Richard Westenra

Here are some pictures that I have made in Photoshop over the years. They are not artful, but I like them.

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The fifth group of 25 links from my linkblog. To see all linkblog retrospectives, click the tag ‘links’.

• Horizontal and vertical: The evolution of evolution – Important developments in biology herald a possible paradigm shift
• Beatles infographics
• The future of UX design has arrived
• The most useless machine ever!
• Colonel Sanders Botches KFC Ad Voiceover (video)
• Offline Book “Lending” Costs U.S. Publishers Nearly $1 Trillion
• The universe is a REALLY big place – The Hubble Ultra Deep Field in 3D
• Boots hit by mass homeopathy ‘overdose’
• Animator vs. Animation (video) – Yeah, making flash videos kinda feels like this sometimes
• The Killer Elite – If you enjoy good war journalism, I highly recommend this article from an embedded Rolling Stone journalist during the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
• US Blockading Costa Rican Sugar Unless It Agrees To Draconian IP Laws Citizens Don’t Want
• We don’t give a damn about the monarchy – Prince William’s entourage of British gossip columnists has been shocked to discover that Kiwis no longer care about royal visits
• A Risky Proposal: Gay marriage, Perry v. Schwarzenegger, and the Supreme Court
• Goodnight Keith Moon
• Two Gentlemen of Lebowski What if William Shakespeare wrote The Big Lebowski?
• The Ballad of Colton Harris-Moore – The story of a modern outlaw folk hero
• Small Talk With A Web Designer
• When skyscrapers signal a downturn – The ‘irrational exuberance’ in the markets that accompany the construction of super-tall buildings is often a sign that a recession is on the way.
• Kant Attack Ad (video)
• NZ’s cyber spies win new powers
• The True Odds of Airborne Terror Chart
• Global healthcare spending Vs. Life expectancy – The US is off the chart (and not in a good way)
• Uranium Is So Last Century: Enter Thorium, the New Green Nuke – Nuclear scientists are rediscovering Thorium, a cleaner, safer, more abundant, more efficient, less weapon-proliferating alternative to Uranium
• Star Wars Weather
• Browser Pong (game)

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According to Stuff.co.nz, the government announced a new three strikes policy shortly before the close of business hours on Tuesday afternoon:

‘Prime Minister John Key told reporters that an agreement with the ACT Party had been reached and the policy would be incorporated in to legislation due in parliament in March…

Mr Key today said the altered policy would incorporate “significant aspects of ACT’s three strikes policy.” An offender would receive a standard sentence and warning for their first serious offence. The second offence would usually lead to a jail term with no parole and a further warning. On conviction for a third serious offence, the offender would receive the maximum penalty in prison for that offence with no parole.’

Imposing harsher sentences for violent crimes (or ’sensible sentencing’, as its proponents call it) has long been one of the ACT party’s key policies. The core argument for their position appears to be that harsher prison sentences will act as a deterrent to potential criminals, thus reducing the crime rate. It sounds like good common sense: the worse the anticipated punishment for an action is, the lower the likelihood that a rational agent will pursue that action.

The only problem is that it doesn’t resemble reality. For decades, study after study has shown that harsher sentencing has if anything an adverse effect upon recidivism rates, and precious little deterrent effect. For instance, an investigation by Chen & Shapiro (2004) shows that ‘harsher prison conditions cause higher rates of post-release criminal behavior, behavior which is also measurably more violent.’ (Click here for a summary of their findings)

However, one cherry-picked article is hardly convincing on its own. Much better evidence is a report commissioned by the Department of the Solicitor General Canada compiling ‘fifty studies dating from 1958 involving 336,052 offenders and producing 325 correlations between recidivism and (a) length of time in prison and recidivism or (b) serving a prison sentence vs. receiving a community-based sanction’.

The report found that:

‘Under both of the above conditions, prison produced slight increases in recidivism. Secondly, there was some tendency for lower risk offenders to be more negatively affected by the prison experience.

The essential conclusions reached from this study were:

1. Prisons should not be used with the expectation of reducing criminal behaviour.

2. On the basis of the present results, excessive use of incarceration has enormous cost implications.

3. In order to determine who is being adversely affected by prison, it is incumbent upon prison officials to implement repeated, comprehensive assessments of offenders’ attitudes, values, and behaviours while incarcerated.

4. The primary justification of prison should be to incapacitate offenders (particularly, those of a chronic, higher risk nature) for reasonable periods and to exact retribution.’

Moving closer to home, these opinions are shared by our Chief Justice, Dame Sian Elias. In October last year, Dame Elias gave a controversial Shirley Smith address on the current state of criminal justice in New Zealand. Colin Espiner of Stuff.co.nz called the speech ‘the most insightful and damning summary of justice policy in this country since the Roper Report’ but ‘political suicide’, and forecast her imminent disappearance from the top job for opposing the judicial policies of both major political parties. Dame Elias’ address outlined the considerable shifts in New Zealand’s attitude towards tackling crime during her forty years of involvement in criminal justice, and how increasingly punitive sanctions against offenders and more victim-focused judiciaries have not made our communities any safer. Whilst I could summarise her arguments here, those interested would be much better served by scanning the text of the speech itself – it is an excellent and worthwhile read.

The three strikes law is intended to dissuade convicts from re-offending by making the prospect of future imprisonment less appealing. If such policies work then we ought to observe an inverse correlation between sentence lengths and crime rates. However as the above reports make clear, this is not the case – in fact the inverse appears true. As Lord Bingham once pointed out (Elias 2009 – p.5), ‘the problem with incarceration that in all but a small number of cases at some point the offender must re-enter society.’ In practice, prisons tend to function as ‘monster-factories’, by locking up society’s most aggressive and at-risk individuals in a place where they will reinforce each other’s behaviour and teach each other more effective ways of breaking the law. The result is that offenders are usually more dangerous when they come out than when they went in.

One of the most significant problems with ACT’s model for reducing crime is that violent offenders are not rational agents (indeed, humans seldom act completely rationally, but that is another matter). The typical offender is male, often of low intelligence and poor education, has a family history of ineffectual parenting and often emotional, physical or sexual abuse, and comes from a background of poverty, poor housing, instability, association with delinquent peers and unemployment. Given what we know about the psychology of violent offenders, it is unreasonable to expect the average convict to make the kinds of rational decisions that an abstract theorist might expect. Furthermore (and this will be controversial for some), since criminals tend to come from bleak socio-economic backgrounds and unstable families, one could infer that it is largely their background that influences them towards criminality rather than personal choice. Therefore, it is unfair to punish them for something that is largely outside of their control. A better solution would be to fix the cause, not the effect – i.e. to work on building better families and communities.

The United States was the first place to enact three strikes laws, and hence they represent the best opportunity to study its success. Undoubtedly the state with the harshest three strikes law, California implemented a system in 1994 which usually requires a sentence of 25 years to life for a third offence. According to Wikipedia, ‘early studies of three strikes laws found negligible impacts on overall recidivism rates amongst the general population’, although the Wikipedia page does acknowledge room for error in the cited statistic. Furthermore, ‘incidence of murder, rape, and aggravated assault has risen from 2002 to 2008′ in California. Whilst these statistics are not sufficient to prove that California’s three strike laws have failed, they certainly lend support to that view. In any event, there has been a failure to show that the United States’ experiments with three strikes laws have had any beneficial effect. Knowing that such laws have not been effective overseas, why would our government choose to implement them other than to curry favour with a population prone to knee-jerk reactions and uninformed opinions on crime?

Separate from the attempts to lower recidivism, another common rationale for harsher sentences is retribution. Such arguments place emphasis on victims of violent attacks, and a need to ’see justice served’ by exacting revenge upon the perpetrators. However it is difficult to see how the desire for vengeance is worth the price. The average cost to the taxpayer of keeping an offender in prison for a year is nearly $100,000 (which may be contrasted with the average cost per day of an offender on a community based sentence of $10.04). Furthermore, New Zealand is already second only to the US in the proportion of prisoners to the total population, and is facing a looming crisis because we do not have enough prison beds. A desire for revenge against murderers and rapists is understandable, but we must not lost sight of the fact that while violence is a cost to the community, the incarceration of offenders is also extremely costly. If longer sentences lead to an increase in violent crime, significant costs to the taxpayer and one of the largest incarcerated populations per capita in the world, is the satisfaction of our base desire for revenge worth it? And if so, how many more violent crimes should we be willing to allow per year in order to ensure that convicted criminals are satisfactorily punished?

In conclusion, I agree with the ACT and National parties that violence is wrong and against the law, and that we ought to do everything we can to stop it. However imposing harsher sentences has been shown time and time again to actually worsen the situation. As Shirley Smith pointed out, ‘the threat of imprisonment does not deter, and prison does not reform’.

‘As a society we create our criminals; we, as a whole, are responsible’.

So thanks National and ACT. Another excellent policy decision from a government that has already given us so much in so little time. After aspiring to mine our national parks, taking steps towards privatizing what is currently one of the most effective health systems in the world, earning two ‘Fossil of the day’ awards for poor performance at Copenhagen, and now ignoring expert advice and overwhelming evidence in favour of populist vote-grabbing, your performance during the remainder of your term will have a lot to live up to.

Further reading:

• ‘On the ‘Three Strikes’ Policy and the SAS in Kabul’
• ‘Act MP Accused of Misleading Public on ‘Three-Strikes” Effectiveness’
• ‘Police, judge attack three strikes policy’
• ‘The Effects of Prison Sentences on Recidivism’
• ‘Does Prison Harden Inmates? A Discontinuity-based Approach’
• ‘Blameless Babes’ – Dame Sian Elias’ Shirley Smith Address

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Last week I went for two trips to space. The first one was aboard a private spacecraft, kind of like SpaceShipOne. I won a trip on the spaceship through some kind of competition I entered on the back of a cereal box or something. I don’t remember what the competition was about, but the space flight was pretty rad. When I got back to Earth, NASA contacted me for some kind of mission to the International Space Station, so I was all like ’sure, whatever’ and went along. It was pretty cool too. I made some critical upgrades to some mission critical systems and went on a critical space walk. Then I woke up and realised it was all just a dream. Anyway, these are some photos I got the other guys to take of me while I was there. I apologise if some of them are a little hard to make out, it’s hard to take photos in space because of all the critters.

This photo was taken aboard the private spacecraft. At this point being in space was still pretty new for me, so I was fairly excited about it.

This picture is of me with the NASA space shuttle that took me to the International Space Station. This was my first time doing a space walk. It was pretty neat.

In this picture I am hanging out with Rob and Chris who are two other astronauts. We are attaching a new truss segment to the ISS and beginning to upgrade the power grid or something like that. I like this photo because you can see my house in the background.

Anyway I hope you like my pictures. I am glad I brought my camera and got the other astronauts to photograph me in space, otherwise my friends would never believe that I really went to space in my dream.

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You can read the entire archive of my 2009 season here, or by clicking on the following links. Each post contains a list of that month’s snow days with commentary. I’ll warn you, it’s not exactly compelling reading. I decided to write them as a complete chronicle of my ski season, kind of like an online road diary. I included nearly everything I could remember at the time of writing and published it. As a result it’s a bit of a verbose ramble (but with some cool photos). You’ve been warned.
Great Winter Roadtrip Part One – Pre-season
Great Winter Roadtrip Part Two – May-June
Great Winter Roadtrip Part Three – July
Great Winter Roadtrip Part Four – August
Great Winter Roadtrip Part Five – September
Great Winter Roadtrip Part Six – October

However if you don’t want to wade through all that, you can just check out the following.

Most memorable moments from the 2009 season:

Beating my previous record  for earliest turns of the season: Mt Cheeseman – 10th May

The skies started puking in early May delivering over a foot of fresh snow, so Alan and Ryan from the Snow.co.nz forum organised a daytrip up to the mountains to check out the conditions and get a few turns in. We drove up to the skifield gate and hiked/snowshoed for 45mins to get to the lodge. There were a fair number of skifield staff/club members around preparing for the season, as well as a couple of ski-tourers with skins. From the lodge we hiked another 15mins or so to get a wee 30 second run. We followed that up with a wee kicker session before skiing back down to the car. There were heaps of rocks around; my new Volkl Gotamas (which were being used for the first time) were pretty scratched up, but nothing too major. Ryan’s snowboard edge took a pretty big pounding though.
On the whole a good day out – nothing compared to a good mid-season day, but fun all the same – plus I beat my previous record (Queen’s Birthday Weekend) for earliest turns of the season by 2 or 3 weeks!

The Temple Truck breaking down again, and again, and again: State Highway 73 – 6th & 7th August

Through July to early September, I spent a lot of time carrying out Temple Basin food resupply missions. A typical TB food run involves waking up at dawn and heading to Trents to spend a few hours working through a several thousand dollar shopping list. After loading about half a ton of supplies onto the truck, I head to Growers Direct to pick up more groceries, then drive two hours up to the Basin, usually arriving around sunset. I then spend the next hour or two sending the food up to the lodge in the goodslift while fending off keas, then commence the hour-long walk up to the field by the light of my head-torch (or if I’m lucky, the moon). Whilst the food run (usually Thursday) is a long hard day’s work, you get all your volunteer work out of the way in one go, and get to spend the next few days skiing without having to worry about more chores. It’s a fairly good gig.

The fly in the ointment is that you have to do it all in the Temple Truck. This ancient behemoth is notorious for its unreliability, and has broken down on me more times than I care to remember. (Admittedly, the first time was my fault – let’s just say that I’ll never forget to check the oil again).

This season provided a few hairy episodes, including a couple of trips undertaken with one headlight and no indicators, horn or interior lighting. (Ever worn a headtorch while driving so you can see the speedometer? I have). However undoubtedly the worst of the season was the Fire & Ice food run, which involved 2 days’ work (dawn to midnight), 8 hours driving the Temple truck, 5 tonnes of food and alcohol, and 2 truck breakdowns.

Day 1’s breakdown happened at the Arthur’s Pass railway station when I stopped briefly to visit the toilet. When I got back to the truck it wouldn’t start. I spent the next hour defending two tons of exposed food from half a dozen ravenous keas with a ski pole, while trying to get the truck going again. To compound my frustration, the AA refused to help me because my membership apparently doesn”t cover vehicles that size (Never mind that the size wouldn’t have made a difference in giving me a jump or tow start – fuck you AA!). Eventually I managed to get a tow start from the friendly local DoC ranger (Cheers Chris, you’re a champion!) and finally delivered my supplies to Temple Basin (minus a few loaves of bread – casualties of the kea war). On arrival I was informed that after unloading I’d immediately have to return to Christchurch to get the truck fixed and pick up more alcohol. Not only that, but during the two hour return journey I could not under any circumstances allow the truck engine to stop or stall, as I would not be able to get it started again on my own. Fortunately I arrived shortly after midnight with the truck intact.

I spent most of Day 2 waiting for the truck to be fixed, and finally managed to get on the road in the late afternoon with nearly two tons of beer on the back. The trip went smoothly until Flock Hill, when I suffered a complete gearbox failure while coasting down the steep incline. Luckily, I managed to pull into a siding not 200 metres from Flock Hill Lodge, and was able to use their phone to call for reinforcements. The next few hours were spent guarding the precious load and trying to keep warm while smaller vehicles ferried the alcohol 40 minutes up the road. I finally arrived at the Temple Basin lodge around midnight, where I was treated to a well-earned beer .

Tracking out the fresh pow before the student hoardes arrive: Temple Basin – 1st August

The morning of the 80s Party heralded back-to-back shallow pow runs in fresh, beautiful, untracked snow with barely a chunky spot in sight and barely half a dozen punters on the field. Stoked!

Knocking off the Grand Traverse: Temple Basin – 9th August

Brian and I trekked from the top of the Elevator Chute, across the top of Upper Bills (just under B’limit) to reach a point just short of Cassidy peak at sunset, culminating in my longest Temple Basin run to date – 10 minutes from the peak to the bottom of Temple tow (including the Cassidy bridge crossing on skis). Although my skiing was a little sketchy due to loose boots and sticky snow, I managed to hold it together and make the descent without bailing nor losing the ear-to-ear grin from my face. A fitting end to an epic Fire & Ice weekend.

Winning a t-shirt in the Gnomes Freeride Competition: Temple Basin – 22nd August
Downhill Basin (the originally intended site for the comp) was out because there wasn’t enough snow to allow a good line, so the comp was moved to the top of Upper Bills. Everyone got one run to show their stuff. We had earlier been advised against ‘hucking our meat’ off big drops if we were unsure about sticking the landing, and that the judging would instead focus on aggressive, fluid, controlled riding. With that in mind (plus my comparative lack of ability) I chose a real mellow line with no airs, and a quick dodge between some rocks at the start. I didn’t see my entire score card, but from what I did see I could tell that I had done pretty much as expected – a good score for control but a poor score for my line. I ended up coming 14th (out of about 20), and Neil picked me out for a T-shirt spot prize due to my years of service (cough), so I was stoked with that.

Actually getting to sleep in my car: Broken River – 31st August to 2nd September
My plan for the winter was to spend the vast majority living in my car and exploring each of the 12 Chill ski fields. Foruntately/unfortunately that didn’t happen – I ended up getting regular volunteer work, accommodation and food at Temple Basin, so I stayed there instead. As a result my investment in a car electrical system, roof box, curtains, mattress and camping stove were largely wasted, and my planned ‘Great Winter Roadtrip’ turned into a ‘Great Winter Ski-Bumming at Temple Basin’. However I did get three awesome days and two nights camping out in my car at the bottom of the Broken River access road.

The original plan was to try to make it to Cragieburn, Cheeseman and Mt Olympus and thus finish off the Selwyn fields that I hadn’t yet visited. Due to weather I ended up only managing Cragieburn and Broken River. The two Cragieburn days were dominated by strong winds. There was a fair amount of fresh snow on the ground, but the winds had redistributed it so that ridges and exposed points were extremely icy. The upshot of this was that the basins, gullies and chutes were filled to the brim with powdery goodness, and any ski tracks were quickly erased by the gale-force winds. Hooray, unlimited freshies!

The weather during the second day was horrible, and the word on the grapevine was that everywhere was closed but that Broken River would be opening at 6pm for night powder skiing. I spent the day idly mooching round Castle Hill and hanging out at Flock Hill Lodge, then when dusk came I made a move up to BR. It had been snowing most of the day and was getting pretty Epic – over a foot of fresh pow on the ground, woop woop! Everyone was completely stoked, with powder-day grins from ear to ear. I bumped into a few familiar faces while there – these days it’s getting pretty hard to visit a club field without spotting someone I know. I guess the club field community’s pretty small.

Sleeping in the car was reasonably comfortable, albeit a little cramped and cold. The new car battery setup only managed to power my laptop for an hour unfortunately, meaning that I needed to run the engine for a bit to allow me to finish my Deadwood episodes.

On the way up Cragieburn on the third day, the CHARDIS’s snow chains struggled to pull the car up the road, and broke a few links. I tried to persevere but the chains on the front right tyre ended up ripping themselves apart and wrapping themselves around the axle of the wheel. I had to remove the wheel in order to pry the chain loose, which proved to be an adventure in the fresh snow on a steep hill. Eventually I got it off and managed to get a tow up to the field from a helpful dude in a 4wd. That’s the last time I buy cheap shitty chains off trademe – next time I’m getting some snow-sweats.

Watching the Black Diamond Big Mountain Competition: Temple Basin – 5th & 6th September

Screw rugby and cricket – what could be better than reclining in a deckchair with a beer on a sunny skifield and watching some of NZ’s best freeriders slay a few epic lines?  A highlight included watching Neil Williman and Sam Smoothy hit the huge cliff near Main chute, and compete over who could claim the biggest drop.

I managed to stick my first ever 180 that weekend as well, which was also pretty rad

Enjoying a beer on the summit, at midnight, under a full moon, with a group of pro skiers: Temple Basin – 5th September

The evening of the Big Mountain Comp was clear with a bright full moon, so instead of partying, I joined Ross and a small party of pro skiers to climb to the top of Hot Pocket. We left the lodge at around 10pm and climbed from Temple tow with ice axes in hand. The snow was pretty hard, which made for fun climbing if not for good skiing. We had had a beer on top of the ridgeline overlooking the Mingha backbowl at 11:30pm, and skied down at midnight. It was an amazing night – I am completely stoked on it.

Club Championships: Temple Basin – 12th September

The photo says it all really:

Sticking my biggest ever air: Temple Basin – 13th September
“ok here we go… hmmm going a little fast… stay balanced… hit the kicker… HOOOOOLY SHIT THAT’S HIGH… hold it together… spot the landing… absorb the impact… keep your skis together… don’t eat shit… alright I’m not gonna fall, sweet… ok time for a celebratory fist pump… fuck yeah!”

‘Breaking hearts and saving lives’: Temple Basin – 19th September

Saturday the 19th (International Talk Like a Pirate Day and Aoife’s birthday) was the also beach party day, and the weather turned out perfectly with sunny blue skies and light winds. We had a bbq outside on the veranda with a badminton net (complete with coke bottle shuttlecock), and all the staff were wearing Hawaiian shirts. The most exciting event of the day (for me at least) was injuring myself in an act of derring-do:

It was pretty icy in the morning on Temple tow. I was manning the rental dept, and rented some gear to a Danish girl then taught her how to use the ropetow, and she got to the top first time. I rode up with her, checked she was ok, then skied back down. I was hanging around the bottom and noticed she was taking her time, so I rode back up to check if she was ok. I got about halfway up the tow and she just started sliding down out of control from the top, lost both her skis and slid at breakneck pace towards a field of rocks. It was terrifying, she was screaming and looked like she was gonna nail herself. She mostly missed the first patch of rocks (thank god), while I hung on to the tow and willed it to go faster. As soon as she was almost level with me I jumped off the tow, bunny-hopped some rocks and skied over to her as fast as I could and grabbed her to help her stop, but we slid together for another five metres or so until I could get us to a stop. She had broken her wrist on a rock and had to be helicoptered to a hospital. While we were treating her I noticed that my arm had a fair bit of blood on it from the icy slide, cos I was only wearing a hawaiian shirt at the time. It was a really bad graze and took a month to heal, but it was totally worth it for the manly story.

Catching the ultimate snow day: Temple Basin – 23rd September
The 23rd was hands-down my best day of the season. We’d had about 10-15cm of fresh snow the day before, and it was snowing on and off that morning. Shortly after I arrived at Downhill, the sun came out for an hour and I got some sweet turns in good vis before heading in for lunch. It socked in during lunchtime and delivered about 5cm which covered up most of the morning’s tracks. Then as we were heading outside again, the sun reappeared as suddenly as it had left, and we had 4 hours of bluebird freshies! The afternoon snow was if anything even more fun than the morning’s, and we thrashed it till 5pm. I got the last tow out of Downhill back through Lower Bill’s, and had a sweeeet run through Cassidy chute. Then, to top it all off, it started snowing again less than 5mins after I arrived back in the lodge. Perfect

Playing snowboard instructor: Temple Basin – 27th September to 2nd October
During TB’s final week we were overwhelmed by the arrival of 26 kids between the ages of 5-16. The mountain became a noisy place filled with, in the words of Dylan Moran, ‘miniature drunks’, whose only purpose seemed to be converting sugar into violence.
Whilst we had a couple of ski instructors, there were no qualified snowboard instructors on the hill. As I used to snowboard before switching to skiing a couple of seasons ago, I grabbed a board out of ski hire and gave the kids some lessons. It’s a pretty cool feeling when one of the kids comes up and says thanks for the lesson, and that the tips I gave him really helped his snowboarding.

TB’s final open day of the season: Temple Basin – 4th October
After a season of cajolling, Hugo and I finally managed to drag Aoife up to Bill’s Basin and show her the field’s full potential.

Staff-only powder day: Temple Basin – 5th October
After the final TB open day, the staff finally got a day to themselves to pack their bags, tidy the lodge, take down the trip cords, and of course ski the empty slopes! I spent a couple of hours at Downhill taking down trips and picking out pow between the ice patches, then headed back through Lower Bill’s with a pack full of tools.

Skiing on Halloween: Mt Olympus – 31st October
Just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in.
Mt Olympus announced a final weekend of skiing over Halloween with a forecast for blue skies and corn snow. Paul invited me to join him so I ignored my dire financial situation and tagged along.
The access tow wasn’t running so we had to hike to the lodge. The walk’s difficulty showed me just how much the last month had cost my fitness. The spring sun was boiling, everything was exhaustingly hot and the snow was spring corn, which melted and became very slow after lunch in sun-affected areas. The riding was still pretty sick though.

Final 2009 Winter Tally:
Snow days: 43
Ski fields visited: 6

Cheers 2009 for an awesome ski season!

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The fourth group of 25 links from my linkblog. To see all linkblog retrospectives, click the tag ‘links’.

• Style versus design: Why understanding the difference is what it’s all about. – “Not enough designers are working in that vast middle ground between eye candy and usability where most of the web must be built.”
• Kiwiright (video) – A 12 minute documentary about how NZ’s copyright laws have been contorted to benefit the financial needs of corporate rights holders and no longer benefits the public nor the artists who create the work itself.
• The Physics of Space Battles
• Inside Afghanistan – Fighting Alongside Stoned Afghan Soldiers (video)
• Best Man Rigs Newlyweds’ Bed To Tweet During Sex. Not Kidding.
• How a Web Design Goes Straight to Hell
• Atheist bus ad campaign hits a nerve
• The climate denial industry is out to dupe the public. And it’s working.
• Google Chrome – Features (video)
• Everything is OK Montage (video)
• Canadian record industry faces massive liability over copyright infringement – Ah, sweet sweet irony.
• Photos Taken From Unusual Angles
• Dutch scientists grow artificial meat in lab, see end to the need for factory farming within a decade.
• ikea lamp (video) – Hilarious ad directed by Spike Jonze
• Macho Trap Shooting (video)
• Link This Bookmarklet – Hooray! Quick linking ahoy!
• Is Global Warming Unstoppable? – Scientist argues that rising carbon dioxide emissions cannot be stabilized unless the world’s economy collapses or society builds the equivalent of one new nuclear power plant each day.
• The Zoomquilt II – A trippy flash animated collaborative art project
• IEBlog: An Early Look At IE9 for Developers – Check out all the hilarious vitriolic comments from pissed-off developers.
• 38 Ways To Win An Argument — Arthur Schopenhauer – Advice for budding Sophists (or forum trolls) from one of the philosophical greats.
• Algae and Light Help Injured Mice Walk Again – Optogeneticists are figuring out how to control brain neurons with viruses that carry genes taken from pond scum, activated by beams of light.
• The Gervais Principle, Or The Office According to “The Office”
• I’m Doing My Inconsequential Part For The Environment
• Most. Realistic. War Game. Ever. – A sneak peak at Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3, currently in development.
• New Zealand was a friend to Middle Earth, but it’s no friend of the earth – The Guardian blows the whistle on NZ’s ‘100% pure’ reputation.

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The third group of 25 links from my linkblog. To see all linkblog retrospectives, click the tag ‘links’.

• Pirate Bay closure sparked file-sharing boom – Web-policing fail
• The Gay Animal Kingdom
• Mob Rule! How Users Took Over Twitter
• Aristotle’s law petition confounds blase Berkeley – Conceptual artist Jonathon Keats wants Berkeley to legally acknowledge Aristotle’s law, commonly expressed as A=A.
• Fullsize: a new IMG attribute – A campaign to get a new attribute called fullsize into the next version of HTML
• 2010 California Marriage Protection Act: Safeguarding marriage from the evils of divorce – excellent satire of the Californian Anti-Gay Marriage law change
• What the F**K is Social Media?
• Designers Who Are Technical: The More You Know, The Better Your Work – …Counter-Point.
• Designers are not Programmers – Point…
• 2012: It’s a Disaster!!! (video) – The trailer for the new disaster flick ‘2012′, recut as a comedy.
• Skiing Robot Not Very Useful But Totally Fun To Watch (video) – Damn robots, stealing our freshies
• In Deep (video) – Teaser for the new Matchstick Productions ski flick. Music by Ennio Morricone.
• “Last, Loneliest, Ugliest” – NZ Last in Aid Ranking – Action Aid ranks New Zealand last among 22 donor countries in sustainability, social protection and hunger alleviation.
• DJ Steve Porter featuring Vince Offer – “Slap Chop Rap” (video)
• Police Ten 7 – Safer Communities Together (video) – NZ’s latest internet meme
• Heavy Footing (video) – If you liked the cross-country snowboarding video, check this one out. It’s the next, next big thing,
• Performance Comparison of Major Web Browsers – *spoiler alert!* Chrome wins. *spoilers end*
• Cross Country Snowboarding – next big thing in snowboarding (video)
• ‘Putting on a show of resistance’ – My mate Graham was featured in a Stuff.co.nz article today
• Afghans: Question Of More US Troops Beside The Point – Afghans want more US troops! Kinda sorta! In a way!
• BBC Survey: Kiwi accent most attractive and prestigious form of English outside the UK – Screw it, I’m moving to Europe.
• Dove – Evolution (video) – No wonder our perception of beauty is distorted.
• Air NZ chief blasts climate change ‘circus’
• Crazy Animation Starts Normal, Goes Full Retard (video)
• NZ’s murder rate halved in past 20 years – The national crime rate appears to be radically dropping despite an overwhelming public belief that crime has got worse.

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Spunday is an unofficial internet holiday created by my friend Elliott Kember to celebrate (?) being able to spin stuff on your site with javascript and CSS3. To start spinning, click the following link:

SPIN ME RIGHT ROUND BABY RIGHT ROUND

The above link is a bookmarklet, so drag it to your bookmarks folder to spin any page you want!
Unfortunately this only works in browsers which support CSS3 transformations – that includes Chrome, Safari, and Firefox 3.5. Otherwise, this won’t be very interesting for you at all.

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