Lieber Herr Vettel

Dear Sebastian,

Well done, man! You've come up against a lot this year, and you pulled it out the bag in a legendary way (the only other driver to win the driver's title after not having led the championship during the season was James Hunt, so you're in good company [thanks to peachy for the fun fact]). Your critics have expounded loudly and at length this season, but you kept it together and took the title, prompting Sir Stirling Moss to announce that you were now a man. DC added his praise of your maturity in how you handled the relationship with Mark after the race (well done, by the way; that can't have been an easy conversation to have, and DC's article implied that it was done without dutch courage).

So, after people far more influential than me have said their congratulations, I would like to offer a virtual fist-bump. Winning the world driver's championship is a mightily impressive achievement! Much, much respect! If we were having this conversation in a bar (let's face it, you would've run for your life by now, but point aside), I’d buy you a round (or a shot with a ridiculous name, just for a laugh), not a give you fist-bump. We knew you had it in you to beat Lewis's record this year! (Incidentally, that's why one of my dad's friends now owes me $10 [it's a standard bet; he doesn't gamble more than that], so I should say thank you, too.)

I gather from the press release that you feel a bit sheepish about how you sounded on team radio when you thanked the guys. Don't sweat it, man. Sure, screaming like a girl isn't very badass, but you'd just won the world driver's title; it more than balances out. Also, do you remember that scene near the beginning of Amelie, where the narrator talks about how the café owner supports athletes who cry with disappointment? It works both ways – people who were supporters of your championship rivals can't hate you for winning instead of their man, because you were so obviously overwhelmed by the moment.

Again, well done, man; you did a really solid job this year (and I'm not talking about just your on-track performance). I hope the tyre test goes well for you, and you have a relaxing off-season!

Brij.

P.S. The sparkly helmet from Abu Dhabi looks really cool from the on-board cam – your helmet designer did well with that.

Peace

I don't really have time for a full blog post about this, but it does warrant a bloglet post. Obama has declared that "Operation Iraqi Freedom" (Bush's campaign to procure foreign oil) is over. The nation of Iraq is now responsible for its own security. This will free up troops to focus on Afghanistan (the war that's actually about terrorism, however misguided a decision it was) and squish Al Quaeda. All I can say is this: at long f**king last. *hi5* Obama.

Baby Barnacles

(Yes, I know that NPH is NPH and not Barney. However, for the sake of the title...)

Neil Patrick Harris (of How I Met Your Mother and Dr Horrible fame) and his partner David Burtka are expecting twins in October. The couple, who have been together for over six years, opted to have children via a surrogate mother. Harris made the announcement via twitter on Saturday, adding that he hoped the media would respect their privacy. They are reported to be thrilled and planning a baby shower.

Two things:
1) N'aww, babies! *hi5* liberal surrogacy laws! I hope that the press do leave Neil and David's kids alone, and don't harrass them, like they do to Brangelina's kids.
2) As cute as a baby Darth Vader and R2D2 cake is (pictured left, credit to cakewrecks), I hope their baby shower cake is less, well, Dark Lord-ish. We don't want Babies Harris-Burtka joining the Evil League of Evil ;)

Fabulous marriage

Yes, I've used the word "fabulous" and "marriage" together. There is, however, a reason. Imagine the fabulosity that's going to happen at weddings in California after the 18th! Yes, isn't it awesome, Judge Walker has ended the stay on the Prop 8 verdict! Now, I'm fairly sure that the only people who still get excited about getting married are gay, so this is a truly awesome thing. Not only does everyone in the state of California have equal rights, but marriage will be fashionable again! *hi5* Judge Walker for bringing the voice of reason back to California legislation!

Post-protest thoughts

So, I took part in the protest on Friday. It didn't affect me as badly as I had anticipated it would. Sure, I got weird looks from the guys in my chem class (and my botany lecturer), but it's not like I'm not used to those. Last year, I got all kinds of weird looks when I wore the t-shirt. However, I think it may have affected me more than I had anticipated. Over the last few days, I've heard a number of truly disturbing stories. Stories of women who were raped and received no justice because it was a he-said-she-said situation, stories of women who saw protesters and finally gathered the courage to tell someone that it had happened to them. All of them have made me think long and hard about this as an issue, which has been highlighted by a couple of news stories released since Friday.

Story 1: Restoring virginity
Long have I been scathing of people who hold up virginity as the determining factor in a person's worth. Having had sex does not make you 'more of a man' or 'a dirty woman' (okay, sometimes it does make you 'a dirty woman', but know that I mean that phrase in an entirely complimentary way). It doesn't determine the worth or worthiness of a person. In addition, I think there are some things you want to find out before you're committed to someone for life (like whether or not they like to play scat games or something. Fair enough if that's your thing, but it's not for me), so I think that sex before marriage is a good idea. Personal opinion. Still, the thought of paying thousands to have sex made more painful in order to avoid excommunication/humiliation/the death penalty strikes me as being unfair.

Story 2: The 'Holy Semen' Scam
Possibly the best argument for the teaching of logic and rational thinking to school children. An Israeli man has tricked a large number of women into sleeping with him by claiming that his pearl-jam was holy/had healing powers. I will, for the moment, lay aside the many, many cracks I want to make about superpowered man-gravy and dash onwards to the point. He charged women for sex, doing things with them that would make a Dutch sex worker blush, and based it all on a lie. (For those of you who don't know, lying about why you're having sex is [under South African law] called 'rape of intent', and is a punishable crime.)

Now, how the hell do things like this happen? How badly has the education system failed that people who get up to things like this are able to? 'Reparing' virginity? Really? It's the twenty-first century! How are we still hung up on the ideal woman who is loyal only to the man she serves? I thought that went out of fashion years ago when women got the vote and became more than just a glorified cook/maid/sex slave with no agency. And, honestly, how uninformed are Israeli women to buy into a scam where they get f**ked (literally)?

I think the bottom line is this: we REALLY need to start being open about sex! Although, I will *hi5* the Israeli government for upholding the law on this one, maybe they need to start teaching useful things in health class so that girls/women can spot a fraud like that? Oh, and one more thing: virginities only get lost once. The presence/absence of a piece of skin is irrelevant, the memory of the horror/ecstasy (depending on whether yours was like mine or Sebastian Vettel's) of one's first time is what is important - should we not, perhaps, be telling people that, rather than preaching about their worthiness as individuals because of their virginisation status?

F1 and freedom of expression

You probably know by now (given the header of my blog) that I'm Zimbabwean. We have little-to-no freedom of speech. You have to carefully watch what you say in public, on the phone, via text, and in emails. They're all monitored by an organisation called the CIO (Central Intelligence Organisation), which is known to be behind large amounts of crime (political violence, intimidation, armed robbery, car-jacking, gang rape, etc. The usual for African law-enforcement, I suppose). Thus, you don't want them to know where you are, what you're doing and what you think about the 'president'.

China, however, has taken the restrictions on freedom of expression to entirely new levels. We (should) all know by now that China bans Google search (although, according to Google, this has been lifted. For an up-to-date report, check here). It provides access to 'sensitive' information, and they don't want their population exposed to ideas that will make them question the status quo. Well, they ban twitter too. I'm not sure how a social networking site is damaging to the delicate communist balance...oh wait, they'd come into contact with people who aren't unquestioning communists, and this would be a horrific thing for the nation. [/sarcasm]

Part of me is hoping that, by F1 being in China and telling people about the restrictions (Karun Chandhok tweeted that fans had showed him how to get around the firewall [creepy that they'd go to the airport and hang around waiting to accost an F1 driver; *hi5* to them for spreading the anarchy and making sure that we get normal race coverage], and that people are asking him for tweeting lessons) the world at large will become aware of how restrictive it all is. I suppose the point would be best put across by them being unable to tweet at all, but I can't possibly advocate that (let's face it, we all need our twitfix). F1 has an audience of about 1.5 million viewers. If we all stood up and said something about the situation in China, maybe something would happen? 1.5 million people shouting loud enough might be heard...yes? Perhaps I just live in hope too much...

Learn to hack before you die

Imagine you had a terminal disease. Your doctor told you that it was inevitable that you would soon find yourself in pain, unable to take yourself to the bathroom (and thus suffer the indignity of adult diapers and the associated exposure of your parts to whoever was taking care of you. Flashback to the scene in Weeds where Andy looks disturbed and says, "I just saw my grandmother's vagina". Pleasant for all participants, no doubt), sometimes unable to move, often on a morphine drip (with the associated chronic constipation, which can't be pleasant when s**ting in a nappy), and costing your family a fortune in care. I'm sorry to tell you that these things come with old age as well.

I decided long ago that if I needed to suffer that, I'd want to be "taken to the vet and put to sleep"! Many elderly folk feel the same way as me, it would seem. The Australian government, in its immense wisdom, decided to block the site of an organisation, Exit International, to prevent people from investigating it. Here comes the awesome part: the Pirate Party of Australia decided to offer hacking lessons for the elderly so they could find out about it. As a party that is mainly a boycott vote, I think that's awesome! Remember when the Green Party was a token vote? Well, they're still a token vote, but their beliefs seems to have permeated into mainstream culture because they said something loud enough for long enough to make people listen.

I know it's idealistic of me to hope that one day we'll have euthanasia (and sex workers' unions, and decriminalised drugs, and...) just because there are people trying to get into positions of power around the world in order to lobby for these things. It would be awesome, though, if we could choose when to end it if the pain gets too bad. I was going to contemplate the guest-list for my Going To The Vet party, but realised two things: 1) it's probably a bit morbid to attend your own pre-funeral and 2) I'm not sure who'll still be alive (and arthritis-free enough) to do the Funky Chicken with me.

Obama had a dream

Since OBama got into office, he's been pushing for healthcare reform. He has tweeted non-stop about it, encouraging people to call the health care reform call centerand write letters to their congressmen to help push the bill through. (As an aside: Oh! how my liberal, free-speech-loving heart wishes I could do that in Zimbabwe without being slightly concerned about abduction and/or torture and/or execution [speaking out against Mugabe is considered treason, we still have the death penalty for treason]!)



Well, last night, the bill went through! What this means, in a nutshell, that TV characters will stop whining about having no insurance (except for on Weeds; since they're all living off-the-grid, they can't really afford to have insurance). No, seriously though, this is actually an awesome thing. Let me clarify that: it'll be an awesome thing for the people; it'll be a terrible thing for the insurance companies. This article explains it quite simply (as in, summed up in ten points, rather than rambling on, lawyer style, about the multitude of implications that will need to be clarified in case law. I mean that in a nice way), if you're up to a bit of extra reading. Basically, people will be encouraged to provide more of the country access to insurance.

Speaking as the daughter of an insurance broker and an accountant (yes, I'm also quite sure I'm adopted), this is quite revolutionary. Insurance companies tend to exclude people from coverage if they're going to cost the company a lot of money. I suppose that's understandable, given that they need to pay their staff too (and earn enough for executive country-club memberships). So, if you have heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, a history of cancer, you can't buy a normal insurance policy. If you can afford it, you can buy MHD (medical history disregarded) policies for double the price of an ordinary one. The new bill stops exclusions like that, and gives more options to the early retirement demographic (if you're over 72, I'm sorry, most companies will not let you have health insurance).

I think this is quite a novel approach to providing universal healthcare. Instead of doing as the UK did - increasing tax and then providing a no-frills medical service - they've taken the Robin Hood path - taking money from The Man and using it to provide health care to the Little Guy. While many (including every Republican senator, none of whom backed the bill) balk at the prospect of rearranging it that way, this is the most utilitarian way of going about it. It means that many international insurance providers will, most likely, pull out of America, because it will become a less profitable market. However, it sets an interesting example.

Imagine if we could do that in other places - Zimbabwe, Brazil, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (which, for the record, is not very democratic, practising succession of the presidency and things) - how much simpler life would be. Unfortunately, the people we'd be taking it from wouldn't be the corrupt government officials, we'd be taking it from people also trying to keep their heads above the water. Oh well, it would've been awesome if it had been a viable plan. Still *hi5* to the US Senate for passing such a controversial bill! (Even if it will lead to a dip in the American economy.)

What's not to love about the Czech Republic?

Firstly, all the cool kids have been through there at some point - neolithic inhabitants, the Celts, the Huns, the Bohemians (well, they were native, but still...), the Monguls, the Ottoman Turks, the Austrians, the Hungarians...the list goes on. They've left a wonderful architectural legacy, and the place is littered with pretty historical buildings, if that's your thing.

Secondly, they have amazingly low crime rates. Theft rate in the Czech Republic is 2 in 100 000 (in the States, it's 146). Murders per 100 000 people: Czech Republic - 16.2, Finland - 28.3, Zimbabwe 75.9, South Africa 496. Drug-related felonies: US - 585, Czech Republic - 1.

Part of the low drug arrest rate could be attributed to the legality of possession. The law has been recently redefined - the previous law said one could carry "no amount larger than a small amount" - to 15g of marijuana, 1g of cocaine, 1.5g of heroin, 4 ecstasy tablets, 40g psilocybin-containing mushrooms, 5 LSD tablets and 2g of amphetamines. If you wandered around with all of that on your person, you'd be a walking party! Bear in mind that a threshold dose of mushrooms is 2g; I've been told (by someone knowledgeable and experienced in these matters who shall remain nameless) that at 12g it's possible to astral project. Imagine being four times that high.

The only problem with the Czech Republic is that they don't want thousands of tourists wandering around baked like the Americans do in Amsterdam. In an article in the LA Times, a man was quotes as saying, "We don't want foreigners consuming marijuana in public. It could demean marijuana. We like the system where a friend gives it to, or sells it to, his friends." But you know what? I think I like that kind of stoner. It shouldn't be about how much you can take or how wild you can be, it should be about sharing the happiness. It should also be about being responsible with the happiness (like not taking all five of your allotted acid tabs at once unless you want a psychotic break), but that's a rant for another time.

It seems like letting everyone do what they want (and providing clinics for when things all go pear-shaped) means a more peaceful population. Maybe we should give that a try? Have a *hi5*, Czech lawmakers!

Why we love Heikki Kovalainen

There are heaps of people who, after this weekend, have been singing the praises of Karun Chandhok, but that's a post for another day. Today, I want to talk about the Fun-sized Finn. In the past, I've been quite dismissive of him. Mostly because he was so very overshadowed by Hamilton at McLaren, but also partly because of the cute-and-little factor. He seemed to me to be an action-figure driver: lacking much personality, smaller than the others, good looking but is destined to be old news next year.

The man has proved me wrong. Not only was he the only driver from a new team to successfully bring his car home (rather than driving off the track or blowing a car part like the others), he finished ahead of Buemi's Toro Rosso. Considering that STR have had four seasons to perfect their racing formula, that's a strong endorsement for Heikki. Considering he's been driving in F1 for only one year longer than the Swiss (and, thus, not significantly more experience), Heikki did really well to out-match him a slower car.

He's also proved me wrong on the personality front. Perhaps it was that Lewis was the star of the show at McLaren, and he decided to keep his head down in his rookie year alongside Giancarlo Fisichella. Either way, he's revealed himself to be one of the most delightful people in the paddock. I subscribed to him on twitter, and discovered a chatty, friendly, refreshingly honest man. For the love of all that is good in this world, he's started a tweet with the words "my ass is fine". In addition, he recently started an official website. It's a far cry from the PR-friendly sites of drivers in the past - he runs competitions (including a grand prize at the end of the year where one lucky fan gets to meet him), he posts videos of things that he's doing, his bio is actually written by him...need I continue about the awesomeness of his PR approach?

All in all, he seems like an awesome guy; *hi5* to him for treating his fans with such bonhomie! Despite my loyalty to Senna and my respect for Chandhok, I'm picking Lotus as my New Team to Win in 2010. Partly because they seem to have the more competitive car, partly because Heikki is so lovely to his public, and partly because I want to see Richard Branson working as a flight attendant while wearing a skirt on Air Asia.

P.S. Further to this post, the picture was used as the header for Heikki's website, in case you didn't recognise it after the photoshopping.

Smart shopping, iPhone-style

I wish there was an easy way to decide what to buy in the shops; there's an enormous amount of choice, and very little information available about most products. Well, unless you want to spend hours online, trawling the end evil blacklist, the Stop the Traffik site, the PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) site, Greenspace, Ecoshopper and numerous others with similar socially-conscious themes. Incidentally, it's interesting to pop onto those sites every now and then to make sure the lists haven't been added to/subtracted from, if you want to make responsible consumer decisions. No judgements if you don't.

Yes, I'm a hippie. I worry about where my food comes from, how far it's had to travel, (and, thus, how long it's been out of the ground), what it's been exposed to during its lifetime. I'm a vegetarian, so I don't have to worry about whether my food was subjected to horrible conditions (pens only big enough to stand up and lie down and not move otherwise, ten chickens to a cage with the cages stacked on top of each other, dairy farmers allowing sores to grow on their cows' udders, etc.), but I know many, many carnivores who (despite their meat-eating habits) care deeply about this sort of thing.

What would you say if I told you that you could find out all of this sort of thing with an iPhone (and, this autumn in the US, the new version of Windows Mobile) app? The new Augmented Living mobile app ("AUG" for short) allows you to scan the barcode of an item in the supermarket with the camera on your phone, and it then tells you where the product was grown/manufactured, its nutritional information, and other interesting data like pricing histories. Awesome, right?

Before I get onto the *hi5* bit of this post, I'd just like to point out a few things.
1) Most people don't have iPhones (or, later this year in the US of A, Windows Mobile). Thus, only the well-heeled can really afford to be conveniently socially conscious.
2) One assumes that one would have to be in countries where this sort of information was registered. For example, if you were in a foreign country and wanted to make sure what you were buying (which is likely to be labelled in a foreign language) didn't contain something horrifying like dolphin or excessive amounts of mercury. So, if you're travelling to the States, you're in luck: you can find out exactly how much lard and corn syrup is in your food (not that I'm generalising here. In my defense, a disturbing number of American products do contain those ingredients).
3) I have a friend, to whom we shall henceforth refer as "The Aussie Surprise Fairy" (TASF for short), who raises a point about this. It's becoming too easy to live ethically and yet people choose not to. What percentage of iPhone users would actually buy the app? I would, but then I'm one of those people who go to restaurants and ask whether the hot chocolate is non-slavery (and whether the cheesecake contains gelatine [which is made from pig/cow hooves, for those of you who were previously unaware, and is therefore non-vegetarian] and whether the cheese is Kosher). I'm also the kind of person who thinks about these things, which your average iPhone user isn't. Maybe I'm wrong and I've mis-judged the trust fund brats of this world by thinking that they weren't raised to question the ethics of everything they do.

But still, *hi5* to the four young programmers who decided to get together and create this for us, and congratulations to them for winning first prize in the Consumer Electronics Association's (CEA) annual Greener Gadgets Design Competition.

Happy picture

What could be more awesome that one Heikki Kovalainen? Two Heikki Kovalainens! Apparently there's some kind of cool concept shoot going on at the moment. This will delight many a crazy fangirl, to the point of squeeing! *hi5* to whoever came up with this concept!

District of Columbia FTW!

After yesterday's whinge about the pointlessness of my life, I have some good news to add. The District of Columbia (that's Washington DC to those of you who don't care about US geography) has passed a bill enabling same-sex couples to apply for marriage licenses. W

While nobody will be able to get married this week (it takes three days to process the application for a marriage license in DC, apparently), I still think this is an awesome step forward. That's now six states that allow the freedom that should be afforded to everyone. (Okay, I don't personally believe in marriage per se [I'm more of a civil union/domestic partnership person], but this still counts as a good thing.)

So *hi5* to DC's Chief Justice John Roberts for ignoring the conservative right and doing the just thing!

Why we love Ryvita©

For a long time, I've been a foodie. Except for a brief spell in the inevitable starvation-diet phase that plagues teenage girls, I have always had a deep love for food - good food, not McDonalds and other food producers in that genre. I even went as far as trying my hand at studying nutrition. For the record, I didn't enjoy it. It was far too much about guilt, and not enough about enjoying what you ate. However, I did learn important things about reading labels and understanding what I ate. It became a real bug-bear of mine that food producers didn't put enough information on their labels to let the average Joe make an informed decision about eating it. Alternatively, they put how many grams of sodium and fat in tiny writing and don't tell you how it's going to affect you.

That brings me to the point. I was watching Jamie Oliver's TED Award speech the other day and realised anew that this is something that is really, actually a problem. So, a little while ago,I found myself walking through the aisle of the supermarket in search of Matzoh (being as how they're big enough that two with peanut butter is a sufficient breakfast). However, this being a small town, the shop had run out of the Kosher delight (yes, Big Bang Theory reference), so I started looking around for alternatives on the shelf and saw a few packets of Ryvita^©. Now, I must admit to having very little brand loyalty; I simply picked it up because Mum used to buy it whenever she went on diet, and I remember it being the least offensive of her diet foods.

We'll fast forward through checkout to the moment when I took it out the shopping bag in my kitchen. It was then that I noticed the wonderful thing: a nutritional label. Now, this was not just any nutritional label - there it was, on the front of the pack, proudly announcing the values of various things in the crackers and their percentage of recommended daily intake. I was stunned and delighted. Having written an impassioned essay in an exam on the need for decent food labels, the sight made my heart sing. I will concede at this point that I may have a problem with dorkiness, but it blew me away.

It was a wonderful thing to be able to decide how many I could have without having to convert the information on the packet into percentages-by-calorific-value. It got me thinking: why don't more companies do that? Okay, Ryvita^© is marketed to dieting women (and, thus, their target market is very aware of everything they put in their mouths), but hear me out. Why do food companies force us to do our own research? If you want to make good choices, you have to read diet books (and wade through the horse s**t that most of them spout), use resources like the GoodGuide site, or the nutritional data site in order to find out what you need to know.

Maybe they realise that, if people knew what they were putting in their mouths, they wouldn't buy the product. I don't, however, think that's a valid argument for two reasons. 1) Most people don't care enough to read labels, and 2) Isn't it their ethical duty to let people know they're killing themselves? That brings us back to my (admittedly idealistic) view that you should let people do what they want, provided they know what the risks are (although that opinion does not extend to "warning: hot liquid may cause burns" on a coffee cup. If you're too dense to work out that hot coffee hurts your skin, you deserve to learn the hard way). So maybe I'm expecting too much from an imperfect world, but I would like to *hi5* whoever designed the labels atThe Ryvita^© Ccompany. Thank you for making our food shopping easier!