Posts by David Haywood
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Don Christie wrote:
... is your own "DISCUSS" button broken or what?
Just thought that two threads on this subject might be one too many!
... the fact that so many fuckwits seem to be lined up against the bill places me more in favour than against.
A really interesting observation. I've heard similar statements maybe a dozen times over the last week -- people who initially favoured the status quo, but then changed their minds when they saw the arguments presented by their own side.
The vast majority of people who support the status quo aren't fuckwits, of course. They are just as concerned about child welfare as people on the other side of the debate. But the fuckwits do seem to do the loudest shouting, and in the process they manage to score a lot of own goals.
Stephen Glaister wrote:
[this] creates a slight technical problem and inconvenience for my overall anti-reductive analysis...oh well.
Don't beat yourself up over it, dude! No one expected you to be omniscient all of the time.
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Just to pour a bit more petrol onto the flames:
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Juha Saarinen wrote:
Renewable energy sources - I presume you mean wind and wave generators for instance - are somewhat dubious environmentally.
Dude, did you read my post?
Every human-made object has an impact on the environment. But I would strongly argue that renewables have less impact than other alternatives.
Yes, hydro dams do initally release methane but eventually (time-dependent on the type of dam) they 'pay back' their greenhouse gas emissions in comparison to fossil fuel burning generators.
You really can't compare the California wind farms with the case in New Zealand. Russell interviewed me in my (other) job as an energy engineer a few years ago, and we discussed some of the wind energy myths. You can find an MP3 of the interview in this post:
http://www.publicaddress.net/default,2247.sm#post2247
P.S. As you point out, Thorium is a very cool name. But how about Odin's AKA? Wotanium does have a certain ring to it -- particularly when said aloud.
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Juha Saarinen wrote:
If we're going to ban incandescent light bulbs in favour of fluorescent ones containing mercury, why worry about something like nuclear power that won't be anywhere near as hard on the environment?
The issue about mercury in fluorescent light bulbs isn't as clear-cut as you might think. I recently read an interesting article about it which I can't find right now (in New Scientist maybe?). The same information seems to be on Wikipedia here.
The argument is that the lifetime mercury emissions of fluorescent bulbs is actually less than the equivalent incandescent if the electricity is derived from coal-burning (burning coal releases mercury into the atmosphere).
Your nuclear options would solve the problem of mercury from coal-burning, of course, but so would renewables (and probably much more cheaply in New Zealand).
Mercury is much easier to handle than nuclear waste. If you collect the light bulbs you can remove and recycle the mercury. This is commonly done in other countries.
Note that Philips make a low-mercury fluorescent. This is the type that I always buy.
But I agree that mercury pollution can be a concern. Here's an interesting article on mercury in New Zealand (although I can't necessarily vouch for its accuracy):
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Neil Morrison wrote:
... a parent says to their child "if you do that again I'll kill your cat" (or what ever the beloved pet is and with no real intention of carrying this out). It's a form of psychological stress much like time out.
Neil, I am so over arguing about my (nearly) two-year old post...
I think you've missed the point. The degree of hurt caused in your comparison isn't the same. Most people would say that announcing to a child that you are about to kill their "beloved pet" would be extremely traumatic. A session of 'time out' is trivial in comparison.
The point in the child-prod analogy is that the physical pain is the same (or less) than with a smack.
For what it's worth I would personally agree that a mild smack is less traumatic than announcing to a child that you are about to kill their "beloved pet". I would suggest that the latter is genuine psychological abuse.
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Stephen Glaister wrote:
Peter: Run your cases with hugs/pleasure.... and the same squeamishness emerges. Hugging Services, Pleasure/reward pills/machines/hypnosis... you name it, it all stinks....
In my household we actually did have reward pills -- we called them sweets! And, no, I don't think that this approach to parenting stinks or makes me squeamish. I understand Deborah is in favour of reward pills made of chocolate and shaped like frogs.
So I don't think the physical reward vs. physical punishment cases are parallel.
In any event, I hardly think my original post is worthy of the minute attention that you have lavished upon it. As Peter Cox has correctly perceived (and explained much better than I did in the original article) I was simply identifying a plausible train of reasoning that leaves us with a mildly interesting question.
As I said before, I never claimed it was the theory of relativity.
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Stephen Glaister wrote:
... unfair, and unbecoming of any scientist...
I preferred "slick but unconvincing"! And poor David Slack -- he somehow got in your firing line without even raising his head above the parapet (although I wonder if there is such a thing as 'conduct unbecoming to a speech-writer'?).
Yes, I probably do try to communicate through humour from time to time -- I apologize if I hurt your feelings with the Trade Me gag. It certainly wasn't my intention.
Peter Cox hits the nail exactly on the head with his précis of my argument. To put it another way: my point is exactly that which you appear to think I don't get. Admittedly it's rather a minor point, but then I never claimed it was the theory of relativity.
On that Einsteinian reference: actually, this discussion isn't based on science. If it was then we could devise a nice experiment, isolate the external variables, and make decent measurements. Unfortunately we can't.
I haven't actually stated my opinion on the Section 59 debate yet, Stephen -- I was merely raising what I thought was an mildly interesting contradiction (you obviously disagree!). However I am going to write a post for Southerly that will give my opinions on the subject. This will respond to some of the arguments that you have raised.
Peter Cox wrote:
Renaming the thing 'Toddler Tingler' and making it look like a pink wand with flowers on it wouldn't change the fact that most people tend to view the concept of delivering pain to a child through an electrical charge as something somewhat distasteful. In fact, I would suggest that said instrument would quickly become illegal.
Darn, wish I'd thought of calling it the 'Toddler Tingler'. Apparently the Trade Me people consider it to be an illegal weapon already -- they deleted my child-prod auction after only two hours.
Still I managed to get a couple of bids, and had some very good questions from someone. The auction is cached here:
http://www.avon-river.net/TradeMe.htm
(scroll to the bottom of the page to see the questions).
By a curious co-incidence I did consider putting a more child-friendly image as per the 'Toddler Tingler' on Trade Me. See:
http://www.avon-river.net/Ready_to_chastise.jpg
Caption: "A mother prepares to chastise her child with the 'Pinochet' child-prod"
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Stephen Glaister wrote:
Here's part of an email I sent Haywood when his slick but unconvincing "prod" piece first appeared...
...it's far from obvious that properly calibrated child-prods wouldn't be great for exactly the reasons you mention...
The "slick but uncovincing" bit is a wonderful turn of phrase!
I wonder how many other New Zealanders would agree with you that using a de-rated cattle prod on children is a "great" idea?
To find out I've advertised one for sale on Trade Me:
http://www.trademe.co.nz/Baby-gear/Other/auction-89399838.htm
Feel free to put in a bid, Stephen.
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Andy C wrote:
Why is it acceptable to hurt our children?
I've thought long and hard about the same thing -- particularly after conversations with dog-training experts (and I'm not kidding when I say that).
To answer this question (like a good engineer) I came up with a thought-experiment that attempted to shed some light on the issue. This was actually the subject of my first guest post on Public Address:
http://www.publicaddress.net/default,2501.sm
Probably not my best work, but it might (in a small way) help put our cultural norms about child punishment into perspective.
Of course, this doesn't necessarily help you decide whether Sue Bradford's bill is a good idea or not.
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Judi Lapsley Miller wrote:
I'd also like to know more about the arguments for and against thorium reactors, which, from what I've read, counter most of the arguments made against traditional nuclear power generation.
Thanks for your comments, Judi -- a very good point.
I'm not an expert on nuclear power (still less thorium reactors) but I do know a little about the topic.
As I understand it, there are three problems with using conventional U235 or U238 reactors in New Zealand: integration, cost, and waste disposal.
1. Integration -- the size and load-balancing problems with standard nuclear power technology make it difficult to integrate into the current New Zealand system. It's possible that this may change in the future, but the Electricity Commission has a good explanation of why it's problematic now:
http://www.electricitycommission.govt.nz/faqs/faqsgeneral
2. Cost -- the Electricity Commission (see previous link) estimates that nuclear electricity in NZ would cost twice as much as electricity from our abundant renewable resources. Note that overseas studies on cost comparisons between nuclear and renewables do not reflect the much lower cost of renewables in New Zealand (for example, our wind farms run at about twice the capacity factor of their European equivalents)
3. Disposal -- safe storage of nuclear waste in NZ's geologically-active environment is a real problem (and may not be easily solvable). The option of transporting the waste to Australia (presuming that they'd take it) introduces the obvious hazards in terms of shipping anything on the high seas.
Thorium reactors offer three important advantages over 'conventional' nuclear power. Firstly, the thorium fuel isn't fissile -- so the reaction relies on neutron bombardment (perhaps from a particle gun) to get going. This makes it inherently safe technology in terms of operation. If anything goes wrong then the reaction just switches off! There's no possibility of a meltdown.
Secondly, thorium reactors produces less waste than conventional nuclear power stations, as well as waste that is much less radioactive (obviously there's no dangerous plutonium in the spent fuel).
Thirdly, thorium is a comparatively abundant element in comparison to, say, U235. There's lots of it about -- particularly in Australia.
In terms of the three hurdles to use of nuclear power in NZ (integration, cost, disposal) the cost and integration problems are unknown since (as you point out) no-one has actually built a full-scale Thorium reactor. It may be that they are economic at a smaller size than conventional nuclear power stations.
The waste from a Thorium reactor is only dangerous for around 500 years. This still makes it a big problem in New Zealand, but certainly not as bad as 'conventional' nuclear waste.
I guess we'll just have to wait and see in terms of Thorium reactors if/when they are built. Certainly if I was Australian, I'd be looking at them very closely!