Posts by Peter Ashby
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
@Alien Lizard
Ah but how did he see them? The method generally works well with the fairer sex too. The 'groping' may either have been an escalation in the getting them to leave or their failure to scarper may have given him ideas. Those are not mutually exclusive either when you are keeping your options open. But with his ailing mother in the next room? maybe not so much so I plump for escalation.
I bet that is how he'll sell it to his probation officer, 'they just wouldn't leave'. After all he didn't ring the Herald and invite them, did he?
-
How's this for an idea then, feel free to stop me if you think it too hypothetical. But young Bailey is sitting at home with his ailing mother on license and forbidden from speaking to the media. Then two female reporters door knock him and suddenly they are inside his house. If he throws them out or throws a wobbly then he's back inside. So how does his adolescent mind come up with something to make them go away? None of this need be anywhere near as logically conscious as that for it to work out as it did and he may well have decided to have some fun along the way. Credit the guy at least with knowing the terms of his license. It seems we are treating him too much like an OTHER and not Homo sapiens. Try thinking yourself into his head and situation.
How do you get two pushy reporters to leave your house with those restrictions on you? Honestly, how? We all know reporters don't leave just because you ask. So how?
-
@Rich
Irradiation is banned in NZ? since when exactly? IIRC there is/was an irradiation facility in the Hutt Valley that did things like dried herbs. Check a packet of standard dried herbs/spices in the supermarket next time you are in. I guarantee the NZ produced/processed ones will be irradiated.
Also ionising radiation is widely used as a means of sterilising things like prepacked medical dressings, on account of it being more effective and less destructive than heat (it doesn't melt plastic packaging for one thing).
I think you will also find ionising radiation sources at places like Universities, Hospitals, AgResearch Institutes etc. Owned and operated by people who know their science instead of getting it from ignorant scaremongering people.
Back in the institute in London we were in the bay in the lower carpark setting fire to things so that we could learn hands on how to use fire extinguishers of various types (in a fire, I'm your man). They trained everyone on site like that. Anyway we were doing the oil fire in the iron trough and had just put it out when the head of security/safety came pounding down the hill with a heavy firefighter's jacket flapping about. The bay was the entrance to the cobalt source and the wind was in the wrong direction and had blown the smoke in through a vent triggering an alarm (silent). He thought the cobalt source was on fire and was wondering why we were standing around unconcerned. Those of use who knew about things like cobalt sources (there were secretaries there for eg) couldn't help admire a man who would run towards a fire in a cobalt source wearing an afterthought of protective gear.
A hint for you Rich, things irradiated with ionising radiation are no more radioactive than you are after an x-ray or CAT Scan. Also microwaves are radiation, just a different part of the same spectrum. That we have tamed them into common technology does not change that fact. Sunburn is a radiation burn too. Going to ban the sun?
The way to handle risk is sober assessment of risk/benefit ratios, not ignorant scaremongering. If you want to get a stomach bug from your condiments that is your perogative, you don't get a veto over mine though.
-
@Just Thinking
Urban Rate payers subsidising rural industry of our precious water. Lets remeber the water is then made into powered and so is lost to the water cycle.
I get the sense of what you mean but you are wrong. If I eat some broccoli made using irrigated water that water is not 'lost from the water cycle'. It will re-enter it through my urine, my faeces, my sweat, tears and breath. You might have an argument if the product is exported to the other hemisphere, but water will eventually find its own level.
If you are thinking of the aquifers then that situation will be complicated by the saltwater intrusion but aquifers can get refilled and if they have no outlet their water will not be part of the cycle except on very long terms anyway.
-
@Logan O'Callahan
See this article in NS from two weeks ago:
Especially this graph:
Which shows that if you are bright and poor at two, by the age of six you will have been overtaken by much less bright rich six year olds. So the answer to one of your questions is that the top and bottom are much more made than they are born than I suspect many, especially on the Right want to know.
Are you listening Gordon Dryden?
-
Yes ok Islander if you mash your honey up with enough other stuff (ie dilute it enough) you can make it ferment, at least to beer strength. However where do you propose Maori got the honey from? I was not aware that the Native bee lived in big enough colonies to be noticeable. The honey bee is an import. Emptying a swampful of flax flowers would seem to me a fool's errand unlikely to be chanced upon.
I do however wonder how hard those first canoe descendants must have searched for a kava equivalent and how many aching bellies resulted before they gave up and took up aggressive stoicism instead.
BTW did you ever hear the possibly apocryphal story of how the Russians became christian? An early ruler of the Kievan Rus realised that to be taken seriously they needed a proper religion. So he invited the representatives of christianity (in the form of Greek Orthodoxy), Islam and Judaism to persuade him. Judaism was rejected on grounds of not fancying circumcision and judging inheritance down the female line so it came down to islam and christianity and they considered long on it. Finally they chose christianity because the prospect of facing the Russian winter without the water of life* was just too much.
*Which the firewater is called all the way from Gallway through Scandinavia and into Russia. The words and languages change, but it is always the water of life.
-
@Islander
Re your idea about mead from honey. Honey needs extensive boiling to get it to ferment. It's packed with preservatives quite apart from the high sugar content and some of them are heat labile. After all the bees don't want the honey to go off in the hive. Any decent book on making meads, metheglins etc will spend time talking about worts that don't start fermenting or that get stuck before they are finished.
In West Auckland in the summer it is common to see drunk tui and wood pigeon wobbling around and even unable to fly after over imbibing nectar (from flax, kowhai etc) that had sat too long. However it would be hard work getting enough for a human and NZ does not have native trees that produce large crops of sufficiently sweet fruit. So you could perhaps do a very small scale, highly seasonal brew for a very few people it is hardly a Bacchanal.
I'll second Jeremy Andrew's point as well, as techniques for testing residues in pot shards gets better we are finding evidence of beer right back in the earliest fertile crescent settlements, including those that were not fully agrarian. When you add in that human propensity for finding anything fermentable and/or mind altering and that drive cannot be discounted as a motivator. Considering also that alcoholics will give up food for the booze and you have a slightly less noble motivation for settling down on the farm than being able to feed more offspring. They get trapped by those children and we all know what happens under the influence of booze . . .
-
@Islander
If what you say is true, its interesting since we humans have a seemingly endless ability to test everything in the world for its capacity to get us high*. I suppose its possible that the multi generational passage through small islands out into the Pacific drove the idea out of the culture due to insufficient possibilities. The same way Polynesian society was stone aged despite the originators having left the vicinity of Taiwan well into the Bronze age. But when your small island doesn't have any copper, let alone lead your blacksmith has to find something else to do.
But now I think of it, all the ways of getting high in NZ are non indigenous, including magic mushrooms.
*Did you know for eg that the skin of a good Stilton cheese is hallucinogenic? Apparently you have to eat a goodly amount of it and I'm told it is not a nice high but still. Oh and that is not the basis of my cheese addiction ;-) Though I do like a nice piece of Stilton, even here in the UK it is getting harder to find. In its place is ersatz stilton with most of the flavour removed, no detectable saltiness either. It enables the supermarkets to sell it to people who don't like real Stilton you see, the most that can be said of it is that it is creamy. Tesco's top range stuff is good but Sainsbury's is pants, you are better off going for an independent deli place. I bet you couldn't get high on the fungus they use on it either.
-
Academies here in the UK, where they achieve better than average or improved results do it by exclusion. Where they are forced to accept wholescale the population of a school they replace they exclude at a much higher rate than state schools.
So do the religious (usually Anglican) schools here (in England and Wales anyway), though they also select on entry.
It seems that the only way to increase standards either across the board or amongst the 20% at the bottom without spending shedloads of money is to cheat and fudge it. Surprise, surprise.
It takes money, lots of one to one help by specialist teachers paid well to attract and retain them. In addition after the ones you improve with that the cost of helping the next lot down are even higher per pupil.
Even if govt manages to institute the necessary things programs like that are incredibly vulnerable to the predations of a different administration or just a budgetary squeeze. This happens even in the face of fierce local opposition and things like election of independent single issue parliamentary or council members.
What is needed is a sea change in attitudes amongst so many of the population that even capture by the usual suspects is not sufficient. Like what happened with the nuclear free legislation. Most people don't care about the top 5% and the bottom 20% because it won't affect their kids. All that is needed to kill this is to point out more generally that extra help for the extremes will be at the expense of 'normal people'. That is the meme that needs to be got out.
-
@Andin
Boy does she completely misunderstand what Feynmann means by that. And even what he is referring to. But hey, a physicist said it, and used the word "ignorance" so that means ignorance is A'ok.
Agreed. I have pointed out to a number of people that to do science the knowing a lot is necessary, but insufficient and really only a means not an end. You have to know all there is to know about a subject in order to understand what questions still remain unanswered.
So in that sense of knowing humanity's ignorance, scientists are the most ignorant people on the planet, and they know it, as well as being able to tell you with what confidence interval they do so.
BTW Russ I don't see my previous post as a recital of my 'virtues', I was just using my experience to rebut an assertion that we cannot be in control of our appetites. I don't claim to be in control of all mine either, I find my cheese addiction very hard to break and I suspect the remains of my middle aged spread would be gone by now if I could. But it does seem true that you can only beat an addiction when you truly want to and it seems I don't have sufficient motivation to cut the cheese.
I am also lazy and one of the world's great procrastinators and time wasters. Knowing that some people, including my wife, think the running is a waste of time helps motivate me to do it. Square that one ;-)