The naked logophile

The best thing about facebook is Scrabulous which lets me play scrabble with friends on the other side of the world. We each play a move every day or so and the game slowly unfolds.

But I'm sick and I'm waiting for the other player(s) to move in all my games so I checked out "Join Table". I forgot the internet is for porn. I forgot Rule 34 of the internet: if you can imagine it there is porn of it.

So when I found:

Hara is requesting a Regular game using the English TWL dictionary.
Note: **LADIES ONLY** HAVE A WEBCAM? LET ME SEE YOUR BODY while we play scrabble, I have pictures of my thick hard [...] to share. Send a message when you accept so I know you read this.

I ended up in a giggling, coughing, wheezing, gasping, snorting fit.

In which I support Labour

A friend is in labour.

On TV no one is ever unclear about whether they are in labour, they never wobble in and out of labour indecisively over days and days or have contractions every evening for a week. This isn't what makes me rant at the screen, it is the way they nearly always give birth on their backs which really pisses me off.

For sane information about birthing positions you can check this out. If anyone wants to hear an irrational rant about it just let me know.

What spangles our banner

This post expands and explains my Waitangi Day post.

The Treaty of Waitangi, Te Tiriti o Waitangi, is the founding document of our nation. It was signed at Waitangi on 6 February 1840 by a representative of the British Crown and a gathering of Maori Chiefs. Over the next several months 500 further signatures were added by representatives of most tribal groups. It granted the Queen governorship over New Zealand, granted Maori continued chieftainship and ownership of their lands and treasures (taonga), specified Maori would only sell land to the Crown, and grants Maori the same rights as other British subjects. For its time, I think, it was quite a reasonable agreement.

The treaty, unsurprisingly, was not the end of the story. Some tribes, also quite reasonably, refused to sign the treaty and some were never given the opportunity. The two versions of the treaty, one in English and one in Maori, differed, putting the exact meaning in doubt. The treaty was not ratified and did not have legal recognition until 1975. Many of the Maori signatories had no experience of what the British meant by land ownership or governorship and the British did not understand what retaining chieftainship meant to Maori. The treaty was not honoured. Land and taonga were taken without consent.

In 1975 the Waitangi Tribunal was set up to investigate and make recommendations to the government to resolve claims of breaches to the treaty. It has been key to the resolution of some significant breaches of the treaty.

Very sadly breaches of the treaty are still occurring. In 2004 the Foreshore and Seabed Act was passed making the Crown owners of that land without Maori ever having sold it or being compensated in any way. I was among many who took part in the hikoi to protest.

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An explanation of the flags.

Union Jack - I began the series with this flag partly because I think it is the first flag that would have been flown in NZ (by James Cook in 1769), partly out of mischievousness and partly as the Treaty of Waitangi was between the British Crown and Maori, and to start and end with very strong, deliberately controversial images for Waitangi Day.

Flag of the United Tribes of New Zealand - The first true New Zealand flag adopted by the United Tribes of New Zealand at a meeting of Maori chiefs in 1834.

New Zealand Flag - The deeply familiar symbol of our country in use since1869. Lots of Kiwis, including me, would like to change but can't agree what to.

New Zealand Red Ensign - Before doing the flag post I could have told you that it is a nautical flag and that it is associated in my mind with Waitangi Day, if pressed I'd have guessed that association was naval. Now I know better, the red ensign is flown during Maori events (including at Waitangi on Waitangi Day) because there is a traditional Maori preference for a red flag.

Green Spiral Flag - The Austrian architect Friedensreich Hundertwasser had a passionate love for New Zealand and adopted it as his second home. He is remembered here for a fabulous toilet and this flag he designed in 1983 which is loved by greenies and ignored by everyone else. I have deliberately chosen a picture of this flag which is slightly rumpled and real, trying to embody a sense of flag as a cherished object not just a symbol.

Stylised Silver Fern Flag - This has become one of the front runners in the bid to change the New Zealand flag. It is inspired by the white fern on black symbol of the All Blacks - if Kiwis can't agree on anything else at least they can agree on the rugby. However black is a controversial colour for a flag, the design has a corporate logo feel and it acknowledges without including Maori symbols. This flag was designed by Cameron Sanders in about 2004.

Flag of Tino Rangatiratanga - This is the unofficial Maori flag and the flag of the Maori Sovereignty Movement (Tino Rangatiratanga). One of the key differences between the treaty in English and Maori was the words used for what was ceded to the Crown and what was kept. In Maori what was ceded was kawanatanga (governorship) and what was kept was tino rangatiratanga (absolute chieftainship, usually referred to as sovereignty). What exactly Maori sovereignty would entail is unclear and this uncertainty leads to fear and resistance from most pakeha New Zealanders. I've chosen a moving image of this flag to show the active nature of a movement seeking change, to evoke the protestors flags in the wind at Waitangi, and to make it seem not just a observation but a statement.

For more information check out Wikipedia from which you can find out more about nearly all of this. There are also a number of other sites covering the treaty online including this NZ government one and this Tino Rangatiratanga one.

True colours?

Today/yesterday was Waitangi Day. After too much chocolate I am unable to sleep so I give you this musing (for background try Wikipedia on New Zealand Flag [and this later post]):

'Tis the season to be irrational

I just don't get it. Why do people try and make their kids believe in Santa? Would they think that using the same logic to get them to believe in God was appropriate?

I do kind of get the people who tell their kids that Nana is now a star. I wouldn't do it but I understand the temptation.

But Santa? Really? Why??

Shoot me now

I saw a car this morning and immediately the music from the current TV ad for that make went through my head.

Contains live culture

I am fascinated by cultural differences. Nearly every funeral I've ever been to the coffin has been coffin shaped (an irregular hexagonal prism), but nearly all the coffins on TV are American caskets which are rectangular boxes. Of course anthropologists have been writing about differences between different cultures funeral customs for a long time. But cultures don't limit themselves to differences in important things - I married into a family who use fluffy (towelling) tea towels, I come from a family who use flat linen tea towels, and I have negotiated a compromise of waffle weave tea towels.

I live in a land where a normal washing machine is a top loader and you drag the vacuum cleaner along behind you on little wheels. I've spent a fair amount of time in England where the normal washing machine is a front loader and the normal vacuum cleaner is an upright. When I last bought a washing machine I considered a front loader because they use less energy and water but we ended up buying a fairly eco-friendly top loader because, well, they are just the way washing machines should be. It amazes and amuses me that humans create such astounding diversity in everything and then culture helps us limit the diversity to manageable proportions.

Even more than appliances I am fascinated by the cultural differences in toilets. I have been meaning to write about this for a while but I didn't have time until I gave up on the all singing, all dancing version with lots of links and pictures of toilets from all over the world.

In my experience the two most common designs are what I will call the "Deep" and the "Shallow". The Deep is the standard UK, NZ, Australian toilet. The Shallow is the standard American toilet. To me the most distinctive differences between these two designs are the distance between the bottom and the water, the surface area of the water, the visibility of the contents and the way they flush.

When sitting on a Deep toilet there is about a foot between ones naked bottom and the water below. This ensures a loud and satisfying splosh when substances drop from one into the other and that when wiping ones nether regions one is unlikely to get the toilet paper accidentally wet. In contrast a Shallow toilet minimises the distance from bottom to water and the water itself is shallower this reduces the splosh factor, an advantage for those in favour of discrete excretion.

However there is one area where the Deep toilet design leads the Shallow for discreteness. The Shallow toilet has a much larger surface area of water and only a very small amount of the water (if any) is hidden from view whereas much of the water in a Deep toilet out of sight in the S bend. This means that for those of us who come from countries with Deep toilets it is only when we visit countries with Shallow toilets that we realise just how much poo an adult produces. It is amazing! The Deep toilet may loudly announce to anyone in earshot that someone has pooed but only a Shallow toilet allows the pooer to observe the entire output at their leisure.

Finally there is the issue of flush, when a Shallow toilet flushes the bowl is entirely emptied. This may seem like a piece of excellence in toilet design and it is what makes the stereotypical American traveller comment on going home "where the plumbing works" but there is a problem, after the bowl has entirely emptied when it refills some of the water that has drained away is coughed back up into the bowl. Why this should be so is beyond my understanding as it seems to cancel out the entire point of emptying the bowl completely. Maybe I am missing something.

As well as the Shallow and the Deep designs other toilets I have come across that deserve special mention are the Greek and Austrian designs. The Greeks, who have had civilisation for thousands of years have designed a toilet that flushes poo but not paper. It is a marvel of engineering, it looks harmless enough, the wee bin beside the toilet look innocent enough but if you should forget to use the wee bin for its intended purpose be warned - no matter how many times you flush, the paper will stare accusing back at you. My advice - leave quickly and try to look innocent. From an environmental point of view this is a desirable design - human waste is easier to process when it is not contaminated with paper.

I only spent a couple of hours in Austria in 1997 but I did go to a toilet there which was so interesting I took a photo and my researches have since confirmed that it was a normal Austrian toilet. Austrian toilets have a shallow puddle of water entirely separate from the drain which is at the front. This leads me to suspect that Austrians are even keener output inspectors than Americans. When flushed the water rushes from the back, surging over the puddle and into the drain, hopefully washing everything with it.

I used to think there was an optimal toilet design but now I suspect that toilet design should and does reflect something about a nation's psyche, history and natural resources.