Sunday, December 28, 2003
Duncan learns how to make panoramas!
A Quicktime VR panorama of the former site of the World Trade Center (As viewed from the World Financial Center across the road) awaits those who click on the image below.
Thursday, December 04, 2003
American liberal dispora invade New Zealand!
Brad Wieners , one of many Amercan journalists on a New Zealand Government-sponsored LOTR:ROTK junket has drunken the Raro and wants to migrate. Apparently California is a potential source of refugees - heading to Aotearoa means escaping the exercise in cognitive dissonance that is the Schwarzenegger administration but still being able to see movie stars and enjoy the occassional earthquake on a regular basis.
Plus it is warmer than Canada.
However, he notes that we are "committed to civil liberties", evidence that the snow job is working well. Swearing over the phone is illegal - "misuse of a telephone" - as one unfortunate peace protester discovered; flag burning is illegal; libel laws concerning public figures still have real bite ; one of the Labour government first moves on election in 1999 was to propose making negative political campaigns illegal; its next move was to ban Members of Parliament from voting on an individual basis; and while it isn't Gitmo, the Ahmed Zaoui case continues to boil along. There is no equivalent to the First Amendment in New Zealand law (which makes regulating political speech much easier).
It is less a case of strong civil liberties as it is a national version of small-town apathy making such issues largely irrelevent.
Plus it is warmer than Canada.
However, he notes that we are "committed to civil liberties", evidence that the snow job is working well. Swearing over the phone is illegal - "misuse of a telephone" - as one unfortunate peace protester discovered; flag burning is illegal; libel laws concerning public figures still have real bite ; one of the Labour government first moves on election in 1999 was to propose making negative political campaigns illegal; its next move was to ban Members of Parliament from voting on an individual basis; and while it isn't Gitmo, the Ahmed Zaoui case continues to boil along. There is no equivalent to the First Amendment in New Zealand law (which makes regulating political speech much easier).
It is less a case of strong civil liberties as it is a national version of small-town apathy making such issues largely irrelevent.