5pm – 10 News

6pm – 7News Sydney

6.30pm – SBS World News Australia

7pm – ABC1 News NSW

5pm ABC News 24:

6pm 7News Sydney:

6.30 SBS World News Australia:

7pm ABC1 NSW News:

On Friday morning’s Sunrise TV show there was a discussion about racism and they gave the dictionary definition of racism as:

“The belief that each race has distinct and intrinsic attributes; The belief that one race is superior to all others”

Now I am not of the politically correct belief that any comments about any race is instantly racism. In fact I believe there are differences between races, these have developed as cultural differences in some cases genetic differences based on the local world in which people have lived over a long period of time (a good study of this is Jared Diamond’s book Guns, Germs and Steel). However, these differences do not make one race superior to another instead it makes us different, in exactly the same way that as humans we are all unique and special just like everyone else.

What is more interesting is looking at the excuses people make for making racist remarks. In the case of Andrew Johns his excuse was that he was merely rallying the troops with a pep talk. In the ARL case it was brushed aside as merely being an in-joke.

Closer to home someone I know wrote a blog post the other day in which they referred to “gweilous”. I have been around enough south east asian friends to recognise that as an extremely offensive racist comment towards “white people”, in fact Urban Dictionary* defines it as this:

Gweilo is Cantonese. It translates as ‘Ghost Man’ and is used to describe a Caucasian foreigner.
Although most of China is familiar with this word only Cantonese speakers use it as a derogative way of describing a white person.
It is considered highly offensive in Mandarin China and with some white people.

When I asked the author of the blog if they knew the meaning of that word they replied that they did and the reason why they had chosen to use it was because they were in a bad mood. That begs a question, is a bad mood a good enough excuse to use foul language? I think not.

There are always times when we lose our cool and say things that we regret at a later date but there are certain words that no matter how bad a mood you are in you are fully aware of the meaning of and there is simply no excuse for the use of.

In the case of Andrew Johns he lost two coaching jobs as a fall out from his comments, so far the ARL coach has kept their job, and the blog post was taken down – with me being accused of over analysing things.

Is taking offensive at racist comments an overreaction? Or should we take offence more often to stamp out racism?

*I know Urban Dictionary is not a real dictionary but it was the clearest, simplest and best definition I could find.

However, upon seeing this footage there is no way that you can claim that the flotilla was acting peacefully. Sure if you are being raided your response would be to fight back, but the savageness of the attack against armed soldiers leaves little wonder in my mind as to why people got killed. You don’t go into a gun fight with knives.

Update: Just released IDF video of the “aid” they were carrying:

West Coast cannabis haul slumps 42pc

The West Coast’s reputation as the second most popular cannabis growing area in New Zealand after Northland may be under threat.

The headline and opening line of the story makes it appear that cannabis is a major export earner for New Zealand.

a “standard fault” caused delays of about half an hour

Auckland commuters on the Western line faced 30-minute delays this morning when a train broke down and had to be pushed down the tracks.

I don’t see how a train breaking down and having to be pushed to another station can be considered a “standard fault” and be treated as such a minor and simple operational issue. It is little wonder Auckland has such poor public transport given the “meh” type response to this sort of issue. The Auckland rail network has only 3 routes on it and yet it seems to have more failures than any other major city that I know.

Hotplate mistaken for a landmine

A tense situation involving an apparent land mine under a Mount Maunganui house was defused after Defence Force bomb disposal unit members identified the mystery object as an old and corroded hotplate.

I know that you can’t take bomb threats/concerns as jokes but really a hotplate as a landmine? And how the hell do you defuse a hotplate!

What is interesting is the rising power of Twitter and Citizen Journalists in reporting the news much faster than the mainstream media (MSM), in fact today I was the one who tipped off NZ Herald regarding the Tsunami alert.

This was the first tweet that I received regarding the Tsunami it is from someone who works in the pacific tsunami warning centre:

Clicking on the link, and checking with the USGS Earthquake website I realised that the earthquake was huge and had just happened. So out I tweet to my 100 or so followers on twitter and cross posted the news to facebook, before then posting a direct message to NZ Herald. Here is the stream of responses (remember the higher the list the newer the post, my post is at the bottom):

From this the NZ Herald website was updated:

Then out comes the Civil Defense warning:

Then the rest of the news site begin to follow up:

In the past you had to stay tuned to your radios, tvs etc waiting for the news sites to tell you what was happening, now it appears the tables have turned and joe public seems to be informing the news media of breaking news much faster than they can report it.

The ‘h’ debate is spreading to Auckland.

Western Bay community board chairman Bruce Kilmister is keen to change the spelling Wanganui Ave in Herne Bay. He says a poll of residents would be a good start.

Mr Kilmister says if the street has been incorrectly named for the last one hundred years, now is the time to put it right.

Auckland City mayor John Banks says he has not considered a change of spelling for Wanganui Ave but supports the poll idea.

2 thoughts on this:

a) The council which campaigned on cutting ridiculous spending is spending ridiculously.
b) Surely there are much more pressing things in the city then the spelling of a street name, that may or may not be spelt correctly.

Just leave it as it is, and stop trying to create an issue where there isn’t one.

Front page of the Herald website this morning. Seems someone doesn’t know what John Key looks like.

The quake struck at 9:22 pm, and the epicentre was located in Dusky Sound at the south-west corner of the South Island. Its magnitude of 7.8 makes its size comparable with the Buller (or Murchison) earthquake of 1929 and the damaging Hawke’s Bay earthquake of 1931.

Now 7.8 is huge, it is the same size as the quake that struck Sichuan, China in 2008 and bigger then the earthquake that hit Kobe, Japan in 1995. At first it was assigned a size of 8.2 and it sent a small tidal wave across the Tasman that hit parts of Sydney. But you knew all that right? Because the media reported it right? No? Oh.

In fact the New Zealand media and civil defense response to this whole event has been really poor. On Wednesday night I got the majority of my news through Twitter (around 35 updates per second at times) and any major development would break on that at least 15 minutes ahead of any news website. To make matters worse after the earthquake a Tsunami warning was issued for NZ. This was not reported on the news until around 10.30pm at which point it had been canceled (however they reported it as valid).

Within minutes of the quake the news media also had reporters on the scene ready for life crosses and the like right? No. Because this wasn’t Auckland it was obvious not news. In fact the following morning the Herald was still reporting that the quake was only 6.6 and no mention of any Tsunami. Now one could partially forgive the news media for playing down the issue given that it happened in a very remote area of the country and that no one was killed or injured.

True, however this is not something to be sneezed at. We were very lucky this time, and by playing it down the news media is not helping. Because if another quake strikes sometime in the future and hits a more populated area how many people will just attempt to carry on as normal even if something is seriously wrong?

For the aussie take on the quake check this out: http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,25787792-421,00.html

In particular:

“The Australian Bureau of Meteorology said small tsunamis, followed by unusual current movements, were detected at Spring Bay in southern Tasmania at 10.05pm and Port Kembla, south of Sydney, at 10.06pm.”

The Geonet report, very detailed now, however this took nearly two days to become fully up to date: http://www.geonet.org.nz/news/article-jul-16-2009-fiordland-quake-biggest-for-80-years.html

At least they get how serious it was

“the remoteness of the epicentre, means that New Zealand has been very fortunate – if this earthquake had happened anywhere else it would have caused huge damage”.

And some more details on the “non-existent” tsunami

A small tsunami was generated by this earthquake, with the tide gauge at Jackson Bay, near Haast, recording a wave of 1 metre (peak to trough). An Australian gauge located out at sea, south-west of New Zealand, also detected a small wave some time after the main earthquake, which may have been generated by a landslip into the sea.

1 metre is pretty big. Not huge. But still big.

The USGS website is where I got a lot of information from on the night. It updates a lot faster than Geonet: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsww/Quakes/us2009jcap.php

Also Tsunami info through NOAA: http://www.prh.noaa.gov/ptwc/?region=0

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10574283

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/2436755/Protesters-block-Auckland-Harbour-Bridge

Look at the news stories, rather than news of many people coming out to celebrate a kiwi icon and vital economic link, the stories revolve around how “protestors” stormed the bridge and how much of a tosser Wayne McDonald is.

And interesting bunch these protestors were… They looked, hmm, normal… It wasn’t a protest it was people power.

Well done to Bevan Woodward and GetAcross may a permament access route for cyclists and walkers be not another 50 years away.