So, what messages is this law firm sending by having such an expansive “reception area”?
Looks expensive, huh? (It’s just me sitting here at the moment.)
– P
Oh dear. Is the N.S.A. out of control? (Hint: Yes, I think so.)
Click to read (and weep) at Der Spiegel. Crikey dick!
In Der Spiegel …
The United States’ National Security Agency intelligence-gathering operation is capable of accessing user data from smart phones from all leading manufacturers. Top secret NSA documents that SPIEGEL has seen explicitly note that the NSA can tap into such information on Apple iPhones, BlackBerry devices and Google’s Android mobile operating system.
The documents state that it is possible for the NSA to tap most sensitive data held on these smart phones, including contact lists, SMS traffic, notes and location information about where a user has been.
see: Privacy Scandal: NSA Can Spy on Smart Phone Data
And special honourable mention for New Zealand in How the N.S.A. Cracked the Web in The New Yorker magazine …
Continue reading →
Greetings, gentle reader
I’m not snooping, I promise… but I love seeing what others are (anonymously) reading on my blog (see the ‘Recently Viewed’ list in the sidebar on the right) … today someone(s) read my post about the uncomfortable-for-both-parties situation where police powers are applied to sickly white liberals (er, like moi) discussed in Put yourself in her shoes.
Interestink! – P
Perception vs reality
He wasn’t the first to say it, but he was the first I heard say it, and he said it with such passion.
Then Prime Minister1 Geoffrey Palmer, whose book Unbridled Power? was one of the texts I’d studied in politics at Victoria University, said, with feeling:
“In politics, perception becomes reality.” — The Right Honourable Sir Geoffrey Palmer
Visit the Chocolate Frog cafe in Miramar for this and other fine self-aware slogans. Then sit on them. Quote attributed to Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. (Pic by Peter Aranyi.)
He was, of course, quite correct.
The world of ‘spin‘, and ‘framing‘ and all the other Hollow Men-esque voodoo arts ‘activists’ like local yokel Matthew Hooton (and offshore, the mythical Crosby|Textor et al) connive to practice and promulgate on unsuspecting voters, and how various ‘perceptions’ are created, nurtured, then trafficked, can be fascinating to watch. If you’ve got a strong stomach.
I spotted this chair (‘A lie told often enough becomes the truth’) in the Chocolate Frog cafe in Wellington last week when my son and I met my beautiful (really) niece for a birthday morning tea. Obviously, it caught my eye. Hence the pic.
Given the frenzy of spin and propaganda swirling around the NZ Labour Party leadership ‘contest’ — especially that from people like Matthew who, really? Remind me why we’re asking him for a comment again? Exactly? — I had to chuckle.
– P
1 8 August 1989 – 4 September 1990
Not that I’m remotely communist (‘not a communist bone in my body’ etc, etc) but another apposite Lenin quote, given NZ’s recent lurch towards a surveillance state (thanks to John Key’s GCSB Bill) is this over-the-top, revolutionary one:
“While the State exists, there can be no freedom.
When there is freedom there will be no State.” — Lenin
What does it even mean to say that in the 21st Century? Aren’t nation states here for good? A permanent feature?
Even Islamic states are states … mind you, they’re not demonstrating a lot of commitment to ‘individual freedom’, as I see it.
Our American cousins and their approach to the English language
I love words.
Here’s the difference between the Oxford ‘British English’ Dictionary entry for the word antithetical* and Oxford’s ‘US English’ entry (arrowed):
Oxford British & World English
Oxford American English
Quirky!
Of course, when I think about it, a word like ‘syllabification‘ simply had to exist — but I’d not encountered it. (Perhaps I’ve led a sheltered life.)
– P
* a word I used, unselfconsciously and without definition, in a post last night about the irrepressible urge to ‘share’ (i.e. break) confidences: Sharing secrets? Isn’t that kinda antithetical?
Sharing secrets? Isn’t that kinda antithetical?
I spotted this graphic in an All Things Digital article about Whisper: Why Should You Care About Whisper, the Secret-Sharing App That VCs Are Pouring Money Into?
And thought, yeah, it’s amazing how quickly ‘gossip’ (however you define that) gets around. If it’s a ‘secret’ people shouldn’t blab — but they do. There’s this irresistible urge to ‘share’…somehow, somewhere.
It’s like (as I’ve said before): Self-expression is the new black (said the blogger!)
Here’s another article about Whisper: Whisper shares information about your favorite subject: You. (LA Times)
Next big thing?
– P
See also: Sir Robert Muldoon: ‘Always On the Record’.
Update: Continue reading →
Good intent
I had my phone playing songs in alphabetical order on this morning’s loooong walk around the coast, thinking about aspects of online and public reputation … when this cool song, Good Intent by Kimbra (from her album Vows) played.
– P
PS Another version of the song here as a comment on my post Let a little air in, @BarnsleyBill.
“… serious criminal offences …” *
From ACT Party insider Simon Carr’s slender volume The Dark Arts of Politics…
In the end, despite attempts at distraction (or bluster) the evidence speaks for itself … and is often inescapable.
For my own part, I try to be a reasonable person, remaining open to negotiation where possible.
But only up to a point.
– P
* Yeah, right.
Oh zing!
Daring Fireball‘s John Gruber cherry-picks a review of Samsung’s ‘smart watch’ (for the full review, see: Samsung’s Galaxy Gear Watch) then sums up:
About the best you could expect from Samsung without having anything to copy from Apple: overpriced, ugly, laggy UI, terrible battery life, dubious utility.
Oh.
– P
Unspeakably good satire about a serious matter
Ben Uffindell of The Civilian blog is seen as our latest Bright Young Thing of political satire — and rightly so. With his delightful mimicry of the ‘voice’ of news reporting (much like The Onion, although he’ll perhaps be tiring of that comparison) Ben manages to produce satire that is so soaked in verisimilitude that the illusion is on occasions almost perfect.
Look at this example, prompted by the NZ Police’s recent three minute media conference declaring that yes, the GCSB actually did break the law by spying on NZ resident Kim Dotcom, but the government spies didn’t have “sufficient criminal intent” to be charged (!) … and it wasn’t (in the Police’s view) ‘in the public interest’ to prosecute anyone at the GCSB.
Um. Bokay … over to Ben:
Ponzi schemer won’t be sentenced as he didn’t intend to break law
The Wellington District Court has determined this afternoon that 63-year-old financial advisor David Ross won’t be sentenced for running a ponzi scheme that affected over a thousand people, as he did not mean to break the law, and only intended to “take everyone’s money.”
Despite pleading guilty to serious charges of account manipulation brought against him by the Financial Markets Authority and Serious Fraud Office, the court found that Ross only intended to “deliberately misrepresent numerous details about investors in his company with intention of securing investments on false premises, effectively stealing money from clients who unknowingly funded his hedonistic lifestyle of excess,” but at no time expressed any intention to violate New Zealand law. …
Read on at The Civilian
Memorable quotes
“Well, here’s another nice mess you’ve gotten me into!”
– Oliver Hardy, from the movie Sons of the Desert, 1933.
At least one member of this famous partnership had trouble with his fingers. (image: filmcriticsguild.blogspot.com – click)
Speak up to save a life. (It may be your own.)
Here’s the link to the It Can Wait documentary
Fighting fire with fire. It may not always be effective, but one can understand the urge.
Auckland Law Revue parody of Blurred Lines.
Entertaining and edgy. Good work.
– P
via @CaitinMoran
Update: according the the NZ Herald, the three women are: Adelaide Dunn, Olivia Lubbock and Zoe Ellwood. Excellent. (Note the beefcake doesn’t get a credit.)
Honourable
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him;
The evil that men do lives after them,
The good is oft interred with their bones,
So let it be with Caesar … The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answered it …
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest,
(For Brutus is an honourable man;
So are they all; all honourable men)
Come I to speak in Caesar’s funeral …
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man….
He hath brought many captives home to Rome,
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:
Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
You all did see that on the Lupercal
I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And, sure, he is an honourable man.
I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then to mourn for him?
O judgement! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason…. Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,
And I must pause till it come back to me.
— Mark Antony
from Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare
Act 3, Scene 2,
Groping for the truth
Why does a lie offend us?
image: nakedblogging.com (click)
Why is it that a lie — especially a lie to our face — vexes us so?
Our efforts to identify the veracity of a claim (sometimes a very basic claim), can be frustrated by liars and rogues. So much of our lives can be taken up with efforts to locate or verify the truth about something or someone.
And lies are told every day — about big issues and small. The expression, ‘seeking the truth’ has a real ring to it … but it ain’t easy.
Over the years, dealing with some professional con-artists and liars, in politics and in business, I have come to see there is no single tell-tale factor that will readily help you identify the liar. Except perhaps one (and even that is not totally reliable):
How they treat other people — particularly those who they perceive as of lower ‘status’ to them.
Arrogance is a HUGE indicator.
A bully is almost always a liar. (But not every liar is a bully! Far from it.)
In my observation, there often seems to be a sort of cognitive link (is that the right expression?) between excessive ego — however it’s expressed — and a lack of truthfulness.
The thought: ‘Those rules don’t apply to me’ has led many a narcissist or sociopath into deception.
Just a theory.
Any other ideas?
Re-posted from August 2009
