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Obama

I used to think that there were no differences of substance between the Right and Left of U.S. politics, per Nader and John Ralston Saul. The election of Bush Jr. showed me that I was wrong.
Obama’s secured the Democratic party candidacy. Good. It is nice to see that the most powerful democracy in the world won’t spend nearly a quarter-century with presidents alternating from two dinner tables – twenty years is quite long enough.
Obama will be working with Elizabeth Edwards on healthcare. Good. Healthcare is a huge mess in the U.S., concerns about healthcare cross partisan lines like no other issue. Obama’s weakness on healthcare also sent many voters to Clinton, who was stronger on this issue (e.g. ).
The election will be messy and nasty. The Republican strategists were ready to go mean on Clinton – they’ve been building ammo on her for years. Obama is much trickier, a relative naif with little dirt in his backstory, and what dirt there is has been played out in the dem primary. They’re left with all the dogwhistle stuff – he’s black, his name’s Hussein, he’s a secret muslim. There will be a lot of this crazy insinuation coming through until the election hits – witness this astonishing Fox News characterisation of a standard-issue fist bump as a terrorist fist jab.
The election should be a walk for Obama. It won’t be, though, because the U.S. is not a sane environment and its political culture has been thoroughly debased. Nevertheless, I eagerly anticipate the first president of the U.S. who’s not a white dude. He can’t be any worse than the current office holder.
Roll on the new era.

Borkhardt Hates You Too (2008)

I posted this on my LJ last week, but forgot to crosspost to the audience here. This is the 48 Hour Film we made this year (and by we, I mean, mostly other people, I just did writing then went home and crashed):

I think it’s rather good, I do. I think it survives the transition to small screen with panache, and bears rewatching quite well too. The city finals are tomorrow night, we didn’t make the cut (hence you being able to watch) but two other films at our heat did. I hope we get some recognition for technical stuff – I think this film is incredible to look at and the tech crew deserve muchas kudos for it..
For more 48 Hour fun, check out
Temporal Affairs, featuring occasional commenter here Jon Ball, and with some other friends of the morgue in behind-camera roles; and…
[Fraser, where’s your film? I thought it was on your LJ but just checked and is not there… I know I’ve watched it… someone linky?]

NZ Basketball Shambles

Wellington’s Saints finish the National Basketball League regular season with an unbeaten record at home, sitting at the top of the table with 14 wins over 4 losses. Media coverage: small story inside back page of newspaper, no art.
Meanwhile, the Auckland Stars get kicked out of the playoffs because they didn’t pay their league fee.
Just six years ago we finished fourth in the basketball world championships, and now we’re stumbling around in the very definition of amateur league. Man.

Step Forward, Steps Back

Sometimes study is like this: you spend all day trying to get through your articles-to-read folder, and when you finish you’re glad that there’s only 10% more articles in there than when you began.
(Because the thing about reading journal articles is they reference other articles and you realise you have to read those too. And so on.)

Israel announces willingness to bomb Iran

Israel warns it will attack Iran:

“If Iran continues with its programme for developing nuclear weapons, we will attack it. The sanctions are ineffective,” Transport Minister Shaul Mofaz told the mass-circulation Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper. “Attacking Iran, in order to stop its nuclear plans, will be unavoidable.”

Me, Feb 2006:

The strategy is not to actually start another war – there is no resource to invade and conquer Iran, and Iran’s not in a position to move outside its borders – but to create a diplomatic situation that will allow Israel to conduct a bombing campaign on Iran without censure from the rest of the world.
Israel is champing at the bit to do this, and they know there’s not a thing Iran can do to stop them or retaliate against them. But the diplomatic costs would be huge, still. A bit more fearmongering around Iran is necessary before this option really becomes viable.

This Friday, We Are Linky It

Art on the street:
Little People (via GrizzlyDog):

Via the knifeman, an incredible animated wall – I watched this with my mouth hanging open:

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.
Also:
A life in polaroids, with sad ending. (via xenogram)
And file under ‘useful’, the psychologist who turned ordinary folks into aggressive prison guards in the deeply unsettling Stanford Prison Experiment tells you how to resist all kinds of influence.

World Environment Day

Today, Wellington is hosting World Environment Day, which occasion it is marking with a public debate (yesterday), a free concert (tomorrow), a family day (day after tomorrow)… er, there isn’t really anything on today at all, is there?
The exception being the panel discussion, “How can we decarbonize the planet”, with a pretty impressive panel – climate change Minister David Parker, head of the UN Environmental Programme Achim Steiner, President of Kiribati Anote Tong and head of the IPCC Dr Rajendra Pachauri.
As a dscussion it never really got going. Each person made personal remarks, and after that and a late start there wasn’t much time for questions at the end, and the questions were all rubbish anyway (par for the course at every single public event I’ve ever been to, the questions are *always* rubbish).
The speakers made much of the value of putting price signals into the economic system to encourage responsible behaviour. Pachauri made the (to me) astonishing claim that acting to mitigate CO2 emissions might well incur a negative cost (i.e. make money! All speakers indicated that NZ was not without influence on the global stage, claiming that advancements in carbon emission reduction here would be watched very closely all around the world. Both Parker and Pachauri outright said that New Zealand could inspire other countries into action.
It was a good session, if not particularly stunning and not as enlightening as I’d hoped for. Nice to see the lecture theatre packed to the gills for it, too.

Drinking Liberally 2

The second Drinking Liberally in Wellington happened last night. Michael Cullen, Finance Minister, came to talk on the back of his electoral-fighting budget – he spoke well about his background and the principles of social democracy, then took a bunch of questions which challenged him on his claims to being a Keynesian and asked about the Treaty resolution process, among other things. Before and after Cullen was mingling, and I was pleased to see a fair few faces there who were also at the one before, even though once again I couldn’t stick around much past 7pm.
It all felt a lot more sure of itself this time, it seemed that the mingling and conversation which was so hesitant at the first one was pretty engaged this time out. All as it should be – the concept is a perfect fit for a small capital city with a strong liberal base and plenty of bars… It was promising, and I’ll be along again, hopefully to get some solid chatter time in for a change.

MND: OneTrackMind gig Saturday

So, you get told you’ve got at most five years to live. What do you do?
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Welly crew will have seen on the cover of this week’s Capital Times a dude who’s skateboarding over 200K from Taihape to here. He’s part of the Ride For MND massive, and he’s heading down for the One Track Mind fundraising gig. Ride For MND was set up by Duncan, who was diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease and decided he was going to do his best to raise money for MND research.
I’ve known Duncan since schooldays, and he’s really tight with my sister and her husband and with a bunch of other good friends of mine. So, Wellingtonians, this: please try and get along to the gig. It’s $10 on the door for a great night, and you are contributing to a really good cause.

Ride for MND in association with a lot of people, presents:

Barnaby Weir (Black Seeds)
Sleepy Demons
The Postures
Daniel Bohan – The Antihero
Newtown Street Justice
+ Munt FM & VBC DJs spinning the latest in aural awesomeness
$10 Doorsales only.
SATURDAY 7 JUNE 2008
BODEGA

If you can’t make it along, but want to contribute, there’s a donate page over on the Ride For MND site.
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So, then. This is what you do.