"Spy Bill" passes in New Zealand

John Key, New Zealand's version of GWB's crony, Tony Blair, has pushed a spy bill through legislation today.

Spy agencies can now legally watch Kiwis.

In a landmark law change, the shadowy Government Communications Security Bureau has been given explicit powers to spy on New Zealanders when it is acting under warrant and for agencies including the Security Intelligence Service, police and defence.
 
Parliament ushered in the change last night by a vote of 61 votes to 59, almost a decade after it passed the 2003 act promising that the foreign intelligence gathering agency would not be used to spy on New Zealanders.

Leading academic Dame Anne Salmond has accused Attorney-General Chris Finlayson of "gutter politics" after he criticised her opposition to the spying bill as "shrill and unprofessional".

During debate on the bill's third reading yesterday, Mr Finlayson said the "high and mighty, such as Dame Anne Salmond", were wrong in their opposition. He labelled statements likening the GCSB bill to Nazi Germany as "disgraceful".

In two newspaper columns, Dame Anne mentioned that in Nazi Germany, critics were told "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear", and likened that to arguments by the bill's supporters.
In Parliament yesterday, Mr Finlayson also slated former Labour prime minister Sir Geoffrey Palmer, who he said allowed the GCSB to operate during his time with "no legislation at all".

But he claimed the "worst contribution" had come from Dame Anne - an anthropologist and the current New Zealander of the Year - whom he accused of being "shrill and unprofessional".

Collective nouns

We all are familiar with .... a herd of cows, a flock of chickens,

a school of fish
a gaggle of geese,

a pod of whales

and
a pride of lions.

Less widely known is:
a murder of crows

an exaltation of doves

a charm of finches

a congress of owls
 

a cackle of tuis

a cacophony of kookaburras

Now consider a group of Baboons.
They are the loudest, most dangerous, most obnoxious,
most viciously aggressive and least intelligent of all primates.........

And what is the proper collective noun for a group of baboons

Believe it or not

 

… A Parliament

With thanks to Judith Smith.  And yes, I did make up the cackle of tuis and cacophony of kookaburras.

Should New Zealand get an Oscar?

In the BBC magazine, Megan Lane makes  an interesting point.

Is New Zealand itself a character in the many award-winning films that have been shot on location here?

"If a country could be eligible for a best actor award, New Zealand could be in the running for every gong going, with its contrasting moods showcased most recently in The Hobbit and Top Of The Lake," she says, and then asks, "Is the scenery more than just a dramatic backdrop?"

I certainly agree that there is something more to the spirit of New Zealand than the stunning scenery.  Many New Zealanders share the ancient Maori belief that the country itself has spirit and life.  Both Maori and pakeha (the more recent settlers) identify with a mountain, a river, a lake, and/or a particular stretch of the coastal sea. 

Delight is taken in the growing of native plants, and the watching and feeding of native birds.  There is a sense of pride in seeing tui foraging the blossoms of the pohutukawa trees that grow in the grounds of the parliament buildings -- a pride that is oddly proprietorial.

So, should our scenery earn an Oscar? 

For versatility, perhaps.

New Zealand can shift from one idea of the land to the other - pastoral to gothic, cultivated to wild," says Prof Laurence Simmons, head of media, film and television at the University of Auckland. "It's been used by filmmakers to fit a variety of global locations and historical periods, from small-town America in Peter Jackson's The Frighteners to 19th Century Japan, let alone Middle-earth and the landscape of Avatar."

Many of these films have helped to attract visitors to the country, just as the New Zealand Film Commission hoped would happen when it first started funding home-grown features in the 1970s.

In a survey conducted in the first quarter of 2013, one in 10 international arrivals said The Hobbit sparked their interest in New Zealand as a destination.

"We estimate that 47,000 visitors a year visit a film location," says Danielle Genty-Nott of Tourism New Zealand.

And that number is bound to increase.  Rumor has it that the eighth Doctor Who season will be filmed in other-worldly New Zealand

(And no, that third picture is not upside-down.  It is a reflection in a lake.)

The Day after the Earthquake

Overheard in a train

Usually, people who roar into cellphones on public transport or in restaurants are simply rude and annoying.  But every now and then you can guess what the unheard person on the other end of the line is saying, and the result can be intriguing.

On Friday, New Zealand had another series of earthquakes, which shook up Blenheim and Wellington rather a lot.  Yesterday, Saturday, a woman across the aisle in a train had a cellphone conversation about it.  And this is how it went:

"Was I hurt? Yes!"

.....

"I hurt my shoulder!"

.....

"I hurt it fighting a man to get under a desk."

....

"Well, he was a big, burly fellow, and very determined."

The woman, as it happens, didn't seem to be hurt or in any pain, but obviously, whatever gallantry her co-worker owned had been shaken out of him.

Joseph Banks and George Stubbs's kangaroo

I was intrigued to see a BBC report that the National Maritime Museum claims that Canberra's Stubbs's paintings don't have enough Australian interest for the Aussies to keep them.  And the man behind it? No less than Sir David Attenborough, who should know his history better.

Accordingly, money is being raised, and an import licence has been applied for, and legal efforts made to get around Canberra's export ban.

How ridiculous.  It is an intrinsic Australian story, deeply connected to the first charting of the eastern coast by James Cook in the Endeavour.  And it is an amusing story, too.

‘Land animals are scarce’, declared Captain Cook in his description of the coast of Australia.  Those in ‘the greatest plenty’ were ‘the Kangooroo, or Kanguru so call’d by the Natives; we saw a great many of them about Endeavour River, but kill’d only Three which we found very good eating’.  No one, apparently, thought of taking a live kangaroo to England — or even carrying one or two for eating along the way — but Joseph Banks did carry back two skins.  One of these was inflated (probably over a rubber lining) to look as lifelike as possible, and Banks commissioned George Stubbs to paint the result, complete with an imaginative background.

            The illustration engraved from this painting, published in Hawkesworth’s bestselling Account of the Voyages, made the kangaroo a popular sensation.  Scientists, puzzled by the concept of a pouched marsupial, and not knowing how to classify it, debated vigorously and at length.  The public response was much more frivolous:  a dance called the ‘kangaroo hop’ was invented, which took Europe by storm.  Even the great Dr Samuel Johnson was intrigued enough to gather up his coat-tails, and entertain his friends by jumping like a kangaroo.

From Tupaia, Captain Cook's Polynesian Navigator, Joan Druett.

E L James top-earning author

It pays to have "James" in your name

We haven't heard much about that infamous sex-romp, Fifty Shades, lately.  But now the BBC reports that E L James, the creator, is the top-earning author of 2012.

The success of the Fifty Shades trilogy has propelled EL James to the top of Forbes' list of the highest-earning authors.

The British writer earned $95m (£61.5m) last year, the business magazine said.

She knocked crime author James Patterson off the top spot after three years. He took second place with $91m.

James's first novel Fifty Shades Of Grey sold 70 million copies in eight months. At its peak, the entire trilogy earned her more than $1m a week.


The Fifty Shades novels have been a publishing phenomenon, and have had particularly strong sales in the e-book market.

The series began as a piece of fan fiction, inspired by Stephanie Meyers' Twilight series, but was re-written before publication as a novel.

Meyers, who took 13th place on the Forbes list in 2012, did not make the top 15 this year.

James's success is almost unprecedented, said Forbes, as most of the names on its annual list are established authors whose earnings derive from sales of their extensive back catalogues.

James Patterson, meanwhile, will release his 115th book later this year.

Captain William "Old Glory" Driver

A Salem shipmaster, and one of America's most flamboyant captains ... William Driver, the man who gave the United States flag its famous nickname, OLD GLORY.

Apparently, August is supposed to be the anniversary of the date (August 10, 1831) when Captain William Driver nicknamed the flag, but I can find nothing to substantiate this.  It was not his birthday; the flag had been made for him about seven years earlier, and in August 1831 he was in Tahiti.

But enough.  This long post is taken from a paper I wrote about Salem captains in the Bay of Islands, New Zealand, and is dedicated to this remarkably flamboyant and noteworthy man. The facts were mostly taken from his logbook and his journal, as well as Salem newspapers of the time.

William “Old Glory” Driver was born in Salem on March 17, 1803, and went to sea at the age of fourteen, then rose in the ranks over a series of Mediterranean voyages.  His first South Seas voyage, beginning in 1824, was as first mate and trading officer of the Salem trader Clay, under the command of Captain Benjamin Vanderford (who was later famous for being turned down by Fijian cannibals, who considered him too skinny to be worth cooking, so allowed him to go free; he died as a pilot for the U.S. Exploring Expedition). 

 

Vanderford's brief from the ship's owners, Nathaniel L. Rogers and Brothers, was to take the Clay to the Fijian Islands, and procure a cargo of bêche-de-mer—sea-slugs—which were in hot demand in the East as a tonic for flagging virility, and would fetch up to 40 Spanish silver dollars per picul in the Manila market.

Getting a good haul of the slow-moving, gristly, phallus-shaped creatures was easily managed, by scooping them off the bottom of some reef-enclosed lagoon.  However, they had to be cured in a particular manner, or the cargo would be unmarketable—and William Driver had no idea how to do it.  Providentially, however, he was accosted by “set of  Manila pirates, who had murdered their captain, Hosea Boyes, and all his officers, destroyed his brig, the Conception”, and now were selling off the trappings of the looted ship.  Not only did the pirates show Driver how to cure the catch—a complicated process of gutting the slugs, boiling them in some large cauldron like a whaling trypot, rinsing them thoroughly in fresh water, and then smoking and drying them in a specially built “batter” house—but they sold him the necessary kettles.  A cargo weighing 600 piculs was taken to Manila, where it was sold at the equivalent of $32 US per quintal, for a total of 25,600 silver dollars.  “Never was a voyage so dependent on good luck and so successful,” reminisced Driver in a letter to the Salem Register.  

The ship returned to Fiji, where Driver had left a gang of assorted natives and pirates catching and curing sea-slugs, and took on another cargo, which was sold at the same gratifying price. Vanderford then decided that it was time to go home.  As the Clay headed east, however, they spoke the Quill, another Rogers-owned trader. William Driver shifted over to the other ship as first mate and trading officer, and headed back to the Fijian lagoons. 

 

It was not until 1830, after obtaining and selling well over 1,000 piculs of bêche-de-mer, that he returned to Salem, where he was  given command of the Charles Doggett.  On January 14, 1831, as the American flag was hoisted up the spanker gaff to signal his departure, he famously exclaimed, “There goes Old Glory”—and not only has the Stars and Stripes had that nickname ever since, but Driver himself was known from then on as "Old Glory."

The ship left Salem in a snowstorm, and had a very slow passage to the Pacific. Then a five-day gale forced him to bring the Charles Doggett into the Bay of Islands, to repair damages and replenish his freshwater barrels. Driver arrived at midnight on 4 June, and next morning, he visited the mission at Paihia, “on the other side of the Bay, a distance of seven miles, to get water.”  The missionary, Rev. Henry Williams, confirmed this entry in Driver's log, writing in his journal the same day, “The Captain landed with whom we had much conversation".  Then he angrily went on to record Driver's boast that “it is universally observed that the crews of the American Ships conduct themselves with that propriety which is unknown by our own [English] countrymen in these seas.”

From there the encounter went rapidly downhill.  Williams tried to buy trade goods from Driver at the advantageous rates he was used to getting from the whaleship captains:  “Occupied a considerable time with the American Captain, endeavouring to purchase some trade—too dear,” he wrote.  Consequently, when Driver requested free access to the mission stream at Paihia, it was easy for Henry Williams to refuse. Driver found a chief, Pomare, who was willing to be paid a musket to escort the brig's boat to Paihia and supervise the filling of the barrels, but Williams simply sent Pomare and the boat away.  Driver resorted then to a written complaint, Williams recording on 19 July that he, “rec’d a note from the American ship respecting the watering on our ground, as his people had rec’d notice to quit.”  

The missionary cancelled prior appointments, “as I had a very unpleasant matter to settle with the American Captain”, and made his way to the Charles Doggett, where he found “the Captain very angry and highly indignant that his people were prevented from watering on our ground." 

 

Driver demanded to know what right the missionaries had to deny him water, and Williams retorted that the stream was on private property, and as private citizens they could do with it as they wished. Then, as he wrote:

He [Captain Driver], however, did not appear disposed to consider anything but his own convenience, and said that he had desired Pomare to water the ship and he should require him to go to the place in question, for which he had promised him a musket, and if that would not do he should give him two, if that would not accomplish it he would give him ten, and if that should fail he would give him something that would do.

Seduced by this increased offer, Pomare proved “as obstinate as the Captain”, leading a party of his own people to the stream to fill the casks.  Williams had arrived there first, however, and as the chief “was there with natives only”, he was intimidated enough to take his men and the empty barrels away.  To make sure that it could never happen again, Williams's "boys" felled the trees that grew about the stream, effectively preventing boats from coming up, and set a fence across the entrance.  Then, to emphasise that this was private property, they dug up a nearby field for a garden—and Captain Driver took the hint, and sailed away.

A trivial matter, but one that augured badly for future relationships between the mission and Salem captains, who fought with each other from then on.  There was an even more important outcome, however—because of what Driver learned during his fruitless attempt to fill his empty barrels.

 

As he reminisced a half-century later: 

I learned there from Gilbert Marr [Mair], merchant, amd Mr. Williams of the mission at "The Pai," that the port of Sydney, N.S.W., was open, and that "a good trade might be done there by us," in staves, oars, pitch, resin, flour, tobacco, and a sprinkling of New England rum … Thought a ship bound to Manila or China, during the Northeast monsoon, could save some thumping and would lose but little time by bringing such "traps" here and selling or consigning them, and then away for Sunda or Timour Straits

Driver communicated this in a letter to the brig's owners, which he consigned to Salem via the homeward bound whaleship Harvest.  That done, he set sail to Tahiti for the provisions and fresh water he hadn't been allowed to load at the Bay of Islands.  And there, he was accosted by 65 descendants and wives of the Bounty mutineers, who had been carried away from their island refuge of Pitcairn Island by the British, and were desperate to get back. 

William Driver took them all on board the Charles Doggett, leaving Tahiti on August 14 and delivering them to Pitcairn Island 23 days later.  They were so grateful for this act of kindness that he was plied with gifts made of fragments from the Bounty wreck, and for generations afterward, children were named after him -- one being named William Driver Christian, for instance.

 

After tearing himself away, Driver headed for Fiji and Manila.  Finally, in the northern spring of 1832, he arrived home with a full freight of sugar, plus a between-decks cargo of 1,600 pounds of tortoiseshell (actually turtle shell) worth over $20,000, and "bundles of bows and arrows, war clubs, etc.".  There, he found Rogers Bros., having received his letter, fitting out their ship Tybee for the south Pacific trade.

The Tybee cleared from the Salem Custom House on April 27, 1832, with one of their most experienced captains, Charles Millett, in charge, and a crew of thirteen that included Nathaniel Rogers' protégé, 20-year-old John Brown Williams, who served as her clerk.  In November the ship called at the Bay of Islands to build and set up warehouses "some miles distant" from Kororareka, where consignments could be stored, just as had been done in Mauritius 46 years earlier. By May 1833 the Tybee was in Sydney, the first American vessel to enter that port since the war of 1812-15.  Leaving on June 8, the Tybee made a quick passage to Salem, mooring at Derby Wharf on 20 October 1833, to discharge Australia’s first export cargo ever to the United States.  It included 4,800 cattle hides, and 1,000 kangaroo skins.

Meantime, Driver had been given command of the bark Black Warrior.  He sailed directly to Sydney with a freight of naval stores, arriving in October 1833 to find "almost a famine” and the government in desperate need of flour.  Leaving his ship in charge of his first officer, Joseph Rogers, he went on shore to set up an office and a depot store, while the Black Warrior sailed back to the States.  In August 1834 Rogers returned with 1,600 barrels of flour, which had cost just $4.64 per barrel in New York, and which Driver sold to a Sydney firm for seventy shillings ($16.75) per barrel, at a profit of almost $20,000.

 

Such were the profits that the Salem shipmasters and merchants made from their ventures in the Pacific -- and all because Captain William "Old Glory" Driver ventured into the Bay of Islands to refresh his barrels of drinking water. 

Jane Austen museum to keep her ring

A 100,000-pound donation means that a ring that once adorned Jane Austen's finger will remain in the UK

From the BBC

 

A ring which once belonged to Jane Austen is likely to stay in the UK after a Hampshire museum received an anonymous donation of £100,000.

 

US singer Kelly Clarkson bought the turquoise and gold ring for £152,450 at auction last year, outbidding the Jane Austen's House Museum.

Culture minister Ed Vaizey put an export bar on it until 30 September.

The museum has now raised enough to "show a serious expression of interest to buy the ring".
It has until December to raise a further £49,000. The museum, in Chawton, Hampshire, is Jane Austen's former home.

Fundraiser Louise West was involved in the initial attempt to buy the ring.

She said: "We could see the writing on the wall.

"We knew it was going to go for much more than we could raise in that short space of time."
After the export bar was put on the ring, she said there had been a "grass roots" campaign from the supporters of the museum to help them raise the funds to match Clarkson's bid.

Staff at the museum have invited Clarkson, 2002 winner of the American Idol TV, to visit the house where Austen wrote and revised all of her six completed novels.

Maori head to be repatriated

From the Huffington Post

'A mummified head said to be that of "a South Sea island chief" is to be sent back to New Zealand after more than 150 years in the UK.

'The Maori head, or Toi moko, was brought to Britain in the 1840s and has been kept in Warrington Museum in Cheshire since 1843.

'Today the museum announced it was to be sent back to its motherland due to its "great cultural importance". '

For some reason (say I) this has become a big news item around the world, variously reported.  The illustration is of a plaster cast of the head, which is presumably not as insensitive to have on display as the head itself, which would be very insensitive indeed.

The markings were tattooed, not painted, in the distinctively Maori art of ta moko.  Elsewhere in the Pacific, tattoos were pricked into the skin, but in Aotearoa (New Zealand), they were carved into the skin, much as wood was carved, and in very similar curvilinear patterns. A sharp chisel was the implement, often made of a bird bone with a wooden handle, and this was tapped with a small mallet, so that the point cut right through the skin.  The blood, which flowed freely, was wiped away, and a pigment, made from special soot, was rubbed in.

It was such a painful process that it was not even attempted until the subject had reached maturity -- and, indeed, was a sign of maturity.  Only a small part of the moko was created at one time, as the agony and swelling were so great.  When the lips and cheeks were tattooed they swelled up so much that the subject had to be fed through a special funnel.

The appalling mokomokai trade in preserved Maori heads was begun by Joseph Banks, who forced a Queen Charlotte Sound chief to sell the head of a fourteen-year-old boy, first by bribing him with a pair of old white drawers, and then "shewing Him a musquet" when the old man tried to escape without giving up the head.

Why Europeans would want to collect such things is a mystery, but over the first three decades of the nineteenth century hundreds of preserved tattooed heads were sold to captains and explorers, and carted off to Europe and North America.  Recently, there has been a campaign to repatriate to New Zealand the hundreds of mokomokai held in museums and private collections around the world, either to be returned to their relatives or to Te Papa, the Museum of New Zealand -- for storage and certainly not for display.

Bizarrely, the toi moko is to be displayed by the Warrington museum to New Zealand and Samoan rugby league players before repatriation in the autumn.

The DNA of Mona Lisa

Tomb opened in Da Vinci-style quest

Scientists in the Italian city of Florence have opened a tomb to extract DNA they hope will identify the model for Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa.

The tomb contains the family of Lisa Gherardini, a silk merchant's wife who is believed to have sat for the artist.

Writer and researcher Silvano Vinceti plans to compare DNA from the bones with that of three women buried at the nearby convent of Saint Ursula.

Lisa Gherardini died there as a nun in 1542.

It is hoped that some of the bones will belong to at least one of her blood relation, probably her son, Piero.

"When we find a match between mother and child - then we will have found the Mona Lisa," said Mr Vinceti.

He added that once a DNA match is made, an image of Gherardini's face can be generated from the skull and compared with the painting.
Self-portrait?
Leonardo da Vinci took about 15 years to complete what has become one of the most famous paintings of all time.

One of the artist's favourite paintings, he carried it with him until he died in 1519.

It was acquired by King Francis I, who ruled France from 1515 to 1547. The painting was put on permanent display in the Louvre in Paris at the end of the 18th century.