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Tsunami media | Dec 30, 2004 09:47
In approaching a disaster of such unfathomable magnitude as the present one, I guess it's natural to look for your own. There are, as far as I am aware, two published eyewitness accounts of the Asian tsunami by western journalists.
The Washington Post's Michael Dobbs, was taking his morning swim around a tiny Sri Lankan island near Galle when the water came. His account is compelling, but the story by the Sydney Morning Herald's Alexa Moses is of a different order altogether. It's a stunning piece of eyewitness reporting: restrained, personal and utterly wrenching.
Their accounts are available, of course, because they survived. Others weren't so lucky. Almost all of the 80 journalists at Aceh's only daily newspaper, Serambi Indonesia, are missing and feared dead.
There is already a huge Wikipedia page dedicated to the earthquake and tsunami, with scientific background and many news links. Digital Globe has a large satellite image of the southwestern coast of Sri Lanka, taken four hours after the earthquake and shortly after the tsunami struck. There is also a dedicated blog.
Slashdot has a thread, concentrating largely on the science of the disaster, but also, regrettably, full of bickering over whether the US has been stingy and/or the world is ungrateful. Shut up. Another site has tsunami video but is apparently suffering heavy load. A Windows media video of the sea crashing through a restaurant in Phuket is here.
A Japanese site has an animated gif showing the spread of the waves across the Indian Ocean.
There is a torrent file available for a PowerPoint package of before-and-after satellite images which can also be downloaded here.
Jordan Golson has gathered other visual coverage, including video (Apple is getting tetchy about his Mac.com traffic) and the Guardian newsblog is updating new links as they come in, including to this blog by American tourist Evelyn Rodriguez.
In trivial news, Ricky Gervais has been lined up to write an episode of The Simpsons, and the new British Marmite ad, featuring a giant, menacing Blob, was filmed in New Zealand …
Tired but happy | Dec 24, 2004 10:29
When you've been doing something as long as I've been doing Hard News in its various forms - 13 years, that is - you wonder if you haven't already said everything you want to say about Christmas and the Great New Zealand Summer already.
I checked. My oath, I was stroppy back in the day. The radio broadcast for Christmas 1995 wrapped up the year, bagging John Banks and making fun of Deborah Coddington. Plus ca change and all that. I was, curiously, banging on about trade in 1997, and Iraq and the SIS in 1998. And get me in 1999, still giddy with the new Labour government and pronouncing grandly on the millennium.
Nothing so weighty today. I'm tired but happy at the prospect of a change of pace. I just hope summer arrives before we go away on holiday next month.
As the media moves into summer mode, I'm looking forward to Jeremy Ansell's 10-part Split Enz documentary Enzology, five years in the making, which launches at 3pm on New Year's Day on National Radio and plays at the same time every Saturday until it's done (repeats are 9pm Tuesdays). Jeremy is the best radio engineer I've worked with, a diligent musicologist and a longtime member of Frenz of the Enz. I don't think there's anyone in the world better placed to make the definitive sound history of Split Enz.
There's actually a lot of interesting music programming on National Radio over the break. The first episode of Enzology is followed by a Helen Young retrospective, a local hip-hop wrap-up and a replay of the Dimmer session at the Helen Young before the soothing balm of Peter Fry is applied at 7pm.
The Classic Concerts series opens at 3pm on Monday the 27th with the Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl and includes Talking Heads from the 1983 Stop Making Sense tour on the Tuesday and a Nambassa festival feature on Wednesday the 29th. I'm quite intrigued as to what sort of "diverse, interesting and eclectic music tracks" Bryan Crump might play in the 11pm-midnight hour of his weeknight summer residency.
I'll be playing music in what would normally be my 12-2pm Wednesday Wire slots on 95bFM. I'm likely to be leaning towards the vinyl archive.
The 'Summer of Rock' feature in the January 1 issue of the Listener, written by Gordon Campbell and Bianca Zander with pictures by Jane Ussher, is better than the name would suggest: great, actually. It asks Dave Dobbyn, Shayne Carter, Heather Mansfield, Bic Runga, Chris Knox, Kirsten Morelle, P Money, David Kilgour, SJD and others what floats their boats, musically speaking.
I also blathered merrily about music to Grant Smithies of the Star Times for a summer music feature that I guess will be in this or next weekend. I'll blather to anyone about music.
Having been offered a post-midnight pass-out for New Year's Eve, I have made the necessary arrangements to attend Lightspeed New Yeah at Morrisson, which looks like my sort of a late one. Stinky Jim plays 12.30-2am. I look forward to seeing The Checks on the Top of the Pops special earlier in the evening. Apparently the kids were crazy for them at the recording.
And I am certain to be listening to Shaft's career-encapsulating Open Sesame album if we ever get a sunny day on the deck. If you're thinking of giving indie, I'm saying give Shaft.
And with that, I hereby offer my annual apology to anyone whose email deserved a reply but didn't get one. I'd like to thank all the Public Address crew, our occasional guests, and especially our most excellent developers CactusLab. Thanks are also due to our advertisers, and especially to Pead PR, Karajoz and Festival Mushroom Records, who all got what Public Address is about.
Fraternal greetings also to the rest of the local blogosphere, even the grumpy ones who need to get out more. Mad props to Dog Biting Men, Fighting Talk, David Farrar, No Right Turn and Rodney Hide. Also, I'm still loving being part of bFM. It is very special.
Looking back on 2004, I'm so proud of our older son, who is mildly autistic but has blossomed at school in the last six months. There are still some things he isn't wired to do, but his teacher reported that other kids in the class actually started to seek out his unique point of view as the year went on. We tend to hear a lot of angry stuff about schools, but an education system that helps foster that deserves real credit.
It's been an excellent year for Public Address. The number of visits per month has nearly doubled to 74,000 in November, and as of yesterday stood at more than 640,000 for the year. Thanks for turning up, everybody. December, moreover, has been a useful month in commercial terms. Internet advertising has begun to move past the stage of numbing mega-banners and into something a bit smarter, and I like to think we've done our bit to aid that progress. I have some ideas for 2005.
But for now, we go a little quieter. There will still be posts from the crew and me, and I'll still send out some emails to the mailing list, but it's time for a little rest. I think I can fairly say we deserve it. Merry Christmas, everybody.
That bloke | Dec 22, 2004 11:09
Was that the sound of John Tamihere believing his own hype? In yesterday's Checkpoint interview, Tamihere reacted quite oddly to a fairly benign invitation from Mary Wilson to undertake that he would not in future say one thing and do another.
"I wish it was as simple as that …" he ventured. Then: "I've never made out that my name is JC, it's JT," and "Are you asking for some sort of test or standard?" and "the judgement is over to the Kiwi community," and finally, after Wilson had patiently put the question for the fourth time, "I will use my best endeavours and try as hard as I can to be a good Kiwi bloke."
Eh? It was really hard to understand why Tamihere should have been so evasive over the question, when a simple promise to do better would actually have seen off the major outstanding matter relating to his payout from the Waiparera Trust: the fact that he said during an election campaign that he would not accept the $195,000, and then quietly changed his mind afterwards.
I actually think that the payment was not unwarranted, given his work in rescuing the trust from oblivion, and I don't even think his rash statement that he would not accept it actually had any significant impact on voter attitudes, especially not in his electorate. So why not just say that he has learned his lesson and get on with it?
Labour was certainly looking to move on at some speed yesterday. Although Rodney Hide inevitably begged to differ, and David Farrar raised questions here and here, there was easily enough in the report from Douglas White QC for the government to go out and trumpet that Tamihere had been cleared. The flurry of allegations in and around the original story broken by 3 News' Duncan Garner actually made that job easier: the long list of debunked allegations looks quite impressive. It is not an exageration to say that Tamihere was subjected to a smear campaign by his enemies - some of whom, of course, he once smeared himself.
But there are unresolved tax matters - and, of course, the Serious Fraud Office inquiry, which will, as is the wont of the SFO, take forever to complete. The Prime Minister knows what she's doing in - at the same time as she loudly defends his reputation - postponing his return to Cabinet until after next year's election.
More good stuff comes in on the speedway issue. Economist Stuart Marshall sees the issue as "a simple case of someone stealing from another - in this case a transfer of enjoyment, for no compensation":
If the speedway has to go then fans of the speedway will sustain a loss of enjoyment and the residents have a gain in enjoyment. But they won't pay for it.
The residents had a value discount in the cost of their house due to their original loss of enjoyment. If the speedway was to be started now it would be utterly necessary for the fans (or promoter or whathaveyou) to compensate the residents. That would be equitable.
What makes it a difficult issue now is that the theft is spread across a wide pool of people (the people who attend the speedway and residents bothered by the noise) and that it isn't direct monetary theft. Situations of a few people on each side with cost/damages in monetary terms are simple to conceive of. The speedway issue is a touch trickier to identify, but not impossible.
In simple economic thinking, if the residents want it altered or moved, then they should compensate those who utilise the speedway.
If the issue was being equitably considered, then the residents should not be getting something "for free" (as my Grandfather would put it). If the speedway fans' property rights were being equitably considered then the residents would have to pay for their loss of enjoyment. That may make them see it as being much easier to erect noise deflectors/barriers around the fenceline, at their cost, rather than track down those their action impedes and adequately compensate them. (I will supply my contact details if they are indeed honourably seeking to compensate for their stealing).
As for the heritage issue, it is important who was there first, the fundamental property right is set by the "discoverers", the first people there (such as the rights of Maori to the foreshore and god how did I get that into this debate?).
It frustrates the crap out of me that in other issues there is an unseemingly swift and often misguided rush to talk about issues in terms of compensation, but in this one it has stooped to a class, cultural or political lobby issue, of which it is none of.
It is a simple compensation issue. If the residents are not prepared to pay for what they get, then why should they get it?
But perhaps that the residents are paying for what they get in the form of local body rates, the payment of which implies certain rights and protections. Even some despicable Parnell type who moved in two years ago could justifiably claim to have done so on the assumption that the agreement on noise levels between the speedway promoters and the council actually meant something.
The problem for the speedway promoters isn't that they are being shut down, but that they have been held to an agreement they freely made. In what sense are the residents financially liable for the promoters' failure to honour their agreement? Rudman takes this view today:
Let's get it clear, it's not the locals who have caused the crisis. It's Auckland City Council as both landlord and regulator of the venue, speedway promoter Dave Stewart, and a geriatric legal system that takes forever to creak into action.
For a decade, Auckland City has failed to police or enforce the noise limits for speedway written into its district plan.
Similarly, Mr Stewart and his predecessors, who helped write the rules after negotiations with neighbours and the council in 1994, have blatantly ignored them.
As for the residents, far from sneaking in with last-minute, spoiler legal action on the eve of this speedway season, they applied for an enforcement order back in May after years of ignored complaints to the council.
They had hoped, notes Judge Craig Thompson, the matter would have been resolved before the resumption of speedway last month. "Regrettably," said the judge, the May application got bogged down in the court system, leading to this month's request for an interim enforcement order.
On Monday night, Mr Stewart said the district plan noise limit of 85 decibels at the boundary was "unreasonable" and that speedway could not operate successfully under those conditions. Why, then, did he sign a contract two years ago for a six-year lease to run the speedway knowing he would be bound by this restriction?
And why, just a few weeks ago, did he sign the annual Western Springs Stadium Noise Management Plan which incorporated this restriction, and declared in the opening paragraph that "it is our policy to comply with all applicable noise requirements and legislation"?
Robert Harvey was also in touch:
Note with approval your point that the dB scale is logarithmic and therefore a few dB make a huge difference, 6dB being a doubling of sound pressure levels.
However no-one seems to have addressed that what is being measured is filtered noise, to the dBA scale, which emphasises speech frequencies and rolls off below 1kHz, so that at 100Hz it's about 20dB down.
The theory is that this reflects the response of the human ear. In practice it overlooks the carrying power of lower frequencies, which are far less absorbed by distance, reflection or passage through walls than mid and bass freqs. With the result that these sounds travel very much farther than the highs and affect a correspondingly greater audience, and as well leaves them with few means of mitigation or avoidance. Result is found in transmission through several floors in new blocks of flats. Speedway is one of several such concerns.
Ben Simpson has a personal solution:
For years I have lived in noisy flats where parties go on till all hours despite the fact I have work in the morning. And I've lived in Grey Lynn on Stanmore Road for years, just over the crest from the speedway
I have developed a great technique for dealing with noise that prevents any anxiety. I turn up my stereo until I can't hear anyone else's noise....I get to listen to my music, and I don't have to give a brass wazoo what others are doing. In fact I'm happy that they are having a good time and enjoying themselves. The day I call noise control is the day I am officially an old fart with no sense of fun.
That's my solution close the windows, turn up the stereo and appreciate that others live in this town too. If I wanted peace and quiet I'd go live in Temuka.
It's interesting, really, because I do think noise control regulation is prone to vexatious use, and I might normally have enjoyed a chance to rail against the blandification of Grey Lynn (the bars are full of plonkers in polo shirts, etc.), but I found myself objecting even more to the speedway-promoters-good-residents-bad PR campaign that most of the media seems to have been soaking in. It just isn't that simple.
Spinning of yarns | Dec 20, 2004 10:39
The Sunday Star Times quietly retreated yet further from its SIS story yesterday, with a page four story noting that "Peter" - the man who claimed to have bugged iwi computers while masquerading as a maintenance man - had been "challenged to explain anomalies uncovered by the paper's investigation."
The story, as it was originally published - a tale of widespread off-the-books surveillance of law-abiding Maori individuals and organisations, with the possible collusion of the government - is basically gone. Editor Cate Brett granted in an interview with Linda Clark this morning that the sources may have "given us half-truths" in the course of an elaborate web of claims about dirty tricks.
That said, there may well be a cracker of a yarn lurking in the details of what really did happen - who are these people anyway?
Brett begged some sympathy for reporters who were "not well-equipped" to deal with such sophisticated spinning of yarns. But Anthonny Hubbard and Nicky Hager may yet earn sympathy on a different count. Since the week after the story broke, there has been a rumour that both journalists, beginning to have doubts, requested that their bylines be withdrawn from the story. Management, with an eye on the Sunday competition, declined. I don't know if it's true, but it now seems worth mentioning.
Poor old Dick Hubbard has apologised for signing the last-minute anti-Civil Union Bill letter and admitted that he was influenced by the ropey statistics it contained. GABA takes up the story:
Following a vigorous discussion about the source, validity and accuracy of the statistics quoted in the letter, Mr Hubbard said that he was very concerned when he heard the statistics that were presented in the draft letter and therefore was prepared to sign the letter. He explained this by saying that, "I took them to be accurate and given that my concern for the young children of our city is deep, I found the statistics alarming". GABA's Johnny Givins pointed out to the Mayor that the statistics date from the 1980's, are from the UK court records, refer to single parent families, make no reference to gay parents and contradict a vast set of international research on gay families.
In other words, it was the same sort of selective, out-of-context half-truth put forward throughout the debate by Maxim and its less salubrious fellow pressure groups. Alan Duff is, of course, a lost cause to any argument on the facts, but it would be nice if Ralph Norris and Mick Brown were to 'fess up and admit that they didn't do their homework before they signed the letter. The funny thing is that most of the men who signed the letter also signed on behalf of their wives. How wonderfully 1950s …
As I expected, I got a bit of email about Friday's comments on speedway at Western Springs, including from my local Member of Parliament:
I would have a little more sympathy for your high-minded argument about the speedway and what we now know about the damage that noise does if I could find anyone at all in the music business who was prepared to help me and ACC to campaign to cut noise levels at concerts, pubs and every other live, amplified, music gig. It's a bit like being against GE and smoking and driving a SUV. Low-pitched, episodic noise, apparently, does little long-term damage. Many young musicians and their fans are destroying the capacity to enjoy music when they are 40!
I sympathise with people who object to the Speedway but they did buy or rent knowing it had been there for 75 years. And it is a real interest and family thing for lots of people, many of them also in Western Springs/Grey Lynn.
Mark Graham took a different view on the council's possibly meaningless vote in support of the speedway:
Fuck them. They're happy to support it because it's not in their backyard. Almost everyone supporting it lives elsewhere. Let's park a racing car revving at 85 decibels outside each councillor's house at 6pm on every Saturday night through summer and see how long they take to call noise control.
Most emails, however, were less sympathetic to residents. Grant said:
This issue is first and foremost about gentrification of the inner Western Suburbs and the desire to enforce middle-class values on the working class. I'll bet there was no worry about the noise when Grey Lynn was a predominantly working class Polynesian suburb.
Yes, perhaps the working class Polynesian residents loved the speedway. Or perhaps they were just less able to access the system do something about it. Mike Mapperson was in no doubt about the issue:
City Council insinuated the 85db limit into the City Plan, either because no-one thought of the consequences for Speedway (negligence) or because they foresaw the effect on Speedway (conspiracy). Either way it is not up to Speedway organisers to put things right it is up to Auckland City.
It is true, as everyone says, that the speedway has been there much longer than any of the residents: if people didn't know what they were buying, then they ought to have known. I don't think that means they have no rights at all.
The current dispute has been going on for 12 years. Noise limits were agreed eight years ago. But it seems that serious attempts to comply with the agreement only began in the last few weeks and, with only seven cars per race - as opposed to 15-20 - the noise at the boundary just crept under the 85db limit.
Why did it take so long? Another email came from Chris Slane:
One member of a speedway pit-crew told me the noise limit was reasonable. Just adding some more muffler was not a problem. (They have a lower limit at the Bayfield track.)
So what is the promoter really doing here - rarking it up mightily for the publicity?
Well, there has certainly been plenty of that. The promoter, Dave Stewart, is of the opinion that residents will just have to stick it.
"But I do think from a nearby residents' point of view that whatever noise they are going to get it is going to be loud ... It's not going to make their lives any different if the speedway runs at 85 or 87."
Yes it will, actually: the decibel scale is logarithmic. The choice of 85db as the threshold at the Western Springs stadium fenceline, onto which houses back, is not accidental. It's a fairly common benchmark in workplace health and safety regulations. It's regarded as the point at which hearing loss becomes an issue, and is often set as the benchmark for eight hours' work in a noisy environment - but if the continuous sound pressure rises to 88db, the maximum permitted exposure under, say, Victorian state law, falls to only four hours. Some jurisdictions require earmuffs to be made available at 85db. You can't have a normal conversation at 85db. At the 85db limit, the speedway is not trivial noise, and at 3db more, it is quite serious noise.
I don't want the speedway to stop. It is a grand tradition, and thousands of Aucklanders have grown up loving it. But I'm not comfortable with the almost universal willingness to vilify residents who can't even open a window on summer Saturday nights lest the sound of angry giant bees drowns out their conversations or bedtime stories. After Close Up @ 7's astonishing decision to broadcast the names of petitioners, some residents, including those who are elderly, have received the inevitable death threats. They are not serious threats, but how would you feel?
There is a public good in the speedway continuing. There is also a public good in ratepayers not being subjected to noxious levels of noise. It is much better to move forward with that in mind and try and do something about it - even if it means both the council and the promoters spending money - than to vilify nearby residents as moaning ninnies and do nothing.
And finally: shopping on Saturday morning at St Lukes. First shop: 'Last Christmas' by Wham! is piping through the speakers. Next shop: 'Last Christmas' by Wham! is piping through the speakers. Into K-Mart … you guessed it. By the time I venture over the road to Dick Smith's, where 'Last Christmas' is playing again, I have the distinct feeling that I am being stalked by George Michael. The assistant at Dick Smith's says there is a CD of Christmas classics "that a lot of retailers use." I hereby offer to give favourable consideration to opening my wallet in any store that doesn't …
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