FWIW, I was explicitly told when learning Maori in school that we were learning the Ngati Porou dialect, but I don't know if that's…

No "S" or a "B" in Maori.

We've gone a long way from the post eh what. Aren't connections wonderful.

Because people hear it as they take in their mother's milk?
(Well,…

Oops, forgot a couple of little appendices:

*A county of roughly 300,000 people, but subtle differences in…

From Language Policies in English-dominant Countries: Six Case Studies, edited by Michael…

I thought it was only English that had this paralysing effect. Sob.

No, and it's spreading. The Manchu…

Chris, I have 2 copies (plus a lot HB's booklets) and am very happy to lend you a copy for as long as it takes…

grrr.... bloody prescriptivists. They've done much damage to many languages and to many people's perceptions of 'correct language'. Witness the current sorry state of France's minority languages, for example, thanks to the revolutionary fervour for enforcing Francien on the whole country.

My wife code…

Bless Elsie!
Mogi are sort of waka-shaped but you ride on – rather than really…

I remember when I read The Runaway Settlers , trying to picture the crossing of the swift Taramakau in small, manoeuvrable Maori craft which I think are described as “canoes”. Might these have been mogi?

The hill’s name, though occasionally disputed, is widely believed to be a corruption of the Southern Māori word kirimoko, kilimoko or kilimogo,[4] the name of a species of manuka tree used by early Māori for brewing a kind of tea
-Wikipedia

Huh. Well I…

How is it that northern forms of words like mōkihi have come to dominate, even when discussing southern things? I'm actually quite curious as to how te Reo has been standardised, and the health of the dialects.

Given your insistence on southern spellings (and presumably southern pronunciations), I wonder…

Ama/amatiatia is used in the South for craft with an outrigger (it also means outrigger.) Our word for a craft made of bundles is mogi/mogihi, and they were certainly in use up to early last…

In Tonga, where ocean-going waka would still have been necessary, even if they weren't voyaging quite so extensively as their ancestors back in the heyday of Polynesian navigating. Flipping a bit further through Te Ara, this page gives two reasons for Maori to switch to single-hulled…

I had the great pleasure of listening to Bruce, and Martin Goff & Catherine Chague-Goff, outlining what "Hostile Shores" was going to contain & why...there was enough wine on my kitchen table to keep the conversation going for quite some time...

It's been…

This sketch of a double-hulled waka was made by Abel Tasman in his journal while at Tongatapu in 1643.

That, at least, can't be ascribed to a tsunami that happened 500 years ago. When Tasman sailed into Golden Bay in 1642 the Māori he encountered used double-hulled waka. When Cook arrived he noted that the double-hulled waka had disappeared and been forgotten about in…

Sure. It seems like a pretty small cost to me. Odds are, not only will it not be restored, but the windmills would continue being used, or at least the sites, having been chosen for their windyness.…

With any luck at all, the cabbage trees shall be wifflling their lovely long leaves over the benighted idiots' bones!

Mine was a wineberry. The birds loved it even when it was small, and now it’s huge. I don’t live in that house anymore, but I left it with a lot more ecosystem than it had. It started with…

There’s a kowhai & a lacebark I planted here, still happily growing… may all…

It makes restoring the landscape unlikely in the future. We're stuck with it.

Solar PV is a growing developing technology, but I agree with the statement that banking on what it might be able to make in the future is dangerous. It might…

What he said.

That's rather sad. Leaving an old home is a death in a way too.

I first learned that they had died in a carcrash, on this site.

I went out to the beach & built a fire, and sat by it, mourning, for hours-

“At some point in the past millenium. however, possibly around the 14th or 15th century, the era of widespread Polynesian votaging ceased. This may have occurred because of the change in climate that produced colder, windier weather and rougher…

Yes, I knew, admired…

I like how he starts the Penguin History of New Zealand by looking at the geological origins of our islands and the development of the flora and fauna before humans showed up. He seems to raise the…

drat! My copy of Michael's book (complete with his last emails, and last written card to me) is stashed over the hill-

That's one of the great beauties of hydro, the way it can be turned on or off so rapidly for load balancing. It can even be pumped…

Good point. I'd read that first article you linked to already, but not the io9 one – that was interesting. Yeah poor Bose, but it's the same for Enrico Fermi, after whom we have the other particle category…

possibly just devleoping sufficient numbers and local knowledge here to make the journey not so worth it any more. quite a trek.

The Kermadec Islands have evidence of discontinuous (multiple, independent) use as a stop over point. As they never seem to have been occupied on a long…

Is there any inkling as to what may have ruptured this connection?

Huh, interesting.

Far out!! That's amazing!

There were at least 2 voyages that we know of to…

Please correct me if I've got this wrong, but there's no evidence of trade between ANZ and the rest of the Pacific post-migration, right? Easy to be independent from the rest of…

+1

It's a core part of our Resource Management Act and Local Government Act. Hence…

Well said, sir. But permit me to take a Daoist approach and refuse to reassemble Earth and embrace our irrelevance. 无为, useless trees, 'n' all that. Nature will take…

Heh. But I have just done a back-of-the-envelope calculation. If the Earth was concussed and diluted into the known universe, each molecule would be spread apart by at least a lightyear.

Your task,…

This/these wannabe 'sheepdog/s' -huskies with Alzheimers, "pull the sled!" As you said:

we need to work on turning that around and finding ways we can get over these challenges.

Fair enough, the quote is an inadequate fit for the inquisitive mind, and yet x pages of Comic Sans Serif critique later, one wonders.

Would it be fair to say that before the last 200 years, NZ was an archipelago of nation-states?

Lilith, ANZ has a very long history (upwards of a thousand years) of being an entirely independant archipelago. The past 200 years have been an…

I trust wholeheartedly in the principles of scientific discovery. I don't necessarily trust the uses that science and technology are put to. They can be very good or very bad.

Things could be different, but exporting primary products and wooing tourists both require making nice to the powerful.

Which doesn't excuse the ridiculously poor…

A sheepdog desperately seeking the approval of a shepherd?

Not equating New Zealanders with sheep, mind.

Well, it's very much better than being dead, so I do try!

Luckily for us, unlike the universe, water has a selective memory which means it can remember the 200C dilution of duck liver but forget all the poo it’s previously contained.

I’m not sure about Anglophile.

Agreed. I’m not sure which word I seek. A comment on their English way of doing things more than allegiances, an ideological and administrative tepidness.

Nonono! Don't throw poets in there! Poets are very falsifiable. Priests and politicians are after power and control, poets are after art, there's a hell of a difference. Poets speak to a different truth than scientists, but when…

Ludwig Wittgenstein

chris, I'm not sure about Anglophile. They certainly do seem to love sitting obediently at the feet of whoever the big Emperor is, though. Labour's not quite so bad at it, or at least a tad more…

Delicious. Draw like the wind.

But that's the whole point of science. You don't have to trust it; it's falsifiable. Which is more than you can say for priests, poets and politicians.

Sniffs my kumara & salmon & greenbean chowder and thinks, quit whining little person, go draw a gruesome (or as one of the nevs kindly put it, "gurusome")…

there is an icky-stick-together Pakeha power base*

Could I insert 'Anglophile' in there somewhere ? Too specific? They're very British.

I am an English teacher, and yes I can get my English grammar and spelling right

Off the clock it's largely academic.

There is a lot of good stuff happening in NZ. I just want to see more of it and that good stuff getting a lot more support.

I…

I like that 'warily' bit. We do need to remember that as awesome as science is, it is done by people, and people are really good at making mistakes and have quite an amazing talent for hubris.

Well, alright... I reminded myself of a conversation with a good mate the other day. He's from Invercargill, his wife from northeastern China (as in her hometown is literally smack on the North Korean border – what a scary place to…

-but us atheists stay happily in our web of NON-belief and warily trust in science-

Tempted to go off on another tangent with even less to do with the Higg’s boson, but I’ll restrain myself for now…

Particles collide, stuff goes everywhere !! Go for it.

Crest raises pre-construction capital
The total funding requirement is over ten years is perhaps NZ$600 million
Capital will be raised in…

I was thinking more of the Total Perspective Vortex. But perhaps these thoughts converge. :-)

On the other hand the universe from big bang to cold oblivion would have been slightly different had you not been a part of it. In other words,…

Yeah…I thought I read something somewhere about the Cook Strait ones…

I’m sure China has similar areas.

Absolutely. And like Australia, many of those areas are sparsely populated with far-flung settlements. Local solar PV would seem…

Did Trotter have a similar experience? Seem to be rather a few bruised penises in that generation's commentariat at the moment.

still room for an Unobtainium mashup..

I disagree. We should be making both short-term plans and long-term plans. The longer-term plans will involve a variety of contingencies. Unless we continue the research, both plans will look the same.

I firmly…

For *grid* generation, wind looks like maybe 60% of the cost of solar PV. Wide disparities of course – much of NZ is fairly windy and cloudy. Australia would, one might expect, be one of the first places for which solar PV would be economical.…

Well, it might not be...but who would have thought we'd find the Higgs? Uncertainty's in the nature of research, isn't it?

And as for putting more hydro dams and…

The only reason we're burning fossil fuels to generate electricity is political (lower initial prices, higher profits and sheer pig-headed destructiveness). Pretending that if we wait, some panacea…

Scientology

or perhaps that inherently unscientific belief system: atheism.

The Rules of Acquisition?

Good god, man — I'm trying to eat my lunch. Nearly choked from laughing!

JW:Facebook, set in Zapfino?

Further to my point, maybe Scientology?

I find it fascinating how he’s managed to miss, mmm,…

The Prosperity Gospel, methinks?

And he’s got his space-cadet uniform on, ready!:

In that moment a 48-year theory became a fact. The glimpse of the ‘Higgs boson’, or something like it, allows minds to boggle on the existence of “dark matter” and the possibility there really is a dimension to…

Where Roughan gets his ideas from is an enduring mystery.

Wow. Who knew? (Where did this come from — I mean it…

I sometimes wonder if he’s trying to be some kind of spiritual successor…

As our greatest Man Rutherford said:

"All science is either physics or stamp collecting."

But he also added another which obviously has much to do with this discussion:

"An alleged scientific discovery has no merit unless…

The main threat to the environment from fusion, however is that it will take many years to perfect (it's been 50+…

The last time this flared up was with the GE debate, which set the Left against its own. Here's a handful of heresies that they will have to cross swords with. One…

He takes it all back to his last year at school, in 1969, when a lady teacher enthused to the class about ecology. He seems to see the Higgs breakthrough as a return to proper Man Science.

Sour grapes, much? And it's commercial hubris, not environmental hubris that's the problem.

Who knows where that knowledge will lead? Next they will work out how to control the particle, then they will remove it to enable things – people – to travel at the speed necessary to explore the galaxy.…

Indeed. I am grateful that they didn't use Papyrus.

Fair point. But, ultimately, it's writing those grants – and publishing papers – which matters more to academic science…

And believe me, as someone who sat through a lot* of academic presentations, using Comic San font is not the worst thing ever!

In the…

You gotta remember, though – scientists usually rely on public funding at the end of the chain, but the proximate source of funding and support for them is a) publication record and b)…

http://www.physics.auckland.ac.nz/uoa/home/events/template/event_item.jsp?cid=495704

No promises about the Comic Sans though.

snap

No — which might be an asset when you're being deposed in a fraud trial, but doesn't do a great deal of good when "non-accounting people" would like to make some sense of why they're unemployed, their retirement…

Surprisingly you don't see too many accountants giving (good) public presentations either. Scientists are…

Winston, then? :)

Heh. Here is where the phrase came from. Bloody Publishers. Spoil all the fun.

Likewise. Just when they’d got rid of Sue Kedgely… It’s the sort of simple-minded sanctimony that’s the norm for Grauniad columnists and I despise sanctimony because it’s simply making a show of hand-wringing as a substitute for real thought.…

That's the thing with snails. They're inscrutable. Also dolphins and mice. However, the cat and I think alike, although that might be a due to a parasite, according to latest research.

You may want this to be the case, but it really isn't that way for any of us in this thread who have been patiently explaining how basic design enhances a focus on the content. It's not an either/or, and…

O dear. You are so right. And…

I'm going to assume that Russell's link is in a similar vein to the tweets in the picture he posted earlier. But no, if anything collapses that stream it won't be rampant collective idiocy. Rampant collective idiocy, unfortunately, is one of…

Is boiling down complex ideas for non-specialist audiences a hard thing to do at all well? Yes – which is why I admire good general-interest writing/journalism about science so much. But it's a skill not a mystical vocation. I'm just suggesting it's not only a…

Surely that stream will collapse under rampant collective idiocy?

The devils (or angels) are usually in the detail.

I’m staunchly Green, but such stupidity makes me writhe with embarrassment.

We still call 'em paper napkins...confuses the hell out of some people...

You mean that's NOT the standard anymore?? I feel old.

My Grandma always insisted on "paper table-napkin".

That was why I learned to use Pagemaker and then InDesign (I say learned in the loosest sense of the word).

And a two hour course sounds good to me.

Twitch Please don't try to make A0 posters in Photoshop Twitch

I teach our university's two hour (2 measly hours) Conference Poster Making course, but I have…

Not really given their solution to finding data within an obscuring mess is to smash 500 trillion nuclei

Easier to present data on the supposed benefits of drinking red wine than, say, the feeding habits of Powelliphanta Augusta.

Agreed.

The real problems here are around visual noise and clutter, which have very little to do with type choices. Also much harder to fix. Structural as opposed to surface etc.

One of…

Yes. But understand. The "unpresenters" would say: "My talk was understandable to my peers. I find that sufficient for me."

I DO have to tell you we have some "Presentation Skills" seminars doing the rounds at…

But auxin is amazing! You could fascinate people over auxin in a bar with…

But that’s what marketing folks are trained to do. It’s hard to blame them. they know how to make a logo, that’s easy. That have no idea how to retain the scientific content in a poster while making it look good,…

It's worth noting that what you guys all assume is an easy thing, that is, seeing how a presentation could be made better, just isn't that easy for some people. It really doesn't come naturally to…

Sure. I do get the value of being good at presentation. But if I get money for another FTE I'm going to spend it on a tech or scientist who can generate more data not on…

I've been thinking about this. And I'm still not sure I know the answer. Yes there are some people who really do "give a good talk" but that isn't quite the same as being presentational rockstars.

Kary…

Texan farmer Jethro Nedreck claims that he was the first to discover it back in the 1950s when he cross-bred one of his hogs with a bison.

Substantial progress has been made in this field albeit under the guise of the rebranded initialism LENR. Nasa scientists, no less have been trumpeting recent breakthroughs:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Z5wF69jFJs

Dark musings....
Now they can concentrate on…

it explains much ....

Thanks richard. Who knows where such theories might lead? The picture could change, phenomena could be discovered. Sounds like it's opening possibilities up, rather than…

It is those that get the ear of the managers and the marketers.…

In particular, this is the first time we have discovered a spinless (which autocorrect just turned to “spineless”)…

http://www.physics.auckland.ac.nz/uoa/home/events/template/event_item.jsp?cid=495704

Don't tell the Indians that. Boson is named after Satyendra Nath Bose.…

Act-u-ally, I find that really human/humane-

I hope it'll be the octopii ascendant, but I fear the jellyfish will win.

That is one point of view...

I happily engage with absurdity & fantasy of all kinds – but prefer – indeed expect – an underlay of our species'…

nice

why treat them as mutually exclusive?