Public Address - Hard News (Home)

Have you met thingy? | Oct 08, 2008 10:07

I am naturally sociable and at ease in conversation with strangers. People regard me as confident and articulate. But I also have trouble with names and faces; both remembering and associating them. I will often fail to retain the name of someone I have just met, and I may not remember the face of someone I have met several times if I see them out of context; or may suddenly lose the name of someone I've known for ages.

At worst, this can come across as rude or snobbish. I fail to make introductions because I suddenly can't recall the name of the person I'm introducing and am obliged to loiter around for a verbal clue that will bring it back. And sometimes I just make a dick of myself.

Case in point: earlier in the year, at some drinks at Top Shelf, I was surprised to see someone I knew. "What are you doing here?" I asked, and then introduced him to the person I was with as John Kelcher, who works at Sound Archives (and is the former bass player of Sneaky Feelings). It was, in fact, John Collie, who works at Manukau Institute of Technology (and is the former drummer of Straitjacket Fits).

I've known both of them for years, and although they are both tallish and brown-haired and played in Flying Nun rock bands, there was really no excuse for mixing them up. And yet I crashed on, even as John tried gently to point out he wasn't who I'd introduced him as. I considered contacting John to apologise later, but I figured I'd see him again at some point.

And I'm sure I will tonight, as Straitjacket Fits are to receive the Legacy Award (from the hand of John Campbell!) at the New Zealand Music Awards, and will have their hits played in tribute by The Fast Women, a pick-up band led by Julia Deans. That should be fun.

Indeed, so should the whole thing. I'm due a night out, and there will be no blogging service from me tomorrow morning. Still better, we're having a Media7 production lunch today, which precludes me trying to fill my day with yet more work and/or obsessing about the presidential debate.

Meanwhile, the Economist's Global Electoral College is quite diverting. The idea is that registered users of the magazine's website "vote" for their US presidential candidate of choice and the total is calculated on an electoral-vote basis (New Zealand is allocated 8, China 1900).

At present, the total is: Obama 8459, McCain 16.

The only country where "voters" have unequivocally plumped for McCain is Georgia. New Zealand is running 82% Obama.

And here is Act's law and order policy, as marvelled at by Brian Rudman this morning. Zero tolerance for crime; a bit looser on spelling and grammar …

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Dial O for Obama | Oct 07, 2008 11:49

I installed the Obama '08 iPhone app. It's amazing. Obviously, it didn't find any swing-state friends in my contacts book, and the GPS component couldn't find me an Obama campaign office nearby, but I can read daily news updates from the campaign, watch video of each day's stump speeches and call up detailed policy summaries to help me win water-cooler arguments with friends and workmates.

The campaign's use of America's top-selling smart phone and second-biggest-selling phone model of any kind is a study in engagement.

I can't tell whether the iPhone app is the work of Blue State Digital, the consultants who have helped win the internet battle for Obama and -- the New Zealand Labour Party hopes (according to an intriguing story by David Fisher in the current Listener) will do the same here -- but it seems likely that it is.

I even tried the "donate" button on the app, which triggers a phone call to a US number. But the number didn't include the right STD code to dial from New Zealand, so I can't tell whether my call would have been answered by a donation robot or a human. They'll have to get that fixed before we get to voting for President of the New World Order.

Which might not be too long, given the rate at which governments are wading in to buy out the risk in capitalism. Pundit has a roundup of local estimates of how bad the news in yesterday's PREFU really is. Also on Pundit, Nicky Hager responds to Matthew Hooton's raging about the "profoundly incompetent or corrupt" police investigation into the leaking of the Hollow Men emails.

08 Wire does its own take on the PREFU and takes a look at Farrar vs Standard on crime stats, with more argument about the ethics of implying your opponent doesn't care about rape in the comments. I do despair a bit sometimes.

PS: Also, we can still accommodate punters at tonight's recording of Media7, about the long-unreported story of Fonterra farmers' dirty streams, so let me know asap if you'd like to join us at The Classic. And if you're styaing home, you can see Raymond Miller and me talking to Oliver Driver about the media and the election campaign on Alt TV at 8.30 tonight.

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Citizens | Oct 06, 2008 10:54

It takes no particular genius to tell that law-and-order will play its traditional role in the election campaign. National will come out today with a somewhat reined-in version of the no-parole-for-repeat-violent-offenders policy it took into the last election, and according to Garth McVicar on Morning Report today, other parties will announce Sensible Sentencing Trust-approved policies before polling day.

The nub of National's new policy is that people convicted of murder will be required to serve their full sentences with no possibility of parole if they have an existing record of violent offending. The surprising thing is how few offenders this will affect: 10 of 144 people convicted since 2002, most of whom are already doomed to stay behind bars until at least their dotage.

Other violent offenders will lose the chance of parole over the last third of their sentence, but will be monitored by some unspecified means after their sentences end. Which sounds like parole without all the established practices and monitoring infrastructure, and without the incentive to behave well in prison.

Whatever the rational questions to be asked about such a policy, it will play well, especially given that the verdict on one shocking murder case is likely to come down just before polling day.

In the meantime, I'm sure it is too much to ask that McVicar could shut up and stop undermining the police at least until he has some vague idea of what he is talking about. He and a former senior cop were indignant that an Otara liquor store owner could be among those charged after a brawl outside the store.

He was charged, and Dave Pizzini, the officer in charge of the investigation took the unusual step of contacting both men to explain the background of the case to them. The ex-cop has unreservedly withdrawn his criticisms, McVicar hasn't. The interview Pizzini gave on Checkpoint on Friday makes it clear the police have not lightly brought charges against the store owner.

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In the Weekend Herald's interesting assessment of Helen Clark on Saturday, Richard Prebble was quoted rubbishing the government's record on the basis that "Government expenditure as a percent as GDP is now one of the highest in the OECD."

This didn't sound right to me, but I was surprised at how difficult it was to find a table that ranked OECD members on this measure. It appears I'm not the only one: this conservative blogger had to make his own table from 2007 raw figures, which placed New Zealand 51st, at 46.6%, with most of the OECD above it. And this economic analysis puts us fourth from the bottom of the OECD, table, with government accounting for only 38.1% of GDP.

So it appears that Prebble is just pulling numbers out of his ass, but can anyone help with definitive, up-to-date numbers and any relevant commentary?

UPDATE: Thanks to reader Rich from Observationz, who found some more very close to home on the Treasury website. For the 2004 year, Treasury says New Zealand has the second-lowest government spending as a proportion of GDP in the OECD. And Richard Prebble just makes shit up.
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Amid the general air of chaos, it might have been easy to miss Apple's share price suddenly slumping 10% late last week. The plunge wasn't anything to with Wall Street: it was because Steve Jobs was supposed to be dying. He wasn't -- and there's quite a lesson in there.

A report on CNN's iReport "citizen journalism" website on Friday morning said this:

Steve Jobs was rushed to the ER just a few hours ago after suffering a major heart attack. I have an insider who tells me that paramedics were called after Steve claimed to be suffering from severe chest pains and shortness of breath. My source has opted to remain anonymous, but he is quite reliable. I haven't seen anything about this anywhere else yet, and as of right now, I have no further information, so I thought this would be a good place to start. If anyone else has more information, please share it.

The markets have been nervous over Jobs' health for months now, and this report, as you might expect, set off a frenzy. The SEC has been passed information on the hoaxer, but it's not clear what it can do.

There's been a lot of soul-cearching out there in blogland. Sarah Perez on ReadWriteWeb asks "Did citizen journalism just fail us? You bet it did.". I'm not so sure. I think she gets to the nub of it in her own post: "Apparently, it's as easy to become a citizen journalist on CNN as it is to sign up for a new web app from an internet startup, if not easier. The process involves nothing more than filling out a name, screen name, and email address."

Citizen journalism isn't about random punters shouting whatever they want: authority still matters. And, frankly, CNN was wrong to think it could get itself some citizen mojo without having any real relationship with its supposed citizen reporter. Publishing "unedited, unfiltered news" in such circumstances was always going to end in tears.

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Meanwhile, an apology is due to Tiki Taane. I assumed that the samples of David Lange's Oxford Union Speech in his track 'David Lange You Da Bomb' came from the MP3 we have archived on this site (and which still gets hits from Wikipedia every day), and I was a bit miffed that he was charging for the track, when I'm keen to see it used freely but non-commercially.

Turns out, Tiki licensed the audio from TVNZ (the Sound Archives copy I have also came from the original broadcast of the debate) in August 2006. He was charged $35 a second for a 10-year worldwide licence, which came to some $1300. He originally intended to use it on his Past, Present, Future album, but it "didn't sit right" with the other tracks, so he's only recently made it available, via his website.

If it's cost him that much, he's clearly obliged to try and recover some of the cost at $2 a pop. I initially had a similar experience with Radio New Zealand/Sound Archives when I tried to free up the audio (I eventually got the right on a verbal agreement with Ian Fraser as TVNZ CEO), and I suppose there's some justification given that Tiki intended to make commercial use of his recording.

But I dislike situations where organisations claim copyright solely by virtue of having a copy of the work. TVNZ wasn't the originating broadcaster of the Oxford Union coverage, and I rather suspect its right to globally license it could be challenged by another party. (IIRC, the Film Archive's copy of the debate is an off-air recording of NBC coverage in America.)

This is where I think copyright isn't beneficial: there's no creator to protect, and a probable desire on the part of those involved that the recording should be public property (indeed, I have a letter from David Lange and Margaret Pope to precisely that effect). But this happens all the time.

Anyway, thanks to Tiki for getting in touch (and sending me a copy of his track!). I have a lot of respect for the way he does things.

PS: BTW, I had to rush out after posting this morning, and didn't extend an invitation to tomorrow evening's Media7 recording.

The topic is Fonterra -- and whether its (ahem) sacred cow status in the media has been foreclosed by the milk scandal. We're looking at shit going into streams and why it's taken five years to become a story.

Waikato Times editor Bryce Johns is on our panel, as is Bryce Johnson, of Fish and Game New Zealand, and John Hutchings, the senior Fonterra executive who's been handling the implementation of the Clean Streams Accord.

If you can join us early evening tomorrow, click "Reply" and let me know asap.

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The joke that went too far | Oct 03, 2008 10:05

A few people will be aware of allegations that a Labour MP committed a sexual assault that was covered up by police. It's not true. Indeed, the whole thing was a hoax.

So far as I can tell, it happened this way: the person responsible, posing as the wife of a police officer, emailed Cameron "Whaleoil" Slater with a fairly detailed account of the alleged scandal. Slater replied and assured her of confidentiality. Then, in another email, he wrote:

Thanks for your reply. I have spoken to Phil kitchin and he will take this as easily quietly as you wish. It is important to get the story told and so we will go as fast as you are comfortable.

As you may have noticed I have started leaking select titbits but certainly no specific details.

Phil Kitchin is a DomPost/SST journalist and is a good honest guy. He has agreed to protect you as our source. He would like to chat to introduce himself so you can get comfortable with his approach and then arrange to meet later once the rules have ben established.

hope that gives you some comfort.

Indeed, Slater had begun "leaking select titbits", as had his friends, including Clint Heine and Matthew Hooton. They hinted, darkly and smugly, about a brewing scandal. They implied they had deep Beehive sources on the matter. In fact, all they had was an email full of eminently checkable "facts" they did not appear to have tried to check, so great was their glee.

Eventually, the hoaxer sent a email claiming a "critical error" and that the subject of the scandal was not the Labour MP,

... but actually National Party leader John Key. I apologise for this mistake and assure you I will be more careful about my facts in future.

It was a pretty dumb stunt, if only because it could easily have gone badly wrong. And the hoaxer seems to accept that. "She" told me by email that:

To be honest I thought whaleoil would be the only one to print it and did not think other people would believe it. Feel very guilty at how this worked out and would appreciate it if you could write something to clear things up.

Slater, demonstrating his trademark lack of self-awareness, has now switched from drooling on his keyboard to expressing moral outrage at this despicable attempt to smear the name of a poor Labour MP. Or something.

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Clinton Smith is a bright young man. Under his blogging name, Steve Pierson, he's often sharp and energetic, and he does good graphs. He could be a serious commentator -- if he can develop some impulse control.

In this post on The Standard, he takes aim at David Farrar's post on Kiwiblog about this week's crime stats.

There are various aspect's of Farrar's analysis that might warrant criticism: the main one being that he's really only guessing when he rejects the idea that the increase in recorded violent offences is down to increased reporting of family violence. He emphasises increases in various violent offences, but can't know how many of them took place in the home, because that information was not in the police report. (Although it did turn up in this illuminating Checkpoint interview with Assistant Police Commissioner Grant Nicholls, who talks about the split between public-place and family violence and rather douses Farrar's argument in the process.)

Also, Farrar highlights a rise in violent crime since the mid-90s without bothering to correct for population increase; and he uses the words "having 1,000 less cannabis crimes and 500 more rapes is a net decrease in crime, but would be a worrying trend" in a way that could easily be read as an account of the new stats (in which the long trend of decline in sexual offending has resumed) rather than a mere theoretical example.

But really. He was spinning the crime numbers; just like Smith did on the same day. I can't see that's cause to call him "a disgusting person" and, worse, declare Farrar is "hardly one to fret about rape".

Smith might well be exercised about the issues, but perhaps he should try being a grown-up and putting that passion into his argument, rather than targeting abuse at the same person, over and over. Especially when Smith himself is prone to annexing the moral high ground. and when, whatever the transgressions of his comments brigade, David is a decent guy.

Meanwhile, over at Pundit, Tim Watkin consults researchers and concludes that, while New Zealand's record is nothing to be proud of, public fear of crime is out of proportion to the reality.

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Phew. Enough of all that for a Friday.

When I learned this morning that Tiki Taane had built a track around David Lange's Oxford Union speech, I was quite excited: the long battle to liberate that recording was about making sure derivative use was allowed. I'm not so impressed that the track, 'David Lange, You Da Bomb' is for sale, even if it's only $2. I couldn't put a licence on the the Lange audio (on account of not owning the copyright), but if I could, it'd be Creative Commons attribution/non-commercial/share-alike. That's the spirit of the project.

Anyway, you can still freely download Tomorrowpeople's classic musical version of the speech from our site.

This week's MGMT mash-ups and cover versions:

Peaches vs. MGMT vs. Soulwax vs. Yeah Yeah Yeahs on 'Kids'.

Katy Perry sings 'Electric Feel'.

Kaiser Chiefs have a crack at 'Time to Pretend.

A Kanye and MGMT mash-up.

And … finally. I have two double passes for the New Zealand Music Awards, Wednesday night at Vector Arena, to give away. Want one? Click reply and email me with "Awards" in the subject line. I'll draw winners later this afternoon.. [The winners are Paul Rose and one of the last entrants before I closed it off, Susan from Action Traffic.]

PS: Yikes! Nearly forgot to plug this week's Media7. It's about Fashion Week and the media, and it really came out pretty well. The panellists are Deborah Pead, Noelle McCarthy and Trish Carter, and there's also a Fashion Week report from Simon Pound and a Newsmash with Sacha Baron Cohen getting thrown out of Milan Fashion Week as his alter-ego Bruno. It's on TVNZ ondemand, as Windows Media clips, the podcast, and the first half is on YouTube.

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Entertainment news | Sep 30, 2008 10:12

A TV review: the new series of The Pretender is tremendous. We watched Sunday's second episode and we shrieked and hid behind our hands like we haven't since the heyday of The Office. The writing is sharp, the performances are fine and the humour is deeply black.

You can catch up with Dennis Plant and his band of chancers at TVNZ ondemand, and, of course the Future New Zealand website is here.

Staying with entertainment, the first Big Day Out 2009 announcement has been made, confirming Neil Young and adding Arctic Monkeys, The Prodigy, TV on the Radio, My Morning Jacket and the Ting Tings.

In the tent, the Australian acts Sneaky Sound System and Pendulum will be tolerable, and Simian Mobile Sound System should be cracking. Still looking for that house act, though …

Local announcements: Tiki Taane, the Black Seeds, The Datsuns, Elemeno P, Nesian Mystik, Ladi 6, Luger Boa, The Naked and Famous and - yup -- the Headless Chickens. But no Shihad yet.

So what time will Neil play? Will The Prodigy do the tent or the main stage? And are MGMT and J.U.S.T.I.C.E. yet to come?

There's a Public Address Radio interview with Andrew Tidball, founder of the excellent (and quite unconventional) Cheese on Toast website, who has been facilitating Aucklanders' nights out for nearly two decades. The site turns five in December and Andrew is shaping up for a two-week indie-palooza of a birthday party.

Meanwhile, did you know that Spare Room now has a political blogger?

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