No 5. Throw Your Arms Around Me - Hunters and Collectors

The song that compelled a generation of antipodean males to show their sentimental side, clapping their mates around the shoulders and letting a tear fall in their beer as they sang along with the chorus.

But you don't need to be a solid Aussie or Kiwi bloke to have fallen in love with this gentle, hummable three-chord ballad, which stretches the word "throw" into seven syllables covering four musical notes (in an interesting twist, it turns out to be the third song in this list with similar vocal feats).

Without quite the same musical versatility and songwriting strength of contemporaries like Midnight Oil and Crowded House, Hunters & Collectors could probably be fairly tarred with that backhanded compliment, "hard-working". But even a fairly ordinary band can summon up an extraordinary song. And it's perhaps in the very simplicity of "Throw Your Arms Around Me" that it's enduring appeal lies.

There's a gruff intensity, awkwardness even, in the opening verse, where songwriter Mark Seymour promises:

I will come to you at night time / And I will raise you from your sleep
I will kiss you in four places / As I go running along your street

He sounds like he'd really rather be whacking in a pallet-load of fenceposts in the back paddock than confessing his love for his girlfriend, and therein may lie the secret to the song's sincerity.

"Throw Your Arms Around Me" was definitely never a pop hit and I'm not sure it was even released as a single. The fact that it's generally beloved across Australia and New Zealand shows that, even in this contrived world of pre-release marketing campaigns and "latest sensations", there is (or was) still such a thing as the modern folk song--one that becomes popular by word of mouth simply because people dig it.

While some songs in this list are indelibly linked to a particular recording or performance, most people would struggle to name their definitive version of"Throw Your Arms Around Me". The slowed-down, slightly bombastic take on the Hunters & Collectors best-of, Collected Works? Probably not. Crowded House used to play it live a lot, and there's a few of their versions floating around, but the ones I've heard tend to be a bit loose or jokey; they wouldn't define the song for you. The original H&C recording? Who even *has* a copy of that these days? I haven't heard it for a while, and from memory it doesn't quite do the song justice.

The time Ben got out the guitar at Mike's party and everyone sang along? No, man, you're thinking of *Rachael's* party...

In reality, everyone probably has their own personal mental recording of "Throw Your Arms Around Me" which is a composite of numerous cover versions and impromptu singalongs, spiced with dim memories of smoky bars and backpackers hostel courtyards.

Somewhere out there is the Platonic Form of "Throw Your Arms Around Me". But even if you can only catch the flickering shadows from the campfire, it'll do nicely.

Categories: Hunters and Collectors, Throw Your Arms Around Me, Top 10 Songs

No. 6 Tabaco y Chanel - Bacilos

In any top ten list, amongst the songs that have stood the test of time, is allowed one current obession--the song you throw on when you get up in the morning or give one last spin before going to bed, somewhat guiltily skipping all the other songs on what is a perfectly reasonable CD because you just have to hear it one more time. For me, "Tabaco y Chanel" has fallen into this category for a while now, and wins the No. 6 spot on that basis .

Bacilos are a Miami-based trio of Colombian/Puerto Rican/Venezuelan extraction. Over the last few years the band has gone from playing free shows in small Miami bars to being darlings of MTV en español. Their 2003 album Caraluna won a couple of Grammys and was a big hit throughout Latin America.

Their music is pleasant pop, mixing Beatles and other Anglo influences with a variety of Latin & Caribbean styles. Overall, it's a little slick and middle-of-the-road for my taste. But "Tabaco y Chanel", off their first album, is a genuine classic.

The first time I heard this song was in Ilo, on the south Peruvian coast, about this time last year. For those who read my post about Ana and Frank's wedding, this was the song which the newly wedded couple chose for the first dance of the evening after exchanging their vows. We were told it had been popular in the discotheques of Arequipa at the time they first met, three years ago.

I was already quite moved by the ceremony and, perhaps feeling the effects of the first couple of cocktails, a little susceptible to the emotion of the moment when they got up to dance. But the song was so beautiful, and the lyrics that I could hear so seemingly appropriate, that I swear it brought a tear to my eye. Before moving on to the next cocktail, I made sure I asked what the song was and who it was by.

"Tabaco y Chanel" is a mid-tempo ballad driven by a lilting violin over simple strummed acoustic guitar chords and a syncopated beat. Imagine the Waterboys at their most Celtic and misty-eyed romantic, underpinned by Caribbean rhythms and an extra touch of sexiness. The opening lines:

Un olor a tabaco y Chanel / me recuerda el olor de su piel
Una mezcla de miel y cafe / me recuerda el sabor de sus besos
[A smell of tobacco and Chanel / reminds me of the smell of her skin
A mixture of honey and coffee / reminds me of the taste of her kisses]

The song, it turns out, is another lament about fleeting and lost love, perfect exactly *because* it's lost. If anyone's picking up a trend with the themes of these songs, I suspect it's not just me, but reflects a preoccupation of folk and pop songs through the centuries. These lines pretty much sum it up:

Una rosa que no florecio / pero que el tiempo no la marchita
[A rose that never flowered / but that time does not fade]

That could be a direct quote from Petrarch--perhaps the godfather of the modern love song. Nothing is quite so exquisite as nostalgia.

The protaganist of "Tabaco y Chanel" is constantly asked about his lost love. Even the stars ask him the same question, and beg him to go back for her. He shows no sign of doing so, preferring to wallow in his memories. However, when I first heard the song at the wedding the repeated chorus line "Que vuelva por ella "("Go back for her") struck me as appropriate, because Frank had in fact come back for Ana. I guess even a love song can have a happy ending.

Categories: Bacilos, Tabaco y Chanel

No 7. Close Action - Big Country

What? I hear you universally say. I can guarantee that almost no one else has ever included this song on their top 10 list.

On the one hand are those who haven't heard much or anything of Big Country, or simply aren't fans of their music. To them, I can only repeat the strongly held belief of every true Big Country-ite: if you would only listen, not only would you become a convert, but the world would be a better place. Let me quote one fan, who does a better job than me at describing this conviction:

"I am torn between the frantic compulsion to track every one of you down and play [Big Country] for you, and the horrible, gnawing awareness that if I did, some of you still wouldn't be convinced. What a botched design-project people must be if these songs can make me feel this way, yet leave you untouched. If we don't share redemption this fundamental, no wonder we fight over abstractions like religions and copyright law. We invented guitars and drums, and somebody figured out how to coax these songs out of them. That should have been all we needed. Why does the planet still need saving? "

For those who need some background, Big Country, who released their debut album The Crossing in 1983, were often described alongside contemporaries U2 and Simple Minds as part of a new wave of Celtic rock, but their sound and style were truly unique. Driving rhythms were combined with soaring Celtic melodies from the twin lead guitars of Stuart Adamson and Bruce Watson; the songs vignettes from Scottish history, yearning romantic ballads or lyrical elegies about industrial decay in Scotland and northern England.

The band made eight studio albums up until 1999, but it was during 1983-86 that all their classic stuff (three albums, an EP and a movie soundtrack) was produced. Since the age of fourteen, when I first heard them, I've probably listened more to Big Country than to any other artist. No other music has ever struck me so hard and so viscerally. You only need to read the Amazon.com reviews to see that there's plenty of others across the world who feel the same way.

But even among hard-core BC fans, my choice would probably raise quite a few eyebrows. What am I doing picking "Close Action", the rather obscure track 4 off The Crossing? The acknowledged classics include "In a Big Country" (the one that even non-fans know), "Wonderland", "Fields of Fire", "Chance", "Look Away" and "Just a Shadow". Skip to tier two, the much-loved album tracks that lend their names to fanatics' web sites, and it still doesn't get a look in. I can only conclude that I see something few others do.

Let me confess that I always intended to pick a Big Country song for this list as a representative of their entire work. There are several songs which have missed out on the top 10 which have probably grabbed me more in isolation than any one Big Country song--yet Big Country have been too important to me not to have a song on the list. Is that cheating? I did tell you there would be a range of criteria.

There's many special moments in the BC ouevre. "Where the Rose is Sown" has the most neckhair-raising guitar chorus you'll ever hear. "The Sailor" off The Seer is an awsome epic which turns a gentle mandolin ballad into a drum-crashing opus. "Look Away" is probably the best straight-ahead pop song the band did. "Steeltown" evokes the rise and fall of the working-class dream with a vivdness and economy of phrase which is worthy of good poetry:

All the landscape was the mill / Grim as the reaper with a heart like hell
With a river of bodies flowing with the bell / Here was a future for hands of skill

But none of them are quite right. It's long been a source of frustration to me that I've never found the perfect Big Country song--all my favourites have little flaws somewhere. Perhaps this is just from caring too much.

In the end, the one I keep coming back to, to remind myself of what I love about Big Country, is "Close Action". To be fair, it's a something of a dirge. But what an epic, romantic dirge it is. Crashing drums, two separate guitar solos which lift the song into a different key and off on a cinematic journey across the wild Scottish highlands. And Stuart Adamson's singing at its impassioned best.

Like many other songs on the Crossing, the lyrics are a little cryptic. The first verse prefigures the more specific tales of industrial decay to feature on Steeltown, while the next two have mysterious references to sirens wailing and lovers waiting. There's no mistaking the chorus, however :

I will carry you home with the gods in my eyes
I will carry you home while the westerlies sigh

I reckon there's something uniquely Scottish about this. It partakes of the same fierce, yearning romanticism which is subtly different from the more mischievous, ironic Irish, and is exemplified in folk tunes like "Wild Mountain Thyme" and "Amazing Grace" (the bapipe tune, subtract the flaky religious lyrics which were added later). Big Country's music affected me in the same way as those tunes--with a chill down the spine and a twist in the pit of the stomach that I can only speculate is due to something passed down through the blood.

To anybody moved by the optimism of Big Country's best music, it remains tragically inexplicable that Stuart Adamson chose to take his life in a hotel room in Hawaii in 2003. The songs live on.

Categories: Big Country, Close Action, the Crossing, Stuart Adamson

No 8. Tunnel of Love - Dire Straits

For a while there in the late 80s/early 90s Dire Straits were a byword among rock critics for corporate blandness. After Brothers in Arms achieved massive success as a vehicle for introducing the new-fangled digital compact disc to the market, the band came to be ranked alongside Phil Collins as the absolute antithesis of the spontaneous, gritty adventure rock music was supposed to be.

Yet how many hip young types, of the sort who would have screwed up their noses if you said "Dire Straits", have I seen after several pints in the pub on a Friday, tapping their feet and grooving as the house band broke into "Sultans of Swing"? Or--perhaps a few pints later--looking misty-eyed over their Guiness as the jukebox played "Romeo & Juliet" and slurring "ahhh, this is a great song"?

Eventual corporate monsters or not, Dire Straits produced some undeniable classics. There's never been another song quite like "Romeo & Juliet", with Mark Knopfler's Renaissance troubadour acoustic guitar riff evoking a hot Verona night under the wisteria, while he mumbles bitterly about the girl who dissed him (apparently she was an actress called Holly something; after they broke up she was quoted in an interview as saying "Oh yeah, Mark Knopfler--yeah, I used to have a scene with him").

Yet, much as I love that song, I have to go for "Tunnel of Love" as the one that's had the greatest impact on me. Strangely, while many rock stars (and non stars) struggle to restrain their histrionic tendencies, Mark Knopfler seems to have the opposite problem. While he's always been one of the most unique and skilful musicians around, much of his and Dire Straits' music suffers from being restrained, disengaged, and ultimately therefore forgettable.

Only an external impulse such as having his heart broken ("Romeo & Juliet") or needing to produce a stirring movie soundtrack (the Celtic-tinged theme to Local Hero) has injected a sufficient amount of emotion and urgency to his songwriting to make it really interesting.

In the case of "Tunnel of Love", the story is that the impetus came from Mark Knopfler's brother David. A much less talented rhythm guitarist, David Knopfler was efectively in the band for being Mark's brother. After the success of their debut album, which combined sophisticated musicianship with some of the driving energy of punk, Dire Straits went away to the Caribbean and ended up recording a fairly meandering album called Communique. David had become bored, and told Mark he was sick of all the downbeat, jazzy stuff.

"Why don't you write something that makes your heart beat faster, you know, like on the rides at the fairground when we were kids?" he said. Shocked into action, Mark went away and came up with "Tunnel of Love", an eight-minute whirling ferris wheel of a song that captures the energy, excitement and mystery of the carnival.

The song opens with a snippet of Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Carousel Waltz", then the band bursts in, with a guitar riff which sounds like an engine revving, and never looks back. For the Making Movies album, Dire Straits had brought in Bruce Springsteen's virtuoso pianist Roy Bittan, and he certainly adds a lot, with extra melodic threads filling out Dire Straits' previously somewhat dry sound.

"Tunnel of Love" is the tale of an encounter in the shadows of the fairground. The protagonist meets a mysterious girl, they hang out, kiss, and then she walks off into the night. Unobtainable and therefore perfect, as he realises:

I coulda caught up with her easy enough, but something must have made me stay...

Just by itself, that makes a rollicking song--but it's only the half of it. What follows is the best guitar lead-out, bar none, in the history of rock n' roll. It starts off slow, with a few plaintive notes, builds up as the band come back in, then reaches a somersaulting, tumbling climax of guitar and piano before fading out and leaving you wanting more.

This is the song that made me want to play the guitar. So enraptured was I by the expressive possibilities of the instrument demonstrated by Mark Knopfler on "Tunnel of Love", that the first time I heard, at about age eleven, I decided then and there that I had to learn.

Hmm, and it may also have been a subconscious factor in my decision to work and travel in a carnival many years later. That, I can assure you, did not turn out to be much like the song.

Categories: Dire Straits, Tunnel of Love

No. 9 Back on the Chain Gang - the Pretenders

OK, so I'm starting to show a penchant for mid-paced pop songs with simple guitar riffs. But while "Just Like Heaven" was about the form, "Back on the Chain Gang" is about the texture. Does that sound totally tossy? Let me explain. There's not much to choose between the Cure and the Dinosaur Jr version of the former song. In contrast, "Back on the Chain Gang" is a catchy tune with a great hook, but it's how the recording *sounds* that really propels it above the ordinary.

To anyone with one-tenth of a musical ear, the song is recognisable from the very first strum of the opening D-A-Em7 chord sequence.

[Ah, Em7! The most suggestive chord to grace a guitar...hovering seductively between Em and G, hinting at an eventual return to D...]

The Pretenders hooked up with the Smiths' Johnny Marr for this song, and it transforms their sound. While Marr was one of the most creative and distinctive guitarists of the 80s, the colour he brings to "Back on the Chain Gang" is really a team effort from him and his six-string Rickenbacker. No other guitar sounds quite like it once the reverb is turned up a little. That jangle that actually sounds like it has sunlight glinting off it was pioneered by the Byrds, and dominates the first three or so REM albums, but it's here that it's close to being showcased to best effect.

Then of course there's Chrissie Hynde's singing. Warm, effortless, and pretty damn sexy. There's almost a touch of the Arabic in the way she turns one syllable into three-ee-ee, and in the oh-o-oh-*oh*-o-ohs at the end of every line. This is a woman who sounds like she might even enjoy the occasional cigarette; today's pop starlets sound like the children they are by comparison.

On paper, the lyrics are nothing special, but each line resonates as it's sung, even: Circumstances beyond our control... Who would have thought a bureaucractic excuse could sound so sensual? There's a nice tight little couplet here, too:

Like a break in the battle, was your part
In the wretched life of a lonely he-a-art

Then, after the minor-ish bridge section, there's one of the most natural and effective key changes to be found in all pop music. Chrissie Hynde's voice floats upwards, turning the word "part" into *six-and-a-half* syllables, and the song heads off into its sunset of the final chorus and a fade-out of more jangling Rickenbackers. Beautiful.

Categories: the Pretenders, Back on the Chain Gang, Chrissie Hynde , Johnny Marr

No. 10 Just Like Heaven - The Cure

The Cure were best known during the 80s as a "gothic" band who produced depressing epics to which teenagers huddled in their rooms and thought about slitting their wrists. But as their 1985 singles collection Standing on a Beach showcased, their other forte was writing original, catchy pop songs which ranged from the punkily sublime ("Boys Don't Cry") to the joyously ridiculous ("Lovecats").

Ardent fans were a little wary of the poppier tunes, fiercely protective of the band's "alternative" status at a time when that label still meant something. Then the alternative / mainstream distinction effectively disappeared from pop music, and to a new generation the Cure were defined by 1992's rather inane "Friday I'm in Love", meaning their place in music history has been re-evaluated somewhat.

In hindsight the apparent stylistic schizophenia actually made perfect sense. A thread running through all Robert Smith's songwriting was demonstrative Romanticism, whether this meant wallowing in dark, Byronic depression or flitting over the hills chasing the skylarks (or cats). Moody or madcap, the Cure's music had a colour and unpredictability that seems almost unbelievable from the vantage point of today's pop-by-numbers.

My favourite Cure song for a long time was "In Between Days" with its punchy bass and wash of lovesick keyboards. But it's "Just Like Heaven" which is the more enduring and perfectly structured song. There is something celestial about the opening, with the keyboards soaring above the Bach-ian symmetry of the falling and rising piano riff. Yet you sense that the melody could easily survive much rougher treatment--as Dinosaur Junior later proved with their thunderous cover version.

And that's even before Robert Smith comes in to howl of impossible, dreamt love:

Show me show me show me how you do that trick
the one that makes me scream, she said...

He's got an amazingly beautiful girl and she tells him he drives her wild. But after the instrumental break it turns out he's only dreaming (...I must have been asleep a day...). Doh!

As far as I know, this song was never a big hit anywhere, but a tribute to its enduring, crossover appeal is that it was regularly played on the radio in Arequipa when I was there, easily outshining the Latin pop and American rock fodder surrounding it.

Categories: the Cure, Just Like Heaven, Top 10

My Top Ten Songs

It's winter. Days are short and the serotonin levels suffer. It's time to crawl into the cave and make some "best-of" lists. So, over the next ten days, if all goes to plan, I'll be be presenting my top ten best and favourite songs, with a brief discussion of each.

Why do people do things like this? I suspect Nick Hornby might have an anwer somewhere, but I've never managed to read one of his books all the way through, and they're all out whenever I go to the library.

I'm guessing it's something to do with the compulsion to give order and permanence to flickering, subjective experience. This is of course one of the fundmental features of being human--it's why we write things down and draw pictures in the first place. The Appollonian response to Dionysian sensation, or something like that.

The personal response to art or music, in particular, can be so intense and so private, that it sparks a yearning to crystallize, preserve and share it. The origins of art criticism may lie in this reaction. The historical designation of "canons" of good, mediocre and great art has surely been not only about conferring privilege and status on certain practitioners but also on a genuine need to bring intense subjective experience into the social, objective sphere (in fact, you could make a case that the assignation of relative value to works of art has accompanied the shift away from the highly social ways art was experienced in folk & mediaeval contexts).

This tendency seems to be accentuated in the geeky, the lonely, and the introverted. In part, perhaps, due to an overdeveloped ordering faculty and less facility for other forms of social communication (which in its extreme form heads towards autism?? --as with making best-of lists, a predominantly male affliction...)

On the other hand, best-of lists are an antidote in times when the Dionysian stuff is in short supply - when that raw fabric of experience gets duller, more restricted or simply colder. Like a squirrel dragging out nuts from its storehouse, you remind yourself that skies might be grey, but you had a good time once.

But enough half-baked philosophizing. On with my list. There are some key rules and caveats to note:
1) All the songs are popular songs from the last 50 years. In other words, there's no classical or jazz pieces or anything else here. Leaving aside my relative illiteracy in these areas, the key point is that a good list must remain focussed.

2) No more than one song per artist. This is an important rule; it forces you to think a little harder. Mine and I suspect most people's lists would be much less interesting were this rule not in place.

3) I've given the list some thought, but it remains something of a snapshot of my preferences, with a mixture of criteria for inclusion. I think the top 3 or 4 songs are pretty fixed, but if you caught me six months earlier or later, the others could well be different. (I may even totally kick myself in mid-list and realise I've left something major out). I'll try and explain the jusitification for each one as I go.

4) Comments are welcome. Feel free to comment on any of my songs, post your own top 10 list, or send it to me at simonbidwell@hotmail.com

Tomorrow, No. 10.

Categories: Top Ten Songs, Nick Hornby, Philosophy of Art

Review of the Sith

In the new series of Star Wars movies R2D2 is now able to fly around, propelled by little rockets in his robot legs. He has also acquired the ability to defend himself against agressors, zapping them with a retractable laser gun. In one scene in Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith, he fights off three soldier droids by squirting them with oil and setting fire to it, like some kind of militant octupus.

This encapsulates what is so disappointing about the three forward-to-the past prequels compared with the charm and adventure of the original movies. In the original Star Wars, R2D2 was the systems robot with incongruous moral courage, seemingly more human than his twittering protocol droid companion C3PO. But physically, he was nothing more than a trash can on wheels; clunky and effectively helpless. In Hollywood these days, however, physical limitations will no longer do. Every acceptable character must be able to kick multiple ass.

Gone as well is the innocent mysticism of the originals, which evoked Arthurian legend, Samurai tales, WWII fighter pilot stories and more, while leaving a lot up to the imagination. We cheered for the Rebel Alliance against the Galactic Empire without knowing all the politics of the affair--there was the simple sense that power must be resisted. The newer films heavy-handedly spell out the political context, which is supposedly an allegory of the fall of the Roman Republic, or Nixon's grab for power, or the machinations of the neocons and George W Bush in the present day ("you're either with me--or you're my enemy" growls the Sith lord formerly known as Anakin in the latest movie).

This has led to controversy about the "overtly political" nature of Revenge of the Sith, with some American conservatives grumbling about Hollywood liberal grandstanding. But to my mind the free-spirited original films were the more subversive.

The Jedi ethic has also been ruined. Previously, there was the philosophy that at times you have to "trust your feelings" over logic, while resisting the pull of anger and fear, and recognising that Darth Vader lurks within your own heart. Wishy-washy seventies idealism, maybe, but a view of how to be a good person and a hero that captured the popular imagination.

Now it seems that the Jedi practise a form of ascetic Buddhism, with (ugh) a "temple" where young acolytes are trained. Jedi-ism preaches withdrawal from emotional involvement; Yoda counsels the tortured Anakin that "you must let go of all that you fear to lose". Yet the supposedly unworldly Jedi leaders have no problem being involved in combat or leading military campaigns in all three prequels--they just can't have sex (how many people would have put "Jedi" under "Religion" on their census form if they knew that?). In their role of moral guardians to the political wing of the Republic, the Jedi resemble nothing more than Iranian mullahs.

Of course, I knew all this before I went to see Revenge of the Sith, and had appropriately tempered expectations. I was even forewarned that the Anakin-Padme love scenes between Haydn Christensen and Natalie Portman were even more cringeworthy than in Attack of the Clones. Nevertheless, I was still disappointed at the lameness of the bit we were all waiting for--Anakin's turn to the Dark Side to become Darth Vader.

To an extent, dramatic plausibility was always going to be a victim of the need to have two and a half films worth of Anakin as a fairly straightforward blockbuster action hero, yet morph by the end of Sith into a trachea-crushing lord of the Dark Side. He has to be led into temptation by noble motives--Anakin is tormented by dreams of his wife dying in childbirth, making him susceptible to the seductive promises of Chancellor Palpatine / Darth Sidious.

But the transformation into Mr Evil, when it comes, is ludicrously quick. When Palpatine tricks Anakin into intervening on his behalf and causing the death of Jedi enforcer Mace Windu, Anakin is still shocked by what he's done. Five minutes later, however Palpatine is telling him to bow down before his dark master and he's, like, "ok". Then he's off to slaughter the Jedi younglings and carry out some political assassinations on a distant volcano planet.

It seems to have slipped his memory that this was all about acquiring the power to save his wife; you'd think he'd at least be demanding some assurances from the soon-to-be Emperor before swanning off to murder people. But no. And when Padme tracks him down in the middle of the volcano planet and tells him that he doesn't seem himself, he goes straight into trachea-crushing mode on her. Sure, the dark side corrupts, but that quickly?

In order to enjoy this movie, you have to sit back and appreciate the sets, the spectacle and the light-saber fights, while smirking at the rest. As a New Zealander, it's hard not to chortle every time Temuera Morrison appears as the leader and genetic source of an army of cloned troops. You half expect him to say: "Commander, take your troops to the south quadrant. And cook me some eggs!".

You snicker at the Anakin-Padme scenes' dialogue, and smile knowingly when Anakin does his Darth Bush bit. You appreciate the (intentional) visual gags which have characters gaining a steadily more seventies appearance as the film wears on, in preparation for the moment when Darth Vader is rolled out in his original cape-and-helmet attire, complete with traffic-light chest unit. Padme even appears at one point with her hair done in Princess Leia spirals, which is nice.

You also (sadly, perhaps) chortle at Yoda turning into a self-parody. Back in The Empire Strikes Back, Yoda was a great character, the classic Wise Man in the Cave from innumerable myths and legends. His backwards syntax was a nice touch, and actually worked with the pithy things he had to say: "Beware the Dark Side. Powerful, it is".

In the prequel films, it's been getting steadily harder to keep this up, as Yoda has to utter ever-longer sentences. The crowning moment is just before the epic battle in the Senate, when the Emperor Palpatine annouces that he's going to take over the universe; a defiant Yoda gets to his feet and replies: "Not if anything to do with it, *I* have".

Classic. You can see a whole genre of Yoda-ised action hero phrases open up.
Clint Eastwood: Ahead go, sucker. Make my day, you will
Arnold Schwarzanegger: Be back, I will.

It's clear that George Lucas wanted to present this as a Shakespearean or Greek tragedy--there's that ironic moment at the end when the restored Vader enquires after his wife and the Emperor tells him with Iagoan spite: "It seems in your anger you have killed her, my lord". But so subsumed are the dramatic elements to special effects and blockbuster conventions that the best that can be managed is an enjoyable farce.

It's a tribute to the instinctive desire to see narrative ends tie up, that it's still totally compelling to see Skywalker become Vader, Luke and Leia be whisked off to different planets, and Yoda retire to the Dagobar System (which, like, he doesn't even say--my most disappointing moment). You'd watch it no matter how bad it was.

But if you want some real insight into the character and motivations of Darth Vader, Revenge of the Sith won't help you much. Nope, best to just read his blog.

Categories: Star Wars, Revenge of the Sith

This time they've gone too far!

Unbelievable. The Cookie Monster, of former cookie jar-devouring heroics, has now learnt that"cookies are a sometimes food" and has broadened his eating habits to include fruit and vegetables.

I don't know where to begin to comment on this. Civilization is at an end. What comes next--"Oscar the Serotonin Disadvantaged"?

Some of the comments on this blog are rather amusing in their outrage about the matter. One 14 year-old girl writes:

"I think cookie monster should stick with cookies cause without cookies there is no cookie monster and that is just retarded!!!"

She may have a point. Another girl gets really worked up and leans on the caps lock key. During her tirade, she points out that:

"...(I am very skinny ONLY BECAUSE MY MOM FED ME THE RIGHT WAY!!!) COOKIE MONSTER DIDN'T INFLUENCE ME AT ALL!!!"

Classic. Later, she arrives at the obvious solution. Threaten legal action:

"IF THIS IS TAKEN ANY FARTHER SO HELP ME I WILL SUE MY FAVORITE CHILDHOOD SHOW JUST BECAUSE YOU RUINED MY FAVORITE CHARACTER... I AM HURT AND TRAMATIZED FOR LIFE!!! ...IF ANYMORE CHANGES HAPPEN I AM GOING TO PUT THIS SHOW OUT OF BUISNESS!! SO YOU BETTER CHANGE COOKIE MONSTER BACK TO HIS OLD SELF OR I WILL SUE. AND I AM TOTALLY SERIOUS ON THIS SUBJECT."

I guess Sesame Street will see her in court.

Categories: Sesame Street, Cookie Monster

Oh-Two Epidemic Devastating Communities

New Zealand’s Oh-Two epidemic is worsening, with another weekend of carnage leaving 375 more users hospitalised, parents distraught, and police under siege.

On Auckland’s North Shore, emergency services were called when an out-of-control Oh-Two party got out of hand and revellers ran wild. Oh-Two was also implicated in an armed robbery in Pakuranga, stabbings in Lower Hutt and Winton, a light plane crash in Fiordland, a case of mistaken identity in Nelson, and a near drowning in the Hauraki Gulf.

Oh-Two is a highly addictive, flammable gas, which users inhale through the mouth or nose. Sustained inhalation can result in a deadly condition known as “hyperventilation” with symptoms including dizziness or lightheadedness, shortness of breath, belching, bloating, dry mouth, weakness, confusion, sleep disturbances, numbness and tingling, muscle spasms, chest pain, palpitations, panic attacks and even death.

Even worse are the effects of the drug when combined with alcohol. When ingested with large quantites of liquor, Oh-Two can result in extreme drunkeness. Police say that many of the amok-running revellers at the North Shore party had consumed a deadly cocktail of Oh-Two mixed with deadly cocktails.

Oh-Two use has also been linked to a number of different psychiatric disorders. Auckland Hospital head of Psychiatry Lucy McLean says that “one hundred percent” of patients currently being treated for schizophrenia and depression had at one stage been Oh-Two users. She says that even casual users of Oh-Two could be at risk of permanent brain damage.

The spreading Oh-Two epidemic is not confined to criminals and hedonistic partygoers, but has begun to infect young people in quiet suburban neighbourhoods. Christchurch dairy owner Bill Chaplin is one who says he has noticed increasing abuse of Oh-Two by teenagers who gather in the streets near his shop.

He says that the youths, some of them are as young as fourteen, form groups which occupy the pavement and sometimes even invade the street. One of the group speaks while the others listen. They then make raucous noises as they throw their heads back and inhale large quantities of Oh-Two, endangering themselves and intimidating passers-by and motorists.

Parents have been warned to check for possible signs that their teenage children may be abusing Oh-Two. Rosy cheeks, talkativeness, and an unusual “wide-awake” appearance may indicate that your son or daughter has been inhaling Oh-Two, says Porirua drug outreach team leader Hone Anderson .

In the light of Oh-Two’s devastating effects, Deputy Prime Minister Jim Anderton has called for the substance to be given special classification and attacked with the full weight of the law. “This is a Class A+ drug” he says. “Dealers should be put away for life and users imprisoned for their own good. We must stop this scourge of our communities”.

However, despite massive deployment of resources, police have not yet been able to track down a single laboratory manufacturing Oh-Two, and customs officials say they have repeatedly drawn a blank in operations designed to bust imports of the substance. Head of the national anti Oh-Two taskforce, detective inspector John Grant, confirms that this is an ongoing source of frustration for enforcement authorities.

“The stuff seems to appear out of thin air” he says

Categories: satire

Children, Homeless Suffer as Wave of Cold Hits South Peru

If you take mainstream media coverage at face value, you could be forgiven for thinking that large scale poverty in the developing world is restricted to Africa. Almost all the recent discussion of debt relief, aid and "making poverty history" has talked only about Africa, and one article even erroneously stated that the debt relief agreed by the G7 was for "eighteen African countries" (in fact, four of the eighteen were from Latin America--Bolivia, Haiti, Nicaragua and Guyana).

It's worth remembering that serious poverty is not restricted to Africa, is not just about debt, and won't be made history by a couple of rock concerts.

The below info was sent to me by Hugo in Arequipa, who wanted it translated for the South America Tour website. The first paragraph I believe is from a newspaper; it's a straight translation. The other two were in Hugo-ese, requiring a bit of rewriting--but the facts are straightforward:

"Peru is not immune from the inclemencies of nature. Dozens of children younger than five years old have died in recent weeks because of the wave of extreme cold affecting the south of the country. According to Ministry of Health statistics, since the beginning of the freeze in the high Andean areas, MINSA has treated 1,400,000 cases of acute respiratory infections (ARIs), as well as 400,000 cases of pneumonia. More than 21,800 children less than one year old, from38 high Andean communities, are most at risk from the big chill gripping our compatriots in the south.



"In the early morning of the 15th of June, South America Tour personnel went into the streets of Arequipa to hand out blankets to beggars, street children, collectors of recyclable trash and people who have nowhere to sleep. Many have come from the sierra looking for a better life, but employment opportunities are few. To survive, they collect bottles during the night around markets and from rubbish bins to sell to recyclers, who pay 50 centimos per kilo (about 16c US). This is hardly enough to live on; some nights they don’t find enough bottles to sell and therefore don’t have enough money to feed themselves the next day.



"This little project was organized to provide help to about 50 people. It was greatly welcomed; the gratitude and appreciation for the assistance that was offered could be seen in the happy looks on people’s faces, especially the children. Due to the low temperatures experienced in Arequipa, the majority of them were suffering from colds and the flu.

"These works of social assistance that the travel agency carries out are thanks to the foreign tourists who use our services."



Further information I've picked up off Peruvian news sites suggests that about 80,000 herd animals have died in the highlands so far during the cold snap. This causes major hardship, as the alpacas and llamas are the main source of cash income for people in the highlands, as well as being important to their subsistence.

Conditions were similar when I was in Peru last year; if anything, the "wave of cold" was more severe, leading to the declaration of a state of emergency by the government. Thousands of animals died, rural communities faced major difficulties, and emergency relief had to be brought in. Cuzco received a dusting of snow for the first time in about 30 years.

In Arequipa, at 2300 metres above sea level, temperatures don't drop quite as low as in the highlands. But risk of respiratory illness is heightened by the dry desert air and the significant pollution (surrounded by mountains, Arequipa suffers from trapped polluted air in a similar way to Los Angeles, Santiago and Christchurch). As Hugo points out, it's also where people who've moved from the highlands end up, and without much shelter, night time temperatures of 4 or 5 degrees are quite cold enough.

Extreme cold in southern Peru tends to be associated with El Niño conditions, which seem to be becoming more frequent in recent times. This may or may not have something to do with global warming. Some might conclude that this underlines the need to control greenhouse emissions and stop global warming.

Probably true, but more pressing is the need for development, jobs and money, so people can move beyond a near-subsistence existence and not be faced with catastrophe each time there's climatic instability--which can happen, global warming or no global warming. The people living on the streets in Arequipa moved there exactly because it seemed preferable to clinging on to a tenuous existence in the countryside. Addressing poverty requires more than giving people an extra goat and a hand-operated water pump for their village.

Some may see an element of self-promotion in Hugo's account of how he's bringing solace to the poor. It's true that he wants to promote his South America Tour business as a social- or eco-tourism operation, having become aware that there's a growing market for this approach. But all power to him. Like many middle-class Peruvian people, he sincerely does want to help those less fortunate. Byhanding out soup and blankets to just 50 people, he and Lizbeth are getting more help directly to people who need it, than large chunks of aid money administered by unwieldy western NGOs.

And if he can "sell" the socially responsible side of his business and get more clients, all the better. Hugo does need some persuading that paying a fair wage to his employees is as, if not more worthy than giving soup and blankets to steet people, but I'm sure will get there in the end, especially if his own revenue becomes more secure.

Peru needs many things, but No 1 at the top of the list is viable businesses which make money, employ people, and increase the available wealth. Tourism is renewable, resource-light and, in cases where it's operated by a local business, involves direct transfer of wealth to ordinary people in a developing country. Which is something that no rock concert will achieve.

Categories: Peru, development aid

And as if to Mock Me

Yesterday's Dominion Post had *another* front page picture of Dancing with the Stars "stars". The Stuff website also had an article posted about the results of the show. Who's paying them? I know Rupert Murdoch owns The DP and Stuff, but why should they be slavishly promoting a TVNZ show?? He doesn't own TVNZ too...does he?

Yes, I know it was Very Popular, but surely all 700,000 people who remotely cared, actually watched the show. How can they possibly justify presenting it as a news item when it has no status as an event in dancing or any other field?

For someone who didn't watch the show, I've learned quite a lot about it. According to a work colleague, his teenage daughter blew the family text-messaging budget during the show. "She sent *ten* texts!" he said. Viewers could vote for their favourite star; obviously there was no limit on how many times, since the broadcaster was presumably quite happy to collect part of the revenue. It must be part of fulfilling their charter obligations to teach young New Zealanders about democracy.

Apparently my colleague's daughter had to vote that many times to help shut out a vaguely villainous Shortland Street actor, who committed the crime of strutting around with a bare chest (Ew! Show off!). You can see how they plotted it. The eventual winner was Norm Hewitt, a former All Black hooker (who was mostly a reserve to Sean Fitzpatrick during his playing career). The good old solid, humble Kiwi bloke had the crowd on his side to beat the smarmy tosser in tight pants.

In the lead up to Sunday's final, they even got Helen Clark and Don Brash to opine on their favourite stars, and the two--ever desperate to appear to have the common touch--readily obliged. "I'm with Norm" I believe was the essence of Helen's quote (this is the same guy who Ruth Dyson said was a prat for playing on with a broken arm during an important game; she said it set a bad example for young people with injuries. A week later she copped even more public scorn than could be expected when she was done DIC, and politicians learned their lesson --don't knock the tough bloke). Man, talk about bread and circuses.

Why I Hate Dancing with the Stars

Sometimes you just have to give in to your irrational prejudices and let yourself loathe. As the saying goes, moderation in all things, including being reasonable.

The source of my spleen in this case is the popular TV show Dancing with the Stars. I can't stand it. And, like the Christian community trying to censor The Last Temptation of Christ, I haven't actually taken the trouble to watch it.

From what I can gather, it's a real-time reality TV show in which New Zealanders with some kind of celebrity status compete, performing choreographed dance routines which are scored by a panel of judges. Some are eliminated each episode, and we'll eventually get an overall winner. It's a version of a show which has been successful in other countries, beginning (I think) in Britain.

So far, so unobjectionable. I like dancing, both doing and watching it. I caught a performance of salsa a while back in a club in Cordoba, Argentina, which was some of the most mesmerising and inspiring entertainment I'd seen in a long time. I haven't watched a lot of competitive ballroom stuff, but am something of a fan of Winter Olympics-style ice dancing. Right now I'm pretty busy, so a show on competitive dancing is something that I would possibly watch if I was already in front of the TV, but would probably skip for other priorities.

If dancing is fine, the "with the stars" bit does seriously irritate me. Why is it the involvement of two-bit celebrities which makes the concept a goer? Why is it more compelling viewing becasue it involves a former reserve All Black hooker or a dilettante politican? In a celebrity-addled world, New Zealand is an extreme case, if only because our ubiquitous "stars" usually haven't even done much that's notable, apart from selling stories on their personal lives to the Womens' Weekly. They're endlessly recycled in the name of "entertainment", and I'd rather see (much) less of them, not more.

That's enough to produce an aversion to watching the show. But I wouldn't mind too much if it just stayed where it belongs, which is on TV in its assigned timeslot. What triggers the real simmering resentment is Dancing with the Stars' intrusion into every area of the public discourse. The overheard watercooler conversations at work can't be helped. But I can hardly pick up a newspaper, read a local magazine, or watch the TV news without being ambushed with an item about the show.

Now, when a TV channel runs a "news" item about a show on that same channel, in my view its news programme instantly loses credibility. But you can at least understand their self-promoting motivation for doing so. When a newspaper like the Dominion Post runs articles on a shows' "stars" or, as it did on Saturday, plasters them over the front page, it has no excuse but laziness and sycophancy.

Worse, a pub quiz in which I competed last Thursday included a question on Dancing with the Stars, a very specific question about who had been eliminated during a particular episode. You had to have watched that episode to answer the question. I was appalled that the content of a reality TV show could be considered "general knowledge". "This is a contrived media creation of no importance to history or culture!", I felt like shouting (fortunately, Jeremy was able to answer the question and help ensure our team's crushing victory).

Then this morning my flatmate Venessa was talking to her mother in Christchurch and had the speakerphone switched on. "Are you watching that show Dancing with the Stars?" asked her mother. Venessa replied that she wasn't (actually, at the moment we don't have a TV). "Oh, you should" said her mother. "It's really gripping".

Now, did I imagine it, or was there almost a moral weight to the "should" pronounced by Venessa's mother? There's something almost totalitarian about the grip of the media monopolies on our country's tiny fishbowl of of a public space. For me, there was a hint of the "did you watch our Beloved Leader's speech?" about the tone of Venessa's mother's question.

I am of course overreacting. My criticisms are unreasonable and disproportionate. People love the show; apparently about 700,000 viewers tune in each week. My contempt for the concept is elitist and anti-democratic. The audience likes the celebrity element because the contestants are familar to them and can be identified with; it adds to the drama of the competition.

The rest of the media are just reflecting the fact that the show is an immensely popular phenomenon - they print articles or show pieces on the "stars" because it's what people are interested in. And the poor quizmaster can't be blamed for putting in a question about what seems a current hot topic, nor Venessa's mother for recommending something she genuinely enjoys.

All of these points are undisputed. I do , however, reserve the right to go on feeling unreasonable antipathy towards Dancing with the Stars as long as it continues to intrude uninvited into my consciousness.

Scientists Discover Love to Be Transcendental Union of Two Human Souls

Leading evolutionary psychologists and neurobiologists are beginning to converge in their efforts to understand the mechanisms responsible for the human experience of romantic love. As science unravels what was previously a mysterious phenomenon, evidence increasingly points to the theory that love is the miraculous transcendental union of two star-crossed souls.

Renowned evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, author of The Selfish Gene, is one who is putting his intellectual weight behind the theory. “My original view was that love developed as an adaptive strategy in which certain genes inclined individuals to form mutually altruistic pair-bond relationships to raise their offspring, thus increasing the chances of the genes' further propagation” admits Dawkins. “But there are now compelling reasons to believe that romantic coupling in homo sapiens is a magical gift from heaven, ordained only by the stars”.

Dawkins says scientific advances reveal the naivety of what he calls “traditional folk beliefs” about romantic love. Take the moment when you stare transfixed into your lover’s eyes, for example. While you might think your brain is simply awash with post-coital dopamine, science tells us that you are actually experiencing the first spark of an invisible eternal flame, burning you up from within.

Racing pulse and butterflies in the stomach? What might appear to be the products of a blind biological imperative to procreate are now thought to be the first stirrings of a heavenly tempest, carrying you and your lover away on the wings of passion. “It's a force from above”, says Dawkins.

Working at the cellular level, neurobiologists are probing the chemical structures underlying the romantic experience. Professor Jane Fisher of Cambridge University says the neurochemistry of in-love human subjects differs from what had been predicted by previous studies of coupling in voles and fruit bats: “ Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs” she explains. “Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers' eyes. Being vexed, a sea nourished with lovers' tears. What is it else? A madness most discreet, a choking gall and a preserving sweet”.

Findings suggesting the transcendental nature of love have been supported by the physics community, with some physicists saying it demonstrates “spooky action at a distance”. In trials conducted at Imperial College, London, lovers were found to be joined by ties stronger than any chains, bonds which defy time and space. “Their hearts are actually connected by invisible strings”, says one researcher.

The process by which people fall in love is also beginning to fall under the purview of science. It is thought that microscopic agents known as Currently Unidentified Passion-Inducing Demonites (CUPIDs) are responsible for love-specific emotions. Researchers think that CUPIDs release tiny darts, which pass through the affected individual’s eyes - what scientists term “the windows to the soul”. After entering the blood stream, the CUPIDs’ darts eventually lodge in the heart, “probably somewhere around the left ventricle”, according to Professor Fisher

While increasingly well-understood at a theoretical level, this process is difficult to observe, says James Larsen, a postdoctoral research fellow specialising in romantic neuropsychology. “Once in a while, two people meet. Seemingly no reason, they just pass on the street. Suddenly it showers, there's flowers everywhere, who can explain, the thunder and rain, but there's something in the air”, he says. “You have no idea how many rolls of film we’ve used up trying to capture that sequence of events”.

Where science goes, technology is hot on its heels. With new breakthroughs in the understanding of love’s miraculous nature, pharmaceutical companies are looking at the possible development of potions, charms and elixirs to address love-related medical conditions.

Global pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline has already applied for patent rights to a formula which it is calling Love Potion Number 4. According to a company spokesperson, the potion is the “latest iteration in a series of stardust-based love elixir technologies designed to improve the user's romantic outcomes”. She says the company will continue to develop new, upgraded potions to help consumers realise their heart’s destiny.

Overpopulation

My workmates are pleasant and intelligent people who mean well. But I think I'm going to scream the next time someone talks about "populating" something.

Example #1: "OK, so we just have to finalise these templates, then we can populate them".

What's wrong with "fill them in"?? It even has fewer syllables, for crying out loud.

Example #2: "Once we've established the role of the various workgroups, we can start populating them".

What they mean here is "decide who's going to be in them". Ok, so this at least takes longer to say. But "populate" still makes me cringe, because it sounds like we're going to have to personally spawn all the workgroup members. Either that or produce a clone army grown in test tubes...

New pieces of jargon seem to arrive in Corporatese via particular technical disciplines (I think this one may come from statistics?) where existing words or expressions are used in new, but fairly limited and precise ways, to describe things or events peculiar to that discipline.

Once it migrates into the general idiom, the jargon tends to quickly lose any metaphorical elegance or precision it might originally have had, and pretty soon people are saying it just because they think it sounds cool and techy.

he worst offenders are often generalist, analyst or managerial types; people who actually work in a technical field tend to distinguish between talking about technical things (where they use their respective jargon) and talking about the wider world (where they can talk normally). Generalists, on the other hand, often feel they have to invent their own smokescreen of techy-talk to maintain their status in a technocratic world. Hence my colleagues wildly "populating" everything.

Something I've noticed in my line of work, is that when we get somebody in to help us from "the sector"(i.e. the outside world), they will often inspire trust and confidence to the extent that they slip into the same jargon we use.

So, if somebody insists on speaking plain English the whole time, you worry: are they independent enough? Will they end up just pushing their own barrow? Whereas I was recently at a meeting with someone from "the sector" who has just been appointed to quite an important role here. He moved his hands round in circles and talked about "overarching structures", and everyone had warm little smiles, because they knew he was going to be ok.

Must go. I have to work on my engagement with key sector stakeholders.

Colder in than out

The other morning as I was heading out the door the TV was on, and I happened to catch part of what seemed to be a "focus on energy & heating issues for the winter" segment on breakfast television .

There was a live feed to a flat of four (male) engineering students in Riccarton, Christchurch. Three of them were sitting on a couch huddled under a worn tartan blanket, while the fourth was lying by the couch under a winterweight sleeping bag, wearing an "EnSoc" woolly hat. The blond, fortyish woman presenting from the Auckland studio proceeded to interview them in an extraordinarily patronising manner.

One of the guys sitting on the couch explained that the house was 97 years old; it had been a student flat for 33 years. Sometimes, he noted, it was "colder inside than out" (in old ChCh flats, a true cliche).

"Sounds re-volting" grimaced the presenter. "Well, it's not really revolting" corrected one of the students. "It's just cold".
"Oh yes" said the presenter. "And I'm sure you're all just lovely to live with".

Now, I probably wouldn't ever have wanted to live in a flat with four engineering students either, but at this point I started to get offended on their behalf. The presenter (who is she, someone?) knew nothing about them, and was supposed to be interviewing them about the struggle to stay warm, not making snide digs with her supercilious Ponsonby-cafe-admiring-the-decor manner. Was she just an arrogant bitch, I wondered, or was she getting flustered talking to four strapping young chaps huddled under a blanket, a bit guache in her attempts to flirt?

The most talkative of the students went on to explain that they had an open fire, and things weren't too bad when they could get it going, but firewood was a bit expensive. "Though we did go out west the other night and, hee hee, liberate some firewood" he said.
"And of course, now in Christchurch" (which she pronounced rather like "Uzbekistan") "there are restrictions on burning in open fires, aren't there" said the presenter. One of the students explained that there were in fact restrictions on putting open fires in new houses.
"So why don't you just buy a heater?" she asked.
"Hmmm, can't really afford the electricity" said one student. "Probably can't afford the heater either" added another.

Before ending the interview, the presenter spotted the weathered fabric of the tartan blanket covering the three on the couch. "That blanket has holes in it" she clucked. "Don't your mothers take care of you?".

Touche. There you have, in a nutshell, much of what I detest about TVNZ and its lumbering, state-corporate, mother-of-the-nation arrogance. Insulated both from real public service requirements and genuine competition, it still seems trapped in an alternate universe where you don't have to respect people's intelligence. May CanWest continue to eat into the market share; in my view the success of TV3 and C4 - though it may have something to do with "targeting the youth market" - is definitely linked to a greater tendency to treat the viewer as an intelligent human being.

I could go on. But this post is not really about the severely irritating presenter or her ilk, so much as the content of the piece, and how it links back to NZ energy issues. How can it be, that in a supposed first-world country, people still can't afford to stay warm in winter?

I froze through ChCh winters as a student, and it seems this continues to be a rite of passage. Which is probably ok if you're young and can go to the university library to stay warm. When the presenter asked if the engineering students experienced any health problems as a result of their glacial environment, they replied (I quote) "Nah, not really". She was able to stay on topic long enough to note that it might be different if you're old or have young kids.

This is still considered par for the course. Government and electricity company websites offer tinkering-round-the-edges recommendations about putting in insulation (bit difficult if you're renting), stuffing draughty cracks, and not heating rooms you're not in. Huddling in front of a three-bar heater in the living room continues to be the norm.

Meanwhile, in Britain, a country of 60 million people and no major hydroelectric schemes, buildings are routinely centrally heated at low cost and are toasty warm during the winter. How do they manage this? Well, you might answer, they were lucky enough to discover a huge pool of gas sitting just off their coastline. Yes, but so did we...and it's only now, when it's running out, that we're seeing household use of gas promoted.

What have we been using it for in the meantime? BBQs, the odd LPG-converted vehicle, some gas heaters. But mostly, it's been burnt in power plants to create electricity. Am I missing the point, or wouldn't it have been smarter to use it directly?

Debates on energy supply continue to use as a measuring stick the possibility of the lights going out . If we can just avoid that, the assumption is, we'll be ok. I would suggest a more ambitious benchmark: People being able to afford to heat their houses.

Here's the comparison: in London Simon and Jill had a combined gas and electricity bill for the last quarter of about 100 pounds, which included as much heat as they needed to pump out during the cold northern winter to keep their whole apartment toasty warm (and dry all their laundry in the process). By contrast, in my flat we've just got a bill of $130 for a month (i.e. $390 a quarter) which - I swear - does not include *any* space heating. So even on straight exchange rates we're paying about 25% more, before you factor in the much higher incomes in the UK. And that's *without* trying to heat anything.

We all know that there are health impacts of sitting round shivering for months at a time. Warm people are healthier, more productive and need to eat less. So why don't we stop faffing around with stuffing towels into cracks and raise our expectations?

Loving the Bomb

Is nuclear power, once again, the way ahead? In doing some reading on energy questions, I concluded that it might be - and then started finding the same view popping up in a lot of places.

A dog-eared 2003 North and South I picked up while on the cycle at the gym had an unusually interesting story on the nuclear power station planned for New Zealand in the 1970s. The history and abandonment of these plans is also discussed in a recent article in the Salient, which makes a cogent case for nuclear power to again be considered for New Zealand. In Britain, pre-election debate stimulated considerable discussion of energy issues, and the New Statesman recently claimed to have uncovered a pro-nuclear industry conspiracy.

Whether on a world or local scale, there's a straightforward reason why nuclear power might be gradually shedding its dire image. As a sober majority start acknowledging the necessity of developing renewable energy sources, nuclear is the only (semi-) renewable that might plausibly provide a significant proportion of our energy in the near future.

For doubters, it's worth clarifying the rationale for pursuing renewable energy. On the one hand, there's the much-polemicized issue of global warming. There are some reasonable doubts about the scale or impact of global warming, and the image of the Earth as a potential fireball dragging a carbon-fulled vapor trail through space is a stupid exaggeration. But the scientific consensus (which we laypeople tend to respect on most other matters) is that the planet is probably warming up, this probably has something to do with carbon dioxide emissions, and this is probably going to create more harm than benefit in the longer term. Therefore, it makes sense to look for alternatives to fossil fuels.

On the other hand, fossil fuels themselves are eventually going to get scarcer. Oil, which produces 40% of the world's energy, may reach peak production as early as next year. It will keep going for a while yet, but will gradually get more expensive, especially as demand continues to increase. This actually alarms me more than global warming, as it's not clear what alternative source of fuel there is for the ships, planes and trucks on which our economies depend. But the least we can do is try and leave the oil for these and other important purposes like plastics and pharmaceuticals, while getting our industrial and household energy elsewhere.

Some environmentalists claim that the solution is a combination of greater energy efficiency plus "green" energy sources such as sun, wind and wave power. All of these are important, but won't do the trick alone. Energy efficiencies might slow the increase in energy use, but in a growing economy (to which I'll return later) won't stop it. Of the green technologies, the most well developed - wind power - is already running into limitations. Both in Britain and New Zealand, even wind power proponents estimate that it could produce a maximum of 10-20% of national electricity supply.

And in both countries schemes to expand wind energy have faced opposition. In rural Auckland and Britain's Lake District, planned windmill farms have been blocked by locals as "blots on the landscape".

I digress here for a moment. The opposition to windmills on aesthetic grounds is partly a failure of imagination; people just don't like what they're not used to. I'm not saying they should cover the entire countryside, but they are sleek, futuristic machines which can be attractive in some settings. I remember being excited to see the windmill farms near Palm Springs in California when I passed through there a few years back; they looked romantically space-age against the desert. Closer to home, most people like the single wind turbine up near where I used to live on Brooklyn Hill in Wellington.

How much uglier are power pylons, which people usually don't even notice? Or regular telegraph-style poles? Or roads, which nowadays people mostly view as part of the natural landscape. Driving through New Zealand's North Island, for me the ugliest technology of all is the endless, dreary, rolling-country sheep and cattle farm, with its fences and deforested hills. But this supports our cloven-hoofed animals, who pay all our bills, so must be tolerated (take a look at these pictures; do the windmills enhance or detract from the landscape?) .

Returning to the point, wind power is limited at present. To provide enough power for a country like Britain, you would have to cover most of its landmass in windmills. Solar is worse; while it will be great to promote the integration of solar panels into new houses (where are the tax breaks, Michael Cullen?), whole deserts worth of panels would be needed to produce major amounts of electricity. And while I fondly imagine the days when fleets of offshore turbines combine wind and wave power to bring light to our cities, by the time that technology really gets going we'll all be buzzing around at skyscraper height in pod-cars like Anakin Skywalker.

Some environmentalists, like the Guardian's George Monbiot, purse their lips and say that we just have to use less energy. We can't expect to keep on with growing populations and growing economies, because Mother Earth has got a finite store of resources to give us, and is already under too much stress.

This simplistic view effectively thumbs its nose at the entire developing world. Huge chunks of the world's population continue to live in poverty - the single biggest challenge facing the world today. Everyone has the right to a decent standard of living. History suggests the only thing that will achieve this is development, meaning economic growth.

And developing-country economies won't grow in isolation. In addition to investment and development aid, they need freer and fairer trade - in other words, for other countries to buy their stuff. It would be nice to imagine we could just "share out" the world's wealth a bit better, but there's no known mechanism for doing this directly. Thoroughgoing socialism hasn't worked within societies; there's even less chance it could work on a global scale.

So a globalised world economy which continues to grow is a necessary prerequisite for improving people's lives. We are going to have to generate and use more energy. Which is where nuclear power comes in. Aside from oil and gas, it's the only currently available way of generating large amounts of energy in a relatively efficient way. There are also reasons to think that the risks and side effects aren't as bad as are sometimes made out. I defer to the Salient article to make the technical case, but even Monbiot is now admitting that it may not be as bad as all that.

It's likely to be difficult to advance this debate in New Zealand. We'll see a lot of emotive reaction and a reluctance to consider the issue with an open mind. People see "nuclear-free New Zealand" as a badge of identity. Though surely, the refusal to accept American warships in the 80s was more a stroppy assertion of foreign policy independence than a reasoned rejection of nuclear technology. Wasn't it?

Either way, we'll have to face up to the questions sooner or later, as our demand for energy continues to increase. We've run out of rivers to dam, our natural gas is dwindling, and wind will only go so far. For many people, the key ibjection to nuclear power is the possibility of a catastrophic accident which produces toxic pollution and harms the environment. It's worth remembering that our other option is burning lots of coal - which definitely will produce toxic pollution.

The Way of the Future

In response to an opinion piece claiming that the late 2oth/early 21st century is producing few new ideas and innovations, the Observer blog listed:

"The top 10 new movements not yet invented but sure to rock the world in the 21st Century."

After considering their list, I have some further suggestions of political ideologies, scientific advances and cultural movements likely to be important in the 21st century:

Mediarology - the prediction of weather patterns through careful and systematic study of the stars and the celebrities

GUT (Grand Unified Theory) - the attempt to discover the quintessential acronym from which all other acronyms derive

Msiism - the belief that all truth and knowledge is revealed through palindromes

Human Lefts Movement - a movement against the systematic right-handed bias in ideology and language. Examples of leftedist linguistic alternatives: "We have the left to protest"; "S/he showed outstanding moral leftitude"; "S/he adleftly manouvered the car into the parking space"

Antinuclear Physics - scientific and technological field devoted to the development of clean, green atoms and other elementary particles

Paleotherapy - a new medical treatment involving being buried beneath the Earth's surface and subjected to intense heat and pressure. Cures muscle and joint problems

Superlativism - the greatest, most incredible, most important and groundbreaking theory ever!

Who can think of any more?

The Daily Minion previews...Hurricanes vs. Crusaders

The Hurricanes will be faced with a big ask as they take on the Crusaders in tonight's Super 12 semi-final. The going will be difficult, and it won't be easy. But if they remain focused, and find some way to negate the Crusaders' superiority on the scoreboard, they have a good chance of coming away with a positive result. Scoring more points than the opposition is usually key in these knockout contests, and if the Hurricanes can remain ahead for the whole game, an upset could be possible.

Hurricanes captain Tana Umaga says that, while he doesn't want to seem overconfident, he's quietly confident going into tonight's match. "We know we need to play well. But the boys are focused on what they need to do, and if we achieve our objectives, we're quietly confident of a good outcome", he says.

Crusaders halfback Justin Marshall says the Crusaders will have the utmost respect for their opposition tonight. "The Hurricanes are definitely a tougher team than most" he admits. "Though, having said that, any team is tougher than most".

Both Umaga and Marshall agree that the team that plays for the full 80 minutes will be more likely to come out on top. "To win the game you need to have the ball - and that means being on the field", explains Marshall. "The side that can achieve that consistently will have the advantage".

For the young, inexperienced members of the Hurricanes, this is their first Super 12 semi-final, with the added pressure that it's their first experience of the big time. That could be a factor if the game heats up, turns into a pressure cooker, or goes down to the wire.

A lot of pre-game speculation has centred on the opposing teams' lineups, but this has been mainly just speculation. Hurricanes flanker Jerry Collins is still recovering from an arm amputation suffered at training last week, but coach Colin Cooper would not rule out him making an appearance from the substitutes' bench.

Tactics have been another hotly-debated area ahead of the match. Cooper insisted that the whiteout blizzard conditions predicted for Christchurch tonight would not have an undue effect on the Hurricane's attacking philosophy. "We'll be looking to play to the conditions" he revealed. "But we won't be letting them affect our style of play".

Almost 30,000 fans are expected at Jade Stadium for tonight's big match, and if things turn out as many pundits are predicting, they'll see a game of rugby being played.

Further Investigation Reveals That...

In Wellington a business has to apply for a licence to use part of a footpath area. One of the requirements is to have public liability insurance of at least $1 million. If alcohol will be served, a further application is required to include the outside area in the premise's liquor licence.

In central Wellington, there is the added snag of Consolidated Bylaw 23.2.1, which prohibits the consumption of liquor in public areas of the central city between 8pm and 6am, Friday and Saturday. The city Council's information on applying for use of footpaths warns that, without the appropriate licence, "your patrons may be in breach" of this prohibition.

The council's "On the Town" food safety and environment newsletter for December 2004 - sounding rather like an Indian mother advising her daughter how to catch a husband - provides some insight into its expectations:

Providing a good look

With summer officially here, we will see a lot more outdoor dining on our streets...

...It is important for the image of both your business and Wellington City that these outside dining areas are kept in a clean and inviting state. The Council’s Environmental Health Team often field complaints from the public about the untidy condition of outside dining areas, unkempt tables and messy surroundings. Customers will get an impression of your business by the way the outside area looks. You should ensure that you clear tables promptly and keep the area around tables and chairs clean and tidy. Making your business attractive helps keep the city attractive.

In another section, more detail is provided about who can serve drinks outside:

Pavement permissions in the liquor ban area

A number of premises have been granted permission by the District Licensing Agency to have tables and chairs on the pavement. This enables customers to enjoy alfresco dining as well as accommodating smokers when the Smokefree legislation comes into force on Friday 10 December 2004. There are a few monitoring issues that should be considered while your patrons are utilising the pavement area.
These include:

• which staff are responsible for ensuring that persons are not intoxicated or minors are not being supplied liquor in the outdoor area


• whether processes are in place to ensure that dirty dishes and glasses are cleared regularly and any rubbish such as serviettes, cigarettes and dirty ashtrays are removed so they don’t litter the footpath and street


• whether signs or information are available to customers using the pavement area to ensure that liquor is not
  removed from that area other than going into the actual premises.

The last point is particularly important because of the liquor ban that is in force in the central city on Friday and Saturday nights until 6am the following day. The approved outdoor area does not contravene the liquor ban area, however, should your area suddenly increase in size without approval or customers leave the area with their drinks, then this would be a breach of the ban.

Aha! So now we have some insight into what rules Kitty O'Sheas might have fallen foul of. You're left wondering whether there were not "processes in place" to clear dishes and glasses, leaving the area "unkempt" and "messy" (though this pretty much describes Courtenay Pl on a Friday anyway). Or did their area "suddenly increase in size without approval"? A brief local distortion in space-time, perhaps, that hadn't been vetted by the council's envorinmental safety team?

Either way, you can now be unkempt, drunk, messy, disorderly, suddenly increase in size, or all of these simultaneously, and you can even do it outside Kitty O' Sheas. You just can't sit down quietly at a table with your drink.

Land of the free...?

But if you assume that excessive regulation and the interfering/nannying/etc state is a recent phenomenon, it's instructive to read about these 19th-century laws which have survived on the statute books in various states of the U.S.

For example, in Vermont, women must obtain written permission from their husbands to wear false teeth. In Montana, it's illegal for unmarried women to go fishing alone. And...in Texas, it's illegal to take more than three sips of beer at a time while standing.

Ahhh, so that's where the practice of lying down drinking out of the hose from the beer keg came from...

Anti-social Outdoor Furniture...

Last night Simon Doherty and I went to have a drink at Kitty O'Sheas on Courtenay Place, one of the few Wellington bars which has remained more or less its dingy, democratic self over the years. It's always been a good place to sit and have a few pints of Guiness and argue verbosely about the possibility of a Kantian ethics or the author-character relationship in Martin Amis novels.

Going into the bar we noticed that the pavement outside the bar was empty; the sidewalk chairs and tables were missing. That seemed a little odd, but we didn't think anything further of it as it was a chilly evening anyway. We bought a couple of pints and, after a bit, it was time for a cigarette. This of course now means leaving the bar, and we were starting to walk out the door when the doorman blocked our way and said we couldn't take our drinks outside. The bar has apparently lost its licence for its outside area, which explained the lack of tables and chairs on the sidewalk.

We asked what had happened, and he shrugged. Apparently the bar had to reapply for that aspect of their licence, and it was denied because the outside seating area had reportedly been an "obstruction" or an "anoyance" to passers-by. We struggled to imagine how serious this could have been. The bar had seemingly not been guilty of any major offenses such as repeatedly serving under age drinkers or intoxicated people, or fomenting significant antisocial behaviour, since this should have jeopardised its principal licence.

Was it a question of overly jovial patrons hailing passers-by and making a nuisance of themselves? Again, it's hard to imagine how serious the problem could have been. Courtenay Place on a Friday is a colourful and seedy boardwalk of sloppily drunk people, at times a bit feral occasionally amusing, generally a little depressing. If you don't like it, you avoid it, which these days I mostly do. The part near the Cambridge Tce end where Kittys is located is probably a little more civilzed and adult than the other end; there are fewer teenagers, and Kittys itself tends to attract an elcectic crowd including a mix of international tourists. I struggle to see how people sitting at tables outside one of the more relaxed bars could be a threat or a disturbance amidst the wider ambience.

It also seems unlikely that obstructing the thoroughfare was an issue. Other bars and cafes in the same area have outdoor tables, and the tables at Kittys always left plenty of space for people to go through. If it was a problem, they could always have required the bar to move their tables, rather than banning them.

But, whatever the reason for the heavy-handed ruling, you now can't smoke inside and can't take your drink outside. The doorman , who initially said we would have to leave our drinks on the windowsill and "keep an eye on them" while we were outside, took pity on us and opened the large window. This meant we could sip from our drinks sitting on the windowsill (technically inside) while we had a cigarette in the fresh air.

It was a nice temporary solution, but we still left feeling depressed at the increasing encroachment of regulation which, in the name of the health and morality of the community, seems to be gradually eroding the few simple pleasures we're still permitted to indulge in.

Land of the Cloven-Hoofed Cow

The foot-and-mouth scare which panicked New Zealand yesterday is almost certainly a hoax, the Minister for Agriculture Jim Sutton assured the nation on TV last night. The Minister, strangling any unwary vowels and looking more like a a 70s bureaucrat than a contemporary politican (an endearing feature, I think), also reminded everyone that the disease is no threat to humans, only affecting "those with cloven hooves". In other words, various species of farm animals plus Satan, the Great Deceiver.

But the most telling point was the Minister's reminder that over 50% of New Zealand's export revenue comes from cloven-hoofed animals. Today I've seen claims that it accounts for up to 65%. This is somewhat chastening. Forget the film industry and Wellywood, adventure tourism and NZ Inc, wine, fruits and other niche crops, high-tech, the Knowledge Wave and the e-economy - it's sheep and cows wot pay the bills.

Sitting in their offices in Wellington and Auckland, urban New Zealanders like to kid themselves that they now live in a land of lattes and liberalism, Cafe Culture and clean-green Pacific Rim Fusion, avant garde paua-and-greenstone jewellery sold via the internet from a cottage in Takaka, $50 bottles of pinot noir squeezed out of Central Otago terroir, a kinder, gentler hip-hop washed by the warm Pacific and popular in Europe.

I'm sure I'm not the only one to wince slightly on being reminded that we all depend for our prosperity on blokes and blokesses who wander through the mud and drizzle in gumboots and swannis to hammer in fenceposts. At the end of the day, its still a land of cloven-hoofed animals. As people I met in Peru would say: "A lot of ganaderia, no?

Here's a Quiz:

In which English newspaper was the following the list of the most-read stories for the previous week? (try and guess without following the hyperlinks just yet).

1) European Cup quarter-finals: Juventus vs Liverpool
2) Archaeologist finds 'oldest porn statue'
3) Japan's virgin wives turn to sex volunteers
4) European Cup quarter-finals: Chelsea vs Bayern
5) Sea life 'killed by exploding star'
6) European Cup quarter-finals: Bayern vs Chelsea
7) Scientist calls for world DNA database
8) Daniel Craig picked for Bond
9) Howard refuses to sack candidate over doctored photo
10) Pope laid to rest

The answer is not The Sun or The Daily Mail, but the venerable Guardian Online. Just goes to show that, while we may prefer a higher tone, better writing, insightful analysis and a range of international perspectives, readers are still drawn to the same old topics as the tabloid-reading masses: football, sex, dramatised popular science and celebrity. The week's serious political scandal is down at number 9, and the Pope's funeral number 10 (though to be fair, that story may already have been getting old). The list fits almostperfectly with the online Sun's self-summary: "NEWS SPORT BIZARRE LIFE FUN TV"

It's worth noting that, while the Champions League quarter-final beat out the sex-related stories that week, the top-rating story for the *three* prior weeks was "Necrophiliac duck ruffles research feathers". This gem from the Guardian's science pages retained top spot long after the front-page link was removed; readers clicked through from the link in the top 10 list itself.

While it's not that surprising that what most grabs people's attention doesn't change much between low-brow and high-brow, what is interesting is that the list also looks a lot like the contents page of a lad's magazine. The topics are what are normally thought of as being classic "boy's stuff".

What's the explanation? Are there less females accessing the Guardian's pages? There's no evidence for that, nor reason to believe it likely. Restricted choice of subject? Hardly. While it's probably fair to say that the British tabloid media can be savagely misogynistic, the Guardian is full of intelligent material by for women. From moralistic Polly Toynbee to hip and snarky Zoe Williams, there's lots of good writing by women, and plenty of news and stories on things that women are interested in (I don't presume to define what these are, but the Guardian's got most topics covered off). Yet we never saw Andrea Dworkin's obituaries make it into the top 10 list.

Maybe the answer is that woman readers are more individual and have more subtle preferences. What they read covers a wide range of topics, so that no individual story collects that many "votes". In contrast, us blokes have short circuits in our forebrains, causing little light bulbs to sparkle whenever we see "Bayern vs. Chelsea" or "Japanese virgin wives".

Possibly. Or maybe we just all like the same stuff; despite their distinct and sometimes impenetrable approach to conversing in public, girls are interested in the same things we are. This could mean that Cosmopolitan, which I always assumed had a largely male readership, really is a women's magazine. Only maybe they need to put in more articles on football and exploding stars.

Excuse the boring, put-upon-middle-class tone of this post, but...

Is it my imagination, or have things in New Zealand got much more expensive while I was away?

I'd already thought I detected about a 20% increase in average rents when I was looking for flats. I know there's been a property price "boom" and I assumed that was the explanation. Though it was also possible that arriving just after the peak rush for rented accommodation - the start of the university year and new employment contracts - all the best deals were gone.

Recently I've also been taken aback by the cost of groceries. It seems that it's costing me $15-20 for a couple of meals' worth of goods. This is a supposed fruit and vegetable-producing country, which trades freely with another nearby one (Australia), yet almost all the fresh stuff at the supermarket is prohibitively priced. $8.00 a kilo for peppers! $3.75 for a single avocado! $6.00 for a small bag of kumara! Not to mention things which don't look particularly exotic, but have apparently now moved into that class, such as asparagus (currently $19.90/kilo) and eggplant ($12.00/kilo).

I've considered the possibility that I live in an expensive area in an expensive city and shop at an expensive supermarket. For prices, New World Thorndon may even shade its compatriot New World Wakefield St (Mt Vic/Oriental Bay), which even in 2003 was known affectionately as "the most expensive supermarket in the world". But anecdotal reporting (i.e. my flatmate) suggests that in rural towns such as Greymouth and Palmerston North prices are even higher.

And I've now collected documentary evidence. A pint of Speights at the Backbencher was $4.00 before I left; now it's $5.00. An espresso coffee had a base price of $2.50. Now it's $3.00 across the board. Returning to the vegetable bins at Thorndon New World, in the corner directly opposite the main entrance there are still helpfully chopped-up "heads" of broccoli (the right size for single, urban people). I recall clearly that they used to be $1.99; now they're $2.25.

Has there really been 12-25% inflation in the year I've been away? I've factored in the possibility of higher oil prices knocking up transport costs - but what about the New Zealand dollar, which has got steadily stronger? It was always used as an excuse for higher fuel prices when it was weak; shouldn't the converse be true now?

There's the fact that I've missed a performance review round and any possible salary increment. But I still earn a decent wage, and have no major responsibilities apart from chipping away at my student loan and trying to start saving again. I wonder what those people who have kids or a mortgage (a first one, rather than a speculative second or third) think of things at the moment? Certainly, maintaing a healthy, varied diet, which we're all encouraged to do, could be one of the things to get squeezed out. You'd have to cook pretty plainly, or with innovation, to beat the $4.00 it costs (even in Thorndon) for a fish and a scoop of chips.

And it's not that I've just been in South America. When I stayed in London recently, I thought that food and groceries were surprisingly affordable. Simon and Jill confirm that they are significantly cheaper than in New Zealand, especially when purchasing power parity is accounted for. Something has changed there - when I lived in London in the late 90s it still seemed more expensive than NZ. I can recall laughing at the 30p it cost per apple in Sainsburys (Cromwell Rd), when you could get a 2-kilo box of apples at the orchard gate in NZ for the equivalent of 30p.

When I went from London to the U.S. in 1999, the lower cost of living was striking. I shared an apartment in South Beach, Miami, with Cecilia and an Australian guy called Todd, and we shopped at the supermarket down the road. For a collective $100 we packed our fridge to bursting point with (among other things) beer, ice cream and legs of meat. We (mainly Todd, actually) cooked sumptous dinners and stuffed ourselves, having to lie down afterwards, perspiring quietly in the South Florida heat.

As a country, New Zealand is obviously never going to be as rich as the U.S. , and we can't afford to pay our farmers huge subsidies to keep prices at rock-bottom. But in a primarily agricultural nation, the question of why basic goods are so expensive warrants further investigation. You also have to start questioning the value of so-called economic growth based on inflated house prices, when its chief effect is to raise living costs for the average person.