Posts by Kiwiiano

World+Dog don't care about climate change, never have done

Where do you get those ideas from Mike?

You haven't been watching Faux news again have you? Your claims are simply WRONG!

Scientists don't model our contribution to climate change, they measure it. They know how much coal oil and gas is burnt (30 billion tonnes per year) and they know how fast the atmospheric CO2 and other green house gases are rising. They then measure the different isotopes of carbon in the CO2.... carbon coming from fossil fuels is different from that derived fromliving or recently dead plants and animals.

It's also WRONG to claim global warming has stopped. Atmospheric temperature rises have slowed for the last decade or so because of successive La Ninas and a couple of big volcanic eruptions that tend to lower temperatures, but atmospheric temperature is only just over 2% of the planet. The oceans for a start hold 93% and their temperature has continued to creep upward as predicted.

It's also WRONG to claim natural gas is environmentally sound. It's just not as bad as coal or shale oil. It's still a fossil fuel and every tonne burnt still puts more CO2 into the atmosphere. Worst still is the unburnt components of natural gas that are stronger green house gases than CO2.

What would be good would be for subsidies to be taken off the fossil fuel industries and diverted to finding alternatives. Breakthroughs in solar electricity generation are coming all the time and there are many ways to avoid using fossil carbon. We will have to eventually, lets do it before we wreck the planet.

Energy crisis over - for 250 years?

Meanwhile....

....the atmosphere CO2 levels today are already higher than they have for 25 million years, when average temperatures were 3-5°C above today's & oceans were 20-35m higher. The oceans are also acidifying 10x faster than the mass marine extinction 55 million years ago.

If we continue burning fossil fuels at our current rate we're staring down the muzzle of a 16°C average temperature rise.

Would you want your grandchildren to live in a world like that? Or try to...

Men at Work swiped Down Under riff

Ask a kookaburra

I'm surprised the lawyers for Men at Work didn't point out that both of the composers are 'plagerising' the bird's song.

I've heard blackbirds here in NZ doing a pretty good imitation of John Lennon's "Blackbird singing in the dead of night".

Boffins: Stop trying to monetise us, you don't know how

Been there...

If they want to know how disastrous profit driven science can be, they need only to check the New Zealand experience. We've been stuck with it for the last decade or so. Countless years of filling out funding applications fully aware that only 10-20% will be granted, funds cut off just before fruition, the best brains heading off overseas, the links between agriculture, industry and science allowed to wither, etc, etc.

The classic example of bureaucracy trying to second-guess where the future profits might lie was with a local project to mechanise the pollination of kiwifruit vines, that was working but needed refinement. Canned just before completion about the same time the varroa bee mite invaded NZ.

Any uses for an old Mac G4?

Huh?

You don't say what speed it is, but if it's over 800MHz or thereabouts, it will give sterling service with Leopard for years yet, esp with a new battery.

And contrary to popular misconception, it won't burst into flames al la Mission Highly Improbable the moment Snow Leopard is released.

I would cheerfully give it space in my workshop as a print server and occasional email & web access Mac. Alas, I'm on the opposite side of the planet. I'm sure there are plenty of folk over there who can use a simple computer.

USAF raygun boffins clocking planet-buster asteroid threats

Oh sheeesh

Humanity is sitting on the railroad track worrying desperately about being hit by a meteorite when the climate scientists are bending over listening to the rails saying "I'm pretty sure we have a problem here".

James M: it's a near miss as opposed to a far miss.

EU slaughterhouses may get animal welfare officers

Easy does it

I gather some European abattoirs are onto it, but here in New Zealand most go to considerable lengths to keep animals calm before slaughtering, to minimise the adrenaline that demonstrably toughens the meat. A friend who was Production Manager for one of our major meat companies confirmed that there's a good market for meat that isn't tough!

Panasonic shows world's smallest DLSR

Being precious?

A rose by any other name would prick as deep. OK, so it's not strictly speaking an SLR, but for practical purposes it's as near as dammit. A step up from the FZ series that perform just fine within their limitations.

Someone tell James that the G1 doesn't change the ISO speed to freeze the wildebeesties, it has a moving element within the lens. At least the switch to activate the image stabiliser is on the lenses.

What is totally cool from my view is the side-mounted flip and twist screen. A very useful feature only available otherwise on the Olympus E2(?)

Asus readies iMac attack with all-in-one Eee

Plastic base?

Mike R: my guess is the curved plastic base is something to do with redirecting the sound from the Denon speakers. I used to have a little Panasonic TV with side speakers that always sounded naff until I stood a book on edge at a 45° angle from the speakers to reflect the sound forward. This looks similar.

I reckon I could live with this design, but I would be much happier if it could run OSX. Time will tell.

The best external hard drive for Apple's Time Machine?

My choice...

I've got a Western Digital something or other inside a 2.5" Welland USB/SATA case that works just fine as my MacBook Time Machine, EXCEPT that it negates the whole point of a laptop. It's a pain to have to plug it in, unplug it, plug it in.......

One option would be a Dock with space for a a built-in drive, but I doubt it exists yet and it would add to the weight being lugged around.

The real answer is the Time Capsule. Not cheap, but oh so convenient.

Email pen concept does away with keyboards

Newton?

They may have had problems intitially, but I gather the later models were issued to Doctors for case-note taking while on ward rounds. Successfully.

Plague: The new Black Death

Spreading plague

Doesn't pneumonic plague start spreading by coughing and sneezing droplets, without the flea vector? Hence the children's song "Ring a ring of rosies (the rash) a pocket full of posies (bunches of herbs to ward off the plague) attishoo, attishoo, we all fall down"

And our tradition of saying "bless you" when someone sneezes, in case they are coming down with the plague.

I'd always believed that the Black Death referred to the haemorrhagic phase of the disease, when the subcutaneous bleeding left the dying patient with massive bruising.