NZ blog round-up

One of these days I’ll think of a generic title for this, like NZBC’s “Mixed Lollies” or “Something for the Weekend”. Suggestions welcome. Until then, this:

David Cohen is unimpressed by the coverage sad old, mad old John Minto got with his absurd noise-making about Israeli tennis player Shahar Peer. Yes, Israel-Palestine is the real hard yards but what has that to do with her? An individual professional, she was hardly what the Springboks were in 1981. As Prince put it so eloquently, “Shut up, already.”

Karl du Fresne does not agree with Chris Knox that the Beatles were punk. He says: “revisionist bullshit”. He also reveals that the title of Knox’s most famous song, “Not Given Lightly”, comes from the Velvet Underground’s “Venus in Furs”. Well, I never.

Laughy Kate blogs about the younger daughter. Well, she is adorable. Her mother’s daughter. I shall say no more.

Phil Parker rates The Lovely Bones. Unlike many reviewers of the movie, he has read the book.

Cactus Kate talks sense about Whale Oil’s breaching of name suppression by posting the name in binary code, or possibly hexadecimal converted into binary (as David Farrar, who knows this geekery, suggests). Mac Doctor also has a view.

On the same subject, Andrew Geddis comments at Dim-Post:

I’ll go on record as saying I had no idea who it was until I ran Slater’s binary code through two internet decoders (that took me one Google search and two cut-and-pastes). Finding out his partner’s name took one further Google search. I stopped looking at that point, having no desire to learn the alleged victim’s name.

The Fundy Post has performance issues. That does not excuse his posting a picture of Jonathan Ross.

Home Paddock has been out driving and isn’t happy about the other drivers. She reckons that roads would be safer if:

People who drive slowly would let others pass.
People who drive slowly wouldn’t speed up when others could pass.
People in the vehicles behind slow vehicles would pass when they could or keep back far enough to allow others to pass them.
People wouldn’t try passing when they can’t see what’s coming the other way.

All true. But imagine how cross she’d be if she had been driving in Northland recently, as I was. Tutukaka is a wonderful place, but getting in and getting out is a challenge. Still, look at this, the view from where we were:

Yes, it was totally worthwhile.