Posts by Kumara Republic
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Dickensian thinking that will result in revolt...
Worse than that. It's feudalism with smartphones.
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I think the reason for designing the new flag was to create an emblem of separatism. Flying that alongside the national flag is hardly a unifying gesture.
We need a new flag that represents all of us, not an emblem of Empire and one of an unrealistic notion of Maori sovereignty.
Canada & South Africa, for all their internal ructions, got it right with their flags. Surely we can't do the same?
It could be argued that on the one hand, the Blue Ensign has been tainted by the likes of the NF hijacking it for their own ends. On the other hand, the Tino Rangatiratanga flag is too polarising for many.
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How do the Tolley Standards compare with America's No Child Left Behind Act?
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Far too many la las for me but I appreciate the effort. This is the time of the year when my iPod works overtime, shutting out all the Snoopy's Christmas and Felice bloody Nobby da da in all kinds of public places.
Works for me. :)
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Can I make a shameless plug for my own blog, where I examine some of the issues that Phil McCann discusses using patent data from around the world? In particular, I compare innovation in Australia and New Zealand in this post.
It brings to mind the Urban Archipelago.
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Totally agree George but look out for the screams of "nanny state PC gone mad" if there's any kind of regulation or disincentive from the govt regarding people's right to fill the suburban streets with their SUVs
Why not ping them with ACC hikes instead of bikers? SUV's are the new tobacco.
I actually think that places where the pollution is much more visible and thus embedded in the consciousness of the public and decision makers, are going to leapfrog New Zealand on at least some responses.
So we'll need to find the Crafarms of motoring, and energy wastage in general for that matter.
Actually, there already is a Crafarms of both the above...
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There are umpteen reasons why NZ doesn't have nuclear power. Public opinion is one of them. Lack of expertise, scale, nuclear waste, cost, and NZ actually having enough renewable power to run the damn country are the other ones.
Agreed. IMO the environmentalists won't put the brakes on nuclear energy, the bean-counters will. To build one in NZ would make Think Big look like petty cash.
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This little gem from the author of the Dog & Lemon Guide sums up the wider mentality quite nicely:
The problem for the West is that the West’s economy is based on energy wastage. Therefore, most of the current energy strategies are aimed at continuing this wastage using different technologies. That’s a bit like promoting chastity in a brothel.
For example, there was a friend who was visiting a family in Las Vegas. While our friend talked with the wife, the wife was taking the family washing out of the machine and putting it in the clothes drier.
For those who don’t know it, Las Vegas is in the middle of the desert and it was 35° Celsius outside. The wife could have thrown the whole load of washing out onto a deckchair and it would have been dry in ten minutes. But that’s not the American way.
There is a deeply ingrained American attitude that says that the reward for all your hard work is the right to squander precious energy: a fourwheel drive Hummer, a fifty-room house, air conditioning in every room, a mega-sized clothes drier. If you run your clothes drier in mid-summer, the power company makes more money, the drier manufacturer makes more money, the shop who sold it makes more money, the housewife gets to put her feet up and watch her mega-sized flatscreen tv. However, when you have hundreds of millions of people living this way, you end up with the current global energy crisis. What’s worsening this global energy crisis is that China and India are now following America’s example.
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How would the denialists handle a worst case scenario of Copenhagen? I suspect they'd do a lot more than just whinge from the sidelines.
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It's mildly amusing to see the teabaggers now dissing Mr Latta as being in the pay of the Nanny State. When they sense they're backed into a corner, they typically reach for the big red button that reads 'DEFCON 1'.