There was this guy and he had a girlfriend called Lorraine
who was very pretty and he liked her a lot.  One day he went
to work to find a new girl had started.  Her name was Claire Lee
and she was absolutely gorgeous.

He became quite besotted with her and after a while it became
obvious that she was interested in him too.  But this guy was a
loyal man and he wouldn’t do anything with Claire Lee while he was
still going out with Lorraine.

He decided that there was nothing for it but to break up with her
and go out with the new girl.  He planned several times to tell
Lorraine but he couldn’t bring himself to do it.

One day they went for a walk along the river bank when Lorraine
slipped and fell into the river. The current carried her off and she
drowned.  The guy stopped for a moment by the river and then ran
off smiling and singing…….
“I can see Claire Lee now Lorraine has gone”.

A sad Bassett Hound was telling his troubles to his friend.
“I’m depressed.  I think negative thoughts.  I’m always bored and always tired.”
“Why not go see a psychiatrist?” suggested the friend.
“Well, I would,” said the Bassett Hound, “except that I’m not allowed on the couch.”

A tiny but dignified old lady was among a group looking at an art exhibition in a newly opened gallery. Suddenly one
contemporary painting caught her eye.

“What on earth,” she inquired of the artist standing nearby, “is that?”

He smiled condescendingly. “That, my dear lady, is supposed to be a mother and her child.”

Well, then,” snapped the little old lady, “why isn’t it?”

I find this sort of comment (quoted from the dim post) disturbing.

The Families Commission has a stated position in relation to the referendum, and as a Families Commissioner it makes sense for Christine Rankin to make sure that she does not contravene that line and speak out by campaigning in a way that would be inappropriate.

Is it just me, or has democratic government crossed a line when it’s branches are taking positions in political issues?

How can the public decide on an issue when multiple government departments (and organisations funded from the public purse) are telling them one side of the story, and only privately funded organisations are able to put the opposition arguments?

They then have the unmittigated gaul to describe their opponents as “well funded”.

This month’s rankings are over the break.

Alexa = Alexa ranking

NZ ranking = Alexa NZ ranking

Technorati.com authority score (1 if none)

HD Score calculated Alexa*AlexaNZ/Authority/10000. Greens blog multiplied by 80.

All data was downloaded this evening.

Notes:

1. The criteria here are looser than Tumeke! Generally we are more relaxed, and include all blogs that post items interesting to the general public. This is pretty much most things outside of strictly “this is what I did today” style blogs. We also include blogs that are defunct, as many still are read for months after closing. What exactly this means is being fleshed out, but that’s a process that’s not yet finished.

2. If you have asked and have not been included, or know of a blog that’s not here please feel free to let me know – politely! I keep thinking I have lost things but not finding them… so if I’ve missed you let me know. Ditto for classifications.

3. There are no prizes for asking why frog blog is “out of place”. Because the blog is only part of that site, I cannot justify calculation on the same basis as blogs that are the sole feature of their site. Strictly speaking, it should be on the “cannot calculate” list. The Frog score is now multiplied by 7, as this appears more fair, based on their Tumeke! score and Authority.

4. Tumeke! data isn’t out yet for May, so the rankings shown here are from two months ago. I’ll update when I can after it comes out.

Key

Right Leaning Political Blog

Left Leaning Political Blog

Libertarian Political Blog

Green Political Blog

Anarchist Blog

Christian Issues and/or Author

Economic Issues and Analysis

Rural Issues and Lifestyle

Feminist Issues

Green/Environmental Issues

Queer Issues

Defunct Blog

Note: Original Blog list, and original concept from Tumeke, who have a more considered ranking of the NZ blogosphere here. No Hamsters were harmed in the compiling of these statistics, just egos!

Apparently Barnardos didn’t see the joke.

Obviously with the interviewer being the same person as the interviewee no one is going to mistaken this for a serious interview, although some serious points are made throughout.

Sandy began a job as an elementary school counselor and she was eager to help. One day during recess she noticed a girl standing by herself on one side of a playing field while the rest of the kids enjoyed a game of soccer at the other.
Sandy approached and asked if she was all right.

The girl said she was.

A little while later, however, Sandy noticed the girl was in the same spot, still by herself. Approaching again, Sandy offered, “Would you like me to be your friend?”

The girl hesitated, then said, “Okay,” looking at the woman suspiciously.

Feeling she was making progress, Sandy then asked, “Why are you standing here all alone?”

“Because,” the little girl said with great exasperation, “I’m the goalie!”

Click for full size.

Seems to pretty much cover the standard media response to any important death, and with a few modifications, pretty much any even regarded as major.

Source.

This was in the “Bob Levey’s Washington” column in the Washington
Post.  Every year he compiles and prints the “Best T-shirts of the
Summer”:

1) (around a picture of dandelions) I Fought the Lawn and the Lawn
Won

2) So Few Men, So Few Who Can Afford Me

3) I Suffer Occasional Delusions of Adequacy

4) God Made Us Sisters, Prozac Made Us Friends

5) If They Don’t Have Chocolate In Heaven, I Ain’t Going

6) At My Age, I’ve Seen It All, Done It All, Heard It All…
I Just Can’t Remember It All

7) My Mother Is A Travel Agent For Guilt Trips

I Just Do What The Voices Inside My Head Tell Me To Do

9) (Worn by a pregnant woman) A Man Did This To Me, Oprah

10) If It’s Called Tourist Season, Why Can’t We Hunt Them?

11) Senior Citizen:  Give Me My Damn Discount

12) Princess, Having Had Sufficient Experience With Princes,
Seeks Frog

13) No, It Doesn’t Hurt (on a “well-tattooed gentleman”)

14)     (on the back of a passing motorcyclist)
If You Can Read This, My Wife Fell Off

15) I Used To Be Schizophrenic, But We’re OK Now

16)    (Over the outline of the state of Minnesota)
My Governor Can Beat Up Your Governor

17) Veni, Vedi, Visa: I came. I Saw. I Did a Little Shopping.

18) What If The Hokey Pokey Is Really What It’s All About

19) I Didn’t Climb to the Top of the Food Chain to Be a Vegetarian

20) (on the Front) Yale Is Just One Big Party
(on the back) With a $25,000 Cover Charge

21) Coffee, Chocolate, Men…Some Things Are Just Better Rich

22) Liberal Arts Major…Will Think For Money

23) Growing Old is Inevitable; Growing Up is Optional

24) IRS — Be Audit You Can Be

25) Gravity…It’s Not Just a Good Idea.  It’s the Law.

26) If You Want Breakfast In Bed, Sleep In the Kitchen

27) Wanted:  Meaningful Overnight Relationship

28) The Old Pro…Often Wrong…Never In Doubt

29) If At First You Don’t Succeed, Skydiving Isn’t For You

30) Old Age Comes at a Bad Time

31) In America, Anyone Can Be President.
That’s One of the Risks You Take.

32) First Things First, but Not Necessarily in That Order.

(I started this post many days ago, but never until now managed to finish it.)

There’s something people easily forget, that the Susan Boyle saga reminds us.

Let me illustrate with the example of Tiger Woods. There is absolutely no doubt, that of all the professional golfers today, he is the best. Zero.

But Take Tiger Woods is simply the best golfer who has decided to pursue a professional career. It is almost certain that there are other people in the world with more talent, however many have never played golf. Many of those who have may have been bored by the game. Many again might have decided that they did not have what it took to withstand the pressure to perform, or of the media.

But they are out there. I remember reading a story about a man who was unable for visa reasons to travel outside France. Inside France, he won every Tennis tournament going. But because he was unable to travel, he never got to the top of the rankings. Another story I once read was about a golfer in Canada who was brilliant but due to a mental disability didn’t travel either.

In singing and talent competitions, you sometimes hear people told “you have the whole package”. Generally this means that the person is able to sing well, can dance and is attractive in appearance, and usually also means they have a good attitude. Music producers seek these people, because these are the people who are most easily turned into a success story. People might not be blown away by their singing, but the fact that they’re easy on the eye makes up for that.

The problem is that while people with such mix are rare, most people who have succeeded in the world of music do have “the whole package”. We’re now at the point where pretty much every song you’re going to hear on a commercial radio station is sung by someone young and good looking.

When I saw her first mentioned on Kiwiblog, it was with the comment that “you think she’s going to be terrible then she opens her mouth”. I watched carefully, looking for the signs of her lack of talent.

My search was in vain. What I saw, and still see, is a bubbly, caring, talented woman.

I’m not sure why other people can see these things and I can’t. Maybe the fact that I knew she was going to be good made the difference.

I have a friend who lived in one of Otago University’s halls of residence for some years. He once told me that at the start of the year, he had noted the physical beauty of many of his female fellow residents. After observing them over the course of the year, he gradually crossed most of them off his mental list. While they might have been beautiful on the outside, their behaviour pointed to ugliness in other areas.

Susan Boyle spent her life looking after her mother. Michael Jackson spent his life trying to be a child. By the end of his life, he was a lost soul, completely out of touch with his finances, racial background, and many other things.

I know which one I’d rather listen to. There are plenty of “whole” packages out there, but to me, those packages are too often empty. I’d rather have a package that’s falling apart but full of kindness, grounded life experience and simply a genuine person, not a fake façade.

Um, how on earth is a supreme court nominee supposed to be a good judge when her record shows that her decisions do not stack up?

And we’re not talking about 10 or 20% here, or even a majority. Sotomayor’s “fail” rate is now a whopping 66%!

That’s not someone who should be on an appellate bench, let alone the top court in the USA, who can override even the congress and president.

It also makes you wonder how lax Obama’s screening was, for a whopper like that (before the last decision, the rate was 60% – still extremely high and wrong more often than not) to miss his attention.

Update: Ok, now I read that 4 out of 6 have been overturned. So that percentage is not quite fair, it’s just the percentage that were referred to the higher court. Clearly a lot of the remainder would be fine or they’d have been referred too.

Well, it looks like we’re just short of the 50 blogger mark on the political spectrum grid.

I found a couple of emails in my spam filter since I put up the last version of the chart, so that brings it up to 49.

Still plenty that haven’t contributed, especially from the higher ranked left wing blogs – c’mon guys, I won’t bite.

A few of these are showing their age…
REV JERRY FALWELL:
Because the chicken was gay! Isn’t it obvious? Can’t you people
see the plain truth in front of your face? The chicken was going
to the “other side.” That’s what “they” call it: the “other side.”
Yes, my friends, that chicken is gay. And, if you eat that
chicken, you will become gay too. I say we boycott all chickens
until we sort out this abomination that the liberal media
whitewashes with seemingly harmless phrases like “the other side.”
That chicken should not be free to cross the road. It’s as plain
and simple as that.

KEN STARR:
I intend to prove that the chicken crossed the road at the behest
of the president of the United States of America in an effort to
distract law enforcement officials and the American public from
the criminal wrong doing our highest elected official has been
trying to cover up. As a result, the chicken is just another pawn
in the president’s ongoing and elaborate scheme to obstruct
justice and undermine the rule of law. For that reason, my staff
intends to offer the chicken unconditional immunity provided he
co-operates fully with our investigation. Furthermore, the chicken
will not be permitted to reach the other side of the road until
our investigation and any Congressional follow-up investigations
have been completed. (We also are investigating whether Sid
Blumenthal has leaked information to the Rev. Jerry Falwell,
alleging the chicken to be homosexual in an effort to discredit
any useful testimony the bird may have to offer, or at least to
ruffle his feathers.)

PAT BUCHANAN:
To steal a job from a decent, hardworking American.

DR. SEUSS:
Did the chicken cross the road?
Did he cross it with a toad?
Yes! The chicken crossed the road,
But why it crossed, I’ve not been told!

ERNEST HEMINGWAY:
To die. In the rain.

MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.:
I envision a world where all chickens will be free to cross roads
without having their motives called into question.

GRANDPA:
In my day, we didn’t ask why the chicken crossed the road.
Someone told us that the chicken crossed the road, and that
was good enough for us.

ARISTOTLE:
It is the nature of chickens to cross the road.

KARL MARX:
It was a historical inevitability.

SADDAM HUSSAIN:
This was an unprovoked act of rebellion and we were quite
justified in dropping 50 tons of nerve gas on it.

RONALD REAGAN:
What chicken?

CAPTAIN JAMES T. KIRK:
To boldly go where no chicken has gone before.

FOX MULDER:
You saw it cross the road with your own eyes. How many more
chickens have to cross before you believe it?

FREUD:
The fact that you are at all concerned that the chicken crossed
the road reveals your underlying sexual insecurity.

BILL GATES:
I have just released eChicken 98, which will not only cross roads,
but will lay eggs, file your important documents, and balance your
checkbook — and Internet Explorer is an inextricable part of
eChicken.

EINSTEIN:
Did the chicken really cross the road or did the road move
beneath the chicken?

BILL CLINTON:
I did not cross the road with THAT chicken. What do you mean
by chicken? Could you define chicken please?

LOUIS FARRAKHAN:
The road, you will see, represents the black man. The chicken
crossed the “black man” in order to trample him and keep him down.

THE BIBLE:
And God came down from the heavens, and He said unto the chicken,
“Thou shalt cross the road.” And the chicken crossed the road,
and there was much rejoicing.

COLONEL SANDERS:
I missed one?

Cars. They can be dangerous.

Oh, and don’t stand behind the door if a cow is trying to get it.

Ha. I’ve just won 1 million pounds, and even better I didn’t even need to purchase a ticket!

Who needs Big Wednesday?

Organization <kevin_jones@rrohio.com>
reply-to    britishtelecom51@gmail.com
to    Iinfo@co.uk
date    Fri, Jun 26, 2009 at 9:45 PM
subject    2009 Online British Winner

9:45 PM (1 hour ago)

You have just been awarded,1,000,000.00 GBP in the 2009 Online British Lottery,send us your full details:

Full Name:
Full Address:
Status:
Occupation:
Country:

Repiy To This Email:britishtelecom51@gmail.com

Funny, you’d think they’d not need a gmail address… maybe their server is having trouble.

And they should use a spellcheck – with those spelling mistakes this poor fellow could easily be mistaken for a scammer.

-  Ratio of an igloo’s circumference to its diameter:  Eskimo Pi
-  2.4 statute miles of intravenous surgical tubing at Yale University Hospital:  1 I.V. League
-  2000 pounds of Chinese soup:  Won ton
-  1 millionth mouthwash:  1 microscope
-  Speed of a tortoise breaking the sound barrier:  Mach Turtle
-  Time it takes to sail 220 yards at 1 nautical mile per hour: Knot-furlong
-  365.25 days of drinking low-calorie beer because it’s less filling:  1 lite year
-  16.5 feet in the Twilight Zone: 1 Rod Sterling
-  Half of a large intestine: 1 semicolon
-  1000 aches: 1 megahurtz
-  Weight an evangelist carries with God: 1 billigram
-  Basic unit of laryngitis: 1 hoarsepower
-  Shortest distance between two jokes: A straight line
-  Time between slipping on a peel and smacking the pavement:  bananosecond
-  A Half-Bath: 1 demijohn
-  453.6 graham crackers: 1 pound cake
-  Given the old adage “a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step,”  the first step of a one-mile journey: 1 Milwaukee
-  1 million microphones: 1 megaphone
-  1 million bicycles: 2 megacycles
-  365.25 days: 1 unicycle
-  2200 mockingbirds: two kilomockingbirds
-  10 cards: 1 decacards
-  1 kilogram of falling figs: 1 Fig Newton
-  1000 grams of wet socks: 1 literhosen
-  1 millionth of a fish: 1 microfiche
-  1 trillion pins: 1 terrapin
-  1 million billion picolos: 1 gigolo
-  10 rations: 1 decoration
-  100 rations: 1 C-ration
-  10 millipedes: 1 centipede
-  3 1/3 tridents: 1 decadent
-  10 monologs: 5 dialogs
-  5 dialogs: 1 decalog
-  2 monograms: 1 diagram
-  8 nickels: 2 paradigms
-  2 wharves: 1 paradox
-  100 Senators: Not 1 decision

[cross posted from Yes Vote Fail Blog]

This referendum isn’t, wasn’t and never will be about “hitting” children.

It’s about smacking – which all will agree is a much more specific thing. Smacking generally is regarded as force applied to a hand or to the bottom in response to an offense by the child. The old law allowed this and other force, with the proviso it be reasonable in the circumstances.

But by using the wider and much more generic term “hit”, the Yes vote site fails to even participate in the debate. Hitting means, and is intended to invoke images of, force applied in any way, to any part of the body, safe, reasonable or not (and usually not). By doing so, they are able to lump together discipline (which is designed to decrease over time as it achieves it’s long term goal) and abuse (which is always random according to the whim of the abuser).

New Zealand has a massive problem with the latter, and the S59 amendment bill outlawed the former.

But it’s not like the “yes vote” site endorses misleading statements for both sides – in fact, they’re selectively quite opposed to them…

It is clear from the referendum debate over the last two weeks that the question is misleading…

The question is, why is a site that advertises it’s presence with misleading statements complaining about what it considers to be misleading statements made by others?

Oh, and it’s even worse than that. While the “yes vote” lobby obviously don’t allow people like me to comment and correct their site, the referendum question was put to public submission.

The original question we submitted to the Clerk of the House of Representatives back in early 2007 was “should a smack in the context of positive parental correction be a criminal offence in NZ?”

As required by the CIR Act 1993, the Clerk published the question in the Gazette and advertised the question in all major papers with an invitation for anyone to submit their opinion on the wording of the question over a 28 day period.

Only two submissions were received. One from a couple who stated their opinion that a smack should never be a criminal offence, and the other from the Ministry of Justice.

Seems like Barnardos, Save teh Children, Unicef, Jigsaw, Ririki, Women’s Refuge, Epoch and Parents Center might have more credibility now had they said something then.

Practice what you preach FAIL.