<note: this has the potential to turn political but that's not the intent. I was just reminded today of a so-Kiwi quirk of NZ's Parliamentary system that y'all might find amusing>

The US has the Liberty Bell. The UK has the Crown Jewels. New Zealand has ..... The Biscuit Tin of Destiny.

In our system, along I expect with most parliamentary systems, not all law is created according to the government's agenda. Any Member of Parliament here is able to draft their own bill on any matter they feel strongly enough about to bother, and submit it to Parliament to be debated and then voted on like any other legislation. If it passes - which mostly it doesn't - it becomes law.

Aside from allowing random trivia or pet hobby horses to come to Parliament's attention, this is also commonly the way that legislation on "moral" topics like marriage, abortion, euthanasia or homosexual law reform comes about here. Political parties often won't want to put their name behind something too controversial, but there's usually an MP who feels strongly enough about it to submit the legislation privately - often with behind the scenes support from MPs on both sides to draft a compromise bill that has a chance of passing - and if it is drawn in the ballot, the government can declare it a "conscience vote" which means MPs are free to vote against party positions, insulating the government from criticism whatever the outcome.

Since there are generally many, many more of these "Private Member's Bills" in the queue than can get discussed in the one afternoon every two weeks which Parliament schedules for them, there needs to be a system for deciding which ones get debated. In New Zealand, the process is that tokens representing the bill are drawn at random by one of Parliament's officials whenever there's a vacant slot.

Because this is New Zealand and we don't go for no hi-falutin' ways, the tokens are repurposed Bingo counters, and the container from which they are drawn is a biscuit tin (cookie tin for the Americans). These were pressed into service because they happened to be lying around 30 years ago at the time the ballot system was put in place, and have remained in service ever since, as has the paper label taped onto the tin.

Due to this, the Private Members Bill system is informally known here as "Biscuit Tin Democracy" and the tin in question, whose official home is a bookshelf in a parliamentary back office, is variously called "The Biscuit Tin of Democracy" or "The Biscuit Tin of Destiny".

(

NZ has done well at containment, but we’re doing a lousy job at vaccination - only 15% of the eligible population have had even one shot. I guess there just hasn’t been the sense of urgency here, plus supply’s been a problem because we don’t have a lot of leverage with pharmaceutical companies and anyway the government’s only approved the Pfizer one.

Anyway, my number just came up, so I’m now sitting in the recovery area waiting to see if I keel over.

So far, at least, I’m feeling no urge to use Bing. So that’s good.

Here in New Zealand, we're still living in 2020: we're in a hard shelter-in-place lockdown at the moment due to Delta breaching the border quarantine. Seems to be working so far, but it's an open question how sustainable an elimination strategy is going to be vs Delta and whether we can hold it together till vaccination rates are high enough to open up. But that's another story and not the point of this tale.

Anyway, as a consequence, it's not currently possible to buy anything I can't get from the supermarket or pharmacy: hard lockdown in NZ means hard - everything's closed. Which is a PITA - it's amazing how many jobs I've started over the last couple of weeks that have stalled because nipping down to the hardware or auto parts store and grabbing a necessary widget isn't an option.

So of course this is the time that the shrub which had hooked itself around the antenna cable of our internet connection (we're on cellular broadband via a Yagi antenna bolted to the roof) managed to yank the cable out through the wall in a storm, breaking the connector on the inside end. Net result: no internet, which as I'm sure most of you remember from last year, is a major crisis when you're confined to quarters.

Fortunately, my box of "cables which I have no idea what the fuck they're for or where they came from and I really should get rid of" was able to ride in and save the day. I'm pretty sure I've never previously owned a device with an SMA format coax connector, but nonetheless I do have a short cable with an SMA plug. A bit of chocolate block splicing and an antenna cable rerouted through a window and connected directly to the router later, and Netflix is back online - yay! It's ugly, but it'll do till electronics stores are open again.

It's nice to occasionally get rewarded for never throwing crap out

The GPS on our JDM Leaf has never really coped with the fact that it's 6000 miles from Japan, and insists on trying to place us somewhere that it has a map for. And we've never figured out how to turn off the nav warnings. We've therefore become accustomed to having a nice Japanese lady (who we call Motoko) burble at us at random intervals warning of railroad crossings and other nonexistent hazards.

This is a new low though - normally it at least manages to place us on an actual road. And more disturbingly, Motoko hasn't warned me I'm about to drown. Maybe she's starting to suspect we've kidnapped her .

I'd say "go home Motoko, you're drunk", except that clearly she has no clue where home is.

@old-busted-hotness That debate got played out publicly here after a trans woman (Laurel Hubbard) was selected for our weightlifting team - a sport in which you'd think starting off as a biological male would give you quite an advantage. I was initially somewhat anti, having more or less the same concerns you've expressed above. But by the time the various people who actually know some stuff about the subject had weighed in, I was totally OK with it.

Factors worth thinking about (note - this all relates to people who've had the full gender reassignment program - drugs, surgery etc: "I self-identify as" is a different conversation. Also the points I make below related to trans women, but the same arguments are applicable to trans men):

• Muscle has a pretty short "life", and gender reassignment takes years to complete and stabilize to the extent that you can be a competitive athlete. By the time you've gone through it, all the testosterone is long since washed away, and any muscular development driven by it will have faded: what muscle you have will be "female normal", both in amount and distribution (inasmuch as any Olympic athlete is normal). The same applies to hemoglobin levels, which are typically higher in males and drive higher cardio performance.
• You will still have a male skeleton, which is advantageous in many sports (though disadvantageous in others). But against that you will no longer have the right musculature to take advantage of it (see above): as well as having generally less muscle, females develop muscle in different areas than males to take advantage of the different leverage provided by their skeleton. General consensus is this "wrong gear ratio" effect outweighs the advantage of the skeleton itself in most circumstances.
• In sports where size and weight are an advantage, such as wrestling and weightlifting, competitors are segregated by weight anyway. A trans woman is more likely to be competing in a higher weight class, but once she's there she'll be competing against others with a similar profile so has no advantage. Hubbard, for example, competed in the heavyweight class but was 20kg lighter than her heaviest competitor.
• Athletics at this level is as much a mind game as a body game, and trans competitors are at an obvious disadvantage here. Between any psychological history they may have (and few people get as far as gender reassignment without some baggage accumulated along the way), and the discrimination and sense of not fitting in they're likely to experience as athletes, they have an uphill battle to reach and maintain the same mental pitch as their non-trans competitors
• Olympic-class athletes are pretty much by definition freaks of nature: NONE of them, cis or trans, conform to norms for the rest of humanity anyway. They are significantly further away from normal than the sex-to-sex spread: the world's fastest woman is slower than the world's fastest man, but she's faster than 99.99+% of the male population. The variation between cis and trans is considerably less than the difference between really good and Olympic good, never mind between average and Olympic good. Sport allows for one person to have an advantage over another - I'm not a professional basketballer because (as well as being an unfit slob with lousy hand-eye co-ordination) I'm not 6'8" tall: LeBron James has an advantage over me. What it doesn't allow for is an unfair or disproportionate advantage, and evidence to date doesn't support the idea that trans athletes have such an advantage. If they did, the trans athletes who have been competing at lower levels of sport for some time now would be cleaning up all over, and they're not. If trans people were competitive in proportion to their prevalence in the population, never mind disproportionately competitive, there'd be about 50 of them hammering at the doors of the Olympics, not one or two.

A counter argument to all that is that Hubbard transitioned fairly late in life and was a serious weightlifter before she transitioned as well as after. As a male, she wasn't good enough to make the Olympic qualification mark, but as a female she was. So one could argue that being trans gave her an advantage. But then you'd have to ask whether as "a woman trapped in a man's body" she was mentally able to compete to her full potential as a male and whether it's removing that disadvantage that's allowed her to step up to Olympic class. And down the rabbit hole we go...

Hubbard, by the way, washed out early after failing to make her first three lifts at a weight well below her personal best, illustrating my point above about it being a mind game.

For major birthdays and anniversaries, we have developed a tradition of going on holiday somewhere in NZ, renting an interesting car, and staying in a luxury lodge. This week’s our 20th wedding anniversary, and we’re visiting Christchurch, the wineries of the Waitaki valley, and Oamaru. In a gorgeously blue 2001 Alfa Spider V6.

Review so far:

Getting the obvious out of the way first, we’ve done 150 miles so far and it hasn’t broken down yet! Here’s hoping that lasts, but it comes with roadside assistance if not.

It’s in remarkably good condition for a 20 year old car, never mind a 20 year old Alfa, though it’s only got 60k miles on the clock. Paint and wheels are perfect, no rust that I can see, everything seems to work, and there’s very little sign of wear on the interior.

The Busso is everything they say it is. Smooth, a linear power delivery that keeps on giving all the way to 7k and feels like it wants to keep going, and sounds great anywhere north of about 3k, though not as loud and sharp as I’d like it - you can hardly hear it over the wind with the top down. There’d be a sports exhaust in its future if I owned it. The guy who we picked it up from also has a 155 with the 2.5 in it, which he says sounds way better. I guess being just about the last Busso- engined car it’s suffered from noise regulations.

Gearshift is very nice though takes a bit of getting used to. The lateral planes are closer together than the amount of free play in the shift, so it feels like you don’t move the shifter sideways at all, you just apply pressure in the relevant direction and let the spring loading do the work. So for example 4-5 is just apply rightwards pressure to the lever and push straight forward. Once you figure that out and stop stirring it around trying to find a slot, it’s light and fast. Pedals are incredibly badly positioned for heel & toe though (and close together and offset, in traditional Alfa style). Steering wheel position is also traditional Alfa - designed for gorillas. It does have adjustable reach, but even at full stretch it’s too far away for me if I’m seated in the right place for the pedals.

Handling (at 7/10 or less) is good - precise and easy to place. More power- on throttle steer than any other FWD car I’ve ever driven though - it goes incredibly wide if you give it some boot out of a corner. Lots of scuttle shake with the top off - it threw my phone out it’s holder over a mildly bumpy road - but the top up improves that a lot.

Top is electric, with a couple of body panels that lift themselves up for it to hide under. Which again, works so far, though it does come with a rubber mallet in the trunk and instructions on where to hit the mechanism if it seizes! Impressively little wind buffeting with it down. Insanely good A/C, which I guess isn’t surprising given Italian summers

Trunk is silly - very deep but mostly full of spare tire. Two squashy bags were a stretch for it. There’s a nice lockable bin behind the seats though.

You can tell it’s an Alfa because there’s a loose trim clip in the ashtray

Mk2 Jaaaag. Only a 240, but still, there are worse gentleman’s clubs to take for a relaxed cruise to a waterfront cafe on a summer afternoon.

Kids bike park with road markings and signs so they can learn the road rules in a safe environment.

And so older kids on pit bikes can set lap times in the wee hours, no doubt...

(Seent in Oamaru, NZ).

I am not the only one with a problem.

Admittedly mine's a more expensive problem, but not by as much you'd think: women's shoes are crazy expensive.

This is not all of them, BTW.

..around about now, in fact (03:30am local time* on April 25th, 1915), British, French, Australian, and New Zealand troops began an amphibious assault on the Gallipoli peninsula in western Turkey.

The objective of the landings was to control the Dardanelle Straits, a critical seaway for both the German-allied Ottoman Empire and the Western-allied Russian Empire. Restricting Turkish naval access to the Med was hoped to encourage neutral states such as Greece and Italy to enter the war on the Western side.

The British landed on the southern end of the peninsula, the Australians and New Zealanders on the western side, and the French launched a diversionary attack on the eastern side. Within hours, the attacks had bogged down. The Brits faced an unexpectedly well prepared and dug in enemy, and once they had successfully achieved a beachhead, incompetent leadership prevented them exploiting it. Meanwhile the Anzacs had mostly been delivered to the wrong beach - a steep and rocky cove around a mile north of the intended target. While they didn’t meet the hail of gunfire they would have met at the planned beach, the few defenders were easily able to prevent them ascending the cliffs until reinforcements arrived. Compounding their problems, they faced a brilliant young military commander on the Turkish side - one Lieutenant-Colonel Kemal Ataturk.

The planning and leadership failures on the allied side which led to the attacks bogging down would continue for another 7 months, during which Allied troops were largely confined to a few yards of beach despite many heroic and unsuccessful sallies on both sides. Gallipoli was in many ways the prototype of later WW1 battles, showing the futility of throwing waves of men against emplaced troops with artillery and machine guns . The Allies eventually evacuated the peninsula on November 22, 1916: the evacuation was one of the few successful manouvres during the entire campaign.

Allied casualties at Gallipoli were around 143,000, and Turkish and Arab forces suffered around 250,000: the Turks paid a heavy price for their victory.

In the great scheme of WW1 this was a minor campaign that had no real impact **, but it had a disproportionate effect on three nations: Turkey, Australia, and New Zealand. For all three of these countries, Gallipoli has become a central part of their story.

In the case of Turkey, the successful defense of the homeland sparked an upswell of patriotic pride that enabled the hero of Gallipoli, Kemal Ataturk, to put together an alliance which opposed the partitioning of Turkey when the Ottoman Empire was dissolved after WW1, and subsequently to become President of the new nation. Ataturk almost singlehandedly created a progressive, secular, western-looking state from the remnants of a stagnant and insular Islamic empire. His legacy was fiercely protected throughout the 20th century, largely by the military, which stepped hard on any move to dilute his reforms. Ataturk’s influence on modern Turkey cannot be overstated, though the current President is doing his best to roll it back.

For Australia and New Zealand, Gallipoli was in many ways the beginning of a sense of distinct national identity. New Zealand was still a colony of Great Britain and Australia, a newly-minted independent country , still very much looked to Britain as the motherland. This was the first overseas war either had sent troops to in quantities large enough to have an impact. Both countries had small populations and effectively their entire armies were pitched into this disaster. To put the effects in perspective, around 60% of all Anzac troops sent to Gallipoli came back on stretchers or not at all. New Zealand suffered almost as many casualties per head of population during the Gallipoli campaign alone as the USA did during the whole of WW2.

As a result of sending divisions to WW1, Australia and NZ got seats at the table both during the war and after - we both joined the League of Nations as independent entities. As a result of losing large quantities of young men to incompetent English leadership ( not that our own was a pack of geniuses, but that didn’t fit the legend) we developed a sense that we needed to control our own destiny. As a result of having it reinforced that a certain class of Englishman saw colonial (not to mention Scottish, Irish, & Welsh) lives as less valuable than English ones, we started to see ourselves as not British. As a result of Maori troops fighting alongside Pakeha (white) ones, and turning out to be darn good at it, Maori acquired a level of respect among a generation of NZers which has contributed to our racial problems being less than most other countries with colonial history (which is by no means to say we don’t have race problems: we sure as hell do). As a result of a whole generation of young men being put through the same blender together, our national values of comradeship, stoicism and making do with nothing were strengthened. As a result of sharing that blender with the Australians, we developed close national bonds which still hold.

Gallipoli was not in fact the worst campaign of WW1 for the Anzacs - the Somme was much worse in terms of casualties. Having the privilege of sending our whole army to both those disasters resulted in NZ having the highest military casualty rate of any allied nation in WW1: around 58,000 dead or injured out of 100,000 troops. This had a huge impact on society - no family came through unscathed. Every road junction with three houses and a pub in NZ has a WW1 memorial somewhere with a long list of matching surnames on it. However Gallipoli was the first, and its the one which sticks in the national psyche of both Australia and NZ.

Today, 25th April, is Anzac Day, the day on which Australians and New Zealanders honour our war dead and our living veterans, and remember what a dumbass idea sending young men out to kill each other is. Holding our national remembrance day on a day when we got our butts kicked rather than - as many other nations do it - on a day of victory, may make the latter part of that more significant here than in other places.

Anzac Day in New Zealand is probably the most culturally significant national holiday - even more so than the national anniversary day, Waitangi Day. Dawn services have been held across both countries, and while I can’t speak for Australia, in NZ in recent years attendance at these has crept up to be by far the largest of any public event in the country: the dawn service at Auckland War Memorial will pull a larger crowd than Beyonce or Metallica could dream of here, and even the small town nearest to where we live will have had a couple of hundred at the local service, I expect. This year I expect the crowds will be even larger than normal - Covid restrictions aren't a thing in NZ at the moment, but this time last year we were in a full shelter in place lockdown and services weren't held, for the first time since 1916, so people will be keen to pay their respects again.

In an hour or so dawn services will be held on Gallipoli at all the main landing beaches. Attendance at these has become something of a rite of passage for young New Zealanders. In a normal year, due to the aforementioned tiny amount of space at Anzac cove, attendance is regulated by ballot, but 15000-odd people would have attended, many of whom would have spent the night on the site. This year, services are still open to the public, but with Europe denuded of backpackers, it will be interesting to see how many Europe-resident Aussies and Kiwis make the pilgrimage.

*in 1915 Turkey was at GMT+2 - they moved their time zone forward one hour in 2018.
**it may ultimately have had a larger effect on WW2, as it knocked some of the arrogance out of (and set back the career of) its instigator, one Winston Churchill, setting him up to be the leader Britain needed 25 years later.

In a vague nod to on-topic, have a Gallipoli ambulance:

@grindintosecond If you’ve got jato bottles who needs floats? Just strap on the skis from the Antarctic package, touchdown and surf on in, park it sideways in a couple of feet of water to do the business, then when it’s time to get the hell out of Dodge, light the blue touchpaper and ski on out. Radical, dude!

@derp Obligatory:

@davesaddiction Piss off the Chinese, and the French, and earn a big slab of cash for General Dynamics all at the same time? Sounds like win-win-win for Biden (and for whoever the congressman for GD is).

Marks a big strategic shift for the Australians, too. Nuclear subs are typically less good inshore than diesels but have better long-range capability, which suggests Oz are now several billion dollars more worried about China than about their historical bugbears, the various populous nations immediately north of them.

@chariotoflove said in Remember to never let education stifle imagination:

There is no “doing it wrong” when a kid is creating.

There is however, “doing it in the wrong place”. My sister’s kid painted most of the lower half of her black SUV white, after daddy left the paint can open and unattended with the brush sitting on top while painting the fence…

@just-a-scratch then their mom’s an astronaut or an alien

@chariotoflove said in More from the Dad files, the Air Force years:

EXCEPTIONAL FLYING ABILITY (has an equal amount of takeoffs and landings)

It worries me that the only time your flying ability isn't exceptional is when you’re actually flying

@italia While feeling like it’s doing 105

@britsnswedes-was-minigti For the NZ market, Kents were the low rent option. Premium trims got pepperpots.

@britsnswedes-was-minigti That is still one pretty car, and I still don’t understand why anyone would choose pepperpots over Kents.

@gmporschenut-also-a-fan-of-hondas said in Remember the Ever Given?:

@facw my suspicion is because it is wide open, and can go full speed, ships have to worry about squat effect where the ship is pulled down like a Venturi effect through comparatively shallow water

Shallow water has a substantial impact on helm response, which is more likely the reason. When the stern is pushed sideways by the rudder, water has to pass under the hull to let that happen - if there’s not much clearance under the hull that gets harder and the ship responds slower to the helm. (There’s a fluid mechanics jargon explanation involving tip vortices and effective aspect ratios, but that’s basically what happens). This has an effect on helm response for large vessels even at continental-shelf depths, but when water depth is less than twice the draft it starts to become noticeably nonlinear with depth changes, as well as noticeably large if you’re going faster than manoeuvring speeds.

Unpredictable helm response is something you really don”t want when you have large vessels travelling at speed in a crowded seaway. Minimum clearance = 25% draft is probably the number someone decided on for a safe limit to that effect.

Source: my undergraduate final-year project way back in the mists of time was on adaptive autopilots for supertankers, to compensate for precisely this problem. They now exist commercially (no thanks to my contribution ) but not all big ships have all the toys, and not all crews use them even if they do.