Posts by Lucy Stewart
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We have at least 32 species of native bees: all of them -as far as we know-are solitary.
I didn't know that, actually; thought we probably had some, though, which is why I specified honeybees and bumblebees. It's remarkable how many bee species do not fall into those two categories, despite popular perception. The fact that they've been seen pollinating brassicas is very interesting - but I doubt we'd ever see them take over pollination of ouir major commercial crops, should the worst happen to our introduced populations. The necessity of honeybee and bumblebee introduction is actually an interesting example of how importing European farming to here involved importaing the European ecosystem to a very large degree.
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Why was nothing done during the long years of the Labour Government?
It's a bit tough to blame Ryall who has his sights firmly fixed on better medical services when Helen Clark etc had loads of time and ideology to move on pay equity.Oh, yeah, let's forget about pay equity; people are sick! Lucky we have all those (mostly female) nurses to help look after them, eh? And poor Ryall, getting all the flack for cancelling a Labour initiative. If Labour really cared, they would have got re-elected so he couldn't cancel it.
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Have they not been somewhat enhanced by having their pollen spread around more selectively? I'm asking, not telling.
I dunno, but most wind and bird pollinated plants just aren't equipped for bees to pollinate them; they have flowers that bees don't see, or almost no flower at all, and so on. There's a possibility that the insect-pollinated ones do better with bees, but I'd want to see some hard data.
I gather hand-pollination is an expensive alternative.
Christ, yes; imagine a tomato plant. Now imagine going around with a paintbrush and transferring pollen from one flower to another. Now imagine doing that for *every tomato we eat*. It'd be a total nightmare.
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I haven't particularly noticed more bumblebees than usual. But they've been more conspicuous by virtue of being the only bees around. Just as well they are around too, I can only imagine what could happen to the flora of the country if there was nothing at all spreading pollen around, except for humans and wind.
Well, the native flora would do just fine, seeing as how they mostly got along without bees before humans introduced them (honeybees and bumblebees, anyway.) We'd still be good for clover and a few other things, because bumblebees were imported specifically to pollinate clover - so much so that the Brits are asking for some of the endangered ones back - that was what my summer project was about. Grasses and most trees would also get along - if think about pine pollen in spring and you'll realise why. But a significant portion of our food crops and non-native flowers would be *screwed*.
< /science rant>
We've been talking about this pay equity thing quite a bit at The Hand Mirror and have set up a to keep track of the coverage and discussion, and any collective activity around the issue. And we've got a pay equity faxathon going on too.
I'm due to post about this on our YL Chch blog later today, to help spread the word. It's a really excellent way to protest.
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How on earth do you find stuff in 100 tabs? I find it's getting cluttered over about 5. If I find anything I expect to need to refer to I favourite it (in Google, so I can see it from home/work).
Having the tree-style tabs feature enabled helps a lot; it lists the tabs down the side, and threads them when you open links on a page. Because they're only one line of text in a list, you can usually see thirty-odd tabs at once, and if you're threading by subject (you can drag them into threads as well) then it's easy to keep track.
Basically I like it because it means I can switch between things and come back to them later without waiting for re-loading. I keep all my favourite pages open and just refresh them when I need to. It's a habit, I suppose; I like it better than bookmarks. The memory useage tradeoff is generally worth it.
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This works very smoothly on a 2.4GHz iMac, but I wonder if it'll be so sweet on a Windows PC, or an older Mac, especially one with not much memory installed -- the beta is presently hogging a lot of the 2GB I'm packing. We'll see how it goes when I have 100 tabs open.
Well, that rules it out for me then. I have to make a concerted effort to keep fewer than 100 tabs open in Firefox, generally. If it wasn't for the goodness that is Session Manager, I'd go nuts every time it crashed from memory-hogging (i.e. about once a week.) And, yeah, I have an old computer (1.6 GHz single core, 1GB RAM) but Firefox does the same thing on our desktop and that's significantly newer and faster. If they've managed to avoid the memory problem with the new version of Safari, that will be *ace*.
Oh, and I generally find the problem is less ads (except for the Herald website and their &$%$^ auto-play videos) and more embedded video clips, which are often auto-loading and pretty much everywhere these days.
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Let me add belated and surprised cheers. I think this is the first time I've *ever* seen public protest accomplish something, legislature wise. Long may it continue.
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We need a word for this, we really do. "Irony" just doesn't seem sufficient.
How To Troll Your Own Legislation In Nine Easy Steps?
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Secondly, because there is no possibility of early release for genuine rehabilitation, the bill requires continued imprisonment even where inmates are no longer likely to re-offend, even where they did not 'deserve' a 25 year sentence on purely retributive grounds.
There's also the problem of what you *do* with them once they're released - most are going to be in their sixties, minimum, and the chances of successful reintegration into society are going to be very, very low. Do we keep them in prison until they die, even if they otherwise qualify for parole? What about rest homes? How would the other residents feel then? How much funding will there be to help them make the very severe re-adjustment to society? If we keep them in prison, are our prisons equipped to handle elderly prisoners, who will be more vulnerable and require extra healthcare?
I just don't see a lot of thought about these sort of questions among proponents of the bill, and since they're fairly straightforward consequences, I'd hope there would be.
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Sorry - 'strikes' not 'strokes' I hope the bill isn't bringing back flogging of prisoners.
Don't worry, I'm sure it's on the wish-list.