Posts by Brent Jackson
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Yeah, Steve, you could be right. The trouble is, it is so appallingly written that the poor readers such as you and I, are left trying to read between the lines to work out what the heck is actually going on.
Ahh. The Herald's stupid put-the-last-few-paragraphs-on-a-second-page-to-increase-our-page-hits policy stymied me. It makes the situation a little clearer, but I still don't see the Navy being bullies over this.
The spokeswoman said the Navy was determined to carry on Mrs Pollock's good work and would keep in touch with her about future management.
But as you say, it makes the Council look like right prats.
Cheers,
Brent. -
Steve Barnes wrote :
And meanwhile. On Craig's beloved North Shore the council's lack of commitment allows another Gang to harass an old lady and deprive her of her garden.
It would appear to me, that Steve has made the common mistake of thinking that Herald headlines are an accurate representation of the story under them.
In this case :
Navy blocks green-finger granny
Reading the article, we see :
A spokeswoman said the Navy decided to take over management of the glade and instigate community planting days after Ms Barrett told them she could not continue for medical reasons.
The Navy said Mrs Pollock agreed, but had said enough planting had been done and only maintenance was required.
"As a consequence of this decision, and with Mrs Pollock's agreement, she was given three months' notice in accordance with the revocation clause in her licence."
It would appear that "blocks" has a different meaning for headline writers than it has for myself.
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Stewart wrote:
I don't doubt that, in cars, hands-free is safer than not, but ...
But that's just it. Research shows that (contrary to common sense), hands-free is not any safer than hand held phones.
People try to argue with this, stating that surely hands-free talking is just like talking to someone else in the car. But research shows that people in the car react to things that occur, so they stop talking when the driver starts passing, or somebody pulls out in front, or other situations that require the driver's full attention. The person on the other end of the hands-free kit does not.
Officially banning texting is a great move. A number of times I have seen what I thought were totally drunk drivers not keeping in their lane properly, and it turns out that they are holding a cellphone on their steering wheel, and reading it (or thumbing it), while driving. Madness !
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Stephen Knightly wrote :
I reckon the famous 'Red Fence' should be donated to MOTAT - who need a better fence along Gt North Rd and are the appropriate resting place of many of Auckland's transport-related relics.
Now that's a bloody good idea (assuming that they are not staying in situ).
Steve Reeves wrote :
Looks nice...but (sorry to rain on your verandah), it will only protect us from the rain if there's *also* no wind.
But isn't that why the old sheds are being retained. Not only can one seek shelter inside them if necessary, but they also will act as useful windblocks in their own right.
Let face, the space wouldn't be very useful for a large chunk of the year if their isn't some sort of wind protection for at least the westerlies and southerlies.
Cheers,
Brent. -
Speaking of
... an attempt to stop political damage ...
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Islander,
I've finally twigged as to why you write ANZ for New Zealand. The A stands for Aotearoa. Nothing to do with banks or Australia. I can't believe that I didn't work it out the first time I saw it and thought "that's odd".
Cheers,
Brent. -
Thanks a lot Adam for the interesting history lesson. It is not something I'm familiar with, and it's interesting to know.
However, like others here, I do not begrudge the MPs their salaries because they need to be paid well to encourage skillful people to become MPs. But based on the evidence I've seen thus far, English's actions appear to be a rort to gain himself more dollars than those to which he should have been entitled.
If this is within the rules, then I think that Mr English, instead of taking advantage of the inadequate rules, should have modified the rules to make them work better.
And the hypocrisy makes it even worse ...
Cheers,
Brent. -
In response to a Ken Ring quote:
Big earthquakes usually happen around new moons and full moons, and a week either side.
Emma wrote:
Can't argue with that.
Ah, but a pendant can.
I think you'll find that the "usually" should actually be "always".
Cheers,
Brent. -
As Douglas Adams said :
I can imagine Newton sitting down and working out his laws of motion and figuring out the way the Universe works and with him, a cat wandering around. The reason we had no idea how cats worked was because, since Newton, we had proceeded by the very simple principle that essentially, to see how things work, we took them apart. If you try and take a cat apart to see how it works, the first thing you have in your hands is a non-working cat. Life is a level of complexity that almost lies outside our vision; is so far beyond anything we have any means of understanding that we just think of it as a different class of object, a different class of matter; 'life', something that had a mysterious essence about it, was god given - and that's the only explanation we had. The bombshell comes in 1859 when Darwin publishes 'On the Origin of Species'. It takes a long time before we really get to grips with this and begin to understand it, because not only does it seem incredible and thoroughly demeaning to us, but it's yet another shock to our system to discover that not only are we not the centre of the Universe and we're not made of anything, but we started out as some kind of slime and got to where we are via being a monkey. It just doesn't read well. But also, we have no opportunity to see this stuff at work. In a sense Darwin was like Newton, in that he was the first person to see underlying principles, that really were not at all obvious, from the everyday world in which he lived. We had to think very hard to understand the nature of what was happening around us and we had no clear, obvious everyday examples of evolution to point to. Even today that persists as a slightly tricky problem if you're trying to persuade somebody who doesn't believe in all this evolution stuff and wants you to show him an example - they are hard to find in terms of everyday observation.
(I recommend reading the entire speech).
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I agree Jack.
Giovanni was arguing that :
Since it's statistically better for the individual not to mutate (most mutations are bad for ya), it increases your chances of reproduction. Hence if it was somehow possible for a "stop mutating" mutation to develop, it would give an advantage to the carriers, and soon enough nobody would mutate anymore.
But, as Kyle so succinctly put it :
Until their failure to mutate led to them all dying out from their environment changing or something.
So, the survival of species over long periods of time requires a diverse population, hence the prevalence of sexual reproduction. A "stop mutating" mutation may give a species an advantage for a time, but in the long haul they would die out when they failed to adapt to a changed environment, or competition. Hence, mutations do give advantages to species, albeit not to individuals. Although Natural Selection works on individuals, its success or failure is measured by the long term effect on the group as a whole (see Unit of Selection).
There is no why to it. It just happens that way. Evolution is a lottery. Some species win, some do not - but buying lots of different tickets increases your chances.
Cheers,
Brent.