The Capital Letter

It's all been getting a tad serious around here lately, what with all the political developments to blog about. I've decided that that has got to change, for one post at least. So, here are a few more light-hearted items for your amusement.

The first is the Personality Defect Test. Lots of people have been doing this and I've seen it around a few blogs, but it was Span, over at Spanblather from whom I picked it up in the end.

Anyway, it's pretty bad news:

Televangelist

You are 14% Rational, 85% Extroverted, 42% Brutal, and 57% Arrogant.

As the Lord is my witness, I swear upon the good book that you are indeed the TELEVANGELIST! Characterized by extreme arrogance, self-assurance, and extroversion, you would make a very charismatic leader (or a very despotic one). On top of that, you are also more intuitive than rational, predisposing you to a more spiritual or emotional outlook on life. Thus, you are thoroughly irrational. You also tend to be rather gentle and considerate of others' feelings. Clearly, you would make the perfect televangelist. Emotional, extroverted, arrogant, and gentle, you annoy the hell out of people who have to listen to the feel-good, intuitive shit spewing from your mouth. Not only that, but people may look down on you as a self-centered asshat. So while you are gentle and genuinely care about others, it is quite clear that you still care about yourself MORE. Why is your personality flawed? Because you are too damned extroverted, emotional, and arrogant. So preach your irrational message, brotha-man! I assure you, no one will be listening!

To put it less negatively:

1. You are more INTUITIVE than rational.

2. You are more EXTROVERTED than introverted.

3. You are more GENTLE than brutal.

4. You are more ARROGANT than humble.

Yikes! I like the less negative version a little more, but it's still not great. Ah well, you live and learn, eh?. Take the test yourself and find out what personality defect you have. Go on, I dare you!

To recover from the shock of that, I took the Star Wars test that everyone but everyone has been doing and passing on. The result of that was slightly more encouraging:



On the subject of Star Wars, if you haven't already seen the clip from the Conan O'Brien Show with Triumph the Insult Comic Dog going to town on the geeks waiting in line for the Star Wars Premiere, go and check it out now. [Streaming video, largely work-safe but requires sound].

And finally, to round off this post, I have two cool links for you. First, head on over to Verlaine's blog and read his list of 25 Don'ts for restaurant/bar goers. Then, if you're game, go here and help me to decide if these Forget-me-Not panties are for real. It's a joke, right? Please come back and tell me it's a joke.

All the papers this morning are covering the confirmation of Angela Merkel as the Christian Democrats' candidate for chancellor in the upcoming general elections here in Germany.

Until yesterday, the two sister centre-right parties, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU - which runs everywhere except Bavaria) and the Christian Social Union (CSU - which only runs in Bavaria) were, officially at least, without a candidate. This came about as a result of the surprise move by Schröder's SPD to call early elections this coming autumn. All that is now behind the CDU/CSU grouping, however, as the two parties yesterday offically confirmed what everyone already knew anyway: that CDU leader Angela Merkel would be the Chancellor candidate.

The only realistic opponent, Edmund Stoiber (leader of the CSU) stepped aside and offered Merkel his unqualified support. He had no option really, having already run against Schröder in 2002 and lost convincingly. In return for his support, he will receive a top post in a CDU/CSU/FDP coalition government after the election, if the result is as expected and as the polls currently indicate.

At 50, Merkel is young for a candidate for Chancellor. She's also an Ossi (she grew up in East Germany). She also came to politics late, having previously been a physicist. She's also a divorced Protestant, in a two party grouping that is traditionally dominated by Catholics. She's also, shock horror, a woman. The fact that she has risen to the top of the CDU despite all these things, indicates to me that she is tough and that she has perseverance. She will need it, if she's going to be Germany's first woman chancellor and be the one to steer Germany out of the mire it finds itself in currently.

Deutsche Welle and BBC News both cover this story in English. For those who can read German, Die Süddeutsche Zeitung has an interesting article and Der Tagesspiegel has a handy timeline of her rise up the ranks. And for those after more background information (in English), try the BBC's Profile of Angela Merkel.

I've been reading around various news sources about the French rejection of the draft European Union constitution treaty in yesterday's referendum. There was, to be sure, .

Amongst the myriad sources and speculations of European commentators and pundits around the world, here are three of the most informative articles I've found:
Politicus: After France's no vote, all bets are off on EU [International Herald Tribune].
Charter 'not dead.' EU insists [International Herald Tribune].
French no an 'unmistakable message' [BBC News].

The most interesting issue, to my mind, is what happens now? No one, it would seem, really knows. For the moment, the referenda on the draft constitution in other EU member states roll on. The next out of the blocks is the Netherlands, which looks destined similarly to reject the constitution in a (non-binding) referendum on Wednesday. A Dutch 'no' would mean that two founding members would have rejected the constitution. If that comes to pass, what happens then? Do the other member states press on with their own referenda? If so, why? What is the point of bothering, now that not all of the 25 member states will be ratifying it? Isn't that just a waste of time and money?

Then there is also the question of what will happen to this draft constitution now that it cannot be implemented? Will the member states throw this draft out completely and commence new negotiations for a new, better, draft constitution that is more likely to be accepted? Or will they simply try to tweak the existing draft and put it to the electorate anew? If the latter, how will they know which parts to tweak? One only has to look at the make-up of the 'non' camp in France (ranging from the Communists on the left to the xenophobic ultra-nationalists on the right) to know that those rejecting the constitution do not all have the same flaws in mind. Or do the 25 members states just try to get by without a constitution? Or will they try to sneak what they consider to be the most important features of the constitution in through the back door, simply by approving them at parliamentary level in Brussels without ever putting the name Constitution on them?

And then I also wonder what will happen to the French and their role in the EU now? Will they be left behind as the rest of the EU moves on ahead? (I consider this unlikely.) Have they dented their influence within the EU, which until now has been considerable indeed? What would happen if, and it is a big if, all the other member states ratified the constitution apart from France? And will Chirac have to resign as French President?

But most of all I wonder what on earth possessed various leaders of EU member states to think that binding referenda were the best way to seek to ratify this draft constitution? Do they really think that the general voting public is better placed to decide on the effectiveness and appropriateness of a technical document which runs to over 400 pages in length than professional politicians and policy-makers? If so, I do not share their conviction. I feel very strongly that we elect our political representatives to make these sorts of technical and intricate political decisions for us. I think that by calling referenda on this issue, the leaders of various European countries were courting disaster. Unfortunately, that appears to have been exactly what they have encountered. As they say, you reap what you sow.

It is clear to me that the draft EU constitution has weaknesses and is by no means perfect. What is less clear to me is that the alternative, i.e. no EU constitution, or going back to square one and attempting to negotiate a new proposal is the better option.

As you can see, I have many more questions at this stage than answers. It is nonetheless a fascinating time for Europe, politically speaking. I shall be watching with interest to see which way things develop from here.


[Update: I've found two more sources which are definitely worth a read if you're interested in this issue. First, Der Spiegel's English language round-up of what the German papers are saying about the French 'non', and then, from the website of the same magazine, Europe is moving ahead, but where is it going?]

Regular readers may recall that about three weeks ago, I wrote about a chicken in California that had got its owners into strife by crossing the road.

Well, today the BBC News website covers the result of the court case: US chicken ducks jaywalking fine. (Cheesy headline, I know, but I am not responsible for that, sorry.)

Anyhow, it seems the chicken and its owners got off. Not because the chicken didn't cross the road - it did - but rather because the owners' lawyer successfully argued that the chicken was domesticated.

A chicken fined $54 for illegally crossing a road in California has had the charge thrown out by a court.

The fine was dismissed after a lawyer for the bird's owners argued that the fowl was domesticated and could not be classified as livestock. California law bans livestock from highways, but not domestic animals.

OK, so let's just take a closer look at that. The couple didn't have to pay the fine, because the chicken is domesticated and is not livestock? In other words, their chicken is a pet? Yeah, right. And I bet the chicken has never laid them an egg, and that the chicken is never going to be slaughtered for meat, or sold. Sure!

Look, don't get me wrong, I'm pleased the couple got off. It sounded to me like a ridiculous, trumped up charge in the first place. But that they got off by arguing that their chicken was a pet? That's just silly. These people are farmers. Farmers don't keep chickens as pets. It just goes to show that, from time to time, the law can be an ass.

And just in case you had forgotten just what a remarkably litigious place the US can be, you should know that the Moore's, the owners of the chicken, intend to file harrassment charges against the Sheriff Department.

~~~

In more important news, the final result of the French referendum on the EU constitution has been confirmed. The Xinhua Daily News reports nice and succinctly:

PARIS, May 30 (Xinhuanet) -- French voters rejected the European Union constitution in a referendum held on Sunday, with 54.87 percent saying "No" and 45.13 percent saying "Yes" to the charter, final results released by the Interior Ministry said on Monday.

A total of 15,422,659 people voted against the charter, while 12,686,732 people voted "yes", with an abstention rate of 30.26 percent, the ministry said in a statement.

Generally, "we observe important variation from one department to another, with a more expressed preference for the 'no' in the countryside, compared with the urban areas," said French Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin.

There's plenty more to be said on this issue, not least what happens next. I will endeavour to post in more detail about it this evening.

I'm watching BBC News and the first exit poll from the French EU constitution referendum has just this moment been release. It looks like the 'Non' has 55% and the 'Oui' only 45%. The BBC pundits are describing it as a "political earthquake". I am inclined to agree. Even though this is only an exit poll, it is such a resounding victory for the no vote, there seems to be no doubt about the result whatsoever.

It will be interesting to see what happens in the wake of this. Why do the French always have to be so contrary? It's beyond me.

Watch this space.

[Update: Here's the breaking news link which has just gone up on the BBC News website: France 'rejects EU constitution'.]

[Update two: Reuters is reporting that the participation in the French referendum was very high, estimated at 70.5% of the electorate. Hohe Beteiligung bei Frankreichs EU-Referendum (German link).]

[Update three: Reuters has now picked up the referendum result story as well. France rejects EU treaty, Europe faces crisis.]

Today's the day the French electorate has its say in a binding referendum on whether or not to ratify the new EU Constitution Treaty. The last opinion polls in the days before the referendum indicate that the 'Non' camp has the upper hand, just. But the outcome of today's referendum appears still to be on a knife-edge.

Deutsche Welle sums it up as follows:

Voting is underway in France in a referendum on the European Union's first-ever constitution. Final opinion polls suggested that the majority of French were against the new EU treaty. Observers say the French may use the "non" vote to voice dissatisfaction with their present government. A French rejection of the constitution could mean the end of the treaty since it has to be ratified by all member states in order to take effect. Nine countries including Germany have ratified the constitution so far, but France is the first to put the issue to a binding referendum of its citizens.

It is not entirely clear what will happen if France votes 'Non' to the Constitution treaty. Predictions range from "total EU meltdown" on the one hand to "carry on as you were" on the other. I suspect that the reality would be somewhere in between.

That said, I hope that this will not be an issue and that a majority of the French electorate will vote 'Oui' today. All the indications from France are that a no vote would, at least in part, be a reflection of dissatisfaction with the current French government and a desire to send the government a strong message. If that is true, and the consequence is a no vote in today's referendum I would find that disappointing and sad. In my opinion, domestic elections are the time to send the government a message about your dissatisfaction, not a referendum, the result of which directly affects the citizens and residents of 24 other countries besides your own.

Of course, there are other factors which have added momentum to the 'non' campaign in France, such as concerns that the constitution moves the EU in an "Anglo-Saxon" direction economically, more general concerns regarding the direction that the EU is headed, especially a perceived reduction of France's influence in the enlarged Union, and also concerns at possible future membership of Turkey in the EU. Nontheless, I can't help strongly feeling that rejecting the Constitution treaty in today's referendum is definitely not the best way to go about addressing those concerns. Accordingly, I've got my fingers crossed for the 'Oui' camp to sneak home today.

BBC News has great coverage of the EU constitution treaty in general and today's referendum in particular. Here are a couple of good links:
=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/eu..."French begin key EU charter vote
Q & A: French referendum
Consequences of a French 'Non'.

The results are expected either late today or early tomorrow. I shall blog about the results as soon as practicable.

In the same vein as my post earlier this week about a naughty bear in California, I found an old but amusing article in the BBC News archives today.

The headline of the article is Berlin bear's break-out bid fails. It dates from August 2004, long before this BerlinBear started blogging, and it details how a bear at the Berlin zoo broke out of his enclosure, but was cornered by zoo staff and recaptured.

Juan the Andean spectacled bear first paddled across a moat using a log for a raft, then scaled a wall. Finally he appeared to commandeer a bicycle, before zookeepers with brooms cornered him, and a colleague picked him off with a tranquiliser gun.

"Just think what could have happened," said a mother who saw the bear escape and head for the children's carousel.

...

Parents grabbed their children and fled as they realised what was happening. But the zoo's deputy director Heiner Kloes was not so concerned.

"Spectacled bears eat both vegetables and meat but children tend not to be on their menu," he said. "I'd have been a lot more worried if one of our polar bears had escaped," he added.

And people assume that wild animals lack intelligence! This one used a log as a raft, crossed a moat, scaled a wall and attempted to make of with a bicycle. I'm impressed. That said, I'd like to stress once again that, though I am also a Berlin Bear, I am not that Berlin Bear.

Time for this week's instalment of Good news Saturday. This week I have two items. First up is this short piece from Deutsche Welle earlier in the week.

Romanian hostages freed in Iraq

Three Romanian journalists who were kidnapped in Iraq almost two months ago have arrived home. The three were greeted by their families and Romanian President Traian Basescu at a military air base in Bucharest. The militant group that kidnapped them had been demanding that Romania withdraw its 800 troops from Iraq. Muslim clerics in Romania have been credited with helping gain their release.

Unfortunately, I've mislaid the source URL and I can't find it in the DW archives, so no live link I'm afraid.

It is heartening to see that every once in a while hostages taken by militants in Iraq make it home safely. I wish that this were the outcome in all the hostage-taking incidents, rather than just a few. Furthermore, I hope fervently that, eventually, the hostage-taking will cease. I do not have the answers for clearing up the mess in Iraq. I wish that I did. For now, I just watch, dismayed, from a distance, hope that things will improve as soon as possible and celebrate every piece of good news like this story.

My second good news story comes from New Zealand, where China's second ranked politician, Wu Bangguo has been visiting this week. Stuff.co.nz has the story of how Green MP and co-leader Rod Donald waged a successful one man protest outside the Parliament buildings in Wellington.

A borrowed Tibetan flag forced the second most powerful man in the world's biggest country to scuttle through a side door at the start of a state visit to New Zealand.

Foreign Affairs officials diverted China's Wu Bangguo from a red carpet Maori welcome at the top of Parliament's steps to the much less salubrious Beehive entrance – at present a construction zone – because of a one-man protest by Green MP Rod Donald.

Mr Donald was waiting at the foot of the steps with a Tibetan flag borrowed from colleague Sue Kedgley.

Four Chinese security officers shouted, "Police, police" as he unfurled the flag and asked for him to be moved, but police there said he had the right to stay.

Police also ordered the Chinese to move when they stood in front of Mr Donald to shield the flag from Mr Wu, the second-ranked politician in China and chair of the National People's Congress.

The protest meant a powhiri by a school kapa haka group waiting at the top of the stairs was cancelled and Mr Wu was driven down a small alley to the main entrance of the Beehive, where he was met by Prime Minister Helen Clark. Scaffolding in the Beehive foyer, which is being refurbished, was moved, but the area still resembled a building site.

A spokesman for Miss Clark said staff from the Foreign Affairs and Trade Ministry decided to bring Mr Wu through the Beehive so he would not have to walk past Mr Donald.

"They knew the presence of a Tibetan flag would cause gross offence to Mr Wu, so to save any embarrassment to the guest, they made a snap decision to forgo the powhiri and put him through that side door."

Read the rest of the article here.

To this I can only say good on Rod Donald. I approve, both of the cause and of the peaceful but effective way that he went about his protest. I also think it is good news that New Zealand Police did not bow to the Chinese security guards' requests to have Mr Donald removed or allow them to obscure his protest. New Zealand is not China. Free speech and the right to dissent and to protest are respected and upheld. That is the way it must stay.

For more information on what Rod Donald was protesting about, check out this Green party press release, or the China section of the Amnesty International 2004 report released this week.

And now, armed with that good news, go out and enjoy your Saturday.

Were you, like me, stunned and dismayed back in 2003 by the small-minded childishness of the United States Congress voting to change the name of French fries and French toast to Freedom fries and Freedom toast in all restaurants and cafeterias on Capitol Hill to protest at France's recalcitrance in refusing to co-operate in the "War on Terror"? Were you astonished to find that restaurants all around the country followed suit in what their owners and managers considered to be reasonable demonstrations of patriotism? Well if so, like me, you'll be amused and perhaps even heartened by this piece published in Wednesday's Guardian.

It tells the story of the sponsor of that ridiculous campaign and recounts how he has had something of a change of heart. It's a short piece so I have reproduced it here in full:

It was a culinary rebuke that echoed around the world, heightening the sense of tension between Washington and Paris in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. But now the US politician who led the campaign to change the name of french fries to "freedom fries" has turned against the war.

Walter Jones, the Republican congressman for North Carolina who was also the brains behind french toast becoming freedom toast in Capitol Hill restaurants, told a local newspaper the US went to war "with no justification".

Mr Jones, who in March 2003 circulated a letter demanding that the three cafeterias in the House of Representatives' office buildings ban the word french from menus, said it was meant as a "light-hearted gesture".

But the name change, still in force, made headlines around the world, both for what it said about US-French relations and its pettiness.

Now Mr Jones appears to agree. Asked by a reporter for the North Carolina News and Observer about the name-change campaign - an idea Mr Jones said at the time came to him by a combination of God's hand and a constituent's request - he replied: "I wish it had never happened."

Although he voted for the war, he has since become one of its most vociferous opponents on Capitol Hill, where the hallway outside his office is lined with photographs of the "faces of the fallen".

"If we were given misinformation intentionally by people in this administration, to commit the authority to send boys, and in some instances girls, to go into Iraq, that is wrong," he told the newspaper. "Congress must be told the truth."

If Homer Simpson were the author of this blog, he'd have entitled this entry D'oh!, and that would sum it up quite nicely. I'm going to try for a comment of a little more substance though: I am pleased that Walter Jones seems to have come to his senses and realised that he and all Americans (not to mention the British and other coalition partners) were misled in the lead-up to the Iraq War. I'm also pleased that he has come to regret his "light-hearted gesture" and to wish it had never happened. I remain baffled as to how he or any other Congressman (let alone a majority of Congressmen!) could ever have thought switching French for Freedom a worthwhile move, or failed to realise the scorn and derision that such a move would (rightly) be met with abroad. However, I suppose at least progress is progress. As they say: baby steps, baby steps.

[Hat-tip to gesn for the Guardian link.]

If you've been having trouble accessing my blog today, please accept my apologies. tBlog has been playing silly buggers all day. In the first couple of months here I kept reading complaints and laments on Blogspot blogs about interruptions to service and so forth and was continually congratulating myself on the choice of tBlog as my blog provider. But now, after two major tBlog SNAFUs in the last couple of weeks I'm beginning to realise that I was a bit hasty in my smugness. It's frustrating, but I will stick it out for the meantime in the hope that smoothness and continuity of service will soon resume. So, for now, please accept my apologies for the inconvenience and Bear (hehehe) with me.

Now to the service announcements. Alert readers may have noticed that I've added a handy little TinyURL tool in the left sidebar. Thanks to Badaunt for the tip. That tool is as much for me as it is for you. You can use it to convert stupidly long URLs, such as those for the staticlinks on tBlog blogs, to nice, manageably short tinyURLs. It's quick, simple, and excellent if you want to cut and paste long URLs, especially if you want to email them. So, should you feel the urge, please feel free to avail yourself of the TinyURL box down to the left.

Secondly, I have today joined my first webring. It's called Kiwiblogs. The name says it all: it's a webring blogs by Kiwis (New Zealanders), both in New Zealand and overseas. My site
hasn't actually been approved yet, but I've taken the liberty of adding the relevant code to the right sidebar already. If it's New Zealand blogs you're after, go ahead and use the links there to view other blogs written by New Zealanders at home and abroad.

And finally, a couple of cool blogs I've come across recently and thought I'd share.

For anyone who's familiar with the famed 17th century London diarist Samuel Pepys, this blog called Pepysdiary will be a real treat. It's an ongoing project which began in 2003, to publish an entry from Pepys' actual diary online each day. It makes for marvellous reading.

And here's a new Berlin-based political blog I came across. I like the look of it so far. Check it out and decide for yourself: djn berlinbybus.

Both of those newly discovered blogs are now in my Blogroll. Enjoy.

Blogging about weird news and goings-on here in Germany is a doddle. I don't even have to go looking for weird news. It just seems to come to me. The blog entries practically write themselves.

Thus, for example, yesterday I found this odd story about a German woman who rang up to find out why her pension payments had been cut off, only to be told that it was because she had died. But that's not all, when she assured her pension fund that she was still very much alive and kicking, they insisted that she prove it, by obtaining and sending them a "life certificate" from her town hall. Nice. You've got to love German bureaucracy! It turned out, of course, that the pension fund had confused the hapless pensioner with someone else who atually had died (and was presumably still receiving her pension).

Or this story of a 21 year-old who returned to where he'd parked his recently acquired first car, only to find that the Fire Department had thought it was a traning vehicle and had cut it to pieces to practise motor accident rescues.

It might not have been much, but for a 21-year-old driver from Hennef, near Bonn, his first car was his pride and joy. But now, the car his father bought for 900 euros ($1,130) only a few days ago, is lying in pieces in the local fire station parking lot.

Overzealous fire fighters spotted the car parked alongside a row of scrap-yard vehicles rounded up to help them practice rescuing accident victims and promptly set to work with a pair of hydraulic scissors and axes.

But the car had only been parked -- not dumped -- next to the junkyard. Its driver hadn't yet registered the vehicle, so it didn't have license plates.

Fire department chief Heinz Peter Krämer said the situation was regrettable, but defended his colleagues. "They're not really to blame, as the car was already 10 years old and didn't look any different from our practice cars," Krämer said.

The poor kid's Dad was so shocked when they came back to what was left of the car he'd bought for his son that he collapsed and had to be taken to hospital. He's apparently fine now though. In something of a departure for German bureaucracy, the city of Hennef has agreed to have its insurance pay for the damage, even though strictly speaking, the car was illegally parked. In Germany it's illegal to park an unlicensed car on the road. Ah well, you live and learn, eh?

And finally, it seems that a research team in Mannheim has come up with a research result that most women probably didn't want to hear. Apparently, alcohol damages women's brains much faster than it damages men's brains.

The lasting physical harm caused by alcohol abuse is well documented, but according to a new study, the effects are felt more intensively by women than men and much faster. Potential problems include heart and liver damage, as well as long-term brain shrinkage.

Research carried out by the Mannheim Central Institute for Mental Health has revealed that heavy drinking takes its toll on women far more than it does on men. Alcohol wears away cells and reduces brain volume -- moreover, at an alarming rate. With men, the process tends to take much longer.

In short, a woman who's been hitting the bottle regularly for just five years will have a brain that's shrunk to the same size of a man who's been drinking for 10 years.

There's more to the report than just that though. It also includes alarming findings regarding increasing numbers of alcoholic women in Germany. On the plus side, though, the report also finds that kicking the booze leads to brain recovery. So, lads, next time there's only one beer left in the fridge or one glass of wine left in the bottle and you and she are trying to decide who gets it, don't forget to remind her that that bottle of beer or glass of wine will shrink her brain twice as fast is it will yours. Offer selflessly to sacrifice your brain to save hers: "Love, just think of the brain shrinkage! Don't do it" or something to that effect. That should secure you the drink. If that doesn't work, don't forget to remind her that alcohol is very, very calorific indeed.

You may recall that, in the immediate aftermath of Sunday's announcement by the leadership of the SPD that they would be seeking an early general election, I noted that such a move was very rare here in Germany and that it was initially unclear how exactly an early election could be brought about.

Well, it is now clear how this is going to work. Here's the plan: Unlike, say, the UK or NZ, where the government of the day has considerable flexibility as to when it calls the general election, here in Germany the rules regarding timing are much tighter and less forgiving. In order to call an election, the Chancellor, Gerhard Schröder must first submit to a vote of no-confidence. If, and only if, that vote is lost, then the German President, Horst Köhler, can step in and dissolve Parliament, thus triggering an early general election.

According to Der Tagesspiegel [German link], that vote of no-confidence will take place on July 1st. If that vote of no-confidence is lost, then elections must be held within 81 days. As German elections are always held on a Sunday, this means that the probable date for the election is 18th September - this being the last Sunday within the 81 day time limit.

These rules lead to what to me is a curious situation: Schröder, or someone in his party, must move a vote of no-confidence which he fully expects to, and indeed wants to lose. How odd! In fact, since the SPD/Greens coalition has a considerable majority in parliament, presumably this will in fact entail Schröder instructing members of his own party to vote against him in the vote of no-confidence. Unless, that is, I have completely misunderstood how that particular vote is supposed to work. But I've been reading around various sources and that certainly seems to be the way it goes. Strange.

Two other interesting German election developments: whereas the opposition Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) and Free Democrats (FDP) have already announced that they will be campaigning on the basis that they would form a coalition government together if elected, the ruling Social Democrats (SPD) and Greens have refused to make a similar commitment to each other as coalition partners. This appears to be based on the SPD's desire to conduct what they are calling a "personalised campaign", rather than a desire by the Greens to distance themselves from the SPD.

And finally, there has still not been any offical confirmation that Angela Merkel will be the CDU/CSU candidate for Chancellor. That said, it appears now to be a mere formality which is likely to be confirmed at a joint party meeting next Monday. Certainly everyone is currently working on the assumption that Merkel will be the Chancellor candidate for the centre-right parties. Were those parties to win a majority come election time, that would make Angela Merkel Germany's first ever woman Chancellor. Deutsche Welle has an interesting profile on Merkel and her chances.

Believe it or not, in a past life BerlinBear was a rower. I rowed in the 1st VIII of New College Boat Club for several years. Admittedly, as regular commenter Twiglets (who was there) will no doubt ruthlessly point out, without much success. That, however, was not for want of trying.

Anyway, my rowing past is not really the point of this post. The point is to highlight the fact that tomorrow is the first day of Summer Eights in Oxford. Summer Eights is a marvellously insane tradition involving different divisions of 13 rowing crews at a time, each in a 60 foot long, very expensive, carbon fibre boat/missile, rowing at full pace in single file down a narrow stretch of river - too narrow in parts for two boats to row side by side - with the express intention of bumping into the boat in front, whilst avoiding being bumped into by the boat behind. Sounds mad, huh? It is. But it is fun. And it is the biggest adrenaline rush I have ever experienced.

The Lady Margaret Hall Boat Club website explains it slightly less flippantly than I have:

Bumps racing is run between Colleges of Oxford University on the Thames twice every year. Races are held over four days in March ('Torpids') and in May ('Summer Eights'). College crews are organised into divisions, which are exactly the finishing order of the year before. All crews in a division race at the same time. Thirteen bung lines are laid at the start at intervals of one-and-a-half boat lenghts, and each crew's cox must hold the rope at the start, which is sounded with a cannon being fired.
The Aim of the Races

The aim of each race is to ‘bump’ the boat in front. To achieve a Bump, the chasing crew must make contact with any part of the crew ahead of it - or overtake it. Naturally, the chasing crew must achieve the Bump before it is itself Bumped by the crew behind it. Once a crew has Bumped, it leaves the race, but all other crews continue chasing eachother. The start order on the next day is then amended so that crews which achieve a Bump start just ahead of the crew they Bumped. If a crew neither Bumps nor is Bumped, then its position is unchanged. Thus, successful crews rise up the divisions over the four days of racing.

When a crew finshes at the top of a division, it may race later in that day at the bottom of the division above. If the crew does not catch the College ahead, then it remains at the top of the lower division and must 'row over' (not be Bumped) the following day to again have the opportunity to Bump into the higher division.

Got that? Good. These two photos may give you an idea of what it looks like in practice.




[Source for photos: JET Photographic.]

And yes, I do appear in both of those photos. So, for the record, does Twiglets. We're not especially visible in the top one, but we're there nonetheless.

Tomorrow, Wednesday 25th May, Summer Eights 2005 begins. New College Boat Club's Men's 1st VIII will be starting at fifth in the men's 1st division, while the women's 1st VIII start at Head of the River in the women's 1st division and will be looking to retain that honour. I will be watching for the results with interest. My best wishes to all the NCBC crews involved. I hope it goes well.

GDBM!

Not BerlinBear. Looks nice though, doesn't she? [Source: BBC News]

This interesting article from BBC News, tells the story of a black bear who went swimming in a California pool. Accordingly, I just wanted to be the first to say that it wasn't me!

A bear has been caught cooling off in a suburban swimming pool in California, one of a growing number of wild creatures exploring the urban heartland.

The way her paw gently rests on the side of the pool, her claws, like human fingers, just sitting on the terracotta edging tiles, her gaze distracted by something in the distance... For an uninvited guest, this 10-stone wild black bear looks remarkably at ease as she takes a dip in a backyard on the outskirts of Los Angeles.

She had ambled into the garden shortly after 6pm, bumping into doors and windows before eyeing the shimmering expanse of cool water and jumping in.

But while the bear appeared to take things in her stride, mother Maryam Salahael sprang into action, fishing her children out of the water before calling the authorities for help. The furry intruder was swiftly tranquilised and carted off, to be released in nearby mountains.

Well, at least they didn't kill the poor thing. Actually, the article is more about the way in which it is becoming ever more common for wild animals, from bears to racoons to foxes, to turn up in urban areas. It discusses a couple of theories, ranging from a predeliction on the part of the animals for the simplicity and tastiness of fast-food leftovers that are readily available in town centres, to the creeping encroachment of urban development into the natural habitats of various wild animal species. It's an interesting read.

Our situation here in Berlin is somewhat similar. We see the odd fox slinking around the streets at night, and we have a weasel or something similar living in our roof. But that is nothing compared with the wild boars. We live close to several large forests, where the boars are supposed to live. However, come the winter, their food soon runs out and they are forced to make forays into residents' gardens in search of something to eat. You can't blame the poor starving things, but obviously this is a) something of an inconvenience (they can destroy a garden in one visit as they root around for bulbs and tubers to eat), and b) pretty frightening when you're walking along the street of a Winter's evening and you're confronted with a family of wild boar trotting along the footpath. This has happened to us on several occasions. There haven't been any incidents around here yet, as far as we know, but it is certainly a little disconcerting.

[Hat-tip to Miss Behaviour who pointed me to the story]

I hope you’re not expecting anything intellectual, insightful, or especially clever from this particular post. If you are after that sort of thing, you’d better move along to the next blog, because this instalment consists of nothing but two inanities. The are, however, two strangely amusing inanities, which I why I thought I’d share them.

The first one I came across while I was searching for something else entirely. I can't even remember what the search was, but somehow I landed directly at this site. I can't even tell you why I find this amusing and fascinating, but I do. I do quite like the fact that it's about bears, though.

I found the second one via a heads-up from Miss Behaviour [politely doffs cap]. I don't even want to ask how she found it. Anyway, for better or worse, here it is.

As I said, nothing but inanity. However, if you're anything like me, they should keep you amused for a while at least. A post of substance should issue forth this evening at some stage.

This story comes straight from the "every cloud has a silver lining" file. BBC News reports today on a barbeque restaurant in Seoul, which is cashing in on an earlier misfortune.

A South Korean barbeque restaurant that was trampled by elephants last month has reopened after repairs and is now capitalising on its mishap.

The eatery in the capital, Seoul, has been renamed Restaurant Where Elephants Have Been and is offering a special elephant-inspired menu.

Three elephants smashed windows and overturned tables on 20 April after escaping from an amusement park. Customers fled in terror. One woman was knocked down, suffering broken ribs.

But now the owner of the restaurant, Keum Taek-hoon, has used the insurance money she received after the break-in to remodel her restaurant. It now has a sign featuring three elephants and offers an "elephant set" - seven vegetable dishes and a hot soup, "since elephants like to eat vegetables", she said

Read the full story here.

Well, you can't argue with the logic, can you? Elephants do indeed like to eat vegetables. And at least she's not serving her dishes with ivory cutlery and seating her clientele on stools made from elephants' feet.

Seriously though, good luck to her. And let's hope that the truism that lightning never strikes in the same place twice also applies to elephants.

Way back when, before I started blogging (ok, ok, it's not that long ago) I started reading around other people's blogs first to get a feel for what was out there, what people were writing about and what forms blogs could take. I was learning all I could before I finally took the plunge.

Naturally, given my background and current situation, the very first thing I searched for was "New Zealand + Berlin + blog." Well, that gave me only one relevant hit. There I discovered that I had just missed the author, a journalist who goes by the name of Shona, who had just that week upped sticks and moved back to New Zealand. Thankfully, Shona set up a new blog, excellently named Restless Kiwi, as soon as she got back to New Zealand. And I've been reading it (and leaving her pesky and inane comments) ever since. Shona doesn't know it, but she was a factor in my decision to bite the bullet and start this blog.

All that by way of introduction to the actual story. Today, in a moment reminiscent of my having your cake and eating it too experience last week, I was browsing expatica.com and I came across a review of the one and only New Zealand restaurant here in Berlin, called Aotearoa.

The review was entitled Giving Germans a Taste of Kiwi. Like most expats, my eye is always caught by references to New Zealand in my chosen country of abode, so I started reading this review. It was good. It made me want to go out tomorrow and visit Aotearoa right away. I've known about this restaurant for a while, but Ms. Bear and I have yet to make it there, as it is way across the other side of town. In any case, once I had finished reading, I scrolled back up and was about to click away to the next article when the name of the author of the review caught my eye. It was someone called Shona. Someone called Shona who had clearly been in Berlin, visited the restaurant, knew that Aotearoa was the Maori name for New Zealand, knew all sorts of other insider things that only New Zealanders know, etc. etc. etc. What were the chances? There couldn't be two such Shona's could there? So I swung by her blog and asked the question. And sure enough, she confirmed within an hour that this was indeed her piece. Accordingly, I thought I'd share.

So, if you're in or near Berlin, stop by Aotearoa in Friedrichshain for a good Kiwi feed. Shona reckons it is well worth a visit.

More breaking news:

Well, well, well. It seems I underestimated the importance of the election in North-Rhine Westphalia in the context of national politics. Here's why:

Less than an hour after the polling booths in North-Rhine Westphalia closed, and as soon as it became clear that the ruling SPD was not going to win the state election, the national leader of the SPD, Franz Müntefering, has announced that he and the German Chancellor will be bringing the national general election forward. As a result, the general election in Germany will be held in Autumn this year, rather than next year as previously expected. This is a big deal. Instead of giving the CDU time to consolidate after today's election victory and plenty of time to take stock and prepare for the general election campaign, the SPD has rather ripped the rug out from under their feet and ensured that the general election campaign begins this evening. The SPD obviously knew that this was coming and, accordingly, will be prepared to go into full nation-wide campaigning swing. The CDU, on the other hand, though they are claiming not to be surprised by this decision, will now have to hustle to catch up. Interesting, and a cunning political move, I think.

In one fell swoop, Müntefering has written the headlines for tomorrow's German newspapers. It will be very interesting how this is viewed in the German media. And in the longer term, it will also be interesting to see whether the SPD is able to turn things around in time for the general election in autumn. My own feeling is that they will not be able to do so, but I've been wrong before.

These stories are not yet available online as they have only just been announced. My source is the German TV news channel n-tv. I will endeavour to provide links to stories covering this when they become available.

UPDATE: All of the major news outlets have picked this story up now. Here is a sample for those who are interested:
International Herald Tribune: Schröder sets early vote after defeat
BBC News: Germany set for early election
Reuters: Schroeder calls for early election after state loss
Deutsche Welle: SPD proposes early federal elections
ABC News: Schroeder proposes early election after state defeat

One interesting thing coming out of these articles: it is highly unusual for early elections to be called in Germany. This has not happened since 1983. Moreover, it is at this stage not even clear exactly what process is required to bring the elections forward.

Something that the articles do not really make clear, but which is important, is that the opposition Christian Democrats (CDU) and their sister party the CSU (which only runs in Bavaria) do not at this stage have a candidate for Chancellor for the general election. Angela Merkel is the leader of the CDU, while Edmund Stoiber leads the CSU. No decision has yet been made on which of those two will head up the joint CDU/CSU bill for the general election later this year. This leaves the CDU/CSU somewhat on the back foot, unless they can come to an agreement very quickly. There were hints in interviews this evening that an announcement on who will be the CDU/CSU candidate for Chancellor as early as tomorrow. That said, everyone was being exceptionally careful this evening not to confirm or deny anything, which seems to me to be a clear indication that it is not yet a done deal.

Either way, from this evening Germany is now firmly in the grip of what will be a very hard-fought election campaign. All the early signs are that the ruling SPD are not going to lie down and go away, but rather that they are prepared to fight to the last and have a strategy for doing so. Here in Germany we are in for interesting political times in the coming months.

Breaking News....

There will been a change of government in the German state of Northrhine Westphalia. The conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) has claimed victory in the state election, even before all the results are in. Similarly, the governing Social Democrats (SPD) have just conceded.

German news channel n-tv is projecting the following percentages:

CDU: 44.1%
SPD: 37.1%
Free Democrats (FDP): 6.2%
Greens: 5.8%

This represents a swing from SPD to CDU of more than 12% over the last state election in Northrhine Westphalia. As a result, the CDU and FDP will in all probability form a centre-right coalition to govern in Northrhine Westphalia.

More later when the final results are in.

UPDATE: The initial projections I listed above at around 18:15 were close, but not entriely accurate. Here is a graphic from Der Tagesspiegel which has the current projections. Note that these are not yet officially confirmed results but they are unlikely to change:

The first row is % percentage of total vote.
The second row is % change as compared with the last election in 2000
The third row the number of seats in the State parliament that this result translates into.

As you can see, everyone lost out except the CDU. Interesting stuff. The new State government will be a so-called Black-Yellow coalition of CDU and FDP. The state premiership will fall to Jürgen Rüttgers of the CDU.

It would seem that 2005 is not the best time to be the leader of a Central Asian post-Soviet Republic. In March of this year we saw the overthrow of the Kyrgyz president. Then, last week, protests and political unrest in Uzbekistan resulted in a violent government crackdown. And things have not stopped there.



Map of Central Asia. [Source: alabamamaps.ua.edu]

Both Deutsche Welle and BBC News reported yesterday that the situation in Uzbekistan remains tense amid continued protests.

A week after protests in Uzbekistan left hundreds dead, tensions in the east of the Central Asian country remain high. Police have broken up a demonstration in the border town of Karasuv, where hundreds of people rallied against the detention of opposition leaders. Authorities accuse opposition figures of having organised last week's bloody uprising in the city of Andijan. It is still unclear how many people died in the uprising. The government puts the number killed at nearly 170, while the opposition says that up to 1000 people were indiscriminately killed by security forces. [Deutsche Welle]

Meanwhile, it now appears that political unrest has spread to Azerbaijan as well. Both the Washington Post and BBC News report that Azerbaijani police have violently broken up an opposition demonstration in the country's capital, Baku. The protesters, who were defying a ban on public demonstration, were calling for free elections in Azerbaijan. In what seems to be the Central Asian norm, the government and opposition accounts of what occurred, how many were arrested and how many were injured differ wildly.

Staying in the Central Asian region, Mongolians are today going to the polls in rather more peaceful circumstances to elect a new President. BBC News covers the story here, and Deutsche Welle sums it up nice and succinctly:

Mongolians are voting for a new president. Former Prime Minister Nambariin Enkhbayar from the ex-communist Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party is expected to beat the other three candidates. The winner needs to more than 50 percent of the vote. Otherwise, the two top vote-getters will compete in a run-off in on June 5. The winner will replace Natsagiin Bagabandi, whose second term ends this month. It is Mongolia's fourth elections since the central Asian country reverted to democracy in 1989 after nearly 70 years of communist dictatorship.

Regardless of the DW prediction (shared by the BBC correspondent), my attention was drawn by this slightly ominous line in the BBC article: "But Mongolian elections are known for their unpredictability." Hmmm, well, I guess we will just have to wait and see.

And finally, in more election news, there's an important state election going on in Germany today. North-Rhine Westphalia (Nordrheinwestfalen), Germany's most populous state, is today electing its state parliament (Landtag). This election is seen as something of an indicator for what might happen in the general election next year. The reason for that is that Chancellor Schröder's Social Democrats (SPD), who form the national government in a coalition with the Greens, have held power in Nordrheinwestfalen for the past 39 years. However, polls suggest that the SPD might be heading for defeat in today's election. That said, some 40% of the electorate in Nordrheinwestfalen is said to have been undecided as to how they would vote until the last moment, meaning that today's outcome is very hard to predict.

An SPD defeat today, of course, would be interpreted as a clear sign that the country is unhappy with its current government and will be looking for a change when the general election rolls around. BBC News and Deutsche Welle both have informative pieces on today's election.

I will endeavour to post on the results this evening, or as soon as they become available.

If you are anywhere in Europe and you know what is good for you, you should be watching the Eurovision Song Contest, a.k.a. the Grand Prix D'Eurovision, right now. Turn on your telly and tune in!

If you're anywhere else (you poor buggers), go and check out the official website, where for the next three hours you can get a live stream of some of the worst and most hilarious music that Europe has to offer.

At this moment, I am enjoying a pretty spectacular number by a Moldovan act. Can't work out whether he's singing in Moldovan, English or both, but hey, that's kind of the point really.

I love the Eurovision song contest. You know you will too.

PS: If you're eligible to vote, vote for Norway. They had a great heavy rock act. Trust me on this one.

This week's piece of good news comes from the Middle East, a region whence there has come a decided lack of good news in recent times. For exactly that reason, the news that came out of Kuwait this week - that women there have been awarded the vote for the first time - is especially sweet.

On Monday this week, women in Kuwait were granted full political rights. This means not only that they are finally able to vote in elections, but that they can also stand for office and hold political positions. Kuwait is only the fourth country in the Persian Gulf region to grant suffrage to women. Kuwaiti women join their counterparts in Qatar, Bahrain and Oman in being allowed to vote.

BBC News reports:

There were celebrations around the Gulf state on Monday after parliament agreed to let women vote and stand for office.

The result, announced by the speaker of parliament, was greeted with thunderous applause from the public gallery where backers of the amendment were gathered.Outside, drivers hooted their horns, people danced and cheered and lit fireworks.

"We made it. This is history," said suffrage activist Roula Dashti. "Our target is the parliamentary polls in 2007. I'm starting my campaign from today."

The Melbourne Herald Sun also covers this story:

The amendment, finalised after several years of debate and struggle by Kuwaiti women, passed by a vote of 35-23 and one abstention.

...

Islamist and tribal legislators had fiercely campaigned against women's suffrage on the grounds that Islamic teachings bar women from participating in political life.

Article One of electoral law, dating to 1962, limited the right to vote to men. It was deemed out of step with the emirate's constitution, which stipulates equality of the sexes.

This is a very pleasing development. It appears to be the result of a years long campaign by a group of courageous Kuwaiti women on the one hand, and subtle but firm pressure from the United States, Kuwait's ally, over a long period of time. The BBC News article puts it thus:

The Bush administration has been pressing its oil-rich and strategic Middle East allies to bring in reforms since the 11 September 2001 attacks on the US - arguing that political stagnation fuels terrorism.

"We think this is an important step forward for Kuwait, for the women of Kuwait and for the nation as a whole," said US state department spokesman Richard Boucher after Monday's vote.

It would be naive to think that this were the end and that the battle for the equal treatment of women in Kuwait specifically, and in the Middle East more generally, were won. There remains a lot to be done. Nevertheless, the granting of women's suffrage in Kuwait seems to me to be an important step forwards. I congratulate the women involved in the Kuwaiti suffrage movement, and the Kuwaiti legislators, a majority of whom have seen the progressive light. I hope that this is just the beginning.

And finally, since it's relevant, a pop quiz:
Q: Which country was the first to grant women the vote, on 19th September 1893?


A: Believe it or not, it was New Zealand. Details here.

I found this little gem over at Blogthings and thought I'd share.

You Know You're From New Zealand When...

You know what to do in an Earthquake: get into the nearest doorway before any other bugger and say, "Nah, i don't reckon it's the big one this time. We'll be right" You can hum the theme song to Coronation street. You know what apples really taste like (and that there are more than four different kinds) You know rugby league is not, and never will be, an international sport. You're not sure about cricket, either. Or hockey. Or netball. Or swimming. Or the women's 400m. Or any other sport in which Australia are world champions. Yes, you're even having doubts about real rugby. You know what happened to the lead singer of Push Push You're seen split Enz, or former members thereof, performing live at least once You reckon anyone who carries on about how great they are is an up-themselves wanker. Or an Australian. You wouldn't dream of wearing thongs on your feet. Thats what jandals are for. The name "Chappell" still makes you queasy You know someone who worked on The Lore of the Rings or Xena You wish Fitzy, Zinzan and Josh were still playing for the ABs. The dairy sells more than just stuff from cows You rolled Snifters, rather then Jaffas, down the aisle at the movies You know something's horribly wrong if you've been driving for more then 2 hours without the scenery changing. The words "NZ cricket victory" just don't sound right, somehow. You actually get these jokes and pass them on to other friends from New Zealand.

Get Your Own "You Know You're From" Meme Here



More cool things for your blog at
Blogthings

I do indeed get all those jokes, and almost all of those things apply to me. I confess though, that I'm not certain what happened to the lead singer of Push Push. Was that Mikey Havoc? (In which case I do know what happened to him) Or someone else? Either way, I think it's now official that I am a New Zealander. Unfortunately, there isn't yet a You know you're from Germany when... meme. A shame, because there's plenty of scope for hilarity there.

Today, as yesterday, time is at a premium, so you'll have to forgive the brevity of this entry. Still, I wanted to get at least something out there for your viewing pleasure and to aid your weekend-induced good mood.

Two pieces of good news this Saturday. I realise that on both these topics, whether or not you consider them to be good news is a subjective thing, but hey, I think they are great news and this is my blog after all.

First up, the EU Constitution. Though it was signed by all 25 EU member states in October last year, the proposed constitution needs to be ratified by every member country before it can come into force. This week was a good week for the constitution, as the parliaments of three member countries voted to ratify it.

The Austrian, Slovakian and German houses of parliament all voted to ratify the constitution this week. In the case of Germany, final approval still awaits confirmation from the upper house, the Bundesrat, but this is a mere formality. The lower house, the Bundestag, this week voted with 569 votes in favour, 23 votes against and 2 abstention. As you can see, an overwhelming victory, much more than the required two thirds majority.

Deutsche Welle has the full story, and BBC News has an excellent run-down on whether all the EU member states stand on the constitution.

We stay in Europe, specifically the Low Countries, for the second piece of good news. It was reported this week that both the Netherlands and Belgium have begun the process of legislating to make it legal for homosexual couples to adopt children. In both countries, it is already legal for same-sex couples to marry, but as yet they are not allowed to adopt children. This move is a ood thing in my opinion, and I sincerely hope it is successful. As I see it, the only factors which should matter in deciding who can adopt a child and who cannot are the welfare of the child and the ability of the prospective parents to provide a loving, caring and stable home and family to the child. The sexuality of the parents should not be a factor, and I am glad that Belgium and the Netherlands are making moves to change this discriminatory state of affairs. You can read about the Belgian situation here, and the Dutch situation here.

Right, that's it for today. Have a great Saturday, wherever you are and whatever you're up to.

Busy day today, so I'm afraid you'll pretty much have to amuse yourselves. Perhaps in my absence you could rent yourself a German to fill the void?


From the info page of the rentagerman.de website:

rentagerman.de offers a wide range of Germans for your personal and social needs. You can select the German of your choice for an exclusive lifetime experience: imagine to appear with your German at parties, family events, or just hang out with them at the local shopping center. No matter which occasion you choose, you will surely impress your environment by presenting an original German.

See, you can't go wrong. And it's not even that expensive.

And if, like me, you are wondering if that is for real, check out this Deutsche Welle news story for more details.

[Hat-tip to RM, who first brought this to my attention several weeks ago.]

Well, the poll has been up for almost two weeks now. Due to the overwhelming response, I have had to take it down for fear of overloading the PollHost server. Or not. Actually, there were only 19 responses in total. Here, in case you're interested (which, it seems from the very limited vote casting, you are not) are the results:

---

Do you bother clicking on the links provided in my blog posts?



Of course! All of them 2 votes 11%


Sometimes. Depends on the story and the link 13 votes 68%


Never. I'm prepared to take you at your word 1 vote 5%


Are there links in your posts? Where? 3 votes 16%

---

As far as I can decipher, there are two morals of this story. The first is that my linking policy is just fine and I should carry on as before. The second would appear to be either that polls in the sidebars are a waste of time, or that this particular poll was too boring to warrant a proper response.

I am tempted to test that second moral of the story with another poll. Nah, forget it. I'll give you a break for now.

Posting will be somewhere between limited and none from now until Monday, as Ms. Bear and I are hosting guests for a few days and will be busy doing all the touristy things you never get around to when you live somewhere. On the plus side, I should have plenty to report when posting resumes with the normal alacrity early next week.

You may recall that in the lead-up to and aftermath of Anzac Day (25th April), I blogged first here and then here about the Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard's, decision not to bother to attend the New Zealand commemoration service at Chunuk Bair on the Gallipoli peninsula. At the time, I said I thought Howard was "an odious little man with an attitude problem," and an embarrassment to his country. And then when I read that he was 'dismayed' by talk of a snub and claimed that he was unaware that he could have attended the New Zealand ceremony, I added "liar" for good measure. I stand by those slurs and have not changed my opinion.

I have, however, found an interesting analysis of the incident. It is written by Selwyn Manning, the co-editor of the New Zealand news website Scoop, who travelled to Gallipoli this year for Anzac Day and was therefore "in the thick of it" as events unfolded.

Manning's opinion piece, here, argues that, despite Mr Howard's protestations to the contrary, his no-show at the New Zealand memorial service should definitely be regarded as a boycott and a snub.

Howard’s decision to abandon plans to attend the New Zealand ceremony at Chunuk Bair was a boycott. Context justifies the assertion.

For over one month prior to Anzac Day New Zealand and Australian foreign affairs officials exchanged emails and calls seeking to resolve John Howard’s insistence that he would not be attending the Chunuk Bair service.

Interesting isn't it? Because Teflon John, we are told, assured Helen Clark afterwards that it was not a snub and that he did not realise he could attend both services until it was too late. It couldn't be that he wan't quite being 100% truthful, could it? Surely not!

Manning goes on to speculate about possible reasons for John Howard's snub. He comes to the conclusion that the snub was not a personal one, directed at New Zealand leader Helen Clark. Rather, he argues, it was born of a "deeply held contemporary Australian belief that Anzac Day is for Australians." He sees it as an example of Australian nationalism and an attempt by Howard to abandon 90 years of Anzac spirit and strike out in a new, more Australia-centric direction.

The Australian PM’s boycott of Chunuk Bair was another demonstration of Australian nationalism – born of the ANZAC spirit but focussed on contemporary Australian values that disregard the sacrifice that New Zealand (then an infant nation) suffered 2721 deaths, 4852 casualties out of 8556 young men during that doomed battle at Gallipoli. Australia’s contemporary view of New Zealand, especially when considering things military, is that New Zealand sponges off Australia, does not pull its weight, is a combat liability, and at best, relegated to a logistics role.

That view was not accurate during World War I or World War II.

...

Australia’s ANZAC Day 2005 set a heading that displayed an altered course. This event of national identity was clearly but cleverly engineered to present to Australians (as opposed to New Zealanders) a flag-waving extravaganza of national pride. John Howard’s mood captured as much as presented a feeling within Australia that it ought to naturally assume its place on the podium of ANZAC history, a solitary place of choice, where New Zealand can make up the NZ in ANZAC but exalts a contemporary belief that New Zealand had never paid its way in battles throughout the 20th Century.

...

Howard’s decision to attend a barbeque rather than lay a wreath of respect for the fallen New Zealanders at Chunuk Bair was a boycott and a snub. It rendered New Zealand as secondary, subservient, and in some aspects irrelevant. In his speech at ANZAC Cove, John Howard referred to New Zealand once – while dotting the word Australia at least 20 times in the course of his commemoration.

As I cannot read John Howard's mind and do not have access to foreign office and diplomatic sources to ask the right questions, I cannot judge whether Manning's assessment of this diplomatic incident is accurate, paranoid, or somewhere in between. Either way, it's an interesting take on something which I found inexplicable and mildly insulting at the time. If I thought that John Howard really spoke for Australians, I would be more concerned. As it is, I've yet to meet an Australian who has admitted to voting for John Howard, and most of my Australian friends are almost as critical of him as I am. Makes you wonder how he keeps getting re-elected, really.

While I was in the park today,
Having a bite to eat,
Several dogs appeared at once,
And began to meet and greet.

There was yapping and tail-wagging,
Panting galore, a gentle tiff,
And, of course, there had to be,
Cocking of legs and a mutual sniff.

And that is when it struck me,
How different, we from canines,
We don't meet by sniffing piss,
But instead with chat-up lines.

And I'm glad, I have to say,
Evolution took this turn,
For with a bashful bladder such as mine,
I'd always crash and burn.

I couldn't meet and greet like that,
Or bark, or chase a bone,
I'd have to hang my head in shame,
And always play alone.

For a dog with a bashful bladder,
Would never find a mate,
And so I'm glad I'm not a dog,
Yes, being me's just great.

More information on the foot and mouth disease scare in New Zealand is available this morning. It appears that the New Zealand authorities are almost certain that this is a hoax and that the immediate response I described in my last post was principally designed to appease our trading partners and let them know that everything was in hand.

The theory now doing the rounds is that this incident is in fact a "capping week stunt."

Asked if it was possible the extortion letter -- which threatened to also release foot and mouth disease on the mainland if specific demands were not met by Friday -- was a stunt for Massey University's capping week, he said: "We are very conscious that a certain university has a capping week... it has been a consideration for us."

Capping stunts are a usually harmless tradition in New Zealand, whereby groups of graduating university students pull various stunts designed to be amusing and attract public attention. What they are not supposed to do, is put the country at risk of a NZ$10 billion economic disaster. If this is a capping stunt, it is a spectacularly ill thought out one, and it is likely to land the stunt-pullers in an awful lot of trouble.

Said trouble is likely to be all the more serious because the Prime Minister has announced that she is viewing this incident as a "bioterrorism" threat. And by now we all know that where the word terrorism is involved, so too is a lengthy prison term. (In fact, in some countries, where the word terrorism is involved a lengthy prison term can precede or even replace a fair trial, but that is a topic for another day.) The New Zealand Herald reports:

Helen Clark said: "I regard this as a bioterrorism threat, and very severe penalties are in place for such crimes."

She added, speaking to a Canterbury student radio station: "We have to take this very seriously, even though we are reasonably confident it is a hoax." ...

Assistant Commissioner Peter Marshall said whoever sent the letter may be liable for years in prison if identified and convicted. ...

Agriculture Minister Jim Sutton described the letter to the Prime Minister as "a case of terrorism".

Some stunt eh? What on earth could possibly possess you to think that this sort of thing would be funny?

What is funny though, is that I have seen speculation this morning on two right-wing New Zealand blogs that this whole incident is a conspiracy. It's something which the New Zealand government has arranged (or had arranged on its behalf) to push several scandals and bad news items off the front pages. Sure it is guys. Dream on.

Big news coming out of New Zealand today: A letter has been sent to the Prime Minister claiming that foot and mouth disease had been deliberately released on Waiheke Island, near Auckland. Apparently, the letter demanded a ransom and an alteration in New Zealand's tax policy and threatened further releases of the disease elsewhere if the demands were not met.

Though this threat is being taken very seriously, it is believed that this is in fact a hoax. Let us hope so. If it is not a hoax, and foot and mouth disease has been deliberately imported into New Zealand, it would potentially devastate New Zealand's agricultural industry.

Foot and mouth is the biggest biosecurity threat New Zealand could have. The virus is no threat to human health but can spread rapidly through livestock, including sheep, cattle and deer.

If the disease was confirmed in New Zealand, it would result in immediate bans on any animal-based exports from this country, including meat and dairy exports which make up 7% of New Zealand's economy.

Reserve Bank and Treasury figures show an outbreak could wipe $10 billion off the economy, the loss of 20,000 jobs, close export meat markets for 12 months and depress export prices for four years.

[Source: One News.]

Accordingly, New Zealand authorities have mounted a furious damage control effort in meat and dairy markets around the world. Details of these efforts are reported here. Unfortunately, as it takes four to seven days for foot and mouth symptoms to show, a cloud of uncertainty will hang over Waiheke Island and New Zealand for some time yet.

Proof that the good news has travelled far and wide very quickly indeed can be found in these online articles: The Scotsman (UK), People's Daily Online (China), Wisconsin Ag Connection (US).

Having lived in the UK during the foot and mouth outbreak there, I can't tell you how much I hope this is a hoax. I also trust that they apprehend the person or people responsible quick smart.

Now what was I saying about biosecurity in New Zealand?

For those of you who scoffed when I reported that Hilary Swank got stung for sneaking fruit into New Zealand, and then cried foul when I mentioned that New Zealand snails had invaded Colorado, this one's for you.

Below is a recent article from the UK newspaper the Guardian. Because it is nice and short, I shall reproduce it here in its entirety.

Are you thinking what we're thinking?

Thursday April 21, 2005

North American mink are a menace to wildlife in Europe. European rats stowed away on the first ships that colonised America and now cost the US an estimated $19bn a year. Canada geese are now part of the British landscape, along with grey squirrels, and the native European red squirrels are pretty hard to spot.

Ecologists report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that tougher immigration regimes could save conservationists a lot of trouble. They analysed five centuries of bird, mammal and freshwater fish introductions between Europe and North America and calculate that one in four of the species that survived the crossing became a successful invader. "We focused our study on larger vertebrates because there are better historical records about their introductions," says Jonathan Jeschke of the Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, New York. "The best way to combat invasive species is to prevent them from being introduced. As global trade increases, precautions such as port inspection and exotic wildlife regulations are essential."

Although it doesn't say so in as many words, that, in a nutshell, is leading scientists endorsing New Zealand's strict biosecurity laws and calling for them to be employed elsewhere, including Europe and the US. Just thought you might be interested to know that what the rest of the world snickered at when it meant a celebrity getting caught out, is now being described as "essential."

OK, gloat over. Please talk amongst yourselves.

I don't know. Why did the chicken cross the road? Well, according to this Yahoo! News article, it was because the chicken was unaware that you could get a ticket for jaywalking.

[Kern County Sheriff's Deputy J. Nicholson] issued a ticket [to Linc and Helena Moore] March 26 because one of the couple's chickens allegedly impeded traffic in Johannesburg, a rural mining community near Ridgecrest, some 220 miles northeast of Los Angeles.

The Moores were in Superior Court on Friday to plead not guilty. A trial was scheduled for May 16. Nicholson has declined to discuss the matter, but sheriff's Sgt. Francis Moore said chickens on the roadway have been a problem in the community of 50 residents. Officials didn't believe it could be resolved by simply issuing the couple a warning.

"Sometimes you have to let people talk to the judge," Moore said.

The chicken's owners say they believe they were cited because they were among several people who complained that sheriff's deputies haven't done enough to control off-road vehicle riders who create dust and noise in their neighborhood.

Sheriff's officials say that isn't so, adding they are doing what they can to keep off-roaders away from homes. "The chicken thing has nothing to do with the motorcycle thing," Moore said.

Interesting. They're very eloquent these Sheriff's officials aren't they? "You know," wink, wink, "the thing with the thing. The thing we have to do before we get on with the other thing." Reminds me of a gangster movie.

I wonder what the fine for chicken jay-walking is? Also, did you notice that just about everyone in this story shares the same surname? I wonder if they're all related up in Kern County? Just a thought.

[With a hat-tip to PC.]

To a greater or lesser extent, we have all come across Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address at some point. Some of the Americans amongst you may even have had to memorise it during your school days. Either way, we are all aware that it was a pithy and very memorable little speech which has gone down in history.

But consider what might have happened if Abe had been making that speech today. He'd have used audiovisual aids, right? Like a PowerPoint presentation for example. Click here to see what it might have looked like.

Here I sit, on this bus,
(This coach, the Brits would say),
It's on its way to Bratislava,
But it won't get there today.

The trip I'm on is overnight,
It's a very long way to go,
Twelve hours or more I must survive,
Quite how, I do not know.

It's funny how they don't make buses,
For people of my height,
Can't fit my legs between the seats,
Were I five foot two I might.

I'm surrounded by all sorts of people,
Who speak a language that's not mine,
I don't know what on earth it is,
But it doesn't sound divine.

This language that they're speaking,
Has a lot of v's and z's*,
And I haven't got the least idea,
What's going on inside their heads.

Thankfully it seems there's not,
A baby on this bus,
No-one yet has cried out loud,
Or even made a fuss.

Call me a pessimist, but I suspect,
Before this journey's out,
Someone will have got all grumpy,
And felt the need to shout.

Fancy that, now there it is,
The scream I was awaiting,
There is a baby, now he's crying,
And yes, the noise is grating.

It's hard to find the words to say,
How frustrating and absurd,
To watch a film you know's in English,
And not to understand a word.

Yes, they've dubbed it in this foreign tongue,
It's not hard to fathom why,
But now I'm the one who doesn't get it,
And the volume's very high.

After the film things quieten down,
And people catch some (v's and) z's,*
I, of course, sit wide awake,
And watch their lolling heads.

For sleeping on buses in something,
That I could never do,
Others nod off at the drop of a hat,
How I wish that I could too.

Because there's only so much staring,
Into space that one can take,
But the more I try to fall asleep,
The more I stay awake.

Of course there are some characters,
On this bus of ours,
There's Mrs. Snore just over there,
And several who need showers.

The guy who's sitting next to me,
Has made himself quite wide,
And that is not contributing,
To this being a comfy ride.

There Mr. Tip-his-seat-right-back,
Of course, in front of me,
You just can't push it any further,
Or else you'll crush my knee.

Then there's Miss Wander-up-the-aisle,
(Not that that's a crime),
Except she seems to feel the need,
To bash my elbow every time.

But in spite of all of this,
I guess it's not that bad,
The baby's been a little angel,
And no-one has got mad.

Also, now the sun's come up,
There is a lovely view,
I even managed to sneak some sleep,
An hour, or maybe two.

The border crossing, behind us now,
Was not much of a worry,
Though the Slovak immigration team,
Didn't seem inclined to hurry.

Bratislava! Here we are,
Finally we have arrived,
At last this trip is over,
And fancy, I've survived.

[*Important note: In NZ and British English, the letter z is pronounced Zed, not Zee.]

Boy, have I got a weird and wonderful news round-up for you. None of this one quirky piece from New Zealand or Germany nonsense. This, my friends, is the real quirky news deal.

Naturally enough, I'll begin in New Zealand. [Hat-tip to Dave Barry's blog for this story.] The New Zealand news service Stuff reports here about someone who thought he or she had found a severed set of male human genitals lying on the beach and promptly called the police. But when the police arrived they discovered that the item in question was in fact some sort of marine life. Encouragingly though, police spokesman Andrew Brill said that the call was "completely out of the ordinary" for his team. Well, I'm very pleased to hear it.

Moving North-West, we find ourselves in Australia for the next quirky news item. As BBC News reports, a prison siege in Tasmania that had lasted for two days ended peacefully when inmates agreed to exchange their hostage for a delivery of fifteen pizzas. No, really. They seem to have decided that their original list of 24 demands was a bit unreasonable and plumped for a good feed instead. Fair enough.

Heading northward from Australia, we reach China, where a murder hunt was sparked by an actress who left a fake hand in the back of her car. Ananova reports:

Wang Qiang, of Liaoge community in Shenyang city, spotted the hand and called the police. "I was looking through the dark glass at the rear of the jeep, and I was shocked to see a hand. It looked like an adult man's," he said.

Four patrol vans containing more than 20 policemen rushed to the scene, reports China Business Morning View. They established the car was owned by an actress at Shenyang Opera house who had left the jeep parked in the street all week. They finally made contact with the actress who revealed the hand was a prop used in her opera.

Twenty police officers for a plastic hand? Sounds like money well spent.

From China we head directly across the Pacific Ocean to San Francisco. We all know, of course, that San Francisco has a reputation for being a liberal and sexually permissive city. But I'd be willing to bet you didn't know it was quite this permissive. Stuff reports:

A mysterious outbreak of chlamydia, a bacterial infection which humans pass to each other through sex, has killed a dozen penguins at the San Francisco Zoo.

The illness turned the zoo's Magellanic penguin colony into a disease hot spot, sparking fatal respiratory distress and kidney failure that struck down 12 of the birds.

The illness that befell the zoo's "Penguin Island" was not sexually transmitted, officials said.

"We suspect it could have something to do with the gulls and their droppings but it could have been something else," zoo spokeswoman Nancy Chan said.

Chlamydia, eh? Not sexually transmitted, eh? Sure. That's what they all say, isn't it? "I have no idea how I could have contracted this sexually transmitted disease, Your Honour. I did not have sexual relations with that penguin." Or something to that effect.

And finally, we head South East to Brazil for today's last-but-not-least quirky news story. In Natal, we find this story of a man who is suing a bar which charged him a "puke tax" after his friend threw up in the toilets of the bar. The man in question considers this to be extortion. I, on the other hand, consider it to be a bloody good idea.

For months the NPD, the Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (i.e. the Neo-Nazis), have been threatening to hijack the sixtieth anniversary of Nazi capitulation and the end of World War II, by staging a large demonstration here in Berlin. Their intent was to march in their jackboots, waving their nationalist flags, past the Brandenburg Gate and the newly completed Holocaust Memorial as part of their ongoing attempts to protest against what they call a German "cult of guilt."

The planned route of the Neo-Nazi march had to be changed on Thursday, after German courts ruled that the Neo-Nazis were not allowed to demonstrate near the Brandenburg Gate or the Holocaust Memorial. After that ruling, the route of the march was altered to begin at Alexanderplatz and proceed down the main street Unter den Linden to Friedrichstrasse. But, in what can only be regarded as a victory for civil courage and peaceful protest, the Neo-Nazi march never happened.

While the 3,000 or so Neo-Nazis - some of whom had travelled to Germany from other countries in Europe - gathered in Alexanderplatz, surrounded by hundreds of riot police, to await the start of their march, huge numbers of anti-fascist left-wingers, and other members of the public blockaded the planned route of the march. They carried banners with slogans such as Wer hier marschiert, hat nichts kapiert (Those who march today, have learned nothing). According to police reports, there were over 6,000 anti-Nazi protesters, meaning the neo-Nazis were outnumbered by around two to one. After a tense stand-off, police announced that the neo-Nazi march had been cancelled. Reuters reports on these incidents here, and BBC News has more on the events around Europe today, including here in Berlin, here.

As I see it, this is an important defeat for the neo-Nazis. It shows to the world that, although there is a tiny minority of fascist numbskulls who have learned nothing from the horrors of the Second World War and the Nazi regime and continue to spread their xenophobic hate-filled lies, they are vastly outnumbered by rational, right-thinking German citizens who are prepared to stand up to them and to say loud and clear, "Never again. Not here, not anywhere."

Or, in the words of the German Minister for the Environment, Jürgen Trittin:

"With peaceful means, the public showed these Nazis who were trying to glorify the greatest genocide in history will never again have any role in Germany."

Hear, hear.

Today, 8th May, is the day which Germany recognises as the anniversary of the end of World War II. Other countries, notably Russia, consider 9th May to be the day on which the War in Europe actually ended. Deutsche Welle has an explanation of the controversy over the exact timing of the capitulation. In any case, in German eyes it is sixty years today since Germany was freed from Nazi rule by the Allies. Accordingly, there have been numerous events here in Berlin today to celebrate the end of the war, to remember the millions of victims, and to celebrate German democracy.

Perhaps one of the most important features of the various events today was the speech made by the German president, Horst Köhler, to a special assembly of both houses of parliament. This speech was televised live. He spoke of the horror and shame with which Germans look back on the events of the Second World War, and of how important it is for Germans to keep alive the memories of the suffering inflicted by Nazi Germany. But he also said that Germans have every reason to be proud of their country and its modern-day democratic reincarnation.

Both Deutsche Welle [in English] and Reuters [in German] have accounts of Köhler's speech and other events in Berlin today.

I am pleased that Köhler found time in his speech to send a message that it is ok for Germans to be proud of their country, whilst ensuring that the past is not forgotten. For the longest time, the predominant feeling here in Germany has been that it is not acceptable to proud to be German, and that any such pride or the remotest inkling of patriotism is a manifestation of nationalism and therefore to be avoided at all cost. As far as I can tell, it has only been in the last few years that the tide has started to turn and that prominent Germans, like Köhler today, have made the first tentative steps towards telling their people that it's ok to be German again. I think that this is a very important development, and while I can understand why it has taken so long to come around, I'm glad that it finally has. Modern Germany has made truly remarkable progress in the sixty years since the end of the war, and I believe they have every right to be proud of that progress, of their country's place in the world and what their country now stands for.

I really admire modern day Germany and modern day Germans for the way they are moving on without forgetting, and the way they actively ensure that the atrocities committed in their country’s name are never forgotten and stand as a lesson to all mankind. And I also have a lot of respect for the attitude which is developing in the past few years of “those of us here now are not personally guilty, but we are collectively ashamed and responsible, and as a result we have the job of ensuring it never happens again, not here, not anywhere.” There is no attempt to paint a rosy picture of their nation's history, to gloss over the atrocities committed and to focus on the positives. Instead, modern day Germany goes out of its way to bring the skeletons in its closet out into the light of day and to own up to how those skeletons got there.

As I look around the world, I see, for example, recent riots in China caused by Japanese efforts to sanitise its own history; I see current scandals in the Baltic States and Georgia caused by Russia's refusal to admit that the Stalinist dictatorship imposed on the countries it liberated from Nazi fascism was perhaps not the liberation those nations were after; I see the mess left in Africa in the wake of British, French and Belgian imperialism and colonisation. And I cannot help but think that many other countries, indeed all other countries, could learn an important lesson from the way that modern-day Germany is coming to grips with its history.

Well, well, well. That was quick. A couple of days ago, just after the UK election, I made the prediction that Tony Blair would not see out the full term as Prime Minister and that he'd be replaced by Gordon Brown within two years. What I failed to predict was that the machinations within the Labour party to remove Tony Blair as leader would begin before the week was out.

BBC News reports that several Labour MPs have already publicly called for Tony Blair to resign as soon as possible, describing him as, amongst other things, a liability.

[Former Health Secretary Frank] Dobson, who served as health secretary in Mr Blair's first Cabinet, told GMTV's Sunday programme the prime minister should step down sooner rather than later.

"I don't think we can go into important local elections next year... with Tony Blair as leader and expect to keep many of the councillors we've got now," he said.

John Austin, MP for Erith and Thamesmead, told The Sunday Times the prime minister had been "a liability and not an asset during the election". He said: "You can't beat about the bush. Blair was a negative factor on the doorstep, time and time and time again. "We need a mechanism like the Tories where the grandees go round and tell the leader it is time for him to go."

The official line coming out of Downing Street is that there has been no change to Tony Blair's stated intention that he will serve a full term as Prime Minister and then stand down at the next election. But with agitation to have him either stand down willingly, or be ousted in a takeover bid by Gordon Brown, Blair will struggle to pull that off. I suspect, in fact, that negotiation are already going on in Downing St to decide upon the best time for Blair to stand down willingly.

Only time will tell.

Despite the fact that the weather is miserable and rainy, I've managed to dig out three pieces of good news for this instalment of Good news Saturday.

First up, cycling. Today saw the start of this season's first three week tour, the Giro d'Italia. It began this evening with a time trial prologue in Reggio Calabria, right on the tip of Italy's boot. The prologue was won by Australian rider Brett Lancaster, who will wear the pink leader's jersey in tomorrow's first road stage. You can read all the details at Daily Peloton. It's always risky to make predictions right at the start of a three week long race, but I'm going to stick my neck out and predict that Damiano Cunego will win this year's Giro, narrowly edging out his own team mate Gilberto Simoni. I'll also be keeping a close eye on Ivan Basso, since I give him a good chance of being the one to finally topple Lance Armstrong in the Tour de France in July. Of course, I've been wrong before.

In other good news, the "Virgin Mary or just a salt stain?" debacle I blogged about here, has come to an end. And why? Because the image in question has been painted over by local authorities after it had been vandalised with the words "Big Lie." BBC News has the full story.

And finally, it turns out that little old New Zealand is home to the world's best tourism website. Yes, that's right, Tourism New Zealand's website newzealand.com, which is designed to market New Zealand as a holiday destination to prospective international visitors and to help them plan their trip, has won this year's "Webby" award for top tourism website. Scoop has the full story.

Even if you have no plans to travel to New Zealand, I can recommend checking out the site. In particular, it has an excellent Image Library, with some stunning photographs of our little country at the end of the world.

I'm not sure quite what to make of this story. It's either fascinating and a jolly good idea, or it's completely bonkers and a waste of everyone's time.

Reported in yesterday's Guardian is this story about a post-graduate student at MIT who has organised a time traveller convention for this weekend.

The organiser, Amal Dorai - a masters student in electrical engineering and computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology - aims to test the theory of time travel by inviting people from the future to the event.

"We are doing this as a very low-risk, low-cost way to investigate the possibility of time travel," he said. "I think the probability they will come is very low, but if it does happen it will one of the biggest events in human history.

"Of course, no time travellers doesn't rule out the possibility of time travel, they could have just decided not to come to our convention."

Physicists believe some kind of time travel is theoretically possible, but it will take hundreds or even thousands of years to work out the technical details.

What's also interesting is the way the organiser has chosen to advertise his time traveller convention and the types of things he's asked potential time travellers to bring with them as proof that they've come back from the future.

Concerned that people will have forgotten his convention by then, Mr Dorai is urging volunteers to publicise the event to future generations by carving the details into clay tablets and burying notices in time capsules. He has slipped invitations on long-lasting paper inside dozens of obscure books in the MIT and Harvard University libraries.

"If we put them inside books that are only touched every 50 years or so then they'll stay there and people in the future might learn of the convention. The big danger is that it's forgotten. Once that happens then it doesn't matter if someone invents time travel, we won't be able to see it."

The invitations ask visitors to turn up on the MIT campus at 8pm on Saturday and include precise latitude and longitude coordinates. "Time travel is a hard problem and may not be invented until long after MIT has faded into oblivion," they note.

Visitors from the future are advised to bring proof of advanced technology, such as a cure for cancer or a working nuclear fusion reactor. Sonic screwdrivers are optional.

"Because of the small chance of time travel I think people will be sceptical," Mr Dorai admits. "But I hope time travellers won't take that as an insult. If what they bring as proof doesn't satisfy us then they could always go back into their future and grab something else."

Well, well, well. Mr Dorai is, I think, right to assume that people will be sceptical. I'm pretty sceptical myself. That said, it would certainly be the news of the year if someone actually did turn up, wouldn't it? Either way, I guess there's no harm in trying. Good luck to him.

Presumably some of you will have already heard this story, but since I've got into the habit of reporting quirky news from Germany whenever I find it, I thought I'd throw this one out there too.

As reported by Deutsche Welle, a 21 year-old from Olpe in Southern Germany hit the jackpot with a 1999 Volkwagen Golf he bought from a second-hand car dealer four months ago. He paid €9,500 for it. Yesterday it sold on EBay for almost twenty times that price. Why? Because one of the car's previous owner was one Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI.

In January, Benjamin Halbe paid a used car salesman 9,500 euros ($12, 204) for a 1999 Volkswagen Golf and hit jackpot.

But the 21-year-old from Olpe, in southern Germany, didn't know that until a few months later when, after checking the previous owner's records, he found that a Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger had owned the car. Shortly thereafter, Ratzinger changed his name to Pope Benedict XVI, succeeding the late Pope John Paul II, and sending Halbe on his way to some serious cash.

On May 5, the day of the Acension, Halbe's silver-gray Golf sold for 188,938.88 euros on eBay. The winning bidder was an American online casino, which contacted Halbe minutes later to ask about his bank coordinates.

"I am more than happy that it was able to sell for such a sum," said Halbe, surrounded by friends, some of whom helped him come up with the plan to auction off the Volkswagen.

Apparently, the car could have gone for a fair bit more, had EBay not crashed 40 minutes before the auction was due to end, thus making it impossible for last minute snipers to bid. No complaints, of course, from Herr Halbe, who says he plans to buy a new car, go on holiday and put the rest in the bank. It turns out the winning bidder was a casino based in Austin, Texas. Quite what they're planning to do with it, I'm not sure.

[Reuters has this story too.]

More from the weird and wonderful German news file. This article at Expatica reports on a bank robbery trial with a difference.

Three men went on trial on Tuesday in a German court in what would normally be a routine bank robbery case except for one thing - their ages.

The three accused are 64, 73, and 74 years old, each man with a lengthy criminal record and time spent in jail.

In the trial in the northern German town of Hagen, they face charges for 14 bank heists in which they used a machine gun and an axe to threaten bank employees and get away with more than EUR 1 million.

As it happens, I've been to Hagen. I lived in another small town close to there. If you've never been there, you're not missing much.

Isn't it odd how we (or at least I do) tend to think of all old people as nice, gentle and generally very peaceable? It doesn't make any sense at all of course. Old people are, at thie risk of stating the blatantly obvious, just older middle aged people. And we all know that there's a great diversity of middle aged people ranging from those with hearts of gold to complete and utter [CENSORED]. So, it obviously follows that there is always going to be the same sort of diversity amongst old people too. Except we never think of it like that, do we? Interesting. Anyone who has an explanation should feel free to fill me in, because I can't work it out.

I know you can get this information from any of a million other sources, but just for the sake of completeness, here are the results of the general election held yesterday in the United Kingdom.

Basically, to absolutely noone's surprise, Labour has won a third term in office. They have however, had their majority in the House of Commons very much reduced.

In terms of seats (which under the First Past the Post system is all that counts), the provisional result with 619 of 646 seats confirmed looks like this:

Labour: 353 seats (47 seat net loss)
Conservative: 195 seats (33 seat net gain)
Liberal Democrat: 59 seats (11 seat net gain)
Minor parties: 12 seats

But in terms of percentage of the popular vote, the picture is very different:

Labour: 36.2%
Conservative: 33.2%
Liberal Democrat: 22.6%
Other: 7.9%

This means that Labour goes into government with the lowest ever percentage of the popular vote. I think this shows very clearly how badly in need of reform the UK's First Past the Post electoral system is. As it stands at the moment, it is completely skewed in favour of Labour, meaning that the parliamentary representation does not even remotely resemble the proportion of popular support enjoyed by each party. The biggest losers are the Liberal Democrats and the other, smaller parties.

BBC News has all the election results in detail.

Before I go, three predictions:

1. Tony Blair will not last till the end of this term. The UK will have a new Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, within two years.
2. With this reduced majority, Labour will really struggle to get their ID card proposal through parliament.
3. Before the end of this term, serious discussions and negotiations will have begun about changing the UK electoral system to a proportional representation system. It won't happen in time for the next election, but it can't be too far away.

OK, enough of the punditry.

There's strange news coming out of Texas today, and I'm not really sure what to make of it. It seems the Texas legislature has voted to clamp down on suggestive cheerleading in schools.

BBC News calls its story on this topic Texas targets 'sexy cheerleading'.

The Times goes one better with Cheerleaders told to cover up and stop being so sexy.

But my favourite so far is The Scotsman's headline: Cheerleading 'leads to teen pregnancies'.

So what are they up to, these Texans? The Times has the skinny:

Their wiggling bottoms, gyrating hips and seductive use of pom-poms may be part of the America’s sporting landscape, but in Texas, school cheerleaders are about to be forced to tone down their act.

Legislators in the state, famed for the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders, have voted to crack down on “sexually suggestive” performances in schools. The law is designed to ban raunchy dance routines by cheerleaders following complaints about suggestive moves, short skirts and exposed midriffs.

“Some of them are just downright vulgar, something you would see at an adult club or something,” said Joe Deshotel, a Democratic member of the Texas House of Representatives. “The problem is in the eye of the beholder, I guess.”

One of the co-authors of the bill, Republican Corbin Van Arsdale, said many parents want restrictions because they go to Friday night games to see young men clashing on the football field, not girls shaking their behinds on the sidelines.

...

The bill would allow the Texas Education Agency to police routines deemed vulgar or excessive, and would force schools to take action to stop them.

OK, so it only applies to school cheerleaders, not to cheerleaders in general. And the bill still has to be confirmed by the State Senate. But I imagine that the people Corbin Van Arsdale (what a name!) overlooked in his consideration, namely the ones who go to the Friday night games not "to see young men clashing on the football field", but rather exactly to check out the "girls shaking their behinds on the sidelines", will be mightily disappointed if and when this bill does become law.

The chap who put this legislation forward was one Al Edwards. The Scotsman quotes him:

"Girls can get out and do all of these overtly sexual performances and we applaud them and that’s not right," said the Democratic representative Al Edwards, who put forward the legislation. He said bawdy performances resulted in teenage pregnancies and the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.

Do you think someone should tell him that, actually, what causes teenage pregnancies and the spread of sexually transmitted diseases is, gasp, having sex? Unless I am very much mistaken, it is not yet possible to catch a sexually transmitted disease from applauding a cheerleader, no matter how 'overtly sexual' her routine was.

Seriously though, I am in two minds over this piece of legislation. On the one hand, it seems to be alarmingly puritanical, not to mention motivated by very odd attitudes and misconceptions such as those quoted above. Surely if your concern is about the spread of sexually transmitted diseases and teenage pregnancy, then your priorities ought to be promoting sex education and making condoms and other forms of contraception readily available, rather than seeking to limit raunchy dancing in public. I mean, it's not like not seeing raunchy dancing takes away your sex drive, is it? The sex is going to happen, regardless of what the cheerleaders' routines are like, let's face it.

But on the other hand, I do have my concerns about how early modern society sexualises young people, especially young girls. I've lost count of the times I've seen little girls (I'm talking 8-10 years old) wearing tops with slogans like "Hot Stuff" or "Sexy" or similar and wondered to myself how appropriate that was, and what on earth the parents were thinking. I could imagine that this move in Texas might be intended as a way to prevent the very public sexualisation of young girls. My problem though is that I don't know enough about High School sport in the US to know how old the cheerleaders are. Are they all 17 or 18, or are they younger than that? If they tend to be younger, then perhaps there's an argument to made for this sort of legislation. But really, if that's the reason, why don't the promoters of the bill advance that reasoning in public, instead of this "sexy cheerleading leads to pregnancy"-type nonsense?

I'm still undecided on this issue. I'll be interested to hear what you think.

[Hat-tip to Twiglets]

Check out this very entertaining Macromedia Flash video about the UK elections today: It wasn't me. [Safe for work (unless you work at Labour party headquarters I guess) but requires sound.]

I've done the searching, so you don't have to. Here are links to some of the more interesting articles about today's election in the UK papers.

First up, the Independent:
In this article, we learn that a remarkably high 27% of people said in a poll that they might change their mind who to vote for on election day itself, indicating that there could potentially be a few surprises. In the same article, we learn that if the voting goes according to the latest polls, Labour will remain in government, but will have a lower percentage of the popular vote than any previous majority government in the UK.

From the same paper, comes this interesting article about the political machinations to replace Michael Howard as leader which are already afoot in the Conservative party in expectation of a resounding defeat today.

The Telegraph well and truly earns its nickname of the Torygraph today. As you can see here, it has one leader and two opinion pieces today. All of them tell you why to vote Conservative. My heart goes out to people who only read the Telegraph. They will wake up tomorrow to find that the party their paper pretended had a chance of winning got an absolute pasting. Ah well, my heart bleeds. Never mind.

The Guardian leader gently raises the spectre of possible voter fraud under the new postal voting system, stops just short of calling for electoral reform in the UK, and then ends with a rousing call to go out and use your vote today.

And in this piece the Guardian asks lots of prominent people to predict the election result. Most of them, predictably, plump for Labour majorities of over 70. One delightfully deluded chap thinks the LibDems will outpace them all, and Mo Mowlam (former Labour MP) goes out on a limb predicting a hung parliament. Noone but noone predicts anything resembling a Conservative win. (Somebody call the Telegraph!)

Again in the Guardian, the inimitable Timothy Garton-Ash advises in his column on how to vote tactically to ensure what he calls the "strange birth of liberal Britain." As ever, Garton-Ash is a good read.

I haven't had a chance to look at what the Times has to say today, so you're on your own there. And as for the Tabloids, I shall not be gracing their websites with my traffic, but I predict their headlines might be something like this:

Daily Mail: If Tories lose, living standards to drop to below Albanian levels

Daily Mirror: Tony Blair still a liar, but will win anyway

The Sun: Blair to Howard: "Have it!"

The Daily Express: "Phwoar!!" Red hot sexy Clarice wants a piece of Tony.

Or something to that effect.

Polling stations have opened in the United Kingdom this morning for the general election. Some 6 million people have chosen to vote by post this year, under new rules making postal voting accessible to all. For those that didn't, the polling stations will be open till 10pm, meaning that we won't know what has happened results-wise until Friday morning. Not that it seems to be in much doubt which way things will go. I will be absolutely astonished if Tony Blair does not remain Prime Minister. BBC News has the story.

The last of the polls put Labour on 38% support, the Conservatives on 32% and the Liberal Democrats on 22%. Support for other parties such as the UK Independence Party, Veritas, Plaid Cymru in Wales, the Scottish National Party in Scotland, or *spit* the openly racist British National Party only comes to around 8% in total.

The BBC News website has a nifty little seat calculator here. I plugged in those poll numbers given above and came up with the following:

Labour:
391 seats in total
0 consituencies gained
12 constituencies lost
-12 net loss over 2001 result

Conservative:
173 seats in total
10 constituencies gained
2 constituencies lost
+8 net gain over 2001 result

Liberal Democrats:
56 seats in total
5 constituencies gained
0 constituencies lost
+5 net gain over 2001 result

Other parties
26 seats in total
0 constituencies lost
1 constituency gained
-1 net less over 2001 result

As you can see, that would give Labour a reduced, but still very healthy majority of 136 seats in parliament. To be honest, I hope that is wrong and that Labour and Tony Blair get more of a pasting over their record in Iraq, than these numbers indicate will be the case. Heaven knows they deserve it. Certainly, if I were voting in the UK general election today, I would not be voting Labour.

No? Neither did I until recently. But now I do, and I thought I'd share.

A merkin is a pubic wig. No, that is not a typo. A pubic wig. Wikipedia explains:

A merkin (first use, according to the OED, 1617) is reported to be a pubic wig, worn by prostitutes after shaving their genitalia to eliminate lice or to disguise the marks of syphilis. A similar, though anachronistic, claim not made in OED is that merkins were worn for nude stage appearances. The narrator of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita (1955) recalls "Although I told myself I was looking merely for a soothing presence, a glorified pot-au-feu, an animated merkin, what really attracted me to Valeria was the imitation she gave of a little girl." This, the first appearance of the word by an established author— one with an unbounded appetite for curiosities of language and culture— demonstrates that "merkin" is not merely an undergraduate prank of the 1950s.

Charming, isn't it? Prompted by the Wikipedia entry, I tracked down this Guardian column from 2003, entitled A short and curly history of the merkin, which I reproduce here in all its, ahem, glory.

Comedy terrorist Aaron Barschak has another claim to fame - he's put the merkin back in the spotlight.

Before his royal gatecrash, the prankster amused crowds and cameramen outside Windsor Castle by lifting his pink ball gown to reveal a luxuriant, black pubic wig - making him the latest in a long history of merkin-wearers.

The Oxford Companion To The Body traces the merkin back to 1450, a time when the bidet was a distant prospect and personal hygiene fell well short of the mark. Pubic lice were common - so some women, fed up with the constant itching, just shaved the lot off and then covered their modesty with a merkin.

Prostitutes, too, were frequent wearers. In the days before penicillin, it didn't take long to become infected with sexually transmitted diseases. They knew it was no work, no pay, and didn't want to scare the customers off with their syphilitic pustules and gonorrhoeal warts. So the merkin was used as a prosthesis to cover up a litany of horrors.

The Oxford Companion recounts an amusing tale of one gentleman who procured the disease-riddled merkin of a prostitute, dried it, gave it a good comb and then presented it to a cardinal, telling him he had brought him St Peter's beard. Some prostitutes even used them to give their nether regions a bit of razzle-dazzle. So a natural brunette could offer differing collars and cuffs to demanding customers.

These days, merkins are largely the preserve of sexual fetishists - although the Oxford Companion notes that this piece of "female finery" is also an "essential piece of the serious drag queen's wardrobe". They can be made from nylon, human hair or even yak's belly, depending on what the erotic dabbler enjoys feeling against her skin. And they're either woven on to a mesh and stuck on with spirit gum, or attached to a transparent G-string.

"I know a bit about merkins, but I don't know anyone who wears one and won't be designing one myself," says Red or Dead founder Wayne Hemingway. "I can't see them making a comeback, but it is a bloody good word."

Would-be wearers will struggle to find any merkin retailers. "We're not 100% sure our customers would buy into the merkin," says Ann Summers spokesman Philip Tooney. "The trend at the moment is less is more - with the 'full Brazilian' and the 'landing strip' proving popular."

But fanny fashion can be fickle. And if there is a return to the dense undergrowths often seen in 70s porn flicks, then the waxed, electrolysed women of today may be reaching for a merkin until nature restores their full glory.

As I said, charming. Intrigued by the suggestion that would-be wearers would struggle to find any merkin retailers, I risked a dodgy internet search history, and found that that assertion is no longer accurate.

Indeed, Merkin World is ready to fulfill all your pubic wig requirements. It has a handy history section, in which you can learn, for example, that "[t]he wearing of a pubic wig is a sensory experience. The wig can allow the wearer a certain "jouissance" as it is made of a fibre/hair that has been selected by the wearer, and it is worn on an erogenous zone. A fetish for the feel of either: silk, leather, fur or hair against the skin, or that of others is common, and can be incorporated into the design of a pubic wig to give heightened pleasure."

A certain jouissance indeed. Crikey! There is a pictures section where you can see samples, such as this gem on the right. Or, if none of the samples tickle your fanny fancy, you can even have Merkin World design one just for you to your own specifications. Whatever you do though, don't look at the prices section. If you do, you will find that merkins such as these start at £150 + post and packaging, and cost even more if your required design is intricate. On the plus side though, that price includes "fitting instructions, adhesive & remover" so you won't be condemned just to looking at your fancy new merkin in its packaging, but can actually use it for its intended purpose. What a relief!

So now there's nothing stopping you. Go to!
[Important note for US readers. In British English, a fanny is not a butt.]

Yesterday I posted in the lead-up to the Champions League semi-final, saying that it was sure to be an exciting match and that, though I hoped Liverpool would win, I doubted they would manage it. Well, I was right in the first instance but, much to my delight, wrong in the second.

It was a cracking match. Real nail-biting stuff right down to the very last minute of injury time. Liverpool scored after just four minutes, with a goal that looked like it might have been cleared off the line before it went in, but which the referee's assistant had no hesitation in ruling a goal. The replays were inconclusive, but the referee and his assistant were both perfectly positioned, so we just have to trust that they saw it clearly.

The final score was 1-0 to Liverpool, meaning that Liverpool go through to the final in Istanbul, where they will face either AC Milan or PSV Eindhoven. (In all probability, it will be Milan, who lead 2-0 going into tonight's second leg).

I've got a busy day today and don't have time to write a full report, but you can check out the BBC Sport match report, and player ratings. Also don't miss Jose Mourinho's less than entirely gracious comments after the match. (Who could possibly be surprised?)

This week in Germany there is no shortage of weird and wonderful news to report. So, without further ado ...

You may remember that a week ago I blogged about the exploding toads in Hamburg. Well, it seems it was precipitous of me to write off crows as a possible cause. According to one Berlin veterinarian who has been examining the toads post-explosion, crows are indeed the most likely culprits.

But now a Berlin veterinarian who has joined the team of biologists and environmental workers investigating the frightful phenomenon thinks he has the secret behind the nightmare. Crows, he said, are to blame, who evidently have a taste for toad liver.

"The crows are clever," said Frank Mutschmann, the vet who tested specimens at the Hamburg pond. He theorized that a bird pecks into the toad with its beak between the amphibian's chest and abdominal cavity to get at the liver, and the toad puffs itself up as a natural defense mechanism.

But the defense mechanism backfires, Mutschmann said, since there's a hole in the toad's body and the liver is missing. The blood vessels and lungs burst and the other organs ooze out.

He said despite the gruesome nature of the affair, it actually isn't that unusual, although dramatic. The fact that it is in an urban area has drawn all the attention.

Read the rest of the story here.

Well shame on me for scoffing so readily at the crows! After the incident with =http://www.tblog.com/template..."Barnaby M. Cat versus a crow last week, perhaps I ought to be glad our cat came out of it with his liver intact.

Next up, chewing gum. It seems that Germany's lawmakers from across the political spectrum are in agreement that chewing gum on the footpath and on train platforms and the like is disgusting, and they want to introduce a Kaugummisteuer, or chewing-gum tax, to pay for its removal.

Conservative Christian Democrat parliamentarian Siegfried Helias said he thought levying a tax on gum is a "good idea." And Hubert Ulrich, head of the Saarland Green Party, told Germany's Bild newspaper he was in favor of a gum tax as long as the proceeds "are earmarked for the removal of chewing gum from the streets."

Not to be undone -- and possibly overdoing it -- ruling SPD parliamentarian Cornelie Sonntag called for "drastic punishment" for people who throw gum on train platforms and sidewalks. (By which she meant, one hopes, issuing a fine.)

It may seem like just another "oh, those oh-so-orderly Germans" moment. But in fact, the idea came out of England. Last week, Liverpool started charging a "special levy" on gum, 1.5 cents per pack.

Uptight? Overly regulated? Vindictive? Maybe all three. But the politicians have a point. According to Germany's Bild newspaper, Germans cough up more than €900 million ($1.16 billion) per year to clean sticky bits of gum off their sidewalks.

Read the full story here.

Apart from being at least a little concerned about the Cornelie Sonntag's call for drastic punishment, I'd be all for this, as long as the money raised from the levy actually does go into cleaning up gum. Chewing gum is already expensive here in Germany, but I'd be happy to pay a little more for mine if it meant I was less likely to tread or sit in someone else's.

And finally, we return to the world of German fauna for this last wacky news tidbit. It turns out that Germany has a crack troop of Special Forces which could come in handy for a Greek Island which has found itself over-run by rabbits. It is, I kid you not, a specially trained troop of weasels.

The inhabitants of the island of Lemnos, which has been under siege for some time, are considering sending out a distress call for the crack German troops in a bid to end the occupation which is threatening their livelihoods.

In an operation which could well be code-named "Kill Bugs", German weasels could be flown in to rid the island of a plague of wild rabbits. "There are thousands of them," Lemnos deputy prefect Thodoris Baveas told AFP recently. "Just by driving at night you can hit a couple each time, there's that many."

According to this DW article, the rabbits on Lemnos have been merrily taking advantage of a hunting ban preventing the islanders from shooting them and have been breeding like, well, rabbits. Sounds like the German weasels are the perfect solution. Well, they would be if it weren't for the tiny detail of the cost.

Enter the Weasel Squad…or at least this is where they would enter if they weren't just so expensive to hire. "I've heard that each one costs about 4,400 euros ($5706)," Baveas sighed. "We would need at least 10 weasels," he dejectedly added.

€4,400 per weasel?!? At that price I'd want them to make my coffee, serve me an ouzo and guard my borders too, not just take care of a few wascally wabbits.

Which reminds me of one of my Mum's favourite jokes:

How do you tell the difference between a weasel and a stoat?

A weasel is weasily recognised, because a stoat is stoatally different.

(I know, I know! But don't blame me, blame my Mum)

Until now I've largely steered clear of blogging about sport, since I know that not everyone shares my passion for it. Today though, I'm going to break my own rule, and say just a little about the second leg of the Champions League semi-final between Liverpool and Chelsea this evening.

If you're still wondering what sport I'm talking about, then this is probably not the post for you. But in case you're determined to read on regardless, I'm talking about football. Or soccer.

The first leg of this semi-final, last week at Chelsea's Stamford Bridge ground, was one of the most boring games of football I've seen all season. It ended in a 0-0 draw and I just about fell asleep in the second half. It was more like watching Italian football than the semi-final of a top European competition. But that's exactly why I'm hopeful about tonight's game. Whereas last week neither side wanted to take too many risks, lest they give away a goal and go into tonight's game on the back foot, tonight they both have it all to play for. Liverpool must win to go through to the final. Chelsea require only a score draw, due to the away-goal rule (which I won't bother to explain here as it's a bit complex). As a result, attacking football will almost definitely be on display from the kick-off and I can't wait.

Despite myself, I will be supporting Liverpool this evening. I've hated Liverpool since I was about eight. That was because I disliked two of their players intensely, Ian Rush and Kenny Dalglish. Oh, and I thought Peter Beardsley was a terrifying little dwarf. The other reason was that in those days, the 80s, Liverpool won pretty much everything, and I got fed up with it as I've always been a bit of an underdog supporter.

But tonight, I will be overcoming my long-standing loathing of Liverpool to support them, because my loathing for Chelsea has become so strong in the course of this season as to outweigh even my distaste for Liverpool. For one thing, Liverpool will be the underdogs this evening. For another, Chelsea have the backing of Russian billionaire Roman Abramovitch, who has spent over £300 million (yes, you read that right!) in the past two seasons buying the players he wants. The naive idealist in me likes to think that, even in the face of such spectacular investment and financial imbalance, there are still teams around that can stand up to Chelsea. But perhaps most of all, it's because I can't stand Chelsea's manager, Jose Mourinho. While I recognise that he is clearly an excellent manager and tactician, I just can't bear his arrogance and nonchalance. And as far as I have been able to observe, it has just got greater over the course of the season on the back of Chelsea's seemingly unstoppable success.

So, swallowing my pride and plumping for the lesser of two evils, I'll be backing the Reds tonight and hoping beyond hope that they take down Mourinho's Blues. Deep down I don't really believe that they will be able to beat Chelsea, but one can hope.

If you're interested, BBC Sport has an interesting preview of tonight's match here.

Next post, I promise, I'll back off the sport and normal service will be resumed.

Yesterday, a friend of mine sent me an email with a link to an article by Robert Fisk, entitled Our presidents and prime ministers are poseurs. Where are the great men of today? and with the sub-heading Bush may think he is Churchill, but he cannot really compare himself to his dad, let alone to our Winston.

The email read:

Interesting ...

[link]

Discuss.

So, I thought I'd take my friend's advice and post my discussion of the article here. First, I'll give you a taste of what the article is arguing.

Before Egyptian President Anwar Sadat set off for his journey to Jerusalem in 1977, he announced to the world that he did not intend to live "among the pygmies". This was tough on pygmies but there was no doubt what it revealed about Sadat. He thought he was a Great Man. History suggests he was wrong. His 1978 Camp David agreement with Menachem Begin of Israel brought the Sinai back under Egyptian control, but it locked Sadat’s country into a cold peace and near-bankrupt isolation. He was finally called "Pharaoh", a description Sadat might have appreciated had it not been shouted by his murderers as they stormed his military reviewing stand in 1981.

The Middle East, of course, is awash with kings and dictators who are called - or like to imagine themselves - Great Men. Saddam Hussein thought he was Stalin - evil, unfortunately, is also for some a quality of greatness - while George Bush Senior thought Saddam was Hitler. Eden claimed that Nasser, when he nationalised the Suez Canal in 1956, was the Mussolini of the Nile (though Mussolini was not Great, he thought he was). Yasser Arafat claimed that Hashemite King Hussein of Jordan, when he died, was Saladin, the warrior who drove the Crusaders out of Palestine. The truth was that the Israelis had driven the Hashemites from Palestine. But Hussein was on "our" side and the Plucky Little King, when he died of cancer in 1999, was immortalised by President Clinton who said he was "already in heaven", a feat that went unequalled until Pope John Paul II made it to the same location before his funeral this month.

After praising the late Pope John Paul II for his stand against the invasion of Iraq, but questioning whether he could really be considered a great man, Fisk continues:

In truth, our world seems full of Little Men. Not just Sadat’s "pygmies". Gaddafi may be a "statesman" in the eyes of our Trot of a foreign secretary - this was just before the Libyan dictator was found to be plotting the assassination of Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia - but anyone who can seriously suggest that a joint Israeli-Palestinian state might be called "Israeltine" is clearly a candidate for the men in white coats. Indeed, it raises the question: are there any Great Men in the Middle East?

And, are there any Great Men in the world today? Where - this is a question I’ve been asked by several readers recently - are the Churchills, the Roosevelts, the Trumans, the Eisenhowers, the Titos, the Lloyd Georges, the Woodrow Wilsons, the de Gaulles and Clemenceaus?

Fisk goes on to weigh up the respective claims to greatness of George Bush, Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac and others and discards each of them in turn. He then goes on to discuss possible criteria for greatness and consider the claims to greatness of further prominent people, including Yitzhak Rabin, King Hussein of Jordan, Tito, Charles de Gaulle etc. And finally, Fisk gives us a list of those he thinks probably ought to be considered great:

Oddly, the list of Great Men doesn’t usually include Gandhi, whom I would think an obvious candidate for all the right reasons. He was palpably a good man, a peaceful man, and freed his country from imperial rule and was assassinated.

Nelson Mandela would be among my candidates for all the obvious reasons (his objections to Bush not being the least of them). Nurse Edith Cavell - "patriotism is not enough" - who was shot by the Germans in the First World War, and Margaret Hassan, the supremely brave and selfless charity worker butchered in Iraq, must be in my list - proving, of course, that we should also ask: where are the Great Women of our age? Rachel Corrie, I’d say, the American girl who was crushed by an Israeli bulldozer as she stood in its path to protect Palestinian homes in Gaza. And how about Mordechai Vanunu, the Israeli nuclear whistleblower?

And yes, all the humble folk - little people, if you like - who did what they did, whatever the cost, not because they sought Greatness, but because they believed it was the right thing to do.

Read the whole article here.

Fisk raises an interesting point. This is not the first such column I have read. A year or two ago I recall reading an article lamenting the lack of greatness among the candidates for the new Chancellor of Oxford University and comparing these candidates (unfavourably) with the giants who had held that position in the past. I can't for the life of me remember where I read it, or I'd provide a link.

To the extent that I know enough about them, I largely agree with Fisk's list of great people. Certainly Gandhi and Mandela would top my list. I also like the fact that he finds time to recognise the "little people" who are great without ever having sought greatness. And I certainly agree with Fisk's suggestion that there is a dearth of truly great men and women around these days, particularly in politics. In times like these, I can't help feeling that we could really use some.

But there are, I think, a couple of reasons why it is unfair and somewhat precipitous to look at current prominent and powerful figures and say "not great" or "not even close to great" and so on.

The first could perhaps be described as the "time heals all wounds effect." I think that Fisk is guilty of allowing the passage of time to erase or fade the memories of negative characteristics and foibles of past great men, while failing to recognise that the contemporary aspirants to greatness do not have the same luxury. Thus, for historical figures who are considered great men, we tend only to remember the positives and to focus solely on the things they did right and the things they achieved. On the other hand for aspiring greats operating in the contemporary world, or in the very recent past, there has been no passage of time to reduce any negativity which surrounds their actions or any unwanted side-effects thereof. As a result, we still recall all too clearly all the negatives, the qualifications and the caveats and cannot yet focus solely on any greatness, perceived or otherwise. In other words, when we look around us for truly great people and seek to measure them against great figures from the past, we're not comparing apples with apples.

To illustrate the point, let's take Winston Churchill as an example. Everyone, or at least everyone in Britain, seems to agree that he is a great man. But these days you never hear, for example, that he was a drunkard, and by all accounts a pretty obnoxious and thoroughly dislikeable man, nor that in the First World War he was responsible for the planning of the Dardanelles misadventure which costs thousands upon thousands of British, French, New Zealand and Australian lives, to say nothing of the Turks, and achieved exactly none of its aims. Nor do they talk about the fact that, although he was an excellent war-time leader, he was a total disaster in post-War politics and was pretty soon turfed out by the British electorate.

I think it is, at least partly, a case of time heals all wounds, and especially wounds to the reputations of great men. And I think the further back in time we go looking for greatness, the more likely this effect is to kick in.

The second problem, as I see it, might be called the "intimate knowledge effect". I think that in our time of hyper-connectivity and information saturation, we are in a position where we cannot but know pretty much everything about the lives, not just professional but also private, of prominent people. Just 30 or 40 years ago, that was very much less the case. I have no idea, for example, which LPs John F. Kennedy liked to listen to. But even if I don't want to know what George Bush has on his iPod, I'm probably going to hear about it anyway. Similarly, I have no idea how many, if any, affairs Abraham Lincoln had, or what he did with cigars in the oval office.

What I'm trying to say here is that perhaps we now have too much intimate knowledge about the lives of people who might otherwise be considered great to be able to see them as anything other than human and thus decidedly imperfect and fallible. We know the good things these people do, but we also know an awful lot of other stuff about them too. We are bombarded with information about every glitch and faux-pas and error they make, and that inevitably tempers our enthusiasm regarding their greatness. Unless I am very much mistaken, that has not always been the case. The exception that proves that rule is of course Nelson Mandela, who is still going strong in this time of information saturation but who is almost universally considered a genuinely great man. But then, Mandela is truly something special.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on the matter. And now, as my good friend who sent me the link instructed: Discuss.

I've put a poll in the left sidebar. If you get a chance, please take a moment to click on it. It's completely anonymous. I'm just trying to gauge what you expect from this blog, and whether I need to include more links, fewer links, or continue with the status quo. It'll only take you a sec and I'll publish a summary of the results in a week or so.

[Hat-tip to Dave Barry's blog]

From the Denver Post comes this story that New Zealand efforts to occupy and colonise the USA are underway. And just as a chess player sends his pawns into the fray first, we have, it seems, begun our efforts with our smallest and most readily sacrificed weapon: snails.

Much-feared foreign snails found lurking along S. Platte
The discovery confirms New Zealand mudsnails are spreading throughout Colorado's waterways.

State wildlife officials have discovered New Zealand mudsnails in the South Platte River, confirming fears that the invasive species is spreading throughout Colorado.

Earlier this week, two fishermen found the snails below Elevenmile Reservoir Dam and in Elevenmile Canyon west of Colorado Springs.

One angler hand-delivered the snails to the Colorado Division of Wildlife in a Skippy peanut butter jar. A biologist there confirmed it was the New Zealand snail - foe to fish and other aquatic species.

The article goes on to provide more information about these plucky New Zealand invaders:




"About half the size of a grain of rice, New Zealand mudsnails were discovered in the United States in 1987.

Because the snails can reproduce so rapidly, they have been found blanketing streambeds in many Western states. That saturation of hungry snails leaves little else for the fish to eat and can ultimately cause a break in the food chain.

They also can live up to eight days in dried mud and can be moved inadvertently by latching onto waders worn by anglers or onto boats, heavy equipment and maybe even waterfowl.

Efforts to contain the snails' U.S. invasion have been relatively unsuccessful, but Colorado wildlife officials think they have found a new tool for the arsenal: Formula 409.

The cleaner seems to make the mudsnails release their grip, causing them to drop off anglers' boots or waders. Division officials recommend that anglers soak their equipment in a diluted solution for five to 10 minutes."

Oh those nasty Americans! They're using chemical weapons on our brave little snails! How dastardly!

I have never seen one of these snails. I suppose that's not entirely surprising since I don't go fly fishing and they are the size of half a grain of rice. But, the weird thing is, that I have never even heard of these "much-feared" little munchers. Perhaps I am just showing my ignorance? Or perhaps New Zealand waterways offer a sufficiently different eco-system from Colorado waterways that they are not such a threat to other aquatic life back home. But I am just guessing here, I really have no idea.

Either way, the Americans will never stop our invasion and colonisation. Now that our snails have established a foothold, it's surely only a matter of time before New Zealand succeeds in taking over the USA entirely. Hey, perhaps we'll just annex them. Watch this space.

If you're anything like me, then you will be amused by the mud-slinging and name-calling going on between Washington and Pyongyang at the moment. (Of course, if you're like me, that amusement may well be tempered by concern that this kind of thing between a nuclear power and an almost-muclear power is how world wars start, but hey, let's focus on the hilarity while we still can.)

It all started on Thursday last week, when George Bush referred to North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-Il as "a dangerous person" and a "tyrant". That, of course, is true. Perhaps not the best way to advance diplomacy, but true nonetheless.

But Pyongyang's response, according to this Reuters article, is truly priceless.

The North's official KCNA news agency reported a Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying Bush had slandered Kim in Thursday's comments, in which he also called the country's reclusive leader, Kim Jong-il, a "dangerous person."

"He (Bush) is a half-baked man in terms of morality and a philistine whom we can never deal with," KCNA cited the spokesman as saying.

...

"No one can expect to hear reasonable words from Bush, once a cowboy at a ranch in Texas. His remarks often stun audiences as they reveal his utter ignorance," the spokesman from Pyongyang's Foreign Ministry said.

I have nothing to add which could possibly make that any funnier, so I will not even try.

With a hat-tip to Frenchie.

With France about to go to the polls to decide whether or not to adopt the new European Union constitution, now seems like a good time to encourage you to brush up on your knowledge of Europe and the EU. To that end, I give you Tiscali's Europe quizzes.

Before you begin, a word of warning. Though all these quizzes are multiple choice, if you get an answer wrong, you get sent back to the beginning. It can get a touch frustrating, especially if you're close to the end, but it certainly means that by the time you've finished you're never likely to forget the answers again.

First up, try your hand at Europe for dummies.

If, however, you already know who Jean-Claude Trichet is, which countries Budapest and Bucharest are the capitals of, and when Switzerland joined the EU, I'd suggest you move right along to Europe for Clever Dicks.

For the Americans amongst you, or for those interested in US/EU relations, you might like to try your hand at The Europe-USA quizz. Be warned, it is tough.

And finally, if you are the type who tended to pay attention in geography class, and always stayed within the lines when colouring in your maps, then the European Geography Quizz is the one for you.

Enjoy.