Posts by Andre
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i asked Spiro, John Roughan and Mr Boock if they had thought about the rugby fight in terms of the non-acceptance of violence within other sports. They already thought that I was a wanker but that unfortunately perhaps sealed it for them.
Happy birthday Sacha!!!
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would have been willing to give "7 Days" a go except for the fact that both Dai Henwood and Jeremy Corbett make me break out in hives...
That sounds uncomfortable... I imagine you running from the room screaming when caught by surprise "7 Days" promos while watching other TV.
I haven't seen Inglourious Basterds or District 9 but unfortunately am more likely to be next in a theatre seeing Up. The boys are already responding positively to the promotional ads and I imagine they will be in a collectively bad mood with an increasing level of pleading until they are wearing 3D glasses camped out eating Pixar...
District 9 sounds like the better of the two BTW...
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I especially like Karl Maughan's "Bunnythorpe" painting from the New Artland exhibition. It's just so Bunnythorpe. I can imagine my Aunty Freda out collecting flowers for the dining room table wearing an old cardy listening to the freight trains filing past while the men go duck-shooting...
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I did of course mean linked to rather than "liked to"...
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How did the sea slugs eat the puffer fish? That has to be the big question? According to encyclopedia.com:
"Sea slugs graze on small sessile animals such as coelenterates, sponges, and bryozoans. Certain sea slugs that feed on corals and sea anemones ingest the stinging cells of their prey without discharging them; these then pass from the slug's digestive tract to the ceratia, where they are used by the slug for its own defense".
So they can't eat fish... but if they had eaten the puffer fish they could have used its poison as a defence... against the dog!
Anyway, maybe the algal bloom is liked to: global warming; inshore trawling; dairy farming run-off (as Sacha & Peter Singleton point out); the dredging of sand from Pakiri, Mangawhai et al and the following collapse of sand dunes and vegetation into the sea; the dumping of this sand onto Auckland beaches; the dredging of silt and sand needed to build the new Ports of Auckland wharf near Mechanics Bay; the fact that we pump millions of litres of sewerage directly into the sea through the stormwater system when it rains and the current council just delayed the project to fix it by another ten years.
We need more marine reserves - and less puffer-fish eating sea slugs. -
I don't think that the climate change sceptics have a case any more. The wierdest anomaly was that the rate of measured pan evaporation was falling: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_evaporation
Because of global warming water should have been evaporating faster but for 50 years now we've had Global Dimming. Without this dimming we'd be fried by now I reckon. It's the effect of our pollution blocking the sun from getting through. The scientists reckon that the dimming effect is lessening because we have produced less aerosols since the 90's, but the evidence talks a lot about "predictions" http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/05/global-dimming-may-have-a-brighter-future/
I really enjoyed their view on the future (talk about taking a bob each way) "as before we cautioned against over-interpreting the importance of the dimming, we offer similar cautions for the brightening." Producing less aerosols may be making the planet hotter... how bizarre! -
It's a kick in the puku.
MP's get paid so much that you'd think that the job came with no other perks. Once you add in the VIP treatment they expect for the rest of their lives it's worth about $500k a year. And you can retire after 6 years or something and get free air travel for you and your spouse for the rest of your lives. Yay! Raise the amount of GST immediately and cut all benefits to BLUDGERS. Make it impossible to afford to live here for average wage earners. Keep kids in school until they're 24 to lower the unemployment figures. I'm so glad you all voted National! It was terrible being looked after by Labour - they were like nannies compared to Action Man John and his best buddy Bill. Puke!
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We have a right-wing government. i think they will privatise everything possible, even though their movement's laissez-faire prophets like Greenspan have had to acknowledge that the central tenets of their belief systems are wrong. In Greenspan's case, after the credit crunch he basically said that Greed wins out. Businesses will actively hurt the weak to make money. The long-term good is of no consequence to business people. They will make more money now even if they know that if they do so their organisation will fail further down the track. So why is the government still acting like a wet dream Roger Douglas had in 1987? If you accept that free markets give no protection to the weak or poor then I suppose either you're heartless or a moron to continue following Thatcher or Reaganite economic policies. Are these guys evil or just stupid?
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Paul Holmes cracks me up - "New Zealand faces a massive welfare payout every week of every year"... what about jumped-up public servants appearing as TV presenters? How much did we pay Holmes, D'Audney, Hawkesby et al? The bill was hundreds of thousands a week - and (based on ROI) retraining them at $25k a year might have been preferable...
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I heard Danny Watson on Newstalk ZB yesterday wondering aloud why a solo mum with ONE child should get $715 a week from the government. He then asked the audience if he was correct that she had one child - he wasn't sure - and invited callers to phone in and correct him if he was wrong before launching into a Spot On black-belt right-wing fantasy of a sermon about beneficiaries ripping off the system. Lovely chap. No-one responded to correct him of course.
It's hard enough getting on a benefit in NZ. When you actually do need help WINZ do all that they can to not give you any. In my experience most people are between jobs for 1 to 4 weeks unless they are "long-term unemployed". This may of course change during the current recession (which must be verging on a depression BTW http://tinyurl.com/52wsao)
At the time when most hard-working taxpayers need help they will be given none by WINZ and instead be put on a stand-down period. Their philosophy is all wrong from my point of view. Hopefully said opinion isn't enough to see my name dragged through parliament by the thought police...