Thursday, October 27, 2005

Here's a Few Things

Josh writes:

OK, so the thing about the cats was bollocks, but this appears to be legitimate: Cows make fuel for biogas train. It's from the BBC and everything:

Still bubbling and burping, and carpeting you with an acrid stench, came the organs and the fat and the guts. Enough, from one cow, to get you about 4km (2.5 miles) on the train.

A tanker collects the organic sludge and makes the short journey to the biogas factory, where the stinking fuel is stewed gently for a month, before the methane can be drawn off.

There's a video, too, which should only be disturbing to those of you hypocritical enough to not want to think about where that last steak came from.


Speaking of hypocrisy, just when you thought Winston Peters as Foreign Affairs Minister was the biggest joke Parliament could play on us, out comes National, assigning Wayne Mapp the position of "Political Correctness Eradicator".

Say it with me folks: Political Correctness doesn't exist. It used to, back when the words meant something. For a while it was something good, then it went a bit overboard, but now all it seems to be is a generic catchphrase, such that "political correctness" now means little more than "left-wing stuff I don't like". Yet here's the National party, sending one of its own off on a quest to slay this mythical beast -- isn't this the party that got all up in arms about people treating Taniwha seriously? Nevertheless, I wish Mr. Mapp well as he departs. Just watch out -- it might be a Boojum...


And finally: Aaahh, that feels sooo good. Surprised it took someone that long to come up with it.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I agree with Josh that PC is a meaningless rhetorical term.

If people disagree with something, they should say *why* they disagree with it, not just call it names. Calling things names is what we did in Primary School...

The trick we need to learn is how to be 'tolerant' but also have robust debate and disagreement. Sadly I think New Zealanders' form of politeness makes this more difficult for us than other cultures. As a result, we often don't raise issues we are uncomfortable with, and thus resolve them - instead we let them fester until they become a running sore...