Something we can beat Australia at

NZ Has More Liquor Outlets Than Australia

NewsRoom.co.nz Agency Story at 11:54 AM, 07 Dec 2005

There are more places in New Zealand to purchase alcohol than there are in Australia, despite the fact that New Zealand only has one fifth Australia's population.

According to the Royal Australasian College of Physicians (RACP), there are 15,000 liquor outlets in New Zealand, while Australia has about 200 less.

RACP alcohol and drug consultant Ian Scott says New Zealanders aren't necessarily drinking more, but it is the way the drinking is done that is problematic, particularly binge drinking.

Dr Scott says the laws need to be revised and the RACP is calling for a new alcohol policy.

He says fines should be enforced on licensees who sell alcohol to those who are under-aged and there should be changes to the way liquor is marketed to young people.

Band name ad game

See how many band names you can spot in this Virgin ad. There's at least 20... but I've only managed 15 so far.

Virgin ad game

[Courtesy of Alpen]

"Are you sure this was in the job description?"

Women sacked 'for not baring breasts to gorilla'

Two former caretakers who refused to bare their breasts to a 300lb (136kg) sign language-speaking gorilla named Koko have settled a lawsuit against the Gorilla Foundation.

Nancy Alperin and Kendra Keller said that they were dismissed after they refused to expose their bosoms and reported sanitary problems at Koko's home in Woodside, south of San Francisco. They were told that if they "did not indulge Koko's nipple fetish, their employment with the Gorilla Foundation would suffer", their claim alleged.

Ms Alperin and Ms Keller said that Francine Patterson, Koko's caretaker and president of the Gorilla Foundation, pushed them to bare their breasts to bond with the 33-year-old female simian.

The foundation has denied the allegations. The settlement's terms were not disclosed. (AP)

- The Times, 2 December 2005

Parliamentary report card

TransTasman has a nice line in being bitchy about nearly everyone...

Shane Ardern (National, Taranaki-King Country) 'Chair of Govt Admin committee will give him some work to do, unaccustomed to it as he may be'

Gerry Brownlee (National, Ilam) 'Makes a habit of making a prat of himself but it can be effective in smothering government good news spin'

Ashraf Choudhary (Labour, list) 'Profile below the horizon, doesn't seem to want it any other way'

Brian Connell (National, Rakaia) 'Totally unimportant'

Gordon Copeland (United Future, list) 'Lacks personality and makes no impact'

Hon Clayton Cosgrove (Labour, Waimakariri) 'Not short of self-belief'

Hon Harry Duynhoven (Labour, New Plymouth) 'If he hasn't given up Cabinet aspirations by now, hope really does spring eternal'

Martin Gallagher (Labour, Hamilton West) 'Unremittingly boring'

Sandra Goudie (National, Coromandel) 'Sometimes shrill'

Dave Hereora (Labour, list) 'Don't feel bad if you can't remember this man'

Sue Kedgley (Greens, list) 'Putting a scatterbrain in charge of the health committee was a high-risk move'

Hon Steve Maharey (Labour, Palmerston North) 'Certainly has the women's vote'

Hon Mahara Okeroa (Labour, Te Tai Tonga) 'Intellectual mystery, sporadic rants largely incomprehensible'

Pita Paraone (NZ First, list) 'Rarely speaks in the House now, sensible move'

Lynne Pillay (Labour, Waitakere) 'Professional non-entity'

Hon Tony Ryall (National, Bay of Plenty) 'He'll be effective against Hodgson, even though he doesn't know anything about health'

Hon Dr Nick Smith (National, Nelson) 'Needs to lighten up a little'

Hon Judith Tizard (Labour, Auckland Central) 'Must be doing something in Auckland. Presence otherwise meaningless'

Richard Worth (National, list) 'Laid back approach hides a sharp mind - if he'd be bothered to use it'

- Excerpts from TransTasman's 'roll call' of MPs in 2005

40 Things That Only Happen In Movies

Number 17: 'If you are heavily outnumbered in a fight involving martial arts, your opponents will wait patiently to attack you one by one by dancing around you in a threatening manner until you have defeated their predecessor'

40 Things That Only Happen In Movies

I guess it's a matter of priorities

"No . . . . Awfully jolly of you to suggest it, though."

- Last words of Ronald Knox, a priest and author who served as the Catholic chaplain at Oxford for many years. For several days before his death from liver cancer, he lay comatose, attended by close friends. Shortly before his death, Lady Elton noticed that he had stirred slightly and asked if he would like her to read from his own translation of the New Testament.

[From Last Words. Knox also perpetrated one of the great radio hoaxes - in 1926 his BBC radio broadcast had listeners panicking that the capital was aflame]

So do they like TV in Syria?

If this picture is anything to go by, the answer is yes.

Buzz.Pics

Nothing on the internet is true, dammit

Someone edited a Wikipedia site to claim that a journalist was a suspect in the Kennedy assassinations. It stayed on the site for four months until it was finally deleted. His solution to the problem? Well, he's American, so it involves lawyers.

The Danger of Wikipedia

A singular command of geography

Channeling Borges and Garcia Marquez - with a dash of L. Ron Hubbard and Erich von Daniken - Busyboy tells endlessly entertaining tales of a place called South America. It is an extraordinary realm where anything is possible.

In South America, boy chickens lay eggs and nobody ever dies. Whenever you step on a crack in South America, a trapdoor opens up underneath you, which is both exciting and scary. You need to know that the land is largely frozen, and patrolled by transparent glowing robot police hippos, who travel on ice skates.

His Nonna and Poppa tried showing him photos of their own travels to a place they were pretty sure was South America, to no avail. "I know all about South America, and that's not it." Nope, it takes about fourteen days to get there on a plane, and when you do there is nowhere to stay because there are no people and no hotels (and the transparent glowing robot police hippos don't run B & Bs, more's the pity).

This South America has a rich and astonishing history. Brandishing a Lego construction that has five wheels and an indeterminate number of projecting bumps, he informs me: "This is a jet-jet. It was one of the first South American planes that was ever built. A hundred and fifty thousand years ago, when there was nuffing, even dinosaurs, or people, or cats, or dogs, or trees, or spiders, or anything else. That's when this plane was built, when there was no anything, just nuffing. Just that plane. And robots. Actually, the plane was built by robots. Then the robots died out and the people came, and the dinosaurs. And that's its real name, jet-jet. I didn't make it up. That's what they call it, in South America." See, not a lot of people know that.

- Jolisa Gracewood's four-year-old (a.k.a. Busyboy) is a devotee of the magical realist style.

For the geek who has everything

...a clock that tells the time using a round-the-clock game of Pong.

Pong Clock

[Courtesy of Alpen]