9 posts tagged “2004”

TV3 just re-ran the 2004 remake of Man on Fire, but I thought it might be interesting to see some clips from the original version, in this preview:

[Cross-posted] There’s a small snippet about Jennifer Hawkins and the spring–summer 2008–9 lingerie range from Lovable over on Lucire’s fashion index page, but behind the scenes we were given a press-release Q&A with the former Miss Universe.
   These tips purport to come from Hawkins, and it’s likely the beauty queen endorsed them. In any case, the advice isn’t too bad. Click here to read. 

Just when I thought those Harvard types were all humourless.

This has been, apparently, doing the rounds for a while, but I have missed it. It finally came on PDF today from a colleague. Normally I don’t have a lot of sympathy for law-breakers, but this gets extra marks for imagination.
   A Mr Justin Lee was booked for speeding, doing 116 km/h in a 100 km/h zone. This was issued by a police officer:

Justin Lee 1

Justin Lee 2

Justin Lee 3

Justin Lee 4

[Cross-posted] This has been official for a while (or so I think—not that I ever heard what the Electoral Commission thought, but I did see it on its website). However, I wanted the party to approve the news first before sharing it with you all. The following is the overseas release which was rewritten from the one sent to domestic newsmedia. One that includes a mention of the Bush–Cheney campaign of 2004 was sent to US media.

JY&A Consulting revamps logo for New Zealand’s Alliance Party

Wellington, May 9 (JY&A Media) New Zealand political party, the Alliance, is looking more modern and relevant, thanks to its new logo by JY&A Consulting (http://jya.net/consulting).
   Devised by JY&A Consulting’s Jack Yan, the new logo signifies a new beginning for the democratic socialist political party.
   Mr Yan says that he has been a keen observer of general elections in the UK, US and New Zealand since the 1980s and that played a part in his team’s design.
   He says the Conservatives in 1983, Labour in the UK in 1997 and 2002 and Labour in New Zealand in 1999 and 2003 had certain commonalties in their campaigns, centring around typography.
   He also said that in those years, the party’s name was important, not the symbol—hence the traditional Labour rose was not present on that party’s election materials in 1997 and 2002.
   By abandoning the old A symbol of the Alliance and concentrating on the word, Mr Yan says that the party looks more professional and ready.
   The Alliance has contested every General Election in New Zealand since 1993. However, due to party changes it is trying to rebuild itself for the country’s General Election later this year.
   ‘We have two major parties in New Zealand that vote pretty much the same on all issues,’ says Mr Yan, ‘and minor parties that get ignored because of a lack of visibility. I wanted to change that. Why should minor parties be laboured with second-rate brands?’
   The logo is based around the Frutiger typeface and its lettering is predominantly in red, with a red dot over the i in Alliance to signify its environmental awareness.
   He says the letter i also shows the humanizing aspect of the party.
   ‘As a piece of design I think it looks more cohesive than the committee-led logos of National and Labour,’ he says, criticizing the major two parties in New Zealand.
   ‘I was given a lot of freedom, which is a good sign of how the party leadership handles matters. It clearly believes in trusting the right people.’
   As well as heading JY&A Consulting’s parent, Jack Yan & Associates, Mr Yan co-wrote Beyond Branding in 2003 and is a director of the Medinge Group, a branding think-tank based in Sweden.
   In October 2007 he was a keynote speaker for the Alliance Party at its annual conference.

Not long ago, I dissed the Times of India for running a story about Miranda Kerr which never happened.
   So I wonder now if Britney Spears actually did marry George Costanza from Seinfeld. After all, it’s in the newspaper. It must be true. (In case they ever change it, Sepia Mutiny has a screen shot.)
   Not only that, the photo was sourced from Reuter. And those guys almost never get it wrong.

At high school, one teacher told us that he was proud of the fact that New Zealand, when he was younger, had the highest car ownership rate in the world, due to our world-beating standard of living in the 1950s. In the 1980s, we were still in the top five, but behind the US and Japan.
   It’s still high today, but it’s hardly anything to be proud of. As the mood of our society has changed toward one that is more environmentally conscious, car ownership is not as cool as it once was—in fact, car ownership may be said to be warming things up. Still, the love affair with the car has not abated, and with India now getting excited over the Tata Nano, we may see a slight change in ownership rates there.
   Here are the 2004 ownership rates from Earth Trends, which suggest that we have been lousy at getting public transportation up to speed with consumer demands. Still no one has considered putting wifi into trains, even if Singapore Airlines has done so with planes for years. About the only innovation that I have seen are the GPSs that tell people at a bus stop how far away their bus is. They aren’t enough.
   There seems to be little correlation between ownership and petrol prices. Iceland leads the table these days, and their petrol costs more than any western country I know of. There are other interpretations which I won’t go in to for a casual blog post.
   I have compiled this manually, so there may be errors or omissions in the ordering. The number is vehicles per 1,000 people. I have only noted 450 and up. Japan is just outside at 441, which suggests, inter alia, relative progress in public transportation since I last looked at these stats in the 1980s. We and the US seem to have swapped places in the last 20-odd years, which to me means that the Americans have done better with public transportation than we have.
   One of the few good sides to our stats is that New Zealand is a spread-out country with low population density where the car is more a necessity. The other favourable interpretation is that there are more young men buying cars, whereas 20 years ago they could only afford a motorcycle. Environmentally, this might not be ideal, and young men are high-risk for insurers—but the flip side is that they stand a better chance of surviving inside a car than on a bike.

647 Luxembourg
601 Iceland
592 New Zealand
590 Italy
546 Germany
523 Malta
516 Switzerland
503 Austria
495 France
468 Belgium
465 USA
457 Sweden
456 Slovenia
451 UK

What was your reaction to the results of the Iowa caucuses?  

Total surprise. I thought I wouldn’t care but I do. Last time, the Democrats had a clear front-runner in the form of Sen. John Kerry and I found that sparked a greater interest for me, to see how he would fare against President Bush. This time, the interest comes from how unpredictable the fight is.
   I would not have predicted Obama, Edwards and Clinton for the Dems, and I would not have predicted Huckabee, Romney and Thompson for the GOP.
   Go back two years and most of my GOP friends were pessimistic because the only candidates they could foresee were John McCain and Rudy Giuliani. Others, perhaps prescient, said there would be a surprise candidate that must emerge closer to the end of 2007. They were right.
   I thought Fred Thompson might have been that man but there certainly has been a lot of attention surrounding Gov. Huckabee. That momentum continued.
   Among my Democrat friends, the hope a few years back was that Al Gore would consider running. Back in 2004 I had good friends who felt Edwards supported their values more and were disappointed that Sen. Kerry emerged as the front-runner in Iowa. Through 2007 I had next to no Democratic friends who felt Sen. Clinton was right for them.
   I am glad the usual rule of “who spends the most wins” did not apply for either party here. It is another example of branding: a good consistent brand that taps in to the consciousness can outweigh huge spends. And that’s something I hope will buoy smaller parties in New Zealand as we face our General Election this year.
   Now that the Iowa caucus item is over, the BBC is running a Britney Spears–K. Fed. story.