Posts by BenWilson
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I've tried MDPV. Russell's erowid selection is spot on, from my experience. It's strong at first, tapers fast, which encourages continual redosing, and has a fucking awful comedown. I chucked the leftover.
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I'd have used the rooftop as suggested, but for the fact my bike was chained up below. Doesn't matter how high we were...
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Capture: Down With The #OGB, in reply to John Armstrong,
Oh. I'll have to adjust my mental image of Ben now, which hitherto has always, for some reason, included blonde hair.
Heh, I've certainly said some blonde things. It is curious how a mental image can build up, no?
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Most enjoyable evening. LHC->OGB < 4:38. Usual particles observed in Wintergarden, the presence of the Stace particle confirmed by multiple independent sources, although I unfortunately never got a glimpse :-(. The impromptu tour of the inner cavities of the Civic complex was marred only by nature mewling at me continuously, having been spirited through a secret door moments before reaching the bathroom. I had a Half-Life flashback, when in the pitch dark, the exit was through a busted window with an abandoned scaffold, but the powerful torch in my pocket (I was also pleased to see everyone) confirmed no head-crabs lurked. I'm still convinced, have been since I was a small boy, that the golden lions might activate suddenly, when the long lost relic is found in the correct antechamber, and kept myself calm with the knowledge that you only have to be a faster runner than the other people you are with, and that the lions are more likely to turn on the guy taking dirty photos of their bottoms.
Great to see everyone, sorry about that abandoned beer, Scott, and I hope the new biz goes great.
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Up Front: You're Telling My Child What, Now?, in reply to Islander,
What situation?
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Up Front: You're Telling My Child What, Now?, in reply to Islander,
I find your comments, in this personal context, fucking stupid.
wtf <sigh>
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Up Front: You're Telling My Child What, Now?, in reply to Heather Gaye,
Surely the problems that someone faces after marrying young & breaking up would be very similar to anyone that was in a long-term relationship (intentionally or not) from an early age?
I still think of my first girlfriend as my first wife, we were together that long, and breaking up was bloody hard. But I doubt I could compare to what it would be like if I broke it off with my wife now.
Having done both, I really do think it's easier to extract yourself from a failed 'live in' relationship than a marriage, all other things being equal.
Indeed. However emotionally hard that breakup was, in practice, she was out of my life by the end of the week. The social expectations of marriage are huge - one's whole family and friends come to a wedding, and you're kind of admitting you failed all of them too. That's a judgment people will put on themselves, I mean.
As for early marriage, I'm of two minds about it (as about practically everything). The greater surety and life experience of late marriage is counterbalanced by the energy of youth. It's odd to think that at my age, my parents were watching their youngest child leave the nest. If mid-life is a time of priority searching, early child rearing means a real second chance. For me, with young children, it's very much expected that I'm stable and reliable, when I do feel anything but.
I can't help but feel that economic circumstances put a cloud over young families now, which just should not be there.
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Hard News: Who'd have thought?, in reply to chris,
The thing I've never quite understood about New Zealand school uniforms was dressing children in shorts in winter.
The All Blacks wear shorts in any weather. It's really a sifting process.
Edit: And c'mon! They were woolen shorts.
Edit2: And anyway, since 90% of body heat is lost through the head, so long as you're wearing a warm cap, you could go starkers and only be 10% cold.
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Hard News: Higgs Live!, in reply to Lilith __,
It makes restoring the landscape unlikely in the future. We're stuck with it.
Sure. It seems like a pretty small cost to me. Odds are, not only will it not be restored, but the windmills would continue being used, or at least the sites, having been chosen for their windyness.
But my point was if we don't try these things, then they will definitely never happen. I don't see research as an alternative to short- and medium-term planning with the technology we already have. Of course we can't know the future, but we have to strive to make things better, don't we?
Is anyone suggesting that PV research and development should stop? The point of putting in the tried and true renewable stuff is that we can benefit from it right now. That doesn't preclude us being able to use even better things in the future. If they come.
There's really big money in improving PV, so I'm not really concerned that it's being held back. But it's just not that good, for how much it costs, at the moment, when it comes to making a lot of electricity. It's fantastic for some purposes, mostly remote, low powered devices.
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Hard News: Higgs Live!, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
A lot of the hydro we need to balance wind can be built on existing sites, e.g. pumped storage on current hydro schemes.
That's one of the great beauties of hydro, the way it can be turned on or off so rapidly for load balancing. It can even be pumped back in, when there is excess power from other sources. Tidal power goes through a 6 hourly sine wave of production, presumably, with the peak points being the half tides, which slowly shift throughout the month, so smoothing/storing potential is quite important. And wind is erratic.
Wind farms may have a contribution to make, but they are noisy and I don’t think there’s much point destroying the beauty of our unique landscapes with them.
There is a point, it's to make affordable renewable electricity. Their beauty is a matter of opinion. I personally like the look of them, because they speak to me of all that coal not getting burned. I don't have anything against tidal, but if it won't get off the ground because of high set up costs and the extremely damaging environment of the sea, wind is a good alternative.
Concrete is not really an environmental hazard.
Solar PV is a growing developing technology, but I agree with the statement that banking on what it might be able to make in the future is dangerous. It might also NOT be able to do that. Or it might take another hundred years to get to the point where it's a viable mass energy source (and who can say what will happen with other technologies at the same time?). The same reasoning regarding fuel cell cars, fusion power, etc. All exciting, all promising, and we might all die waiting.
I'll chuck in biofuel as another technology well worth considering for NZ's energy independence.
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