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Virulent outbreak of sarcasm

The always trustworthy and balanced Dim-Post made a shocking report: Blogger Implicates Clark in Toilet Paper Theft

Prime Minister Helen Clark has been accused of ‘high level involvement’ in the mysterious theft of a twelve-pack of super-absorbent toilet rolls belonging to political blogger Calvin Snail.

NZConservative responded with its own stunning revelations:  Blogger implicates Key in Power Outages

Moderate Centre-Left Wing Blogger "Dillsy" yesterday published irrefutable proof that John Key and National were directly behind the power outage across Wellington, in a deliberate ploy to embarrass the State Owned Enterprises that provide energy to the country, and by implication, Helen Clark.

Over in the States a high profile convert to the New Atheism gushes: The Loser Letters

An open letter to those spokesmen for the New Atheism who have labored mightily these last few years to sweep aside religion’s paralytic webs of superstition and prejudice, and to liberate the rest of our Species via Science and Enlightenment!
(more on this one tomorrow)

Crocodile versus Shark...and the winner is:

This is a real photo, from Australia this week

Whatever will the boffins come up with next?

Professor Richard Wiseman is a professor of psychology at Hertfordshire University.

And he has just presented his research into how your first name will affect how people view you.

His results can be found here.

Anyway just for fun I looked up to see how our Prime minister, Helen Clark,  and her major rival, John Key fare in the christian name stakes.

                                                       

	Success	Luck	Attractiveness
Helen	7.6	1.57	2.0
John	4.8	2.31	2.2

So Helen is perceived to be more successful than John but not as lucky and marginally less attractive.

How the good professors research will factor into the general election results later this year is at this point unknown.

Whether John Key's margin in the Luck factor combined with his slight edge over Helen Clark in the Attractiveness category be enough to overcome the margin she has over him on the Success scale only time will tell.

Of course John Key could take Professor Wiseman's research and put it to good use by changing his first name to James, Which not only tops the Success scale for males (13.0) but also scores highly in the other  two categories as well (5.6 and 8.4 respectively).

James  Key, works for me.

But then again Helen Clark could respond by dropping her first name and using her middle name Elizabeth which tops the list in the success factor for females.

Sadly, it would do little to help her in the  Luck or Attractiveness  departments  though.

Sir William Lyons must be spinning in his grave.

Way back in 1921, William Lyons, a 20 year old car salesman, bought a converted ex-army motorcycle with a stylish sidecar from one William Walmsley.

He liked it so much that he struck up a partnership with William Walmsley to mass produce the sidecars under the brand name Swallow Sidecars. A company launched in 1922.

It was a successful enterprise and  the empire upon which the sun never set was at its zenith.

William Lyons became more ambitious and started coach building elegant car bodies for the Austin 7 Chassis and motor. The car sold under the name Austin Swallow.

From there it was a short step to building their own car based upon a chassis and engine from Standard motor company, sold in the early thirties SS1. The company soon changed its name to SS Motors.

William Walmsley was content to stop there and in 1935 sold his share of the company to William Lyons.

Who in 1935 went on to produce 

Italian court rules that the 7th and 10th commandments can invalidate the 9th

There is a slight complication in the title since the Catholic, Orthodox and some Protestants  all use a slightly different numbering systems for the ten commandments.

In the interests of ecumenism I have gone with the Jewish system of numbering, which is also the one most familiar to the majority of us.

Anyway the text of the commandments are more or less the same regardless of how they are numbered

The commandments concerned are:

• Thou shalt not commit adultery

  Civil laws involving this commandment were repealed in Western nations years ago.  Hardly surprising given the number of politicians guilty of breaking this one. Sometimes there are consequences for their political future when they get caught out. Sometimes there are not.

We can easily think of examples of both the former and the later in New Zealand, Australia, the UK and nobody will forget the most famous political adulterer  of all who comes from the USA and whose wife has parlayed the wrong done to her into a political career and perhaps the ultimate prize in American politics itself.

• Thou shalt not bear false witness against your neighbor

Well its hard to legislate totally against malicious gossip - but in legal settings breaking this commandment is called perjury or sometimes slander or libel.

And it is perjury that the court of of Cassation, the highest appeal court in Italy has just ruled does not apply in special circumstances, circumstances related to the other two of the ten commandments mentioned.

• Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife

If you fancy someone else's wife  it is a sin  but not something that legislation could prevent nor something that there could be any unambiguous way of defining legally.

However the Italian case involves a woman who gave her lover her cell phone who then used it to taunt and threaten her husband. He was charged with abusive behaviour and she was charged with conspiracy.

The trouble was she lied to the court about giving her lover the cell phone, perjured herself in fact, breaking not only the 8th commandment but  also Italian perjury laws in the process.

Or perhaps not the latter since the Court of appeal has ruled that

“the fact of having a lover is a circumstance which causes injury to a person’s honour in a family and a social context”.

It was, therefore, legitimate to lie “if the intention is to conceal an extra-conjugal relationship”, even in a judicial investigation,

ergo she did not perjure  herself. So saith  the Court of Cassation, the highest Appeal court in Italy.

Perhaps they have bought into the idea Moses was stoned when  he bought them down from Mount Sinai,or  perhaps they were stoned themselves when they made this ruling. Of course there places where the courts would have ruled that this errant pair receive a sentence that would end up with them being stoned.

My guess is Bill Clinton would love it if this ruling   could be applied retrospectively to the United States.

As it is he remains a  perjurer. 

And when he hears about this ruling he will probably break the one about coveting your neighbour's ass - the Italian Court of Cassation.

Are New Zealand women really this trivial?

This was in the Sunday Star times and is a report on a TVNZ investigation into the sexual behavior of New Zealand women, a follow up to the infamous Durex survey which purportedly  shows Kiwi girls are the most promiscuous in the world.

TVNZ Sunday correspondent Janet McIntyre said there was anecdotal evidence from the five women on the show that the Durex survey findings were valid.

"There's a new kind of mating ritual sex is the point of entry into the relationship."

If the first-up sex wasn't any good women weren't prepared to waste their time progressing the relationship.

"There's no dating culture any more." In candid interviews about their sexual experiences some of the women who are all in their twenties felt empowered by having sex and wanted to celebrate and enjoy it.

McIntyre said all the women who had experienced one-night stands had been affected by alcohol, a term described by at least one expert in a report as "getting pissed and hooking up".

If the sole criteria for a relationship is "good sex" rather than a package deal that involves companionship, shared values, mutual understanding and shared experiences, as well as the sexual aspect of course then there is not much to look forward too for these women. All they will have in their future is childlessness and loneliness as their sexual allure fades, as it will.

Hopefully all this represents is the banality of the makers of New Zealand documentaries because if this is truly representative of modern  New Zealand women our culture has no future whatsoever and nor do our young women (and men). 

England trembles

A 4.7 magnitude earthquake has just struck England.

I still think this is a result of plate techtonics.

Pakistan knocks out Youtube

Yesterday morning when I posted about the Eurovision song contest I intended to use a video from Youtube  frame my post.

But alas Youtube was not there anymore - the "server not found" message consistently displayed in my browser.

Now the truth is out.

It appears that the Government of Pakistan ordered access to Youtube blocked throughout the land "because of content deemed offensive to Islam."

And when the Country's ISPs complied they succeeded, not only blocking  Youtube to users in Pakistan but to Youtube users all over the planet as well.

Anyway Youtube is all better now so I can use a video in this post - chosen because it is a beautiful thing in a sometimes ugly world, a hymn to the Resurrection of Christ - the most seminal event in human history and  because it has a peripheral connection to the previous post being the work of  Divna Ljubojevic, a native of Belgrade, the city where the Irish Turkey is due to sing in May.

This Irish turkey is going to sing in Belgrade

I am surprised that the Eurovision song contest is still going. Its older than most of us.

And all it ever produces is tack as far as I can tell.

It did bring Swedish group ABBA to prominence I suppose, but that was a very long time ago now and maybe they would have achieved fame and fortune anyway, who knows?

As it happens, the Irish who are generally good at making music came last, last year.

Embarrassing? I wouldn't think particularly so.

So their comeback for this years contest is Dustin the Turkey. 

And he is off to Belgrade to sing in this years competition, to be held in May.   

Of course this might well be an Irish piss take on the whole Eurovision thing which in my opinion is well past its use by date.

One of lifes little mysterys

Why do telemarketers always call just as you  sit  down down to dinner?