Hard News: Reasons to be cheerful
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Oh yeah, and Clemence Poesy is gorgeous, alright.
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Talking of steam power Steven, how's this
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Ah I see you didnt look at the link.
Oh, I did, I did. How dare the world party instead of donning sackcloth and pitching in to help those plucky telegenic crips?
Miseryguts. -
While the song has a beauty, Beyonsis's rendition lacks something. (Perhaps I prefer those who want to evoke an emotion in me to actually have experienced some deeper emotions, other than sycophancy and covert ambition, themselves.) Yes Im saying I find her shallow.
She thinks the world of you.
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Reason to be cheerful:
US allows use of embryonic stem cellsAlso: the global gag rule is gone (damn straight!), and he signed it the day *after* all the anti-choice protests in DC. Strategic.
How dare the world party instead of donning sackcloth and pitching in to help those plucky telegenic crips?
Roflnui! (Or would laughing at that count as a 'toxic emotion'? I am concerned.)
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On a completely unrelated note. I just checked my readouts from my home ventilation system. It is 51.5c in my roof, that's about 125f.
I think I will stay out of the loft today. ;-) -
On a completely unrelated note. I just checked my readouts from my home ventilation system. It is 51.5c in my roof, that's about 125f. I think I will stay out of the loft today. ;-)
Wise. It's 37 degrees in Sydney. It's been hot, though not quite that hot, for three days. Each day I long for a storm or a change to break this overwhelming heat. At night it's been 30ish and too hot to sleep. My youngest hasn't slept through a single night. Make. It. Stop.
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Honestly, I feel very sorry for the transport people. They have to figure out solutions that piss everyone off the least.
Yup and EVERYONE has an opinion on what should happen with the roads. Usually based on what would be best for them. So it's a pretty thankless job.
Where to put cycle paths is a tough one. Follow main roads, or quiet suburban ones? Personally I'd like the suburban way much more. When there is no dedicated route it's almost always the way I choose, if possible. Shared bus/cycle lanes make no sense to me at all, since a bus is absolutely the most dangerous kind of vehicle to be overtaken by, being long, wide, and impatient (for good reason, since they are carrying lots of people and have timetables to keep). Motorbikes, fine, they would be actually safer (apart from the fact that the paint on the road is slippery). But pushbikes? Only for the courageous. Suburban streets, with chicanes and speed humps, are perfect for bikes. Only real problem is they don't go where you want - main roads are main for a reason, and they are hillier. So it's a tough problem.
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riding the wrong way down the road
yep - I've nearly hit 2 cyclists (at different times) who think it wise to ride the wrong way up the one-way street I exit an underground carpark from! I'm only looking one way, and it's not the way they are coming from!
Lots of comments I agree with re cycling in Akl. If the Council are going to go to the effort of painting a line down the footpath to indicate a bike-lane, they could at least make sure it's safe for riding on!
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Where to put cycle paths is a tough one.
How about opening up the sewers for cyclists? Whenever I see those multi coloured Lycra clad shaven legged plonkers covered with fake advertising weaving in and out of stationary traffic with scant regard for the frustrations of poor impotent car drivers who have no choice but to sit there sweating in their tin boxes in the heat of the summer with nare a drop of liquid to moisten their parched lips as their life ebbs away moment by interminable moment I hope and pray for the day when we can say "Enough allready, to the sewers with the lot of them.
;-)
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It's 37 degrees in Sydney. It's been hot, though not quite that hot, for three days. Each day I long for a storm or a change to break this overwhelming heat. At night it's been 30ish and too hot to sleep. My youngest hasn't slept through a single night. Make. It. Stop.
Having lived through close to a couple of decades of Sydney Summers, my sympathies. The only method I've seen that ever brought relief, and then only on occasion, was to assemble a number of children at around 5 pm, buy them popsicles, then have them thrust said iceblocks at the sky, all the while shouting "Southerly buster!"
Though the heavens flash armageddon-purple behind the figure of Jesus atop St Vincent's hospital, syringes sluice down the gutters of Darlinghurst, and lightning blast the Cumberland plain clear to Penrith, the götterdämmerung special effects of a full-scale Sydney southerly buster are as naught compared to the blessed drop in temperature.
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Miseryguts.
hahahahahahahhahahahahahahhahahaha
See you made someone laugh,
with your total lack of comprehension. -
And the gushing of emotions that I see streaming from the audience borders on the toxic. But hey maybe than whats just me.
Hey, I was weeping tears of gratitude that Beyonce wasn't doing the split-personality/avant garde space diva thing that even she can't rock. She wore a nice gown, did the over-emoting diva thing that passess for a performance nowadays and the Obamas were adorable. Hope the crowd got full value for their tickets -- unlike the B-list guests at one ball who were pleased that they'd spent hours in line for a security lockdown. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you don't run a party.
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Steve, haven't you heard of air con? Many's the time recently I've gone and sat in my car just to cool down. And c'mon man, you can wear lycra too. It's just a fashion statement not to, in this kind of heat.
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Agreed on Boyle - interesting director. I’m wary of Slumdog Millionaire for some reason, but I will check it out.
Yeah, it has the potential to be either be absolutely dazzling or utterly infuriating, but fortunately the critical reception suggests it's more likely to be the latter. Boyle's an interesting director because none of his films really "sit still" even within their own genre confines-__Trainspotting__ owed more, to say, the Britpop cinema of Quadrophenia or A Hard Day's Night than the social realism of a Christine F-which may actually be what lets this film take flight. At the very least, I'm almost certain it will be vastly more entertaining than the egregiously vapid and relentless Moulin Rogue
I’ll bet you a Monteiths that (unfortunately) Benjamin Button takes out the Oscar for Best Pic.
Yeah, what is it with the buzz behind that film? It baffles me, frankly, then again, Fincher hasn't interested me as a director since Fight Club (hugely flawed and even contradictory as the film was). I don't know there's something about the flatness of his recent films that I can't totally get behind- Zodiac was almost too well crafted and self-contained for its own good, if that makes sense.
Good performances though.
Btw, cheers for tactfully ignoring the dreadful typos in my last post. Is there any "edit post" software RB could install for the PA System forum?
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And as for Clemence Poesy, I think I'd pretty much melt if I ever met her. Which would make things uncomfortable for both of us. Thankfully (for her), it's unlikely such a meeting is ever going to occur.
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I've seen some astonishingly cavalier cyclist behaviour here (including, but not limited to, riding the wrong way down the road) and it's just not good for anyone - cyclists, pedestrians, or drivers.
Auckland cycle couriers in particular seem to be over-represented in the stupid road manoeuvre ranks (based on my personal observation). I assume that, as with the buses, the incentive to hurry is an irresistible tempation to a minority of courier riders who chop their way through pedestrians, run lights, go the wrong way down roads and so on. They piss people off, and that heat is directed onto other cyclists, like (generally) blameless me.
That said, as for hacking people off by splitting lanes and so on, the problem is that for every person you mollify by not passing them in gridlocked traffic, there seem to be two who are enraged by your presumption in acting like a car (e.g. stopping at lights and having to start again, taking up more of a lane than the width of your arse) and thus in holding them in their God-given mission of Getting There Faster. Sigh.
Then there are the somewhat larger cohort who are too lazy to look out for anything smaller than an Astra and will genuinely not notice when they almost run you over. I could go on. But despite this moany post I've had generally positive experiences on the road in Auckland. Most people appreciate if if you signal and act predictably, even if you may be temporarily holding them up, and will give you enough road room to get by. That's alright by me.
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Reason to be cheerful: Revolutionary Road -- not a terribly good film, but it's strangely hypnotic watching Kate Winslett and Leonardo De Caprio rediscover the lost art of performative smoking.
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Yeah, I've noticed Auckland traffic is mellower than I remember the 80s and 90s being. Some of that could be down to propaganda and tougher enforcement, but I don't think so because I noticed the opposite in Ozzie, which has just the same propaganda and steadily tightening enforcement. I feel it's a zeitgeist thing, intangible, a mass mood swing. Perhaps popular mellowness has huge amounts of chaos built in due to karmic feedback loops. But whether that is true or not, I want to be on the side of good karma.
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oh yes, NZ. A land where people overwhelmingly still retain the idea that being carved-up in traffic is a personal insult.
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I've noticed Auckland traffic is mellower
Might be partly re-learning economical styles of driving in light of petrol prices, and I wonder if the 70s were more relaxed for similar reasons.
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I can't help but feel something is broken when we spend more time on attention seeking from Ralston, than Chomsky on autopilot.
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urm jon-knox - anyone being 'carved-up' in traffic here would not only feel personally insulted, aggreived but also literally wounded if not dead.
A word-use collector seeks your meaning-
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I can't help but feel something is broken when we spend more time on attention seeking from Ralston, than Chomsky on autopilot.
Well, as Russell said twelve pages back the frustrating thing about Ralston is that he's entirely capable of doing better -- and a little tough love might just have some effect.
Chomsky on autopilot? Meh... Depending on where you are on the political spectrum, I guess you're always going to be somewhat frustrated when real world politicians don't have the luxury of drawing up blueprints for ice cream castles in op-eds. They've got to make things work in the less rarefied air of legislature and ballot box.
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Sacha
Might be partly re-learning economical styles of driving in light of petrol prices, and I wonder if the 70s were more relaxed for similar reasons.
Or I could just be wrong, and what is mellower is me. Still hard to shake the feeling though.
Islander, I think 'carved up' might mean 'beaten', in Jon's context. As in, being dragged off or outmaneuvered. I'm thinking it's a surfing or skiing metaphor, sports where carving the wave or the snow are usually one's proudest moments. Correct me if wrong, Jon.
Jon, what did you want to say about Chomsky? Talking about Ralston doesn't do much for me either - I never watched his show, mainly because I don't like the format of any of those kind of shows, rather than any particular gripe with him. In fact, I don't like televised or radio news, period. Nor printed newspapers. In the old days, we had to put up with all that, but now, it's not necessary, and to me it just seems old school. Extremely popular old school, of course, still by far the most common way that people get their news. But that's just not enough reason for me to put up with the shortcomings.
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