Undulating Ungulate

http://www.brokenpicturetelephone.com/view?id=12569

And apropos of nothing, I liked the image “don sombrero looks at a stick”
when it turned up in its context

Argh, the interweb, it wastes time.

Oh wow. This one is the best.

Filed by billy at 11:22 am under Uncategorized
Comments Off on how a wizard smoking a bong and fighting a dragon leads to whoopi goldberg throwing snowballs

Making naturally grown food illegal sounds insane, yeah.

Apparently the US is currently ramming through bill HR 875: Food Safety Modernization
Act of 2009 (full text here). The gist seems to be an effort to “improve security of food” by requiring more or less every food producer (including organic farms and family gardens, seemingly) defined as

(14) FOOD PRODUCTION FACILITY- The term ‘food production facility’ means any farm, ranch, orchard, vineyard, aquaculture facility, or confined animal-feeding operation.

who will be required to

(2) require each food production facility to have a written food safety plan that describes the likely hazards and preventive controls implemented to address those hazards;

(3) include, with respect to growing, harvesting, sorting, and storage operations, minimum standards related to fertilizer use, nutrients, hygiene, packaging, temperature controls, animal encroachment, and water;

the gist of which seems to mean enforced minimum standards of spraying, fertilizer, etc. The bill is pushed by agribusiness/Monsanto etc, so this seems likely to mean an end to organics.

Violation of anything is punishable by up to 1,000,000 per offense, per day.

That is just from a quick skim of the law. A farmer blogs here. Originally got sent an email linking to this alarmist youtubey thing. There seem to be a bunch more which are more reasonable and go into detail.

Sounds like it is being pushed through in two weeks with no discussion.

If this is scaring the shit out of you, a one page action webby thing is here to help people contact newspapers, representatives, etc. May well be worth spreading to any Americanos you know, as if it happens there, the pressure for it to happen elsewhere (like here) will grow.

All information provided as is, where is. Check it out, spread, act, as appropriate.

Filed by billy at 11:48 am under oblivion,politics
12 Comments

No right turn and buzzandhum have good posts about National’s declaration that good faith from employers means employees are fine and won’t be exploited, forced into giving up a week of holidays, or generally screwed over in employment contracts. Buzz in particular has a really nice example of what unions do in negotiating collectively (= it is possible to win some changes) vs what happens if you try to negotiate alone (= ignored – “take it or leave it”).

This government sucks. Brazenly. One presumes the media are still tame and suckful, to allow it.

Oh, and as a side note, Morgue notes that hey, it still isn’t too late to do something about climate change before life as we know it is doomed and all, but we need to do it NOW, but under this blind fathead Key, it seems pretty hard to imagine New Zealand playing any role in that. Which is really rather dispiriting. And frankly, embarassing.

Filed by billy at 2:59 pm under no mercy for john key
2 Comments

This is 3 minutes of a 42 hour talk Bucky gave.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBMXaBkBZYw&feature=player_embedded

I mean, holy shit.

The whole thing is archived here. Someday I’ll get through the whole thing.

Filed by billy at 12:22 am under consciousness,utopia
4 Comments

Its eyes glow as it tells the future.

Of course it’s Japanese.

Filed by billy at 3:02 pm under culture,oblivion
1 Comment

The other day I twigged that barbecue sauce, while made to go with meat stuff, is not made of meat stuff, and thus can happily be eaten by vegetarian types.

Funny how the brain works sometimes.

Filed by billy at 10:54 am under the moose
3 Comments

Nice that someone out there with a piece of chalk also gets that the economy is an abstraction that exists only in our heads.

Filed by billy at 10:45 am under oblivion,utopia
1 Comment

Saw this today at the DocNZ fest. It follows six women on various sides of the conflict in the Nepalese civil war over a number of years, and is really amazing.

Civil war seems messier and more awful than most things. The film deals really well with the complexity of the situation, and the story, as it unfolds, is by turns mind-blowing and heartbreaking, following soldiers, rebels, a mother searching for her disappeared daughter, the lawyer helping her, democracy activists, and peasants. And again, spread over many years, the tale takes many turns, and as the civil war comes to an end after nine years, the pieces fall in stunning fashion.

Unfortunately it is not showing again. (Bugger. Half the idea of blogging it was to tell people to go see the next screening. Oh well. It’ll probably turn up someday in some form.) If you ever get the chance, see it. Definitely one of the best docos I have seen.

Filed by billy at 11:45 pm under culture
1 Comment

Of late we have noticed something weird.

So, driving around Wellington, randomly the radio ended up on 107.5 FM. The moose rarely listens to the radio, but something has to happen when the tape is being changed, as the stereo is really hard to turn back on again if it is turned off. (Our wheels are pimping, yo.)

Anyhow. So 107.5 FM seems to exist within Wellington central, but vanish around Newtown, and be replaced by other randomness, which was all a little spooky.

The last few times I’ve caught it in town, I recognised it was playing variously Robert Anton Wilson Explains Everything, and Adam Curtis’ documentary series the Century Of Self. Since these are both things I have repeatedly forced on people in the past I can only say, hell yeah, check these guys out.

A wee google later and it seems to be these guys. There’s not a lot of information, so I assume it is someone’s computer wired up to a little transmitter and looping underground sort of media, but good stuff.

Apparently their coverage is over the “Wellington CBD, Mount Victoria, Te Aro, Kelburn, Brooklyn and parts of Newtown.”, so if you’re in range, check it out.

Recommended.

Filed by billy at 10:35 am under consciousness,culture,new zealand,politics
2 Comments

Continuing an unexpected trend of wildly enthusiastic Iron Maiden related posts: it seems that the moose is now singing in an Iron Maiden tribute band.

Yeah, I know.

Completely randomly was asked earlier in the week. We had the first practice last night and it was utterly ridiculous amounts of fun. There was like a half dozen songs we were supposed to do, but it turned out everyone already basically knows tonnes of the songs, so we did maybe a dozen. Generally really well, as it turns out.

So yeah. This is basically totally awesome, yet also extremely daunting. Bruce has some serious pipes, and Maiden is the best band I have ever seen live. And the proposed set is ginormous. So we’ll see.

But basically, woooooooooooo yeah! 🙂

Filed by billy at 1:58 pm under the moose
1 Comment