Posts by Chris Waugh
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Hard News: Thatcher, in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
Are the two really contradictory?
One person's terrorist is another's freedom fighter. No contradiction in this case, in my book, Mandela was entirely justified.
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One of those China moments... smog-blue sky, massive hole where a row of restaurants was not so long ago, cement still damp on that new fence.
And this morning, a frigid norwester, but a beautiful sky.
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Hard News: Key Questions, in reply to Ross Mason,
Because I suspect the “Baddies” – and historically this means China – will give the NK a bit of a hand again.
I suspect China, although it has plenty of spare young men, will be working to preserve peace and stability. Too much invested in globalised trade, too many memories of unstable times, too many young people comparing North Korea now with China of the Mao era. But yeah, the rest I agree with.
And while we're getting stuck into our fellow Kiwis saying dumb shit in or about China, how the hell can Patrick Gower not know which is Xi Jinping's surname and which his given name? Oh, wait, I see that article has been mostly cleaned up, but still has this clanger:
Mr Jinping took charge of China's 1.3 billion people three weeks ago. His wife, Peng Liyuan, has real star power – a folk opera singer with fans across China.
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Hard News: Key Questions, in reply to David Hood,
Are you talking about Kim Jong-un or John Key
Both. I agree it seems Key has had his talking to already.
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Hard News: Key Questions, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
Hopefully Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang will sit him down and give him a healthy dose of reality.
And I very much doubt things will play out as you say - you think China, South Korea and Japan want all that fallout floating around?* Little Kim might be crazy, but do you really think the regime would deliberately bring about its own destruction? Any actual shooting will be small, conventional skirmishes which might blow up into full-scale war, but probably won't. Neither China nor South Korea wants the flood of refugees war would bring them, nor do they want the massive cost of rebuilding North Korea.
*When that tsunami destroyed Fukushima Daiichi there was a massive run on iodised table salt in China - rumour was the iodine would protect you from the radiation headed our way. Of course, it was all bollocks, but that's what happens - people hear "radiation" and panic.
But I'm just happy our inglorious leader's visit to the PRC has sparked off a massive flood of writing on NZ-China business in the NZ Herald. Finally.
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Hard News: Done like a dinner, in reply to John Farrell,
You may also need a tempering valve on the output of the whole setup – normally a gas unit doesn’t need this, as it is limited to a maximum output of 50 degrees C.
If I'm interpreting that correctly, then the tempering unit is highly recommended. The sun can get the water really damn hot, and in my experience with solar water heating, trying to find that perfect balance between scalding your skin off and giving yourself hypothermia can be really fiddly.
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Hard News: Key Questions, in reply to Islander,
that piece of Danish womanshit
I was confused when I saw your comment last night, Islander, but this morning I think I see what you were referring to. I think it's clear from her comments on the hongi and waiata that, among many other things, she really needs to grow up.
I wish I could say "don't worry about her", but unfortunately it seems to me that fascism is on the rise in Europe again and there's probably quite an eager audience for such puerile nonsense.
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Another couple of international shots, then. Beijing, about 9am today.
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Hard News: Done like a dinner, in reply to Hebe,
$14,000
ummm... wow....
Solar water heating alone?!
What we got was a very simple cylinder with an array of pipes angled to catch the sun and warm the water up, connected to the water supply with hoses running down to connect with the shower head. We could've paid a little more, as in a couple of hundred yuan, to get the electric booster to tide us over the winter, but we don't live up there full time, only the olds do, and they're well used to going a week or more without a shower and using the village bathouse. Even had we installed a stove for heating so we could use that shower over the winter, even a few extra partitions to guarantee privacy, we wouldn't have come close to that kind of spending. But even so, from mid-spring to mid-autumn the water is still warm enough for two people to shower consecutively in the morning.
In fact, I whipped the calculator out because I didn't trust my mental calculations, but I was right: 70,000 yuan! That's more than my car cost! 70 times what our solar water heater cost!
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Hard News: Done like a dinner, in reply to Farmer Green,
Bjorn Lomborg provides a perspective
And a couple of pics to match his comments on China.
PV and coal (and that power station is expanding, dammit). He seems to think it’s either renewable or fossil fuel, but China’s doing renewable, fossil fuel and nuclear all at the same time, keeping the economy going while putting in new, cleaner sources of energy.
Biomass for cooking and heating - and, yes, coal to the left. When it was biomass alone, winter mornings could see mops and basins of water left inside overnight frozen. Coal means it may be only 12 degrees inside on a winter morning, but that's a vast improvement. Other families we know up here have got their places even warmer after rebuilding their houses and put in more modern windows and glass doors (ranch sliders and the like). In a rural area, what's more renewable than agricultural waste? I wonder how it stacks up in terms of carbon emissions, though.
