Posts by Andre
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I did of course mean linked to rather than "liked to"...
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How did the sea slugs eat the puffer fish? That has to be the big question? According to encyclopedia.com:
"Sea slugs graze on small sessile animals such as coelenterates, sponges, and bryozoans. Certain sea slugs that feed on corals and sea anemones ingest the stinging cells of their prey without discharging them; these then pass from the slug's digestive tract to the ceratia, where they are used by the slug for its own defense".
So they can't eat fish... but if they had eaten the puffer fish they could have used its poison as a defence... against the dog!
Anyway, maybe the algal bloom is liked to: global warming; inshore trawling; dairy farming run-off (as Sacha & Peter Singleton point out); the dredging of sand from Pakiri, Mangawhai et al and the following collapse of sand dunes and vegetation into the sea; the dumping of this sand onto Auckland beaches; the dredging of silt and sand needed to build the new Ports of Auckland wharf near Mechanics Bay; the fact that we pump millions of litres of sewerage directly into the sea through the stormwater system when it rains and the current council just delayed the project to fix it by another ten years.
We need more marine reserves - and less puffer-fish eating sea slugs. -
I don't think that the climate change sceptics have a case any more. The wierdest anomaly was that the rate of measured pan evaporation was falling: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_evaporation
Because of global warming water should have been evaporating faster but for 50 years now we've had Global Dimming. Without this dimming we'd be fried by now I reckon. It's the effect of our pollution blocking the sun from getting through. The scientists reckon that the dimming effect is lessening because we have produced less aerosols since the 90's, but the evidence talks a lot about "predictions" http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/05/global-dimming-may-have-a-brighter-future/
I really enjoyed their view on the future (talk about taking a bob each way) "as before we cautioned against over-interpreting the importance of the dimming, we offer similar cautions for the brightening." Producing less aerosols may be making the planet hotter... how bizarre! -
It's a kick in the puku.
MP's get paid so much that you'd think that the job came with no other perks. Once you add in the VIP treatment they expect for the rest of their lives it's worth about $500k a year. And you can retire after 6 years or something and get free air travel for you and your spouse for the rest of your lives. Yay! Raise the amount of GST immediately and cut all benefits to BLUDGERS. Make it impossible to afford to live here for average wage earners. Keep kids in school until they're 24 to lower the unemployment figures. I'm so glad you all voted National! It was terrible being looked after by Labour - they were like nannies compared to Action Man John and his best buddy Bill. Puke!
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We have a right-wing government. i think they will privatise everything possible, even though their movement's laissez-faire prophets like Greenspan have had to acknowledge that the central tenets of their belief systems are wrong. In Greenspan's case, after the credit crunch he basically said that Greed wins out. Businesses will actively hurt the weak to make money. The long-term good is of no consequence to business people. They will make more money now even if they know that if they do so their organisation will fail further down the track. So why is the government still acting like a wet dream Roger Douglas had in 1987? If you accept that free markets give no protection to the weak or poor then I suppose either you're heartless or a moron to continue following Thatcher or Reaganite economic policies. Are these guys evil or just stupid?
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Paul Holmes cracks me up - "New Zealand faces a massive welfare payout every week of every year"... what about jumped-up public servants appearing as TV presenters? How much did we pay Holmes, D'Audney, Hawkesby et al? The bill was hundreds of thousands a week - and (based on ROI) retraining them at $25k a year might have been preferable...
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I heard Danny Watson on Newstalk ZB yesterday wondering aloud why a solo mum with ONE child should get $715 a week from the government. He then asked the audience if he was correct that she had one child - he wasn't sure - and invited callers to phone in and correct him if he was wrong before launching into a Spot On black-belt right-wing fantasy of a sermon about beneficiaries ripping off the system. Lovely chap. No-one responded to correct him of course.
It's hard enough getting on a benefit in NZ. When you actually do need help WINZ do all that they can to not give you any. In my experience most people are between jobs for 1 to 4 weeks unless they are "long-term unemployed". This may of course change during the current recession (which must be verging on a depression BTW http://tinyurl.com/52wsao)
At the time when most hard-working taxpayers need help they will be given none by WINZ and instead be put on a stand-down period. Their philosophy is all wrong from my point of view. Hopefully said opinion isn't enough to see my name dragged through parliament by the thought police... -
F them... Either give us a government-funded Te Papa or not... Wellingtonitis strikes again. "Nah, just keep the sheds". I thought it was April Fools or something. We want a $500 million edifice right nb
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Think back to the 1990 Commonwealth Games fans swamping the city while the Round the World yachts sailed in. The whole town was a huge party. We certainly didn't need a $100,000,000 suck-up to the business interests surrounding the tourism or local government ministers at the time to keep the international guests interested. The most popular move at the time was the arrival of tuk-tuk's and rickshaws. The tourism industry is getting hundreds of millions in returns from the RWC anyway - maybe the overseas-owned cruise ship operators should pay for their new cruise ship centre in partnership with NZ.
I went to the 40 Below party. I thought I'd check National out and had a constructive conversation with Tim Groser for about an hour before I got a bit too drunk and left. Their moves to take over Auckland's local government and then privatise our infrastructure are going well. The new "Party Central" will be for sale in a couple of years along with the rest of the Ports of Auckland. We should build Otahuhu residents the $22.1 million swimming pool and library complex they have been waiting decades for instead. It would do more to solve the city's problems than a "party central" designed by John Key's mates ever could. -
I used to hang out there far too much. I flatted with Jmmy Joy and that's how I met Simon in1987. Jimmy dragged me up to The Playground and then Berlin and then The Siren - it was like the scene just jumped clubs every six months. Then I shifted into a flat downstairs from Sasi who worked on the door at the Siren and we'd go there almost every night. We'd head to Roma a bit too, but the scene that ran the first big dance parties really revolved around High Street. De Bretts Corner Bar was the focal point. I went to Christchurch for 3 years and met up with Fish when he was setting up the Worcester Bar at Noahs and saw Greg Churchill play his first gigs there. He's still awesome. Then i came back in 1991 and hung out at The Box and Cause Celebre almost every night until 1996, when I emigrated to Wellington. Squid and The Dragon Bar were the other clubs that drew similar punters. De Bretts was asset stripped by Ken Chambers and turned into a back packers and it was like the guts being ripped out of the scene. The Escape Club and Galatos both arrived with the latter bringing the scene to K Rd mirrored by clubs like Staircase. I'd go dancing at The Box for 6 hours and then stand outside to cool down and have these drunken rambling conversations with Simon, Soane & Tim until closing. On other nights we'd play pool and drink Kevin's cocktails while listening to Nathan & Joel. We smoked a lot of weed and took acid but it was a much different scene to today's. We'd go out and get wasted sometimes but never got wasted to go out. I saw Kevin a couple of years ago and he was running functions on a boat from Princes Wharf and looked happy, dapper and much the same. I first met him at Le Bom. He was a touch of class - as where all of the crew that worked at The Box & Cause Celebre BITD...