Posts by Bart Janssen
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i'd prefer a "dear anjum" to a "dear mr rahman".
Interesting. I guess people feel less uncomfortable about getting your sex wrong than they do about using your first name.
I guess the use of your first name implies an intimacy. Which implies folks (probably me included) are more afraid of the offence of unwarranted intimacy than the offence of getting your sex wrong. How silly.
Odd and interesting
And yes, if I had to guess, I would have guessed male, no idea why.
cheers
Bart -
What goes wrong with people's brains when they have a baby?
And people wonder how to get ideas for the science spot on the radio show?
Quite simply the female parent is swamped by hormones that affect her brain (actually studies have shown that rather than "baby brain" reducing memory it enhances it) all designed to make her NOT drown the parasite that is going to take over her life.
And just to be fair the pheromones that the male parent gets from mother and baby do the same.
Against that background of abnormal (normal?) brain biology, you really think namng gets that many brains cells attention??
And grats, I'm sure given your reluctance you'll produce a wonderful new human.
Can we run a competition to name your child?
cheers
Bart -
I never have, and never will, answer any questions about my ethnicity
I'm with you Craig. I usually answer that question with Homo sapiens sapiens
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Because we all know that wiki is always right
There is some discussion, with no official explanation, of the meaning of "Pacific's triple star". Unofficial explanations range from New Zealand's three biggest islands (North, South, and Stewart Island/Rakiura), to the three stars on the flag of Te Kooti, a Māori political and religious leader of the 19th century [2]. Another possibility is that Bracken was referring to Alpha Centauri, the brightest triple-star system in the southern constellation of Centaurus, which contains the fourth-brightest star in the sky.
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A couple of people have made the point that most folks don't want to know what goes on underneath the GUI.
I agree.
I also agree that most folks can't cope with the simplest changes in computing environment.
but that's my point
The ability to handle software (a bit) and soup up your operating environment and be able to pick and choose - and yes modify even - the software and addons you use is very important to how efficiently you can function in todays world. And personally I'm betting it will be more so in tomorrows world.
The current state of ignorance and outright fear present in todays adults can only change if you expose children to something different.
I want the next generation to be something other than MS users who blindly call helpdesk any time their file won't format properly.
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Hi Emma
Sorry to hear about your dinner table discussions.
I didn't find anything in there that the large contingent of Muslim immigrants would find really alienating.
But if you happen to believe there is no god then the whole anthem becomes a bit much - and the Maori version of it even more so.
For me the anthem can be consdiered inclusive of most religious folks, but what about non-religious folks?
cheers
Bart -
Hi Rich
Yes, and we could require that everyone learn to replace a piston before they learn to drive, or milk a cow before they learn to make tea.
Hmmm point taken, although back when cars were less reliable we pretty much did teach children how to fix them.
I guess my thinking was that with the continued expansion of computers into our lives, the ability to understand how software works might well become as much a part of life as say keyboard skills are now. Or not. Maybe it's OK if most folks never know why their program stops working and the only person they know to ask is IT support.
Some technologies become reliable enough that no-one needs to know how to fix them, some technologies become so complex that no-one needs to know how to fix them, but some technologies integrate into everything we do at a level where some understanding is needed.
The ability to do internet searches for knowledge I think is becoming such a technology. Does that mean we need to understand how to write software to thrive in the future? To some degree I think the answer to that is yes. Or at least close enough to yes to makeme want to see children learn how to "play" with programs.
cheers
Bart -
Hi Danyl
regarding your comment about open source
....and a total freaking nightmare for the other 99.999999% of the population.
I think you're exactly right. But maybe if you exposed children to perl etc earlier you might just get a society where a larger percentage was comfortable creating/modifying their own software.
cheers
Bart -
Why does god appear in both of our national anthems if we are not a Christian state?
Good question. We are not a christian nation we are a secular nation.
On that basis I agree entirely we should absolutely ditch the national anthem (both versions) and replace it with something secular.
Seriously, NZ is the country it is because it does not impose any religion on it's people. Believe what you like and the government will protect your privilage to have that belief and prevent others from forcing you to change your belief. That means we have diversity of belief and non-belief which makes this country a much nicer place to live than some less free countries (e.g. the USofA where we quickly learned than non-WASP belief systems were not tolerated).
As for using open source office equivalents on school computers - surely it would be a good thing if kids were to learn not only how to type into a word processing program but also how to find bugs and participate if the open source environment that fixes those bugs. Surely that would result in more computer literacy rather than less.
cheers
Bart -
Just comment on biofuels in general and not pellets in particular.
A huge amount of plant molecular biology is funded by the DOE in the US. Specifically to develop plants as alternative energy sources. Setting aside for the moment the corruption that has led to the use of corn as an energy source. A lot of pretty neat work has been done on designing the perfect energy crop. Things like lignans which are so useful for binding pellets together actually make it really difficult to get energy out of a crop.
The research isn't there yet but my impression is that we are not very far away from a purpose engineered crop purely for energy production.
As far as I can tell the key to making it viable is to avoid trying to transport small amounts of the energy eg turning it into ethanol and moving it around the country to stick into cars. If you want to get the best from a biofuel you build a generator to convert the biofuel into electricity at the site of production.
As an aside I've always thought there must be a way of getting plants to produce hydrogen directly. It would involve some interesting biochemistry and some interesting engineering. Of course compressing the hydrogen would probably lose it's value but I like the idea of burning hydrogen instead of carbon.
The point is plant biology will be the answer :). They are after all the most efficient solar energy converters.
cheers
Bart