Saturday, May 11, 2013

Obligatory Lazy Link Post

There is no news today, so here's an obligatory post of interesting things.

# Aaron Gilmore might be getting attacked by batsmen swooping and diving around his head like mental magpies. Thank Dagg Pablo and Manhire are awake and staring in horror as the new GCSB and Communications Intercept Bills move at warp speed into select committee stage of indeterminate length and intensity.

This is real, and much more dangerous than some bug-eyed born-to-rule cretin with bent antennae screwing with a one seat majority government. Even if you're naive enough to believe in a benevolent John Key appointing everyone from the Governor General to the GCSB Head, think what some future, less scrupulous prime minister might do with that unbridled power. What would Muldoon do? And when the hell did NZ did decide to adopt the US presidential style of appointees to the new royal court anyway?

# I've finished reading Patched; The History of Gangs in New Zealand. It's way too early to blurt to conclusions, but the thesis of pivots proved illuminating. On a completely different subject, the NBR headlines a call for an end to the NZ Police's lethal car pursuit policy. It is certainly responsible for more carnage than any of the other gangs in New Zealand right now.

# This week has seen the moral panic over fake cannabis come to some kind of crescendo with Duncan Garner hitting the bong. For the public good, of course. We wouldn't have all this madness if BZP was still legal. Or real cannabis.

If we're to sit through exploitation media on the divide between the clueless and the guileless, give me this witty Dragnet remake over any of the MSM drivel any day:


# And finally, the Telegraph looks at the life of one of the most respected of this household's gods, an icon of iconoclasts, Richard P. Feynman. He made a great leap from observing the nature of spinning plates.