Or, at least, to the house!

All roads lead to Rome.

Romans go home!

and the start of a simple creed...
The Earth:
sit on it...
and rotate!
:- 0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdOS2CezyoI

Because Genesis 2:2

And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had…

We use a 9 on/ 5 off roster for our assistants. A 5 day "weekend" every second week. It is well-received. The extended break allows a total change of perspective for those who don't live in.

:-) 27's a pretty cool number – 3 cubed. A Rubik's Cube worth of days. It's got nice properties. I like the idea of a 9 day week. 6 work days, 3 rest days. The work days can be neatly divided into 2…

Actually, it’s 27.3 days. Another difficult number.

That isn't really my point. It's that because it doesn't synchronize with any actual number of days at…

The lunar cycle is actually 29.5 days, so it doesn’t break evenly. The Romans had months alternating 29 and 30 days, but that doesn’t quite fit evenly into the solar year either. In…

Surely we've screwed around enough with our planet without adjusting its orbit to make our calendars more rational as well?!

And chuck out daylight saving while we’re at it.

No argument from me there. One of the…

That’s right , and yet most everyone in…

Where? What are they? Sincerely puzzled.

I came up with several suggestions already. Let's keep this discussion in good faith, please.

Sure, but farmers are not everyone, not even close.

If you…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jJeoS--XZM

The 12 month year much less than the 7 day week. The month is not much of a milestone at all, mostly just marking a pay cycle in it's annoying irregular way. But 12 is a…

Yeah the calendar's just like sexism. Obvs.

If you subtract electric light from our lives, moon phases become a very obvious marker for time passing. I don't think the 12-month…

found via Stuff

ETA: Also, rename them to second, centond, millond. If we had 10 days per week, and 10 weeks per month, we'd be reaching the limits of what we could do with…

I'm discussing rationalizing the calendar. Explaining it was already done. "Because History", which is incidentally also an explanation for sexism. There's really only 2 things we couldn't feasibly discard – the solar year and the solar day. The fudgy…

A Catholic heaven presumably.

Better than the alternative/s one presumes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LI7ASaAA55g

It's the basis of our months. And our week is the lunar cycle/4, plus a remainder. You may not wish to bother, but our ancestors did. :-)

Many farmers in all sorts of climates would take issue with that statement. The ascending/descending moon rhythm is used in both agriculture and forestry.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_node

Have…

Every day!
Even better is to have restful work. Some seem to manage it.

Well, a compromise in so far as one of those will get lip service only. So why bother with the moon? It's only real importance to earthly…

equinoxes. :-)
Also – equal duration of night and day.

Well the northern hemisphere WAS the universe once. There in lies the beginning of it all.The "points" of the "year" were obviously the northern and southern most movements of…

Our familiar 4 seasons are particular to temperate latitudes. Farmers in tropical climates may raise several crops per year, and are more interested in when rainfall is abundant. Farmers in high latitudes have to deal…

Farmer Green, I really can't answer any of your questions, having pretty much zero expertise in the area of calendars. All I can say is that last I heard the Chinese calendar is lunisolar, that is, a basically…

“In East Asian Solar term, spring begins on 4 February and ends on 5 May. Similarly, according to the Celtic tradition, which is based solely on daylight and the strength of the noon sun, spring begins in early February…

Julius Caesar
http://mentalfloss.com/article/29611/why-does-new-year-start-january-1

Perhaps, Horatio, but we were talking about electric cars, right here and now.

I think you mean frikkin' lasers

Er, because they probably went overseas for funding?Therefore to the victor goes the spoils.

I like it! And it's made in New Zealand!

Why have we not heard much more about this vehicle? Why are the Link buses not all of this type?

Can someone please drag Auckland Transport policymakers kicking and screaming into the 21st century...

The All Blacks have bigger stones? Bigger than who?

Steinlarger. Not that it matters to your overall point however.

The proof readers in Oz might need their work early. They might take longer to read. Outsourcing our Granny Harold ? Are we not Australian yet?

I always got more out of smoking ;)

As I'm sure are the health benefits of people playing sport.

Surely it should be tomorrow's Mid-Autumn/Moon Festival they're looking forward to? Now, if I could score me some of those dark chocolate-and-ice-cream mooncakes like we had last year....

Always has been’ Always will be. I remember the companies that we used to beg money off when I was at The Mercury Theatre. One year…

I also wonder if modern audiences have fragmented as well, even…

Like buses

A train, on the other hand, will...

There are more ways to get around heaven and earth than just cars.

Sometimes they do that. Other times they abandon the cities and go to where food can be obtained. That hasn’t happened in recent times though has it?
New orleans? Detroit?

Hey, I'm supposed to be the heartless right-wing philistine around here. :) Yeah, it looks like Downstage just hasn't been getting bums on seats (which is…

Yes, that must be the reason that people are moving to big cities all over the world.

Yep, but that’s just a matter of time and uptake. The technology is in actual use right now in a lot of places. As an example here is a map of charging stations across Sweden, Norway, Finland and…

Meanwhile, I do hope Labour will have something to say about the tens of millions being poured into the America's Cup while [[http://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/arts/9175545/Downstage-theatre-company-to-close|Downstage Theatre is going to be closed down…

It is weird that, in NZ, the stock market has started to rally, become bullish – it did the same thing in 1985 with KZ 7, with…

He's not wrong, but we also need an infrastructure for recharging because a 100K range isn't going to get you from Wellington to Auckland. The tech still has a little…

http://youtu.be/y3G_7hNPXQE

And we could get Liam Neeson to start each race by shouting ...

Spectator participation! Oh I seriously want a trebuchet someday, launching paint bombs at America's cup yachts sound like a great excuse.

Maybe we could have the marks decided by online spectator vote instead of boring logical yachting rules.

He is framing the "outlier scientific opinion" as the climate denier. Because there are folk out there who consider that climate warming has a very high probability of occurring, the denier is trying to form a "consensus". They are having…

There should be no thread for this :)

Interesting.

All who have sinned apart from the law will also perish apart from the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law. For it is not the hearers…

You are presenting the data and models produced by a consensus of scientists as if it was an opinion based vote. That is deceptive and completely inappropriate, you are trying to deceive your audience into thinking scientific consensus is the same as a vote…

This point is being hammered by Peter Gluckman who says (of government depts.)-
"worryingly, some officials have limited understanding of the scientific process of knowledge production ,…

That almost sounds true – however it is in fact bollocks.

As someone actually doing science day to day and involved in funding and dissemination of science I can tell you and anyone else who might care – that science is…

Responding to a list of questions published in the paper by Mr Scalfari, who is not a Roman Catholic, Francis…

(This is the non-sequitur thread, right, and somebody might have a view)

But you do know that argumentum ad populum is a logical fallacy.

Science is not consensus ; consensus is not science.
Regardless of the issue being discussed, the…

You mean those coloured dots behind each boat aren't paintball cannon splashes????

Sure. Seen that done many times. But when you get lots of different groups all producing independent data that show the same thing then my inclination…

Depends on the peoples. And data, as we all know, can be framed to fit most any position if the position is determined before the data is…

See! People thinking of other…

No reason in my view, depends on whether Cunliffe winning pleased you or not and whether one relies on the news only, to find such things out. Considering that Trevor…

Now that it is a tax payer funded socialist experiment why shouldn't it trump the leader of our centrist opposition.

In my experience people using that phrase are generally the least willing to have their minds changed by ... you know ... data.

Great to hear.

Nobody should be interested in the Americas Cup or Political Idol, any more than they must join in geeking out on Booker Prize stats just because there's a Kiwi on the short list.

Nah sorry. Distracted by the big black cat having his first serious “now I’ve had enough of your nonsense, whippersnapper” moment with the puppy. (Pup backed down.)

I was more thinking of the “new way of farming/feeding the world” comment by Farmer…

Much more interesting. A refereed, terms-of-reference-set-by-Russell-and-policed-by-his-iron-hand thread could be interesting. But that would require minds to be prised open on all sides: is it possible?

From what I can tell nothing major has changed. Apparently at…

It counts for nothing here, right? Being a Kiwi musician, that is. Toe the line or take the animosity.
So it goes.
But not everywhere.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tZVGA3SBa8

According to that report, the UAE government, which owns the Emirates airline and I guess co-funds "our" boat, has 90 government critics in detention, has imposed 21 death sentences and actually executed one person (this in a pretty small place, remember), arbitrarily…

The database boat or the airline boat?

That's what I've taken to calling them.

I do like the idea of P Class or Laser, but I'd make it a bit bigger and something more local. Say voyaging waka?

greatest race ever according to the lead on one news, but then in the story it turns out it was Team NZ making the claim!

He'll be good for tomorrow, as it's a rest day for the America's Cup. Probably only…

Except it was a contest, a genuine and apparently testing one. Like many others, I think that's a real positive for the entire Party as well as for the caucus. The…

I was replying to Bart. Mate.

Thanks Geoff!
After a rocky few months, I'm ready to -urrrm, engage again?
Cheers all -

You do mean the "achievers " don't you? Elite has some other connotations.
The thing is , most aspire to "quiet achievement" ; public exposure is not of value to the quiet achiever. The achievement itself is the more than adequate…

Actually Bart – the 'kids' I know, family kids, go away for adventures & learning and – majorly, come back home...with increased skills they probably couldnt have…

Part of my point is that the Americas Cup is a fantastic platform to showcase some of those under-recognised talents. Don't be too harsh on the yoof, remember at that age if you're a…

Where did that mentality come from?
Maybe it was the first signs of "celebrity" culture; the age of narcissism even.

Farmer Green always thought that the idea was to DO something ,…

Well bum. Because they have every reason to be proud of their country and the people in it. Seriously, we have amazing engineers and designers and the AC72 they designed and built is just one example. We all know about some amazing sportspeople from here…

And this is from someone with minimal sailing experience (I got concussed by the boom, gave the boat a dirty look and…

Still, I'm looking forward to the day when there is an open discussion here, but…

I was looking for a Hooton column about AC/DC, but it appears to have disappeared. Whether cock up or conspiracy, I'm not sure.

The Civilian takes up the theme.…

(By the way, nice to see you all here still . . .)

`A REFLECTION OF EVIDENCE FROM NEW STUDIES’… THE IPCC CHANGES ITS STORY

See my reply below — RB

I bet we got a better deal than Nespresso...

doh! But kind of apt when you consider the forces applied to that boat.

There *is* a difference btwn. shear & sheer, folks...

If you measured interest by numbers, then you are probably…

I'm pretty excited by it, having sailed a fair few…

I'm watching it as best I can on my work computer with an intermittent and fitful broadband stream with the other guys from the workshop clustered round. I am a long time sailor so my…

Well that's the argument that is used against formula one racing and even against space flight. The counter argument is that it really doesn't matter what the use is that drives extreme tests of engineering and science the end result…

And it's science and engineering on both boats that originates from New Zealand, for me, having that occurring right in the Bay Area, where all my company's work comes from is…

It's also a hell of thing to watch. I'm not generally a follower of yachting but I felt like I'd…

You personally don’t have to be, unless you care that many others in your country are interested, either because they sail themselves or because they like seeing New Zealanders excel. No you don ’t have to care…

And then, after I wrote that, race 2 this morning. Ye gods.

(Did anyone notice how stable fore-aft the AC-whatsit was on…

Quite. Not Labour's strong point over the last few years, sadly, but they may have learned their lesson.

We decided that if NZ wins it's time for a reset, I suggested nominating P-class yachts, a…

Must be something about Spring and Autumn then :)

Allow me some punditry, sir!