Multi-Tangential Ramble #1: Video-Surveillance Bill; VSM; Translation; Dostoevsky

[I wasn't going to, but screw it. What is a blog if not a place to ramble your pants off? I apologise for NOTHING; we all saw it coming.]

So: LOTS OF THINGS. Four, actually; as per title. But à la Pratchett that still works so HAH.

(1) Frustration and Lack of Sympathy: The Video Surveillance Bill

I'm not sure how useful that article is, but I don't want to ramble about this too much but still ARGH. Warning: never quote me on the technicalities, particularly since I don't know if there's even enough drafted of the Bill for it to be publicly available yet - oh  but I just looked it up now and here at least is an explanatory note.

Anyway, so Parliament is amending the law (by enforcing temporary law, so they can have time to fix the original later) so as to allow around 50 pending cases (including controversial Urewera business; BTW watch the movie 'Operation 8', highly recommended; also catapulting a bus onto a political figure's head is the BEST SECRET PLOT EVER) wherein the Police's case relies on video surveillance evidence, which the Supreme Court (in a case noted in the above explanatory note) has recently deemed to be inadmissible, i.e. any cases/arguments that have been made based on video surveillance evidence are no longer valid, because the procedure for getting that evidence was dodgy in the first place.

On one hand, it's kinda sad because the High Court and Court of Appeal didn't originally say that there was a problem with the video surveillance (but general FYI: the lower Courts deal primarily with issues of fact, rather than issues of law), and nor did the lawyers who advised the police (hmmm).
Moreover, Parliament says that they intended video surveillance to be acceptable in the first place in whatever statute it was, but never said anything explicitly to that effect, so the Supreme Court just, you know, presumed that Parliament would want to be consistent with the Bill of Rights and not let the police go snooping around and spying on people in absence of evidence in the first place (but let's not get into the substance of the video surveillance business for now because I have other things to say too).

On the other LAWS-BLOODY-121 SO-MUCH-FOR-UPHOLDING-THE-RULE-OF-LAW hand, what REALLY gets me is that they are enacting RETROSPECTIVE LEGISLATION.

To step out of the wanky law kid jargon: THEY ARE MAKING A LAW SO THAT IT APPLIES TO THINGS THAT HAPPENED BEFORE THEY MADE THAT LAW.

There is an argument that if they don't do this, there will lots of problems for not only pending cases, but convictions that have already been passed based on this legislation. (Also, whut man, there's totally been some problems.)

But unless Graeme Edgeler (see: lovely public lawyer guy who was the previous crossword setter for Salient in 2005, and as such is the only man whom I met and ran straight home to tell my mother about, LIKE ACTUALLY) says something very clever and convincing about it, I'm not sure I can sympathise with Parliament or the police on this one.

Basic, fundamental concept when it comes to law: you do not make a law that punishes people for actions that were not criminal when they were original done. So Parliament could not have written that anti-downloading law to allow them to fine and/or imprison everyone who had pirated music off the internet before that law was in force. Because that's just plain NOT FAIR. And the same applies to the inverse, i.e. Parliament should not be allowed to legitimise the actions of the executive after the fact.

You learn this in the first law class. Even the couple hundred or so students who ditched law after the first few months learned this.

NO RETROSPECTIVE LEGISLATION.

Just. Ugh. Fail, guys.


(2) Dislike and also Apprehension: Voluntary Student Membership
If you are Facebook friends with people interested and/or involved in student politics, you may have recently noticed a wave of status updates about celebrating new-found liberty (some sincere, most sarcastic). The story is, a bunch of libertarian kids around campus have been complaining about the fact that when you enrol into university (except for Auckland), you have to pay for the Students' Association thingymawhatthehellis this,askedthefirstyear. It was Compulsory Student Membership (CSM): you have to join it, and you have to pay, and then you get some free stuff that you may or may not want or ever use.

And now it is optional, and the majority of first years won't pay for it, because what student is going to willingly give up an extra hundred or so dollars to some university thing that they don't have a clue about? I know I personally wouldn't have paid for it in the beginning. But then if I hadn't, particularly if lots of students hadn't either, they would've had hardly any funding and hell maybe then I wouldn't have found out about awesome things like Salient and the Women's Group/Room and other things around campus, I think they're the ones who do the Campus Angels thing too which I think is just lovely (where they have people available to accompany students home in the evenings for safety). And the free food bank thing!

Also, what do we do with all the Salients lying free around campus? You'll have the handful of students who contributed to its funding, and then the rest who have no clue and pick it up anyway and read it and write in to complain about the decline in the quality of Salient and the general availability of other uni services.

Ugh I can't be articulate, just read Keith's article. (He's this is awesome journalisty-type mathsy politics guy who I blatantly fangirl over, similarly to Graeme, except with extra Asian jokes. Also he has an awesome t-shirt of a cowboy (I think?) riding a velociraptor. Actually Graeme might too. God, why do I always like the dorks?)


(3) Excitement: TRANSLATION.
On a completely different note, we are TOTALLY going to translate a book or something from French to English! By which I mean: there is this couple who translate Russian books and others into English; and okay sure it would be the worst PDA EVER but I DON'T CARE.

The problem now is finding a book. Back in first year I started translating Jean Anouilh's 'Antigone' after studying it in my French literature course... but that's already been done. As has Simone de Beauvoir's work (of which I've only read some fiction anyway; FYI "All Men Are Mortal" is AWESOME). But maybe I should read them and redo it anyway if I dislike the translation... Same with 'Les Liaisons Dangereuses' maybe, there was something about the bits I read in the English Penguin copy that I DID NOT LIKE - though, I have to think about that first since connotations can't help but remain with the inherent sultriness in French~


(4) MORE EXCITEMENT: LOOK I'M IN A BOOK IT'S ME.
I'M IN A BOOK I'M IN A BOOK TRISTAN FOUND ME IN A BOOK.

This is important because I keep playing that game where you try to find a character that is roughly the equivalent to yourself in some sort of book or TV series or general fictional universe - and I fail hooooorribly all the time. Can't find myself in Discworld, Disney (I vaguely argue for Mushu in 'Mulan', hah) or Neil Gaiman's Sandman series (though have reluctantly settled on Delirium when her eyes are the same colour). Pretty much I was just Rory Gilmore with a fair dollop of Lane - at least, till I discovered (and accepted) that I was neither a proper academic nor a particularly selfless person with wordly ambitions beyond myself...

ANYWAY SO THIS IS IMPORTANT.

The following extract is from Dostoevsky's "The Possessed" - though apparently a more accurate title is "The Devils" (which I suppose makes sense since most possessed things involve the/some Devil(s), though not all devilish beings necessarily involve being possessed). I've already posted it on Facebook but that'll disappear and I want a safer copy of it. And I repeat myself. And like to do so. Repeatedly.

It is spoken by Pyotr (like Dom's hot brother who came to our hockey game in highschool! But having glanced over Dom's recent Facebook photos maybe he's aged a bit now meh) Stepanovitch, who is the son of the wanker who casually keeps saying some of his dialogue in French FOR NO GOOD REASON, e.g. one time he says "She is what we would call a [somethingsomething I forget]" - but he says the first half of the line in French and the specific term in English, OH WHEREFORE.

FYI I haven't read the book yet because hélas I am not nearly as much of a literary wanker as I would love to be, BUT chances are I will eventually read this one at least, because contrary to popular Anglophone belief Dostoevsky is apparently HILARIOUS - and instead of consciously reading him for pretentious wanker points, I will read this one purely for fondness of Pyotr and his father. As it should be :D

To the quote:

"By the way, I always say a lot, that is, use a great many words and talk very fast, and I never speak well. And why do I use so many words, and why do I never speak well? Because I don’t know how to speak. People who can speak well, speak briefly. So that I am stupid, am I not? But as this gift of stupidity is natural to me, why shouldn’t I make skilful use of it? And I do make use of it. It’s true that as I came here, I did think, at first, of being silent. But you know silence is a great talent, and therefore incongruous for me, and secondly silence would be risky, anyway. So I made up my mind finally that it would be best to talk, but to talk stupidly – that is, to talk and talk and talk – to be in a tremendous hurry to explain things, and in the end to get muddled in my own explanations, so that my listener would walk away without hearing the end, with a shrug or, better still, with a curse. You succeed straight off in persuading them of your simplicity, in boring them and in being incomprehensible – three advantages all at once! Do you suppose anybody will suspect you of mysterious designs after that? Why, every one of them would take it as a personal affront if anyone were to say I had secret designs. And I sometimes amuse them too, and that’s priceless. Why, they’re ready to forgive me everything now, just because the clever fellow who used to publish manifestos out there turns out to be stupider than themselves – that’s so, isn’t it? From your smile I see you approve."

Since this post is equal parts happy to equal parts sad, I have added the tag of 'success'. Hopefully this will be used more often because we are AWESOME, yeah?

[Still no regrets.]