Posts by Ross Mason
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Graham,
What is a Ministerial Certificate?? A get out of jail free card? A suppression order? A piece of paper that gets Key off the hook? Permission given by the guy in charge – in this case English I presume – to let the Police or GCSB do want they want? We ain’t paying nuthin?
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Does anyone have a map showing the routes of the fibre optic links around the country? Including where they go from offshore into NZ? Any detours they make etc. Needs to be down to road level probably.
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Off topic but holy shit Batman!!!!!
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA1209/S00361/prime-minister-requests-inquiry-into-dotcom-case.htm
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Keith I think you are being generous in suggesting "Advancing Mathematics and Statistics". There needs to be an "Introduction to Counting" first surely!
If we take out the special schools, that goes down to 0.0738. This is what we would call a "poor" fit.
"Poor fit". L O bloody L....Bonk.
I think....WB.
Sigh...what with the carrots 'n walnut 'n all from the Herald as well. They NEED a science (and now a math?) page.
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The vegetables. The eyes have it. The walnuts. The brains of the place. Check out the comment in Sciblogs about where they got it from. Tabloid??? Hmmmm
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More to the point Linger, the sports above are (careful here) real sports whereas the list yesterday included a lot of what most would call "recreation sports" as well.
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The Para coverage is a bit lacking and very short. Comments above about only seeing the goals in goalball is dead right. There is incredible skill listening for the ball and figuring out its direction before it arrives. The delivery guy skillfully and sliently trying to put off where it is being sent from as well. The ball has to bounce along the floor so that the defenders can hear it. The lines are raised so that they players can figure out where they are on the court.
Another blind sport is 5 aside football. Now THAT is a hightly developed skill. Most people have difficult dribbling the ball with vision. If you watched some you will see the player get his guidelines from marks of the sideboards. They listen for the defenders, listen to their coaches ( I think there is one behind each goal), keep the ball on the foot, dribble around defenders purely by feel and sound and let rip. The other football are for the CPers. (Cerabral Palsy) 7 aside.
All the many letters associated with the sports are lists of the classifications of the disability. Sophie Pascoe is in the minimum disability catagory. Half a leg below the knee gone. All the other disabilities are ranked on function rather than what the disability is. Some events have combinations of disability competing against each other. IPC (International Paralympic Committee) do this if insufficient numbers are entered but they try to keep everyone seperate as much as possible.
The swimmers with the major limb disabilities are stunning. Watching a body with half an arm doing a medley. (Breaststroke, backstroke and freestyle) "paddling" furiously and I would vouch only the best able bodied would beat them!!
I was (and still am a bit) invloved with Para shooting. Coaching the 2004 Athens team. Shooting is classified into 2 grades. SH1 are those with fully functioning trunk and arms sufficient to be able to hold a rifle without support (usually with spinal injuries or parts/all of leg(s) missing. A SH2 where they cannot support a rifle with their arms. These guys use a floppy spring to support the rifle. Michael Johnson is in this catagory (Gold 2004, Bronze 2008, 2012).
Boccia is another pure CP sport. CPers have full cognition but the body just doesn;t work so well. There are 3 grades in Boccia. The highest disability ones use a helper who steers the ramp, loads the ball under instruction from the athlete. The athlete has to trigger or release the ball though.
Wheelcahir Rugby - Murderball in the states - is the rough and tumble game. Ramming machines, chair flipping the works. In basketball only hitting - but nowhere near as hard as rugby - is allowed from front to front. All the usual basketball ploys like picks and blocking are used. Wheelie Players are assigned points for the level of disability. High pointers have higher function, low pointers have less. There is a maximum total points allowed on the field at any one time so teams have to mix and match their abilities. Your need the high guys to be the speedsters and ball handlers and the low pointers to do the blocking.
Athletics: The blind guys use a runner. Some are attached with a short piece of string, others use verbal guidance. Lots of skill invloved keeping in time with your runner and it helps that they can keep up!!
The tandem cycling is a cracker. Check out some of the names on the front of the bike and you will find them ex Olympic and Tde F riders. There is a lot of competition amongst the able pilots as there is between the engines on the back. Then the blind put immense faith in the pilot remember. They are not going slow around that very steep track!!
It would have been good to have a short description for a few days outlining the classification system as it would make the events more enjoyable. Knowing what the disability is and therefore what the spectator can expect in performance would be useful.
I was first exposed to disability sport a la Paralympic style at the 1999 Oceania Shooting in Sydney in the "warmup" competition for the Olympics. I was nonchalantly watching the womens air rifle. One of them was competing in a wheelchair and had just finished and got up and walked. Well, as well as a person with spinabifida could walk. I was stunned. "But...she can walk! They are supposed to be in a wheelcahir and NOT be able to walk!" THAT was the moment when I was educated into the Paralympics World.
I was hooked.
BTW: Check out the Notable Achievements in the link. NZ had a first with Neroli Fairhall.
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I still have no idea. Alec modestly demurs possessing superpowers, saying:
9.58am @philiplyth Not omnipotent. Attentive.and Ian's 50's contributuon:
Perhaps a Vacuum Tube system from Waihopai to back room of US Embassy, filternet… + context parsing… + flag for immediate action!
GCSB finally does something useful (for New Zealand)…Fi Fi Fo Fum....ah ha.....Echelon???? Nicki?
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Hmmm...was this part of the act repealed in Nov 1999 after an election?????
And more here on knowledge before the amendments were put through....They were good these guys!!!
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12062
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Deja Vue......1999 Tuariki Delamere.....Who??? Ghosts in the night.....
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=8404
and nothing like saying it like it is from the good 'ol Libertarianz
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO9906/S00015.htm
The Alexandra II must have sunk.......no...it arrived in Papua New Guinea apparently (see 31) here