Hmmm . . . anyone who reads this
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10811302
needs to quickly read this
http://profdavidnutt.wordpress.com/2012/06/11/smoke-without-fire-scaremongering-by-the-british-lung-foundation-over-cannabis-vs-tobacco/
Pretty sure you won't be reading it in the Herald though.

What? We're cool in Wellington? Cos for mayor we picked the person who managed to get her photo on the front page of the paper standing next to Peter Jackson?

I think most people were probably wilfully ignorant.

Scott, you were talking about Germans cWWII, and doesn't it also apply to those Lincoln students? For me it's not the symbolism that's offensive, it's their utter lack of satirical intent – or any kind of reflective thought – that's disturbing. That unthinking, follow-the-group mentality.

But. The phrase 'Lincoln ag student' has its own heavy burden of symbolism. How much of the liberal urban distaste for their party is actually some kind of, what's the word? Transference?

Last thing. I went to a great party in Jablonec in Czech in 1992 and we all sat in the garden shed drinking pilsners with a bust of Stalin someone had nicked given pride of place. It didn't seem in the least questionable. If everyone had dressed up in Red Army uniforms they'd bought cheap by the Brandenburg Gate it would have been much harder to pinpoint the mockery.

Um, okay, so in China there were economic criminals killing small children by lacing their milk with melamine *despite* the threat of the death penalty. In New Zealand (for argument's sake) such people would be allowed to live, yet oddly our milk appears to be sound.
Or am I living in a fool's paradise allowing my children access to dairy products?

Seriously, when we've done away with capitalism, who runs global telecommunications?

Um, apparently it's not obvious to everybody that even the capitalists are capable of running it on their own:
http://www.guide2.co.nz/money/news/business/parts-of-ngns-may-be-unlikely-to-be-economic-to-duplicate/11/4865

Yet more sorry reading on Gaza, placing the fighting in a context of a humanitarian disaster that was already two months old when Israel invaded:
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n01/roy_01_.html
Incidentally, anyone know how many Israelis were killed in 2008 by rockets fired from Gaza?

What an evening. The southerly died off, the cloud bank in the strait turned the colour and texture of psychedelic crushed velvet and now there's just the sound of waves on the gravel beach through the kitchen window.
And then you had to remind me about all this.
I have one question. What were you doing in 1991? I can barely remember, except that it was all pretty depressing what with the recession and benefit cuts and all, but that was the year Sweden introduced a carbon tax.
Now, 17 years later their carbon emissions are 9 per cent lower than they were in 1990 and their economy is 44 per cent larger.
Actually, I'd bet that Nick Smith had bugger all say in the Nat-ACT deal, and Key, English & Brownlee figure that with the economy going down the toilet our emissions will actually decline for a year or two anyway.
Still bloody depressing though.

Money quote from David Garrett in that HoS story?

"That was a stupid thing to say. But I might have said it stone cold sober."

In context (Key's to the left of Helen, climate change ain't happening) it obvious he joined the right political party.

Being affluent is not an absolute sign of success.
It can be an advantage.

I think it was Kathy Acker (__Blood & Guts in High School__ probably & maybe the time is right for her comeback?) who said the point of having money is to make things stay the same. They don't call them conservatives for nothing.