Olberman: Special Comment- 10/18/06

Well said - and about time someone did.

"All the Sweet Green Icing Flowing Down . . . "

Friday was my last lecture, so I'm starting to breathe a lot easier. I've still got another week of Tuakana, and I'll have to mark exams in November, but otherwise I'm finished teaching for the year. Now I need to focus on trying to get published.

But not this weekend, it's Labour Day here. NZ was one of the first countries to adopt an 8 hour workday, over 150 years ago. Of course, the holiday forecast was for "rain, turning to showers, with occassional thunderstorms." And that's what we got. It feels like the world is melting. In some places, it is: they've had to close several highways because of 'slips' - kiwispeak for mudslides. Good weather for ducks, and for catching up on sleep, laundry, blogging, etc.

I keep hearing a loop of the soundtrack to NZ's spring in my head. Here Comes the Rain Again. Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head. I Can't Stand the Rain. . . . You get the picture. Too bad we can't export it to Australia. Oz is having its worst drought in 100 years.

I miss Ali a lot. Today is 14 years since we met. We had a long distance relationship for a year then - Chicago to LA - without email or skype. By comparison, this is a piece of cake.

Cheers,
Sandie

Heads Up!

Makes me wish I could vote in Massachusettes.

Cheers,
Sandie

Sherlock

Colbert's The WØRD: Sherlock

Colbert at his best. This is just plain brilliant.
Cheers,
Sandie

300,000,003

Tuesday morning, October 17, 2006, the U.S. population will reach 300,000,000. Armaz, Angelique, and Antonia, who just took off from the Auckland airport, will arrive at LAX a little past noon, bringing the population up to at least 300 million and three - but who’s counting?

Armaz and Angelique moved to New Zealand less than a year ago, Antonia arrived on the 4th of July, and now they’ve packed up and are on the move again. No wonder New Zealand has negative net migration.
Armaz recently accepted a position at the National Institutes of Health, so, after a week visiting family and friends in Southern California, they’ll settle down somewhere between Washington, DC and Bethseda, MD. At least for a while.

I’m going to miss them an awful lot. It’s been great fun to have them living so close, especially the past few days while they've been staying with me. But Antonia promised she’ll come back and visit.

Cheers,
Sandie

A Day at Tiritiri

I took off last Friday to spend the day with Armaz, Angelique, and Antonia. We drove about half an hour from their place to Gulf Harbour, then took the ferry to Tiritiri Matangi, an island bird sanctuary in the Hauruki Gulf.
The island was farmed until 1984 but, since then, volunteers have planted over 280,000 trees. Conservation efforts have made it a haven for an amazing number of birds - many of which are seriously threatened.
The takahe, which Armaz is barring from our lunch, was thought to be extinct in the 1940s. This one was absolutely fearless, trying to steal food from anyone not paying close attention.
We had a nice sunny day, except for the chilly wind. (A late-season southerly dumped enough snow in the central plateau they closed the Desert Highway.) It made the complimentary tea at the visitor center extra welcome.

The island is also home to the oldest lighthouse tower in NZ, which made a nice background for our picnic spot. After lunch, we still had a couple hours to explore on our own.
The highlight, for me at least, was a feeding station that seemed to be party central for all the songbirds on Tiri. The bellbird was just taking a breather, before launching back into the throng. (Below her, a stitchbird is showing off his white stitch.)

The trails were all well-maintained, with plenty of observation decks and stairs in the steep places. Easy for walking, but less easy with a baby stroller.

There's also a lot of scientific research done on the island. On days like that, I'd swap offices with her in a heartbeat.


A lot of days aren't like that, however. And since the rain is pounding against the windows as I write this, I won't complain about having a roof over my head.

Cheers,
Sandie

Blonde Star - It's OnStar for a niche market

Sent by Ali, who knows I love blonde jokes. Cheers, Sandie

Bush Hijacked Our 9/11 Unity and Flew It Into Iraq

Don't you just love election year bumber stickers?

For the past month the weather in Auckland has fluctuated between pretty good and really great. Spring was starting to feel like the beginning of summer. Not that I had much chance to enjoy it while I was working 10-12 hour days, 7 days on my paper. Even this weekend, I came in to finish marking tests. Now that’s done and I’m ready for a day off, the Equinox Effect has arrived - torrential rain, thunder and lightning (a rarity here), even a tornado. Sheesh.

Since the weather outside’s been frightful, I’ve just been hanging around surfing the 'net and catching up on the news. Wow. Between the National Intelligence Estimate (the war in Iraq is not making America safer – really?), Woodward’s latest book (State of Denial), not to mention the Brits might be pulling out of Iraq, and Mark Foley - the Republican from Florida who resigned last week over his X-rated e-mails to underage male pages - the Bushies are having a rough week. And so close to the election.

Speaking of which, an interesting thing I read about the terrorist detention bill - the one the House and Senate both passed last week, right before they recessed for election campaigning - the one that eliminates habeas corpus, and leaves the definition of “enemy combatant” wide open to administration interpretation - provides top administration officials (in addition to everyone in the CIA and the military) with retroactive immunity from prosecution for war crimes. Neat. Good timing, too, since it would have been harder to get this into law if the Dems win enough seats to gain some control over the situation. In which case they may also want to start some investigations.

Jane Smiley (who wrote one of my all-time favorite books, A Thousand Acres) sees this as the pivotal moment when tyranny comes into the open:

the simultaneous granting of immunity to administration criminals for breaking both US and international laws concerning the detention of suspected "terrorists" and the removal of the right of habeas corpus for, essentially, anyone the administration deems unacceptable, citizen or non-citizen. Let me make that perfectly clear. Bush and his friends cannot be punished for crimes they have committed, while others can be thrown in jail without even knowing what crimes they are accused of. As Molly Ivins details her her op-ed piece today, it is even worse than it looks, because after the Bushies appeared to compromise with McCain and his allies, they changed the terms of the compromise to make the bill MORE DANGEROUS rather than less. If you aren't crying about this, my fellow Americans, you should be. I am.

Yeah, but she cried when Reagan was elected, too.

Come to think of it though, so did I.

Ah, but no matter - the ACLU will always be there to stand up to the government and champion civil rights. Or maybe not. Turns out the ACLU is in turmoil, riven by internal contradictions that threaten its continued existence, at least as the institution it once was.

Which may explain why that haven't done much to help people like Maher Arar, the Canadian citizen the U.S. kidnapped and sent to Syria to be tortured. And, as if we needed more reminding of how important it is to have someone stand up for civil rights - particularly when 'war time security' justifies every kind of rampant bigotry, Iva Toguri died last week. A loyal American who became infamous as 'Tokyo Rose' - for things she never said and never did - after she was framed by the Justice Dept. Thank God that couldn't happen today.

Hyperbole aside, things are looking a tad grim. This election is serious. But so was the last one. Isn’t anyone paying attention? To paraphrase something I saw on the wonderful Huffington Post:

I’m heading for the Americans-Must-Be-Morons Camp. It’s on the lake, right next to Camp Jesus.

Last Saturday, the 30th of September, marked two years since we moved here. Not as eventful as the year before, but it’s nice to have finished my degree and secured a full-time job. Because the way things are going in the 'Land of the Free', I'm not sure it's safe to go back.

Cheers,
Sandie