Posts by Gabor Toth
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I find that the horror movies that scare/unsettle me most are the more "plausible" ones - anything with the breakdown of society, really
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. -
One of the peculiarities of "first-four-ship-worship" is that they were comparatively late in the play - people had stopped counting ship numbers in Wellington by then
It is rather curious. Though they started arriving over a decade before Ch Ch's first four ships, most Wellingtonians only think of Tory, Oriental, Aurora and Adelaide as being the names of local streets (and a bay). The most likely reaction in Wellington to hearing that your ancestors arrived on one of these ships is likely to be "huh?".
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Bah! Yes I meant thermal - not geothermal...
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They may be obsessed with NRl and even more arcane ballsports, but the ockers definitely demostrate a more level attitude to these kinds of small-scale initiatives to cut emissions and save a few quid too.
I wonder if this could have had something to do with the general Australian public's recognition that in terms of electricity generation and consumption, their country has got some serious issues that need dealing with.
90% of electricity generation in Australia is geothermal - and almost all of that is coal (gas makes up only around 5%). Though most of that is from black coal, about 30% of total electricity generated is still from brown coal (lignite) which is particularly dirty (Australia has the distinction of having the most polluting power station in the industrialised world). The net result of all this is that Australia has the highest per capita emissions of greenhouse gases in the world. Banning incandescent light bulbs may be a step in the right direction, but doesn't count for much when so much power gets hoovered up for air-conditioning. -
I just wish that larger CFL bulbs (i.e. >20 watts = >100 watt equivalent incandescent) were more generally available. I have seen bigger ones in specialist stores but their colour temperature was all cold-white rather than warm-white. Cold-white may be fine in a workshop but in a domestic situation they are the pits.
I don't mind the soft-start to CFL bulbs, but I find that a maximum of 100 watts-equivalent in a medium - large sized room just isn't enough. -
There is actually a continuity here. It was a Labour government that anointed February 6 as "a national day of thanksgiving in commemoration of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi" in 1957, and the Kirk government that made it a national holiday-- in the first instance, as New Zealand Day
Around the mid-1970s there was a fair bit of coverage in the media as to what our "National Day" should be called. With the sort of logic that only a c.7 year old lad could come up with, I remember asking my father that seeing as we had a National Day and a Labour Day, why didn't we have a Social Credit Day? :)
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I can't say I recall seeing Such a Stupid Way to Die, but the vibe is familiar -- if loaded up here with proto-Blair Witch dread and wild, spooky music (check out the 'Day in the Life' crescendo at the beginning of part two). NZ On Screen has uploaded this 1971 public heath classic, and it's really worth a look.
Heh! Good to see that again. Hardly a year went by at my primary school when this thing wasn't screened to us in the "film room". It had a special significance for us as the actor who cops it at the end of the film owned the dairy across the road from our school (K.W.N.S Rulz!). The prog-rock freak-out at the death scene (part 2, c.9 minutes) is pretty wild!
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Incidentally, anyone know how many Israelis were killed in 2008 by rockets fired from Gaza?
The figure which is being reported is 16 deaths over the past eight years
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I agree with Craig. Wishart isn't going to be too soft on National. He can always been relied on to speak wild-eyed hallucinations to power.
I'm wondering how long it will be before we get the first deranged comments (though not necessarily from Wishart) regarding Key's ethnic background or bollocks about The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. This sort of rubbish is thankfully absent from the NZ political scene but it still rears its head in Central / Eastern Europe and the U.S.
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Using bottled water for the entire volume of my ginger beer seems unreasonable, but I reckon I'll keep the plant itself in the purer stuff until I get a bit more confident in keeping it alive
Seeing as you are in Wellies, head for Te Puna Wai Ora (The Spring of Life) - a well of untreated pure artesian water on Buick Street in Petone (just before the intersection with Jackson Street). Saturday mornings can be quite busy as home brewers line up next to hippies to fill their containers. It's good stuff and like the best things in life - free.