Posts by Russell Brown
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Also, yay for the geeky.
Reader Paddy Free offers the following chunk of ultimate geekiness:
-
And what is our futuristic food? For those in the know down Southwest Central, the grounds of Wesley Intermediate and War Memorial park provided no muesli bars this weekend ...
Heh. And I was down with my pale homies in the south, conducting traditional firewater rituals and eating mouldy fermented milk.
And commenting on Sapna's comments:
Another really interesting theme that came out was this thrust by government, political parties and politicians to push 'national identity' towards ethnic minorities. The academics of course questioned that and rightly so. This week the Herald has spent reams and editorials on religious identity in NZ and the underlying theme was the liberal, democratric and Christian beliefs on which NZ society is based, which allows for accomodation of other religions and cultures. I dispute this belief because democracy is not a Christian or Western institution in the first place and neither is the idea of tolerance. Similarly national identity and the place of ethnic minorities within that is for the minorities to decide, not for mainstream Pakeha to push.
That Herald editorial was such a bore. It had that windy, written-by-committee feel and Sapna's right, it's pompous and wrong to declare democracy and tolerance the sovereign property of the Judeo-Christian tradition.
But as a probably "mainstream Pakeha" (damn! shoulda voted National!) I think it's important to offer some vision of what being a New Zealander is about, if only so there's something to contest. It's just also important to listen back. After all, a key plank of the evil philosophy of political correctness us closet Marxists are always peddling in places like this is being polite and letting people define themselves.
-
"Poo! Where's my gravatar!??"
Ditto. I signed up about a week ago, but so far there's no sign of my Gravatar here. :(
Damn. Transparently portable avatars are such a great idea. But they obviously need better resourcing than Tom currently has ...
-
But the the idea of installing Vista hasn't occurred...not even in passing. I had a Longhorn release on an old computer a while back but since re-formatted it for my daughter with XP.
Our Nielsen NetRatings technical module is seeing 0.66% of our traffic coming from Vista systems (that must be what our internal stats package is identifying as Longhorn), so you're not alone.
-
Whats the story with Yahoo!Xtra? What with Xtra and MSN being buddies and all...?
Sorry if I missed something fundamental!
You did. Xtra and MSN parted company late last year when their existing agreement expired. Xtra is now in bed with Yahoo (and will presumably be a customer of Yahoo's ad network, plus offering the usual Yahoo features), while MSN is teaming up with siblings NineMSN and ACP, plus TV3 and Seek.
So it's two portals now ...
-
I've heard of it, but not seen it.
Now that one of them seems to have found this blog, it may start to appearing all the time.The interesting thing is that "Robin" actually had to register and respond to the confirmation email.
His email address is robindraper@yahoo.com, which doesn't tell us much. If he'd made the link live by adding "http" we'd be able to add a no-follow tag that tells Google not to count it for PageRank.
Of course, I could just delete his post and his account, but it's kind of fun for now.
-
A certain chirpy, personal style shows up here too:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Palm_oil
Hi everibody, I liked this article and I added some information I collected while traveling in Congo Brazzaville, north, by the Shanga river, and added also pictures I took there. Bye, Tornasole 22:15, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
-
It seems like someone is sowing some astroturf seeds.
Yes. I note that's Robin's first post too. Care to reassure us, Robin?
-
Looks like the idea of palm oil as the perfect biofuel is coming unstuck a bit too. From the NY Times last month:
Peat is an organic sponge that stores huge amounts of carbon, helping balance global emissions. Peatland is 90 percent water. But when it is drained, the Wetlands International scientists say, the stored carbon gases are released into the atmosphere.
To makes matters worse, once dried, peatland is often burned to clear ground for plantations. The Dutch study estimated that the draining of peatland in Indonesia releases 660 million ton of carbon a year into the atmosphere and that fires contributed 1.5 billion tons annually.
The total is equivalent to 8 percent of all global emissions caused annually by burning fossil fuels, the researchers said. “These emissions generated by peat drainage in Indonesia were not counted before,” said Mr. Kaat. “It was a totally ignored problem.” For the moment Wetlands is backing the certification system for palm oil imports.
But some environmental groups say palm oil cannot be produced sustainably at reasonable prices. They say palm oil is now cheap because of poor environmental practices and labor abuses.
-
Anyway, I don't know much about cheesemongers and blue veined cheeses but it seems to me that you should use your blog to also promote some healthy eating.
Check out this site www.palmoiltruthfoundation.com This site gives us the lowdown on what appears to me to be one of the best kept health secrets. This cheap natural oil is supposedly extremely rich in antioxidants and is transfat free too!
Assuming your post wasn't intended as advertorial, you might want to be a bit careful about believing everything you read. The Palm Oil Truth Foundation registered that domain through a proxy company, and is untraceable through the registration details. It is likely to be an astroturf project mounted by either processed food manufacturers in the US (who use loads of the stuff) or the Malaysian palm oil industry.
Palm oil is 50% saturated fat, and a WHO report found that consuming it increased the risk of cardiovascular disease. Because it's semisolid at room temperature, it may be a better option in spreads than hydrogenated oils that contain trans-fats - but it's used (in Australia anyway) in hydrogenated form for deep frying by fast food chains.
There are also serious concerns about habitat destruction where it's grown. Sourcewatch has an article on the £500,000 PR campaign the Malaysian industry group mounted last year to counter environmental objections.
It's not all bad: two studies have found it increased the levels of good cholesterol and reduced the levels of bad cholesterol in the blood. But it turns up in a lot of shit food. I'll have it in Korean noodles, but not in potato chips. And olive oil gives you most of the benefits claimed for palm oil without the saturated fat.
So, yeah, I'll stick with whisky and cheese for now ...
Last ←Newer Page 1 … 2209 2210 2211 2212 2213 … 2279 Older→ First