to whom they happily sold tickets earlier in the day. Worse, Fullers didn't even send over another boat to pick up the castaways, as they were wont to do in earlier (more customer-friendly) times. Nope, they raked in their ticket cash and the ferry management said:

"When most of the people choose to come back on the last sailing it makes it a little difficult."

Well, bugger me, Fullers, I know you like that, but isn't providing passenger services what you are actually in business for?
Now a few people face charges for "breaking into" the wharf building, because they were cold and hungry during their 8 hour wait overnight. Well, duh! Our famous island hospitality has been severely dented by this incident. At least the wharf building should have provided shelter - isn't that what it was built for? Every ticket sold by the ferry company includes a "wharf tax" so technically speaking they didn't break in but gained access to what they had paid for.
On the second day after the incident, Auckland Regional Council leader Mike Lee waded into the issue calling the ferry company excuses "nonsense". Pity the ARC has little power over Fullers because they run the Waiheke service as a pure monopoly without local body subsidies, which means they are un-beholden to any conditions on service and quality delivery, timetabling and fare structures. A pure capitalist text book case of bugger the customer for all he's worth.
Despite all this fun and nonsense, there is really a serious issue involved. Our island is basically dependent on its 1,000 daily commuters and the hordes of tourists who visit irregularly. All have to use Fullers Ferries who happily gouge whatever dollars they can get out of us and you (you can come on another ferry service from a suburban part of town but this is impractical). And if this suddenly becomes uneconomic our whole island economy will be far more affected than any foot and mouth disease can throw at us.