Posts by Kyle Matthews
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From Stuff:
Kiwi electricity consultant Bryan Leyland recently led a team of international sceptics to a climate conference in Bali.
I don't know Mr Leyland from swiss cheese,but "electricity consultant" doesn't exactly inspire confidence that he's an expert in the science of global warming and melting ice sheets.
Or that he's unbiased.
Not a good sign for the "Global warming, we are all going to die!!" crowd when the NYT, of all publications, starts publishing articles skeptical of it.
I think you need to re-read the article James. It's about the way that the media covers events and ascribes them to global warming when they supposedly support the thesis. Indeed, the only opinion offered in the piece about whether global warming exists, of Dr Sunstein is:
I don’t doubt that climate change is real and that it presents a serious threat, but there’s a danger that any ‘consensus’ on particular events or specific findings is, in part, a cascade.
It's not exactly skepticism.
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The bottom line is that elections these days are almost never decided on well informed debate and accurate knowledge of the candidates.
Wait. When did this _ever_ happen?
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I agree with I/S. It looks as if he has bought himself an honour.
I vote we go through the last... I dunno, 20 years of honours lists and see who's major contribution to society was to have money to fling around. Michael Faye for starters - throw millions of dollars at some stupid boat, and then when everyone's watching it, buy up national assets in a fire sale and screw the country over. Governor General still waved a sword at him, and for some reason knighted him rather than taking good aim at his neck.
I presume the EFA is going to give greater access to, but also, a lot more interest in, who's giving money to who. We're going to know in the future more about what donations honours recipients have made. Is making a large political donation (possibly to both political parties in this case?) going to rule people out of getting their name on a silly list?
Climate change is an economic issue. And Kyoto - whatever you think of it - is all about creating a different set of economic incentives.
That would be fine if they were saying "oh, Kyoto won't work, to deal with climate change you have to do these economic things...". It's my understanding that they're saying/being put forward as saying "climate change doesn't exist". To make you an expert in that, some sort of qualifications in a sciences subject would seem pretty important.
If a group of doctors tell me that AIDs doesn't exist, I'll look at them funny and ask them to explain how they know that. If a group of economists and pharmacy executives tell me that AIDs doesn't exist then I'll walk away wondering where they are making money out of that bullshit idea.
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Seriously, is the Herald good for anything these days apart from starting your BBQ? I always remember that it was a nice thick paper, you could buy the Saturday edition and you'd be set for a fire pretty much for the next week.
If only it was sold with a bag of kindling...
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I have yet to find the Dunedin equivalent of La Porchetta for a cheap pasta meal, or Pete's Pies for inexpensive pie chips and salad..although there is a pie shop called "Who Ate All The Pies" 5 minutes walk from where I live that makes divine, but expensive, pies.....
Can't help you with either of those I'm afraid, but Apsara is pretty good if you're looking for cheap and reasonable asian food. Good student fare.
Dunedin's best wee secret is the Friday bakery. Last time I went, it was still only open on Friday morning (sells out by about 10am) - I think most of their business is catering - at the roundabout in Roslyn. Best pastries and baking ever. Ohmigod. I don't even know what it's called, everyone seems to just call it the Friday bakery.
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I think it's really important to be really honest with kids - later on having them believe you becomes much more important - now they're teenagers I feel it's paying off - they do listen to us when we give nuanced talks about alcohol and drugs (not just the 'everything bad' which they'll find out is not true soon enough)
My ex told my son that Santa wasn't real when he was four. Not impressed! I managed to re-convince him that it was true, and he's since figured it out for himself.
I think 'really honest' is easy to wave around until we start to think about everything that we actually tell our kids. I teach my son to be 'polite', which sometimes involves not being completely honest. I want him to play games using imagination and make believe.
Amongst the crimes against honesty I commit, trying to get my son to believe in magic for as many years as possible, isn't really the worst. He now has a younger sister, and one of the ways I'm going to teach him to be a great older brother is to help me be Santa and teach her to believe for a few years.
If I can get her to do what he did a few years ago - carefully move the milk and cookies away from the fireplace (log burner with a chimney that anorexic Santa couldn't fit down) so that he doesn't trip over it when he arrives - then I know that next morning I'll get to see that wide-eyed look of wonder on a child's face.
Who wouldn't want to be part of making that happen?
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Our Xmas day is finishing as yours begins Jolisa. Best wishes to you and your family.
My father has spent the recent evening bravely trying to finish a massive pavlova, with cream (he got about 3/4 of the way around), while the rest of us sensibly focus our attention on the cheesecake. Organic chickens, greek salad, bubbles and wine, fresh bread and BBQed steak. 3/4 of a day of sun, with a hint of cricket in the front yard that was dashed by the late afternoon rain.
Gotta love a Kiwi Xmas.
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the colonial nature of the term/box/brand 'science'.
The what?
Umm, science as the coloniser of 'all things right'. By broadly defining science in the way that people have, here and in other places, once something becomes proven, it becomes science. I'm interested in the expansive nature of that as a metaphor for colonialism. Or colonialism as a metaphor for the nature of science I guess really.
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My fav pic of the quake has to be the library. I hate shelf-tidying at the best of times, but this looks like a serious bitch.
Pie for whoever built those shelves and locked them down well enough so that they're all still standing. If that quakes happens in the middle of the day and a hundred books fall on you, you're in some pain. If the shelves fall on you, you're alive if you're lucky.
I just finished watching S7 of West Wing, to complete the whole set in my drawers. I know a lot of people say it dropped off in the last few seasons, but parts of 7 were as good as anything in the early ones. Happy holidays everyone.
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I like the ThaiIndian.com headline - Major damage reported after massive earthquake rocks New Zealand.
Do you think they share subs with the NZ Herald?
Given the damage suffered in the subcontinent from the boxing day quake and resulting wave a few years ago, 'major damage' is a pretty relative term.