Good News And Bad News

First the good news. You're in all likelihood aware of the ratcheting-up of rhetoric between the Iranian and Israeli governments, spurred on by some in the United States. What's been coming in a tad under the radar, though, is the fact that this is showing to not be a total reflection of the general populations of Israel and Iran. Some of those against the idea of war between Israel and Iran have gotten online and started an anti-war lovefest with each other, promising not to bomb each other.

For example, here's Israel-Loves-Iran. And here's Iran-Loves-Israel. And then there's a neutral 'Love And Peace'.

Because Iran's on a media blackout and Facebook is officially unavailable there (which would probably explain why Iran-Loves-Israel has a smaller population than Israel-Loves-Iran), it's possible to get around the blackout- pretty much any online blackout can be avoided if you're good enough- and while it can't be certain that the Iranian messages are coming from Iran, the messages pass all the smell tests.

They're still not all that big by Facebook standards and it's unclear whether it's actually going to have any effect whatsoever. But, hey, online movements have gotten quite a lot accomplished in recent years. Why not this too?

Now for the bad news: there's a shortage of the yeast spread Marmite in New Zealand. An earthquake in November forced the closure of the only factory that made a certain version of Marmite specifically for New Zealand, which means they can't just go grab a foreign supply and now "Marmaggedon" has gripped the population. Online auction sites are seeing a ridiculous markup on what jars of Marmite remain.

Wait, this is actually good news. Never mind. Yay! No more Marmite!

Unless they switch to Australian rival Vegemite. Then we're back to bad news.