Island Life by David Slack

1742 - Parfait of Foie Gras*

Auguste Escoffier writes:

Fresh foie gras do not bear transport very well, and when sent from a distance, often reach their destination tainted. It is, therefore, difficult, whatever care may have been taken in their preparation, to obtain the results which are achieved by manufacturers who are renowned for this kind of produce.
Consequently, it is preferable to buy the Parfait of foie gras readymade from a good firm rather than try to make it oneself.

* P 571 The Escoffier Cookbook

PSC 1410 - Cartridge of HP Printer

The Techsploder and I had an email conversation this morning that touches on the existential angst of consuming computing goods. An excerpt:

David:
When I think about it, the thing that irritates me most is that I'm pestered by this machine like a toddler. Give me a new cartridge! Align my new cartridge! Go to the store and get six more cartridges! I didn't like that file. Give me a new power cycle!
Can't shoot it, can't put it in time out.

Juha:
Reminds me of Windows that. It pops up all sorts of useless information constantly. Worst one is Outlook 2007 - when you click on a folder to read mail in there, it pops up a bubble saying "Outlook 2007 is preparing the view" each time.

Just fucking do it and don't bother me with insane chattering...

At the age of 46, I have disrobed for a popular family magazine. The first consequence of this act may be that the magazine will become less popular, but that’s their roll of the dice.

My principal concern is to answer the inevitable question I expect to be hearing from people once they have received their copy of this week’s Listener, and that question is, of course: “What Were You Thinking?”

I’ll start at the beginning. A few weeks ago, I had a call from Sally Blundell. She was doing a piece about heart attacks and wondered if I’d be willing to share my story. Happy to. Always happy to. I tell it so often, I fear I bore people to death, but that heart attack entirely changed my life, and even two decades later I am still absorbing its implications. She duly turned out a most interesting cover story, using my own tale as a way in.

Enter the unparalleled Jane Ussher, who took some lovely photos of Dad and daughter two years ago. "I couldn’t talk you into doing one showing your naked torso could I" she asked brightly. I receive all kinds of odd phone calls here at the world headquarters of speechesdotcom, but this was the first time someone had asked if they could take a photo of me with my shirt off. Oh my unfulfilled dreams. Ever since I was a little girl I wanted to be a topless model in a glossy magazine.

That’s not it. Try this: For one thing I say "Yes" to everything. For another, as friends whose counsel I sought after the fact were quick to assure me, I am given to acts of vanity and foolhardiness.

“Sure”, I said, “why not.” I think she was surprised.

Let me share some of the advice I was given at no cost from one the nation’s most expensive public relations practitioners:

Upsides.
Um..........

Downsides.
They won’t airbrush you.
Rodney Hide tried this. It didn’t win him anything but snide letters to the editor.
Men your own age will hate you. (How dare he not have a gut. Do you think he’s gay?)
Younger women will be repelled (Middle aged skin. Gross.)
Women your own age will be appalled. (Oh dear, sad. I bet he’s bought himself a sports car.)
Children will be frightened. (Mummmmmmmmmmy!)
You will have to confront this naked you at every corner dairy for an entire week. And each time you do you will think – do people think I think a lot of myself?

Talk about yourself till the cows come home but please don’t lose your shirt over it!

I also consulted the previous editor of the organ in question. He said, “Look, by all means do it if you want to, but if it was me, I wouldn’t.”

Did I listen to them? I tried. In the end, though, certain combined aspects of my personality, namely: class clown, reckless gambler, contrarian, blind optimist won the debate. Not forgetting the previously mentioned foolhardy vanity.

We met at Cheltenham Beach: Jane; her glamorous assistant Naomi and I. It was all fun. You’ve seen the news shows following her around before, perhaps. She’s a wonderful person. All photographers should be so nice. And she promised to do a kind job. I looked at my post-Christmas waist. Could they Photoshop off the love handles? Sure they could.

Off we went: Under a tree, standing purposefully and manfully, legs akimbo, in the sun; in the water, following directions. “I want you to come out of the water like Daniel Craig,” she teased. I emerged as instructed from the water. “That’s not exactly like Daniel Craig is it,” I said. “No,” said Jane. “No. He’s more …....” - the beginning of a pause loomed over our little group - “British!” declared Naomi brightly. "That’s going in a blog," I said.

I am indeed less British than Daniel Craig. You can turn to pages three and fourteen of the Listener to verify this for yourself. There is also a picture on page sixteen of Dad and daughter.

Mary-Margaret, I expect you to concur, looks beautiful and takes after her mother.

For the past couple of weeks I have been slagging off my friendly gym to anyone who will listen. “Look better naked” they promise in their exhortation to join an intensive class of six. All around town I have declaimed loudly against this evil manipulation.How dare they be so cynical? How dare they use a line certain to elicit large measures of self-doubt? There are vast numbers of women who have no reason to believe it but nevertheless consider themselves to look not sufficiently attractive when naked. And so on.

Well, here’s some advice to myself. Less time slagging off the gym and more time on the weights since Christmas, and you might not have been so perturbed to see the state of your love handles in a glossy magazine, Chester.

There’s always more than one perspective, though. This is, I rationalised to myself in the last two weeks, the year of the male nude. Everyone’s at it. Harry Potter’s getting his kit off. Matthew Ridge can’t keep his clothes on, and every time you turn on the TV, there’s Paul Henry, for whom I have the utmost respect, proving that it’s okay in middle age to get your shirt off and let the flesh proclaim your humanity to the TV viewers of the nation.

It’s only February. The year of the male nude could be, if you like, bigger than Ben Hur. Putting all misgivings aside about the less than perfect state of my aged self, I think there’s a sound basis to this nudity business. Let’s be having more of it. Few of us look so terribly splendid naked; but you know what? A little more honesty and authenticity could well do us all good. Less veneer, more truth.

So that’s me at 46. Rippling abs, flowing locks, a truly marvellous specimen of alpha masculinity, even if I don’t look very British. Narcissus came undone with his self-loving gazes but that’s only because he was looking at himself in the water. You can’t drown in a magazine.

Hell, in the usual run of things, is other people at conferences: dull types you can’t shake off; egotists who like the sound of their own voice; cologne-drenched sales people; corporate Machiavellis; stale coffee; minutes measured out in mints from the saucer.

Not that all conferences are awful. I've been to some splendid affairs. Exotic locations don't hurt. Pimp your programme with a coconut palm and a golden beach, and your staff will love you for it. Add alcohol and dalliances, and you have yourself a party.

But your industry gathering, as advertised in the glossy brochure that falls out of your NBR, can be a dire business.

I blame the middle man; the dreaded Conference Organiser. The ads are all the same. You will hear, they assure you, from leaders in their field. They will have 'learnings' to offer.

It all seems somewhat ersatz, and there is a perfectly good reason for that: it is. Some poor bugger has to make a living doing it. He or she has to conceive a theme, round up a couple of dozen speakers, hire a hotel ballroom, run off the flyers and then hustle the whole deathless experience at two or three grand a throw to all the usual suspects: large corporate organisations, relevant government departments, hapless NBR readers.

You makes your booking and you takes your chances. Sometimes, you get lucky; talented people have interesting things to say and the gathering comes alive. Sometimes, you just spend a day in a windowless room staring at PowerPoint presentations, swapping business cards at the break.

People have been asking me: what exactly is Foo Camp? One answer would be: it's everything those joyless affairs are not.

The phrase they like to use is unconference. Like-minded participants are invited, they gather, and they decide then, amongst themselves, what they'd like to talk about and what they'd like to hear. If you're of a mind to give a presentation, you put your name up and nominate a time and place. And then off you go.

This was my experience from Friday evening to Sunday afternoon. It was one of the most stimulating, entertaining and enjoyable things I have ever done. Various others have already reported on it. I'll add a little more.

Most Exciting:

My inner entrepreneur was fully-charged listening to the story of Rod Drury's latest project. NZ's Hi-Tech Entrepreneur of the Year is not resting on his laurels. He has pulled together a team of extremely capable people and they are primed. In fewer than six months they have sized up the market for accounting and banking software for small businesses and conceived an online service - 'Xero' - that will take care of the whole book-keeping enchilada from Goldstein to Government.

Drury is on the TradeMe board. He thought three quarters of a billion was a good number. He thinks it would be 'interesting' to put the first billion dollar deal on the board. I'm co-hosting with Finlay Macdonald on his Sunday morning show on Radio Live this weekend, and you bet we'll be getting Mr Xero on the wireless for a chat.

Also Damned Exciting:
Richard Simpson is by no means letting go of his Carlaw Park stadium idea. Travelators! I love travelators!

Most Dazzling:
The PitchBlack people get to do what most people of dream of: they fool around all day doing what they love (in this case: making really cool stuff with sound and light) and they get paid to take it all over the world to vast and dazzling events.

Most Unexpected:
David Haywood and I found ourselves undertaking, in an Open Source session, to make submissions to the select committee dealing with the copyright legislation. In a forum like this, if you have a tale to tell, you may well be urged to testify.

Most Civic-Minded:

Rob McKinnon will be on the Digital Democracy panel with Chris diBona and Alistair Thompson at the Great Blend in Wellington this week, and he is a man worth listening to. Idiot Savant, this one was for you. We found ourselves mentioning your name often as we were taken through firstly the UK site TheyWorkForYou.com, which is, in its own words, "a non-partisan website run by a charity which aims to make it easy for people to keep tabs on their elected and unelected representatives in Parliament, and other assemblies" and then on to the NZ version Rob has set up: TheyWorkForYou.co.nz

We searched speeches, we checked voting records, we went through MP asset registers, and we discussed a very good plan to marry up a few online social networking techniques with the select committee process.

Biggest Can of Worms:
There is not, it seems, a can big enough to cope with all the worms that attend copyright law and digital rights management in the twenty-first century. Talk about your irreconcilable tensions. Talk about your noble intentions undone at all turns. Judith Tizard came in on an artists' rights-leaning perspective. I sense that after many hours of explanations, illustrations and ardent protestations, she took away a new one.

If you wanted to get yourself well-briefed, you were in the right place. Peter Gutmann was able to offer chapter and verse on the Vista suicide note, and there were Open Source people all over the shop.

You Put Some In, You Get Some Out:
I talked about the rise and stall of speechesdotcom, and building a storytelling facility into a dynamic speech generator. In turn, I got a clutch of excellent fresh suggestions from Mark Cubey, John Houlker and various Pitch Black guys. Thank you all.

I've Had A Foo

My only regret - not being able to see everything. I especially regret missing the One Laptop per Child session. I might have suggested modifying it to make room for a lunch box. Which reminds me that neither did I get to the hardware hacking session.

It was just a total treat. Everywhere you turned, you met good people with great ideas and an enthusiasm to share them. I didn't touch a single mint all weekend.

One phrase from Don Brash's Orewa barnburner makes a cameo in the speech delivered today by John Key.

In 2004 Dr Brash pushed the alarm button on the "dangerous drift towards racial separatism."

John Key, being a uniter rather than a divider, has plumped instead for a cause behind which no right-thinking Kiwi would not rally. We are seeing, the speech declares, "a dangerous drift toward social and economic exclusion."

So far, so uncontroversial. If there is anyone in New Zealand who warms to the notion of families that have been jobless for more than one generation, or families destroyed by alcohol and P addiction, or kids going to school with empty stomachs, they're being awfully quiet about it.

It is, nonetheless, a sound enough political strategy for a leader of the opposition to identify a glaring problem and then excoriate the government of the day for failing to tackle it. The government "mish-mash" of policies, Key tells us, isn't working and naturally, the answer does not lie in "just throwing more money at the problem". In the best Simpsons style he gets in a Montgomery Burns line or two about those bureaucrats down in Wellington, and just to reinforce the Dubya persona as the outsider with no taste for politics-as-usual, he declares:

Yes, the government has a hugely important role in creating opportunities. But no government sitting on high will ever come up with the grand solution to all New Zealand's problems. After all, even the most experienced and intelligent Cabinet will still be made up of politicians!

But let's get a look, as they say in less refined circles, at the money shot. What will the leader of the opposition do that is better or different?

One argument seems to be this: perhaps businesses in the private sector and the non-profits can do a better job, with the support and encouragement of government (furnished, one presumes, by a better class of bureaucrat than the kind presently formulating a mish-mash of policies.)

The "mission of my leadership' he declares, "will be to invigorate and support us all to do our bit."

As far as specifics go, there are a few tasters: he suggests we could encourage some public-spirited businesses to help provide school lunches. Presumably not the ones who are presently running soft drink vending machines on school properties.

He likes Project K. He likes Big Buddy.

None of it is especially startling, but it may well be sufficient for his purposes. The strategy seems to be: damn the current lot as incompetent and wasteful, promise a better tomorrow as the motivator-and-aspirer-in-chief, and tip your hat to the talented people of the private sector as the people who can do a superior job of providing prosperity than you, a humble politician.

Overlying it all, however, is something more intriguing. The title of the speech is "The Kiwi Way." In defining this he talks first about how foreigners see New Zealanders:

They typically say we are friendly and modest people; we are inventive and empathetic; we are proud of the natural beauty of our country; we believe in working hard and getting rewarded for it; we think no one is born superior to anyone else and that everybody deserves a fair crack in life.

Developing this idea of a universal New Zealand perspective, he says:

As New Zealanders, we have grown up to believe in and cherish an egalitarian society. We like to think that our children's futures will be determined by their abilities, their motivation and their hard work. They will not be dictated by the size of their parent's bank balance or the suburb they were born in.

We want all kids to have a genuine opportunity to use their talents and to get rewarded for their efforts.

These, too are sound enough politics. Any good leader tries to find some common ground we can all agree upon. But there is a discouraging facet to it. The phrase 'The Kiwi Way' is then deployed through the speech as a kind of veiled threat. Disagree with this proposition and you are denying the Kiwi Way. In that respect, it has the same hegemony as the Mainstream New Zealanders argument.

This may in fact be the true distinction between the two major parties. On the National side, difference has been something to approach warily, with a sharp stick. They seem to fret about anything they perceive to be a threat to the cohesion of the nation. Labour, by contrast, has consistently championed diversity, identity politics and cultural variety.

This 'Kiwi Way' is all very well, but it seems dispiritingly similar in tone to 'My Way or the Highway'.

Around today's news in sixty seconds.

1. Jayden Comes Home. Continuing last week's hard line on criminal justice theory: did you notice how much weight Jayden's Mum lost in prison? Join the dots.

2. The Elephant In The Unaffordable Room. Let's run a sweep: how many more news stories will we get this year about the unaffordability of houses without hearing the dreaded words Capital Gains Tax?

I see some momentum gathering for the argument that the solution might be to stop the artificial land-rationing imposed by planners in cities such as Auckland. "Look at Houston," they say "It just keeps expanding outwards, without limitation, and houses are much more affordable there." Cities like Houston, however, have no waterfront. Are we allowing for that important distinction?

3. Telecom: From Bad To Worse? An idle thought: does Telecom happen to have any investment interest in Venezuela's biggest phone company?

4. State of the President. George W Bush is clearing his throat to deliver a speech that must sure as hell have been hard to write. Here, as a scene setter, Letterman's Top 10 George W. Bush Moments.

5. That's UnAustralian. If thugs were to use an Australian flag to roll up Lebanese women and abduct them from the Big Day Out, and the organisers were then to announce that they were thinking of banning the use of flags, would John Howard and his baying supporters finally grasp the point?