Posts by Bart Janssen
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Hard News: An open thread while I'm down…, in reply to Rob Stowell,
More than enough literary threads
The impossibility of this phrase should not be allowed to pass unnoticed :)
I blame Jolisa's lack of blogging, because while I'm entertained by such threads I sure as hell can't contribute to them.
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Hard News: An open thread while I'm down…, in reply to Christopher Dempsey,
wheat from the chaff
It's more a case of finding some criteria, any criteria, to get from impossible number to read properly let alone interview to something feasible.
I'll also include "entertaining fonts", name dropping as in "I happened to be in the lab the day XXX walked past", notes of admiration for work I didn't do eg "I have always wanted to work in your physics laboratory Professor Janssen, anyone who calls me Professor, oh and anyone who puts folk dancing as their hobby.
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Hard News: Science: it's complicated, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
dealt with in a top-down manner
My experience in the place I work is that management are far far far more risk averse than the people actually doing the work. I think some of that is because the people doing the work have a good understanding of what is going on, same is true in the lab as is true at the demo site. Management know only how to have lunch and worry about how they will look at the next board meeting. Yes that's harsh and cynical and probably overstated but it certainly feels true sometimes.
Meanwhile I am so looking forward to OGB.
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Hard News: Science: it's complicated, in reply to Sofie Bribiesca,
Bart, you are relieved of your responsive duties.
but but but I have so many more opinions to share :)
You won't get any argument from me Sofie. I personally think it is entirely reasonable to let folks in, carefully.
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Hard News: An open thread while I'm down…, in reply to Islander,
Incidentally, the local cop, who had been rung by one of the Franz welcome group, had better things to do with his time than turn up.
Brilliant.
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Hard News: An open thread while I'm down…, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
You need an econometrician
Yeah someone must have a spreadsheet that calculates that. Which is why I was hoping Keith might know.
It's also more complex than just Oil. CPI also includes imported consumer goods (I think). So they should respond directly to changes in the dollar but how much of an effect that has on CPI I don't know, again there must be a spreadsheet or ten lurking somewhere.
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Hard News: Science: it's complicated, in reply to Steve Barnes,
So why, in this instance, has the perceived risk outweighed the cost?
My guess is the political cost of having someone lose their life in the central area would be enormous. When balanced against the loss of livelyhood for say a couple of hundred people there was no politician willing to take that risk.
A slightly more serious answer is that where risk can actually be controlled, say by restricting access to a potentially dangerous site then there is a strong psychological drive to eliminate that risk. The balancing harm to the lives of peoples who really really need access is very difficult to compare fairly with a potential loss of life or even injury.
The much harder case to deal with is where harm occurs in both cases and in both cases the harm is difficult to quantify and also difficult to emotionally grasp. Harm from loss of life is easy to emotionally grasp, harm from loss of income is harder, harm from change in climate even harder, harm from statistics hardest of all.
That's one reason people often resort to metaphors (often very bad ones).
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Hard News: An open thread while I'm down…, in reply to Sacha,
So if the NZ dollar drops to say 75 US cents what will happen to our fuel prices? And what will be the flow on costs to the CPI?
I know in rough terms we'll be f'd but I was wondering if anyone has a spreadsheet that could estimate that - Keith????
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So my random memory of the Eden Park protest. I was a student living in a flat across the gully from Eden Park. On weekends I would walk across Bond St to the bakery and buy doughnuts to bring back to the flat for breakfast. At the time I was aware there was a test match on and was planning to watch it on TV. I wasn't opposed to the tour and firmly believed stopping the sport would have no effect on the politics (I was of course wrong). But I also wasn't terribly caught up in the anger of the debate, oh I'd happily argue but I couldn't feel the anger that brought people do violence with each other.
I vividly remember being more than a little confused as to why, having got up and dressed and somewhat bleary-eyed walked over the bridge, I could not get to my favourite bakery. Some plonker had parked shipping containers across the road??? I'm not sure what the police thought of me as they turned me away, apparently I needed to show them tickets to the game in order to go to the bakery?
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Hard News: Science: it's complicated, in reply to Carol Stewart,
A great mystery to me is why cherry tomatoes are so expensive to buy when they are so easy and prolific to grow
I don't know. But my guess is yield. They cost the same to grow as any other tomato plant, my guess is the fruit have to be hand harvested, which is common for eating tomatoes that are greenhouse grown, but I'd also guess they yield maybe 20% of the weight of fruit that bigger tomatoes yield.
Or it could be marketing.