No Right Turn carries the news that the US Supreme Court has found the military tribunals planned for Guantanamo detainees violate both US and international law and are unfair (BBC report here, excerpts from decision here). It goes to show that while the US may from time to time deviate from its core values, at immense cost to itself and the world, the system established by some very wise men way back in the late 18th century can still work.

This further unravels the Bush administration's ill-thought and dangerous policy of suspending all normal rules of law in relation to Guantanamo detainees. The US has already released many of the detainees, people it had previously branded as dangerous terrorists. You might assume that after these releases they are really getting down to the hard core guys - but then you'd have to explain why David Hicks is still there.

It's hard to believe that some pundits who claim to love democracy and freedom will be disappointed.

Now, an apology. NZBC was down for a day or so ending about lunchtime yesterday. Some dufus had forgotten to renew the domain. Doh!

Update "He is not king": Probably the best report I've seen so far, from the Christian Science Monitor. There's a victory for process in the UK too.

Update 2: Interesting angle here suggesting the decision could have an impact on the wiretapping debate. More on this from Forbes (AP) here.

Sadly, Australia have been eliminated from the World Cup, losing 1-0 to Italy by a last minute penalty. They've played terrific football over the last few weeks and clearly deserved their place on the world stage. They could easily have beaten Italy too, having most of the running even before their opponents were reduced to 10 men.

Anyway, they've won the first game ever at the finals by a team from this region and qualified for the next round, another first. And they were an unusual Australian team - underdogs for once - which made them a lot easier to support from this side of the ditch.

Well, here we are three days after the release of the US National Academy of Science report on controversial surface temperature reconstructions and there's not one mention of it on www.climatescience.org.nz, the site set up by a group of local global warming sceptics to "audit" climate science research.

This is probably the biggest single review of these reconstructions to date, and the local watchdogs have gone to sleep!

Now I can appreciate it may take some time to produce a substantive response, but it's not even mentioned in the news section "From the news - in the media and on the internet, here and overseas".

Come on Augie, tell us the weather.

Anyway, here's the full report and the short report. And, here's an excerpt:

Based on the analyses presented in the original papers by Mann et al. and this newer supporting evidence, the committee finds it plausible that the Northern Hemisphere was warmer during the last few decades of the 20th century than during any comparable period over the preceding millennium.

Mann doesn't get it all his own way, especially when he tries to get really granular about the 1990s and 1998 in particular, but his basic thesis stands.

Update 8.20 27/6: Well the site's been updated a couple of times but there's still no mention of the NAS report. Instead we get a paper on why liberals fear global warming more than conservatives:

After all, if the science is as conclusive as Al Gore, Time, Newsweek, The New York Times and virtually every other spokesman of the Left says it is, conservatives are just as likely to be scorched and drowned and otherwise done in by global warming as liberals will. So why aren't non-leftists nearly as exercised as leftists are? Do conservatives handle heat better? Are libertarians better swimmers? Do religious people love their children less?

The spirit of scientific enquiry is alive and well at ClimateScience. If you want some commentary your better off going to RealClimate, for the orthodox view, or ClimateAudit, for a sceptical view.

Okay, no time for clever intros this week (what do you mean you haven't noticed?). Lots to get through.

First, Chris reckons smart parents know the way to stop kids getting up to shenanigans on myspace is to ask them for help in signing up - suddenly, myspace is noplace they want to hang in. Meanwhile, Kiwi Zane Lowe at BBC Radio One was one cool British music biz exec. fooled by Q magazine’s bogus myspace band.

Did you know your nose can detect 32 primary smells? With that in mind, fans of a “winter warmer” might enjoy Glenfiddich’s proprietary guide to tasting, nosing and appreciating fine whisky.

Via BoingBoing, the power of the internet to smarten up crap companies and their employees: You Tube video of an ISP technician who falls asleep on a disgruntled customer’s couch while failing to install a new modem.

Via Arts & Letters Daily, comes this insightful review of the biography of a “gold-plated egomaniac”, Acid Redux: The life and high times of Timothy Leary by Louis Menand.

Stephen, an avid reader of the Economist, offers Lexington on Hillary Clinton and a survey on logistics/supply chain management - no, wait, it's really interesting but some of it may be behind the paywall.

Mark offers this on how newspapers shrink but news is thriving. It's the case here too. I was talking to a bunch of journos on the weekend who were unanimously of the opinion that the job market had never been as healthy as it is now. He also likes this on how the New York Times covers culture.

From me, Adolf offers an unintentionally hilarious view on Iraq from the comfort of his North Shore armchair. Things are pretty much going to plan, he says. That's some plan, fella. Anyway, Adolf may have a pretty good view of the Hauraki Gulf, but if you want to know what's happening on the ground you're probably better off asking the troops.

As Japanese pirates say, sayonara, me hearties.

The arrest of alleged terrorists in Florida is pointing a bit of a spotlight on an obscure and fascinating sect. It turn out the seven may not be Muslim, or at least not traditional Muslims. Reports indicate some kind of connection, though perhaps a very informal one, with a group called the Moorish Science Temple, founded by one Timothy Drew:

Timothy Drew was born in 1886 in North Carolina. The accounts of Timothy Drew's childhood are varied, from him being the son of two former slaves who was adopted by a tribe of Cherokee Indians, to him being the son of a Moroccan Muslim father and a Cherokee mother. He is recorded, perhaps apocryphally, as saying, “When I was born, it turned black dark in the daytime. The people put their hoes down and came out of the fields.” Allegedly, at the age of 16, he joined a circus and became a stage magician, befriending a band of Roma, whom he traveled the world with. Supposedly during these travels, he met the high priest of an Egyptian cult of magic. In one version of Drew's biography, the cult leader saw him as a reincarnation of the founder of the cult, while in others he considered him a reincarnation of Jesus Christ.

That's from Wikipedia. I highly recommend you read the rest. America does spawn some weird and wonderful things.

Update: This from alt.muslim is worth a read. It contains a link to this page about Muslim engineer Fazlur Rahman Khan, who was the engineer behind the Sears Tower, supposedly the target of this alleged plot. News stories appear to be becoming more circumspect about labelling this group as Muslims, using terminology such as "religious sect" instead.

There's a few items around today about blogging. First, Egypt has a couple in jail, and we all know what that means. Bloggers of the left and right may be getting a bit too cosy with politicos.

Slate celebrated its 10th anniversary with a forum on new media. Panelist Malcolm Gladwell reckons bloggers are like parasites and without the New York Times there'd be no blogosphere (more full report here). Steady on, Malcolm.

William Powers, via Romanesko, reckons bloggers are among the few media people having any fun:

We talk about the difference between bloggers and mainstreamers as if it were just a matter of attitude: Bloggers have pluck. But the more important difference may be that while mainstreamers cry in their beer -- or their herbal tea -- about the sorry state of journalism, those troublemaking bloggers are, in the finest tradition of hackdom, simply having a blast.

Finally The Huffington Post has had to disable one of its contributor's passwords for acting, well, too much like a blogger. Like rain, that's ironic.

Okay, after yesterday's current acount shocker, a $14.5 billion deficit at 9.3% of GDP, Statistics New Zealand has just released the long-awaited March quarter GDP figure.

And the figure is ... 0.7% growth. And that means there is no recession in New Zealand.

The reality is there has never been much chance of a second consecutive negative quarterly GDP figure. The December negative itself was a surprise and economists have been revising their March forecasts up steadily over the last few months as good economic indicators outweighed bad.

That said, right now it's hard to say what a good GDP figure would be. If it is high, it could push the dollar up and we don't want that, especially in light of the current account. If it's low it means there's more of a slowdown than the economy needs. There isn't really a right answer.

Now I have already joined the chorus of journalists, sorry people, calling for tax cuts. But here's an interesting angle on the benefits of Cullen's somewhat extreme fiscal discipline.

"At 9.3 per cent of GDP, Standard & Poor's regards the current account deficit as high and unsustainable, placing pressure on the AAA/Stable/A-1+ local currency and AA+/Stable/A-1+ foreign currency credit ratings on New Zealand," credit analyst Kyran Curry said in statement.

He said the Government's fiscal discipline had provided a vital buffer to mitigate the effects of the country's high external debt.

Hmm, maybe the government is better at managing our money than we are ;-) Okay, that's a very tongue in cheek comment especially in the light of this:

Government administration and defence recorded its eighteenth consecutive quarter of growth (up 3.2 percent), and was up 9.3 percent for the year ended March 2006.

Anyway 0.7% may lead some economists to raise their GDP forecasts for the year. Despite that we are entering a period, maybe up to three years barring external shocks, of lower GDP growth, as this guy reports.

I recently returned from a business trip to the States. In my hotel room I channel-hopped to a TV news report that’s been stuck in my head ever since: a mountain lion had strayed into a nearby settlement of townhouses. I took this at more than face-value; a metaphor for the present fragile and confusing state of the world, perhaps. Visits from mountain lions are becoming increasingly frequent to populated areas of the US; in recent years, they’ve shown up in Palo Alto, California, near the Stanford University campus. On one occasion, the docile-looking lion climbed a tree before being shot dead by Police. Anaesthetised darts are risky, it seems; the lions must be killed outright to minimise the threat. A Jobs-Worth appeared onscreen to make official excuses. “If it becomes a public safety mountain lion, we’re left with no choice but to shoot it.” If you call yourself a mountain lion, you might argue that becoming a public safety mountain lion would be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Which must be the moral to this story.

The Psychedelic Furs played at the St James in Auckland last night and I toddled along. They were very tight, except for a bad off-key moment in the middle, and very loud and played all their classics finishing on a attacking encore of India.

I've never thought of them as a new romantic band but there is a big splash of that in the mix particularly in the way a lot of their songs seem to reach for an epic quality. Oh, and then there was the smoke machines.

The crowd was almost universally of a certain age, more or less my age. It was quite striking how there were very few young or old people there. There were a lot of familiar faces from the band scene circa 1979-85.

I hadn't been in the St James in years and it really is a star in its own right, though looking a bit worse for wear right now. Apparently plans are afoot. Anyway, a very good night all up.

"It has been the world's largest exporter of goods every year since it overtook the U.S. in 2003. Its trade surplus was six times that of China in 2004," begins this FT article. Almost unbelievably it's talking about Germany.

It is a little-known fact that in spite of Germany's unexceptional economic data, no other industrial nation has so successfully harnessed the opportunities offered by an interconnected global economy.

This country of 80 million, often painted as angst-ridden, risk-averse and allergic to change, has been the world's largest exporter of goods every year since it overtook the U.S. in 2003.

It's certainly not the impression you get. Germany exports nearly as much as Britain, France and the Netherlands combined.

Five whole minutes with a news reporting goddess — we should be so lucky… Before long, New Zealand English will be appending the adjective “lovely” to Pippa Wetzell in the same way as it attaches “leaky” to homes, “flaky” to Holmes and “Labour-led” to government. We could claim NZBC only watches TV One for its news reports and that we asked Pippa if we could interview her simply because she’s such a good journalist, or because she looks so elegant when she dons a ball-gown for those red carpet moments at the Oscars. And she was the perfect foil for Paul Henry on Breakfast earlier in the year. But let’s face it, Pippa is hot. And it seems all of New Zealand recognises that fact; with the apparent exception of TVNZ management, which hasn’t even profiled her on its own website, as it has done for each of its news anchors. So, in our self-appointed role as the nation’s trendsetters, NZBC invited Pippa over for a free-trade coffee so we could break our “men only” curse with five minutes of pure class. But then we got all tongue-tied and giggly.

Hah! with all the fracas over whaling at the moment take a minute to read this very funny rant from Rod Liddle of The Times, who reckons the Japanese just hate whales, cos they sure as hell don't like eating them:

There is more stuff ... on the Japanese whaling industry’s website. Whales are a bit thick, it suggests ... But also devious. And there are loads of them, more than we could ever possibly want, and they breed like aquatic rabbits. Always at it, whales. Quite disgusting. Reading through the whalist diatribe one half expects warnings about a sinister world conspiracy of whales and Freemasons, a sort of The Protocols of Moby Dick.

Oh and the Japanese are suddenly glad secret ballots weren't adopted yesterday.

It was Bloomsday a couple of days ago, the day advertising salesman Leopold Bloom got pretty tanked in old Dublin town, little knowing all his good wife Molly was thinking about was another man's Johnson. In celebration Stephen and Mark submit this on a latter day Joyce.

Mark also sends this and this on the right to detain people for you know, like, forever, under US immigration law. And this on consumers wising up to Hollywood's lack of new ideas.

From Stephen, if you want a lively romp through the mainstream media's errors, try Regret the Mistake.

Chris finds Green Gartside of Scritti Politti spent seven years boozing. That beats even the NZBC's long lunch record. In his case, it was caused by self-doubt rather than the discovery of a particularly nice Pinot Gris. Simon Reynolds of the Guardian wants to know what brought him back to the land of the living?

We're all doomed, so when horror movie characters are sent to their grave, it should comfort us, reckons the Private Fraser of the literary world, author of The Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk.

NZBC reader Chris McBride asks whether the special constables now seen roaming New Zealand are the new "Massey's Cossacks", last seen in 1913.

Finally we are all collectively amused by the strange demise of a once common, and rather Joycean, street name: Gropecunt Lane.

Ciao.

The Guardian carries a report on further investigations of the death of the Ghalia family on a beach in Gaza. Quite frankly, the Isreali military account of what happened is nonsense. Take a look at the military's timeline of events and see if you spot something wrong:

Military account
4.30 to 4.48pm: Six shells fired at beach
4.57pm: Video drone records calm on beach
4.57 to 5.10pm: Explosion kills Ghalia family
5.15pm: Drone records arrival of first ambulance

Yup, just after firing six shells on the beach, people are sunbathing there and having picnics.

The committee acknowledged the army fired six shells on and around Beit Lahia beach from artillery inside Israel. But it said that by coincidence a separate explosion — probably a mine planted by Hamas or a buried old shell — occurred in the same area at about the same time, killing the family.

There's a lot more in The Guardian article. The Israeli military's version of events is ludicrous.

This NASA picture, via Scoop, is so cool. The South Island from space, gone all white.

Large version, well worth seeing, here.

An earlier "blizzard" image, from 2003, is here. Not nearly as good.

Well it's been a rollercoaster few weeks, but I think everyone will be glad the truth is finally out.

As you may know I'm not exactly a fan of the man. But there's no denying he's very good at what he does. I guess I just don't like what he does.

It's been a really well kept secret and I for one am amazed the real story (as opposed to all the fake ones) wasn't leaked earlier. Still with all the noise it would have been impossible to separate the truth from the rumours.

Yes, Rove McManus has finished filming his new series, Real Stories.

I can't say much about it, it's all very hush, hush, but I am really, really proud of it, it's a top quality show. I am excited about the idea of that getting air-time.

Other Rove news here.

The Guardian has made a decision that it says will affect the entire newspaper industry - publishing on the web first and in print second.

But for a newspaper to say that the website comes first is a big, big step. Ever since the second coming of the internet - the first coming ended around 2001, to the delight of all those newspaper executives who didn't like the look of it - there has been a given in newspaper offices: we will take the internet seriously, but we must not let it get in the way of our primary business, which is publishing a paper each night.

What that means in practice is yet to be worked out and some exclusives will be print exclusives still. Anyway, it's a brave move and a necessary one, but it won't necessarily mean the news either online or off is always fresh. Sometimes newspapers recycle stuff, especially internet related stuff, simply because they don't realise it's old. That's an issue of awareness, not of publishing deadlines or medium.

Well, hey! How are you? Yeah, that's great. Hey, it's really good to see you. Yeah, way too long. Oh, you know how it is. Totally, yeah, we really should. Hey, what's your mobile?

Okay, so it's been two weeks since our last lollies, due to technical difficulties, ie we ran out of space, and then I ran out of time. Life sucks, get over it, move on, okay? Then I tried to post this morning and, you know, no electricity. No electricity means no coffy, no worky, no shoppy, no nothingy except read a booky.

From young Chris and young Mark both we have Patrick Barkham of the Guardian, who reckons super-size wine glasses help create “unwitting alcoholics”, but we know no other kind… of glasses.

And from Chris via Boing Boing: One of the eternal questions answered: Can a human subsist on a diet of monkey food? Blogger Angryman wanted to know, for the good of human kind. “Maybe I'll lose weight," he surmised, "maybe I'll gain superhuman monkey strength. Maybe I'll go crazy. Maybe it's too late…" It certainly hasn't made his toilet smell any better.

Also, via Arts and Letters: "Those without theories write better", says the always fascinating Clive James in his New York Times review of American Movie Critics - An Anthology From The Silents Until Now, edited by Phillip Lopate.

From Mark, for all fans of the late great Charles Bukowski, Factotum has made it to screen and will be here for the film fest. You know, guys in bars, humour, violence (poignant insights may offend). And also this interview with Alan Partridge's alter ego Steve Coogan.

From Stephen, everyone's favourite Canadian on "Turnip Day moments" and presidential authenticity.

From little ol' me, did you know a 500 pound bomb weighs 606 pounds? Or that 616 and not 666 is the number of The Beast.

'sall. Ciao.

Underworld has just released ‘i’m a big sister, and i’m a girl, and i’m a princess, and this is my horse’, another download-only release available for only GB£5.00, exclusively here. This is the third in Underworld’s riverrun series and incorporates the new tracks 11 hundred hz, mowed path, peach tree, showlder and wedge. Over 30 minutes of exclusive music for five quid is great value, and this time the gallery comes with a twist: it’s a slide show with audio, consisting partly of images gathered in Tokyo by curator John Warwicker of tomato. Click here for some free audio samples.

TV news just carried a report that blogger Tim Selwyn has been found guilty of sedition. Let's hope it's a really light sentence, I mean community service or something. The sentence should be commensurate with his real offence - breaking a window.

No Right Turn (on Scoop!) calls the verdict shameful. Certainly seems like enormous overkill to me.

This photograph was taken at Bristol docks in England by NZBC reader Eric Dugdale. The work (by an unknown sculptor or sculptors) has been constructed out of “all the things that we accumulate over our lifetime”, he says — such as computer mice for teeth.

Update: Eric writes to say that more information can be found on Junkjaws (or to give him his correct name “the Weee Man”), who was designed by Paul Bonomini, here.

All non-bus traffic this way...

Two months ago I posted an earlier version of this chart after AL at Sir Humphrey's noted declining coalition casualties in Iraq. I pointed out that despite a decline over a few months, the trendline was still positive overall.

Sir Humphrey's stats whizz Chefen then chimed in in comments to that post asking if my data had been normalised. It had, or rather it didn't need to be as troop deployments had not changed in the period, though they may soon. Chefen then came up with alternative treatments of the data and a long discussion ensued where no consensus was reached about a key issue, whether the data were random or cyclical in nature.

Anyway, this latest chart show the last two months of casualties ahead of the trendline. It isn't going to even begin slanting downward while that goes on.

I think it was Private Eye that coined the phrase "tired and emotional" as a euphemism for pissed to the gills. Well, it's time for an update. How about "He's looking healthy today" or "(insert name here)'s looking healthy today".

According to the BMJ, heavy drinking has now been linked to healthy hearts. Not just a drop of red wine now and again folks - frequent drinking of just about anything.

The new findings, based on the self-reported drinking habits of some 57,000 middle-aged Danes, confirm a previous report that the lower risk of heart disease in men who drink alcohol depends more on how often they drink than on how much they drink.

And for the first time, the study finds that alcohol's heart benefit for women doesn't depend on how often they drink -- just on how much.

The Girlie's been commenting on my tendency to have a glass or two each night of late. Well bugger that. It's a bottle or two from now on. AdMedia was also pondering today whether the brewers would be allowed to advertise the health-giving benefits of their products. Don't hold your breath.

As for Jim and his proposed booze-free day, well, if you were wondering why Winston is looking so much healthier than Jim these days ... hold on, let's give it a whirl: "Why, doesn't Winston look healthy today!"

Okay, blogging may be light over the next couple of days - I'm going out to work on my health. But before I pass out let's just remember another great Private Eye euphemism: Ugandan discussions.