Posts by Garth Bray
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I was Turner to Damian's Hooch at SUNDAY. Or, maybe it was vice versa. The story we were working at showed one thing to me. The standard you have to meet for bringing science into the courtroom in New Zealand is pretty hit and miss - my expert vs your expert (which one has a more plausible voice or whiter teeth, maybe?).
My dated recollection is that Dr Miller may have struggled to testify on the conclusions from his novel IHC test in a US Federal court in Texas, where he practiced, as judges there look at peer-reviewing and other empirical standards before allowing experts to put it before a jury.
I'd be fascinated to hear if a PA legal eagle or Edgeler Beagle, fancied reading the judgement from JCPC today and considering these issues, and their impact on our justice system, irrespective of any future verdict for Mark Lundy. -
Speaker: Why the disaster in Japan made…, in reply to Gareth Ward,
@gareth thanks that's reassuring - more so if i knew you had a background in nuclear sciences or medicine. Don't want to panic people who might be reading this. have yet to hear from work where if at all i can get some kind of comprehensive check-up, but the nuke and chem PhD i spoke to in the airport departure lounge at Narita seemed to think there would be no such thing. i note the bbc reporting US Homel;and Security is now scanning for radiation at airports with direct connections to Japanese airports.
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Now of course having written all this and read the responses, i felt bound to throw this into the mix...
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/02/ff_joelinchina/all/1 -
Speaker: Why the disaster in Japan made…, in reply to izogi,
@izogi thanks for that. have been recommended three by brother-in-law#1: the Desire HD, the Galaxy S or the Google Nexus S. Will go and try to have a tutu with each of them. b-i-l#2 says go the HD for maximum screen size.
I completely agree with your comment about phones plus social media. It’s the combination that works and even then there are limitations. While all four of my travelling companions had chocolate-bar sized smart phones. only i had an actual chocolate bar. As yet there’s no app that turns your phone into something you can eat in an emergency :).
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Right, over birthday lunch for my wife, discovered my brothers-in-law both own HTCs.
One has a G1, the first smartphone they produced i think. He says they stopped supporting it two years ago but he’s managed to install Android and various other hacks and keep it running and as a voracious reader finds it OK for novels in bed.
The other has a brand new HTC Desire HD which has replaced his laptop.
Both are offering to show me through them and add all the good apps, so i guess it’ll be a Desire or similar.
Guess when i wrote “And I’m buying an iPhone” i meant a smart phone, which shows to go ya that it’s joined Band Aid and Red Bull as an example of a brand that’s come to define the category.
Definitely relies on a continuous data feed and on you biting the bullet and leaving it connected internationally – then overcoming the need to check cricket scores at however many $$s a meg while there. But i like @Ben’s point about how you’ll probably only be carrying your wallet, phone and keys if and when disaster strikes. -
Speaker: Why the disaster in Japan made…, in reply to Steve Barnes,
Nope definitely a Leatherman in the case of the old guy with the slouch hat I'm picturing.
I guess the smartphone is a kind of digital Leatherman. Happy to profit from all your experiences and opinions about the benefits and faults of Leatherman/Gerber or Apple/Samsumg/HTC etc.
@Ben yes i would proabbaly be a sucker an go for black too, so thianks for that tip -
Speaker: Why the disaster in Japan made…, in reply to Henry Harrison,
Thanks Henry. Spot on. I was sharing a very short version of my account with a Kiwi who's since left Tokyo for Kyoto for a few days. She actually bought an iPhone _during_ the quake, or just as it was settling. She was in Shinjuku about to start collecting for an appeal her organisation is running for the Christchurch earthquake. She said her first though was to call home but she new phones go out, so she walked into the store while the dust was still settling, handed a wide-eyed clerk her 5 man (50 000 yen) and was Skyping her mum inside 30 minutes. 'Nuff said.
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@peter I share your envy. i was carrying a crappy nokia classic that was second hand when Andrew Saville took it to the Beijing Olympics (remember to delete your texts when you hand on a phone is all i'm saying). My crappy dust-filled nokia seems to die at increasingly inconvient times while my cameraman's iPhone2 with a Uk sim kept marching. It was our lifeline.
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Channelling Grandad
My grandfather, bless him, used to answer any mystery telling us "the Chinaman did it".
"Who?" we'd ask. "Yes that's him" he'd reply.
Rather more recently, I interviewed Benji Marshall a couple of seasons back, after a leg injury sustained playing the Dragons.
I was suggesting it was bad luck following his many shoulder injuries. As Benji put it..."I must have killed a Chinaman or something, I don't know if I've broken any mirrors, someone's probably got one of them voodoo dolls stabbing me in the leg now, they used to stab me in the shoulder now they're getting me in the leg".
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I was working in Sydney when Malcolm Turnbull announced (as Environment Minister in the Howard government) that incandescent bulbs were to be phased out and banned from some date in 2009.
There was ZERO agitation - well, none that broke above the line to someone who spent a good portion of his day from 6am scanning every Aussie news website, tv bulletin and as much takback as one can stand driving to jobs.
Returning to NZ just prior to the election to hear banning bulbs was a nanny-state call felt like stepping into a playground and hearing people demanding the right for their kids not to slip slop and slap to avoid melanoma. Boneheaded and kind of scarily trivial.
They may be obsessed with NRl and even more arcane ballsports, but the ockers definitely demostrate a more level attitude to these kinds of small-scale initiatives to cut emissions and save a few quid too.