Category Archives: Rights and Responsibility

Politcally Correct Eating in New Zealand

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Posted by JJ on February 20, 2010 – 10:09 pm
Filed under Random Grumps & Raves, Rights and Responsibility, Things to Consider
Tagged as , , , ,

The weka is a native New Zealand bird.  It s a large, brown flightless bird that has a famously feisty and curious personality. These two qualities traditionally made the bird an easy food source for Māori and early European settlers.  The Europeans called them “wood hens”.  By all accounts, they’re damn good eating.

They have all but disappeared from mainland NZ and are protected.   They now survive mainly on islands, that also are home to other endangered birds.  The problem is, weka eat the eggs and young of other ground-nesting birds.

Currently, the only place where the legal harvest of weka can occur is on the Chatham Islands and on some islands around Stewart Island.  But now, they threaten the survival of other birds on the Open Bay Islands off Haast on the South Island’s West Coast.  So, up to 70 weka on the islands  are to be killed to save other native species.  The Department of Conservation and the trustees of the Maori-owned islands have agreed that the birds will be killed and in some cases ‘culturally harvested’.

It’s OK, guys, to manage the conservation of native birds wisely.  And when culling is necessary, it’s very OK to eat the birds instead of wasting them.  But stop making us puke with your politically correct double-talk.  “Culturally harvested” indeed!

The Trouble with Free Speech

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Posted by JJ on December 3, 2009 – 2:24 pm
Filed under Random Grumps & Raves, Rights and Responsibility, Things to Consider
Tagged as , , ,

I love free speech.  I am very happy that I live in a society that allows all to hold and communicate their opinions.  For me, free speech is a cornerstone of democracy and vital to its survival.  It is also vital to the growth of human knowledge – remember the difficulties that confronted Galileo?  Censorship, thought control and political correctness are the tools of the forces of darkness.

The world-wide-web with its email facilities, blogs and social-networking systems provides a platform for the whole world to communicate.  So I should rejoice, right?  Well, not entirely, mate!  A platform for learning and enlightenment is also a platform for banality.  A medium for information can also be used for misinformation.  A forum for understanding is also an opportunity to promote bigotry and hatred.  On the Internet, geniuses and halfwits, poets and proselytisers, statesmen and racists, thinkers and wanna-be celebrities, scientists and chicken-lickens, writers and chain-letter zombies, all have the same right to disseminate and promote their views and themselves.  And so, they twitter away.

Blogging provides a wealth of information, entertainment and amusement.  From travel anecdotes to family records to seriously well-informed scientific discussions – whatever, it’s all there.  Some of the forums raise very intriguing questions, inviting replies from interested readers.  The self-promoters butt in in the forum response sections, with mindless gushes like “I just wanted to say Hi”, or “Amazing – keep up the good work”.  Good grief – all to see their “contribution” in a public forum.  It’s a waste of space and time, and the noise makes it more difficult to find the answers from the real contributors to the forums.

You know the chain-email types.  Pass this on to at least 20 people and spread warm fuzzies, raising the total happiness in the world.  Or save a starving child/dolphin/nuclear family/world peace/the Earth.  Break the chain and they are doomed and you will suffer bad karma and die alone.  If you really believe this stuff, don’t saddle me with it.  Keep your fantasies to yourself.

And then there are endless emailed jokes.  It seems that nearly everybody forwards every goddamn joke and cutesy URL link they ever receive, to everybody else.  Is there anything to be said in their defence?  Well, maybe – some are actually funny.  About one in a hundred, that is.  And of the one percent that are funny, one in ten is funny enough to forward on.

That leaves ninety-nine percent that are not funny and a waste of storage space, bandwidth and my time.  That would be bad enough to deserve a good old-fashioned grump, but it’s not the worst of it.  No, the worst of it is that a disturbing percentage are created to promote the bigoted stereotypes of the writers and senders.  Their intention is to promote and maintain hatred or derision of whatever group or groups the writers themselves may despise.  That could be Muslims, Jews, Blacks, Asians, Whiteys, Catholics, Capitalists, Communists, Republicans, Democrats, whomever is blamed by the writer for the ills of the world.

Here are three examples of Internet “jokes”.  I wonder if they will make you laugh:

Scientists are trying to combat crime by combining the DNA of a Maori and a Samoan. The are hoping to come up with a blackie that is too lazy to steal.

The presidential inauguration compared to  Hurricane Katrina:  “How can 2,000,000 blacks get into Washington, D.C., in one day in subzero temps when 200,000 couldn’t get out of New Orleans in 85 degree temps with four days notice?”

“Breaking News!  Playboy just offered Sarah Palin $1 million to pose nude in the January issue.   Michelle Obama got the same offer from National Geographic.”

These examples are not funny, and I am very grumpy about them.  If you are in the habit of passing on stuff like them, please stop it.  There’s enough misery in the world.

P.S.   If you get a one-in-a-hundred joke email that is really funny enough to pass on, send it.  Even grumpy old men need a good laugh.

The Best and Worst Thing about the Netherlands

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Posted by JJ on November 2, 2009 – 12:18 am
Filed under Netherlands, Random Grumps & Raves, Rights and Responsibility, Things to Consider
Tagged as , ,

Bicycles are the best thing about the Netherlands!

And a well parked bike

Grumpy Old Man and a well parked bike

The country is flat, there are bicycle lanes in and between nearly every street in the cities, between the cities and towns and out in the country through reserves and farmlands.  There are bikes with extended wheelbases and big buckets on the front for carrying up to four children.  There are bikes with extra seats (and sometimes, pedals) for children.  I have seen one young mother on such a bike with two children pedalling away and another in a small seat behind her.

The ease and safety of cycling and the excellence of public transport render cars unnecessary.  For the first time since we were very young parents, my wife and I do not own even one car.  We have bikes!  (And a shopping cart which we take to the supermarket!)

Cars here are actually very careful about bikes – accidents are very rare.  Cars, trucks and even buses patiently follow bikes through the narrow streets in places without bike lanes.  The cars stop and let the bikes in ahead of them.  Signs proclaiming one-way and no-exit streets usually have a picture of a bike with the caption “Uitgezonderd”.  It means “Bicycles excepted”.  The rule does not apply to them.

God help any motorist who has an accident with a bicycle.  Even if the cyclist was completely wrong and the motorist completely in the right, the motorist will be found guilty and punished, and the cyclist will get every assistance.  If the accident was caused by the cyclist, then only if there is incontrovertible evidence that the motorist moved heaven and earth in an attempt to avoid the accident and it was totally unavoidable, will he get off the charge.  Bikes rule, OK!!!   Well…

Bicycles are also the worst thing about the Netherlands!  They give way to nobody, use the footpath as a cycleway if it is more convenient, and as a bike-park if it is ten feet closer to their destination than one of the many bike parks provided free of charge by the authorities.  Usually, pedestrian crossings are placed in the places most convenient to corner bars, railway stations, supermarkets etc.  “How convenient”, think the cyclists.  More often than not, they park their bikes on the footpaths and block entrances to pedestrian crossings completely.  Passing policemen completely ignore this rude, inconsiderate and very dangerous situation.  This forces the pedestrian (often an old man or woman) to step off the footpath into the adjacent bike lane, where naturally the cyclists swear at them for walking on the bike lane (or even run into them).  Bikes rule, not OK!

GRUMP