Photo of the Day - 29 August 2013

Shane Jones has come up with a slogan for his campaign to lead the Labour Party; here 'tis, along with his portrait:

"A new New Zealand." It's not rocket science, but it's uncomplicated, and certainly indicates that Shane Jones wants to take the country, and by default the Labour Party in a different direction.

But we wonder if "A new New Zealand" might be bad news for the likes of Phil Goff, Trevor Mallard and Annette King, Labour's last remaining refugees from the Rogernomics era. Perhaps this slogan is an indication that Shane Jones plans to do a little pruning if he wins #Labour'sGotTalent.

Photo of the Day - 24 August 2013

We were two years old when Otago lost the Ranfurly Shield to Taranaki in 1957, so our memories of Otago's last shield era are understandably hazy. But the men from the south have breathed new life into the famed Log o' Wood with a brave 26-19 victory over Waikato last night.

And this photo is one that diehard Otago fans had probably given up seeing in their lifetimes:

Congratulations Otago. When Hawkes Bay comes to challenge next Sunday, we're sure that Forsyth Barr Stadium will be a much livelier place than a near-empty Waikato Stadium was last night.

Photos of the Day - 22 August 2013

Student newspaper Salient offers this pictorial vista of the David Shearer situation:

Someone at Salient has some biblical knowledge as well, because this was posted on Twitter with the caption: Shearer steps down - "the one who betrays me is here at the table with me"

Mr Shearer's snapper stunt on Tuesday does indeed seem to have precipitated his Last Supper. But who wielded the knife?

And there's another Photo of the Day that can't be ignored; remember this one, from last year's Labour Party conference?

 

Photo of the Day - 20 August 2013

White Island has let off steam this morning:

We've actually stood on the edge of the crater of White Island, and gazed down into the bowels of the earth within. It's quite a surreal experience. From time to time pressure builds, and the island gives off warnings that she is still very much an active volcanic force.

UPDATE: GNS Science has now made this photograph available:

And via Scoop, here are the warnings issued by GNS.

Photo of the Day - 18 August 2013

Someone in the captioning booth got the black team confused with the red team that thumped Australia at ANZ Stadium a couple of months ago. But there's no confusion in the numbers:

Well done to the All Blacks.

Photo of the Day - 14 August 2013

Jason Dufner won golf's final Major of the year on Monday (NZ time). In doing so, he erased the memories of a heart-breaking loss in the PGA Championship two years ago where he blew a five shot lead in the closing holes to lose in a play-off to Keegan Bradley.

We wonder if he celebrated like Darren Clarke when Clarke won the Open Championship in 2011. If he did, it was thoroughly deserved. Dufer looks to be sleeping like a baby here:

And for those with a statistical bent, Dufner has discovered that the impressive Wanamaker Trophy holds 43 beers! We hope he had help to empty it!

Footnote: The photograph above was posted by Jason Dufner's wife Amanda

Photo of the Day (or even better!) - 13 August 2013

We've headed this post Photo of the Day (or even better!) for good reason; it's such a great sporting photograph that it is likely to be the sporting picture of the year at the very least. Check it out, and see if you can spot why (or see the answer after the break):

Good photographs are a combination of instinct on the part of the photographer, a sense of timing, and a measure of good luck. Capturing Usain Bolt winding down from his 100m world title win as lightning flashed overhead (and directly above the championship sign on the roof of the stand provides a brilliant sporting shot. 

The photo is the work of AFP photographer Olivier Morin. It's certainly going to be feted in years to come.

Photo of the Day - 12 August 2013

We've just had the image below sent to us by a Facebook friend:

Whoever has written this letter on behalf of Waterstone Insolvency has done a masterful job. The first paragraph is just gold; so good that it begs repeating:

"Like David Shearer, those of us in the insolvency community look glumly at the rosy economic picture"

And as an aside, might David Shearer have another reason to feel glum today? John Tamihere certainly seemed to think so just after midday when he suggested that the coup reported to Duncan Garner a few weeks ago coup had merely been postponed. We will watch with interest.

Photo of the Day - 9 August 2013

We were tempted to have another Caption Contest, but three in two days was probably overkill. But this Stuff photograph taken yesterday at Parliament needed to be acknowledged in some way, shape or form, so here it is:

The symbolism here is interesting. Alexander Ustinov is a heavyweight fighter in the twilight of his career. The same could be said of Winston Peters with regard to the twilight bit, but he's never been a heavyweight. 

And Peters has lost some of his biggest fights, knocked out by Jim "the Fighting Irish" Bolger, Jenny "Trailblazer" Shipley and Helen "H1" Clark. He also had titles stripped from him by the Privileges Committee, and the People of Tauranga due to playing fast and loose with the rules. And he has been reduced to undercard contests against the likes of John "Memory" Banks and Peter "Mr Sensible" Dunne.

Quite what Alexander Ustinov was doing at Parliament yesterday is anyone's guess. But he seemed to enjoy the company of the veteran pugilist Peters, and was also photographed with Shane "Fast Hands" Jones, sometimes tipped as Peters' successor.

There's one thing that is in no doubt however. Peters' lack of height and reach are his greatest disadvantage. Sometimes a picture is worth 158,000 words!

 

Photo of the Day - 4 August 2013

Happiness is - winning back-to-back Super Rugby titles.

Congratulations to the Chiefs, and commiserations to the Brumbies who were gallant in defeat. A review of the match will follow later in the day.

Photo of the Day - 31 July 2013

Guess what is going to be the hottest ticket in Hamilton this week?

Best of luck to the Chiefs and the Brumbies on Saturday night, and may the home team win!

Photo of the Day - 30 July 2013

Emirates Team New Zealand is now going to take a break until the Louis Vuitton finals. But yesterday they had a Top Gun guest; Stuff reports:

Team New Zealand are clearly the top guns at the America's Cup regatta and today they got Hollywood star Tom Cruise on board their giant catamaran for a spin around the San Francisco Bay.
Cruise and his adopted son Connor were guests of Emirates Team New Zealand for their final Louis Vuitton Cup round-robin race against Luna Rossa Challenge.
They watched the Kiwis' victory from the team's VIP vessel, Imagine, and afterwards the pair suited up in full sailing gear and jumped aboard the team's race boat, Aotearoa.
The Cruises joined the 11-man crew on the giant AC72 and helped on the winches to trim the rig and sails. They even got their hands on the wheel, taking over from skipper Dean Barker for a spell steering the boat.
 "We were very fortunate to have Tom Cruise and his son jump on board for a ride around San Francisco Bay. They had an absolute ball," Barker.
 "We had a nice reach back under the Bay Bridge, so Tom jumped on the handle bars (steering wheel) and did a better job than I did.
"He had a competition with his son to get the top speed. It was a real boost for the team to have someone like him come along." 

ETNZ's AC72 might not be a supersonic jet fighter, but in marine terms it's an impressive beast. The publicity from having Cruise and his son along for a ride will certainly help the profile both of the America's Cup and ETNZ.

Here's hoping though that Cruise left all Scientology literature at home!
 

Photo of the Day

British tabloid The Sun has changed its name in honour of this momentous day for the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge:

The certainly makes a nice change from The Sun's normal fare!

Photo of the Day - 22 July 2013

The BNZ Harbour Quay building is a relatively new building of modern construction on the Wellington waterfront. It seems to have taken a pretty solid hit yesterday.

As the day goes on today, we suspect that stories and sights such as this coming out of central Wellington are going to be more frequent.

Meanwhile, Audrey Young's tale from the press gallery is a good read:

I was waiting for Patrick Gower to send us the latest political poll results to see if Labour's "man-ban" debacle had had any impact.
The Press Gallery sits alongside the Beehive and all I can say is, thank God for Stalinist architecture.
It's a long, skinny, two-storeyed building, unattractive, solid concrete, with small impractical windows. No chance of it toppling over. The Treasury could topple on to us but it is built like the proverbial brick s*** house.
The most scary thing about our offices is the prospect of the floors opening up and dropping us into the parliamentary swimming pool below.
Several times yesterday afternoon we had rushed to our respective doorways, Felix from Newstalk ZB, Jane from Radio New Zealand, Andrea from Fairfax and me, wondering if this was a big one (we hunt as a pack, we panic as a pack).
Just after 5pm we wondered no more. We dived to our positions under the door frames. The photos lining the gallery corridor swung back and forth on their strings.

This quake was harder, louder and longer than any of us had ever felt. There was a lot of swearing, a lot of Oh-my-Gods and fast-beating hearts.
The box marked Winston Peters and Owen Glenn came flying off the shelf in the Herald office, along with David McGee's Parliamentary Practice in New Zealand and many other files.
At least the floor didn't open up and throw us into the pool.

Some "victims" of the press gallery might have a different opinion on that final sentence!

Tweet/Photo of the Day - 21 July 2013

Wellington residents got a rude awakening this morning, as Heather du Plessis-Allan from Seven Sharp tweets:

The swarm of earthquakes since Friday morning, whilst mildly disconcerting for Wellingtonians and others in the vicinity is nothing compared to the whole lotta shaking that Cantabrians have experienced since 4/9/2010. 

It is a reminder though that we are a quake-prone country, and if you can screw it down and earthquake-proof it, you should!

Photo of the Day - 18 July 2013

The Open Championship, golf's third major of the year and its oldest begins later this evening (NZ time) at Muirfield in the East Lothian district of Scotland. Muirfield has hosted the Open Championship 15 times previously, and made such an impression on Jack Nicklaus who won there in 1966 that when Nicklaus built his own course in Ohio, he named it Muirfield Village. The Memorial Tournament is played there every year.

Even the club which inhabits Muirfield has a quaint and very British name; The Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers. It is one of golf's oldest clubs, and the Muirfield course was laid our by Old Tom Morris in 1891. 122 years later and 156 of the world's best golfers will face the unique test which Muirfield provides.

And here's a scene-setter, via former Kiwi golfer Frank Nobilo as greens staff did their final work at sunset on Wednesday night:

 

The weather forecast for the first day is for relatively benign conditions. Here's hoping that the wind blows at least one day during the Open Championship; after all, as Tom Watson was told by a local on his first visit to a Scottish links course many years ago "If there's nae wind and nae rain, it's nae golf"!

Photo of the Day - 15 July 2013

Who would have wanted to be a passenger on the Interislander yesterday before gale force southerlies and huge swells forced sailings to be cancelled?

We copped a battering from the wind from early afternoon through until early this morning with gusts of over 100km/h recorded in Wanganui. And a number of our Taranaki friends awoke to cold, dark homes this morning with widespread power outages after even stronger gales last night.

Things have calmed down a little this morning, but it's still bitterly cold. The North Island skifields will be smiling though, with a huge dump of snow over the weekend just in time for the school holidays. Whatever the weather, someone is happy about it!

Photo of the Day

An alert viewer managed to capture this image for perpetuity after a broadcasting gaffe on Friday:

E-Online reports:

Who knew Bart Simpson was working for the National Transportation Safety Board?
An anchor at Oakland-based Fox affiliate KTVU apologized today, as did the station, after reporting the fake—and offensive—names of the pilots onboard Asiana Flight 214 when it crashed Saturday while landing at San Francisco International Airport.
Needless to say, Captain Sum Ting Wong, Wi Tu Lo, Ho Lee Fuk and Bang Ding Ow were in no way involved. But the error was captured for posterity by vigilant viewers and subsequently splashed all over the Internet.
"We sincerely regret the error and took immediate action to apologize, both in the newscast where the mistake occurred, as well as on our website and social media sites," Tom Rapioni, VP and general manager of KTVU/KICU, said in a statement.
But the station also pointed out that those were the names signed off on (if not read aloud) by the National Transportation Safety Board before today's noon broadcast.
Sure enough, the NTSB copped to the bizarre screwup, blaming an intern for getting it wrong.
"The National Transportation Safety Board apologizes for inaccurate and offensive names that were mistakenly confirmed as those of the pilots of Asiana flight 214, which crashed at San Francisco International Airport on July 6," the NTSB said in a statement Friday.
"Earlier today, in response to an inquiry from a media outlet, a summer intern acted outside the scope of his authority when he erroneously confirmed the names of the flight crew on the aircraft. The NTSB does not release or confirm the names of crew members or people involved in transportation accidents to the media. We work hard to ensure that only appropriate factual information regarding an investigation is released and deeply regret today's incident.
"Appropriate actions will be taken to ensure that such a serious error is not repeated."

This is an awful gaffe, with racist overtones. Doubtless whoever prepared the graphic was thinking that they had come up with  a wonderful practical joke. Humour may be in the eye of the beholder, but making jokes about fatal accidents is never funny.

Photo of the Day - 9 July 2013

Stuff confirms that Robbie Deans has jumped, moments before being pushed:

We have a fair bit of sympathy for Deans, even if he was coaching the opposition. He has had precious little support from the ARU in dealing with players whose egos are bigger than their ability.

Photo of the Day - 8 July 2013

Whales are magnificent creatures, but they are best viewed from a discrete distance as a surfer found out at Sydney's Bondi Beach yesterday:

Perhaps this 10-metre fish, believed to be a southern right whale had come in close to shore to join those celebrating a series win by a Lions side dominated by players from Wales!