Posts by Bart Janssen
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Polity: BURGERGASM, in reply to Vivid,
Stop for a second and think about what the cows go into the works covered in.
No don’t. Stop for a second and think about the huge effort and cost that goes into ensuring the butchering of our meat animals results in meat free from bacteria. It really is a sophisticated process that works very well. Or does so long as we maintain a publicly funded inspection process to monitor, which at the moment is still pretty damn good.
Most meat contamination occurs AFTER the meat leaves the freezing works. The big exception is chicken, which is almost always contaminated at the time of slaughter, the key with chicken is to reduce growth of that contamination hence rapid freezing is good.
Eating a medium-rare burger is really not as much of a hazard as driving to the burger joint.
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On the burger front in Auckland, it's hard to go past Burger Burger (medium-rare).
I love home made burgers but have a big problem getting buns that don't dissolve into a soggy mess. Almost certainly because I put too much into the burger :).
I do quite like the Mt Roskill Burgerfuel.
Best burger I've ever had was in Cambodia, not sure if it was partly the location (probably) but Raffles in Siem reap made a burger that has lasted in the memory.
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Polity: BURGERGASM, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
With the exception of chicken
A friend who worked as an epidemiologist never eats chicken outside his home. And then avoids fresh chicken because there is no certainty that it has been stored at a safe temperature, frozen is much safer.
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Polity: BURGERGASM, in reply to RBentley,
Any minced burger meat that is pink in the middle is likely to house gut-wrenching nasties and so should be avoided, or well cooked to ensure that any lurking salmonellae are toast.
Not true. It is not "likely", it is possible if hygiene standards are not met, but by no means likely.
Most commercial minced meat is produced under pretty high standards. IF the chefs and food preparation area is good then there is more risk of food poisoning at home than from eating a medium-rare burger.
IF the meat is minced on site and again IF chefs and kitchen are good quality you can eat the meat raw with again very little risk, much less risk than you took driving to the burger joint.
Also worth noting that as you overcook the meat into sterility you are almost certainly blackening the outside and introducing (delicious) carcinogens.
From a personal perspective if you are going to cook the meat to sterility you may as well become a vegetarian (although note that food poisoning from sprouts etc is not uncommon either).
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“my glass half-full view of the world might just happen to coincide with the glass half-full view of the Government” and declares himself to “have been glass half-full for about 50 years”
Which is simply a lie, intentional or simply because he fails to remember the vitriol he spilled over the Labour government.
From the NZHerald to the NPHerald step by step.
Sad to see Dita's opinion missing from our media, it was thoughtful, researched and reasonable, all things that are rare these days.
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Polity: Buying a fight with democracy, in reply to Russell Brown,
But we do have a bid for exactly the same measure
And had Rob focused on the issue in New Zealand highlighting the almost complete absence of voter fraud and the insignificant effect of the fraud that has occurred the post would have been just as useful.
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Polity: Buying a fight with democracy, in reply to Lilith __,
I think what Bart means is that it's a specious and irrelevant connection to make.
Exactly.
The problems with the proposals to change the rules around electoral law can be discussed without invoking comparisons that are extreme.
We do not have the same social structure as the US. We do not have the same large communities equivalent to the black and Hispanic communities in the US that can and have been targeted by the Republicans. We do not have the local political structures that allow counties to create electoral laws designed specifically to target specific (poor) voters.
Your comparison between The National party and the extreme behaviour of the Republicans, and more specifically the extreme right wing Republicans, does nothing to enhance the discussion it simply acts to add fear and drama to your post.
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In the US, the Republican Party
Invoking the US Republican party as an equivalence to the NZ National party is effectively godwinning your own post.
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Speaker: House prices and the "Magic Money", in reply to David Hood,
Yeah and I'm by no means suggesting folks shouldn't test your hypothesis and the analysis behind it. We all miss stuff that can make a beautiful hypothesis fail.
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While I appreciate the value of testing David's analysis, especially given that some of the way money moves around in banks and in housing markets is somewhat arcane, I also find myself somewhat bemused by the discussions.
Yes it's possible David's analysis misses something.
But it is also pretty clear that David's analysis and the accompanying hypothesis is a very good fit for all the current observations.
Any hypothesis explaining rising house valuations needs to explain some of the other observations. And yes some of those data are not strong.
There is considerable reporting of Real estate activity offshore, very enthusiastic real estate activity all of which costs real estate companies money and that strongly suggests there is value in it for the real estate companies.
There is data suggesting a significant number of empty houses.
There is a complete lack of activity outside Auckland.
There appears to have been very little impact on prices from the construction of large apartment blocks.
And yes there is a lot of anecdotal reporting of houses being bought by offshore buyers.
All that together suggests that the market is not simply responding to a lack of supply but is instead responding to an increase in external buyers with external money.
What bemuses me is that people seem weirdly resistant to that idea. I honestly don't see anything surprising in the idea that offshore money would want to buy housing in New Zealand. As an explanation for the price rises it actually seems more logical to me than the constant insistence that supply is limited when it doesn't take much driving around Auckland to see huge new increases in supply.