Road trip

Driving along one of Wellington's narrow winding roads with a footpath on one side I saw a child standing on the other side smiling at me. A blond, tousle haired, wee boy who looked about two. There was no one around. I pulled over, thinking an adult would pop out of a car or up from a path any moment. No one except the child on the side of the road standing between the yellow lines and a fence.

I hopped out of the car and started across the road. Huge smile. Still no one else around and I'm thinking that he's probably been told to stand right there while they deal with a baby or something like that. I ask: "Hello, what are you up to?", "Is your mum around?" "Where do you live?" but don't get any answers. After a bit he points down the hill at a house. "Is that your house?". No reply.

The house has toys visible and an open door. It is not obvious how to get there from here. There must be a path but it isn't the closest one. I keep chatting, hoping someone will hear me and appear. We smile at each other a lot. I think he has escaped and is very pleased with himself.

Finally I hear a person in the house below talking as if to a child. I call out "Hello?" and woman appears. "Is this your little one?" Her face is a combination of relief and horror.

Democracy in technicolour

In a couple of weeks there will be an election. I wrote this three years ago during the build up to the last election and I still haven't changed my mind.

The more I think about it the more I am unable to consider voting anything but Green.

I think they were unbelievably stupid creating contraversy around the Meningococcal B vaccination campaign.

But consider global warming.

Seriously.

I mean just for starters think about the Wahine Storm hitting Wellington every year. What about the effects of the sea level rising on the CBD? What about a changing climate on our agriculturally based economy?

Even social welfare spending is a trivial issue by comparison with global warming.

Now you can argue that global warming is a far bigger issue than the NZ government can sort out and that you should use your vote on something more personal. The problem with this is that global warming will get personal. If you believe it is worth voting at all - that your one vote might make a difference, then it is worth believing that your one country might make a difference too.

So - how do the parties stack up? Well, Forest & Bird did a nice summarised evaluation of the parties policies on this and other environmental issues and I'm afraid I don't have it in front of me and I can't remember it all but what I do remember is that the Greens were the only party with two ticks for global warming, Labour got one and National got none.

I am struck at this point by a profusion of silly slogans - Vote for the weather. Vote for the future. Vote for the continuation of the species.

Posted here 30 August 2005.

My favourite thing about New Zealand elections is that you vote with a fat orange felt pen, a clear sign of a serious democracy at work.

Public service announcement

If you're in Wellington and have been meaning to go to a first aid course and not getting around to it then join me at the NZ Red Cross comprehensive first aid course on 15 and 16 October. You can book at www.redcross.org.nz or by ringing 499 5827.

If you don't eat your meat

We've decided to eat vegetarian at least one day a week. I was inspired by a snippet in New Scientist which said:

How to eat green

If you are serious about reducing your carbon footprint, going vegetarian for one day a week will make a big difference, says Christopher Weber of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, who has audited the greenhouse gas emissions of our meals. "The differences between eating habits are very, very striking," he says.

Writing this I've done some more research. There is an article on New Scientist Environment which references Environmental Science and Technology (DOI: 10.1021/es702969f). The research is American and the detail would be slightly different here because we don't keep our cows in barns and transport grain to them but that doesn't stop them farting a staggering amount of methane.

If that is all too sane for you try this leaflet which was delivered to our "No Junk Mail" snail-mailbox just the other day. My favourite part is the second question on the second page:

QUESTION: Yes. Thank you, Master.

I am very happy to take questions like that.

You can't make me talk

New Scientist published an interview with, Darius Rejali, a researcher who studies torture which got me thinking. The preview of the interview is on the New Scientist site, the full article is on a blog over here.

The bits which particularly grabbed me were:

Where do [methods for clean torture] come from?

The techniques migrate. Every time Americans have been involved in a war where there has been torture, those techniques have come back to local or private policing, since that is where military policemen get jobs. There is migration the other way too: techniques used by US military policemen in Iraq had been recorded in immigration and naturalisation prisons in Miami in the 1990s. Most often, torture techniques originate not in some deep vault in the CIA but in dark parts of our society where they are tolerated. They live in barracks and fraternities and university pranks and movies. Hence most torture is not sophisticated: electricity is about as sophisticated as it gets.

...

How often do interrogators obtain useful information or truthful confessions using torture?

The few statistical studies on this suggest the return is incredibly poor. There are several reasons. How do you know you have the right person? And even if you do, how do you know they're telling the truth? Third, torture can damage the brain, and anything that affects the brain's capacity to withhold information also affects its capacity to retrieve it.

If it doesn't work, why does it persist?

Myths and rumours. There is a perception that democracy makes us weak and only "real men" know how to do this stuff. People think torture worked for the Gestapo, for example. It didn't. What made the Gestapo so scarily efficient was its dependence on public cooperation. Informers betrayed the resistance repeatedly in Europe, and everyone knew this, but it was more convenient to say the Gestapo got the truth by beating it out of us. Public cooperation is the best way to gather information. After the failed bomb attacks in London in 2005, the British police found every one of the gang within a week. One was caught after his parents turned him in. They would not have done that if they'd thought he'd be tortured.

This left me thinking about how torture is portrayed and propagated by the movies and TV shows that I watch. 24, for example, actively propagates the myth that torture works. What can I do about that? Not much. I don't write movies, books or TV shows that propagate the myth that torture works but I do roleplay and I've been thinking what the implications of the article are for that. Maybe I should campaign for an effective torture free Kapcon. What do you think?

Wordlessly

www.freerice.com

Playing with my colleagues' minds

I just posted this on the bulletin board on the intranet at work:

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Topic: Survey - Breastfeeding in Public

The latest survey on the Intranet home page is:

Should breastfeeding be allowed in public?

And the answers at the time of writing are:

Yes, always 42.6%
Yes if done discretely 49.5%
Not in eating establishments 4.5%
No, never 3%
Unsure 0.5%

202 votes cast.

As a fairly recent breast feeder I would like to say - how do 100 good [company] people think it is possible to attach a wailing infant to one's bosom in public discreetly?

For those of you who have never breastfed I would like you to imagine the following scenario:

You are on call and so have to carry a cellphone with you everywhere you go. Unfortunately the cellphone has been glued to a large siamese cat. Fortunately the cat sleeps a lot. Unfortunately if the cellphone rings the only way to stop it is to press it (with cat attached) against a part of your anatomy usually covered by underwear for 10-30 minutes. In the unlikely event you can achieve this in a position in which the cat is sufficiently comfortable the cat will go back to sleep.

Hopefully this mental exercise will give you sympathy for indiscreet breast feeders and admiration for those who manage it discreetly.

Finally I had twins so those of you who are very brave can imagine that you are on call for two jobs with two cellphones stuck to two cats.

How to harasses the harassers

I'm feeling very pleased with myself for how I handled a situation at work:

Two of my male workmates, G and S, have an ongoing thing where they rib each other about each other's homophobia, for example calling each other pottle (because of the non-work safe definition here).

Recently someone made the text on a website we all use maroon. S and G talked about it and S said he "thought it was a bit gay". So G posted a comment which says "S thinks the Maroon is a bit gay".

I wasn't impressed. I didn't think it was an appropriate remark for the context. So I emailed S and G a link to this site which advertises a cure for homophobia. They both thought it was funny, got the point and changed the comment.

It now says "Scott thinks the Maroon is really lovely and it makes him feel all calm inside."

Mission Possible II

At the beginning of this year I was considering taking on a mission. The two options I was considering were a seriously low carbon diet or dramatically changing my buying patterns to reduce excess production and waste. So far I've done a bit of both, not a mission but a few sorties.

On the low carbon front I have:

• bought a good book
• bought a centameter
• made sure our car is tuned
• had our insulation assessed
• installed more energy efficient light bulbs
• stopped one of the ways that Andy gets under the house
• started investigating getting solar water heating.

I also intend to:

• sort out our central heating ducting and completely stop Andy getting under the house (he sits on the ducts making them less efficient)
• figure out our carbon footprint and then buy carbon credits to offset it.

On the buying front I spent a long time thinking about what rules I should set myself for my mission, things like "Nothing new except consumables, parts, services and presents". I didn't set any but instead I've started trying to think through "reduce, reuse, recycle" twice for every purchase.

First about the kind of object generally:

Reduce - Do I need one? Do I have something else I can use instead? Can I borrow one?
Reuse - Can I fix an old one? Can I buy one second hand?
Recycle - Can I get one made of recycled materials?

Then if I'm buying it about the item I'm buying

Reduce - Can I get one which will produce less waste or uses less resources overall?
Reuse - Can I get a reusable one? Can I get one which I can use for more things (reducing future buying)?
Recycle - Is it recyclable?

50% off costs the earth the same

So far the biggest impacts have been on my clothes and book shopping. I've got less new clothes and made more effort to get my sister's old ones, less new books and more second hand ones. Small beginnings.

[I've put back in the links which got lost due to an error somewhere between the chair and the keyboard.]

Drain angel

This morning I looked out our bedroom window at the dirty water and food particles from the sink gently trickling across the deck. I spent the next half hour kneeling outside in the cold, bailing stinky water and scooping gritty slime out of the drain. Ever since I've been feeling very virtuous.

I also keep sniffing my hands. I swear I can still smell the stink of the drain on them. I empathise with Lady Macbeth.

A good days work

At the final count I raised:

$2,758.60

for Wellington Women's Refuge. (The explanation is here and here.)

It is amazing what a whim can achieve.

In other good news the time limit for the nanny we fired to raise a personal grievance against us has now passed.

I'm thinking of going to The King and the Clown tonight to celebrate.

Workplace guerrilla

Leaving home

At the bus stop

On the bus

At work

What I've learnt so far:

• choose your gorilla mask carefully
• children are much friendlier to strange gorillas than strange people
• adults like to know whose inside and are generous to gorillas
• people are more surprised by a gorilla when the lift doors open than a gorilla appearing beside their desk
• wise gorillas carry safety pins.

Making the hat fit

The project I am working on has decided to have a Hat Day on Friday. We've never had one before and I'd like to participate but I'm out of the office on a training course so I've just sent out the following email (workplace identifying details removed):

---

Hat Day in absentia - for Wellington Women's Refuge

On Thursday and Friday I am out of the office on a training course and I would still like to participate in the Hat Day but with a twist - I am offering to wear a hat to my course for a good cause - Women's Refuge.

If the total sponsorship pledges I have received by email by 5pm Thursday 24 May are:

• pathetic (i.e. <$5) I will wear a slightly silly hat for 1 hour during the course
• supportive (i.e. $5 to $40) I will wear a slightly silly hat for the duration of the course on Friday
• very supportive (i.e. $40.01 to $150) I will wear a fairly silly hat for the duration of the course on Friday
• amazingly generous (i.e. >$150) I will wear a pretty ridiculous hat for the duration of the course on Friday

I will collect the pledged money upon my return to work on Wednesday 29 May. I will endeavour to supply photographic evidence and signed confirmation from the course facilitator.

---

I'm feeling smug with this solution to my dilemma.

And if you, my lovely reader, want to sponsor this silliness for a worthy cause you may, the deadline is Thursday 5pm NZST. You can make your sponsorship donation by credit card at the NZ Women's Refuge site online and just email me the amount.

Another brick in the wall

There is legislation before parliment at the moment usually called the 'anti-smacking' bill. Actually it repeals a part of the assault legislation which says it is OK for parents to punish children with reasonable force. (This excuse is not available to anyone else.)

I have never hit my children. I hope and intend I never will.

As an adult I have deliberately hit people, hard, twice that I recall. Once it was the bride's cousin at a wedding when he was trying to slow dance with me and I was trying to dance with a group and he wouldn't take 'go away' for an answer. The other time it was my recently ex-boyfriend when he looked too smug. In both cases I'd had a few drinks. In both cases if I'd thought before I acted I would have done something different. In both cases I could, theoretically, have been changed with assault but in the circumstances the police wouldn't have cared enough to do so. If I ever hit my children, even if the 'anti-smacking' bill has passed I am confident I will not be charged with assault whatever the law. So really it does not effect me.

It does effect our society. In ways I care about. It gives children the same protection from their parents which they currently have from other adults. This seems obviously sensible to me. I don't really understand why it doesn't seem sensible to everyone.

I can easily understand why many parents are driven by their children to the point of hitting them. What I can't understand is the parents who think it is or was a good idea rather than an unfortunate mistake. Most of the time when I send H or K into time out it is for hitting the other one. The message I am trying to teach is 'we don't hit people'. How would hitting them help?

I can think of one example of physical punishment which I consider sensible in the circumstances. The brother of someone I know was planning to join a gang, his mother gave him a black eye, she knew that the gang wouldn't accept as tough enough someone who got beaten up by his mother. Perhaps it is telling that in this story what the beating taught was the lesson that beating another person teaches most clearly - I am more physically powerful than you. This was a rare occaision when that message was actually worth emphasising.

[For more blogging about this check out from the morgue].

Am I getting warmer?

Q: How do you spot a climate scientist?
A: The bike helmet.

This is an observation from a presentation I went to on the key IPCC findings on climate change. IPCC(Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) Working Group 1, which covers the physical science of climate change, has just reported back. For a quick over view I recommend this press release, for more check out the IPCC site.

One quote from the presentation:

"We are already commited to dangerous levels of warming. We don't want to go much beyond dangerous." Ralph Chapman, Director Environment Studies, Victoria University of Wellington.

Picking the scabs out of my hair

I'm back at work today. I've worked one and a half days in the last month. I've lost the rhythm of working. It all seems strange to me. Just think of the millions of years of evolution that have gone into developing a lifeform that sits behind a desk reading email. Perhaps proof of the undirected nature of the process? We are all just accidents on the way to making the best bacteria.

---

One of the many emails I've been trolling through said:

The innocent victims of Internet child abuse cannot speak for themselves.
We need you to light a candle of support <http://www.lightamillioncandles.com/>.
We're aiming to light at least One Million Candles by December 31, 2006.
This petition will be used to encourage governments, politicians, financial institutions, payment organisations, Internet service providers, technology companies and law enforcement agencies to eradicate the commercial viability of online child abuse.
They have the power to work together. You have the power to get them to take action.
Please light your candle at lightamillioncandles.com <http://www.lightamillioncandles.com/> or send an email of support to light@lightamillioncandles.com.
Together, we can destroy the commercial viability of Internet child abuse sites that are destroying the lives of innocent children.
Kindly forward this email to your friends, relatives and work colleagues so that they can light a candle too.

The page the links take you to has two links, the one labelled ENTER didn't work for me, the one that says "If you cannot see a flame on this candle, click here" did.

Movie review - An Inconvenient Truth

Yesterday I went to An Inconvenient Truth, a documentary about Al Gore, the presentation he has given hundreds of times about global warming, and global warming itself.

Al Gore is the hero of the film and it presents him as larger than life (and not just because we were sitting near the front of the theatre).

It is aimed at a non-scientific, American audience and occaisionally that grates - I wanted all the graphs to have scales and titles, I wanted to read all the words on the slides and I wanted his "we" to include me.

As Helene Wong wrote in the Listener:

By all accounts, he’s got the science mostly right, though it’s a bit bemusing to hear that rising waters have led to the evacuation of Tuvaluans to New Zealand, and to see on the world maps which appear at regular intervals that, alarmingly, sometimes we’re there and sometimes we’re not. Or maybe it’s just their way of making a point about the tides.

It is a great movie and I recommend it to everyone except particularly pedantic, scientific kiwis who are sceptical about climate change.

It is a powerful message well presented. It made me go home and change what I do.

(For what is really happenning in Tuvalu you can check out this article or this longer more recent one. Sadly from these I learnt that what I'd read about NZ offering to take everyone from Tuvalu when it sinks is not true.)

A tui a day

When I was growing up in Wellington in the 70s and 80s I saw about one tui a summer. Usually perched on the flax flowers near our letter box early in the morning.

Now if I walk to work I see at least five tui. When I walk around the block to creche I normally see one.

This is almost entirely because the Wellington Regional Council has been reducing the number of possums in Wellington.

Every time I see a tui they have my heartfelt thanks.