Posts by Paul Campbell
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Hard News: Done like a dinner, in reply to Matthew Poole,
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One thing about redirecting electricity from Manapouri is that it doesn't have to be redirected all the way north. The station is already some distance from Tiwai Pt, so changing the feed direction to north instead of south would allow power from stations further north to be sent north, and so on. It'd be a very significant oversupply to the bottom of the south, to be sure, but by shifting the various stations' supplies to a northwards direction it would make it easier to minimise transmission losses.
Harder than you think - here's a map ....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:New_Zealand_transmission_grid.svgthat line you'd like to put in would go through Fiordland Nat Park - roughly where they are arguing about monorails and the like at the moment
Any extra power to the North Island would have to go through Benmore I guess
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Hard News: Done like a dinner,
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Don't forget that other advantage of closing Tiwai - not only do we get to reduce carbon footprint by shutting coal and gas fired power stations - but Tiwai itself pumps out a tonne of carbon for every tonne of Aluminum it makes.
With power to spare there would be actual competition in the power market, prices would fall, great for everyone (except those silly enough to be caught touting floats of generating companies)
My bright idea though involves the govt getting energy companies to work together rather than to compete - I want Meridian to add extra penstocks to Clyde (they're sort of half there already) and more generation capacity, and then simply letting the lake fill when the wind blows, when it doesn't make more power - Central Otago has some of the best wind around bulking up and and sharing the lines capacity between the two would provide more peak power capacity and more reliable long term capacity.
But yes let's start charging for power in the South Island at least as low as a rate that's equivalent to the losses involved in getting the same power to Auckland - we could have more industry in the South because it really is cheaper here - an we could solve some of Auckland's problems with trying to build a large city on a tiny isthmus - remember that Dunedin is the 5th largest city on the planet (in land area).
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Hard News: Violence in the streets,
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yes not new - I was dragged out of my car (a 1946 Austin 8 with doors that wouldn't lock) at the lights late one night in 1974 by a bunch of hoons and left lying bleeding in the middle of the street - luckily 1 block from A&E - we do seem to have some in society who somehow confuse violence and sport, fun things to do on a saturday .
I think the behaviour is learned in high school and is tied up with the whole macho school sport thing
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There was a point where my son was about 3 when he suddenly realised that one day he would die - he suffered an obvious existential crisis and got really really worried, which was eventually solved a few days later by talking through "it's going to be a very long time from now".
The mortality thing is probably more a "I'm going to die soonish" for some more or less worrying value of soonish
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Well I have two kids, both are now off to Uni and have actually left home - that whole "empty nest" thing is quite real .... they both can drive, feed themselves, budget, get out of bed to go to classes by themselves so I think mostly we've done OK.
I do think that a large part of getting them to learn the big lessons as teenagers involves giving them space to safely fuck up .... as parents we may lecture them about all sorts of stuff but to internalise that stuff they often need to figure that stuff out themselves the hard way ..... so not too much cotton wool .... yes you do need to drink too much one night to really learn why it's a bad idea (and yes as parents it's quite OK to feed them bacon and greasy eggs the next morning to help drive the lesson home ....)
On the other hand it's stupid to try and teach them 'facts' that they can disprove on their own - after all we want them to be capable of critical thinking as adults - so no "one joint and you'll be hooked" stuff ..... we found that taking out 10-12yr olds to Burningman was useful - "look at that guy, he's having no fun" - we've tried to teach facts and moderation rather than abstinence in general
Maybe understanding the value of "moderation" may have a lot to do with "being an adult"
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Legal Beagle: A little known story of…, in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
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The Māori electorates represent the proportion of the Māori descent population who are on the Māori roll, including the same proportion of non-enrolled Māori.
that makes sense ..... but without the question "which roll are you on?" does this really work? (or do the people making the estimate connect up Maori roll entries with census returns some how?) I wonder how many (if any) people on the Maori roll didn't claim descent or ethnicity ..... and if you could game the system for Maori by enrolling and not claiming
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Legal Beagle: A little known story of…,
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I guess the population representation thing gets messed up because Maori voters get to choose what roll they are on and for the purposes of deciding how many more people their votes represent the missing piece of data that statistic may not have is "Which roll are you registered on?" - with that they could make informed guesses about how many extra people (their kids/etc) they 'represent' - so I guess i'm confused do the Maori electorates represent all Maori? or the population that the Maori who choose the Maori voting option represent?
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Legal Beagle: A little known story of…,
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I have a question (not stirring here, just my ignorance) electorates are all supposed to be the roughly same size why not hold open enrollments for the Maori roll for 4 months, then look at the sizes of the rest of the electorates (after the Maori roll electees have been removed) and then allocate enough Maori seats so that the Maori seats are roughly an equivalent size? (ie based on the number enrolled rather than the population size of those who might enroll)
Does the size of an electorate depend on the total number of people of any age - if say Stuart Island was suddenly populated by 25,000 (or whatever the appropriate number is) 13 year olds would it create an electorate in which no one was allowed to vote? (apart from the whole lord of the flies thing that would invariably result) .... or more seriously do populations that have bigger families get more representation (per voter)?
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I believe it's China Miéville you want for the "flag waving commie" spot in your pantheon
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I always thought Ender's Game just another take on the classic bootcamp movie (Starship Troopers is very similar).
On the other hand I found the sequels (not the prequels) more readable and uplifting
But then on the strength of those I also slogged through the Homecoming books (apparently a thinly guised Book of Mormon), they seemed to go on forever ....
I haven't found anything else of his worth reading and have given up