Car-less days

The New Zealand car-less days scheme, designed in response to a rapid decline in the New Zealand economy, ran for less than a year from 1979 to 1980, but failed due to avoidance and concerns about its impracticality. My mother had a sticker on her old VW, and was annoyed by the efforts many people went to to get around the scheme. In any case it would have been difficult to enforce on Waiheke Island, our home at the time, because there were no police officers permanently stationed on the island!

Quoted below is the official information pamphlet for the scheme:


Information for all owners of petrol-fuelled vehicles

Car-less days stickers are printed in seven different colours, one for each day of the week, and have the day printed across them.

You must choose a day, obtain the correct sticker for that day from a Post Office by entering your selected day at the base of your motor re-licensing form, and fix it to your windscreen by 1 July 1979. It will be an offence NOT to display your car-less day sticker from this date.

Place your car-less day sticker on your windscreen alongside your motor licence sticker.

You may change your chosen car-less day only if:

1. Your sticker has been lost, stolen or destroyed.

2. You have bought a new or used car.

3. You can convince the Secretary of Energy that your chosen car-less day will cause you extreme hardship.

If you wish to change your car-less day for any of the above reasons, ask the nearest Post Office for an 'Energy 1' application form.

ON THE DAY YOU HAVE CHOSEN, YOUR MOTOR VEHICLE WILL BE PROHIBITED BY LAW FROM BEING DRIVEN ON THE ROAD, IF AND WHEN THE GOVERNMENT ACTIVATES THE SCHEME.

Traffic officers will then be making sure that your vehicle is not driven on your chosen car-less day.

- Car-less days pamphlet, Ministry of Energy, Wellington, New Zealand, 1979, quoted in Richard Wolfe, Instructions for New Zealanders, Auckland, 2006

The island of general intoxication

The social history research of Reverend John Heckewelder, who sought tales of early encounters between Native Americans and Europeans, reveals interesting accounts of social interaction. Here Giles Milton recounts an extract from a letter written by Heckewelder in 1801, describing an early run-in with the demon drink during Henry Hudson’s visit in 1609, to what would later become New York:

They watched in astonishment as [Hudson] opened a bottle of pure alcohol, poured it into a glass beaker, and gulped down the lot. He then handed the bottle and glass to the nearest Indian chieftain and instructed him to drink.

[Heckewelder wrote:] “The chief receives the glass but only smells it, and passes it to the next chief who does the same. The glass thus passes through the circle without the contents being tasted by anyone; and is upon the point of being returned again to the red-clothed man when one of their number, a spirited man and a great warrior, jumps up, harangues the assembly on the impropriety of returning the glass with the contents in it.” He argued that [Hudson] had offered them the glass in the spirit of friendship and for the peace of their people, “and that as no-one was willing to drink it he would, let the consequence be what it would. He then took the glass and bidding the assembly a farewell, drank it off. Every eye was fixed upon their resolute companion to see what effect this would have upon him, and he soon began to stagger about, and at last dropping to the ground, they bemoan him. He falls into a sleep, and they view him as expiring.”

But after a few minutes the man suddenly leaped to his feet and, to gasps of amazement from the crowd, declared that he had never felt so happy in all his life and demanded that he be given another glassful. “His wish is granted, and the whole assembly soon joins him, and become intoxicated.” [...]

Hackewelder claims that the name Manhattan is derived from the drunkenness that took place there, since the Indian word manahactanienk means ‘the island of general intoxication’.

- Quoted from Giles Milton, Nathaniel’s Nutmeg, London, 1999

Wife selling in old England

'John Walker, emailing me from Warwick on wife sales, tells me it seemed fairly common in Cornwall and quotes several accounts from the West Briton newspaper, from 1818 to 1853. In November 1818 this Cornish newspaper reported a wife sale at Bodmin Market, thus: "A man named Walter, of the parish of Lanivet, led forward his wife by a halter, which was fastened around her waist, and publicly offered her for sale. A person called Sobey, who has recently been discharged from the 28th Regiment, bid sixpence for her, and was immediately declared the purchaser".

A further example, sent in by John, concerns the sale of the wife of George Trethewey at St Austell in March 1835 who was sold to a tinker for four pence, the couple then proceeded to a neighbouring pothouse for a jug of ale. There they were approached by a market collector of tolls where the 'husband' handed over a penny in commission, "the sum usually demanded for selling a pig"'.

- Tom Wood, Family Tree Magazine, December 2008

Thigh-high boots

'In a moment of stupidity recently I was toying with the idea of maybe getting some thigh-high boots, and fishing for a compliment I said to my sister, "Where would I get thigh-high boots that would fit my thighs?".

And she said, "Well, trannies must get them from somewhere"'.

- Sarah Millican, BBC Radio 4, 4 Stands Up, 9 April 2009

Funny money

Jon Stewart and guest author William Cohan dissect the ongoing crisis in the US financial markets and ask not what their country can do for them, but what they can do to work out what in the hell's going on. Great TV for those of us who thought a Ponzi scheme was a Happy Days-related misspelling: it's both entertaining and highly informative.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
William Cohan
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis Political Humor

Chinese tattoos

The Far Eastern Economic Review mentions the recent growth in popularity of Westerners acquiring tattoos using Chinese-language characters has not been matched with increased vetting of what the tattoo artists are actually inscribing on their clients' skin. Witness the unwise choice of one young woman after the jump:

Universal words for stupidity

Death and taxes

'The manor court rolls provide a useful history of events relating to the [Wimbledon] Common from the 15th century onwards. But in 1499 there is a joke. Many of the entries in the rolls refer to various people being prosecuted for illegally taking wood or furze from the Common, and this entry mentions a Robert Hunt entering the Common and "unjustly cutting two cartloads of underwood in sapling to the prejudice of the lord". A note in the margin however reads: "excused because he is dead"'.

- Clive Whichelow, Secrets of Wimbledon Common and Putney Heath, London, 2000

The number of the Beast

From a book on public morals in Britain in the pre-Victorian period:

A code revealed the mark of Evil on Napoleon. The Book of Revelations prophesied that the Beast could be identified by 'the number of his name': 'Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast'. And the very name of Britain's nemesis contained that number. If the letters of the alphabet are numbered so that the first nine letters represent the numbers one to nine (with A worth one and I worth nine), J is left out and the corresponding numbers then increase in multiples of ten, so K is worth ten, L twenty and Z 160, then the sum of the letters in the Emperor's name totals exactly 666. That it only works if his name is spelt 'Napolean' and the first 'a' in Buonaparte is not counted did not matter. As millenarians stressed, 'Napolean Buonparte' deliberately misspelled his name to conceal the mark of the Beast and confound mankind.

- Ben Wilson, Decency & Disorder 1789-1837, London, 2007

That pesky Abraham Lincoln

The Maryland state legislature is debating whether or not to amend the lyrics to the official state song, 'Maryland, My Maryland'. They're kind of belligerent, you see. Although I wonder why they've not been bothered until now - after all, they've been in use since 1939:

The song begins with a hostile reference to President Abraham Lincoln, who brought troops through Baltimore en route to protect Washington: "The despot's heel is on thy shore, Maryland! His torch is at thy temple door, Maryland!"

It ends with a call for the state to stand up to the Union: "She is not dead, nor deaf, nor dumb — Huzza! She spurns the Northern scum! She breaths! She burns! She'll come! Maryland! My Maryland!"

- San Francisco Chronicle, 24 March 2009

[Courtesy of Fark]

Icelandic banking

Iceland has accumulated debts amounting to 850 percent of its GDP. (The parlous US economy only managed 350 percent). Most of the damage was inflicted by a wild and unsustainable culture of financial speculation - a bubble waiting to burst:

...another hedge-fund manager explained Icelandic banking to me this way: You have a dog, and I have a cat. We agree that they are each worth a billion dollars. You sell me the dog for a billion, and I sell you the cat for a billion. Now we are no longer pet owners, but Icelandic banks, with a billion dollars in new assets. “They created fake capital by trading assets amongst themselves at inflated values,” says a London hedge-fund manager.

- Michael Lewis, 'Wall Street on the Tundra', Vanity Fair, April 2009