Posts by buzzy
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This is why the coal industry continues to hold such an influence in Australia and leads to things like the Hazelwood Power Station getting a 25 year extension on their operating license. Though closing and replacing Hazelwood (and others like it) with something less environmentally hideous would seem to be the blindingly obvious thing to do, these stations (and their associated mines) tend to be located in areas where there are bugger-all other employment opportunities.
NZ's just as bad. We continue to run coal and gas fired power plants because of the naive belief that nuclear energy = bad. While I can understand "No Nukes" in the dirty-bomb sense of the word, extending that to power is just outright silly.
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But Section 58 indicates that actually any indication at all of a controlled substance in your blood test is an offence in itself:
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(b) if the person’s blood, as ascertained from an analysis of a blood specimen subsequently taken under section 73, contains evidence of the use of a controlled drug specified in Schedule 1 (except thalidomide) of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975.The "any indication at all" applies only to those drugs listed in schedule 1 of the Misuse of Drugs act. Generally these are the big boys of the drug world - LSD, Heroin, PCP, etc:
http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1975/0116/latest/DLM436576.html#DLM436576
...so cannabis isn't in there. Just having THC in your bloodstream isn't automatically an offense, although before they could test for it the police would have to have reasonable suspicion that you're impaired, and you'd have to have failed the impairment test.
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@David:
"My lovely wife (a linguist) speculates that it would be possible to develop a language in which there is only one grammatically correct way to write a 100,000 word novel."
English.
Take a grammatically correct novel and change some of the words. You'll either end up with a different novel, or one that's grammatically incorrect.
Let's say you've replaced the word "hello" with the word "sheep". This will likely result in a grammatically incorrect novel.
Alternatively, let's say you've changed the word "red" to the word "cherry" and the novel is still grammatically correct after those changes. This is now a different novel. So what if most of it is the same as the previous one? Professional authors have recently shown that two novels with some similar content are in fact different, and that it's acceptable to publish the results...
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Firstly, good article Anke. Unfortunately those who could gain the most from reading it are also the least likely to.
Figgie said:
It is sickening to see New Zealand students laughing at and making light of the Holocaust.
Sigh. Nazism isn't the same thing as the holocaust. The holocaust was a genocidal event aimed at the Jews. Nazism was a fascist ideology spanning a couple of decades (at a minimum). Anke's article was about Nazism and the effects it has on the German sense of identity; the holocaust wasn't even mentioned.
Stereotypes should only be used to criticise/draw attention to racism not to perpetuate it.
Good point. Let's pass some laws controlling the use of stereotypes. That'll help things immensely.
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@Mark Thomas
HDTV programmes quickly fill up the hard drive (file sizes of up to 6GB per hour). There doesn't seem to be an easy way to compress the video files (h264 within a *.wtv container file).
- Have you looked at GB-PVR? It's free and has the ability to transcode to H.264 automatically. Very handy if you're low on disk space.
@Steve Barnes
as many tuners as you have slots in your comp
- As of GB-PVR 1.3ish, DVB-T tuners can record multiple channels on the same Mux. In non-technobabble, this means that with two tuners you can record all channels at the same time.
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To be clear, I do not believe that filtering will stop people who are even slightly motivated to find this stuff.
Sacha's hit it on the head here. What's being blocked is a list of URLs. Web addresses, to put it another way. It's not blocking email traffic, peer-to-peer applications, or any of a dozen or so other ways of sending and receiving similar information over the net.
I think at a high level the idea's laudable, but effectively implementing something to "fix the issue" becomes very complex and, as Emma said, could be the start of a slippery slope - witness the alleged additions to Australia's blacklist that apparently include a dentist's website. I say apparently, because as with the DIA here, the Australian government won't release a confirmed list of sites.
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Please, someone teach the Coalition of Parents of Children with Spina Bifida to use a spell checker. Postrate? Maybe the dictionary currently keeping David's table level could be put to some use...
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"At this point, I regret to inform you that I was not my usual reasonable and polite self"
Damn straight. I've come out of surgery before and been in the worst possible mood from the moment my eyes opened. Apparently that kind of reaction is not uncommon, and the nurses in recovery have to put up with a lot of angry, unreasonable people who've just woken up.
The kicker is that it's nigh-on impossible to go back afterwards and apologise for your behaviour.
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As many others have said, David this is a brilliantly written and very moving article.
I've only ever read a few other articles on the subject, and those tended to be "women's weekly" style things*, glossing over the pain and focusing on how nice things are now the sufferer is back at home amongst loved ones. This gives a far greater insight into how hard it is and the sort of things you had to go through.
I hope things continue to get better for you :)
* for lack of a better description -
"Must start self-Googling alternate spellings as well"
I believe the correct term for Googling one's self is "to Meegle" :)