Monday, March 23, 2009: Four things I hate about you

1) Questions about immigration are bound to bring up some stupidity, even when it's not about 'cheeky darkies' coming here, but rather the constant diaspora of young New Zealanders leaving the country. National would always say it was because our taxes were too high. Labour would say it was because of high student loans. Charlie Devenish, of Christchurch (get your own newspaper!), thinks it is because of global warming.

"Before the election, John Key spoke of the need to stem the flow of our best and brightest overseas. What he failed to realise was the best and brightest are informed, and care deeply, about the future of not just New Zealand but the Earth and all its inhabitants.
Rolling out ... a bevy of measures that, ultimately, undermine the future wellbeing of the Earth ... is not the way to entice New Zealanders home.
It seems the most proactive way New Zealand's educated youth can act on Earth's most pressing issues ... is by moving to countries with leaders who are good enough and bright enough to do the right thing: drastically decrease greenhouse gas emissions and our dependence on fossil fuels."

That's funny. I always thought that everyone moved to London for the bright lights and big city glitz - not to mention the quality newspapers. Clearly they are moving there because of Gordon Brown's policy of building more coal power stations accords with their sentiments toward Gaea.

Seriously, it's knobs like this guy who put the 'mentalist' in environmentalist. See what I did there?


2) Just read this:

"Google was forced to remove photographs of naked children from its Street View service last night as a row over internet privacy escalated into one about public safety.

The Independent on Sunday alerted the internet search giant after finding images of the toddlers, playing at a family summer picnic in a garden square in north London, captured permanently on the revolutionary mapping system.

Britain's privacy watchdog, the Information Commissioner Richard Thomas, is considering an investigation into Google if more images of naked children are found to have been picked up by its cameras and made available to internet users.

Google has had hundreds of requests for images to be removed since it launched Street View on Thursday, including pictures of members of the public leaving sex shops or vomiting in the street. But the pictures of young children suggest the service could be exploited for more sinister purposes."

Jesus. Christ. "Breaking news: paedophiles stalking Google Street View". Because spending countless hours going through thousands of miles of streets in the hope of finding a small, blurry, low-res picture of a naked toddler seems like an efficient way of finding child porn.

"The picture had been found by this newspaper within only 10 minutes, suggesting there could be many similar images on the website."

I found a picture of Big Ben within only 10 minutes, suggesting there could be many similar images on the website.


3) I know I'm breaking my own moratorium on reporting Josef Fritzl gossip, but I find the latest turn the case has taken to be grimly humorous. "Fears mount for Fritzl's mental health", says the article, which continues to say that his "mental health had deteriorated since the verdict".

So there are worries about the mental health of a man who imprisoned and sexually enslaved his daughter, keeping his second family locked in a secure basement?? In other news, Hitler may not have had all his marbles, and Einstein was rather clever.


4) You would think that, if any country could do with some positive press in the media at the moment, it would be Israel. That would explain their latest policy of "bursting balloons at a schoolyard celebration":

At one [Palestinian cultural] event, teenage girls at an east Jerusalem Catholic school released a few dozen balloons in the red, white, green and black colours of the Palestinian flag over the walled Old City. Israeli military police and soldiers quickly moved into the schoolyard and popped the remaining balloons, students said.

Zein, an 18-year-old student, said the police popped them with their hands and told them they weren't allowed to release them into the air.

This makes perfect sense, and dovetails nicely with other recent Israeli policies of stealing candy from children, kicking puppies and telling Heath Ledger jokes.