Save the Humans

You Have Two Cows...

This is pretty old, but there is much truth in old things. I think it was Winston Churchill who said that Democracy is the worst possible form of government apart from all the others ones that have been tried.

CAPITALISM: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.
SOCIALISM: You have two cows. The government takes one of them and gives it to your neighbour.
COMMUNISM: You have two cows. The government takes both and gives you spoiled milk.
FASCISM: You have two cows. The government takes both, hires you to take care of them, and sells you the milk.
NAZISM: You have two cows. The government takes both and then shoots you.
LIBERTARIANISM: You have two cows. What you do with your cows is on one's business but your own.
PROTECTIONISM: You have two cows. You can't buy a bull from another country.
WELFARE STATISM: You have two cows. You milk them and give them the milk to drink.
ANARCHISM: You have two cows. Your neighbour hits you over the head with a brick, steals your cows, then shoots them for fun. You later discover that he is a Nazi.
BRITISHISM: You have two cows. They are mad.
BUREAUCRACY -- EUROPEAN UNION: You have two cows. The EU pays you €1000 to stop milking one cow, and offers you double the market price for the other cow's milk.
NEW DEALISM: You have two cows. The government takes both, shoots one, milks the other, and pours the milk down the sink. The government insists there is a giant storage tank where all the milk goes.
POLITICAL CORRECTNESSISM: You are associated with two differently aged (but no less valuable to society) bovines of nonspecified gender. You don't milk them as you are not sure it would be appropriate.
SURREALISM: You have two giraffes. The government requires you to take harmonica lessons.

What Happened to this Blog?

That is a very good question, but there is also a good answer.

The answer is that nothing has happened, just that it has not received the time and attention it deserves of late. This is largely due to our family's move to the UK in mid-April. However I plan to continue this blog from the UK, and comment on the continuing environmental madness in New Zealand and elsewhere. There is never any shortage of topics, just a shortage of time in which to address them.

I have started writing this post several times, but each time stopped since I didn't feel able to devote the time it needs. This post was finally prompted my a comment (see title). Hopefully I am now in a position to continue! Let's see.

I also plan to comment on the situation in the UK. This is were many of our mad environmentalist policies have come from (as many council and government staff are pommies). So it is interesting to compare and contrast.

The Definition of Luck: Man Attacked by a Truck and a Train

Take a look at this video which shows a man being run over by a truck which has been hit by a train. Unbelievably he suffered only minor injuries!

Mr Tokac has his feet on the ground and is well aware of how lucky he is.

Mr Tokac, who plans to marry in April, said Feb 25 is his new birthday.

I hope he was able to limp to the shop and buy a lottery ticket.

Welcome Back

For years I have bemoaned the slackers who take most of January off and come back expecting to still have a job and a business. But I will have to stop now as it is very near the end of January and my blogging has certainly taken extended leave.

What is it about Christmas that induces such sloth? Maybe the thought of Joseph and Mary changing all those nappies without the benefit of modern disposables?

Anyway, I am, as Arnie would say, back.

So is Anti-Dismal, which is excellent news. There is much material on the financial crisis and particularly the dodgy bail-outs. Please go and take a look. It is a salutary lesson to have an academic back at work blogging before I am. Still at least it isn't February quite yet.

So welcome to another year of hassling the environmentalists, who again have our worst interests at heart in 2009.

Holidays

In case you have not guessed already, The Optimist is on holiday. Even optimists need to recharge their batteries and reinforce their optimistic view of life. A short break in Hanmer followed by a spot of camping in Temuka is just the thing.

I hope you had a great Christmas and are planning wonderful things for the new year. If you are an environmentalist, I hope you use this time to get close to nature so that in the new year, you can stop bleating about it being overrun by humans.

A Human Dinner Party

In response to the Herald's rather precious but hilarious guide for environmentalists on how to hold a dinner party (no doubt written by an Aucklander living in a microscopic apartment with no room for the compost heap mentioned), here are my own thoughts:

1. Invite whoever you like. If you invite an environmentalist, make them sit on the recycle bin to 'save wood'
2. Require your guests to arrive in a V8 or better. A bus is ok so long as they are the only one on it. They probably will be.
3. Cover the table in paper decorations and make sure you have plenty of those 'pop gun' streamers for later. At the end, dump the whole lot in the Kate Valley express
4. Food likes miles. Try to eat food from Europe where possible. Drink Australian wine. Try chocolates from Belgium and coffee from Italy. If you must buy local produce, travel there in a V8 or a large empty bus
5. Avoid green drinks. Red or white drinks are best for dinner parties, with brown drinks to start. Sip green drinks only if you like cocktails. A Grasshopper is not bad.
6. Eat meat. It's good for you and will help your brain operate. You will need your brain to cut through the enviro-babble in the news the next day
7. You can try eating sustainable seafood if you want to, but if you can't figure out what that is, just buy some fish.
8. Use disposable everything. At the end of dinner, asks guests to help you pour the tablecloth and everything on it into a large rubbish bag you have prepared earlier. Invite any environmentalists present to leave the room if they can't bear the planet torture. Explain that you hear voices from the Earth asking for more and fuller landfills.
9. If you have a dog, give your leftovers to the dog. Otherwise, invite your friends to come around in a V8 (or empty bus) the next day to pick them up.
10. Set up bins that mark where guests can recycle and compost. Make sure the bins are locked. This will infuriate any environmentalists you have invited. Then put all food waste down the waste disposal unit. This is also a good place for bones. Leave the waste disposal on all night to really grind these down. If a guest complains, suggest that they help by returning in the morning to turn it off

A few tips also on energy use:

• Turn on both the heating and the airconditioning. Invite guests to sit whereever in the temperature gradient they feel most comfortable
• If you have a patio heater, turn it on the previous day to warm up the back yard so guests will be comfortable
• Turn on the oven and leave it on. It makes a nice noise and you never know when you might want to heat something up
• Make sure all the lights are on so people know which house to come to. If you have fairy lights, string them up all over the house.
• Encourage your guests to arrive in an empty bus, or by V8 if they don't live on a bus route or don't want to get mugged
• Turn the stereo up loud, but put it in the next room so guests can still converse
• Get our all your kitchen appliances in case guests want to play with them during the night
• Shower before the party and encourage your guests to do so also so they don't smell

If anyone has any other good tips, please post them in comments. All of this reminded me of Hyacinth Bucket ('Bouquet') so I had to add a photo.

400 Posts!

Well this blog started in March this year. Partly it was a way of letting of steam at all the madness in the world, much of it to do with environmentalisms. Partly it was an experiment to see whether I would last a week or a month.

So far I haven't felt the urge to stop. Environmentalists are as mental as ever and there is no shortage of material. I have a stack of topics a mile high and blog on less than     a quarter of the things I would like to. Sadly I don't have time to be a full time blogger. To be honest I don't really have time to even be a part time one.

I note that the guys at The Standard and Frogblog are paid to blog, and even get a nice office to do it in. I suspect that the payments you receive for blogging are in direct proportion to your level of insanity, but I have no proof as yet.

The change of government offers a change of scene. It is funny seeing different people on the box and different names in the paper. Refreshing, I suppose. Perhaps that's why we voted for a change. But this is not really a political blog, like so many in New Zealand, more about environmentalism.

But that's important enough. Environmentalism is the scourge of the modern world, the opium of the secular masses and the brain tonic of the fool. As an ideology it is broad enough to encompass opposition to free trade, oil extraction, private cars, energy use and economic growth. Its converts run from mad scientists like James Hansen (who famously defended a group of 6 environmentalist vandals on the basis that they were saving the planet from more CO2) to deluded former politicians like Al Gore (who famously claimed to have invented the Internet, and has the power bill to prove it).

Environmentalism has been called the new religion because of its power to entrap young minds. It is actively taught in schools from age 5, even (or even particularly) those with no other religious instruction. It is now more socially acceptable to admit to being unfaithful to your spouse than to admit to not recycling. The former affects only a few families - the latter destroys the planet!

Local body politicians have found environmentalism a convenient vehicle. They can whack those who don't vote for them anyway with silly new rules, while whipping their environmentalist supporter into a majority-enhancing lather of ecstasy. As a bonus, they get to increase rates to pay for their pet projects.

Central government has not behaved much better. Environmentalism has been used as an excuse to avoid solving traffic and electricity problems, to avoid lowering (and even raise) petrol taxes and to buy up large chunks of land for the state.

All in all, environmentalism's battle against the civilised world is worth resisting, in whatever small way we can.

For the moment, this is my way. I hope you like it and find it entertaining, and maybe even useful. If not, I'm sure you're let me know in the comments.

(pic from Aedificium)

Hive's Departure Stings

As I reviewed my blogs roll last night, expecting another torrid of interesting insights from The Hive, I certainly did not expect to read this:

So we have decided to call it quits on The Hive. We will leave it up as it is an interesting resource for those studying New Zealand politics and history. Those studying the impact of blogs on New Zealand politics will also find this a useful resource.

The reasons are basically that Labour has been tossed out:

• The decisive result at the election;
• The removal of NZ First from Parliament;
• The participation of the Maori Party in Government;
• The election of Phil Goff and Annette King as leader and deputy leader of Labour.
• The probability that Mike Williams will stand down from the Labour Party Presidency and be replaced with Andrew Little.

[At least they understand the difference between a semicolon and a colon, unlike those who drafted the National / Act agreement.] I didn't fully appreciate that The Hive was focussed on this end.

In sum there has, we believe, been a fundamental shift in New Zealand politics.

I'm not so sure about that. Time will tell. The fawning of the media over John Key cannot last forever. We still have 40% employed by the state.

The Hive, we believe, played a roll in achieving this shift. In the last month it moved to #4 in the ranking of NZ political blogs and was achieving an impressive daily readership of close to 3,000 opinion formers every day Monday to Friday with a daily readership at weekends closer to 1,200.

So there are 3000 people as unhappy as me. I suppose that makes me feel a bit better.

You get used to the furniture and it is a bit of a shock when it starts walking away. The Hive has become a daily read for me and I will miss it. Good luck guys.

CTU on How to Dry Fiordland

Does anyone know the auction number for Lake Taupo? I have the screen snap:

Thanks to Kiwiblog for pointing me to these

The first one is funny. Blaming the lack of power on National might be a bit of an ask. It's because the environmentalists won't let us build any power stations, right?

But the second one is better - it still makes no sense but is hilarious. I have been to Queenstown half a dozen times over the years and not once has the weather been good enough to take a scenic flight over Milford Sounds, let along further south. This video has a secret plan on how to dry out Fiordland and boost our tourism significantly!

Watch for Don Brash and Roger Douglas - very funny, and enlightening too as we see how unionists regard these two as evil personified. Must remember to have a good read on the CTU sight one day. I'm amazed that global warming is an issue for these guys.

Brilliant Scientist Not So Clever With The Bottle

Here's a sad story of a scientist who drank out of the wrong bottle:

An Antarctic scientist who drank heavily and used drugs may have died because he accidentally drank poison instead of alcohol, a coroner has found.

Marks, 32, an Australian, complained he was feeling ill and his "vision was not too good" on May 11. The next morning he began vomiting blood. He was said to have been anxious and scared, and his vision deteriorated.

That sounds like meths. That's probably what got him.

"It could well be that he thought he had consumed ethanol from laboratory sources but in fact had consumed methanol," the coroner wrote in his findings.

An easy mistake to make. Both colourless.

Thompson also failed to investigate recent needle tracks in Marks' arm, "which could have led to vital information on his treatment of the patient".

Or it could have been the drugs. It's beginning to look like this guy might have had a death wish.

He was known to smoke cannabis and to have used heroin, but friends said they had never seen him use it when he was on the Ice.

Assuming that Ice means Methamphetamine, one would hope not. Really, it's amazing this guy wasn't toast earlier.

The coroner recommended the Government consider how to resolve this problem.

I knew it would be the government's fault, it always is. Possibly asking people to avoid drugs would help. I thought these things were illegal anyway?

Come On Canterbury Where Are You?

Wellington ahead? What's going on.

Click here.


Hat Tip: Kiwiblog

I Drink Therefore I Am

I love this, so should you:

Hat Tip: Not PC

Funny Cheney Video

Go see Halfdone for Dick Cheney's dinner speech.

George Bush's one last year was also bloody funny. In fact 2006, was also a goody, with Bush and an impersonator both on the stage. No wonder he felt himself too hard an act to follow.

Why is our News so Crap?

TV1 is crowing that their ratings are up 5 months in a row. Certainly not on my account. I find it almost physically painful to watch the news. I haven't seen it in years.

Around the last election I remember making a conscious effort to keep up with what was going on with the TV news. It nearly killed me. It is the most puerile, pathetic, pointless pile of poo.

How many times does the news lead with a mountain rescue, or a sea rescue or a bush rescue. And just to make it worse they come back to it at the end with a reporter giving a 'live update'! Nothing has happened. The climber has still been rescued, but we now told that his family is very happy, or his head has been stitched back on, or some other crap.

Then it is a cut to some clump of ice melting somewhere so they can tell us that we are all going to die of global warming. Perhaps then a cabinet minister crapping on about what she will do about it. Then a murder, a robbery and a sobbing widow. Finally all is well because we get to sport which I have to admit is something of a mystery to me. Through it all there are so many ads that I don't have time to write down all the things I have to rush out and buy the next day.

As an experiment I tried watching the news on My Sky at 30x. It is quite a regular pattern: studio chat, outside picture, studio chat, outside picture, you get the idea. The stories are not really any different on any particular night. I suspect it would be possible to show the news from 5 years ago on April 1 and not get a single comment.

One possible explanation for the ratings going up is that One News has suddenly improved. If it has, be sure to let me know.

Exporting Wombats

Stuff has a story about the guy who told 111 he was being violated by a wombat.

"I dialled 111, and they asked, 'fire, police or ambulance'. I said I wanted to talk to the Motueka police, and they said it had to be an emergency, so I hung up and then called back, and they said the same thing, so I said 'okay, I've just been raped by a wombat'. They pulled the pin on the call."

My first thought of course was 'why is this even news?' But then I remembered which country I am in. After all, 'news' in NZ consists of:

1. Strange and unusual deaths (and climbers stuck up mountains, cats stuck up trees)
2. Why you should vote Labour
3. Lots of ads
4. See 1

But what caught my eye was the headline:

"Wombat violation goes global"
A moment's frustration at not being able to reach the Motueka police station by phone led Ross Cradock to utter a phrase that has led to worldwide notoriety and a spot on zany British comedy the Graham Norton Show.

Maybe we need to get all our characters together and market them around the world. News in the UK is so utterly depressing that anything to lighten the mood is welcome.

It is also another hint on how to get the police around: make a crank call. Point noted.

Have a laugh

Is there anything more important in the world than a sense of humour? I don't think so. Would life really be worth living without the occasional episode of The Simpsons, Blackadder or Faulty Towers? Probably not.

So if you're one of those super-serious people who things the world is going to end, we are all doomed and nothing is funny while Bush is in power, take a break, and take the test:

http://www.spiritualityhealth.com/newsh/items/selftest/item_8508.html

Babies can do it:

Try what is supposedly the world's funniest joke...

...if you did not laugh at any of the above, then try this.

Failing that, you are knackered, like this bus.

Television

How much television do you watch? Enough? Not enough? I definitely don't watch enough, in fact I essentially watch none.

But I'm not a TV Nazi. Maybe it addles the brain, maybe it has lots of benefits. I think probably both. But I find it very hard to force myself to sit down and watch TV, and virtually impossible to watch a TV ad.

As a result when a conversation starts with 'did you see ...' I have to smile and shake my head. I have a list of shows that people have urged me to watch and I need to start getting around to it. it would be a lot easier if they would ban Amazon.com as I have a bookshelf of books I haven't read but am still adding to my wishlist.

[ As you might expect, the environmentalists are trying. At least Amazon packages your goods. I bought a few books at Borders the other night (a regular event) and they wanted to charge 10c for a plastic bag. As Tim Blair points outs, I bet Borders would take a different view if their plastic bag supplier increased their price by 1000%. I won't be back there in a hurry - I think it's just being obnoxious.]

I have signed up for Sky TV on my cellphone but haven't tried it yet. I have promised myself that  will try it before I cancel. Maye they have The Simpsons,