The Capital Letter

Pop quiz, Hotshot:

You all know how these things work by now: below is a close-up photo. What is it a photo of?

Put your guesses in the comments section. I'll post the solution and an eplanatory post tomorrow evening.

Is your computer screen looking a little on the dirty side?

Could your monitor use a bit of a polish?

Well, then get your free screen clean right here. You won't regret it.

[Hat-tip to PC at Not PC.]

Today two excellent links were forwarded to me and I thought I'd share. [Hat-tip on both counts to Twiglets who's obviously working very hard at the office this fine Friday.]

The first of the two links is to a hilarious interview with a search engine, specifically, Ask Jeeves. Here's the introductory blurb:

As random as they are relevant, enigmatic as they are enlightening, search engines have earned a slightly sullied reputation as a necessary evil. But it is a one-sided assessment. The search engines have not been able to explain themselves. Until now.

Thanks to its sophisticated program, which answers questions with phrases or sentences, Jeeves of AskJeeves.com granted SatireWire Editor Treat Warland the opportunity to actually interview a search engine. There were many important questions to ask. Unfortunately, he never got to most of them.

NOTE: These are real screen captures of actual responses. Advertisements appearing with results have been edited out, and the query boxes have been enlarged to allow readers to view entire questions. This does not in any way alter the responses.

Read the rest of this ridiculous yet amusing interview here, where you'll find that little old New Zealand even gets a mention.

The other link I was sent was to 20Q.net. 20Q.net is an experiment in artificial intelligence. The program is very simple but its behavior is complex. Everything that it knows and all questions that it asks were entered by people playing this game. 20Q.net is a learning system; the more it is played, the smarter it gets.

It's fascinating, and frighteningly addictive. Follow the link and see if you can beat the system, perhaps even teaching it something along the way.

Today the Irish Republican Army (IRA) formally ended a decades long campaign of armed resistance to British rule, illegal paramilitary activity and terrorism. In an historical and important step, the IRA announced earlier today that it was formally ordering an end to its armed campaign as of 4pm.

The leadership of Oglaigh na hEireann has formally ordered an end to the armed campaign.

This will take effect from 4pm [1600 BST] this afternoon.

All IRA units have been ordered to dump arms.

All Volunteers have been instructed to assist the development of purely political and democratic programmes through exclusively peaceful means.

Volunteers must not engage in any other activities whatsoever.

The IRA leadership has also authorised our representative to engage with the IICD [Independent International Commission on Decommissioning] to complete the process to verifiably put its arms beyond use in a way which will further enhance public confidence and to conclude this as quickly as possible.

We have invited two independent witnesses, from the Protestant and Catholic churches, to testify to this.

The Army Council took these decisions following an unprecedented internal discussion and consultation process with IRA units and Volunteers.

Read the IRA statement in full here.

This is a Good Thing and should definitely be viewed as an important step in the right direction. What is unique about this IRA statement is that it is uncharacteristically forthright. Unlike previous statements, it leaves no 'wriggle room' for interpretation, but is rather a bald statement of facts and unmistakeably clear instructions to its members and activists. Unfortunately, the statement stops short of ordering an end to all illegal activities (such as the IRA's suspected involvement in a €38 million bank robbery in Belfast late last year) or of promising to disband. But, if we're being realistic here, this is about as far as anyone could have expected the IRA to go in the first instance.

Predictably, and not unreasonably given the IRA's history of broken promises, initial reactions from the Unionist parties have been somewhat sceptical, in a "let's wait and see if they stick to it" type of vein. So, for example, Sir Reg Empey, the leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, had this to say:

"I can`t take any statement from the Republican movement at face value because we have had that many of them in the past," he said.

"After having had so many false starts in the past, naturally people are going to say actions speak louder than words. So let us see how this plays out. Let us see what happens to the weapons, let us see what happens on the ground."

Sir Reg predicted it would be "some time" before a power-sharing Executive was resumed. He told BBC Radio 4`s World At One programme: "People are so sceptical, having been burnt so many times before. This is not simply whingeing or being difficult about it. It is being simply factual that we have had so many statements before that haven`t been kept."

Unionist hard-liner Ian Paisley, responded to the announcement in a similar vein, as BBC News reports:

DUP leader Ian Paisley greeted the statement with scepticism, saying that the IRA had "reverted to type" after previous "historic" statements.

"We will judge the IRA's bona fides over the next months and years based on its behaviour and activity," he said.

He said they had also "failed to provide the transparency necessary to truly build confidence that the guns have gone in their entirety".

The unionists have every reason to be sceptical, of course, and we won't know just how historical a step this is until we see how effectively it is put into action by the IRA. If, however, the IRA really does follow through on its promise to "dump arms", that will place real pressure on Unionists, particularly Ian Paisley's hardline DUP, to enter into government with Republicans, as the Financial Times argues in this article.

These are fascinating and encouraging developments, and today has the potential to go down in history as the day the armed struggle for supremacy in Northern Ireland ended and became a democratic and political struggle instead. Alternatively, it could go down as yet another set of broken promises and yet another glimmer of hope for peace dashed. We won't know until we know, but I sincerely hope it is the former.

In all of this, let us not forget that the IRA is not some honourable group of freedom fighters struggling against injustice, but rather a terrorist organisation, responsible for the deaths of over 1,770 police officers, soldiers, politicians and civilians. But let us also not pretend that the terrorism and atrocities have been confined to the republican side of the battle for Northern Ireland. Both the unionist paramilitaries and the British government also have their fair share of blood on their hands.

Spare a thought in your consideration of this new development for the Prime Minister of Great Britain, Tony Blair and the Taoiseach of Ireland, Bertie Ahern, who have worked extremely hard over recent years to reach this point. Don't forget either that the U.S. President, George Bush, and his tougher stance vis-à-vis the IRA and its political arm Sinn Fein have applied important pressure that has had a role to play in hastening today's announcement. And finally, do not underestimate the significance of the stance taken by the brave and indefatigable McCartney sisters, who refused to be cowed or intimidated into silence and who turned the personal tragedy of the murder of their brother at the hands of IRA members into a personal and political campaign that made a real difference to the Northern Ireland peace process. It's amazing what can be achieved when a handful of of brave people stand up for what they believe in and refuse to be swayed.

For more detail about today's announcement and background information on the Troubles and the peace process, check out these links:
Reaction to IRA statement [BBC].
IRA says ceasing all armed activity in N.Ireland [Reuters].
How the IRA has reached this step [BBC].
Timeline: IRA's armed campaign [Daily Telegraph].
Ireland peace process: interactive guide [The Guardian].

It cannot be often that two stories involving both a bird and a phallic symbol emerge on the same day, but that is exactly what has happened today.

The first of the two stories comes from Cape Canaveral in Florida, where a very large phallic symbol which I've blogged about before successfully launched on a 12 day space mission. By all accounts the launch went smoothly, except for a bit of a question mark over a piece of debris which was observed falling off the underside of the shuttle and which NASA are looking into.

Unfortunately, there appears to have been one exception with regard to the Space Shuttle launch going well: I seriously doubt that the bird pictured on the right had a good time of it! Poor little fellow. Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Today's second phallus-plus-bird story comes from the South of Germany, specifically from the Hohle Fels cave, near Ulm in Baden-Württemberg. There, archaeologists have found what might well be a 28,000 year-old sex toy. No, really. Don't believe me? Well, perhaps you'll believe the BBC News website:

A sculpted and polished phallus found in a German cave is among the earliest representations of male sexuality ever uncovered, researchers say.

The 20cm-long, 3cm-wide stone object, which is dated to be about 28,000 years old, was buried in the famous Hohle Fels Cave near Ulm in the Swabian Jura.

The prehistoric "tool" was reassembled from 14 fragments of siltstone. Its life size suggests it may well have been used as a sex aid by its Ice Age makers, scientists report.

"In addition to being a symbolic representation of male genitalia, it was also at times used for knapping flints," explained Professor Nicholas Conard, from the department of Early Prehistory and Quaternary Ecology, at Tübingen University. "There are some areas where it has some very typical scars from that," he told the BBC News website.

[Emphasis added]

See? I don't just make this stuff up, you know. There can't be many dildos around which have the added feature of doubling as a knapping stone for flints, I reckon. The phallus, for those of you who are wondering, and didn't bother clicking on the link above, looks like this:

But where, I'm sure you're wondering, is the link with the bird in this story? Well, it turns out that in the same cave, archaeologists had previously found what is thought might be the earliest representation of a bird in the archaeological record, carved from mammoth ivory.

The dig site is one of the most remarkable in central Europe. Hohle Fels stands more than 500m above sea level in the Ach River Valley and has produced thousands of Upper Palaeolithic items.

Female forms, such as the 30,000-year-old Venus of Willendorf are more common. Some have been truly exquisite in their sophistication and detail, such as a 30,000-year-old avian figurine crafted from mammoth ivory. It is believed to be one of the earliest representations of a bird in the archaeological record.

Truth, as Mark Twain once put it, is stranger than fiction.

I've been sent the picture below twice in the past hour, and just had to share. This is obviously flying around the cyber-world at a rate of knots, so I thought I'd do my bit to help it on its way. [Hat-tips to Twiglets and RM].

Neither of my sources were able to confirm whether or not this is for real. It certainly looks real, and hand-written signs like this are commonplace at London Tube stations. But it could equally be someone having a lark. Either way, at least whoever wrote it is calling a spade a spade. It would be funnier if it weren't so true. Or, as my London-dwelling, tube-riding friend Twiglets put it:

It's fairly sound advice too. I'm not sure whether I'm appalled by the lack of political correctness or refreshed by the lack of political correctness. At least there's someone there who's prepared to tell it like it is. You are at greater risk if you look a bit foreign.

Quite so. 'Business as usual' in London? Don't think so. How could it possibly be?

Just when I had pretty much given up hope that I would get a response to my open letter regarding Zimbabwe to the New Zealand Prime Minister, Foreign Minister and Associate Foreign Minister, I received a response late last week. It was from the Foreign Minister, Mr. Phil Goff.

Here is his reponse in full:

Dear [BerlinBear],

Thank you for your emails of 22 and 24 June. I am replying on behalf of the Prime Minister.

The New Zealand Government has for a long period consistently condemned the actions of the Mugabe regime in undermining democracy and abusing human rights in Zimbabwe. Over the last two months, the situation in Zimbabwe has deteriorated still further, with the unprecedented destruction of the homes of more than a third of a million people in what appears to be an act of political retribution.

The proposed cricket tour by the Black Caps in these circumstances is quite inappropriate. It would be portrayed as a lack of concern by the team as to what is happening there, and used by the regime even to suggest implied support for it. Consequently, the Government has told New Zealand Cricket that it is opposed to the tour going ahead. If it proceeds it is not with our blessing. Indeed it is opposed not only by the Government but also by most parties in Parliament and the overwhelming majority of New Zealanders.

However New Zealand Cricket like all sporting organisations and other independent bodies cannot be compelled by Government to follow our instructions. To achieve that we would have to legislate to control non-government organisations and in particular to restrict their right of free association and movement. Freedom to travel abroad as a group or as individuals is a longstanding right of New Zealanders. No government has ever legislated to prevent this and I have no desire to create such a precedent.

The Government has endeavoured to press the International Cricket Council to lift penalties on to its member Cricket Boards who breach contractual obligations by not complying with their Future Tours Programme agreement.

We have said that gross human rights abuses constitute a valid reason for refusing to tour a country and that penalties should not be threatened to force a national cricket side to do so in these circumstances.

Regrettably the ICC has not been willing to adopt this approach. Of the ten countries represented on the ICC, we have been able to get support from the governments of only two others, and neither of these, (Australia and the UK) would be prepared to compel their Cricket Boards to act in a particular way. New Zealand will however refuse to give visas to allow any national representative sporting teams from Zimbabwe to tour New Zealand. This will prevent the proposed tour to New Zealand by the Zimbabwe cricket team in December. New Zealand is the first country to have taken such action. This will clearly, directly and strongly communicate to the Mugabe regime our opposition to and abhorrence of its human rights abuses.

A sporting boycott is not an end in itself but rather a means to the end of putting pressure on the Zimbabwe government to change its behaviour. We have also imposed smart sanctions prohibiting leaders and business cronies of the Mugabe regime coming here. We are using every available forum: the G8, the EU, the United Nations, the UN Human Rights Commissioner, the IMF and the Southern Africa Development Community to press for stronger international action against and pressure on Zimbabwe's government.

New Zealand is showing leadership in the international community against human rights abuses in Zimbabwe. Thank you for passing on your views on this issue.

Yours sincerely

Hon Phil Goff
Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade

Interesting. It was good, and encouraging, to receive clarification of all of the steps taken by the government vis-à-vis Mugabe's human rights violations. For example, I was not aware of the smart sanctions that Mr. Goff mentions, nor of the appeals to the various international bodies for more pressure to be imposed on Zimbabwe's government. That is all good news, and I am pleased to see that steps are being taken.

I was a little surprised that Mr. Goff chose to focus so heavily on the New Zealand cricket tour to Zimbabwe, since I made no mention of it in my letter. That is an area where I disagree with government policy. I am firmly of the opinion that, since the clearly amoral ICC failed to take action, what was required was for the government to step in and impose sporting sanctions. As I see it, this need not necessarily have involved curtailing the New Zealanders' freedom of movement and association as Mr. Goff claims. Government action should have been taken to prevent teams and sporting bodies representing New Zealand travelling to and competing in Zimbabwe. Legislation to this end could have explicitly stated that the rights of individual New Zealanders wishing to travel to Zimbabwe in a private capacity were unaffected. As I understand it, the legislation designed to stop the tour, proposed by the Green Party, did just that. Idiot/Savant over at No Right Turn agrees.

So all in all then, it's a good news/bad news response. It is encouraging to see that the government is pursuing various avenues in its efforts to apply real pressure to Mugabe and the Zimbabwean government to halt Operation Murambatsvina and other human rights violations. But it is a shame that the government refused to act to prevent the New Zealand cricket team from travelling to Zimbabwe to represent our country. That sends the wrong signals entirely and is an embarrassment to me as a New Zealander.

Meanwhile 1: Yesterday the New Zealand parliament passed a motion expressing its opposition to the cricket tour to Zimbabwe. The text of the motion was as follows:

That this House, noting with grave concern the oppression by the Government of Zimbabwe of its own people and its gross violation of human rights, calls upon New Zealand Cricket to abandon the proposed Black Caps tour to Zimbabwe, and urges the International Cricket Council to exclude Zimbabwe from international tours while gross human rights abuses continue in that country.

That's all well and good but sadly it achieves nothing. You can read more about the motion here, and about New Zealand Cricket's rejection of the motion here.

Meanwhile 2: Despite the publication of a damning report by the UN special envoy, Ms Anna Tibaijuka, and despite official claims that Operation Murambatsvina has been curtailed, the forced removals and human rights violations continue apace in Zimbabwe, particularly in voting districts which voted in favour of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change in the recent election. Sokwanele has the disturbing details.

Germany keeps up its record as the fount of the quirkiest news this week, with this absolute gem reported by Deutsche Welle. It seems that a woman in Cologne thought it would be a good idea to go shopping at 4 o'clock in the morning ... naked! The article is short, so I'll include it in its entirety here:

Police detained a Cologne woman shopping naked early one morning this week but let her go after admonishing her.

The 35-year-old female loser of a game of spin-the-bottle walked into a 24-hour convenience store in Cologne at 4 a.m. Nothing unusual there. But in this case, the woman was clad in an unbuttoned jeans jacket and nothing else.

And although Germans are famously tolerant of nudity, officials said they could have arrested her for disturbing the peace. But they did not. "We are a tolerant city," police spokesman Berkard Jahn told Reuters. "We decided to let her go home with a verbal warning to dress appropriately next time."

He said that decision was made because few people and presumably no small children saw her at that time of the day.

No word yet on what the clerk doing the graveyard shift thought.

Nice touch. It's certainly true that the Germans are very tolerant of nudity, and very keen on getting their kit off: at the beach, in the sauna, even in some parks (though, interestingly, unlike the Brits, never when they are drunk in the pub). That said, I've never seen anyone shopping here in the buff. I must be shopping in the wrong places.

There was fascinating variety in the responses to yesterday's Sunday pop quiz. As you may recall, this week's quiz featured the photo on the right.

Perhaps my favourite response of all was Andaloo's suggestion that it might be a photo of the missing link. Sadly, it was not.

Had I managed to find and photograph the missing link, I think I'd be flogging the photo for a fortune to some magazine, rather than displaying it on my blog. But I loved the suggestion nonetheless. Other interesting guesses involved trees and fungus and all sorts of weird and wonderful things.

In fact, as a number of you guessed correctly (M.P. Black got there first, well done!), it was a close-up photo of a piece of the Berlin Wall, with a hole in it. If you take a few steps back from the hole, it starts to take shape and looks more like this:

And if you step right back to the road and fit as much into the photo as you lens will allow, then it looks like this:

Noone managed to guess exactly where or what it was though. Cufflinks made the logically sound, but ultimately wrong guess that the photo must have been taken looking from the Western side of the wall towards the East.

I say logically sound because, back when the Berlin Wall was whole, the only artwork and graffiti on it was to be found on the West Berlin side of the wall. From the West, you could walk right up to the Wall, and the authorities allowed it to be graffitied and decorated. From the East, on the other hand, the Wall was a pristine and imposing grey, because you most certainly could not walk right up to it. In fact there was a so-called 'death strip', patrolled by East German border guards with dogs and machine guns, and surveyed from on high by more guards in towers equipped with searchlights and more machine guns. The fact of the matter is, there's no way you could have graffitied the "anti-fascist protection wall" from the East, because you'd have been shot before you reached it.

But the reason that Cufflinks was ultimately not right about the orientation of the photo, is because this is a rather special section of the Berlin Wall. It is a small part of the so-called East Side Gallery. The official website describes it thus:

The Berlin Wall East Side Gallery is a 1.3km-long section of the wall near the center of Berlin. Approximately 106 paintings by artists from all over the world cover this memorial for freedom and make it the largest open air gallery in the world.

The East Side Gallery is a special place, where art has become the expression for a unique point in time of the history of a separated Germany. It is a meeting point that talks about an old Berlin and a new Berlin, a separated and a unified Germany.

Between Oberbaumbrücke (Oberbaum Bridge) and the Ostbahnhof, along the former borderline that ended at the Spree and Mühlenstrasse, stretches a unique picture palette that marks a sign of overcoming inhumanity. After the Wall came down in 1989, hundreds of artists from all over the world gathered and transformed the eastside of the Wall that had been untouchable up to now, with their paintings, giving the Wall a new face in a new time.

In 2000, ten years after it came into existence, much of the East Side Gallery was restored by the original artists. The restored section now looks like this:

The East Side Gallery is great. The remaining section of the Wall is long enough that you get a real (if visually vastly brightened) idea of what it must have been like to have a bloody great wall running through the middle of your city. Much of the artwork is really superb, with some very clever political messages. I would highly recommend a visit to the East Side Gallery to anyone who comes to Berlin. It is definitely worth a look.

[Time permitting, I hope to post more about the Berlin Wall tomorrow or later this week.]

I've just made two new additions to my blogroll, which I thought I'd draw your attention to.

First up, the blog of someone I met (briefly) recently here in Berlin. He's a Kiwi, currently living in Edinburgh and his blog covers all sorts. The name is a clever pun on the blogger's name, rather than an indication of where he lives or is writing from: from the morgue.

And secondly, another new discovery: strong-light. Strong light blogs from Wellington, New Zealand, and though she appears to be just getting this blog started, I like what I've seen so far.

Check them out.

Well, my source, or rather her Mum, is obviously impeccably connected in the New Zealand political world, because she had it bang on. As predicted, New Zealand Prime Minister, Helen Clark, has announced the date of the general election. It is to be held on Saturday 17th September, some eight weeks from now. The New Zealand Herald has the story:

New Zealanders will go to the polls on September 17, Prime Minister Helen Clark announced today.

Helen Clark said she had advised the Governor-General that Parliament be dissolved on August 11. Labour would launch its official campaign on Sunday August 21. Labour will be seeking a third term in office after sweeping to power in 1999 and returning with a large number of seats in 2002.

The Prime Minister's announcement comes a day before Parliament resumes after a four week recess and heralds eight weeks of intense political campaigning. Helen Clark kicked that campaigning off today, saying voters faced "stark choices" between Labour and National in both policy and style.

Leadership, credibility experience and trust - areas where she believed Labour had an edge on National - would be crucial, she said. Labour had kept its election pledges - unlike previous governments - and it did not "overpromise" like some of its opponents. The experience of Labour's leadership team dwarfed National's, she said. She and Finance Minister Michael Cullen had a joint 48 years' experience in Parliament, whereas National leader Don Brash and his finance spokesman John Key had just 6 years. "Leading a government is not a game for amateurs. Credibility, experience and a proven ability to get results for New Zealanders as our government has, do speak volumes."

So now, finally, it's game on. There have already been very clear signs that this is going to be a nasty political campaign, with both of the main parties (Labour and National) already having launched into taking cheap shots at each other, rather than focus on the real issues and differences of policy. Personally, I'd far rather see a New Zealand election campaign fought on policy and vision and important issues, but it doesn't appear to be shaping up like that. It stands in stark contrast to what I've seen so far of the German election campaign, which seems to have all the parties focussing largely on the major issues, rather than getting into gutter politics. I say so far advisedly, as that positive focus may well change as we get closer to the election here. Time will tell.

For more coverage of the announcement of the election date, check out the following links:

Prime Minster's statement on the general election

The announcement of the election date in photos

The National Party's response to the announcement

The Green Party's response to the announcement

The populist xenophobic clowns' New Zealand First Party's response to the announcment

A rumour has come to my attention: apparently the general election in New Zealand is finally going to be called on Monday at a press conference after the scheduled cabinet meeting. So, by the time I get up tomorrow morning, it should be known when we New Zealanders are going to be called to the polls.

Since the NZ election, just like the German election, will in all likelihood take place in September, I will have two different election campaigns to keep my eye on simultaneously. Excellent. Watch this space.

Later today, on the cobblestones of the Champs Elyssées in Paris Lance Armstrong is going to win the Tour de France. Again. He has an unassailable 4 min and 40 second lead over the second placed rider, Ivan Basso. Nothing, barring a terrible accident which prevents from completing today's 21st stage, can stop Armstrong from taking a record seventh Tour de France win in the final race of his career as a professional cyclist. Congratulations Lance! That is a truly amazing achievement. You deserve it.

For those who are unfamiliar with professional cycling and in particular with the Tour de France, it is extremely difficult to convey just what a remarkable achievement this is. The Tour de France is the toughest bike race in the world. This year, the tour route has covered more than 3,500 kilometres, over three astonishingly gruelling weeks and 21 stages. (You can see a flash presentation of the route here.) Before Lance Armstrong won his sixth tour last year, no one had ever won more than five. More than five was thought to be impossible. Even the greatest cyclist of all time, the "Cannibal" Eddy Merckx couldn't do it.

But it wasn't impossible at all, as Lance Armstrong proved last year by winning his sixth Tour de France in succession. And today he makes it seven in a row. Bear in mind that all seven of those wins have come after his recovery from testicular cancer. He was told by his doctors that there was little chance that he would live, and that if he did he would never ride competitively again. Over the past eight years, he has proved them wrong with a display of single minded determination and competitive spirit bordering on the completely obsessive.

Today is the last day in the professional career of a truly amazing sportsman. If you can, watch the last part of the stage into Paris on television or online. Even if you are not interested in cycling at all, you will be amazed at the spectacle. Plus, you'll be watching the crowning moment of a sporting achievement that will probably never, ever be equalled.

Pop quiz, Hotshot!

By now, you know the drill: what is this a picture of?



Solution to follow tomorrow evening. Good luck!

Due to a combination of a busy latter part of the week and a preponderance of bad news which distracted my attention, I missed the chance to blog about the latest big political development here in Germany when it emerged on Thursday. So now I'm making up for lost time.

You may recall that I have posted previously about the complicated procedure for dissolving parliament which was required in order for an early general election to take place. After Gerhard Schröder had deliberately lost a vote of confidence in the Bundestag (the German lower house), the next step was for the President, Horst Köhler, to consider whether or not he would dissolve parliament. After the confidence vote, Köhler had three weeks in which to make his decision. This past Thursday, a day before the three week consideration period expired, he announced that yes, he would be dissolving parliament (almost a year before the end of its term), thus opening the way for early elections to be held on 18th September.

German President Horst Köhler gave the okay to dissolve parliament Thursday and called for an early general election on September 18, which polls show Chancellor Gerhard Schröder will lose.

"It is my duty as president to decide this issue according to the law," he told the nation in a televised broadcast. "I think it is best to have a new election to let the people decide."

The announcement came three weeks after Schröder engineered his own defeat in a parliamentary confidence vote in order to call early elections and one day before the expiration of the 21-day deadline he is allowed under the constitution to make the decision. His decision, one of the few real powers he has as ceremonial head of state, could be overturned by the constitutional court.

[Read the full story at Deutsche Welle.]

There may yet be a spanner thrown in the election works. Two MPs, one from Schröder's own SPD party and one from the Greens, as well as representatives of four minor parties (none of which have seats in parliament) have announced their intention to challenge the President's decision at the Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe. Though all the legal experts I've heard or read so far suggest that the court will dismiss these challenges and give the green light for early elections, it is still theoretically possible that they could be stopped by court order. As I understand it, this would involve the reinstatement of the current parliament, which would then have to serve out its full term (i.e. until next Autumn). At this stage though, the whole country is working on the assumption that the elections will go ahead on 18th September. Accordingly, the election campaign is in full swing, all the major parties have released their election manifestos and the political points scoring and cheap shots have begun.

All the indications at this stage are that there will be a change of government from the current red-green coalition of SPD/Greens to a so-called black-yellow coalition of the centre-right Christian Democrats (CDU) and the liberal Free Democrats (FDP). The question really seems to be just how much of a majority these two parties will enjoy. There seems to be a very strong feeling in Germany that it's time for a change of government. But, oddly enough, there is very little confidence that it will make much of a difference.

A full 83 percent of Germans believe the new elections will bring a change of government, although 76 percent also believe that the new conservative government would not do a better job than the ruling coalition of Social Democrats and the Green party.

That looks very much like a resigned and pessimistic electorate to me. It would appear that a great many voters have the feeling that come election time they'll be voting for what they see as the lesser of two evils, rather than voting for positive change. That's very interesting, I think, and a telling commentary on the esteem, or rather lack of it, that politicians are held in this country.

For those readers who can understand German, Die Berliner Zeitung and Die Süddeutsche Zeitung have more on this story.

After a week of pretty much wall-to-wall bad news, I was badly in need of a good news fix today. So I was pleased to discover that the Great Pavlova Debate has finally been resolved once and for all.

For those not in the know, Pavlova is a truly delicious and delightfully decadent dessert that resembles meringue, but is lighter and fluffier. It is usually served with whipped cream and fresh fruit. Pavlova is my all-time favourite dessert. It is named after the Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova.

There has long been a debate between Australians and New Zealanders over who invented the pavlova, with both countries laying claim to it. Until now, though a New Zealand recipe dating from 1933 had been found, Australians were in denial and remained adamant that it had been invented in 1935 by one Bert Sachse at the Esplanade Hotel in Perth. As it turns out, though, they were wrong. Pavlova is a New Zealand creation after all. Good news indeed!

Research by Professor Helen Leach, of the University of Otago's anthropology department, has uncovered a 1929 pavlova recipe, published under a pseudonym, in a New Zealand rural magazine. A 1933 recipe has also turned up in the Rangiora Mothers' Union cookery book submitted by Laurina Stevens as Mrs W H Stevens, of Rangiora.

The Australians have long claimed the light and fluffy meringue dessert as their own - based on a cake Bert Sachse baked at Perth's Esplanade Hotel in 1935. New Zealanders say no - their grandparents were scoffing pavlovas much earlier.

Leach said her copy of the Rangiora book had the correct name, with the correct ingredients and correct method for cooking the pavlova cake, which was named after famed Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova, who toured Australia and New Zealand in 1926.

...

And what does the original pavlova taste like? Zest baking columnist Shelley Caldwell whipped up the original Rangiora recipe, which included a cup of sugar and two egg whites, for Zest editor Kate Fraser to taste.

"It's gobsmackingly sweet," Fraser said. "It's very crunchy on the outside and chewy inside. This is more like a meringue than a modern pavlova, which is all fluff."

[Source: Stuff.co.nz]

Australians are pretty keen on laying claim to some of New Zealand's best exports. Think for example of Russel Crowe (actually, they can have him, he's a thug with anger management issues), Crowded House and Phar Lap. But, try as they might, they can't take the credit for pavlova. The secret's out: that one's ours. So, next time an Australian tries to tell you that pavlova is a delicious Australian dessert, feel free to tell him he's behind the times and that myth has now been debunked.

Another day of terror in London ...

Another day of rioting ...

Another day of famine and starvation in Niger ...

Another day of evictions and human rights violations in Zimbabwe ...

Another day of dissembling and denial from Mugabe and his henchmen ...

It's enough to make you want to curl up in a corner and cry. What is happening to the world?

Q: You are the owner of a dairy (convenience store for the Americans, corner store for the Brits amongst you). Someone comes into your store, brandishing a gun, and demands money. What do you do?

A: If you're the guy who owns the Viking Dairy in Otumoetai, a tiny New Zealand town of the blink-and-you'll-miss-it variety, you grab a packet of sweets, lob it at the armed robber, and he runs away. Honestly! Check it out:

A dairy owner threw a packet of pineapple lumps at a masked gunman who demanded money last night during the Western Bay of Plenty's sixth aggravated robbery in as many weeks. A robber brandishing a pistol and wearing black clothing and a mask burst into the Viking Dairy on Otumoetai Rd about 6pm. "He had a gun pointed at me and asked for money. I told him no. He asked a second time and I said no again," said the owner, who did not want to be named for fear of being attacked again. "I threw a bag of $2 pineapple lumps at him as he was running out the door." "I was really surprised. Usually people come in and buy cigarettes. You don't expect them to point a gun at you," the dairy owner said.
The raider left empty-handed.
Source: NZPA

[Hat-tip to Kiwi from Daily New Zealand News.]

I can't decide if that dairy owner is brave or stupid or just really very lucky indeed. And what of the armed robber? Who ever heard of a robber who, while holding a pistol, was afraid of a packet of sweets? What a muppet! I hope they get him. He deserves to do time for his stupidity alone.

Two weeks to the day after the horrific London bombings, there appears to have been more terrorist activity in London today. There have been explosions reported at three London Underground stations: Oval, Warren St and Shepherd's Bush. The result is the closure of three Tube lines. In addition there was an explosion on a bus in East London. At this stage, reports indicate that there has been only one injury. It appears that the explosions were caused using detonators only, rather than explosives. There has been no indication yet as to why this might be the case. BBC News has the full story.

[Update: Apparently part of the University College Hospital in London has been closed and armed police are in attendance after an "incident" there. No indication yet of what that might be.]

[Update 2: BBC News has further coverage, indicating that two arrests have been made in London, that there may be unexploded devices at some of the scenes, and that, according to London Metropolitan Police, these attacks were 'meant to kill'. This raises the prospect that, for whatever reason, the bombs did not detonate as they were intended. Questions abound: Are these attacks linked to the bombings two weeks ago? If so, how exactly? Are these just copycat crimes? Or are we dealing with the same terrorist organisation? If the bombs were meant to kill (and thank goodness they didn't), what went wrong? Who are the two people who have been arrested and what is their involvement? What went on at the UC hospital? etc. etc. Only time will tell.]

Here's one from the you must be having a lark! file:

Next week at the Professional Association of Teachers conference in the UK, delegates will be asked to consider deleting the word fail from the educational vocabulary and replacing it with deferred success. No, really. BBC News has the story.

Liz Beattie, a retired teacher, will call on the association's annual gathering in Buxton, Derbyshire, to "delete the word 'fail' from the educational vocabulary to be replaced with the concept of 'deferred success'".

She argues that repeated failure, such as in exams, can damage pupils' interest in learning. She told the Today programme on BBC Radio Four she had deliberately made the motion provocative to spark a good debate, but said it reflected the way the education system was developing.

"We have made so much development in recent years in making examinations more flexible, doing them in modules so you can concentrate on different parts of them at different times," she said.

"What happens when an exam is failed but, for example, three-quarters of it is perfectly satisfactorily done? It should be possible to do the other bits as add-ons afterwards and to defer the success of the exam."

Wesley Paxton, a member of the association's council, is supporting the motion. "Elsewhere we applaud those who persevere, like marathon contestants who take days to complete. It's time we made the word 'fail' redundant and replaced it with 'please do a bit more'," he said.

Pardon my French, but what a pile of bollocks! Thankfully, the British Education Secretary, Ruth Kelly, is calling it like it is:

Education Secretary Ruth Kelly told the Today programme on BBC Radio Four: "For that particular proposal, I think I might give them nought out of 10.

"It's really important for young people to grow up with the ability to get on and achieve, but also to find out what failure is.

"When young people grow up and enter the adult world they have to deal with success and failure, and education is about creating well-rounded young people who can deal with these sorts of situations."

Hear, hear! I'm not much of a fan of Ms. Kelly, but I completely agree with her on this count. Can you imagine an employment situation in which, when you had not completed your assigned tasks adequately, your boss came to you and said: "Gee, Mr. Bear, it's a real shame you've suffered a little bit of deferred success on those tasks I gave you to do. No matter, please do a bit more"? No? I thought not.

To my mind, school is supposed to be a place where young people are equipped with as much of the knowledge, skill-set and experience that they will need later in life as possible. Sure, pupils leave school with plenty more learning and development and maturing to do. But in my book they are also meant to leave with the beginnings of an inkling of how the big bad outside world is going to treat them for the rest of their productive lives.

Outside of the school environment, people are not mollycoddled and constantly encouraged no matter how poor their performance is. Instead, it's dog eat dog out there and those who do not shape up are not given a cuddle and commiserated on their deferred success. They are told they've failed and shown the door. British schools would be doing their pupils a real disservice and failing in their task to prepare them for the 'real world' if they were to pretend otherwise.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for the maximum of support for children and young people who are struggling academically. I'm also in favour of flexible examination and testing methods, such as internal assessment, which take into account that many young people struggle with exam situations but perform well in assignments throughout the year. But I find it nothing short of silly and intellectually dishonest to pretend that those pupils who do not make the grade or do not complete the requirements of the curriculum have done anything other than failed.

I can only hope that the delegates at next week's Professional Association of Teachers conference will give this ridiculous notion its own taste of deferred success, and that said deferral will be indefinite.

In what is perhaps evidence of a very early equivalent of the mobile-phone-falling-out- of-your-pocket-into-the-l oo disaster that many of us have faced in our time, archaeologists in Greifswald, in North-Eastern Germany have discovered four 600 year-old Papal seals down a latrine shaft. Expatica has the full story.

The four round seals cast in lead date to the papacy of Pope Bonifatius IX (1389-1404). The 3.5-centimetre seals, each weighing some 50 grams, bear the inscription "BONIFATIUS VIIII" on one side and images of the apostles Peter and Paul on the other.

Regional archaeology office director Hauke Joens said the find - in the shaft of a latrine on the campus of Greifswald University - was "sensational".

He noted that over the years, individual papal seals would occasionally be found in various places. But the Greifswald find was the first in which several papal seals were discovered.

The seals were first discovered last week by archaeologist Joerg Ansorge. ...

...

At this point, the archaeologists could only surmise that the four papal seals had perhaps been contained in a bag which was then given up for lost when it inadvertently fell into the latrine.

But another theory was that the seals were thieves' booty.

I don't know about you, but I'm picturing a Cardinal, a senior Papal official - perhaps even his personal secretary? - in fancy red and black robes being suddenly caught short and making a quick dash to the latrine on his way to sign and seal some very important Papal Bull. Having reached the latrine just in time, he loosens the rope belt that keep his cassock nice and tight around his ample middle, squats over the wooden and very rustic latrine and then hears with horror and a sinking heart, too late, the unmistakeable heavy plop! as the little leather pouch in which he keeps the Papal seals and the handful of ducats and gold coins he uses to smooth his passage through the countryside and pay the coachman slips from the loosened belt into the rancid water and disappears down the shaft faster than the mortified Cardinal can say "Holy Mary, Mother of God!"

Can you imagine the look on his face and the way his ears burned with shame and embarrassment as he attempted to explain that to his boss? Shocker.

George W. Bush visits Algeria. As part of his program, he delivers a speech to the Algerian people: "You know, I regret that I have to give this speech in English. I would very much prefer to talk to you in your own language. But unfortunately, I was never good at algebra...

You gotta laugh, or else you'll cry.

[Hat-tip to HSB]

This week, I've had three fellow tBloggers email me and ask me how to make their archives appear in their sidebar. I responded to the first two directly, but when the third request came in, I realised this must be a pretty widespread problem and thought I'd put detailed instructions in a blog post for all to see. If you find this helpful, please feel free to pass the link on to other tBloggers who might also benefit. If you are a pro user, or for that matter a free user who is lucky enough to have archives that worked automatically, you won't need this information. Feel free to click away and read someone else's blog.

Right, here's the rub. tBlog is supposed to generate your archives and provide a link automatically. In practice, that often doesn't happen, just as it didn't for me when I first signed up. But there is a cheat. It's very easy once you know how to do it, and it is a matter of only a couple of minutes' effort a month.

All you need to do is at the beginning of each month, generate a new link to that months archives and manually insert it into your sidebar, either or the left or the right, whichever you prefer.

First things first, the archive code. It looks like this:

(Click on this link and a new page will open. The code in the address bar is the url for my July archives and is very similar to what you'll need to generate yours.)

That is the code for my archives for July. To get to your archives for July, you simply need to replace BERLINBEAR in the above code with your username. So, for example, if your user name is, say, smilesnz, your archive code for July would be this:

Click here for smilesnz's July archives.

In that code, the month is designated by the 07 at the beginning of the date at the end of the code. Accordingly, August archives would have 08, while June archives had 06.

Once you've got that code, it's simply a matter of cutting and pasting it into either your left pane or your right pane (in the position you want it to appear) on the Blog Options page. Once you've done that, you just need to turn it into a link, rather than a bare url, and that is as easy as pie. Here's how:

First, place quotation marks (") at either end of the archive url.

Next, in front of the url, add the following: < >
Then add: a, then one space, then href=
(Do not leave a space between the equals sign and the quotation marks, only between the a and the href).

Next, after the url, again without leaving a space, add

Now comes the label you want for your archives. As you can see in my left sidebar, I call mine by the month and year, but you can call it whatever you like. Assuming you want your archives to look like mine, you need to add, for example, July 2005, directly after the , without leaving a space.

Finally, to complete the link, you need to add < then /a and then > again without leaving any spaces, after the label (e.g. July 2005, as above).

The result should be a link to your archives for the month you have in the date.

Then, at the beginning of each month, all you have to do is go into your Blog options page, copy and paste the previous month's archive link, change the month (e.g. 07 becomes 08) and the label (e.g. July 2005 becomes August 2005) and you're done. It takes just a minute. You can see the result in my left-hand sidebar, just below the previous posts.

I hope that helps. If it's well received, I might do a few more of these posts with instructions on how to beat tBlog's little ticks and inconsistencies. If you know of anyone struggling with their archives, please feel free to point them here.

President Mugabe's Operation Murambatsvina, or Drive out Trash, continues unabated in Zimbabwe. Until now, we haven't seen any footage of it, largely because Mugabe's regime refuses to give accreditation or visas to western journalists, and has imprisoned or expelled those who have snuck in and attempted to get the word out. The only footage of any kind I've seen have been a handful of photos taken by Zimbabweans on various websites. At least, that was the only footage I'd seen, until Scoop posted a disturbing video about Operation Murambatsvina on its website yesterday.

The video is work-safe and is not gory, but be warned, it's extremely disturbing. Follow this link. The video should load automatically.

Meanwhile, last Saturday a protest march against the upcoming New Zealand cricket tour to Zimbabwe was held in Auckland. Scoop has a photo essay documenting the march, which was led by former Zimbabwean cricketer Henry Olonga and Zimbabwean human rights campaigner Judith Todd.

At the same march, the co-leader of the NZ Green Party, Rod Donald, made what I consider to be a very effective speech. It is not long, so I will include it here in its entirety.

Oppression is colour blind. Whether white on black, black on white, white on white, or black on black, all oppression is equally bad.

It must be challenged, it must be stopped before it chokes freedom and hope to death. Good people can make a difference. You are all good people and your presence here today is making a difference.

As Margaret Mead once said, "Never underestimate the power of a few committed people to change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." The world is watching what we do here today.

New Zealand is the first country in the world to take to the streets in protest at Robert Mugabe's deliberate campaign of genocide. I hope we will not be the last.

Mugabe's behaviour is not the last gasp of a senile despot. It is the culmination of 25 years of increasingly autocratic rule. It is a deliberate campaign to crush democracy, a campaign to systematically eliminate his political opponents.

His demolition squads have now moved from the so-called slums - in reality, vibrant communities - into the suburbs of Harare, as he seeks to punish all those who oppose his regime. He must be stopped.

New Zealand must not give him any comfort, any legitimacy. We must not allow any of our sporting heroes to become pawns in his power play.

The International Cricket Council lives in a moral vacuum. It portrays cricket as a gentleman's sport, yet it refuses to sanction the patron of Zimbabwe Cricket Union, Robert Mugabe. Our own government has been slow to act on our behalf. It has followed rather than led, but at least it has acted. By refusing visas to the proposed Zimbabwe tour to NZ in December, Helen Clark's government has taken a stand.

But stopping one tour is not enough. It is simply unacceptable for our national team to be playing cricket in Zimbabwe while outside the stadium the Government continues to bulldoze the homes of innocent civilians and buries children and the elderly in the rubble.

The Green Party asked the government back in April to do everything in its power to stop the Black Caps tour of Zimbabwe. I ask Phil Goff again today to take action on behalf of everyone here and on behalf of the overwhelming majority of New Zealanders who want the tour stopped. If legislation is the only way that can happen, then so be it.

Which is the greater evil? Suspending the right of New Zealand Cricket to send a sports team to Zimbabwe or letting Robert Mugabe and his henchmen continue to destroy the hopes and dreams of a nation? All too often, we are powerless in the face of government bullying and human tragedy. With Zimbabwe, we can make a difference.

When Norman Kirk sent the frigate Canterbury to Mururoa in 1973 he didn't expect the French Government to stop nuclear testing overnight. But that symbolic protest galvanised our nation and changed the course of history. Stopping the Black Caps' tour is another symbolic gesture. It will not stop Mugabe and his atrocities overnight, but it will help to end his reign of terror.

Rod Donald sums up well how I feel about this issue. That should by now be clear from all my previous posts on Zimbabwe and the NZ Cricket Tour. Sadly, it now looks as though the New Zealand government has hedged and stalled for too long, and has failed to take action while there was still time and the tour will go ahead. I, for one, will not be watching.

Yesterday's incarnation of Sunday pop quiz was less successful than previous quizzes. Perhaps I didn't provide enough clues? Wiccachicky had a crack and was on the right track. But I wanted more detail. Miss Behaviour chimed in too, but since she knew what the photo was, because she was there when I took it, I am working on the assumption that she was well and truly taking the piss with her guess of a bicylce on EPO. There were a few other guesses, but apart from the bike bit, which we established very early on, noone even got close.

The mystery object was in fact part of a sculpture. It was a sculpture of two bicycles, outfitted with brightly coloured neon lights and mounted in a pond near Potsdamer Platz. The sculpture is entitled "Riding Bikes" and is by the American sculptor and artist Robert Rauschenberg.

Here it is in its entirety. Click on the thumbnails to view full size images:

And now I have a question of you. How am I to interpret the response to this week's Sunday pop quiz? Was it too hard? Too easy? Or are you just a bit bored of these guess-what-the-photo-is-o f type quizzes? If the latter, what should my response be? Should I bin Sunday pop quiz altogether as a concept? Or should I see if I can come up with some other sort of pop quiz? Any suggestions?

In response to my recent post reminding my fellow ex-pat New Zealanders to enrol to vote in the upcoming general election, I received a couple of interesting responses. Rather than try to squeeze my riposte into a comment or two on that thread, I've decided to turn the issue into a post of its own.

On the enrol to vote thread Uroskin commented:

Hmm, my objection to you not being able to vote in German elections has its corollary in my objection to you expats being able to vote in NZ elections. If you don't pay tax in NZ, why should you be able to determine how my taxes are spent? (If you are a NZ taxpayer, this comment doesn't apply). I have never voted as an expat in the elections of my country of origin for that reason. My argument is that as soon as you are registered with the local IRD you should be able to vote in that jurisdiction.

The first part of Uroskin's refers to an earlier complaint of mine that here in Germany, only German citizens are allowed to vote, regardless of how long they have been resident here. Thus, for example, someone who has permanent residence but not German citizenship (dual citizenship is not allowed here), has been living in Germany for decades, fully intends to remain here indefinitely, pays taxes here, owns property here, invests money here etc etc etc, will have no say whatsoever in how the country is governed. Like Uroskin, I find that unacceptable and am strongly of the opinion that, as in New Zealand, permanent residents should be entitled to vote, both in local and national elections.

Where I disagree with Uroskin is on the suggestion that New Zealand citizens who live overseas and do not pay tax in New Zealand should not be allowed to vote in New Zealand elections. Here's why:

First of all, for those who are resident in New Zealand, paying tax is not a criterion in determining their eligibility to vote. Once a New Zealand resident is 18, he or she is entitled to have a say in who runs the country, regardless of whether or not he or she receives a tax bill. Many 18 year-olds do not yet work and therefore do not yet pay tax. Some are still at school. Others are in tertiary education and not earning. Others are unemployed and therefore not earning. Their right to vote is not curtailed on the basis that they are not paying tax, so why should an ex-pat's right to vote be curtailed on those grounds?

Secondly, while it is certainly true that one important role of government is to determine the level of taxation and how tax revenue will be spent, that is by no means the only role of government. Nor is taxation the only area in which a government can influence the lives of its citizens in a negative or positive way, regardless of whether or not they are resident in the country. So, for example, New Zealand's foreign policy will vary depending on which party or parties form the government. And foreign policy has the potential to affect the lives of New Zealanders living abroad just as much as the lives of New Zealanders living at home. This is especially so in the case of reciprocal visa programmes, extradition treaties and so forth. Hypothetically speaking, if a New Zealand government were elected whose foreign policy caused a major rift between New Zealand and Germany, it is not inconceivable that that might have visa or administrative implications for me as a New Zealand citizen living in Germany. Since that is possible, is it not important that I should have a say in which party or parties will form the government?

But there are other areas where government policy has the potential to directly affect the lives of ex-patriate New Zealanders. Most ex-pats still have family members living in their country of origin, for whom under certain circumstances they would find themselves responsible. As a result, changes in such areas as health policy, inheritance tax, the penal code, or retirement age all have the potential to affect ex-pats either directly, or indirectly by changing the situation of close family members. Given that, should we not have a say in who is making those decisions?

In summary, my difficulties with Uroskin's assessment that those ex-pats who do not pay tax in their country of origin should not be entitled to vote lie in the dual facts that a) that would apply a qualification criterion to ex-pats which is not applied to residents, and b) it gives undue precedence to taxation policy as the be all and end all of government when in fact other areas of government policy have the potential to affect ex-pats' lives just as much as the lives of New Zealand residents. Taxation is not the only thing, or even necessarily the principal thing, on which voters base their decision of who to vote for. Nor should it be the only criterion for deciding who can and cannot vote.

Another commenter, Cufflinks, added this to the comments thread:

If you have been out of the country for that long how can you be trusted to get the answer right?

Cufflinks went on to clarify this in an email to me:

My comment about the votes is only half flippant. To vote you should be fully aware of all the issues, preferably or at least the issue about which you are most concerned. I would wager that not many people here are as well informed as you, and that even fewer overseas based people are. Does that lead to informed voting?

While I, like Cuffilnks, would wish for voters to be aware of the issues and generally politically well informed, I cannot see how this can be achieved or effectively tested or imposed. It is an ideal that we can work towards in designing the school curriculum, in deciding upon radio and television programming, and in making information about politics and tools for democracy as readily accessaible and easily understood as possible. But "informedness" is not something we can legislate for. Moreover, I certainly do not accept that in this day and age living abroad means de facto that one is uninformed about what is going on "back home." As I put it in my email reply to Cufflinks:

I don't think that being in or out of the country is a decisive factor in staying informed. Definitely not nowadays when I can read the NZ papers (insofar as I can put up with their execrable quality) online before you even get it in your letterbox. I think what is crucial is interest. If you want to be informed and are prepared to take the time to get informed, there is nothing stopping you any more, regardless of where you are.

So, much as I rejected Uroskin's proposal in part based on the fact that it applied a standard to ex-pats that is not applied to residents, I find myself rejecting Cufflink's suggestion that ex-pats are no longer qualified to vote on the same grounds. As long as proving that you are informed is not a requirement for "home" voters, it cannot fairly be applied as a benchmark for voters living abroad either.

So there you have it: my passionate and admittedly self-interested defence of my right to vote somewhere at least. I'll be interested to hear what you make of it.

The third edition of Kiwi Carnival, a fortnightly round-up of some of the best posts from around the New Zealand blogosphere, is now up. This time around it's being hosted by Idiot/Savant over at No Right Turn.

This week there are 16 posts featured. Understandably, there's a focus on responses to the London bombings and on freedom, how to keep it and what it should look like. But there are other interesting topics covered too. Why not head over to No Right Turn to check out the Kiwi Carnival?

Pop quiz, Hotshot!

By now, you know the drill. What's this?


Answer and a picture of the whole object to follow tomorrow.

This will have to be brief, as I've only got a few minutes to knock out today's instalment of Good news Saturday and I've got three things to cover.

First up, I've expressed my dismay before at the refusal on the part of the leaders of Zimbabwe's Southern African neighbours, notably South Africa, to condemn Robert Mugabe or to take real action in the face of his flagrant human rights abuses. Similar concern has been raised by two commenters recently. While that situation has not changed and the condemnation of Mugabe by African political leaders remains conspicuous in its absence, there are encouraging signs.

Doing what their President and Foreign Minister should have done before them, South African church leaders have visited Zimbabwe to see the atrocities for themselves, and issued a statement accusing Robert Mugabe of "trampling on humanity". At least someone in South Africa is calling it like it is. BBC News has the full story. I applaud the stance of this interdenominational group and I hope that it will put pressure on political leaders in the region to follow suit. Better late than never.

The second piece of good news is that this week saw the creation of eight new World Heritage sites of natural beauty by UNESCO. This greatly increases the chances of these natural wonders being preserved. The photo left is of one of the eight sites:

Two of the world's longest and deepest fjords, Geirangerfjord and Naeroeyfjord, run from Stavanger in the south to Andalsnes, 500 km to the north-east and are set 120km apart. They are considered among the most stunning of fjord landscapes and are home to many marine mammals.

BBC News has more photos of all eight sites, which appear to be truly stunning in their natural beauty.

And finally, a piece of personal good news. Today, for the first time ever, I'm meeting someone in person whom I got to know via my blog. Regular commenter Kiwi in Zurich is in town with friends and we are meeting up in my favourite cafe for brunch. I'm really looking forward to putting a face to the pseudonym.

With the launch of the Space Shuttle Discovery, which had been planned for Wednesday, delayed for the fourth time, on account of a fuel sensor malfunction, I've had space flight on my mind this week. Though the Shuttle launch had originally been provisionally put back to Saturday, that has now been ruled out too as NASA has halted the countdown while engineers continue their search for the cause of the malfunction. Unless they can find the problem and fix it quick smart, they are in danger of missing out on the current launch window, which lasts only until 31st July. If they miss that, then the next possible launch date would not be until 9th September. That would be a problem, because NASA had planned to launch another Shuttle, the Atlantis, at that time.

The fact that the latest attempt to launch the Space Shuttle has been plagued by a whole series of setbacks has set my mind to wondering something. What I am wondering is this: Why on earth in space would anyone want to become an astronaut?

It's not just that astronauts have to expose themselves to incredibly strenuous forces, particularly during lift-off and re-entry. And it's not just that they have to spend many days sitting or crouching in cramped and uncomfortable positions that I wouldn't want to have to remain in for more than an hour at a time. It's not even that they have to eat freeze-dried or liquid food out of fancy silver packets for the entirety of their time in space. Rather, it's that being an astronaut is incredibly dangerous, both in the course of space flight missions and in training.

A list of space disasters from Wikipedia notes that 11 astronauts and cosmonauts have been killed in training, including Yuri Gagarin, who had been the very first man in space. Worse still, 18 astronauts and cosmonauts have died in five fatal in-flight accidents, most recently the seven crew members of Space Shuttle Columbia, which exploded on re-entry on 1st February 2003. In total, 22 astronauts and cosmonauts have died while in a spacecraft. That's out of 439 individuals who have flown on space flights.

About 2% of the manned launch/reentry attempts have killed their crew. Both Soyuz and the Shuttle have approximately similar death rates. (Except for X-15, which is suborbital, other launchers have not launched sufficiently often for reasonable safety comparisons to be made- for example it seems likely that Apollo would have eventually had a fatality had the program continued to the present day.)

About 4-5% of the people that have been launched have died doing so (because astronauts often launch more than once.) As of November 2004, 439 individuals have flown on spaceflights. (Russia/Soviet Union (96), USA (277), others (66). Twenty-two have died while in a spacecraft (Apollo 1 (3), Soyuz 1 (1), X-15-3 (1), Soyuz 11 (3), Challenger (7), Columbia (7)).

If Apollo 1 and X-15-3 are included as spaceflights, 5% (or 22) of the 439 have died on spaceflights. This includes Roger Chaffee (who never flew in space) and Michael J. Adams (who reached space by the U.S. definition, but not the international definition, see below) in the spaceflight total and Grissom, White, Chaffee (the crew of Apollo 1) and Adams in the killed total.

If Apollo 1 and the X-15-3 are excluded; 4% (or 18) of the 437 have died while on a spaceflight. This excludes Gus Grissom, Ed White, Roger Chaffee and Michael Adams from the killed total and Chaffee and Adams from the spaceflight total.

Let's take a closer look at those figures. Even if we take the lower percentage of deaths mentioned above, namely 4%, it's still a proprtion of one in 25. That means out of every 25 people sent into space, one has died. Those are not good odds. Think of it this way. Say you take the bus to and from work every day. And you knew each morning before you left the house that there was a one in 25 chance that at some time between getting on the bus and getting off the bus again that evening your life would end either in a towering inferno, or an excruciating lack of oxygen, or that your internal organs would either explode or implode because of a massive change of air pressure in the bus, would you get on the bus?

No? I thought not. Neither would I.

Add to that the evidence that the experience of being in space, and particularly of walking on the moon, is rather more than the human mind is capable of handling, and the reasons not to become an astronaut seem to me to be completely overwhelming. A review of Andrew Smith's Moondust, which appeared not long ago in The Observer, puts it this way:

Today many people doubt if we even visited the Moon, a piteous state of affairs given the magnitude of the achievement. Worst still, of the 12 men who actually landed (the majority of Apollo astronauts merely orbited it), three are dead and the rest are ageing. At 69, Charlie Duke of Apollo 16, is now the youngest.

Hence, Smith's mission - gloriously realised in this spellbinding book - to seek out the last nine and discover how the decades have treated the only humans to have walked on another world. 'I wondered whether the Moonwalkers had reconciled themselves to being Earthbound; whether they'd made peace with their world or continued to mourn their strangled hopes,' says Smith as he begins his quest.

And so he stalks them, with intriguing results. John Young (Apollo 16), who later flew the first space shuttle, gives an interview in which he directs every remark to the wall behind Smith, while Armstrong, a legend in reticence, offers a few emails, some details of his mission's technical parameters and little else.

Of course, it cannot be easy continually answering the same daft question: what's it like to walk on the Moon? The late Pete Conrad (Apollo 12), got round the problem by answering: 'Super! Really enjoyed it!' on every occasion. On the other hand, the level of dysfunction uncovered by Smith is astonishing.

Buzz Aldrin simply plunged into a bout of alcoholism. 'He resents more not being the first man on the Moon more than he appreciates being the second,' as a fellow astronaut observed. Hence the absence of lunar pictures of Armstrong. Even when specifically requested, he refused to take a single snap of his commander, because he was 'too busy'.

Similarly, Charlie Duke (Apollo 16) became a drunken, rage-filled bully who persecuted his children until he and his wife, Dotty, found God, eventually becoming the Lord's Sonny and Cher, as Smith puts it. Which leads us to another Apollo theme: the epiphanies. While Ed Mitchell returned in his Apollo 14 capsule, he glimpsed 'an intelligence in the Universe and felt connected to it'. He then set up the Institute of Noetic Sciences which is as potty as it sounds.

Similarly, Al Bean (Apollo 12) gave up flying to become an artist, though he paints variations of only one scene - the lunar surface - while Jack Schmitt (Apollo 17) became a Republican Senator who lasted a single term in office. There seems little to connect these men apart from the fact that they were all either eldest siblings or only sons, nearly all chose country-and-western tapes as music for their Apollo voyages, and, of course, that they walked on the Moon.

Perhaps the saddest case is that of David Scott (Apollo 15), who was disgraced for smuggling stamped letters to the Moon and had his reputation trashed in the Daily Mail after a dalliance with newsreader Anna Ford five years ago. In fact, his plan to sell the letters, although dodgy, was legal and intended to raise cash to send his children through college, something he could not have contemplated on his astronaut's salary.

In other words, if you become an astronaut and are selected for a space mission, there's a significant chance that you'll die either in training or in-flight. And if you don't die, there's a pretty good chance that you'll be unable to deal with the profundity of your experiences and will lose your mind, escape into alcoholism, or plunge into the depths of depression. And for your trouble, and for the glory and great PR you've brought your country, you'll be paid a pittance (Buzz Aldrin was paid $33.41 for his Apollo Mission, for example), be dumped after just a handful of missions, and receive a meagre pension. Tempting? No, not really.

Like many people, as a little boy I was fascinated by space flight and in particular by the Space Shuttle in its heyday. When I lived in the US as a nine year-old, I watched with rapt amazement as the space shuttle flew over Washington D.C. perched on the back of a Boeing 747. I also wandered around the Space Center at Cape Canaveral in Florida in a state of wide-eyed wonder, and came away with the obligatory model of the Space Shuttle.

But now, having given it a good deal more thought, and weighed up the pros (not many) and cons (an awful lot), I know for certain that you wouldn't get me in a space craft under any circumstances. And I'm prety amazed they can find anyone at all to be perfectly honest.

Ms. Bear has politely informed me that my blog posts have been a bit too boring serious for her tastes of late. With that in mind, I think it's time for a change of pace, for something a little more light-hearted. Below is a column, an oldie but a goodie, from the Guardian, which I found by accident when searching for something else entirely, and which demonstrates that, contrary to popular opinion, the taxman does have a sense of humour. Since I know some of you are link-click resistant, I've included the column in its entirety. I think that anyone who has ever paid tax will find something in here with which they can identify. Enjoy.

Funny money

Chris Addison
Saturday September 27, 2003
The Guardian

There follows the text of a letter which I received last Wednesday, second post:

Dear Mr Addison, I am writing to you to express our thanks for your more-than-prompt reply to our latest communication, and also to answer some of the points you raise.

I will address them, as ever, in order.

Firstly, I must take issue with your description of our last as a "begging letter". It might perhaps more properly be referred to as a "tax demand". This is how we, at the Inland Revenue, have always, for reasons of accuracy, traditionally referred to such documents.

Secondly, your frustration at our adding to the "endless stream of crapulent whining and panhandling vomited daily through the letterbox on to the doormat" has been noted. However, whilst I have naturally not seen the other letters to which you refer, I would cautiously suggest that their being from "pauper councils, Lombardy pirate banking houses and pissant gas-mongerers" might indicate that your decision to "file them next to the toilet in case of emergencies" is at best a little ill-advised.

In common with my own organisation, it is unlikely that the senders of these letters do see you as a "lackwit bumpkin" or, come to that, a "sodding charity". More likely they see you as a citizen of Great Britain, with a responsibility to contribute to the upkeep of the nation as a whole.

Which brings me to my next point. Whilst there may be some spirit of truth in your assertion that the taxes you pay "go to shore up the canker-blighted, toppling folly that is the Public Services", a moment's rudimentary calculation ought to disabuse you of the notion that the government in any way expects you to "stump up for the whole damned party" yourself. The estimates you provide for the Chancellor's disbursement of the funds levied by taxation, whilst colourful, are, in fairness, a little off the mark. Less than you seem to imagine is spent on "junkets for Bunterish lickspittles" and "dancing whores", whilst far more than you have accounted for is allocated to, for example, "that box-ticking facade of a university system".

A couple of technical points arising from direct queries: 1. The reason we don't simply write "Muggins" on the envelope has to do with the vagaries of the postal system; 2. You can rest assured that "sucking the very marrows of those with nothing else to give" has never been considered as a practice because even if the Personal Allowance didn't render it irrelevant, the sheer medical logistics involved would make it financially unviable.

I trust this has helped. In the meantime, whilst I would not in any way wish to influence your decision one way or the other, I ought to point out that even if you did choose to "give the whole foul jamboree up and go and live in India" you would still owe us the money. Please forward it by Friday. Yours sincerely, H J Lee, Customer Relations.

You may recall that back in April I blogged about a petition to stop the New Zealand cricket tour to Zimbabwe. Just to refresh your memory, the New Zealand cricket team is scheduled to tour Zimbabwe next month. With the abominable human rights situation in Zimbabwe showing no signs of improvement, and with polls showing that a vast majority of New Zealanders do not want the tour to go ahead, this has been a major issue in New Zealand in recent weeks.

The sticking point has been the fact that New Zealand Cricket stands to be very heavily fined by the International Cricket Council (ICC) if they do not tour. The only way to avoid such a fine, it had been speculated, was for the government to step in and ban the team from touring by imposing sporting sanctions on Zimbabwe. The Labour-led government has thus far proved reluctant to do so, leaving New Zealand Cricket to sort the problem out for themselves.

However, yesterday the ICC confirmed unequivocally that if the New Zealand government were to impose sporting sanctions on Zimbabwe, thus forbidding the New Zealand cricket team from travelling there, the tour could be cancelled without punishment, as this Green Party press release explains:

ICC President Ehsan Mani released a statement this morning reiterating that the ICC recognises the right of governments to impose sporting sanctions. Mani said, "It is ... recognised that governments will, from time to time, elect to use sporting sanctions as a tool of their foreign policy programmes. Our members accept and expect that where this clear directive is given by a national government, the obligations of the Future Tours Programme will not apply."

"The Government now has no choice but to stop the tour," Green Co-Leader Rod Donald says. "Its only argument for not doing so is that it doesn't have the power. However, the ICC has now made it abundantly clear that it recognises the right of national governments to impose sporting sanctions.

"Where sporting sanctions are imposed, there will be no financial penalty on the cricket board of that country. This is a win-win-win situation. The Government can call off the tour by issuing a directive to NZ Cricket not to go to Zimbabwe, NZ Cricket escapes any financial penalty, and Robert Mugabe is prevented from exploiting New Zealand's good name."

As I see it, the government must now act to prevent the tour. It has, in effect, been given the green light to do so by the ICC. If the government does not step in, it risks besmirching New Zealand's good record in taking a stand against human rights abuses around the world.

If, like me, you believe that the tour should not go ahead, and that the best way to prevent it is for the government to take things out of New Zealand Cricket's hands by stepping in and imposing sporting sanctions on Zimbabwe, there's something active you can do about it.

First, if you haven't already done so, you can sign the Say No to the Tour petition online. At this time 2,222 people have signed this petition, so it could use some beefing up.

The second thing you can do is send an e-card to New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark, asking her and her government to impose sporting sanctions, thus stopping the tour in its tracks. The Green Party have made it easy for you, by preparing a form e-card, to which you can add your name and any message you wish and send it directly to Helen Clark. Mine went off this afternoon.

It'd be great if some of my readers felt they could do the same. The more, the merrier. Make your voice heard and stop the tour to Zimbabwe.

Regular readers of this blog know by now that Germany produces more than its fair share of really weird news. We've had, amongst other things,exploding toads, dog DNA testing, dog washes and more recently mobile phone throwing champions. And yet I think I've found a story to top the lot.

Deutsche Welle reports on the truly strange story of a Porsche that doubled as a landing strip for a light aircraft, much to the suprise of the Porsche's driver, who was travelling at 100 miles per hour at the time.

A member of a private German racing club had the shock of his life when a single-seater plane swooped out of the sky and landed on the roof of his speeding vehicle on Wednesday.

Modern motor vehicles come with an astonishing range of added extras these days but none, not even top of the range luxury models, come with an in-built landing strip on the roof.

This may not be news to most of the people on the planet, but someone may want to tell the pilot of a small one-seater plane which landed on top of an unsuspected Porsche driver's speeding vehicle as he was racing with fellow members of his auto club on what he thought to be a disused airfield in Germany.

The 12-strong Bitburg Porsche racing club were putting their sports cars through their paces on a former US air base on Wednesday when, out of the blue above them, the small plane swooped out of the sky.

Despite driving at 160 kph (100 mph), one of the racing club members could not outrun the rapidly descending plane which eventually landed on his car. Such was the shock of suddenly having a propeller-driven aircraft as a roof accessory that the driver slammed on the brakes, sending the plane crashing to the ground.

"It was a miracle that no one was hurt. There was considerable damage done to the plane and the car," said Klaus Schnarrbach, spokesman for the Bitburg police. "The airplane managed to stay steady on the roof at first. They probably couldn't have done it that well if they had tried." Bitburg police revealed that the pilot faces possible charges of negligence.

Isn't that weird?!? The mind boggles as to how that could possibly happen. Even if you were aiming to land on a four metre long landing strip travelling at that speed, how many times out of a million could you expect to get it right? I'm stunned.

This post is one for the New Zealanders living abroad who read my blog (and I know there are a few of you at least).

Though the date for the New Zealand general election has not yet been officially announced, one thing is certain: it can't be far away. The latest possible date for a general election is 24th September. There has even been recent speculation that it may be as early as 20th August. One more thing seems certain: if the polls are to be believed, this election is going to be very, very close indeed. Which is all the more reason to vote, even if you are living overseas. And, of course, in order to be allowed to vote, you have to be registered to vote.

The Elections NZ website explains the conditions that have to be fulfilled for you to be eligible to vote from overseas.

I'm living overseas, am I eligible to enrol?

Yes, if you are 18 years of age or older and either: a New Zealand citizen and have been in New Zealand in the past three years, or a New Zealand permanent resident who has been in New Zealand in the past 12 months, then you may enrol.

Your electorate will be the one in which you last lived for a month or more.

(Notes: There are exceptions to these time limits for certain people and their families, such as members of the New Zealand Defence Force or New Zealand diplomats or trade representatives.)

So, if you fit into that definition and you're not yet enrolled to vote, get on it! You can even enrol online. It's easy, and it's going to be important. Follow the link and make sure you can have your say come election time.

If you've read through the comments on yesterday's Sunday Pop Quiz post, then by now you know that the photo was a close-up photo of one of the many stone blocks which make up the fairly recently opened Holocaust Memorial here in Berlin. Congratulations to Shona who got very close right away, and to Lindy who refined Shona's guess to get it exactly right. See, they're not so hard really those quizzes!

The reason I used that photo for this week's pop quiz was because I knew it would finally force me to write an entry which I've been meaning to write for over two months now but hadn't quite got around to. So here, at last, it is.

The Berlin Holocaust Memorial was finally opened in May this year. It had been a long time coming and had been the focus of much wrangling over location, funding and design for nearly two decades. This Deutsche Welle article provides details and some of the background.

After a long process and much debate, Berlin will unveil on Tuesday a central memorial to the Holocaust. Covering an area of 19,000 square meters, the memorial comprises 2,711 grey pillars, or steles, of varying heights, from a few centimeters to 4.7 meters.

They form a dense grid, which, according to the monument's New York-based architect, Peter Eisenman, is supposed to create a sense of unease and loneliness among visitors who wander through it, reflecting the feelings of Jews who were sent to concentration camps.

The monument, which has been under discussion for 17 years, has been both widely praised and roundly criticized. Its supporters say it is a courageous way for the Germans to acknowledge in the very center of their capital city the darkest chapter of their history. Detractors have slammed the monument as an eyesore, a target for vandals and overly abstract.

As you can see from this aerial photo (not taken by me, unfortunately, it's from Deutsche Welle), the 2,711 steles make for quite a sight from above. But they are no less impressive from ground level.

The opening of the Holocaust Memorial was not without controversy either. At the dedication ceremony, the president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany strongly criticised what he saw as too strong a focus on the victims of the Holocaust and a failure to force viewers to confront the questions of guilt and responsibility. In addition there was also a kerfuffle over Jewish journalist Lea Rosh's announced intention to bury the tooth and the yellow star of a Jew murdered in the Holocaust under one of the pillars. This was widely criticised by the Jewish community, and she eventually backed down and the proposed burial never took place. There were also initial concerns over the behaviour of visitors (especially children) to the Memorial, some of whom were treating it as more of a maze-like playground than the solemn memorial it is intended to be.

All in all then, the Holocaust Memorial did not get off to the smoothest of starts here in Berlin. Now that the dust has settled though and the news stories about various controversies have died down, it appears to be well received both by Berliners and by the many thousands of tourists who have paid a visit.

I have now visited the Holocaust Memorial twice and I like it. On my first visit, the day after it opened, I too was bothered by the behaviour of several groups of apparently unsupervised children and it was all I could do not to have a word to them. But on my second visit a few weeks later, there was no such problem.

The effect of all the pillars of different sizes and on slightly different angles is disorienting and, in certain parts near the middle of the memorial - furthest from the "outside world" - quite oppressive. This effect is heightened by the undulating ground. In that sense, I think the memorial achieves exactly what it sets out to do.

There is a cold and solemn beauty to the stone pillars. This becomes especially clear as you stand closer to the edges, where the pillars are shorter, and look towards the centre of the memorial.

As you walk from the centre of the memorial, where the tallest pillars loom ominously at more than twice your height, towards the edges, towards the city going about its business, you come across a few small saplings scattered, seemingly randomly, amongst the shorter pillars. (You can just make one out in the photo below.) The effect of this, to me at least, was one of hope. From the darkest depths of despair and horror in the centre, you walk slowly towards the light, and there, against the odds, is new life. It strives upwards, still fragile, but with the promise of growth and gained strength in the future. I can't be certain that was exactly what the architect was going for, but that was certainly the effect it had on me.

The first time I visited the Holocaust Memorial, it was a beautiful sunny day and the interplay of light and shadow amongst the pillars was most striking