Oh, OK then

So less than a metre to my right, Karen is in labour.

I guess we'll see how that goes.

Virtue of the vicious

Dr Samuel Johnson, always a handy man with a quote, said "Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel". (He also said "Anyone who thinks of going to bed before midnight is a scoundrel" - clearly he liked calling people scoundrels). George Bernard Shaw said "Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." And intellectually I can certainly see what these erudite chaps were getting at. I am aware, basically, that patriotism is a bit silly, if not outright dangerous if taken to extremes.

However, this doesn't stop me from loving New Zealand. I find it excellent in almost all possible ways. See this?


Excellent, I know.

Occasionally I will be trawling a comments section on a Stuff article or something and will come across complaints that such-and-such is "ruining this country" or, even more drastically, such-and-such has already "ruined" New Zealand. I am genuinely puzzled by such comments. Is there really some precipitous decline in the standards of New Zealand everything, hitherto unnoticed by me? Does it actually suck to live here, and I'm just in some kind of bubble? I mean, really? I can't be sure, but I choose to believe that such commenters don't know what the hell they are talking about.

This could be blind patriotism.

Being a New Zealander of my age, I have many friends and acquaintances who have travelled overseas for long periods to get up to various things (in fact, I don't have many who haven't). I can totally understand the want or need to go and see or do things that we just don't have here (Castles. Pyramids. Elephant safaris. Irish people.) even for extended periods of time, and then come back. I might have done such things myself, were I not so, you know, useless.

But when people - some quite good friends of mine - have at times taken an attitude that is more like "there's nothing here for me" or "I can't wait to get out of here", which of course they are perfectly entitled to do, I have sometimes caught myself in the process of almost becoming personally offended - like this is some kind of slur on New Zealand's honour. Whaddaya mean? What's wrong with New Zealand? Screw you, New Zealand doesn't want you anyway! You must suck. I have, at times, had really quite strong feelings in this sort of department.

This could be blind patriotism.

On Friday, New Zealand and Australia play the fifth match of the Chappell-Hadlee ODI series. The rebuilding, inexperienced and vastly underdog New Zealand team arrived to newspaper headlines in Australia reading "Even this lot think they can beat us". New Zealand won the first game, and during the course of it the Australian wicketkeeper knocked the bails off with his gloves and claimed the batsman was out bowled. In the post match press conference, Daniel Vettori mildly stated he was disappointed with this (clearly captured on video) incident. Cricket's most arrogant captain, Ricky Ponting, promptly threw his toys and demanded to know how DARE Vettori accuse his player of "cheating". The player in question, Brad Haddin, labelled Vettori's expression of disappointment "low". Michael Clarke of Australia was interviewed shortly afterwards and said a series loss to New Zealand was "unthinkable". New Zealand won the second game. Australian media commentators opined extensively on how low Australian cricket had sunk, that they had lost 2 games in a row to a "second-rate" New Zealand side. Australia made some team changes and won the next two games. The fifth and final match is therefore the series decider. New Zealand have never won a one day series in Australia.

I would like us to win the game on Friday.

This is just sensible.

You'll be safe with the journalists

As what remains of humanity is whittled down further and further in Battlestar Galactica (39 thousand odd last I saw, and that was before what happens in the most recent episode started happening), one thing keeps weirding me out - the continually massive press corps. There are only 39,000 people left all up and yet for some reason this community has produced what seems to be about 50 plus journalists who turn up to every statement the President / Adama / Apollo care to make. How many media organisations do they have in their ragtag fleet, serving the news needs of the 39,000? Maybe it's some kind of deal where there is one newspaper and that paper sends 50 journalists to the same event who then compete to write the best story on it? Or perhaps they just cover exactly the same story from 50 slightly different angles? Forget about wanting them, can a society struggling to survive at subsistence level afford to support 50 journalists? Do the journalists all live on the same ship, which through a combination of flukes has never suffered the casualties inflicted on just about everyone else at some point? Will the show finish with 50 journalists drifting alone through space, writing up their exclusive interviews with each other for an audience of ghosts?

Ooo, poignant.

And now, the Kremlin:



And scenically by night:


Great, isn't it? Except wait a minute, this isn't the Kremlin. It is instead St Basil's Cathedral, just across the road from the Kremlin. (Where the road is Red Square.) And who knew? Not I. Quickly, make me feel better, Wikipedia:

It is very often mistaken by Westerners for the Kremlin, whose buildings are in fact situated across the square from the cathedral. Arguably the most recognised building in Russia, it is an international symbol for the nation and for the city of Moscow.

Just call me a mistaken Westerner then, I suppose. But now I know. See, isn't learning good? Thanks, job, for requiring me to fact-check things in books. At least I was correct in my suspicions that the Kremlin is NOT the government building of Russia. That is in fact this thing. To which I gave to say to Russia: the Cold War was on, you built a new government building, and you named it the White House? Seriously? Talk about your latent inferiority complexes. Or perhaps just your penis government building envy.

But how 'bout that St Basil's Cathedral? Let's take a look at it again:

(Also making me feel better: an easy way to find photos of it is to type "Kremlin" into a Google image search.) It really is a fantastically awesome building, I'd love to go check it out in person someday (damn it Google, how is Red Square not on Street View yet? Stop wasting time running over deer and get onto it). Perhaps one day I can visit with my son:

"Check it out, boy, your old man used to think this was the Kremlin. What a thickie, eh - it's clearly St Basil's Cathedral."

"That's the Taj Mahal, Dad."

"Oh, where are we again? Oh that's right, India. I always confuse the countries ending in -ia."

Going to attempt to blog more regularly than once every geological time period. I guess we'll see how that turns out.

You have been selected for a very special offer

Although my attitude to impending fatherhood is (at the moment) quite cruisy, I do have the occasional vague notion that I should be further preparing myself in some kind of wishy-washy responsible adult sort of way. For example with a baby on the way, the paucity of my tie selection is surely cause for concern. I also feel that I should maybe own like more shares, or something, and fewer Star Wars Micro Machines (apart from the socio-cultural implications here, to have a child choke to death on a Jawa sandcrawler would be truly unfortunate). Perhaps I should even own some kind of portfolio. Not a house, though. Christ, who the hell can afford one of those.

But anyway, I was probably more receptive than normal the other night when my bank rang me up to try and sell me life insurance. Despite my feeble attempts to sound uninterested I surprised myself by agreeing to being rung back in two week -obviously I sounded too listen-y. Only afterwards did I remember my hatred of banks and all things bank-related, which I plan to nourish in the next week to get ready for when they ring back. I already actually have life insurance.

But the fact that I didn't say not interested straight away I suppose illustrates the whole slowly shifting priorities thing - worrying about looking after the next generation for that inevitable day when I go to light a candle some time alone at the house, slip over and impale myself fatally on Lis's cool-but-potentially-deadly bronze star candle holder, drop the still lit match from my dead hands and burn down the house - although at least in this scenario Karen won't face expensive cremation costs. I can see the funeral now:

Priest: He died as he had lived - impaled by a candle holder in a flaming house.

Karen: That is in no way accurate. Our house was hardly ever on fire, was it Shangobunni?

Shangobunni: No, Mum. (To priest) What are you doing here anyway? Dad didn't want a religious funeral.

Priest: Well to be honest, I saw you were a small boy and I followed you in.

Tim: Is there Coke at this funeral?

(Don't worry Tim, there will be.)

One things about these things when one is about to produce offspring. Well, not so much about impaling oneself on a candle holder (I can't stop looking at it now, wondering if it's about to make a move), but about ensuring that things will be "taken care of". That's in the right way of course, the responsible I smoke a pipe and sip a brandy in my drawing room as with grace and dignity I tragically slip away due to consumption "of course, you and the children will be taken care of" way, not in the bad, mistakenly walking into the wrong office one day way:

Ben: Are you the financial advisor?

Mafia Heavy: Why...yes, you could say I suppose that I have provided financial advice before, yes...if you catch my implicit meaning.

Ben (relieved): Oh good. Well listen, after I go I want my whole family taken care of.

Mafia Heavy: Let me be clear...am I to understand in no uncertain terms that you wish you have your family...taken care of?

Ben: Oh yes. I've got some money put away.

Mafia Heavy: This is good, 'cos taking care of a whole family...that don't come cheap.

Ben: Oh no, I can imagine not. So I'll give you this money then, and you take care of my family.

Mafia Heavy: I understand. After you go.

Ben: Yes, straight after that. Right, here's the money. I'll be off.

Mafia Heavy: So it is now that is to be the time of your going. Having made this arrangement with you, I shall immediately proceed with the necessary steps for the taking care of your family.

Ben: Terrific! That's a real weight off my mind, I can tell you.

Hey, it could happen. Especially in Christchurch.

Anyway having thought about this sort of thing lately (at the risk of turning this into the "Things Ben Stumbles Across on Wikipedia" blog) it was nice to stumble across something on Wikipedia today showing that (at least part of) the world has been thinking about the same thing. As usual with stumbling across things on Wikipedia, a single spark of complete randomness was all that was needed.

"Is this Iceland, Ben?" I was asked.


"Er, nope," I said, "Iceland is that one there." However, having pointed out Iceland (thanks, Risk) I then realised I didn't actually know what those islands were. An atlas plus Wikipedia to the rescue. As usual.

Why yes, it's the Svalbard archipelago, officially part of Norway and home to the northernmost town of over one thousand people in the world, Longyearbyen, on the island of Spitsbergen (ah Norwegians, your language amuses me so). "What the hell do they do up there in Longyearbyen?", you may think to yourself. I know I did. It seems that historically the main industries have been coal-mining and being destroyed by the Nazis (just jealous about their readily available supplies of whale-oil margarine, were they? Disappointingly little information available on that) but now it's all about having a university and tourism, because:

Spring is very popular since Spitsbergen is one of the few places in Norway where a snowmobile can be driven in open country without special permission.

Man, I know I for one plan all my holidays around where I can drive a snowmobile unrestricted. Ain't no-one tells me what to drive my snowmobile over. Or through. Or into.

But! Spitsbergen is much more than just an untrammelled snowmobile wonderland my friends (I for one am personally a bit gutted I didn't go to uni there...apparently rifle lessons are offered on the first day of classes so students know how to properly defend themselves from polar bears. I am not making that up). Spitsbergen is working to secure your future. For Spitsbergen contains the Doomsday Vault.


Behold its completely majestic glory. It really does look like Echo Base, or perhaps a sequel to The Thing or episode of The X-Files just waiting to happen (for the full fiction potentiality of the place effect, go look the place up on Google Earth or behold some very cool photos of the general area). I remember stumbling across a BBC item about the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, as it is more properly known (Despite the already established amusement value of Norwegian, as a name, Doomsday Vault is approximately 2600 times cooler) a while back and assuming it was somewhere in Norway proper - but no, way up there on Spitsbergen at 78 degrees North it is. And a good thing too, because:

The safe has been designed to protect (seeds) against natural and human disasters, including global warming, floods and fires, and nuclear holocaust.

Can't see anyone lobbing a nuke at Svalbard just to piss off snowmobile fans. And so the (as many as) 4.5 million seed "spare copies" are all good up there, snug in their permafrosted, underground, high-enough-to-avoid-all-possible-sea-level-rise, low-to-no-tectonic-activity facility, just waiting (there are no permanent staff in the place). Surrounded by polar bears. Excellent.

Somehow it's nice to know that when the world goes to hell, Shangobunni can head up there and "take care of" restarting civilisation. I'm not sure how he'll get there. Or how he'll get past the polar bears. But the important thing is it's there, and that's good enough for me. Perhaps I'll explain this when the life insurance lady rings back.

Adventures in KNOWLEDGE

Here's a question - should I retroactively give 263 blog posts subject titles? Hmmm, a project for the future perhaps. But perhaps not this afternoon at work.

This post might have been up sooner but it's fair to say that potential blogging time has been eaten up a fair bit by the old (er, or actually) new X Box 360 of late. Sorry everyone. You'll be pleased to know I've been having fun though. Yes. Note to everyone: Bioshock is awesome. I look forward to the film version making a complete hash of it in 2011.

Anyway, when it boils down to it, there aren't many places I actually go on the Internets. The list of sites I check on any regular basis is probably less than 20. However this isn't to say that I can't spend long hours on the Internet at a stretch. For the Internet has Wikipedia (perhaps you've heard of it).

I have occasion to use Wikipedia a bit at work for the purposes of quick fact checking. If I am reading some author's quiz book manuscript, for example, and one of his answers claims that the island of Sardinia was named after sardines and I immediately think "hold on...surely that's the other way round", bang into the ever-ready search box goes 'sardines' and sure enough, this is why authors have editors. The danger of this process though is that Wikipedia will then promptly proceed to eat up half the afternoon.

I think the problem is that the articles are written in such a way as to tantalise the reader with casual references to related things that not only does the average reader not know much about, but hasn't even heard of. If you are reading something in a book, say, and come across one of these surprising offhand segues, you might go "What? Really? What even is that? Gosh, I must look that up some time" and then probably forget about it. But in Wikipedia, that little blue hyperlink is already sitting right there, pretending to be all innocent, in a manner akin to the handily-labelled cake and flask Alice finds in Wonderland. "Hi there!" it says, craftily. "I'm something you don't have the foggiest clue about. But you can rectify this situation! And all you have to do is Click Me!"

I've followed quite a few of these links down the rabbit-hole recently, and have learned all kind of interesting things completely by random, really. One chain a while ago was particularly bizarre. I was reading a manuscript on climate change education. The introductory paragraph to a chapter was talking about the challenges of conducting scientific study in Antarctica, what with it being the "coldest, windiest, driest and highest continent on Earth".

"Highest?" I thought. "Really?" So off to Wikipedia it was.

It only took until the second paragraph to find out that my doubts were unnecessary - Antarctica is indeed the highest content by average elevation (who knew? Probably everyone reading this. Oh well, screw you all). So I thought I'd read on a bit out of interest. "Antarctic territorial claims" I saw. Australia is currently claiming the largest portion of the continent, it seems (typical, Australian bastards).

But I was curious. "Hmmm" I thought. "They claim the largest part of Antarctica? What does that even mean, though? What exactly is the deal with Antarctic territorial claims, anyway?" So on I went.

Antarctic territorial claims, it seems, are a bit weird. For a start, apparently nobody in the world outside of those countries that have made claims actually recognises any of them. But those 7 countries (us included) all recognise each other's claims in what must be some kind of, I dunno, "yay for us" exercise. Anyway, along came the Antarctic Treaty in 1961. Eventually 46 countries (presumably the ones in the world quite interested in Antarctica. You could understand Chad not turning up for example - Chad has other things to worry about) got together and 39 of them said right, well we're not really going to recognise the claims of you 7 existing claimants as such. But you, you go right ahead and recognise them amongst each other. Just don't...do anything about them. Have them, pointlessly, for strategic putting them on maps purposes. But what all 46 of us can agree on in Antarctica, among other things, is we're definitely not going to have any new claims. So we'll all put our names to this Treaty saying no new claims on Antarctica. Antarctica is for everyone. Agreed? Agreed! said everyone, except for couple of minor troublemakers - the USA and the USSR.

"Sure!" said the USA and the USSR. "We'll sign this treaty with its no new claims clause. Just one thing - we don't really like this no new claims part, so we're going to sign, but we're also pretty much going to reserve the right to claim whatever the hell parts of the Antarctica we like in the future."

I imagine that one or two of the other 44 countries went "Eh?" at this, but I'm pretty sure the answer of the USA and the USSR was "Look at your watch, it's 1961. This is the Cold War. We don't listen to the rest of you bitch countries, we do what we like. If we want part of Antarctica to live in after the global thermonuclear war we start, you'll bend over and you'll TAKE IT." And take it everyone did. And so the Antarctic Treaty was signed. And all the claimant countries rejoiced, for they were thus able to proudly mark their nearly completely pointless claims in atlases - sometimes even daring to colour an entire giant triangular section in their own delicate but exciting pastel shade (NZ's bit, which is of course largely ice, seems to get pink on most maps).

So this I learned (or learned more about). And then I ran my eye over the list of official and historical claimants. There's New Zealand with the Ross Dependency, there's Australia with Australian Antarctic Territory, there's Norway with "Dronning Maud Land" and "Peter I Oy" (those crazy Norwegians), there's Brazil who didn't get with a claim in before the treaty, but seem to have an attitude of "You know what? To hell with you guys and your treaty, we're making a claim anyway. And furthermore, this whole bit here should belong to South America. You other guys should jolly well move your bases!" Good one, Brazil. And then finally of course there's Nazi Germany.

What? Nazi Germany laid claim to part of Antarctica? Here was a link that postively sat up and begged to be clicked. Click it I did.

New Swabia it was called. Apparently the Nazis knew that war would soon be upon them (or rather, that they would soon make it upon everyone else). Naturally there are a lot of things to take into account when you're planning a war. And it seems one of the things they took into account was...well, imagine if you will this scene in a German headquarters around 1937:

Nazi Strategic Planner #1: War is coming.

Nazi Strategic Planner #2: Yes, Hans. And if there's one thing we need to secure in the event of an upcoming war, it's a reliable supply of margarine.

Nazi Strategic Planner #1: I concur, Hans! But everyone knows margarine is made from whale oil. And I'm so sick of getting that stuff almost exclusively from the Norwegians.

Nazi Strategic Planner #2: Agreed, Hans! There is only sensible solution: an expedition to Antarctica.

Nazi Strategic Planner #1: Antarctica, Hans?

Nazi Strategic Planner #2: I hear it has whales. Do you know what else has whales? Norway. Think about it.

Nazi Strategic Planner #1: ...that really make no sense.

Nazi Strategic Planner #2: We're Nazis, Hans. Nothing about us makes sense.

Nazi Strategic Planner #1: Good point. And do you know what else? Let me ask you this: what are we hoping to take over?

Nazi Strategic Planner #2: The world?

Nazi Strategic Planner #1: That's correct, Hans. And do you know what the world has in it?

Nazi Strategic Planner #2: ...Antarctica!

Nazi Strategic Planner #1: Exactly!

Nazi Strategic Planner #1: Oh my God, quick! Get me the navy and some scientists!

I am not making this up (maybe Wikipedia is, but I'm not). Down to Antarctica the Nazi scientists duly went to hunt for tasty, margarine-providing whales, claiming a significant chunk of Antarctica for the Fatherland by the method of, among other things, flying over it and dropping poles with swastika flags attached to them onto it ("do you have a flag?", indeed). Sure, Nazis. That'll stand up in court.

Here I must pause the story for a second so the following concept can truly be allowed to sink into the mind of the reader in its full delicious glory: whale-oil based margarine.

So learned all this, I did. And here the trail might have ended. But for a section at the end of this article titled "New Swabia's role in alternative historical theories":

An esoteric Hitlerist legend recounts that Adolf Hitler did not commit suicide in 1945, but fled to Argentina, then to a base under the ice in New Swabia during the early 1950s, where he resumed his career as a painter. According to this account, Operation Highjump, the largest expedition mounted to the Antarctic, is claimed to have been sent to wipe out the Nazi presence. [citation needed]

See also: Nazi UFOs

Wow, that's an "alternative" "historical" theory, all right. (Citation needed. Hahahahaaa.)

Of course, if you're getting the idea here by now, you'll realise that there was absolutely no way that I could possibly NOT on "Nazi UFOs".

Ah, the joys of this particular article. Let's jump in with the illustration somebody helpfully came up with to illustrate the whole concept:

(The game at work might have well have been given away by my explosive guffaw of laughter at this point; luckily my desk is kind of separate from everyone else's at work. I must not play nicely with the other children or something.)

For all the hilarity of the illustration though, some stuff was interesting:

Sir Roy Feddon, Chief of the Technical Mission to Germany for the Ministry of Aircraft Production, stated in 1945:

I have seen enough of their designs and production plans to realise that if they (the Germans) had managed to prolong the war some months longer, we would have been confronted with a set of entirely new and deadly developments in air warfare.

Secret Weapons Of The Luftwaffe, indeed (who remembers that game? SWOTL!). Furthermore:

In 1956, Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, Chief of the US Air Force Project Bluebook, stated the following:

When WWII ended, the Germans had several radical types of aircraft and guided missiles under development. The majority were in the most preliminary stages, but they were the only known craft that could even approach the performance of objects reported to UFO observers.

Oooh. However, let's read on and whoops - what was that just flew out the window? Ah yes, it was credibility:

In 1978 Miguel Serrano, a Chilean diplomat and Nazi sympathizer, published The Golden Band, in which he claimed that Adolf Hitler was an avatar of Vishnu and was then communing with Hyperborean gods in an underground Antarctic base. Serrano predicted that Hitler would lead a fleet of UFOs from the base to establish the Fourth Reich.

Whoa! This is a problem. Who's got their eyes on Antarctica? Everyone signed the Antarctic treaty, and so no-one's got any weapons down there! It's just what Hitler wants!!! (Or what Vishnu wants, maybe?)

And so a simple mission to check on the height of Antarctica had opened my eyes to the dangers of the upcoming Nazi UFO invasion of the world. I resolved that when it was time to knock off work, I would rush home to fortify our house. Ain't no Nazi getting my baby without a fight. Or my Karen. Or my X Box.

Sadly though, I had to stay where I was for a while after work had finished and click on every single "See Also" article linked on the Nazi UFO page (totally worth your time, by the way). I think I may be addicted. And my house remains dangerously unprepared for the Nazi UFO invasion. But I read more hilarity. And I did find this.

Oh yes.

Please stand by, as brought to you by THE NAKED MOLE-RAT

I'm halfway through a post here, but ack, it's 3:15am. But while you wait, why not check out the Smithsonian National Zoo's live Naked Mole-Rat Cam? They're 1 of only 2 eusocial mammals in the world, you know.

Awwwww.