Posts by Gabor Toth
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...just returned from protesting about Cadbury's use of palm oil at the annual Jaffa Race. (Not using the palm oil at the Jaffa race - you know what I mean).
I was away last week so a bit late to join the thread, but I wonder if those protesting about Cadbury's use of palm oil are planning on banning soap from their households? Check most brands of commercially produced soap and near the top of the list of ingredients (ingredients are listed in order of quantity used) you will see Sodium Palmate and/or Sodium Palm Kernelate. Some soaps will also list Potassium Palmate which is the potassium-salt equivalent. Sodium Palmate is essentially palm oil which has been reacted with sodium hydroxide and this will make up about 70%+ of the average bar of palm-based soap (with coconut oil (listed as sodium cocoate) about another 20% or so) .
If you want to avoid it, the main alternative is beef fat (which will be listed as Sodium Tallowate). Ironically, palm based soap makers will often proudly state "contains no animal products" on their bars while ignoring the damage that palm oil production is causing (whereas beef fat is largely a waste product).
The quantities of palm oil used by Cadbury's would be a fraction of that used by the soap industry and I seriously doubt that commercial soap makers are going out of their way to obtain sustainably grown palm oil. -
It's been tried? Cool! Where?
Switzerland comes close. They have regular referendums at both a Federal and Canton (state) level. Canton level referendums can be held on just about anything and Federal referendums can be called to vote on whether to overturn a law within 100 days of it being passed. Only 50,000 names are needed on a petition (in a population of about 5.5 million) for a referendum to be called. Meanwhile they have a staggering 2700 municipalities (Rodney Hide would have a heart attack) where decisions at a local government level are often decided with a show of hands by citizens at the local town hall.
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I was at my parents (who have Sky), and saw an absolutely fascinating documentary on the Arts channel about the New York Philharmonic's recent(ish) trip to Pyongyang. Best TV docco I've seen in a while.
So, that, at least.
Some of the docu's on TVNZ6 and 7 are of a similar standard. Probably not as many, but not too trashy either. Artland USA on TVNZ6 for instance had me hooked (brilliant content and co-presenter Mame McCutchen was rather errr..."arresting").
None of the frequent signal loss "due to atmospheric conditions"
Curiously, despite getting our Freeview via satellite (the same Optus D1 that Sky uses) we have never experienced the "rain fade" problem that friends of ours who have Sky Digital regularly grumble about.
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This has reminded me of an episode of That's Incredible where they showed how a team in China had developed an experimental technique which used small explosive charges to shatter kidney stones inside the body. The resulting fragments would then be passed out through the urethra. I don't know if it ever caught on but I do recall it was only used on women. Weird what you remember from your childhood...
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Learn to shave properly - with a proper shaving brush, shaving soap and a quality double-edged safety razor (straight razor also acceptable). Over the past three decades or so, several multinationals have managed to convince most of the male population that canned goo & a multi-bladed monstrosity of a razor costing around $4 per cartridge gives a good shave.
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What I love about bowling is how you can often tell within a split-second of the ball leaving your fingers if that particular bowl is going to be a cracker. There is that great feeling as you see the ball continue along the perfect trajectory your brain has paced out until - whammo! Golf has something similar but it isn't anywhere nearly as satisfying (I think in part because strikes are a hell of a lot more common that holes-in-one).
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It's also why it's hard to buy that really really cheap generic bottle with 400 ibuprofens in the supermarket the way you can in the US
Grrrr - don't get me started ESPECIALLY when it comes to children's liquid paracetamol (aka "pamol". Anyone who has been parent will know the value of this stuff. However unless you get it on prescription, 100mls containing the equivalent of only about 10 standard paracetamol tablets will set you back about $15 from the chemist. No one as far as I know makes a generic non-branded version of it in NZ (happy to be corrected on this)
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Goodness - that would have been the Sunshine Dairy? (or the "Bumshine Dairy" as it was called by local mischievous youth). I grew up around those parts and remember it well. The 4-Square ("Peter's 4-Square") was once a local institution that delivered to the door. It was the only grocery store for miles.
Life become much tougher for these places once they lost their monopoly on the retail sale of milk. I recall that just before the legislation changed (early 1990s?), supermarkets managed to get around the law by selling something they bizarrely called "milk-flavoured milk". This was made up of evaporated milk which was reconstituted and then blended with normal milk - thus making it a "flavoured" milk which they could legally sell - as opposed to "fresh" milk which they could not.
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A vocoder just makes the voice sounds robotic. Auto-tune changes the pitch, which is why the newscasters speech has become tuneful (as well as robitic) in the video.
[muso geek stuff]
IMHO better than both of these is a Harmonizer which can sound truly awesome. I have very happy memories of an evening session I spent with a group of mates, a microphone and a harmonizer plugged into a stereo (and lots of beer). They don't get used that much in home studios as they remain quite expensive and software emulators don't come close to the real thing. However I have to take my hat off to people like Michael Tretow who created Abba’s famous wall-of-sound vocal harmonies without any of this digital studio jiggery-pokery (and didn’t shoot anyone either…) -
I think a film of this type which scared the bejesus out of me more than any other was Threads. I recall that it had one screening on NZ television around 1986 (I think it was a Sunday evening). Such was its impact it was the lead headline on the front page of the Evening Post the following day.
I watched it again recently on DVD (the local public library had it) and it hadn't lost any of its power. Seriously scary stuff.Ah! no - two year out. It was late 1984 when it was screened on telly by various national broadcasters on the same day around the world (incl NZ). It never received a cinematic release which was a shame (particularly when the vastly inferior U.S. film of a similar era and genre "The Day After" did). A teacher at my old school video-taped it and then showed it to her class as part of a science lesson. The not entirely unexpected result was kids running from the class in terror and one throwing up in the toilet...