Israel Stands Ready To Act!

This week's UN grandstanding by Libya's Mohammar Qaddafi highlighted that, even on its home patch, the UN does not have the balls to stand up for itself. His supposed 15-min."speech" rambled on for 95 minutes – yet no-one had the guts to curtail it!
On the other hand, Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad showed his extremely dangerous true colours, after revelations that his country was well into constructing a second nuclear-processing plant, underground and in secret: one capable of and designed to produce nuclear weapons. When the UK and USA spilled the beans, Ahmadinejad basically said, "So whatcha gonna do about it?!" And that's the scary thing. While most of the bigger powers tut-tut and say, "Er... well... you just can't, ok? Please? It's a naughty thing to do!", Israel is preparing to act. Decisively. World-alteringly.
For several years now, Israel's air force has trained for pre-emptive strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities...and has made its position quite clear: for Iran to have a nuclear weapons capability is completely unacceptable and, if the rest of the world won't do something about it, Israel will act alone.
Of course, if this does happen, Israel suddenly faces retaliatory military action from all sides, and will not survive. But what will Israel's destruction precipitate globally (apart from widespread Arab rejoicing)?
As no-one wants another international conflict, it is up to all countries to somehow enlighten Iran's leaders of the hopelessness of their dogmatic stance. Iran can achieve so much more for its people and country by peaceful means, than by crafting a Weapon of Mass Destruction.
Israel seems quite prepared for the consequences of 'levelling the playing field'. Is the Western world ready to let things escalate to that point?
PS: 29 Sept.09 - A worrying article from the Jerusalem Post...
PS: 04 Oct.09 - Food for thought from the Aljazeera website...

Tick-tock-tick-tock...um...

After all these years of Daylight Saving, some people still ask: in spring, do we put the clocks forward or back?
This is so basic! DST begins in NZ this Sunday 27 September... when we "spring forward" an hour. It runs until Sunday April 4, 2010, when – to use an American expression – we "fall back" an hour.
You may not know but modern DST was first proposed in 1895 by a NZ entomologist George Vernon Hudson, whose shift-work gave him leisure time to collect insects, and made him aware of the value of after-hours daylight (many books wrongly credit an English builder William Willett, who proposed it in 1905). Germany was the first European nation to use DST (in 1916), to conserve coal during wartime.
NZ dabbled with a half-hour shift from 1927 until WWII, then revived the concept in 1974 with a one hour summer advance. Of course the dairy farmers complained (don't they, about everything?!) but generally this country of outdoors enthusiasts thought it was pretty cool.
So that's another NZ re-write for the history books: George Hudson (inventor of Daylight Saving) can take his rightful place alongside kiwi Richard Pearse – the first man in the world to fly (tough luck, Wright brothers, you guys were nearly a year too late!).

Fashion Week Gets Real!

Air NZ Fashion Week 2009 will be remembered for its first-ever plus-sized showcase, using women with an average size of 18.
No stupid pony-prancing with Belsen-survivor bodies (e.g.: like this emaciated... thing...on the right: her shadow has more substance than her body!). These bootilicious belles strode out oozing confidence, with big smiles and bigger styles that proved curvaceous creatures can surpass any stick insect on the catwalk.
The show was run by The Carpenter's Daughter label, which designs for curvy gals: the women were sized from 18-24 and aged 14-66. And they'll run another show this weekend using the same well-proportioned women drawn from a public model call, including a 70-year-old.
65% of Kiwi women are sized 16 or bigger, so these models are highly representative (US size zero = NZ size 6). The label's founder said she wanted to "show normal everyday women that they are also part of fashion because they get left out a little bit".
But while things got bigger on the catwalk, the 'goody bags' have shrunk! Maybe it's indicative of the recession that the contents of the bags this year were leaner: some designers dispensed with them altogether!