There’s a pretty good summary of the Republican-controlled US Congress in this week’s Time magazine cover story (also at time.com) -
To win votes back home, lawmakers in session have been spending like sailors on leave, producing the biggest budget deficits in history. The party’s approach to national security has taken the country into a war that most Americans now believe was a mistake and that the government’s own intelligence experts say has shaped “a new generation of terrorist leaders and operatives.”
The Fleet has a new member:
Welcome to the family!
Feeling a little pleased with myself this morning – I ran 8.7 miles (14 km), the furthest I’ve ever run in my life. And the time – 1:25:17, while not sizzling by any means at an average pace of 9:47/mile, is pretty good by my standards.
10 miles is now in my sights, but I will probably stick with this route for at least three more runs before I try to go further. I had a goal at the start of the year of being able to run for 2 hours. I’m not sure that I’m going to get there, but 1:45 should be feasible provided I remain injury free. Not too bad for an almost-44 year old 
.
I watched a DVD of the movie Duane Hopwood last week. I’m very pleased I did – I thought it was excellent. It starred David Schwimmer from Friends. I didn’t expect him to be great in a dramatic role, but he proved me wrong (unlike fellow Friend Courtney Cox who I recently saw in November, which I simply couldn’t sit through).
Schwimmer plays a divorced alcoholic father of two young girls. He loses visitation rights after being caught driving drunk with one of his daughters in the car. The movie is really about (imo) the sadness of people making bad choices in their lives – sad because he seems like a nice guy, who you really wish had a better life. Arguably the movie is a little misguided in portraying him this way – but that’s a theological quibble. He really does a nice job, as does co-star Janeanne Garofalo as his ex-wife. It’s not what I would call an “entertaining” movie, but worth seeing nonetheless.
I’ve been tremendously busy for the last few weeks and haven’t had much time for blogging, which is a shame, since I’ve been seeing plenty of things I feel inclined to comment about.
One thing I’ve been sitting on for a few weeks is that I got a reply back from Winstone Peters in response to the letter I sent him a while back about the killing of Falun Giong members in China for body parts.
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Interesting quote from Mike Moore (this one, not this one or this one) in the NZ Herald.
“Proportional representation has acted as a muzzle on free speech and the logic of serious debate, scrutiny and evidence. The Maori Party, even the Greens, are not held to account for their policies by other political parties. Why? Because you might need them to form a coalition government. Best not cause a problem.”
Likeable fellow Mike, and usually pretty sensible. I came pretty close to voting for him in 1990 when he was briefly the PM (the Labour Party was more right wing then than left – honest!).
It was kind of funny after the election, when there was all the hoo-haa about whether Helen Clark was going to challenge him for the party leadership and was lying low, people had put signs up on power poles around Mt Albert where I lived (and Helen Clark’s electorate) saying “Helen, call Mike.”
The Sydney Morning Herald reported a couple of days ago that Japan has stolen (through illegal fishing) 6,000-18,000 tonnes of southern bluefin tuna a year for the past twenty years -
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More from the Sydney Morning Herald on the treatment of Afghani refugees in detention by Australia -
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This is cool – The Time Fountain.
Found on engadget.com
The NZ Herald has an article today quoting various political figures claiming that Auckland needs to become a single city (a single local government) in order to become a “world class city.”
I have no problem with the idea of a consolidated government (hey I know – let’s call it the Auckland Regional Council. It could even have its own website, like say – www.arc.govt.nz), but I get pretty annoyed when people throw around this term ‘world-class’ without saying what it really means (imo, without knowing what it means).
Cities are complex systems and imo Auckland is a fine one. If these people can’t tell me what they think a world-class city is then I’m inclined to think they use the term just as a way of hiding their own insecurity about whether they are as good as they think other people expect them to be.
