Posts by Bob Munro

  • Radiation: The death of television, again,

    It's a new twist on the 'John&Paul&Ringo&George' shirt, with many variants, famously worn by (among others) ?uestlove.

    So I go to Wikipedia to find out about ?uestlove and there he is in a t shirt that says 'Strawberry Kiwi Baked'.

    Christchurch • Since Aug 2007 • 418 posts Report Reply

  • Radiation: The death of television, again,

    Is the last season of The Wire coming?

    TV2 usually run The Wire in the winter late at night, presumably so it can be recorded. It's quite a good service - e.g Martin Scorsese’s No Direction Home- all three and a half hours of it was on Sunday morning at 1.30am.

    Christchurch • Since Aug 2007 • 418 posts Report Reply

  • Up Front: Girls Can Do Anything. You…,

    About 2001 when our daughter was still in primary school NZ Cricket shouted the senior school to a free afternoon at Lincoln to watch the White Ferns play Australia. I think they paid for the buses too. Each bus was met by a cricket rep. and the kids were given programmes and the '4' on one side '6' on the other cheer cards. Buses from other schools were arriving at the same time.

    The players not on the field were available for autographs. It was a warm Canterbury day and within half an hour the somnolent atmosphere with a few scattered spectators was transformed by hundreds of kids cheering each ball and shouting for their newly discovered heroes.

    Christchurch • Since Aug 2007 • 418 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: The Trophy Hunter,

    was interested to read recently that scientists have debunked the idea that we lose most body heat through the head.

    It seems there might still be life left in the old saw about wearing a hat and the percentage of heat lost through the head, particularly when treating hypothermia.

    The Wilderness Medicine newsletter of 2004 explains that under normal rest conditions heat is lost through the head at the same rate as the rest of the body. The head is 7% of the surface area of the body so it loses 7% of heat.

    It then goes on to describe the various rates of blood supply and heat loss from the head in a variety of situations and then concludes:

    Now, what about hypothermia and heat loss through the head?

    If the hypothermia victim is not shivering, they are at rest, and the heat loss through the head remains about 7%. But, this is important, if they are shivering, the percent of heat loss via the scalp can increase to upwards of 55%, so protecting the head well is a very important part of treating the hypothermia patient. And as you can imagine, the primary defense against the cold and hypothermia is vasoconstriction of the peripheral circulation, this shunts blood to the core, reduces circulation to the skin, and increases the percent of heat loss through the scalp.

    The difference is that the shivering hypothermia patient is indeed exercising, but they do not vasodilate the peripheral circulation; the shivering muscles increase metabolic demand and cardiac demand so the patients do increase their cardiac output; therefore, they do increase cerebral circulation; therefore, they do increase the percent of blood loss through their head.

    Christchurch • Since Aug 2007 • 418 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: The Trophy Hunter,

    __Anyway ... how good is it that Lucinda Williams is coming in April? Got our tickets this morning.__

    Bloody good -- not the biggest fan of the whole "alt-country" deal, but she does do it well. Makes me regret that she's hardly prolific -- eight or nine albums in thirty years, isn't it?

    Lucinda is a pretty good interpreter of other people’s songs too.

    She sings ‘Farther Along” with Ralph Stanley on his Clinch Mountain Sweethearts and is on several tribute albums: ‘Lately’ on Going Driftless a tribute to the bard of the Great Plains Greg Brown: ‘Angels Laid him Away’ a tribute to Mississippi John Hurt, and the best of them all a collaboration with David Crosby of ‘Return of the Grievous Angel’ by Gram Parsons.

    Christchurch • Since Aug 2007 • 418 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: The Trophy Hunter,

    But the danger we were warned about most often wasn't river-crossings: it was hypothermia. We were repeatedly told about the symptoms of exposure, and how people might act under its influence.

    In the early eighties an American researcher on hypothermia toured New Zealand talking to outdoor groups with his findings. He was part of a research group that used themselves as guinea pigs to test out the results of lowering their own temperatures.

    It was pretty brutal. They had a track that they walked up and down while being buffeted by wind machines and hoses, pausing to do skill tests to measure their mental deterioration. They floated about in water with chunks of ice in it with rectal thermometers inserted to measure core temperatures.

    It wasn’t just the thrill of objective science that drove them. The Nazis in World War II had done a lot of this research already, testing their subjects to destruction, in pursuit of knowledge that would assist downed pilots and troops on the Eastern Front. The researchers had been given special permission by Holocaust survivor groups to use this information. I remember the shock of seeing this data up on the screen as facsimiles of the original notebooks.

    What the research was showing was that when the core temperature was threatened peripheral circulation shut down quite quickly. As well as the hands and feet this included the brain. The researchers showed that lowering core temperature was actually pretty hard: so for example people lasted hours rather than minutes in freezing water and it is was more likely the gasp reflex that meant they inhaled water that led to their drowning. In the bush it was the slowing down of blood supply to the brain that led people to make poor decisions, often quite some time before the actual disaster overtook them.

    I can’t remember what created the drama about hypothermia that led to the likes of “Such a Stupid way to die”. It may just have been a period when there was a focus on it as the science was being discovered. Certainly the recognition of hypothermia helped explain some tramping disasters which otherwise seemed odd. I remember a tragedy involving a number of kindergarten teachers (I think) who died one by one on the Tasman glacier pre-war and that had been put down as being struck by lightning at the time but was obviously (by the early eighties) hypothermia.

    And as for Lucinda: She’s only coming as far south as Wellington. Too expensive for me to travel to see her unfortunately. You lucky buggers.

    Christchurch • Since Aug 2007 • 418 posts Report Reply

  • Field Theory: Hey, no gang signs,

    I doubt I'll live to see a better catch in the deep, too.

    Probably correct but this one by Nathan ‘Nijinsky’ Astle against the Windies in 2006, just when people were wondering if he still had it was pretty good.



    http://nz.youtube.com/watch?v=4XzNnHeicFw

    Christchurch • Since Aug 2007 • 418 posts Report Reply

  • Holiday Book Club,

    I'd be a fan of a permanent book thread if that were possible?

    Christchurch • Since Aug 2007 • 418 posts Report Reply

  • Holiday Book Club,

    Watched one episode* with great interest but also with some bewilderment, as it was difficult to fully understand connections and back-stories. Do I really need to start with season one?

    Danielle answered that one - but it’s a feature of the style of ‘The Wire’ that the characters and connections unfold slowly and sometimes it’s not till several episodes later that a particular connection comes clear. If you have the time to take in several episodes at once that can be very rewarding. Also be aware that after series two I think, it was not produced in zone 4 format so you have to get creative about getting hold of the rest of the series.

    Christchurch • Since Aug 2007 • 418 posts Report Reply

  • Up Front: Why Does Love Do This to Me?,

    Thank you Emma for giving the love interest in this story such a noble name. :)

    Christchurch • Since Aug 2007 • 418 posts Report Reply

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