This week in Ninja news...

Don't look now, but the ninjas are taking over. Remember you heard it here first. Not to fear, because as we all know, ninjas are awesome. Although I'm not sure that they are quite as awesome as they once were, if the below evidence is any indication.

There just seems to be an inordinate amount of ninja-related stories in the news recently.

Fortunately some of the ninjas are out for the cause of righteousness:

Ninja protects the not-so-mean streets of Tunbridge Wells
For a crime-fighting Ninja has begun patrolling the streets of Royal Tunbridge Wells scaring off yobs, helping pensioners and rescuing cats from trees. The 25-year-old, who calls himself the ‘Neighbourhood Ninja of Tunbridge Wells’, claims to be a ‘grandmaster’ of the Japanese martial art based on ‘stealth and infiltration’.
His mission is simple – to clean up the streets. Speaking on condition of anonymity he said: ‘It’s my aim to help people, I am inspired by Neighbourhood Watch, which people seem to have forgotten about, so I’ve created Ninja Watch. There is still lots of trouble in Tunbridge Wells and the community does not seem to be as together as it used to be.
‘The message I want to get across is serious, which is about people keeping watch, sticking together and reporting incidents.’
Ch Insp Simon Wilshaw, of Kent Police, said he had not ‘made himself known’ to officers.‘Although we support public spiritedness we do not condone anyone taking the law into their own hands.’
Resident Sally Everson, 43, said: ‘It was very odd, this man dressed all in black was helping these old ladies across the street and they were quite happy to have someone help them.’

All power to the guy, but I'm not sure I'll be truly impressed with his ninja powers until he starts cleaning up the streets of a town slightly more menacing than Tunbridge Wells. To be sure, helping little old ladies across the road is a worthwhile pastime, but I'm not quite sure that it was what the founders of the ancient mystical ninja arts had in mind.

In fact, if you want another example of how ninjas just ain't what they used to be, here's a guy who appears to be invoking the ninja ways in the cause of some mindless destruction and petty crime.

Masked 'ninja' carrying samurai sword terrorizes Pa. town; breaks into 11 cars, attempts to stab man
A man dressed as a ninja and carrying a samurai sword broke into 11 cars in southwest Pennsylvania and tried to stab a man who confronted him, cops said. Cops said the masked-marauder terrorized an area of South Union Township between midnight and 1 a.m. on Sunday, smashing the windows of cars and creeping through yards.
Resident Santino Guzzo told Pittsburgh's WTAE television he was in his car investigating after neighbors repeatedly heard glass breaking and car alarms when he spotted the black-clad goon hiding out in a yard. When he confronted the ninja, Guzzo said the thug thrust his samurai sword through his open window of his Jaguar and sliced open his hand. The masked man then shattered the rear window of Guzzo's car before taking off, Guzzo said. Cops on the scene found blood on the shattered glass, a blunt tool the assailant used to break the windows and a bottle of booze, WTAE said.

In fact, these days it seems that all you need to do to be considered a ninja, is to wear a pair of trainers:

No they WEREN'T Ninja Nuns!
The secret identities of two nuns who took pride of place next to Prince William and his new wife at the Royal Wedding have been unveiled. They were seen by two billion people around the world, looking on demurely as William and Kate listened to prayers during the service.
But despite their unassuming appearance, rumours began to surface that one of the women was a secret 'ninja nun' intended to protect the Royal couple, after she was pictured wearing black trainers.
Speculation was rife that the taller nun, wearing Reebok Classics with her traditional habit, was on hand to pounce on any intruders.
One internet user wrote: 'I guess they were undercover agents, MI5.'
But today she has been revealed to be Sister Annaliese Brogden - a 52-year-old nun from the Community of the Sisters of the Church. Her identity was disclosed by her bemused father Geoffrey Brogden who said she always wore trainers - no matter what the occasion.

It even seems that the President of the United States is down with the ninja arts too. Forget being the First Black President, being the First Ninja President is the real milestone.

Bill Maher: I’d Bet My Own Money On ‘Multi-Tasking Ninja’ Obama Getting Re-Elected
Bill Maher was in high spirits last night appearing with Joy Behar to celebrate President Obama’s national security success with Obama and laughing, “this has got to eat at [Republicans] because this is supposed to be what they’re good at.” Maher was so impressed with our President, the “multi-tasking ninja,” that he concluded if Republicans can’t give Obama credit now, then they probably wouldn’t ever be able to do it for anything.

More ninjas cleaning up the streets here.

See also: Lame self-defence.

UPDATE:
The ninjas just keep on coming.

The underprivileged white male

Bin Laden is dead. Why are some of you being grumpy?

They got him!

Now, I'm going to assume that the Yanks didn't just make this up for propaganda purposes, or shoot some beardy brown guy who looked vaguely like Bin Laden and decided that was good enough. Let's assume that it's actually happened.

Not sure how to react? Here's how. Be happy.

I know it's weird to be happy that someone died. But this is Osama Bin Laden. I know he doesn't have the same kind of body count as say, Hitler or Pol Pot, but make no mistake, he's cut from the same cloth. So be happy. This is a guy who was a figurehead for mass murder and terrorism, for whom civilians were mere expendable pawns, no matter whether they were Muslim or non-Muslim. He'd kill your mother without a second thought, so don't feel bad that he's dead.

And no, this doesn't mean that the threat of militant Islamism is over. And yes, they probably should have got him a bit sooner.

But he's dead and that's a good thing. I abhor violence as a rule, but a select few people have forfeited their privilege to be alive, and Osama was living on borrowed time. Be happy, he deserved it.

Yet...

I notice some of you are finding reasons to whinge about this.

Yes, certain radical lefties, I'm looking at you. Yes, certain Muslims, I'm looking at you.

I know that it's cool to be anti-establishment, and anti-American. And I can dig it, I was once like you, and still am in some ways.

But really, stop complaining, just for a moment. Yes, the death toll of the War on Terror is obscenely high. Yes, the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan has caused a mountain of unnecessary problems.

But at least for just a moment, allow yourself to be happy that amidst all the horrible things the world has seen in the last 10 years in the cause of the War on Terror, it ain't all bad. You don't have to run out into the streets and chant "USA! USA!" That might be a bit excessive. But the guy who's life's mission was to create an all-consuming world war between the Islamic world and the West just got got. That's cause for at least an approving nod of the head.

Tomorrow, you can go back to being mad about something and normal service can be resumed.

Obama's birth certificate, and the racist impulses behind Birtherism

This week President Obama released his long-form birth certificate, that proves that he was born in Hawaii. Not Kenya, not anywhere else.

So, thankfully, that will be the end of the "Birther" movement, and the deluded conspiracy theories that naturally flow out of it.

No? Oh.

The discussion amongst the birther crowd has simply shifted from: "He doesn't have an American birth certificate," to: "His birth certificate is fake".

Anyone seriously thought showing everyone the document would alleviate the constant speculation surrounding his birthplace, should perhaps reflect on the fact that Obama already satisfied the legal requirements for the Presidency over 2 years ago when he ran for the job, and that he has also previously released the short-form certificate. Neither have prevented a substantial proportion of Americans believing he was born elsewhere.

An example is the recent claim by former Republican congressman Tom Tancredo, that Obama deliberately withheld the certificate in order to make Republicans look foolish. A claim that, while it sounds outlandish, at least comes with it some acknowledgement that the birther crowd and the Republicans who associate themselves with it have indeed looked foolish.

The latest person to put the Obama birth issue in the headlines has been Donald Trump, who looks like he is going to try running for President, and is thus competing with Sarah Palin for the honour of "candidate whose Presidency would be most likely to convince the world that Americans are all morons".

The Donald has been beating the birther drum for a while now, claiming that the document was missing. Now that it's most definitely not missing, he's shifted focus to the President's academic records, claiming that Obama was apparently a terrible student in college, yet somehow got accepted into Columbia and Harvard Universities. Trump doesn't say who his source about Obama the bad student is, and it's not clear why it is suddenly relevant that Obama needs to release his academic records.

...unless of course you are someone who fervently wants to believe that there was a massive conspiracy to elect a Kenyan Muslim Socialist Nazi President.

One of the questions that has arisen is whether or not the whole birther issue is driven by racism. The Left will say yes, the Right will say no and complain about the Left's eagerness to play the race card.

Well, the Left is spot-on; right-wing figures keep the issue of his birthplace alive precisely to scare the public and capitalise on the lucrative xenophobic vote.This doesn't mean Trump must be racist against "the blacks" as he calls them, but he's definitely relying on racist attitudes to fuel his road to candidacy.

It must be stressed that the deep well of racism the Republicans are trying to tap into is not the obvious variety. It's the entrenched racism that people often don't know is there, or at least don't acknowledge is there. It's not the kind of racism that says, "I won't vote for Obama because he's a nigger." Rather, it's the sort of racism that says, "I won't vote for Obama because there's something about him I just don't like." (That certain something they don't like is that he's black and seems foreign, of course.)

Even Trump's latest academic angle seems like a racial dog-whistle. The veiled implication is that Obama (who is black, by the way) did not deserve to get into Ivy League schools. So despite him being voted by his peers as President of the Harvard Law Review and graduating magna cum laude, Trump says that something is fishy about that. Of course, George W Bush got into the Ivy League, but he was a rich white man. The implication is that as a black man who was not wealthy, Obama did not really belong in that esteemed strata of society, and must have only got there through affirmative action.

The political genius of this kind of attack is that it is not OVERTLY racist. Indeed, the same has been true of many of the right-wing talking points about the President - he's got a anti-colonialist mindset, he's a socialist, he's a Muslim, he's a Muslim sympathiser, his middle name is Hussein, he has a problem with white people, he wasn't born in America.

Those who keep these myths floating around are doing so in order to prey on conservative America's suspicions about the brown guy with the foreign-sounding name. Yet the racism behind these fears is hidden enough that those who have them don't see themselves as being racist. So when anyone on the Left points out that racism is at play, they are accused of "playing the race card". The general perception on the Right is that the Left play the race card as a way of silencing any debate they don't want, shaming right-wing opponents with the label of racist. Thus Obama is seen to be using this tactic to maintain his hold on power.

That's the brilliance of using thinly-veiled xenophobia as a political strategy, and why so many political parties around the world love using it. So many vehement Obama-haters spout arguments which are based in racism, without seeing it as racism. So when someone on the Left brings up racism, it's as if they brought it up out of the blue.

Try this analogy:

A: "Tell me, what foods do you really dislike?"
B: "A few things: I dislike lasagna, I dislike fondue, also quesadillas, pizza and saganaki.
A: "Well, it sounds like you have a problem with cheese."
B: "What? Who said anything about cheese? I have no problem with cheese, you brought it up. Why are you so fixated on cheese, anyway?"


If you oppose Obama, credit to you if you are opposing him strictly on his policies and character. Because I know that there are plenty of you out there. But there's not as many of you as you might think.


UPDATE:
Seen this video? Obama has digs at Trump and the birthers at the White House Correspondents Dinner. Obama got jokes.

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Pennywort (Centella asiatica)

You may have come across this edible herb at your nursery. A creeping groundcover, it grows prolifically in my garden. Native to Southern Asia from Iran all the way out to Melanesia and Northern Australia, pennywort can grow anywhere where it gets sufficient water, particularly in ditches. It's also known as gotukolle or gota kola (its Sri Lankan name).

It is promoted primarily as a medicinal herb, for its alleged healing properties, which are impressive. It is considered to have anti-bacterial and anti-inflammatory qualities, and is used to treat conditions such as leprosy, hypertension, cancer and diabetes. Eating 2 leaves a day is said to markedly reduce the symptoms of arthritis, and it even is thought to be beneficial to brain functions such as memory and concentration.

I can't comment on how much of that is true, but there is surely something to it. And given how easily it grows, it makes sense to grow some. But here's the rub - it doesn't taste all that great. It's not horrible, but it is somewhat bitter and astringent, and not something you'd naturally wish to munch on.

Yet cook it in the right way and it can be delicious. The key is to balance its bitter taste with salty, sour and/or sweet flavour components. Numerous South and Southeast Asian cuisines make use of pennywort in such ways. Here are a few.

The Sinhalese cuisine of Sri Lanka makes great use of pennywort, in a vegetable preparation called mallung or mallum. There's a recipe for it here, which comes from Charmaine Solomon's classic The Complete Asian Cookbook. You can use any green leafy vegetable for mallung, or a combination of them, but pennywort is a common choice. It's simple and delicious as an accompaniment to rice and curry.

In Vietnam, where it is known as rau ma, pennywort is blended into a drink with water and sugar. You may have seen this green liquid in Vietnamese cafes and grocers. It has a taste which is slightly odd but not unpleasant.

The Kachin people of Burma make an unusual salad from pennywort which I came across on SBS's My Family Feast program. They combine the leaves with sliced tomatoes and red onions, coriander leaves and chilies, while the dressing comes from a combination of lime juice and salty fermented bean paste (easily found in Asian groceries). You can get a recipe and watch it being made here.

The way I most often eat pennywort is in a salad that comes from the Indonesian province of Aceh. It is called sambai on peuga-ga in Acehnese. I've adapted it from this recipe (written in Indonesian) via the Indonesia Eats blog. The leaf is little used in the rest of Indonesia - where it is known as pegagan - except in herbal concoctions. My recipe is a bit rough with measurements, so use your own taste as a guide.

ACEHNESE PENNYWORT SALAD
- 1/3 cup grated coconut (fresh is best)
- a bunch of pennywort, finely chopped
- several lime leaves, finely sliced
- 1/2 stalk finely chopped lemongrass
- 1 clove garlic, finely chopped
- 1 shallot, finely chopped
- juice from 1 lime
- 1 or 2 fresh chilies, finely chopped
- 1/4 cup roasted or fried peanuts, chopped
- a few fried shallots to garnish
- salt to taste
If the coconut is dried, moisten it slightly with a little warm water. Add to all the other ingredients and mix. Serve as an accompaniment to rice and main dishes.



NOTE: There is other plants often known as pennywort (genus Hydrocotyle), which look similar and some of which are edible, but I don't think they have any of the health-giving properties of Centella asiatica. Hydrocotyle leaves tend to be round, while Centella asiatica's are kidney-shaped.

Don't be a kiki

(Hat tip: Yuey)

What should be a source of mild amusement becomes a gigantic facepalm due to one person's ridiculous oversensitivity and an over-zealous bureacracy's strange need to indulge a busybody. From The Daily Telegraph:

A NSW woman says she is being relentlessly pursued by state road authorities because her personalized number plate means "vagina" in another language, news.com.au reported Wednesday.
The Roads and Traffic Authority (RTA) says the number plate bearing the name - "Kiki" - is the same word used for vagina in the Filipino language, Tagalog, and wanted them removed.
Kristen Perry, a lawyer from Newcastle, said she was informed of her "offensive" nickname after first receiving her personalized plates five years ago as a gift from her husband, the Newcastle Herald reports.
"At first I thought it was a joke, but then I realized it was actually quite serious and that my number plates would be taken off me if I didn't respond appropriately," Perry told ABC.

"Quite frankly it's a bit of a funny thing, but at the same time quite a bit scary that we've got people that can just report a number plate that seems quite inoffensive to 99 percent of us out there, but one percent have an issue with it."
The RTA has said it received a complaint from a Tagalog speaker who found the number plate offensive. The Tagalog people is an ethnic group in the Philippines, making up 28.1 per cent of the Filipino population.
Perry said that Kiki has been her nickname since childhood. ''I rang my father last night and said, 'Do you know you have been calling me vagina all my life?'''
This afternoon the RTA relented.
"The RTA has a responsibility to investigate complaints about personalised plate content, but we recognise that in doing this we must take a common sense approach,’’ a spokeswoman said today. "We recognise in this case a common sense approach was not adopted and Ms Perry will retain the content of her plates."

I really, really hate this sort of fuss-making over nothing.

Now, I'm no spokesman for the Filipino-Australian community (I'm not Filipino for a start), but I'm going to take it upon myself to speak for them here. Do you know how many people of Filipino origin there are in Australia? Something like 160,000. But how many of those would actually be offended by seeing "KIKI" on a license plate, and would think it such an important matter that they would lodge a complaint about it?

A handful at most. The vast, vast majority would probably just chuckle to themselves about it.

Think about it - just say you were in, say, Iran and saw the personalised license plate of someone with the unfortunate name of Mr C**t. Would you ring up the Iranian traffic authority and complain? No, you'd laugh, and take a picture to show your friends back home.

In fact, years ago, I was watching TV with my girlfriend of the time, who was Filipino, and she started laughing at a cat food ad that featured a cat named "Pookie", which also sounds like puki, another Tagalog word for vagina. (It strikes me that Filipinos have a lot of words for vagina.) She certainly didn't ring the TV station to complain, and I'm sure no one else did either.

But all it takes is one busybody to spur the RTA into action. Thank goodness common sense prevailed. Although with the number of people dying from crashes on our roads, I'm rather concerned that anyone at the RTA has the time and resources to moonlight as the Tagalog manners police as well.

But aside from being a waste of everyone's time and a poor reflection upon the sole Tagalog-speaker who was so terminally lame as to lodge the complaint, there's another reason why we need to make sure this sort of thing doesn't happen.

This sort of story inevitably gets into the papers, and witness the responses it engenders:

Jim diGris of Dungog Posted at 6:01 PM April 20, 2011
1 person complains and causes a stink. This country has gone mad with political correctness and pandering to minorities
Comment 2 of 21

MB of Cairns Posted at 7:24 PM April 20, 2011
Another case of the minority trying to dictate to the generally silent and sensible majority. So relieved Kiki took the mindless bureaucrats to task over this.
Comment 7 of 21

TCK Posted at 8:05 PM April 20, 2011
It might surprise them but this isn't the Philipines, it's Australia and Kiki is not offensive here. how many other cultures, nations etc are we expected to cowtow to? The old story, if you don't like something about Australia or Aussies...GO HOME, don't expect us to change to suit you.
Comment 10 of 21

RichardC Posted at 8:31 PM April 20, 2011
The RTA is staffed by arrogant fools. This is Australia, we speak English and KIKI is not an offensive word in Australia. In fact my daughter, whose name is Kristianne was called KIKI when she was small because that's how her brother pronounced it. If some foreigner doesn't like life in Australia then they are welcome to go somewhere else. SOON!
Comment 11 of 21

And so on. You'll notice how the complaint of a single easily-offended Filipino-Australian has suddenly become "Another case of the minority trying to dictate to the generally silent and sensible majority."  One person = a whole section of society? And the reality is that the above comments reflect a pretty widespread view. Their perception is that the ethnic lobby and the politically correct brigade are out to interfere in the most mundane aspects of the average Australian's life over some petty bullshit.

The above commenters seem fairly douchey, and while I don't really care what they think, all that is achieved by stupid cases like this is that more regular folk begin to acquire those sorts of attitudes. It's unfortunate, but when a member of an ethnic minority does something objectionable, it ends up reflecting on all ethnic minorities, in the minds of a lot of people. That's not right, but it's reality, and it just feeds prejudices. And one day, when we have serious, real problems to raise a fuss about, we might be taken less seriously since we are perceived as a bunch of whingers.

Other examples:

Banks no longer giving piggy banks to kids for fear of offending Muslims. The vast majority of Muslims wouldn't be offended at all by piggy banks (it's not a real pig, therefore it's not unclean), but it just fuels the perception of Muslims not wanting to integrate and wanting to take away the freedoms of the majority.

The Korean-American woman who attempted to sue Miley Cyrus for $4 billion, after the teen starlet was photographed making the "chinky-eye" gesture at a party. Now, a lot of people were offended by that photo, and fair enough too, but to sue Cyrus for any amount of money, let alone $4 billion, is so ridiculous that it's beyond ridiculous. And it just encourages ignorant people to think that Asians are just too sensitive.

So by all means, fight for your rights, people. But when it comes to the insignificant stuff, just get a life and move on. You're making us all look bad.

And to the companies and government departments that indulge this nonsense - you're part of the problem. Grow some balls.