A weekend ramble: Sex, murder and multiculturalism

It's Saturday, which means offering you a selection of good weekend reading.

• Fancy a visit to the world's largest sex theme park? Then you'll need to get to South Korea's Cheju Island, which is where you'll find "Love Land," and more of what you see in this rather tame pic at left. Der Spiegel has the story.
  LINK: A Phallus garden in "Love Land"
  
  
• What do you do if you're a resident of a small rural town in which the mayor "puts a stop to the centuries-old custom of herding livestock through village," refuses to issue hunters with shooting licences, and causes local drinkers to revolt after he prevented the settlement's only bar from setting out tables on the terrace in summer -- in other words, if your elected employee begins thinking he's your boss? If you're a resident of the small Italian town of Fago, you shoot your mayor. True story.
  

  Police believe Mr Grima was the victim of a meticulously planned ambush involving at least three perpetrators and, in a move worthy of an Agatha Christie murder mystery, the police are considering the entire population of the village as suspects.

  Read more here. Busybody nanny staters who like to mind everyone else's business might like to reflect that everyone has their breaking point. A harsh judgement? The boys at Pacific Empire don't think so: "Petty tyranny is still tyranny. He might not have ruined an entire country, or executed or tortured dissidents, but his policies were unjust, and he incurred the hatred of all his subjects. I hope the killers are never captured, and that one day tyrannicide will be considered a just defense against a murder charge." LINK: Entire village suspected of mayor's murder - Telegraph-UK.
  
  
• The heroic Ayaan Hirsi Ali (left) is still a lightning rod for many of the worst ills of the modern world, and for many of the arseholes who peddle what makes the world ill. Pascal Bruckner defends her against her latest critics, the apostles of moral equivalence who would make her morally equal to those who murdered her colleague Theo van Gogh, and whose creed of multiculturalism would deny people their chance to breathe free, and would instead chain people to their roots. LINK: Enlightenment fundamentalism or racism of the anti-racists? - Pascal Bruckner.
  
  
• Now for some frivolity. Paula has a meme where she compares "twelve words you'd hate for others to apply to you, though you know they fit like a glove," with twelve words you'd use to describe yourself. You know the kind of thing: I am principled, but you are dogmatic. Feel free to use her meme yourself, or to help me compile twelve adjectives to describe myself. LINK: The grapes of meme, and The grapes of meme II - Ultrablog. [UPDATE: Oops. Links fixed.]
  
  
• And now, back to our ruling classes. Insolent Prick has a list showing the "combined backgrounds of Labour's caucus and party list from the last election; their qualifications for office and their careers prior to entering Parliament." These are overwhelmingly not the sort of people who move the world: it is a lists of committee-joiners; a slate virtually overflowing with sanctimony and busybodiness. You will look in vain for anything like running a business, being self-employed, or personally taking (and succeeding with) an entrepreneurial risk, and you might care to ask yourself what attracts people like these to politics... LINK: Real New Zealanders - Insolent Prick. [UPDATE: Cactus Kate says in thirty-three words what it took me nearly a hundred to say:

  You have an actual job, are not a Union organiser and desire the horizontal company of those of the opposite sex, what chance have you got of getting on the Labour Party list?"

  I guess pithiness like that is why the Dom is paying her the big bread.]
  
  
• Lest you have delusions that the bluer side of the aisle is any better, Blair offers further evidence that whatever entrepreneurial ability the Blue Team has, it's pissed away that advanteage in an utter abandonment of principle. The latest case in point: National's refusal to back private property rights -- said to be one of National's "core values" -- specifically, a refusal to back the Maori Party's Bill for the repeal of the Foreshore and Seabed legislation, which effectively nationalised the seabed and foreshore. The Bill if passed would would reinstate the right for anyone, regardless of colour, to prove their ownership of specific stretches of foreshore or seabed before a properly constituted court. Blair's letter to John Boy Key is a masterful explication of why, if National is to have any claim to being a party of principle, it must support the Maori Party's Bill. LINK: Unbelievable! - Mulholland Drive.
  
  
• It sometimes takes a while for news to hit the news, but last week the news that houses in New Zealand's cities are amongst the most unaffordable in the western world finally hit the news. The MSM news. Rather than rewrite what I would humbly suggest are several very well put together posts on the subject of why NZ's cities are so goddamn unaffordable, I'll simply relink to some of them now.
  - Some Auckland mayors realise ring-fencing the city is 'unsustainable'
  - Sustainable cities are unaffordable cities
  - Dream of home ownership is just that
  - Decentralisation, and Those Who Oppose It
  - East Germany in East Auckland
  - Sprawl is good
  - Sprawl is good; regulation is not
  - Sprawl has always been good
  - NZ Housing affordability "in crisis" says report
  - Housing un-affordability - denying the obvious
  - Frank Lloyd Wright: Broadacre City
  That's just a small selection from the, ahem, seventy-three posts I've written on this and related subjects. Once you've digested them -- and iff they don't stick in your craw too badly -- then you might like to visit planner Tom Beard's site (especially this post, and this one) to see how risible are his arguments against letting people free to build and live where they wish. Feel free to respond in his comments section. And speaking of risible, feel free to lob some decent intellectual ammunition on this subject in Jordan's direction, since he's clearly short of a few truckloads himself. ;^)
  
  
• "In the wake of PC campus "speech codes," media self-censorship over criticism of Islam (recall the "Muhammad cartoon" and "South Park" controversies), and "campaign finance reform" efforts to forbid certain people from funding political ads with their own money," Robert Bidinotto links to an ugly campaign to silence global warming skeptics.
  As he says, those who still like to associate the word "liberal" with die-hard support for free speech need a reality check. LINK: Weather Channel climate 'expert' calls for decertifying global warming skeptics - Senator Inhofe's blog.
  
  
• "Theory is all." "Integrated ideas are simply meta-narratives." "There is no reality." Post-modern wankers are as stupid as they sound, and Bruce Boyd deservedly takes post-modern-wanker-in-chief Jacques Derrida to task in this highly enjoyable evisceration of the wanker. [Hat tip Stephen Hicks] LINK: Getting it all wrong - The American Scholar.
  
  
• Should you say "nice things" about your competitors? Why not. Good business is like good blogging, argues Garr Reynolds.

  Good bloggers operate from an "abundance mentality" rather than a "scarcity mentality." They are more concerned with being linky than being sticky. Readers trust a blog that happily points them to other cool and useful sites. Likewise, people respect someone who has enough confidence in themselves that they are not afraid to introduce you to others who are perhaps even more talented than themselves.

  Stephen Hicks calls this "positive competition." You might see it as a reflection of the harmony of men's interests in a free, capitalist society. LINK: Love thy competitor (and it wouldn't hurt to say nice things about them either) - Presentation Zen.
  
  
• And finally, a crucial question ... what's your ideal pet? Here's mine:
  

  Your Ideal Pet is a Big Dog

  You're both energetic, affectionate, and a bit goofy. And neither of you seem to mind very slobbery kisses!

  
  
  What's Your Ideal Pet?