Posts by James Green
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A somewhat unrelated Albany story was our subsequent trip to a cheesery just on the other side of the motorway. You get to it through a string of cul-de-sacs of forgettable architecture, and randomly, there is then a small farm, with a few goats, and some great cheese, under siege by Albany's Terracotta Plague.
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Westfield Albany is not as terrible as you make out. Living in a delightfully mall-free city (mwa-ha-ha), I'm occasionally dragged to such places when we're travelling. Granted, there is little to be said for the interior, but I believe it's core source of triumph is the terrace along the front/back (I'd call it the front, because it seems like the entrance, but the main carpark is on the other side).
Anyway, having suffered 30 minutes or so in side the air-conditioned mcdonalds smelling-horror, it is possible to stumble outside to a bar. Not just any bar, but a bar with a wine-list not beholden to Pernod Ricard (so it's not the list of usual Montana suspects), and to enjoy a fine drop. Better yet but from the terrace, you can't see the mall, smell the mall, or see a sea of cars. It's almost a semi-rural vista, and after the first or second glass of wine, you might almost forget you were at a mall. Bliss.
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Customs can be an interesting bunch.
I know someone who has come in with a few (work-related!) buckets of white powder. Despite a lack of labelling, once customs were clear that they didn't contain honey, there were no further questions...
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My Inner Librarian is going crazy. Must... alphabetise...
The knitting and rugby sections are probably in better order presently than usual.
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My fav pic of the quake has to be the library. I hate shelf-tidying at the best of times, but this looks like a serious bitch.
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This, of course, is a measurement which can be enormously problematic.
You can always look at the most easily measured health indicator: Life expectancy. (Figures from WHO). US health spending does not seem very efficient. And if you want to have a play for yourself
http://www.who.int/whosis/databaseFrance
Life expectancy at birth (years) males ? 77.0 (2005)
Life expectancy at birth (years) females ? 84.0 (2005)
Per capita total expenditure on health at average exchange rate (US$) ? 3464.0 (2004)New Zealand
Life expectancy at birth (years) males ? 77.0 (2005)
Life expectancy at birth (years) females ? 82.0 (2005)
Per capita total expenditure on health at average exchange rate (US$) ? 2039.6 (2004)United States of America
Life expectancy at birth (years) males ? 75.0 (2005)
Life expectancy at birth (years) females ? 80.0 (2005)
Per capita total expenditure on health at average exchange rate (US$) ? 6096.2 (2004) -
The problem of course is that laying fibre, digging up streets is terribly capital extensive - you can't really have 10 different sets of people do it up every street
If telecom can be brought on board, there is no need to go digging up the streets. For years they have realised that digging is a mug's game, so we have miles of mint green duct pipes running under a street near you. The fibre will actually take up less room than the copper wires, and they should just be able to pull the fibre through them. </rose tinted glasses>
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Why must you hate on the auldskool preppies, James? Without the penny, what would they put in their penny loafers?
It's not so much that I hate auldskool preppies Jo, more that I hadn't heard of penny loafers. Now that wikipedia has enlightened me, I can point out that apparently it's more common to use dimes.
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So as of '06, apparently the US cent contained .8c of metal, but cost .6 cent to make. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cent_%28United_States_coin%29
And there are groups both for and against the removal of paper dollars and pennies (based on respective commercial interests).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Save_the_Greenback
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coin_Coalition -
I also really love that the steadfastly keep the penny, despite the fact that basically they're not accepted anywhere, unless you be arsed counting them out in a shop. They must just about have more value as scrap.