Posts by Matthew Poole
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
What I want to know is...when is the rest of the world going to get access to hulu. Or amazon video on demand. Or shows via the local itunes???
At such time as the copyright issues get resolved. Meaning, sometime between never and in a far-off distant future. Not that I'm cynical about the major TV labels and their negotiations or anything, but NZ regularly gets fucked over on screening foreign TV. I was absolutely stunned when episodes of Flashpoint were showing here that hadn't even made it onto the screen in the US. And it's made in Canada!
-
Answer between 50 and 60.
Or even fewer. Wasn't it 2007 that had 47 murders? That was good for a whole short article in Granny at the start of 2008, and then it got pushed under the carpet.
I had quite an argument with a couple of friends at the height of the last summer murder wave about how murder is a very low risk here. They were both convinced that murders were spiralling out of control, and that the country was killing itself at an increasing pace. Neither wanted to hear that, actually, our nominal murder count is pretty static and, as a result, the murder rate per capita is decreasing because the population is growing. The media does a spectacular job of under-reporting that particular fact. -
These "meddling do-gooders" sound like the types who think doing their bit for the environment is about slapping an 'I heart nature' sticker on the rear bumper of their Range Rovers/Porsche Cayennes/Ford Explorers.
haha. Love it. Not quite how I'd thought of it, but probably not far off. The kind of people who move to the country for the "peace and quiet" and then get uppity because their neighbour, who's a real farmer, is up at 4 in the morning with the quad and the dogs to get the herd to the shed for milking. They don't understand that life is different in the country, and think that they can mould it to be like life in the city only with different scenery.
-
That ad's genius. Has it been reported what they paid to get that to air during the Super Bowl? A full minute. That's gotta leave a mark in the quarterly report!
-
Fire has, in many parts of the world, been part of the natural order of things.
Controlling bush is a much more modern, and not particularly 'natural' concept.
By "controlling bush" I meant allowing fire to do its thing rather than attempting to preserve the "greenery", such as it is in a drought-stricken area. Controlled burns to keep uncontrolled burns at a distance from people. Farmers get that this is important and that the uncontrolled fire will come, whether or not you have controlled burns. Stopping it is impossible, so you just have to hold it as far away as is possible.
-
Also, It also appears that controlled burning, which clears ground material, would not have helped in this case.
So fuel reduction burning (which aims to reduce ground material) would not have stopped the spread of these fires through the canopy; but it should have reduced the chance of the fires igniting and moving to the canopy to begin with.
The second part of the sentence implies, and reasonably so, that the fires may well not have got to the point at which they race through the canopy had the ground loading been reduced. Constructing fire trails and other such "evils" also puts breaks into the path, helping to stop canopy fires.
-
The lobby against it has been more in the line of middle-class conservationists.
A state of affairs that would surprise me not in the slightest. Real conservationists understand that fire is part of the natural order. Since the human cost of allowing fire to burn in all its splendour is unthinkable, a la Victoria, letting the beast loose under controlled conditions is far preferable. But your average meddling do-gooder frequently has only a very slim grasp on all the details, and consequently does more harm than good. The unfortunate thing is that the average meddling do-gooder is often a far more appealing visitor to the office of their local MP than the neighbourhood greenie.
There's also the disconnect, as mentioned in other articles, between those who have moved to the land for the lifestyle and those who live on the land. Farmers know that fire is necessary, that bush must be controlled. Lifestylers want it to look pretty, and think that fire is bad because it does such things as we're currently seeing.
-
And on the topic of a totally different bunch of crusaders, an opinion piece in the SMH lays the blame for the death toll in Victoria squarely at the feet of the green lobby, and its absolutist stance against "prescribed burning". When you read things like In nearby St Andrews, where more than 20 people are believed to have died, surviving residents have spoken angrily of "greenies" who prevented them from cutting back trees near their property, including in one case, a tea tree that went "whoomp" it's hard not to agree that maybe the green lobby needs to be accorded a bit less heed at times.
-
It is not repeatable.
If only that were true. People said stuff like that after WW1. The US still has the power to smash the living crap out of anywhere and anyone they feel like
At this point, it really isn't. We've seen clearly that unless you can completely pacify a country in short order, you're there for the long haul. That severely diminishes the ability to project power into other areas. All the guided missiles and modern ground-attack aircraft in the world can't hold ground, or engage the enemy in cities without excessive civilian deaths (I know, I know, they're only rag-head camel jockeys, but some people do get upset if they die).
The US is already struggling to maintain its current deployments, and that's when they're not fighting a hot war. Trying to do another Iraq, without completely withdrawing from Iraq and giving troops time to recuperate, would be a total disaster.
-
Is it better then it was under Hussein? Just a little bit.
At which point under Hussein? The point when Iraqis had one of the highest literacy and higher-education rates in the world? Where workforce participation by women was normal and ordinary, rather than unusual and discouraged? Yeah, they're definitely better off.
Oh, and don't forget that their infant mortality rate has continued to climb post-invasion, despite having more than doubled (from 50/1000 to 108/1000) as a result of the sanctions after the Kuwait invasion. That's a really impressive sign, that is. "We'll kill you, and we'll kill your kids before they reach the age of five!"