Thursday, March 16, 2006

That's 3,999,999 thank you very much

All throughout the city I see signs telling me that our Commonwealth Games team is 4 million strong. So I wanted to register myself as a conscientious objector from nationalism.

Another advertising campaign asks "Where do Gold Medals Come From?" You're supposed to go to Sparc's website to get this answer:

They come from ordinary kiwi kids who are encouraged, supported and then developed to become extraordinary young athletes motivated to spend years in intense training to reach the world stage.
They're wrong the actual steps to getting a gold medal looks more like this:

1. Find an environment with some gold in it.
2. Build a mine, destroy the environment, and save money by leaving out as many safety features as possible.
3. Hire a whole bunch of people to work in the mine, pay as little as possible.
4. Bust unions, anyway you can, try violence.
5. Get a whole bunch of other toxic chemicals and mix them with the gold.
6. This is actually where my knowledge of gold-mining and smithing runs out, but you get the picture.

4 comments:

  1. Anonymous9:00 pm

    How much gold in that computer you're using then?

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  2. I've no idea. My point isn't that people shouldn't use gold (I'm not at all into consumer boycots). My point is that it's a bloody stupid question, and an even stuipder answer.

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  3. Well, the next step is that you throw the gold (mixed with cyanide) in a pile and let the liquid drain out. Then you recover the gold from it, turn it into an ingot, ship it around the world, melt it down, and cast it into a medal. Or something like that; Weekend Viking could give more details.

    In New Zealand up until quite recently, we didn't get a cent for the gold that was being extracted, and had no real way of making mining companies clean up their mess after them.

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  4. It is a pretty stupid answer. (the website one) then again you didn't really expect an intelegent one did you?

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