God bothering

So this isn't strictly the Herald's fault (although they ran it). But this NZPA story has three of my favourite things - odd use of statistics, a weirdly irrelevant picture of the Pope and a Massey University survey.

There has been a sharp rise in the number of New Zealanders with no religious affiliation, new research shows. In a study of 1000 people by Massey University, 40 per cent said they had no religious affiliation compared to 29 per cent 17 years ago.

Good news, you might think, although I'm sceptical of cause-effect relationships between religion and stupidity in public life. Rather than producing rational debates about ethical and policy issues, increased secularism really seems to correlate with people getting their tits out in ads and reality television. And there's always the slim chance that God will smite our nation with earthquakes, tsunamis and bird flu if we ever hit 50 per cent. Meanwhile:

Just over a third of New Zealanders described themselves as religious.

So what do the other quarter think? They don't know whether they are religious or have no affiliation? Perhaps they're stuck in some painful limbo where they are quite literally losing their religion. But I imagine that wasn't an option on the survey.

Fifty-three per cent said they believed in God (although half of those said they had doubts), 20 per cent believed in some form of higher power and about third said they didn't believe or didn't know.

53 plus 20 plus "about third" equals about 106 per cent. But I don't find that surprising. What precisely is the difference between God and a higher power? And what about between having doubts about God and not knowing. Oh, OK, it turns out surveys are worthless.

Interestingly, the Herald only ran a shortened version of the whole press release, under the headline "NZers becoming less religious: Survey". But the numbers don't really support that claim in a meaningful sense. Firstly, they don't seem to have asked (or, at least, reported on) to which religions people subscribe. I suspect that a lot of Anglicans and Presbyterians are dying, whereas all the cool kids these days are joining the Destiny Church. As a previous Massey study showed, your average Anglican is only 46 per cent religious, but Destiny members come in at a whopping 83 per cent. That's almost double the religion!

Also, the fuller report has some further interesting results that didn't make the Herald.

The study found that significant numbers of New Zealanders believe in the supernatural with 57 per cent believing in life after death, 51 per cent believing in heaven and 36 per cent believing in hell.

Who are the two per cent of people who believe in God but not in heaven? Where does He live then, genius? But seriously, that's quite depressing.

A quarter of those surveyed think star signs affect people's futures, 28 per cent say good luck charms work and 39 per cent [!] believe fortune-tellers can foresee the future.

I would recommend two measures to improve political outcomes in New Zealand by the next election. The government could run official horoscopes on the week and day of the election, warning that "Mars is in the seventh house, meaning that today is a bad day to vote - just stay at home and eat a bag of chips." Concurrent with this, all psychic hotlines should be forced to warn clients away from polling booths with terrifying stories of imminent death. Actually, I'm not certain that this would alter the makeup of parliament at all.

Also, the Herald ran a picture of the Pope next to the article online. He's religious, you see.

Odds and/or ends

Disingenuous comment of the day: 'Sir' John Wells, made Distinguished Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit, on accepting the optional title of 'Sir':

"I will accept the title - not for me, but for the sport sector."

Sure, buddy. I definitely noticed our Olympic medal haul tailing off after 2000.


Bainwatch: South Island correspondent (lucky nothing else is going on in that island at the moment) Jarrod Booker may be in danger of running out of ideas:

"Bain trial: Bloody sockprints scrutinised"

Herald exclusive - Herald Herald Herald: Yesterday was April Fool's Day. You'll notice that I didn't post anything, as I consider AFD to be a de facto public holiday. But man-oh-man, I hope you saw some of the hilarious April Fool ads in the paper. But in case you were so busy breathing through your mouth that you didn't pick up on the fact that Pacific Blue won't actually be having a 'Bronze Class' featuring an on-board spray-tan booth, or that Hugh Hefner won't really be relocating the Playboy Mansion to Rotorua, then someone at the Herald got up, went to work without throwing themselves in front of a train, and wrote an article about ads that were in the Herald the previous day. Go on, read it. Journalist Alanah May Eriksen sounds quite happy with herself.


Goff Corner rides again: It's been a while, but Goff Corner is back. Today we have GC article hemmed in by a piece on MPs libelled on Twitter, and an ad for the Honda Jazz encouraging one to 'discover freedom', presumably through purchasing a car. The article itself, hidden all the way down there, is about New Zealand dropping its bid for a seat on the UN Human Rights Council in favour of letting the US take it. Foreign Minister Murray 'Maverick' McCully has truly learned how to tug his forelock in the past few weeks, which is good considering that he will be meeting with his new boss, Hillary Clinton, in the near future:

"The Human Rights Council has been widely criticised. It was our intention, in seeking election, to provide a force for change and improvement," he said.

"However, we believe that US membership of the council will strengthen it and make it more effective."

The US has been a harsh critic of the council and its past reincarnations [Um, what? 'And on the third day the UNHRC rose again...'], saying it members are quick to criticise others, but slow to recognise their own poor human rights records.

Well that makes sense - because (without flogging a dead horse) whenever I think of a country that is quick to criticise others, but slow to recognise their own poor human rights record, I never think 'the US'. And they are totally into reform of the UN in general. So yeah, let's see what happens, shall we?


Letters on Wanganui/Whanganui: Anyone else bored yet?

Trying too hard?

Just when you thought it was safe to go out on the streets, someone comes over and murders you. Then someone writes on "Your Views" about it.

The father of Augustine Borrell has blamed the bail system for his son's murder, saying his killer should have been kept under control. Should a defendant's past convictions be declared at criminal trial?

Ok, so, the father certainly did say that, and the murder was committed while Hayden Davis was out on bail. But what does that have to do with the fact that juries aren't allowed to know about the previous criminal convictions of the accused unless the judge deems it particularly relevant? It's not like Davis was let off; he was found guilty and given a life sentence. So it turns out that the jury didn't need to know about his previous convictions, did they? So I can't help but wonder if this rather odd juxtaposition of sentences in the YV topic wasn't an attempt to sex up an interesting but relatively dull legal question with something (bail/parole/free massages for prisoners) that will really get the masses wailing and gnashing their teeth. In fact, it reminded me of this exchange from The Simpsons, where Sideshow Bob is in a mayoral debate with Mayor Quimby before the election:

Birch Barlow: Mayor Quimby, you're well known for your lenient stance on crime. But suppose for a second that your house was ransacked by thugs, your family tied up in the basement with socks in their mouths, you try to open the door but there's too much blood on the knob...

Mayor Quimby: What is your, ah, question?

Barlow: My question is about the budget, sir.

Someone made the interesting point to me that the kind of responses that this question brought out on YV are precisely the reason that juries should not be allowed to know about previous convictions - the general tenor being that, if the jury had known about the prior convictions, they would have known that he was the kind of person who carried out the murder. Keeping that in mind, a Herald poll on the same topic came up with these results:

Should a defendant's past convictions be declared at criminal trial?

• 87% - Yes, past actions are relevant
• 13% - No, jurors could be prejudiced
  

Thank the gods that we don't live in a direct democracy, or at least not one administered by the Herald. Yet.

The wonder of Google

Sorry if today ends up as some sort of self-indulgent, Canvas-esque lifestyle section, but the Herald was so unimpeachably good today that I really have nothing to say.

Instead, I want to briefly talk about one of the most fun things about having a blog and being unemployed: spending hours poring over the Google Analytics visitor statistics. Especially interesting are the keyword results, which basically show what people have googled to end up at the site. As some light, almost-midweek fare, I thought I would share some of the more interesting search terms that have brought people to EtH:

• dangerous asians [twice!]
• "how to play oregon trail"
• sweet blog
• 17teens.com
• affair analogy
• battleship woman in kitchen
• beckham 20000
  
• cannibals on trial
• crazy force feeding asians [!]
• donations for salvation army
• grumpy old men phrases
• happy cows and harald [sic]
  
• how much money did herald [sic] and kumar 2 make
• m&s carart metaphor front bumper
• making out with cannibal 2009
• ovophobia pronounciation
  
• the real cannibal britain
• tiger kills ostrich

Thanks to everyone who arrived here by clicking on a random google result. I trust you found what you were looking for.

My Views

I was feeling a bit like a day off, but it seems there's no room for slacking in the dog-eat-dog world of unpaid blogging.

1) Because I was bored, I decided to start a new feature where I tally all the advertising in the front section of each day's Herald, feed the results into a supercomputer, and come out with the percentage of the Herald that is advertising. I will then outsource the making of a graph, which may or may not provide insight into the seedy underbelly of newspaper journalism. I'm not sure quite what I'll call it yet. Their Views? Ad Views? Because that's a pun that will never get old.

Anyway, today's Herald was 45% advertising. Because I have only one data set, I thought this might be best represented as a pie chart:
Expect more data to be made available in easy-to-read "Herald Graphic" as it comes to hand.


2) In case you thought I was making up the Herald's, erm, "Victim's Views" policy on crime reporting, there's a nice, brief article - not to be confused with a nice "In Brief" article - in today's paper about Bailey Kurariki. Apparently, the proposed 'three strikes' bill "fits Kurariki", according to an expert on the justice system. And when I say 'expert on the justice system', I mean the mother of the young man Kurariki and others brutally and pointlessly killed. I would be interested to know whether it is the Herald contacting her every time Kurariki gets a mention in the paper, or vice versa - although it doesn't really matter, as it is the Herald who decides to print it in the end.

"A lot of the general public don't know his background and just think, 'Oh he was so young,' and excuse it."

Really? Where are these people? And if there are so many of them, why are they never reported in the paper?

Epilogue: You can imagine my delight when, searching for 'Kurariki' on the Herald site to find that quote, I discovered that he is now the subject of another "Your Views" - just the latest of the 114 Herald articles that mention him by name.

Paul Henry's Views

In case you live in some wonderful, idyllic world where you don't have to hear such ridiculous trash:

Paul Henry angered TVNZ viewers with his antics on Breakfast this week when he insulted a guest speaker and implied that she had a moustache.

Anti-nuclear campaigner Stephanie Mills appeared on the show to speak about the compensation awarded to victims of French nuclear testing in the Pacific.

Henry then proceeded to read out several readers' comments despite pleas from co-host Alison Mau and his producers.

[...]

Mau tried unsuccessfully to dissuade Henry and bowed her head as he began to read the first letter.

"I have no idea what Stephanie Mills was thinking going on telly with that enormous moustache. Wax is cheap, you know," Henry read out.

Et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseam. Now, I'm all in favour of free speech. I'm also in favour of edgy humour in general. I don't think a woman with slight facial hair is particularly funny - but then I imagine that quite a few people wouldn't agree with my sense of humour either. And you know how I feel about nanny state - it's PC gone mad. So the worst I can say about Paul Henry's comments decontextualised is that, as far as humour goes, they were pretty lame.

But in this case context is quite important. I realise that Breakfast isn't exactly Close Up... erm... Campbell Live... OK, so there's really no mainstream New Zealand television show that will make that comparison work. Suffice to say that Breakfast is considered 'infotainment', and not exactly issues-driven - who wants to deal with issues that early in the morning, am I right? But if you are going to deal with serious issues, such as allegations that French nuclear testing caused cancer in observers - please, I'm eating my bagel! - you may want to treat them seriously. Otherwise, just have a movie review or talk to a cartoon character or sing a song about puppies. And, for the gods' sake, if you're going to invite people on and interview them about these issues, you could treat them with a modicum of respect. I don't really care if you think that a woman with a moustache is the funniest thing you have ever seen; surely, if you have moved on from kindergarten, you might see that it was inappropriate in the context of a serious interview on the state broadcaster.

So, and now I'm getting to the point, I went to "Your Views" to find the opinions of some people who had moved on from kindergarten and poop jokes. I was sorely disappointed.

"Do you think Paul Henry's 'moustache' comments were amusing or offensive?"

Scott Dawson (Mt Eden): I personally found it humorous and greenpeace of all organisations should be able to have a laugh at themselves. The nation has become too PC, and im sure if Stephanie Mills was to comment on Paul Henry looking like one of the chipmunks with glasses, this would be taken in good humour

Greenpeace, of all organisations! They're always having a laugh. But yes, just the other day I called a black guy 'nigger', and he was FURIOUS, even when I said he could call me 'whitey'! Can't we all just get along?

Too_soft_NZ (Greenlane): This is why this world is screwed up, we are not even allowed to insult people we dont like anymore freely.

And I thought it was the global financial crisis or global warming. When a man can't insult a female guest on the television show he is paid many, many tens of thousands of dollars of (essentially) taxpayer money to host, the terrorists have already won.

Precious (Te Atatu Peninsula): I thought he was funny. I mean, she did have a moustache .

"Wait, this is the thread for 'Did the woman have a moustache or not', right?"

Tim (Auckland Central): It was amusing. Like watching Ricky Gervais. Paul is the only reason I ever watch breakfast.

Yeah, it was just like watching Ricky Gervais. He did that kind of thing all the time all the time on his documentary, The Office.

Deal to Crims (Rotorua) It is the growing number of Kiwis who fail to recognise humour that concerns me most.
Hey - my hair is receding and I get my fair share of jibes but who cares. Some are fat, some are hairy, some are bald some are skinny, some have big noses, but lets see the funny side of it and not be so thin skinned.
Maybe thin-skinned is something we should also take jibes at. The reaction there would be guaranteed.

And remember that time that you went on live television to talk about the serious public policy issue of 'dealing to crims', and the presenter talked at the end of the show about how your bald spot was 'the elephant in the room' and wondered why you couldn't at least wear a wig on television. That was hilarious. At home, I thought you were a stupid, lonely, balding, fat, self-important redneck bastard - but I kept my opinion to myself.


OK, that's probably enough. If you are feeling unreasonably positive about the prospects for humanity, have a read. If you can't get the Herald site at work, you'll find that picking up the phone, dialling a number and then bashing yourself over the head repeatedly with the receiver has a similar effect.

He said, she said

Remember when you were back at primary school, being taught how to write? I do. Now, that was a long time ago, and the lessons might be fading a bit, so when I was reading the lead front-page article in the Herald today, about the serious, pressing and not-at-all-hysteria-driven issue of boy racers, I actually got confused. I could not tell whether I was reading the Herald or Finnegans Wake.

The threat to crush boy racers' cars for repeat offences has moved forward with the Government drafting legislation aimed at getting their souped-up vehicles out of circulation.

Oh yeah. Now what does Police Minister Judith 'Crusher' Collins have to say about this?

Police Minister Judith Collins said legislation currently being written would allow courts to order the crushing of cars belonging to recidivist offenders.

Wait, was that all?

Ms Collins said yesterday that she believed crushing had benefits over selling the seized car and giving the money to charity.

Anything else? Here are the openings of eight consecutive paragraphs in the same article. I kid you not.

• "At the time, Prime Minister John Key said..."
• "Ms Collins told the Q and A..."
• "Ms Collins said the legislation was..."
• "Ms Collins said crushing was for..."
• "ACT leader Rodney Hide said Ms Collins..."
• "Labour law and order spokesman Clayton Cosgrove said..."
• "Mr Cosgrove said there were..."
• "Mr Cosgrove said a boy racer's car..."
  

Well, at least on this occasion we get to hear what opposition parties have to say on the issue. Other than that, I don't really have anything more to tell you about this article than Miss Jones told you in Standard 3.