It's not that i'm a real motor-mouth, just that when i get started, i switch from topic to topic until i run out of steam, or i notice my audience getting a little restive.
I need to get out of the house at least every couple of days, or i go stir-crazy (or lie in bed feeding my face).
Even if all i do is have a coffee in some public place like a cafe (or the Vehicle Testing Station, where my car got its latest Warrant of Fitness without a hitch - surprise, surprise!),
read a zine, or earwig sometimes (but i completely forget the topic of conversation unless it's something on which i could've voiced an opinion, then i remember what i Would Have Said..), tho if it's personal to someone i quickly lose interest - can't be doing with gossip - boring boring..
Dear Helium!!
It looks like you're not too long for this world - well, this earth actually, according to an article in "New Scientist" magazine - projections have you gone by 2030.
I'm really surprised you're here at all, coz you're lighter than air, & should've been all gone millions of years ago, but there have been underground reserves, & the US has kept a national helium reserve since 1925, one billion cubic metres (1 000 000 000m3) at a recent count, until a 1996 US Congress ordered that it all be hocked off by 2015 - Duh!.
What part of 'irreplaceable resource' did they not understand?
Who was US President then? I can't remember, off the top of my head..
(Can't be bothered finding out, either, easy tho it is with the WFSE)
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Monday, August 23, 2010
I luv the funny little WotWots.. & Radio New Zealand Concert
"The WotWots" run daily on TVNZ's morning children's session on TV2, & they're cute & so funny! Two little aliens, DottyWot & her brother SpottyWot have landed (been stranded in?) their steampunk spaceship in what looks like Auckland zoo. Their steampunk hoverchairs run on fruit juice & every new day we get get to check in & ask them about their explorations & any new animals they find via their Sneak-a-Peek periscope..
Yesterday's 'Composer of the Week' on Radio New Zealand Concert talked about Estonian musician Arvo Part. I'm so pleased to hear more of him than 'Fratres' & 'Spiegel im Spiegel', because they're only part of his musical style. TG 4 RNZ Concert - i wake up @ some ridiculous hour & there's a good chance that their all-night program (thank you, 6-CD auto-changer, 4 making it economically possible) will have something i really like -Pascal Roge's fabulous performance of Ravel's Piano Concerto for Left Hand or Mahler's Ruckert songs (i'm a sucker for mezzos & contraltos - i first heard the great Kathleen Ferrier @ a little party 20 years ago; just blew me away!), Dvorak's Slavonic Dances or 'New World' Symphony (yay Mariss Jansons), Bartok's Music for Strings Percussion & Celesta, Borodin, Prokofiev, Debussy, Haydn, de Falla, Granados, Mozart. Beethoven, Bach, Sibelius, you-name-it..
Hehehe - one of my IT lecturers once joked that he had only to mention Shostakovich in the staff-room to kill a conversation stone-dead..
I'll listen to anything good: jazz, classical, rock, country, techno (& its 'classical' cousin minimalism - cf. Kraftwerk & John Adams or Steve Reich), even heavy metal (but only in places with a good - loud - sound system)..
Yesterday's 'Composer of the Week' on Radio New Zealand Concert talked about Estonian musician Arvo Part. I'm so pleased to hear more of him than 'Fratres' & 'Spiegel im Spiegel', because they're only part of his musical style. TG 4 RNZ Concert - i wake up @ some ridiculous hour & there's a good chance that their all-night program (thank you, 6-CD auto-changer, 4 making it economically possible) will have something i really like -Pascal Roge's fabulous performance of Ravel's Piano Concerto for Left Hand or Mahler's Ruckert songs (i'm a sucker for mezzos & contraltos - i first heard the great Kathleen Ferrier @ a little party 20 years ago; just blew me away!), Dvorak's Slavonic Dances or 'New World' Symphony (yay Mariss Jansons), Bartok's Music for Strings Percussion & Celesta, Borodin, Prokofiev, Debussy, Haydn, de Falla, Granados, Mozart. Beethoven, Bach, Sibelius, you-name-it..
Hehehe - one of my IT lecturers once joked that he had only to mention Shostakovich in the staff-room to kill a conversation stone-dead..
I'll listen to anything good: jazz, classical, rock, country, techno (& its 'classical' cousin minimalism - cf. Kraftwerk & John Adams or Steve Reich), even heavy metal (but only in places with a good - loud - sound system)..
Thursday, August 19, 2010
You're a long time dead..
With mildly childish glee, i watched the bright headlight on the horizon, at idiot-o'clock this morning, & slowed, & even stopped, to time my run under the Sawyers Bay railway over-bridge just when the locomotive thundered overhead, with its train of container wagons..
To the tune of a JS Bach cantata, or some such..
Looked out this morning, feeling tired & mildly head-achy, & the sun was shining!
"Get up you lazy cow! Got a headache? Take some paracetamol.. Hungry? Eat something go & see the debt collector people today & get it over with.."
So i did. They were quite nice. They actually meant what they said when they wrote 'cash, cheque, or credit card'. No EftPos. Never mind..
A lot better than the the private health insurer who said to my late best friend Amanda 'cash or credit?'
'Cash' says Amanda, & fronts up with $600 in folding stuff.
'Oh we can't handle cash. Besides, we haven't made up the invoice yet.'
Amanda was already beside herself with worry - her partner's tracheoscopy (oesophagoscopy? -to the stomach, not the lungs) had revealed no sign of the (hoped-for) stomach ulcer, & dreaded thoughts of something far worse distracted her so much she left her wallet on top of the car as we headed for home.
It took her too long to register our cries of 'Stop, stop!' as i briefly glimpsed something flick past the rear window.
By the time we did stop, a cyclist behind us had picked up the wallet, done a u-turn straight across the (rather wide) road, knowing we couldn't follow quickly, & disappeared down a side street.
A couple of weeks later, her partner was diagnosed with inoperable pancreatic cancer.
That was at the beginning of October 2003.
Her partner died three days before Christmas..
To the tune of a JS Bach cantata, or some such..
Looked out this morning, feeling tired & mildly head-achy, & the sun was shining!
"Get up you lazy cow! Got a headache? Take some paracetamol.. Hungry? Eat something go & see the debt collector people today & get it over with.."
So i did. They were quite nice. They actually meant what they said when they wrote 'cash, cheque, or credit card'. No EftPos. Never mind..
A lot better than the the private health insurer who said to my late best friend Amanda 'cash or credit?'
'Cash' says Amanda, & fronts up with $600 in folding stuff.
'Oh we can't handle cash. Besides, we haven't made up the invoice yet.'
Amanda was already beside herself with worry - her partner's tracheoscopy (oesophagoscopy? -to the stomach, not the lungs) had revealed no sign of the (hoped-for) stomach ulcer, & dreaded thoughts of something far worse distracted her so much she left her wallet on top of the car as we headed for home.
It took her too long to register our cries of 'Stop, stop!' as i briefly glimpsed something flick past the rear window.
By the time we did stop, a cyclist behind us had picked up the wallet, done a u-turn straight across the (rather wide) road, knowing we couldn't follow quickly, & disappeared down a side street.
A couple of weeks later, her partner was diagnosed with inoperable pancreatic cancer.
That was at the beginning of October 2003.
Her partner died three days before Christmas..
More articulate protest needed..
Hell's Bells & Buggy Wheels, do we ever need more articulate & well-publicized protest against the creeping 'devil-take-the-hindmost' ideology drip-feeding into the National-led government's veins!
Not that it wasn't there in the first place, but it flares up whenever society's immune response drops off a bit. It's not so much "Bugger you Jack, I'm OK" as "Bugger you Jack, why can't you be more like me?"
The impetus for this mini-rant is..
I've not long read Anne Else's piece on the government's Welfare Working Group, and it's even more depressing than I'd thought. It was bad enough watching the almost criminal naivety of some of Treasury's denizens in the movie "Someone Else's Country" (or was it the successor movie), but the WWG really takes the cake!
And as Anne Else points out, the devil is in the lack of details, with the WWG simply ignoring the issues fundamental to the 'welfare problem' by saying that it wasn't in their terms of reference.
Good old Ts of R! Whenever you want a forgone conclusion, just grope around under the skirts of your Ts of R; you'll be AOK, mate!
Reminds me of W H Auden's "Ogre" piece on the occasion of the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.
He has quite a few interesting things to say..
It's taken me years to figure out why all the pollie-blather about
"improving this country's economic performance" is just hot air.
Our overseas currency-earning commodity exporters still dominate the economic landscape here.
Almost by definition, commodity producers are price-takers, with two glaring exceptions: oil, and the US dollar in which most (if not all?) oil markets are denominated (and even that's not rock-solid any more).
Price-takers can improve their overall income only by lowering their "overheads", e.g.. wages, taxes, import duties of all kinds, and materials and energy inputs.
Low wages run with high unemployment;
lower taxes mean less Health and Welfare spending (two big-ticket items of government expenditure), to say nothing of Superannuation;
lower import duties mean import-substitution industries (providers of employment) die in the face of sweated-labour imports;
cheap energy means the rest of us pay more for our power.
Strangely enough, the proponents of that grim hit-list are often very vocal about "Law and Order", and say they are prepared to spend big on it, more prisons, harsher punishments.. they're a logical consequence of that same hit-list.
Makes sense, I suppose.. Someone somewhere will have done their sums and decided that it's cheaper and less bothersome to make the legal process their enforcer rather than their potential adversary.
Not that it wasn't there in the first place, but it flares up whenever society's immune response drops off a bit. It's not so much "Bugger you Jack, I'm OK" as "Bugger you Jack, why can't you be more like me?"
The impetus for this mini-rant is..
I've not long read Anne Else's piece on the government's Welfare Working Group, and it's even more depressing than I'd thought. It was bad enough watching the almost criminal naivety of some of Treasury's denizens in the movie "Someone Else's Country" (or was it the successor movie), but the WWG really takes the cake!
And as Anne Else points out, the devil is in the lack of details, with the WWG simply ignoring the issues fundamental to the 'welfare problem' by saying that it wasn't in their terms of reference.
Good old Ts of R! Whenever you want a forgone conclusion, just grope around under the skirts of your Ts of R; you'll be AOK, mate!
Reminds me of W H Auden's "Ogre" piece on the occasion of the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.
He has quite a few interesting things to say..
It's taken me years to figure out why all the pollie-blather about
"improving this country's economic performance" is just hot air.
Our overseas currency-earning commodity exporters still dominate the economic landscape here.
Almost by definition, commodity producers are price-takers, with two glaring exceptions: oil, and the US dollar in which most (if not all?) oil markets are denominated (and even that's not rock-solid any more).
Price-takers can improve their overall income only by lowering their "overheads", e.g.. wages, taxes, import duties of all kinds, and materials and energy inputs.
Low wages run with high unemployment;
lower taxes mean less Health and Welfare spending (two big-ticket items of government expenditure), to say nothing of Superannuation;
lower import duties mean import-substitution industries (providers of employment) die in the face of sweated-labour imports;
cheap energy means the rest of us pay more for our power.
Strangely enough, the proponents of that grim hit-list are often very vocal about "Law and Order", and say they are prepared to spend big on it, more prisons, harsher punishments.. they're a logical consequence of that same hit-list.
Makes sense, I suppose.. Someone somewhere will have done their sums and decided that it's cheaper and less bothersome to make the legal process their enforcer rather than their potential adversary.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Hey 'chameleon' car, we can't see you..
Good to see the Automobile Association having a go at 'chameleon' cars in dodgy weather conditions.
I've been driving with my headlights on (even in daylight!) for years now; my theory is:
"i want Dumb & Dumber to see me before i have to avoid them!".
So when i was on the road from Port Chalmers to Dunedin last week, dodgy visibility - the kind of gray, drizzly weather in Dunedin that Jafas complain about - i took a little note of the cars i saw with their headlights
off .
And there seemed to be a lot of gray cars, which is weird really, because they're harder to see than most. What is it with the owners of gray cars? Do they want to be like the chameleon, as the AA suggests, & blend into the road? 'Cause if they do, they'll do more than 'blend' into the road if one one of those log-trucks (which are often lit up like xmas trees) fails to notice them making a right-hand turn across its path, or even anyone else really..
My other whinge is about drivers who don't know the rules for turning into multi-lane roads. I sit patiently behind the guy 'dutifully' giving way to traffic turning right into a multi-lane - i know he's got the wrong idea - but the drivers who really get my goat barge across two or three lanes to get to one they want, & go berko if you assert your 'rights' to turn into the lane on your immediate left..
Mr blue 'beamer' with the "I1" plates (years ago now, when i was driving an old olive-green dunga of a Morris Marina wagon), you know who you are: flashing your lights & blaring your horn at me because i didn't (have to) 'give way' to you.
You got really upset, but i just thought "Go on, hit me, i'll call the cops & your insurance company won't be too impressed either"..
That's my wee rant for the day.
I've been driving with my headlights on (even in daylight!) for years now; my theory is:
"i want Dumb & Dumber to see me before i have to avoid them!".
So when i was on the road from Port Chalmers to Dunedin last week, dodgy visibility - the kind of gray, drizzly weather in Dunedin that Jafas complain about - i took a little note of the cars i saw with their headlights
off .
And there seemed to be a lot of gray cars, which is weird really, because they're harder to see than most. What is it with the owners of gray cars? Do they want to be like the chameleon, as the AA suggests, & blend into the road? 'Cause if they do, they'll do more than 'blend' into the road if one one of those log-trucks (which are often lit up like xmas trees) fails to notice them making a right-hand turn across its path, or even anyone else really..
My other whinge is about drivers who don't know the rules for turning into multi-lane roads. I sit patiently behind the guy 'dutifully' giving way to traffic turning right into a multi-lane - i know he's got the wrong idea - but the drivers who really get my goat barge across two or three lanes to get to one they want, & go berko if you assert your 'rights' to turn into the lane on your immediate left..
Mr blue 'beamer' with the "I1" plates (years ago now, when i was driving an old olive-green dunga of a Morris Marina wagon), you know who you are: flashing your lights & blaring your horn at me because i didn't (have to) 'give way' to you.
You got really upset, but i just thought "Go on, hit me, i'll call the cops & your insurance company won't be too impressed either"..
That's my wee rant for the day.
Monday, August 9, 2010
Here we go again..
Out comes the old mantra about "Welfare Dependency"!
Certain ignorant elements of society can't seem to get enough the of 'beneficiary-bashing' kick.
According to these 'experts', beneficiaries are 'locked into welfare dependency' [sigh..!]
Can't these twits get it right??
They seem to have a built-in ability to get things a**e-about-face'!
Beneficiaries are NOT locked INTO 'welfare dependency',
they're locked OUT OF just about everything else except jail,
& the above twits would be more than happy to lock more of them in there, too.
Chaotic home lives & our chronic unemployment hangover lock them
*out of educational progress,
*out of decent housing,
*out of even halfway decent employment,
*out of any redress for getting laid off/fired inside 90 days,
*out of the belief that there's any rhyme or reason for their position,
*out of any career path that would see them on a par with their middle-class critics
(who seldom have even the faintest idea of how the other half lives),
.. i could go on..
Someone whose life has more or less run on rails
(& has been able to put major effort into their journey)
is most unlikely to understand someone else whose life-path
is more like an obstacle course littered with hostile influences
& in some cases thoroughly hostile people.
I don't know if some mothers feed their kids take-aways because food kept in the house is merely a target for the neighbourhood's feral males, but i wouldn't be surprised. Ditto for growing your own vegies, advocated by some Treasury ning-nong at the start of Rogernomics, or Ruthanasia or Jennycide, i forget which.. The bare backyards of some state-housing estates are a defence against theft more than anything else - anything left outside grows legs & disappears!
Lots of this kind of stuff has already been high-lighted in the past, but somehow short-term memory seems widespread among certain sections of society.
Either that, or they're trying really hard to peddle the same old rubbish in the hope that the rest of us are stupid.
Certain ignorant elements of society can't seem to get enough the of 'beneficiary-bashing' kick.
According to these 'experts', beneficiaries are 'locked into welfare dependency' [sigh..!]
Can't these twits get it right??
They seem to have a built-in ability to get things a**e-about-face'!
Beneficiaries are NOT locked INTO 'welfare dependency',
they're locked OUT OF just about everything else except jail,
& the above twits would be more than happy to lock more of them in there, too.
Chaotic home lives & our chronic unemployment hangover lock them
*out of educational progress,
*out of decent housing,
*out of even halfway decent employment,
*out of any redress for getting laid off/fired inside 90 days,
*out of the belief that there's any rhyme or reason for their position,
*out of any career path that would see them on a par with their middle-class critics
(who seldom have even the faintest idea of how the other half lives),
.. i could go on..
Someone whose life has more or less run on rails
(& has been able to put major effort into their journey)
is most unlikely to understand someone else whose life-path
is more like an obstacle course littered with hostile influences
& in some cases thoroughly hostile people.
I don't know if some mothers feed their kids take-aways because food kept in the house is merely a target for the neighbourhood's feral males, but i wouldn't be surprised. Ditto for growing your own vegies, advocated by some Treasury ning-nong at the start of Rogernomics, or Ruthanasia or Jennycide, i forget which.. The bare backyards of some state-housing estates are a defence against theft more than anything else - anything left outside grows legs & disappears!
Lots of this kind of stuff has already been high-lighted in the past, but somehow short-term memory seems widespread among certain sections of society.
Either that, or they're trying really hard to peddle the same old rubbish in the hope that the rest of us are stupid.
"Zero Time Space"
The title of a book by two German scientists, Gunter Nimtz & Astrid Haibel.
Basically, about quantum mechanics & some very weird (well QM is weird - weird is normal in QM!) stuff about superluminal velocity (i.e. faster-than-light speed) stuff.
Doesn't (can't) happen in free space but you get things like quantum tunneling (i think i've got that right), which has been exploited in the semi-conductor tunnel-diode for decades (invented in 1957!, by Leo Esaki
when he was working for what is now Sony), which behaves a bit like a Gunn diode in that it has a "negative differential resistance" section in its Voltage-Current characteristic curve..
The authors go thru some very strange behaviour of light, and they also mention the Casimir effect.
However, sci-fi & sci-fan fans, prepare to be disappointed!
Cause still has to precede Effect & you can't travel back in time (& kill Adolf Hitler or whatever).
And while it is technically possible to traverse a worm-hole,
the amount of energy needed is absolutely gargantuan!!
Never mind, i'm not worried, the Universe is quite strange enough for me.
People sometimes ask me if i get lonely or bored (i live on my own)..
Nope. Not at all.
Basically, about quantum mechanics & some very weird (well QM is weird - weird is normal in QM!) stuff about superluminal velocity (i.e. faster-than-light speed) stuff.
Doesn't (can't) happen in free space but you get things like quantum tunneling (i think i've got that right), which has been exploited in the semi-conductor tunnel-diode for decades (invented in 1957!, by Leo Esaki
when he was working for what is now Sony), which behaves a bit like a Gunn diode in that it has a "negative differential resistance" section in its Voltage-Current characteristic curve..
The authors go thru some very strange behaviour of light, and they also mention the Casimir effect.
However, sci-fi & sci-fan fans, prepare to be disappointed!
Cause still has to precede Effect & you can't travel back in time (& kill Adolf Hitler or whatever).
And while it is technically possible to traverse a worm-hole,
the amount of energy needed is absolutely gargantuan!!
Never mind, i'm not worried, the Universe is quite strange enough for me.
People sometimes ask me if i get lonely or bored (i live on my own)..
Nope. Not at all.
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