Category: Uncategorized

Me, two weeks ago:

Food and produce labelling continues to be a massively important battleground. At stake isn’t just animal welfare, but every aspect of food production in our society, and the attendant impact on our health and well-being.
There is no good excuse for opposition to effective labelling. Companies fight it solely because they know their customers would be unhappy if they were better informed.

NZPA, yesterday:

Sue Kedgley’s bill to enforce a labelling regime detailing GE ingredients in food was voted down in Parliament yesterday night.
Labour and National joined forces to defeat it 99-20 on its first reading, despite the Green Party MP saying it was supported by the vast majority of consumers.
Under the bill, GE ingredients and GE-derived ingredients would have to be shown on food labels, as well as the country of origin of all food items.

Dammit.
(My awareness of the happenings at Parliament courtesy No Right Turn.)

New face in the blogosphere. Well maybe not so new as a face – a lot of you have been subjected to his grinning visage when you went off to worship him…
That’s right! Leon the God, exiled King of France, has a blog, and is even updating!
All the faithful can check it out here.
(Cheez. Everyone got blog now. Leon got blog. Chewbacca got blog. Even Geoffrey Chaucer got blog. Cheez.)

Quick post while I have a connection.
Weather has been miserable this week. Was considering this the other day and developing the ongoing analysis of how we talk about climate change and weather events and whether global warming is caused by humans. (It’s a frame-related point, so those with Lakoff in their toolbox will get it easier.) Namely –
We/the media allows the debate over global warming to be framed in terms of scientific inquiry – is there still, scientifically speaking, doubt over whether global warming is caused by human activity?
(Answer: yes, of course. That’s how science works. The doubt is massively diminished, but it’s still there, and that means certain organizations will have room to resist any controls on carbon emissions and Kyoto and so forth.)
The frame in which we should be discussing this is one of risk assessment. Is it acceptable to risk that global warming is caused by human activity?
(Answer: no. Not even remotely. This is the fate of the millions we’re talking about.)
Talking about it in terms of science assumes a much higher burden of proof than is appropriate. Allowing the debate to be framed in this way is making it much more difficult for those arguing for urgent change.
(The fact that, despite this unhelpful frame, we’re still winning the debate is a pretty clear sign of how serious things are getting.)
—
Worth a read: Making Light reads a 1939 book on social control.

I’m living somewhere new again, on the Terrace in central Wellington, in my brother’s apartment while he does a Euro-mission. Internet will be infrequent while here as he has no phone line, but right now I’ve found an unsecured wireless connection to leech off. It wasn’t there yesterday so I’ll take advantage while I can.
It is damn good to be back in Wellington and able to walk places. This is my habitat; I get a little pleasure rush walking out the door and finding myself in the heart of the city. Now all I need is an affordable plan to live in similar locale long-term. Hmm. This dissolute bohemian life has its complications.
On the Terrace reminds me that I read Maurice Gee’s Blindsight the other day, and enjoyed it very much. A crucial piece of action in that book happens on the Terrace. Blindsight is a novel inspired by now-deceased Wellington street personality, ‘bucket man’. Now Wellington has a new street personality, ‘blanket man’. I approve that Wellington’s homeless person has a Wikipedia entry.
Finally picked up Pynchon’s Mason and Dixon again. Despite enjoying it very much, I stalled out on it a couple months ago around the 450-page mark. Now it’s back on the table and delivering reliable laughs once again, even if it is too clever by ‘alf. I think I was vulnerable to stall-out because of the complete lack of narrative momentum – the story isn’t going anywhere at all, and it takes its sweet time to not go there. But it’s just so much fun to read.
In a flurry of creative energy I started writing a short story last night. I crashed out on it only about an hour in, with the heavy-lidded thing going on – too little sleep the previous night. Nice to have popped something new, though; making space for the new has been tricky as I’ve tried to be so diligent about resolving the old. Even that’s disingenous, of course, since this is a riff off an idea I had some years ago, but it feels new, which counts for something.
Life continues to deliver interesting times, but I feel I have my footing back and everything is as it should be. I’m starting to run the show again. Getting things in their correct alignment; everything takes longer than expected but it’s worth it to get things right. Perhaps I should resume some kind of meditative practice to set this pattern in? Or perhaps I will simply voice that thought in this blog as a simple alternative, recording intent and thus absolving self from action. The mind is a terrible thing to second-guess.
Also, considering the number of times in the last couple of weeks I have had to negotiate Complications arising from communications failings, it occurs to me that I am not speaking much to people at the moment. I would suspect myself of failing to heed my own advice if it wasn’t so clear that it’s working for me. Do ye as I say, not as I do.
It is an apartment with a balcony. There is no cat here.

Tonight I spent a couple hours in Krazy Lounge nursing a coffee, listening to a jazz quintet and reading last year’s John Ralston Saul book on globalization.
Finally, I felt like a fucking citizen.

Over in Edinburgh, the lovely coffee lifeform devotes many hours to the charity Pass IT On, which passes donated computers on to those who need ’em. It’s good work, and the kind of thankless low-key toil that stays in the background of our big ol’ society.
It took a step into the foreground this past week, with a fundraising concert organised by the caffeinated one (at the cost of god knows how many hours of her time, and a cigarettes-and-coffee bill running into the thousands of pounds), which she reports raised an astonishing seven and half thousand pounds. Blimey. And, by all accounts, it was a tremendously successful night of entertainment to boot.
I know a lot of people who sink energy into community projects and groups – lots of little things here and there, and occasionally big things like this. It’s nice to give a shout-out to a particular moment of success, but really this just reminds me how much respect I have for all people who put some time to make a difference just because they believe it’s worthwhile. You are all amazing.
Nice one Cat. Seriously impressed over here.

Care of Scoop:
Two of New Zealand’s largest battery hen producers have bowed to pressure from animal advocacy organisation SAFE following calls for mandatory labelling of egg cartons, and say they will label their battery eggs…
Good. About time.
Battery farming of hens is one of the most depressing examples of animal abuse in the name of increased profit, and the fact that it has taken this long and this much campaigning to even get eggs labelled effectively is a sad indictment of industry practices.
Of course, for corporate industry, the profit motive trumps all else, and it can be no other way. Profit is what companies are for. The only real check on the profit motive comes from consumer ability to make informed purchasing choices. For this reason, food and produce labelling continues to be a massively important battleground. At stake isn’t just animal welfare, but every aspect of food production in our society, and the attendant impact on our health and well-being.
There is no good excuse for opposition to effective labelling. Companies fight it solely because they know their customers would be unhappy if they were better informed.
My unscientific impressions from travelling are that New Zealand is well behind the rest of the developed world in terms of food labelling. I hope this development is a sign of pending improvement.

I have never lived with a cat before. Thus, I don’t know how much of the following is idiosyncratic to this particular cat, or typical behaviour of the species; I suspect it’s mostly bloody typical.

• There are two important times of day for a cat: morning food time and evening food time. Morning food time begins when the human awakes and ends when actually fed. Evening food time begins as soon as morning food time ends, and ends when actually fed. Then evening food time begins again and continues until the human goes to sleep or, absentmindedly, feeds the cat again (whereupon, I imagine, a third evening food time would immediately begin).
• Cats like to be friendly and companionable, except when you are not about to put food in their bowl.
• If you spend a great deal of effort getting a roaring fire going in the fireplace, then leave to fetch a rewarding cup of tea, the cat will have appeared in whichever spot you intended to use to enjoy the fireplace and have your cup of tea. It will be asleep, but not so asleep that it cannot produce claws.
• If a cat puts a mouse on the floor before you, it means ‘you’re the boss’. If it keeps the dead mouse in its mouth and glares at you while blood drips on to the floor, it means ‘you’re next’.
• If it’s howling wind and rain outside, the cat will want to be let out the door to see for itself. Then it must be let back in immediately. The cat door is at the other end of the house and thus of no use at all in any way.
• Cats really don’t understand why we do anything we do, which is a good prompt to remind ourselves that, usually, neither do we.

I am enjoying living with a cat.

Once again I have the healthy. This is good. Being unwell was a real nuisance. The constant muscular ow was really driving me barmy.
I had a blood test the other week to try and figure out what was wrong with me. This was a minor personal milestone – the last time I had blood extracted was a very long time ago, fifteen years or more, and it was horrible. They couldn’t get blood out, jabbed me multiple times, veins collapsing left right and centre, all very frustrating and mildly traumatic. It didn’t give me a phobia or anything, but it certainly dampened any enthusiasm for donating blood… but the blood extraction this time out was quick and simple and painless, so that was cool.
Anyway, better now. The downside is I am now entirely well enough to work, so any slackness in the personal discipline goes straight and undiluted to the guilt centres. Curses.
I also learned something about masculine health etiquette, viz: How many days must one cough up blood Like A Man in order that going to the doctor becomes Acceptable Down The Pub? (Answer: Only two days.)
In other doctor-related news, I watched episode three of the new Doctor Who series last night, and it was bloody good. K9!

On Tuesday I play Ultimate. I’ve alluded to it a couple times on this blog, but this is the first time I’m saying it outright – I have become a player of Ultimate.
Ultimate is the sport with the frisbee. (Frisbee is a brand name, so technically it’s the sport with the flying disc, but that genie is never going back in the bottle, so.) It’s not quite like any other sport I’ve come across in a number of important ways. Most importantly, it has no referee. From a game design point of view this is very interesting.
How it works:

• Players call their own fouls or other violations; if the call is disputed, the disc is flipped to provide a 50/50 decision. The game is then got on with. (There’s a bit more to it than that, but this is sufficient summary for now.)
• Play stops when the frisbee goes out of bounds or hits the floor. To restart play, a member of the team winning possession grabs the frisbee from wherever it lands, taps it on the floor, and play begins immediately.
• The only breaks in play occur after points are scored. Then, teams can take time-out for discussion, and freely switch around players with their bench. When both teams signal their readiness to resume, the team who won the last point throws the disc to the other team and play begins.
• The only aspect of play external to what is happening on court is the clock; this ticks down the game time and never needs to be paused or reset. Its alarm signals the end of the game.

What has impressed me the most about the game is how efficient it is at delivering fun and avoiding ill-feeling. Every rule in the game is geared towards getting people out there throwing the disc with minimum time spent on anything else.
It’s a very elegant ruleset, and I have come to admire it greatly. I expect some of my own game design efforts will be affected by it in due course…
I choose this week to make a post about Ultimate because the Tuesday just gone, the team I’m in ‘Happy Creature’ posted a draw with top-of-the-table ‘Not 2 Serious’. It was a hell of a game. I didn’t play my best but I didn’t suck either, and I realised that I actually know how the play the game now – I have the basics down, I can see how the play comes together, I know how to work situations and set up defence. Of course, I don’t do all this with any great ability yet – mostly this knowledge manifests in ‘these are all the ways you royally screwed up this week’, but it feels good to know what the hell’s going on out there and it feels very good when I do stuff right.
So I have a new sport. It will never unseat the hallowed basketball in my personal sports pantheon, but it’s a mighty good time nonetheless.
(Oh, and for those few readers who were there that time years ago when we knocked Jon(not Gav) unconscious trying to play Ultimate – yeah, I can conclusively say it isn’t meant to be played like that. Poor Jon(not Gav).) (Edited because, um, I’m a dick with a bad memory basically.)