flinging chopsticks

The Timaru Herald got a very interesting story (in weird way) on a racial clash in Timaru. The really interesting part is not the story itself, in fact, after reading the whole thing, I still don't know how it was started, maybe staffs of the Timaru Herald also need a bit of improvement on writing English, just like I do:)

It is how the witness described the event really amused me:

"Two of them [Asians] were in school uniform and an adult was with them. One had two baseball bats, [and was] flinging them around like bloody chopsticks," a witness said. He said as soon as the youth with the baseball bats appeared everything escalated. “It was just like a rat’s nest being disturbed by a fox terrier, they were going everywhere.

bezdomny ex patria's comment focused on the racial motivation of this witness recall:

...  why? I mean, why use this word “chopsticks” in your seriously warped simile? Could it be the Asian-ness of those doing the flinging around? Some bizarre stereotype of kung fu movies?
And to then follow that up with rats? Wow, you really are trying to reinforce the image of Timaru as a racist, redneck hole, aren’t you?

Well, it sure did a good job on reinforcing the image that I always had in my mind: rural parts of the South Island is the most racist part of NZ. If you are from there, no offence, the bad guys are always the minority.

However, as  a Chinese who get so used to racial remarks, I was really wondering, how did this comment made itself onto the paper, black and white? Regardless of racism part, this chopsticks comment is also factually flawed. It is a common sense that when you are in middle of a fight, you hold on with your baseball bats and smash you enemies as hard as you like, you don't fling them around like "blood chopsticks". I suspect that this witness either exaggerated the situation, or made the whole thing up.

For Timaru Herald, allowing such comments to be published on its paper, really shows how it lacks professionalism.

Even more nanny state stuffs

Parents should be prosecuted for allowing their children to play age-restricted video games, the chief censor says.

Current laws allow punishments of up to three months jail or a $10,000 fine for those caught supplying R-18 games to children. While there have been no prosecutions so far, chief censor Bill Hastings told the Dominion Post the laws should be enforced to help prevent the effects of repeat exposure to violence and sexual violence on young people. (via New Zealand Herald)

Well the first thing I started to wonder is how they are going to enforce that law. Sure that lousy TV3 programme called Target can hire under aged actors to buy restricted games, but unlike illegal selling of tobacco, distribution of games, especially compute games, does not work that way. Today's kids are pretty clever, much cleverer than what we use to. 10 years ago no parental control software can lock me away from computer, today, I recently heard a story from China,  a 14 year old kid is now spying on their parents' activities on computer.

That's a very unique case but most young people do know how to download pirated stuffs online - parents will also be responsible for this if S92A came to force last month (luckily it hasn't) as the Internet access is under the name of a parent. If this happens, I mean, is this really a fault of parents? They tried their best, education, use parental control software, lock out the computer ... but parents aren't nannies, even a nanny cannot watch with children 24/7.

There's a difference of wording, "allowing" or "supplying". Supply is a process that you handed out something that you know it is illegal, allowing can mean you simply don't know. Sure if a parent buys a clearly labelled r-18 games for their children then it is a offence, but if you simply don't know, and don't have access to information on what your children is playing?

Teacher stabbed at Avondale College

The news broke out at the midday yesterday, Avondale College's Japanese language teacher, Dave Warren, was stabbed by a student while teaching in the class. And the local media, especially the herald, did their best on finding out the nationality of the offender as in other cases before, declaring "it wasn't one of us" -the attacker was a Korean national, who had been there for just few weeks.

However, it is still related to "one of us". The catalyst of the attack seems to be some kind of racist remark from the teacher, according to the report.

As you may know, I attended Avondale College for few weeks before I decided to leave, and went back to my former high school, a decile 3(Even worse this year I heard) school. Am I stupid? Maybe, but Avondale got some kind of strange culture, it's hard to tell what it is and not necessarily "racism", but it makes you feel that you don't belong to there, nobody wants to hear what you think and want. I was attending so called "mainstream" classes (another way of saying "normal classes", compare with "esol class") in my old school, but because I have a Chinese face, they wanted me to waste another year in ESOL with no interest to hear my story.

I don't know the attacked teacher, but I do know people who know him or attended his class before. Their comments seem to match what is being reported, although Mr Warren may never had the intention to offend, some of his daily language are very likely to be offensive to some people.

I'm not endorsing violence against racist remarks, the point I want to make is, if there isn't another way to express your concern or release your anger, violence is the only way left. In this case, language barrier might be a factor but I also suspect the reason I described above had something to do with it.

This applies to both new immigrants and those who were born here. Every thing happens for a reason, you don't do anti-social stuffs for no reason or just for fun.

New Employment Relation Act effective from today

Now your new boss can fire you at will within 90 days.  You chose that,  you voted for it.

This is what National Party is all about. Like the recent job summit, aimmed to "create jobs", but let's face it, it's just a bad publicity stunt. When you see a group of predominantly white, rich bosses sit around talking about "create and save job", you immediately smells something strange. Aren't they the guys who are responsible for the current situation? In fact, to me, it was more like a discussion on how to save their big fat pay cheques.

My suggestions for this ERA is, refuse to sign any contract that has that 90 days clause in it.  Yes I recognise employers need confidence, but 90 days trial period is too long. 30 days is more than enough to see whether a new employee is a lazy bum and lives up to employer's expectations. 90 days is way to long, it just opens a big opportunity for those bad employers out there.

But if you don't have a choice - then sign the contract anyway.

Human Rights Record of United States in 2008

In response to U.S. department of State's annual report, China's Information office of the State Council also publishes a similar report to call U.S. to "reflect and take care of its own businesses".

But that's only half of the sentence, what Chinese government really meant is "so stop accusing us". I'm not judging which side has the moral high ground, but I want to point it out that, as that famous "hurt our feelings" remark, I suspect this Chinese version of human rights report is also intended for domestic consumption, rather than a serious attempt to "help" U.S. on human rights record. If that is true, then I have serious doubts on the intelligence of whoever is behind this - making the accuser look bad doesn't mean the accusations made are invalid and the  accused can walk free.

The Chinese report is quite fun to read, and the best thing is, there's an english version, unlike those lazy bums in the States who didn't bother to translate their report.   Highly recommended if you got an hour to kill.

Copyright Act Section 92A - what copyright terrorists really want?

My friend just forwarded me a link from Computerworld, a leaked letter from RIANZ, showing the points they disagree with the TCF code of Practice, currently at a draft stage.

Yes, they are copyright terrorists,  I have no doubt about that, let's  just see what they want:

RIANZ instead wants users to be required to provide sufficient evidence as to why they believe the alleged infringement didn’t occur via the internet account in question and/or why there is no copyright infringement of the file being downloaded.

Who's accusing who? Why should users prove they are innocent when they are accused by others?

RIANZ opposes having to pay for processing copyright infringement notices and indemnifying ISPs for any costs and liabilities.

So it's not all right when others download musics for free, but it's all right to have others to work for you for free?

Third, RIANZ does not want the notices sent out to users accused of infringement to include evidence that would be admissible in court.

You know this is simply amazing. This is not just guilt upon accusation, it's guilt upon accusation with absolutely with no evidence to back it up. Even the murders have a chance to see the evidence used to against them, but Internet users don't get this right.

Furthermore, RIANZ says its evidence is “highly reliable, well-tested and accepted worldwide”.

This is not the point. The point is, download activities don't mean that download is an infringement of copyright, in many cases, it's legal to download materials, like using downloaded materials as a backup of a disc I already own.

Yes they are right holders, and I do respect their copyright, but if they just want to keep abusing people like this, I'll have no sympathy for them at all.