My latest rant

Sometimes I just need to rant. Be afraid, you are my captive audience.

Suicide and apathy on the internet

(This is the Online column, written for The Southland Times)

Suicide isn’t a topic many of us want to discuss but the death of a United States teen last week has made it a hotly debated topic online and there have been calls for censorship of the internet.

However, short of putting in place the type of controls China has inflicted on its citizens, censoring the internet is pretty much impossible.

Abraham Biggs, a 19-year-old from Florida, took a lethal cocktail of drugs, then went online to talk about it on his blog and broadcast his death via his webcam.

University of Miami School of Medicine director of child and adolescent psychiatry  Jon Shaw says having access to that blog and webcam most likely encouraged the teen to take his own life.

Dr Shaw believes it wouldn’t have happened without the online audience and that the webcam provided the psychological distance that let other bloggers forget basic human decency and instead taunt, and even encourage, the teenager to go ahead with his plans.

Sadly, this isn’t the first suicide to be broadcast on the internet, and I suppose it probably won’t be the last.

In another case, Kevin Whitrick, a 42-year-old Briton, was logged on to a so-called “insult” chat room on the well-known Paltalk chat program, with his webcam broadcasting to the world, when he placed a rope around a ceiling joist and around his neck, then stepped off a chair. Some of the chat participants egged him on while others tried desperately to find his address. Eventually, the police were called but Mr Whitrick did not survive.

In any suicide, family and friends are left with unanswered questions and wondering if there was anything they could have done to stop it. Usually, the answer is no.  However, in these online suicides other internet users have sat back and watched, not offering to help and sometimes even encouraging the victim.

As much as the internet offers us the freedom to explore and learn about a seemingly endless array of topics, it brings with it some dangers that we must acknowledge.

Perhaps instead of pointing the finger at the internet we need to look at the moral shortcomings of those who took part in taunting these victims, or those who stood back and did nothing when they saw what was happening.

The internet does have its dangers, but it’s not as dangerous as a society that doesn’t care.

Tax cuts: Oooh, let’s go crazy!

So, what will you be doing with all that cash you’ll have burning a hole in your pocket with our exciting tax cuts that come into being tomorrow?

The lovely people at Infometrics have a calculator on their site if you’re wanting to work out just how much you’ll have to treat yourself with now and in the future.

The budget that delivered the promise of these cuts has jokingly been referred to as the block of cheese budget, because the average $16 most New Zealanders were looking at was about the same price as a block of our locally produced but ridiculously overpriced cheese. 

I think I’ll spend it on a beer or two. In Australia. Did I mention I’m going on holiday?

On Sunday?

To Australia?

For a month?

… 4 sleeps to go …

The ultimate … er, climax

Hah, I was right. Some of us aren’t smarter than the animals!

It seems there was a bloke who picked himself up a friendly young woman in a bar. They made there way to the railway tracks, where they proceeded to do the horizontal tango (you know, the shag nasty … bumping uglies … bonking and all those other euphemisms for having sex) on the train tracks. 

Along came a train. Which tooted to announce it was on its way.

They continued to do their thing. Well, that was until the train hit them. 

They won’t be doing that again. Seems he died instantly, his lady of the night is at the hospital. 

He must have been one hell of a shag.

It’s worth noting that the news report said his half naked body was found with condom still attached.  So what’s the deal there? He didn’t want to risk a dose of the clap but was happy to play chicken with a train?

Read the story here.

Online ban was never going to work

I don’t know whether I’m more angry, sad or embarrassed at the internet news censorship ruling by a New Zealand judge last week. 

Manukau District Court judge David Harvey has decided newspapers, television and radio can name the two men charged with murdering South Auckland teenager John Hapeta on August 12. Even their images are allowed to be used. But not online. 

What’s the point of stopping websites from publishing the names when newspapers are allowed to? It appears it may be that the judge is worried about potential jurors Googling the names but those potential jurors are just as likely to crank up Google and search for info on the accused after reading the names in their local newspaper. 

It’s also likely most people from outside the area would have had little interest in the names before Judge Harvey’s somewhat disjointed suppression order. 

However, once the good judge banned the names from being published online, I’m sure there was a flurry of activity as Kiwi web-surfers from Auckland to Invercargill jumped online and Googled their little socks off to find the names on overseas sites. 

The online ban has done nothing more than increase interest and make New Zealand look like a backwater. Or, at the very least, just a little bit oppressed. 

Judge Harvey is meant to be pretty tech-savvy, having written a textbook on New Zealand cyberlaw, and this does feel like perhaps he is testing the waters to see if and how this kind of suppression order might work. 

However, it’s quite clear it hasn’t worked. Let’s hope he doesn’t decide to dip his toes in the water again.

Well that just sucks (ooh, a bad pun)

How ridiculous is it that Pharmac — the government agency that pharmaceutical purchasing agency — has decided to give the okay to government funding for flavoured condoms?

It was just a few weeks ago that Pharmac turned down funding for 12-month courses of the breast cancer drug Herceptin and there have been many other controversial decisions on where to spend our tax dollars when it comes to drugs.

Ordinary, run of the mill condoms I can understand. Of course they should be subsidised and readily available. And they are. However, with the rate of teen pregnancies on the rise, it would appear that hasn’t had much of an impact.

The funding decision includes extra large condoms (yeah, right), ribbed (ribbed for her pleasure? We all know the really selfish blokes out there will turn them inside out), super sensitive (men? super sensitive? I’m saying nothing) and flavoured.

I guess someone wants to ensure all the blokes out there have suitably seasoned dangly bits. And hey, it’s obviously more important to make sure everyone is getting getting their fair share of shagging than worry about those pesky things like cancer and blood pressure drugs.

 

Glad I didn’t watch that faked opening

(This is the Online column, written for The Southland Times)

Well, how’s that for sporting prowess? I’m not talking about “those” Games that I’m boycotting, I’m talking about the Stags and the eblacks.

Our very own Southland Stags took out a win over Manawatu on Friday night (yay), giving me something to focus on that didn’t involve a certain opening-ceremony-that-shall-remain-nameless.

But just between you, me and whoever else might be reading this, doesn’t it strike you as a tad fitting that China, the country that seems to produce so many of the fake designer handbags being sold on dodgy websites, decided to fake it for that unnamed opening ceremony? First, we hear that some — perhaps all — of the giant footprints that had everyone ooh-ing and ahh-ing in television coverage of the fireworks display were in fact fake.

They were computer generated because, apparently, filming the real thing would have been difficult.

Then there’s the wee girl who sang at the ceremony and, from all accounts, stunned the world with her voice. Turns out she was lip-synching. The organisers felt the girl who had the great voice didn’t have the look they wanted for the event.

However, I’m guessing the wee software malfunction was genuine enough.

Sticking with my boycott, I spent the weekend watching non-Olympic sporting events, and it ended up being very entertaining.

Streetball, as it turns out, is pretty amazing. I also fitted in some Texas Hold’em poker and darts. All-in-all, a full weekend of sports viewing with not an Olympic ring in sight.

Then it was our mighty eblacks gaming team, battling their way to gold and silver medals at the World Cyber Games Asian Championship in Singapore, earning them the Asian Championship Trophy.

Who needs the Olympics?

PS: And while we all might complain about our jobs from time to time, it sure beats working in the shadow of a bunch of tanks.

So why won’t I be gawking at the Games?

(This is the Online column, written for The Southland Times)

Olympic rings and torchThe Olympic Games get under way tomorrow and while other years I’ve been pretty happy to sit in front of the telly, cheering on our Kiwi sporting heroes, this time around I’m boycotting the Games.

In these rather fragile economic times, when businesses are struggling to survive and many local manufacturers are being forced out of the market by a flood of cheap imports from certain offshore locales, I have had some difficulty getting my head around our Government signing a free-trade agreement with China. (I realise that’s probably a somewhat simplistic view on my part, but hey, what’s wrong with simplistic?)

Now, we’re expected to be happy about our athletes, and those from everywhere else, rocking on up to China to take part in what should be a proud sporting event.

Sorry International Olympic Committee dudes and dudettes but I’m just not buying it. Back when South Africa had a policy of racial segregation, most of the world said no, we’re not going to play with you.  And rightly so.

However, for some reason we’re supposed to be prepared to overlook China’s not-so-spectacular record of human rights issues and enjoy the Games: we’re meant to simply forget about Tiananmen Square and the tanks, Tibet and the censorship of the internet. They’ve now said they’ll open the net up for the Games. For the media anyway. I’m adopting a wait-and-see attitude because we were promised free and open internet for the games months ago. And besides, the locals are still being locked out.

Amnesty International’s report 10 days out from the games details how China had reneged on its promise to improve the country’s human rights situation and betrayed the core values of the Olympics.

So, while the Olympic Games are saturating news coverage everywhere, I’m going to be checking out some different sports, in my own special protest.

Sports like camel wrestling and outhouse racing, or how about train surfing and underwater hockey? If all else fails, I’ll start my own sporting league. Like synchronised wading, for those of us who can’t swim. With teams of one, for those of us who have no co-ordination.

Personal growth

Isn’t it wonderful, how this internet thing works?

Here I am, not yet fully moved in after the wee renovation job on my site and already the spammers have found my blog and posted a comment pointing me to information on penis enlargement.  Because, well … we all want to know how to make our collective penises bigger now, don’t we?

Or would that be penii? What is the collective term for a group of blokey appendages? A drove of danglers? A gaggle of goolies? Maybe it’s a pack of peckers or a wealth of willies?

I could say it’s a burning question but I guess if that were the case, you’d probably need to see a doctor.

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