Posts by Peter Ashby
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@Russell Clarke
Aren't they also meant to be positive role models, or somesuch?
Says who? maybe, just maybe if they are children's entertainers but for general/adult people not so much. I say that is something many people in the public eye would dispute. Now those we elect are in a different category and I would say yes, but only wrt their public behaviour unless they are indulging in major hypocrisy.
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What is probably underlining a lot of the perceived difference in courts' willingness to convert fines to other punishments is that you have to be credible to the judge that you will complete and abide by the proposal. It is a fact of life that professional people with a public profile have a lot of incentive to live up to things like that. Joe Smith not so much. When you make a proposal to a judge it helps if you are credible. It's as simple as that.
We would be first to criticise a judge who let some no hoper evade a fine like that who then gave two fingers and sloped off. This is the flip side of that.
Moral of the story, be credible. But preferably, don't do the crime. I have never in my life got a parking ticket, and yes, I do drive. I also do that walking thing and I am not too proud to ride buses to places where parking is a nightmare.
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@David
Ahem, I regularly run and ran home from work, up to 9miles not being a problem. I knew a medic who ran 6miles into work every day of the week.
I also find it silly that you claim we aren't evolved to run but then claim we should cycle as though we were evolved to exercise sitting down?
The bushmen in the Kalahari hunt game by running it to exhaustion. The tribes in Kenya that dominate their and the world's distance running are good runners because their tribes used to specialise in cattle raiding and lacking domesticatable steeds did it on foot. it isn't just the altitude though that certainly helps.
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@TomSemmens
Oh and seeing how the Brits build things on the Living Channel - largely unreinforced brick and mortar held up largely by gravity - I pray they never have an earthquake over about 5 on the Richter scale.
Plenty of Victorian two story villas in Dunedin built the same way are still standing despite all the earthquakes they have been subjected to. Not many of them still have their chimney's mind. I remember being in bed in our first flat on the top floor of one in a big wind and feeling the house sway as the chimney stack did. I mentioned it to the landlord and he and his wife were around to demolish it quick smart.
Even in old wooden villas it's the chimneys that go in the earthquakes. Not many earthquakes here in the UK though. Been years since I felt one and our chimney (1965) is still in fine nick. The old wooden villa we had in St Kilda didn't have its chimneys any more, we found them buried in the back garden, right where I wanted to put the veggie garden. We had a potbelly instead.
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@Damian
Another example of sarcasm being easily missed in text conversations. Dammit, I was trying to encourage you!
I'll second George Darroch's points too. Get some good shoes, and keep them only for running. Your feet and legs will thank you. In a couple of weeks it's my birthday and I will then have two concurrent pairs of running shoes. I'm not sure all that luxury won't spoil my ascetic perfection though.
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Damian that ankle is telling you that running is not just for one half marathon, it is for always. Otherwise you will always be thrashing a vulnerable body into shape in not enough time. I have recently survived Swine Flu (apparently regular exercise prior to infection reduces its severity). All I will say is I wouldn't want it without being as fit as I am. On the worst day I didn't have the energy to sit upright in a chair. I hate to think what that would have been like if I hadn't been fit with all my normal energy.
There's another half later in the month in Auckland
http://www.adracharityrun.org.nz/
gives the ankle a couple of weeks to heal. Why waste all that training?
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he's really built for voicing narration and for delivering stern tellings-off to people.
When you see Kevin McCloud's Grand Tour you will see that he is also built for engaging and enthusiastic knowledge sharing in the Reithian tradition of public telly that informs as well as entertains.
I started watching because there was nothing else worth watching on and got hooked. My wife was similarly keen. When I turned over to watch an episode she would ask 'what's this?' then seeing him would go 'oh good' and settle down to watch.
He is showing you this stuff and how and what it influenced because he thinks it is all too neat and 'rather wonderful' to keep to himself.
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@Joanna
He is absolutely NOT posing, he looks uncomfortable and embarrassed. This series shows that he is not in least bit precious about himself and is happy to send himself up. There are a series of what in another program would be bloopers, edited out of the program at the insistence of the 'talent'. I would say the dip in the hot pool was his producer's idea.
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@Joanna
In his Grand Tour series in one bit he gets his kit off down to his shorts to take a dip in a hot pool that Grand Tourists bathed in. After telling us about the delights of travelling in a cramped hot carriage and dipping a cloth in vinegar and wiping groin and armpits before using it to clean your teeth. As they did.
You can see how buff he is then, if you aren't gagging that is.
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@Tony Parker
Kevin McCloud has just finished a series over here in the UK on the Enlightenment Grand Tourists and the influences their 'discoveries' had on architecture and culture back home. It is fascinating telly as he shows you the bits that got essentially stolen in IP terms from bits of Rome, including a bijou cupola that got blown up into the dome of St Pauls in London.
Our Kev is also engaging, revealing he speaks conversational Italian, falling off camp stools and happily revealing his vertigo when climbing inside the dome of the Duomo in Florence (a city everyone should see before they die). He is genuinely little boy enthusiastic about it all, nothing forced or stagy at all.
If it turns up in NZ wack it on the TiVo for posterity.