Posts by Fooman
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Hard News: Women and their representations, in reply to Jackie Clark,
+1 to the power of 1 million
Ahem, in other words, 1?
I'll get me coat....
FM
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Very interesting.
Saw the initial reviews of this a few months ago. The form factor is indeed "interesting" - reminds me of the Ziess Axiocam microscope camera I used a few years ago - fantastically good, but was essentially a box with a hole in it.
Can you stack focal depths and export them out as one image? Or would that be limited to 3rd party software (e.g. ImageJ's focus stacker)?
Cheers,
FM -
Passenger jet speeds haven’t increased for 50 years
Poor example. This has got something to do with transonic shock waves forming on the aircraft requiring exponential increases in thrust to overcome the aerodynamic forces, rather than a lack of innovation or evolution of technology.
The technological progress is shown by the fuel consumption per passenger dropping to 30% of what it was in 1960 (1). At the same time as improving reliability.
The drive in aerospace technology is, in fact, driven by civil aerospace requirements for fuel efficiency, high specfic performance, and longer maintenance cycles. Military applications, less so.
FM
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Hard News: Press Play > Budget, in reply to Paul Campbell,
I’m always been amazed that people haven’t been shrinking their loans this way – it always seemed very rort-worthy
Well, the drip feed nature of student loan draw downs makes this unlikely. The most you get ever get in one shot was ~$1k for course related costs (text books, maybe laptops these days). The rest came in at a max of $150 per week, and for most students on a loan, was needed to pay for inconsquentials like rent, power and food.
FM
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Hard News: Press Play > Budget, in reply to HenryB,
Does that mean that the SOEs have been making a significant contribution to the growth in NZ’s GDP whilst core-govt expenditure has stayed static?
Were there not figures flying about how the SOE's recent rate of return is something on the order of 18% on values on anywhere between 3-7 billion. Seems a bit more than the just above static GDP of recent times.
Core govt expenditure has actually skyrocketed recently (by approx 18 billion off the top of my head) - but that is not in the field of things like health, welfare, etc. The increase, as far as I could see were the Roads of Unusual Size, earthquake costs and the bailout costs. Raw figures are at:
http://www.treasury.govt.nz/government/financialstatements/yearend/jun11/16.htm
For my earlier lay-analysis, see: http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2012/04/government_expenditure-2.html#comment-956469
FM
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Hard News: Press Play > Budget, in reply to HenryB,
I don’t see how a `zero’ budget with an increased GDP adds up to a government that is “the biggest it has ever been…as a share of the economy”
Inclusion of SOE's and the like, rather than core Govt. expenditure?
Just a guess at this stage...
FM
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Hard News: Press Play > Budget, in reply to Deborah,
They’re repealing the housekeeper and childcare tax credit. Sure, it’s only worth $310 a year, but even so…. it was the only acknowledgement anywhere in the tax system that there are significant costs for working parents.
Except for maybe a small scheme known as WFF (means tested, but).
FM
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OnPoint: Student Loans are Loans (Duh.), in reply to Bart Janssen,
I think you need SONAR to deal with U-Boats, not RADAR.
Not entirely, U-boats spent most of their time on the surface but because of their low profile, radar, particularly at the time, would have struggled
Actually, because of the effectiveness of the radar systems, at the time, the Germans started using the snorkel to provide air for their diesel engines, rather than running on the surface, and risking detection by ship and aircraft bourne radar (e.g. Sunderland Flying Boat).
FM
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OnPoint: Student Loans are Loans (Duh.), in reply to Keir Leslie,
Think Big, of course, was a major cause of the atrocious state of NZ's books in 84
One interesting aspect of the Motunui synthetic fuels plant, part of Think Big, is that when they turned it on in 1985 or so, it immediately halved NZ's balance of payments deficit due to the change from having to import and oil and refined fuel (petrol) to a domestically produced petrol (from "cheap" natural gas).
FM
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OnPoint: Student Loans are Loans (Duh.), in reply to Ben Curran,
Currently, for certain degrees (PhD is one of them) you can get a 150 week extension
Back, when I were lad...
I was doing PhD following on from BE (Hons). I used up one year of allowance as a undergrad, followed by 3 years of (interest bearing) loans. Postgrad funding was loans until I became eligible for student allowance again (my parents had the temerity to earn a tad more than 50k a year before tax, and were expected to support 3 children in tertiary study away from home. Solution: Thanks, Student Loans!) I hit the 200 week limit (easier to do with post-grad study, consumed the remaining allowance allowance at the rate of 52 weeks per year, rather than the ~30 weeks p.a. of a undergrad degree). I found, much to my amazement, that a M.E. was an approved long course, but a PhD in the same department was not!
It's sort of nice to see things have changed...
FM