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Friday 3 July 2015 1 The Strand, PO Box 240, Tauranga
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The Weekend Sun
The Weekend Sun is published every Friday, circulating throughout the Western Bay of Plenty, delivered free to 65,000 homes of more than 159,700 residents from Waihi Beach, through Katikati, Tauranga, Mt Maunganui, Papamoa and Te Puke including rural and residential mailboxes. The Weekend Sun is produced by Sun Media Ltd, an independent and locally owned company based at 1 The Strand, Tauranga.
Sun Media Ltd Directors: Claire & Brian Rogers Editorial: Andrew Campbell, Letitia Atkinson, Elaine Fisher, Zoe Hunter, Luke Balvert, Merle Foster, David Tauranga, Dan Sheridan, Hunter Wells, Laura Weaser. Photography: Tracy Hardy, Bruce Barnard. Advertising: Kathy Sellars, Suzy King, Lois Natta, Rose Hodges, Tasha Paull, Lucy Pattison, Bianca Lawton, Cath Jump, Doug Britton, Chloe Brown, Vanessa Lee, Jo Delicata. Design Studio: Kym Johnson, James Carrigan, Kerri Wheeler, Kyra Duffy, Amy Bennie, Lauren McGillivray. Digital Media: Jay Burston Office: Julie Commerer, Melanie Stone, Kathy Drake.
Second helping of pigeon pie Welcome to the news regurgitated, a second helping of pigeon pie. We’ve had a lot of news this week and some of it has been newsworthy and some of it has been just plain not.
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First up on the “not” side is the scintillating news in press releases that some councils have adopted their 10-year plans. Well, Madonna adopted a 10-yearold but she didn’t feel the need to put out a media alert about it. In fact, Madonna seems to have adopted half the uncivilised world and rather than having to make a media release, the paparazzi have almost battered down her door to get the story and, if they’re lucky, the exclusive photographs. So what makes Madonna’s children collection more interesting? Well she’s got a bigger budget for starters. Most 10-year plans generate about as much excitement as Colin Craig imagining he’s having a rampaging affair with his press secretary; which, we hasten to add, appears to be complete nonsense, denied by all including the press secretary but nevertheless seems to remain a fanciful thought somewhere deep in the mind of Colin Craig. Rest assured, however, the councils are all looking after us all with their 10-year plans. Not much of it fired up the imagination of the RR team, closely scrutinising each subject, except perhaps the walkway plan from Memorial Park to downtown. That seems like a sensible idea.
Password madness
In this increasingly electronic world, when everything beeps and flashes, passwords have become all important for those eking out their existence in sad, computer-riddled lives. Once a bloke could simply jangle around town with a bunch of keys. That was all the security needed to open anything worth securing. These days, he’s got a myriad of digits, birthdays, cat names,
and in the case of Colin Craig, his press secretary’s vital statistics, ingrained in the subconscious. It seems you can’t do anything these days, without a password. The bank, Facebook, the email account, the router, the telephone account, the television channel thing, even the treehouse needs a password. Oh hang on, the treehouse has always needed a password. Okay, so that’s not new. Treehouses might be the exception to this. And fair enough, you don’t want any old hacker climbing the rope ladder and plundering the treasured contents of your treehouse. Every other household action seems to
now need a password, when once, it was only Ali Baba who needed a password, in black and white movies. Plus, everyone knew the password was “open sesame” because everyone had been to the movies because no one had Sky or Freeview or any of the other fancyschmancy things that needed a password. Ali Baba would turn in his cane basket if he knew the extent to which his password idea had been bastardised. Back in the day of sensible communications, you didn’t need any password nonsense and could send a message by cool physical means, such as semaphore or carrier pigeon. Of course that all changed when pigeon messaging became less reliable probably due to Sonny Tau and his mates eating all the pigeons.
By the way, have you ever tried walking through airport security with five poached and plucked Kereru under your jacket? It’s an awkward stance. You’ll find you hunch over slightly and your toes tend to point towards each other. It’s called walking Pigeon Tau.
Obsessive security
You have to wonder where this password obsession is going to end. Will we have to tell the car a secret password before it opens the driver’s door? Will can openers require a seven-letter with caps and least three digits code before it will leave the cutlery draw to operate on a baked bean can? The dog needs to go out the back door for a visit to the lawn; will the aluminium joinery demand a secret phrase to allow free passage of said canine onto said grassy area for the purposes of doggy downloading? At some stage we will have to say “enough” on this whole sorry saga of passwords. If you agree, log onto ‘RR Campaign Against Passwords’ and key in your 127 digit personal ID code and a minimum 50 keystroke secret phrase with a mixture of caps and your birthdate and your mother’s maiden name and the nickname of your first pet, and click…“OK”.
Second helping
Leap second. In case you missed it. In a Sun exclusive, we are giving away another second today, for those who missed the free one on Tuesday night. That’s right, the Weekend Sun is giving all its readers a FREE SECOND, to make up for the one during the week, while you were asleep. Many people are feeling aggrieved that they missed on the extra second, so the Sun is giving you another one, completely free. Starting now, you can enjoy... Oops, it’s over. Hope you enjoyed taking your free time, as much as we enjoyed giving it. brian@thesun.co.nz Like on Facebook: Rogers Rabbits Blogger.
IMPORTANT STUFF: All material is copyright and may not be reproduced without the written permission of the publisher. Sun Media makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all information and accepts no liability for errors or omissions or the subsequent use of information published. According to Walkypedia, Pigeon toe (also known as metatarsus varus, metatarsus adductus, in-toe gait, intoeing or false clubfoot) is a condition which causes the toes to point inward when walking.