Posts by Harry Musgrave
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Access: Being Inconvenient, in reply to Nick Russell,
Thw thought occurred to me that politicians in particular don't want to be seen as apologising too sincerely otherwise they run the risk of offending/annoying/outraging other people (most likely their supporters) as they would appear weak or toadying to political correctness or something.
I suspect that even if the politician in person was genuinely sorry, there is a certain political constraint in expressing that too fulsomey.
'None of which is any help at all to someone who is in fact genuinely outraged'. -
I had no idea that xkcd had mouseover text. There goes my morning!
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As I relatively mild asthma sufferer I did find myself in my teens and twenties getting into what the buteyko people called the drug trap. Every winter I'd get sick several times and it woulkd require more doses of ventolin to recover and bigger and bigger doses of the steroid drugs to keep stable. And all the steroids are not great for the immune system.
A number of things have co-incided for me to be drug free most of the time now
- a move away from the straight inhalers to the turbo inhalers. I found the drugs were impacting on the back of my throat and that this would be where I would get infections.
- lowering my base allergy sensitivity by removing a thing from my diet I didn't know I was allergic to.
- living in a relatively clean dust free home now (asthma was always much better when I was camping)
- increased aerobic capacity gained by exercise (walking/yoga) - I thought as a kid that exercise had to be 'strenuous' and that always had me out of breath
- and I did a buteyko course. I struggled a bit with the exercises but I did have one big takeaway from the course. Breathe through your nose - all the time. I had been breathing through my mouth pretty much all the time including while sleeping. Taping the mouth at night and concentrating on breathing with the mouth shut for a while turned it a habit suprisingly quickly.As the study says - my asthma isn't 'cured' - I still have crap peak flow - but my breath doesn't feel short so I'm happy with that.
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Polity: A hazy, intriguing crystal ball, in reply to Thomas Lumley,
For comparison to the 58% implied chance of National winning the 2017 election, iPredict only has a 62% implied chance of the 2016 Presidential election going to a Democrat. That doesn’t mean either election will be a cliffhanger – it’s quite likely in both cases that the winner will be clear six months out.
I can see it is likely the US election will have an obvious winner but I don't think the NZ election will. I think it's the nature of MMP (here anyway) that elections are always pretty close.
I don't think we've had a genuine old school clear winner in our MMP elections so far. The country as a whole (the part that votes wanyway) is fairly evenly split. Even when the big parties do really badly it results in big gains for other similar parties - United Future 10 (13?) years ago, NZ First last year. -
First, New Zealand has no credible bargaining chips on free trade. When we ask another country to make a concession, and they ask “or you’ll do what?,” we have no answer. That’s because New Zealand unilaterally dismantled most of its tariffs and other trade barriers in the 1990s, without asking for anything in return.
Well - I guess we could always threaten to add back in some trade restrictions..
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Up Front: Well, Read Women, in reply to Emma Hart,
I’ve always kind of loved Catharine Asaro. They’re basically a combination of romance novel and the kind of hard scifi that spends five pages explaining how Klein bottles work.
Eyah - she's great. She came to the NZ SF nat con a few years ago. She's an almost professional level dancer who became a physics professor, but want she really wanted to do was write... And thought - who says SF can't have romance?
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Up Front: Well, Read Women, in reply to TracyMac,
woman writers doing hardish sci/fi similar to Alaistair Reynolds or Neal Asher
There's Karen Traviss - whose wess'har series contrasts a powerful, matriachal alein species that take justice very seriously with a typical human corporate/military space expedition that includes a female British police superintendent who also takes justice very seriously....
Kristine Smith - maybe you could call it future syber punk.
In a fantasy vein I would also suggest Patricia McKillop, Robin McKinley and Rachel MacAvoy. Then there is Carrie Vaughn and C E Murphy for your more contemporary urban fantasy. -
Here in Onehunga - at the corner of Onehunga Mall and Arthur Street is a pop up store sellng the remains of the Marbecks stock. They keep threatening to close but were still open last weekend. I have literally spent hours in there and have come away with over 100 Cds. They're selling them at $5 each.
To continue the promotion they also have DVDs, t-shirts and posters (as well as trying to sell fixtures and fittings like power boards and cables. -
Hard News: Friday Music: Starting Early, in reply to Jonathan Ganley,
Wow - that was amazing...
I loved the drumming on it too with the very simple sounds used so effectively! -
Hard News: Friday Music: The First Time, in reply to philipmatthews,
I thought we might be having this discussion for some reason like that.
I took my oldest daughter to see Rihanna and Chris Brown when she was 12 or 13. Nowadays she goes to Taylor Swift with her friends (we still have to provide transport :))
Both the girls saw he Wiggles and Hi 5 when they were pretty young - which are arguably better than Justin Beiber (educational you know..)And of cause Julia took her first steps at a Music in Parks concert in Tahaki reserve when she was not much over 1!