Hard News: The Internet in New Zealand
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Where have you heard that piece of irrationalism - "It is better that some die than" unspoken - all of them - before?
Phuque o dear, some times I think we - H. sap. sap - truly are deeply & permanantly insane. I mean, a kind of majority of voters here elected this crap-heap of a - plutocracy. Which touted itself as a gummint of the hustle & greed. And __which all of us over the age of 30__knew the track record thereof-
Total shame on Pita Sharples and the so-called Maori Party for it's total lack of response to the mining of conservation lands, to the 'Yes, slaughter whales please - it might save some", and the loud lack of support (in a certain area) for home help for the aged.
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The Japanese government, 3410 (quite a different matter from the people of Japan.) The grabbernments of Norway, Iceland, and various hangers-on. Human with minds like their digestive systems, especially the end part.
I don't think it's even about the food - it's about national pride, and that's why it's so damnably hard to negotiate. Think of it as the nuclear-free policy of Japan.
Only, um, with more whales. And blood.
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3410,
The Japanese government, 3410
Big daddy United States, of course
Right. Anyone amongst those who are actually (ostensibly) represented by the NZ govt., though?
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Lucy Stewart - yep. It's been touted as a matter of national pride - but
a LOT of Japanese will not eat cetaceans. Like the majority? There seems to be a rather small minority who have decided - THIS is a matter of being Japanese! How dare anyone go against our cultural sensitivities here?Well,if you are killing intelligent mammals in an area that you have absolutely no claim to - that belongs to the people of Earth- I think all the rest of us can say fuckoff, and should be able to enforce this-
3410 - the ANZ government does have a claim to overseeing matters in Antarctica and surrounding waters.
Which is why I find the current grabberment lacking in any kind of environmental awareness & spine-
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Anyone amongst those who are actually (ostensibly) represented by the NZ govt, though?
Not this time - any potential "gains" are indirect through trade agreements and associated sucking up. Downsides much more obvious, including reputation damage like we've already suffered with these bozos in climate change and now with plans to dig up our national parks. Big and lasting trade and tourism implications.
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I read that the deep cultural need of Japan to kill whales dates only from WW2 when they were very short of food, and that there are huge whalemeat stockpiles now because not enough Japanese people are interested in eating it.
Norway and friends have stronger claims on grounds of custom, but there are other old habits that are globally out of fashion now - like slavery.
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Islander - you are right about many people not being into whale in Japan. When I lived there and talked to people about it, mostly it is a nostalgic food. Maybe like eating something like corned beef for us (sorry, I don't like corned beef but was made to eat it as a child - there might be a better example out there if some of you like it!). Most people say it doesn't taste great, but it reminds them of the old days.
I'd see it occasionally on a menu, in odd places, like my local little diner.
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Maybe it's like offal or tripe or suchlike - nostalgic at safe distance for war's children.
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Sacha - as I understand it (from reading and, especially, my Japanese friends) people there have hunted and eaten dolphins since prehistorical times (as we have here.) Whale-meat definitely was introduced into the general dietary during & after WW2, and is not popular.
Sarah North - exactly that. It is a generational thing: if you were hungry and the only meat around was whale - well, that'd taste just as good as corned beef or muttonflaps if you were a child growing up in Pacific Islands...
For my family, corned beef was something we all stopped eating early on: it was the sheer blatant fattiness and the little tubular bits in the tins that suggested this was the scraps of the beef carcass. And we had really good alternatives: my uncle's wellshot venison, busher lamb, pig (not to mention titi, fish of every kind, our own chooks-)
But for older people in Japan, yep: a taste of the sense of surviving bad times-
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I had a really um emphatic argument with an old friend, who I do esteem, Rore Habib and his then-girlfriend, a Norwegian. Apropos whaling, she said, "This is our tradition. How dare you go against our tradition?"
I said, "One of our traditions was eating people. We've managed to stop."
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Islander - That's gotta be one of the best come-back lines ever!
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Sarah North - she has never been back since. I hope it wasnt my lack of hospitality....
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Sacha - I'm sure you are right about disability being a barrier to internet use. I only know two people who do not have a computer at all by choice, but I know several disabled people who would love a home computer, and lots of single mothers of disabled children who would love to have broadband but just cannot afford it on a benefit. Even if they have managed to get a second hand computer the minimum cost for broadband is about $40 a month or $10 a week, on top of a phone line. That's a lot for people trying to get by on very little. Has implications for those developing disability resources not to make them too big for those people who have dial up.
Stephen - great technology but I think that for paralysed people to use it would have to be fitted before muscles and bones got too wasted from lack of use (one of the best shots in Avatar was the close up of that main character's shrivelled legs). Can't quite see ACC funding it.
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There seems to be a rather small minority who have decided - THIS is a matter of being Japanese! How dare anyone go against our cultural sensitivities here?
These not-so-silent-minority Tojoites didn't count on their fellow citizens blowing the whistle...
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Are we actually agreeing that 10Mbits/s is considered a good broadband speed? What we are being asked to pay for this "broadband" is the real issue.. This would be considered a lazy dial up speed in many countries..
If 10 Mbit/s was our average broadband speed, we'd be second in the world, according to this report:
Unfortunately for the US, the data is pretty mixed. For the third quarter of 2009, the average connection speed for the country was 3.9Mbps, placing the US in 18th place globally. Unsurprisingly, South Korea topped the list with an average of 14.6Mbps, almost twice the average of second-place Japan with 7.9Mbps.
Asian and European countries filled the top ten, with Ireland and the Czech Republic making particularly large gains in average speed year-over-year. The US average was actually down slightly, 2.4 percent year-over-year.
It seems attainable.
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she has never been back since. I hope it wasn't my lack of hospitality....
I hope you didn't eat her.
The whaling thing is pure pragmatism, you cannot negotiate with someone that won't listen or talk because your viewpoint is so far from theirs. One step back two steps forward.
As for the mining thing. If it swells the advertising coffers of the National Party who needs Democracy?. National with its blind following of free market principals will lead to a one term Government if you ask me. -
Oh yeah, Internet. It's going down the tubes.
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a LOT of Japanese will not eat cetaceans
Apparently whaling in Japan goes back only as far as McArthur, who encouraged the whaling industry as a source of cheap protein after WW2.
They lose large amounts of money whaling and piss off their trading partners.
I can only assume that the towns the whalers come from are Tauranga style rotten boroughs that are important to the government's majority.
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Steve Barnes - nah. As I said, me & mine had given up eating people...to date.
I'd definitely support the "Tokyo Two" but that website is neither secure nor easy to negotiate.
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Hilary, that's the structural poverty side of it (shared with some other population groups) - and then there's the inaccessible site/service design on top of that.
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Islander - That's gotta be one of the best come-back lines ever!
Reckon
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@Sacha
I'm a child of the '60s and I like tripe, done well. Eaten it as such in Slovenia and Italy for eg. I also like liver (cow, sheep, chicken or whatever), kidney (steak and, yum!), pan fried lambs brains (melt in delight), haggis (chopped lambs lungs amongst others), I currently have black pudding (congealed blood sausage in essence) in my fridge. I was eyeing lambs hearts in the supermarket yesterday and noting incidentally that the NZ ones had less fat than the British ones. I have eaten fish eyes as a dare to freak out my sisters and other things most delicious that many will not eat out of squeamishness. For visual difficulty squid cooked in its own ink in Venice has to come top. a plate of grey bits in black sauce served with a bright yellow slab of polenta, but the taste and texture were absolutely wonderful.
I have taught the offspring to not be particularly squeamish too.
The reason I don't eat tripe more often is I don't remember the last time I saw it for sale and my wife doesn't like it.
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I was always a fan of liver and kidneys. But no one else I know likes them so I haven't had them for years.
I had lambs brains once, but I found it too fatty. I never realized brains had so much fat up there.
But I draw the line at sweetbreads.
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Do you think I'll ever get this thread back on topic?
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