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Posted at 8:46AM on 1 Feb 08. Permalink.

Hmmm, under the Education Act, the name 'University' is protected. SIT is not and never has been a University. It is an Institute of Technology and a member of ITPNZ - Institutes and Polytechnics NZ...

Posted at 9:27AM on 1 Feb 08. Permalink.

Re Tom Cruise remixes -- have a look at these. The top two -- the Hillary/Cruise and the Craig Ferguson -- are especially good.

http://gawker.com/349857/the-ultimate-tom-cruise-scientology-parody-video-roundup

Posted at 9:37AM on 1 Feb 08. Permalink.

Amy Gale digests Titus Andronicus in lolcat. Genius.

BLOODY CLEVR. YOOVE FINISHED? TRY TEH SKINHEDD HAMLET!

HEREZ TASTE:

ACT I
SCENE I

The Battlements of Elsinore Castle.

[Enter HAMLET, followed by GHOST.]

GHOST: Oi! Mush!

HAMLET: Yer?

GHOST: I was fucked!

[Exit GHOST.]

HAMLET: O Fuck.

[Exit HAMLET.]

LOL

Posted at 9:38AM on 1 Feb 08. Permalink.

Quote of the week from that graffiti artist's response:

so concerned with fences, i think we forget whats behind them

Buy that young man a spray can, hope he spreads that message around.

Posted at 9:50AM on 1 Feb 08. Permalink.

And off same site (linked through hiphopnz I believe he said):

but at least we got him at “the starting point” before he “jumped on the criminal treadmill”. aint that right lord mayor of Manukua city, Mr Brown.

Cuttingly accurate.

Posted at 10:03AM on 1 Feb 08. Permalink.

Doris Kearns Goodwin? Lordy, she's the one accused of plagiarism in her presidential biographies(by the Weekly Standard, but hey, she hasn't been invited back since by PBS to appear as an expert presidential historian on the News Hour.

Posted at 10:49AM on 1 Feb 08. Permalink.

Something that stood out from that graffiti blog entry was this:

Graffiti is a problem because most people think it’s poor, violent, brown people trawling their streets tagging fences. ... The truth is graffiti in your neighbourhood is made by people from your neighbourhood, if there’s tagging in Epsom it’s by kids from Epsom.

It was a major revelation for me when I realised that of all the times I'd seen kids tagging around Mt Eden, it was all white kids, and ones who looked pretty well off, and yet I'd had this really dumb idea it was brown kids from South Auckland.

But when you think about it, what 12-year-old is going to travel halfway across the city to write their name on a fence. Yeah...

Posted at 10:53AM on 1 Feb 08. Permalink.

I think she admitted to unwitting plagiarism - blamed it on her research assistants or something? It's a bit fuzzy...

I cannot tell you how thrilled I am that there is a blog called Longest Drink in Town. That giraffe cup is basically one of my favourite things about New Zealand (yes, I am a weirdo).

Posted at 11:35AM on 1 Feb 08. Permalink.

Before this thread gets on topic I'm wondering if any of youse saw this in today "Harold"

A police pursuit ended with two people jumping from a stolen car before it crashed into the Herald building in Albert St last night. Patrons at the Shakespeare Tavern watched as the man and woman then fled the scene.

So. The Herald Building is "The Shakespeare Tavern"?
I can see the scene now,
O'Sullivan, from behind a lipstick smeared half empty beer glass "You know what's wrong with this country George?"
George, propping up the bar with a leather patched corduroy elbow "PFFFraaaaarp"

Posted at 11:37AM on 1 Feb 08. Permalink.

I'm not aware of a comparable petition to our own government.

So perhaps its time someone started one.

New Zealand has troops in Afghanistan. We're propping up the people supporting this obscenity. We should be using whatever influence we have - including the threat to stop propping them up - to stop it.

Posted at 11:48AM on 1 Feb 08. Permalink.

From WIki

Claims of Plagiarism
The January 18, 2002, issue of The Weekly Standard made a case for Doris Kearns Goodwin as a plagiarist, arguing that her book, "The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys," used without attribution numerous phrases and sentences from three other books: "Time to Remember," by Rose Kennedy; "The Lost Prince," by Hank Searl; and "Kathleen Kennedy: Her Life and Times," by Lynne McTaggart.

In a March 24, 2002, interview with the Associated Press, McTaggart said, "If somebody takes a third of somebody's book, which is what happened to me, they are lifting out the heart and guts of somebody else's individual expression."

Once this was made public – and the almost identical phrases in Goodwin’s book were placed in numerous newspaper and magazine articles side by side with the originals in question - Goodwin admitted that she had previously reached a large "private settlement" with McTaggart over the issue.

An August 2002 Los Angeles Times story by Peter King reported that there were many passages in Goodwin’s book on the Roosevelts ("No Ordinary Time") that were apparently lifted directly from Joseph Lash’s "Eleanor and Franklin" and Hugh Gregory Gallagher’s "FDR’s Splendid Deception," as well as other books. (See Timothy Noah, "Historians Rewrite History: The Campaign to Exonerate Doris Kearns Goodwin, Slate online, Nov. 13, 2003.) The claims of plagiarism have damaged her reputation; however, many in the academic, literary, and entertainment communities have continued to support her and her assertion of innocence.[1]

Posted at 11:51AM on 1 Feb 08. Permalink.

That giraffe cup is basically one of my favourite things about New Zealand (yes, I am a weirdo).

It used to be for me until an unfortunate experience in Melbourne, boarding the last train from Warragul to the City after getting a bit sloshed. What was a mild desire to urinate quickly became an absolute imperative, but alas no toilets on that train. If I disembarked, it would have been a damned expensive taxi fare home. Fortunately in an empty carriage I discovered a used "Longest Drink in Town" cup. It was just enough.

Now I can't shake the memory. I'm grateful for their awesomely large cup, but I don't want to drink from it any more.

Posted at 11:51AM on 1 Feb 08. Permalink.

Milly is right. SIT is a polytechnic, not a university. Never has been and has never stated it wants to be.

The Performance Based Research Fund and research incentives for tertiary education are not the issue for SIT from the different perspectives of the major protagonists: SIT (and friends of SIT), the Minister, and the Tertiary Education Commission.

Posted at 11:51AM on 1 Feb 08. Permalink.

Doris Kearns Goodwin? Lordy, she's the one accused of plagiarism in her presidential biographies(by the Weekly Standard, but hey...

Well, I'd even give The Nation credit where credit's due -- on the theory that even a broken watch is right twice a day.

So. The Herald Building is "The Shakespeare Tavern"?

Nope, but what self-respecting Lunchtime O'Booze is going to waste good drinking time by going any further than strictly necessary. The other side of Albert Street is as close as you can get without replacing the tea room coffee machine with a wet bar.

Posted at 11:53AM on 1 Feb 08. Permalink.

So. The Herald Building is "The Shakespeare Tavern"?

The tavern is directly across the road from the Herald building and would have offered patrons front-row seats for the commotion.

But I'm surprised that such a dramatic event happened literally on the Herald's doorstep and yet they only reported it with a three-sentence article.

Posted at 11:54AM on 1 Feb 08. Permalink.

It's Foo time!

as a side bar or should that be a baaah - good to see that Foo is still on wicked pedia after all the fuss last year.
Would be useful to hear what significant outcomes actually eventuated -
* like changes to copyright legislation?
* changes to Telco separation programme?
* chance for MP's to mix with geeks?
and what else was there?

It seems like a programmers festival from the outside. Would be good to hear a bit more as things evolve.

As someone who works with open source all the time it strikes me that there is still a need to sell that message of the brave new world.

Will be looking forward to the reports.

Posted at 11:59AM on 1 Feb 08. Permalink.

With the death of Sir Edmund Hillary and all the brouhaha on the best way to honour his memory and now all this talk of youth & education, I have been reminded of one of my huge personal bugbears - its a national disgrace that not one of our major educational institutions is named after C.E. Beeby. What Hillary was to the virile in our national character, C.E. Beeby was to our intellectual.

Posted at 12:01PM on 1 Feb 08. Permalink.

Fortunately in an empty carriage I discovered a used "Longest Drink in Town" cup. It was just enough.

Now I can't shake the memory. I'm grateful for their awesomely large cup, but I don't want to drink from it any more.

bro. just throw away the cup, and get a new one.

Posted at 12:05PM on 1 Feb 08. Permalink.

douglasof240:

Thanks for refreshing my memory, but I thought it was a little more serious than a Murdoch media beat-up based on a couple of quotes lacking citations.

Anyway, before we start up a pity party for Dr. Goodwin, she might be off the speed dial at the PBS Newshour, but she still obviously has enough credibility out there to pick up the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for history and appear regularly on NBC as a news analyst.

Probably helped that she's not in academia, where plagiarism isn;t (or shouldn't be) a good career move.

Posted at 12:09PM on 1 Feb 08. Permalink.

The tavern is directly across the road from the Herald building and would have offered patrons front-row seats for the commotion.

But I'm surprised that such a dramatic event happened literally on the Herald's doorstep and yet they only reported it with a three-sentence article.

I know both buildings well, in fact if memory serves me well I have been ejected from both. It just seemed too good an opportunity to point out, yet again, the sloppyness of Harollds grasp of reportage.
Many a granny from Waikikamukau will be thinking the Herald is run from a pub in Albert Street........................oh.hang on.

Posted at 12:09PM on 1 Feb 08. Permalink.

I thought the graffiti blog offered the most poignant, and relevant opinion on the whole 'yoof crime/tagging etc' issue that's the moral panic du jour...

Makes you wonder why Campbell, Sainsbury et al, with all of their writers and reasearchers can't come up with anything even slightly resembling an alternative angle on such a topic.

Posted at 12:12PM on 1 Feb 08. Permalink.

bro. just throw away the cup, and get a new one.

LOL. Being a tidy kiwi I was tempted to dispose of it conscientiously, but the idea of carrying a full (to the brim) cup of piss in my hand all the way home to a toilet got less appealing as the minutes passed, and the train entered more populous areas. So it went onto the tracks. But it still plagues my dreams.

Posted at 12:24PM on 1 Feb 08. Permalink.

Tom - there is already a school - grouping that celebrates Ed's legacy in Manukau city. Hillary College has been around since the 60's but now it is joined by 2 other schools since 2001.

From their website

The new collegiate was launched by its namesake, Sir Edmund Hillary on December 4, 2001 and combines the resources of what was Clydemore Primary, Bairds Intermediate and Hillary College in partnership with Manukau Institute of Technology and The University of Auckland.

Sir Edmund Hillary Collegiate

Posted at 12:29PM on 1 Feb 08. Permalink.

Will be looking forward to the reports.

Sure. Just about to go, but I'll try and get together something along the lines you suggest next week.

Posted at 12:35PM on 1 Feb 08. Permalink.

And while we're on the topic, it's worth remembering that Afghanistan isn't the only country which outlaws blasphemy. Take a look at s 123 of the Crimes Act...

Shouldn't we remove the mote from our own eye and repeal this archiac, ridiculous, and theocratic law?

Posted at 12:35PM on 1 Feb 08. Permalink.

SIT is not and never has been a University

True, oversimplification on my part. I should have just said words to the effect that funding formulae in the general tertiary sector had been mistaken for entitlement and that changes had been ignored.

Posted at 12:41PM on 1 Feb 08. Permalink.

Oh yes, the lolcat Titus Andronicus is sheer genius.

Has anyone else notices that locats come across like Yoda with serious dyslexia? With the pointy ears, small stature and so on, I thought that there'd be crossovers. Anyone want to try?

(I'm busy trying to make sense of Daniel Libeskind at the moment and that's enough to do my head in)

Posted at 12:50PM on 1 Feb 08. Permalink.

Afghanistan isn't the only country which outlaws blasphemy. Take a look at s 123 of the Crimes Act...

serious question from here.

would s.123 be used to bring a prosecution for blaspheming a non-christian deity or religion?

as it's written it appears not to preclude the possibility.

Posted at 12:58PM on 1 Feb 08. Permalink.

would s.123 be used to bring a prosecution for blaspheming a non-christian deity or religion?

While the way it has been written seems to be religiously neutral, thanks to UK precedent, most legal commentators believe that it applies eclusively to Christianity (some go further and believe it applies exclusively to the Anglicanism).

The law is unlikely to be used unless Pope Tamaki wins an election or John Banks runs for Parliament again. But its mere presence on the books is an affront to modern New Zealand's liberal and tolerant values, and undermines our ability to criticise other regimes which actively engage in religious persecution.

Posted at 1:07PM on 1 Feb 08. Permalink.

Now I can't shake the memory. I'm grateful for their awesomely large cup, but I don't want to drink from it any more.

But thank you for spreading that image to the rest of us!