Posts by Bart Janssen
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I don't know the answer to this question myself but ...
How much difference is there between the NZDF spying on Jon Stephenson and a journalist with a telephoto lens spying on a B-list celebrity?
I think because of the value of Stephenson's work in revealing practices most kiwis would be ashamed of in the NZDF, we want to see his work continue. The suspicion is that those spying on him will use that information to prevent him from being the watchdog we clearly need. So we view that spying as bad.
But in an age when "the media" engages in what most folks would describe as spying for the purpose of making more money I find it hard to figure out what defines unacceptable spying from acceptable. To me it all seems unacceptable.
It gets even murkier when you could easily imagine a good investigative journalist using analytical methods that are not really any different from the spying being done by the NZDF.
I have to say I am just not sure I can see the objective measure that defines any version of spying as appropriate. To me it seems like "good spying" is defined by the outcome. That doesn't make me comfortable.
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Being a New Zealand resident or citizen gives you benefits in New Zealand over people who aren’t.
Yup. And New Zealanders pay for those benefits in taxes etc. It isn't as though we are preventing foreign investment in NZ (as other countries do) and I can't see any reason for panic over this. It isn't xenophobic and it also has the upside that it would defuse one of the stupid rascist memes.
Will it work to reduce house prices? I don't know and as far as I can tell nobody knows for sure. It probably won't do any harm. So it makes sense to try it and see what happens. If it works even a little bit then great.
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Hard News: Tooled Up for Food, in reply to Gareth,
Tell me more…
Well a charcoal BBQ that uses bugger all charcoal, burns almost to completion, can maintain 80 C for 16 hours without needing adjustment or more charcoal, can heat to 350 C for pizza, cook with direct or indirect heat and function as a bog standard charcoal grill ...
is that what you wanted to know?
Also they have a slight tendency to cause owners to rave about their virtues.
Mine came as a birthday present just before we ripped out our old kitchen, so we ended up using it many nights when we didn't have a functional kitchen. That said it is a complete luxury and I am well aware of how lucky I am.
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Hard News: Tooled Up for Food, in reply to Gareth,
“Big Green Egg”, and tells me it’s brilliant. Looks very similar to your kamado.
Kamodo is a type of BBQ, Big Green Egg is a brand of BBQ. His picture and the one I proudly own as well are Big Green Egg brand kamodo type BBQs.
Same as photocopier and xerox
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Hard News: Tooled Up for Food, in reply to Andrew Johnson,
We cooked half a brisket (5 kg) in ours for about 10 hours .... oh god ....
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Hard News: Tooled Up for Food, in reply to Hilary Stace,
What is it about cast iron
Mostly mass and thermal conductivity. In order to be strong enough to use for most purposes cast iron must be reasonably thick, which gives it mass. This means changes in temperature are slower than say an aluminium cake tin. For baking in particular, and I'd argue for most cooking, rapid changes in temperature are not good.
A decent thermal conductivity means cast iron heats up in a reasonable time (versus say clay) and an uneven heat source on the outside of the iron results in an even heat distribution over the cooking surface inside.
When coated in oil iron does not corrode and it doesn't become brittle with repeated heating and cooling cycles.
The killer though, is it is dirt cheap to make. A seven layer sandwich of 18/10 stainless steel and copper may arguably work better than a cast iron pan but it costs 10-100 times as much.
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So have Global knives bought advertising here yet?
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Call that a porn post? pfft I didn't even have to look up any new words!
It seems like there are lots of different pieces to this, foremost is the politician pretending to have morals. You get the same from numerous editorials. All supposing that some external morality should apply to x or y, yet failing to actually notice that morality is flexible over time and a product of a society as a whole. It doesn't take much effort to realise our society does not believe boobs and bums are a moral issue any more at all. Most depictions of sex are fine with the bulk of our society. Basically if a significant portion of society are keen on viewing or doing these things then you need a good case (eg abuse of children) to argue they are immoral and should be controlled. This rule fails because most folks don't agree on the rule.
But the other part to this is the technology just shifts too fast to make any such system viable, even if you could get a moral restriction agreed upon. For the people who we mostly agree are sick bastards there are just too many ways around any measure we put in place. Had tumblr stuck with their restrictions on hashtags, how long before someone rigged up a search engine worked around the restriction?
And then you get the problem of how does anyone make a living (not get obscenely rich, just a living) by providing a decent curated place to view content on the internet? The creators of tumblr had a great idea that worked really well but they quite reasonably wanted to make money from that effort and at the moment the only way to do that is to sell the whole thing to someone big who may have different motivations.
Is any of this new? Or will it change ever?
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And finally for those of you who love old things … here is a genuine 1970s fondue set, with original forks! In the height of fashionable colourways. Somehow I snaffled this when I left home 30+ years ago and it has stayed with me ever since – melted cheese mmmmm
Oh and in the background is the pepper grinder we literally spent years trying to find. -
Here's my "more power" gadget, complete with pasta rolling attachment.
