Posts by George Darroch
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Civil defence procedures are intended to work without ministers. Even if every single minister had been on a week-long trip to Incommunicado, the emergency response would have been exactly the same.
Exactly. Heaven forbid, a disaster might actually even kill the relevant minister.
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"Best viewed in IE 5.5 or later."
A long time since I've seen that.
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The earthquake magnitude data, visualised by Chris McDowell on his nifty new SciBlog, and then animated in gif form by John Fouhy.
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Firstly, arohanui to all CantabPASers. My extended family are physically okay, but like the rest there is going to be much to do in coming weeks. I'm glad there's the EQC and Civil Defence in times like this.
Thank you Jolisa. I woke up in Brisbane this morning, and saw a few tweets about a quake - being in Christchurch though, I thought it minor. It took me a full half-hour to realise it was something more.
My Grandma survived the Napier quake. Her school was out to play while the teachers had a meeting. The children survived, virtually the entire staff was killed. Bricks are an object of horror to my entire family. Fit for only for paving.
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Sorry, tongue firmly in cheek there, I should have been more clear.
I'm not presumptive on the internet, and if I'm going to tell others how to behave (quite rarely), I'll do that directly.
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Dude, you're just not hanging around with the right kind of pro-cycling activitists. I've heard attitudes way more virulent than this expressed about cars.
If it was up to me, cars would be decorated like cigarette packets - much like this.
I think that's something we can all agree on. Right?
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back when Wellington was looking at banning smoking on footpaths (at cafes and things), I had a massive hissy fit at several co workers, pointing out that I breathe in a damn sight more cabon monoxide walking down Courtenay place from all the buses than I do from the odd bit of passive smoke from outside a bar.
Grump.
Facts about cars as a health problem.
# 1.27 million people are killed worldwide in traffic accidents ever year
Pedestrians face traffic in all directions
# Half of them are not in cars, but are pedestrians, motorcyclists and cyclists
# 50 million people are severely injured each year
# More people are dying in road accidents worldwide than die of malaria or diabetes
# At this rate, by 2020 road accidents will become the third most serious threat to human health.
# The Asia-Pacific region accounts for about 60% of global road deaths, despite having only 16% of the world’s vehicles
# Road injuries kill more children aged 5 to 14 in poor countries than malaria or AIDS
#They are the single biggest killer of 15- to 29-year-oldsFrom the the First Global Ministerial Conference on Road Safety
Yeah, it's ridiculous. And those figures, to the best of my knowledge do not include the very serious health burden imposed by pollution, the rightly noted bugbear above. Pollution from cars kills over 300 people every year in Auckland alone. That side of the car-death ledger is still almost unrecognised by anyone except ARC transport planners. China is slowly getting a handle on it, but only because the scope of their problem is so huge. The changes they force on their population may eventually be picked up in the rest of the world.
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Don't know why I didn't see this blog when it first came out, but hopefully it's not so late that everyone's gone home....
Not at all. Join the party!
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My friend also says they are great in his restaurant kitchen, washable, protective, (as jandals are a "no"),yet breathe in a very hot environment.He uses them.
I've found plastic Birkenstocks pretty common in the hospitality industry for the same reasons.
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BTW, for product placement to work don't you need an identifiable brand?
I watched In a Lonely Place tonight. A great film, with cracking dialog, sardonic leads, faces that could melt or freeze hearts (often within the same scene), and a lit cigarette about every two minutes.
I don't know that anyone was paying them to do so, but the filmmakers had every intention of linking glamour and sex with the cigarette. I've been Emma's kind of smoker in the past, and if I didn't have a firm intention not to smoke, the message might have been effective. I certainly watch Mad Men and feel like making gin-based cocktails.