I've been a journal writer and a blogger for several years - on and off. I've also published articles in 'real' newspapers and magazines, and am working on doing more publishing in the e world.
Made a short visit today, to the new Chinese Garden here in Dunedin. Its only been open officially for a week or two, but already theres had to be some repair work. When you go in there are a number of little stands with nothing on them. Seems that there were tabletops on these, but some child stood on one, tipped it over and broke it. So there are no tabletops at all, at present.
Probably the childs parents were paying more attention to their playstation 3 (or some more portable toy) than to the child.
That problem apart, the Garden is lovely and quite different to what I expected. (Maybe I had a Japanese garden in mind!). Its perhaps more austere than I expected, but I think that may be because the foliage is still in quite early stages. Once its all grown up around the rocks and walls and so on, itll look better.
Though the rocks have a feeling of having been there for years, its an illusion. Give them another year of weathering and small children climbing over them and theyll have some real aging. And a few more goldfish wont go amiss. No doubt the goldfish themselves will attend to that, if some large birds dont get to them first.
The Garden isnt huge you could walk around it in a few minutes but the vistas in any direction are lovely. Theres an immense amount of detail, and you keep discovering things every time you glance at a different angle. No wonder they were so long working on it.
Weve bought ourselves a season ticket (slightly less than the price of two full price tickets combined) so well go back when things have had a bit more time to grow. And when the sun is shining.
I came across this crazy video on a blog belonging to someone who calls herself simply, Mom. She wrote a comment on one of my posts yesterday, so I checked out her blog....as you do. It goes by the name of Family Adams Magazine - and she has a couple of review posts of M Night Shyamalan's latest movie, The Happening - with spoilers. So don't read these if you're intending to catch up with the movie at some point.
But more recently than those reviews, she's posted the video I was talking about. It's sung throughout to the tune of The Times They Are a-Changing, and the words are subtitled at the bottom in case you miss any of the subtleties.
It's cleverly done, quite witty and doesn't let anyone off the hook. At the end it tells you how you can make a similar video by going to JibJab.com. JibJab seems to specialise in pre-made videos that allow you to substitute your own face/head for the one that's already there. And then, using the old Monty Python technique of dropping the jaw of the face, they make it look like you're singing - in a loose sort of way. You don't even need the IQ of an airhead to do it (that's IQAir for short)
An request in Slashdot for some ideas for a TED conference elicited some snide comments, some helpful ones, and some that looked at items that dont encourage well-off people to spend more money on toys or diet pills, but rather offer help to people in Third World situations.
I cant tell you exactly who responded in this way, as people on Slashdot tend to use only usernames, but heres the list he or she came up with.
The rollable water container - a round thing that you can roll over to get water with, rather than carrying it on your back/arms/head
This is probably the Q-Drum, a round plastic drum with a hole through the centre that the handle fits in. Children can pull it along quite easily, thus saving strain on backs, arms and heads.
The little heater with an AA rechargeable battery in it for the fan, that you recharge at the local solar panel
Precise information about how this is done can be found here.
The huge and incredible mobile phone informal/illegal repair subculture in developing countries - such as putting 2 Sim(card)s in the same mobile with a simple switch mechanism.
I dont fully understand the point of this, but its obviously big-time already. Perhaps someone can explain it to me. Heres just one example.
The pot with sand in it, and a smaller pot inside, that uses the physical properties of wet
sand to create a refrigeration system for fruit and other perishables at markets
You can read the full story about this invention by Nigerian teacher Mohammed Bah Abba here. Basically he used an ages old technique and refined it.
The solar furnace - a curved mirror or reflective sheet with a black pot in the middle.
Heres some info about this:
Although power towers can reach high temperatures, solar furnaces are able to get even hotter. They collect energy over a wide area, and focus it on a single spot. Some scientific experiments can be affected by the impurity of the fuel used to heat them, Solar furnaces are ideal for such experiments, because the Sun's energy is pure.
The best known solar furnace is at Odeilo in France. Curved mirrors cover the whole of one side of a ten storey building to form one large mirror, which focuses the Sun's rays on to an area of less than one square metre. 11000 flat mirrors on the opposite hillside follow the Sun and reflect its rays on to the large curved mirror. A tower in front of this larger mirror houses the target area, at the focus of all the rays, where temperatures can reach 33000 degrees Celsius.
The Indian project to use harvested stomach bacteria to process recycled food into gas for cooking.
I was working on the Internet the other night when various sites became unavailable. One or two stuck with me, but after I closed the browser down, I couldn't get anything to load up again
Ive just been reading an article by Muriel Newman in which she points out that Nicky Hager, who was part and parcel of the downfall of the former Opposition Leader, Don Brash, has never been charged in any way with receiving stolen emails emails that belonged to Mr Brash and which appear to have been hacked into by someone within Parliament itself
Rather amazingly I was alerted to a video about Australians invading New Zealand by the Prodigal Kiwi(s) Blog, which usually writes about stuff related to Christianity. I mean, the last several posts have been on such topics as Pope Benedicts visit to Oz and the best of the biographies of the man; Faith; Alan Jamieson talking about his recent book, Chrysalis and the way it looks at Christians who, for one reason or another, no longer go to church; and St Brendan.
Apparently on a talk show in Oz, they proposed that a couple of ad agencies should do a short video promoting a reason for Australia to invade NZ. The two agencies came up with quite different approaches, both of them very well done and funny. (Australians being funny? Yeah, I know its hard to believe
I had reason to come across the site, isthisyourname.com, again tonight, and thought, after having checked out the name that came up, it might be interesting to see what results I got by putting my name in.
Of course the stuff that comes up is really pretty ridiculous - like, do I need to know what my name is in ASCII binary? Probably not
This should really have gone on my other blog, WorkReport, since that usually talks about things green, but I put it on here by mistake and couldn't be bothered to shift it again.
The only person Ive known with the surname of Pickens was the actor Slim Pickens (perhaps most famous for riding a nuclear warhead at the end of Dr Strangelove). Im not sure if T Boone Pickens is any relation, but he sure talks in the same way
If you dont know what Fenphedra is, youre not alone. Ive never heard of it till just now, and that was only because it was pointed out to me by another site and I got curious. Not because I want a diet tablet to take (I dont) but because it seems to me that all these diet pills are the same, essentially. They mix up a bunch of chemicals and let them loose on the unsuspecting public.
Hullo, Ruby, for some reason I didnt catch up on this comment until today. So I havent been ignoring you on purpose!
Thanks for updating me on your background; its interesting to hear you say that you converted to Christianity but stopped being a Christian within a couple of years. Thats not very long to have given Christianity a chance.
And its interesting to hear that you were brought up as a Muslim. My general impression of the way Muslim women are treated is that theyre worse off than Christian women. But then it may depend on where you were brought up.
I note that the link you give isnt to the Survey itself but to a (fairly biased) commentary on it. One of its early paragraphs states: The general idea of the survey is bad news. The average of religious adherence in the entire world is 87%, and the average of theism is 92% - which is certainly higher than we were led to believe.
Because the writer believes that belief in a religion is bad news, therefore the survey is bad news. An odd conclusion. As for the section you quoted on negative correlation, the stats that the writer quotes dont actually bear out his statements. I hate when people use stats to prove something they dont prove.
I'm not saying that there are no educated people who consider themselves Christian. I am just saying that there is a negative co-relation between education and religious affiliation. From the Gallup International Millenium Survey:
My statements on female promiscuity should make you angry, but not for the reasons you suggest. Informed consent isnt the issue; its the after-effects of the promiscuous sexual behaviour thats the problem. If you can seriously tell me that a huge increase in sexually transmitted diseases is somehow good, Id be surprised. But STDs are definitely an enormous problem, and its because people are being so casual about their sexual behaviour. Its as if they dont really give a damn.
I think in part what the Bishop is saying is that since the 1960s sexual behaviour has lost its moral ground; people no longer care about having casual sex and the consequences of casual sex. The result is increased abortion, increased STDs, increased divorce, increased unmarried couples, increased separations, increased child abuse and much more. If youre prepared to live with all these, thats fine. But the Bishop isnt and neither am I. (Notice I dont blame it on women, but on people in general.)
Yup, my wife and I both grew up without a father around, and we determined, when we got married, that we would work through any issues rather than leave our children in the same boat. So far (34 years down the track) we've managed!
So which version of Firefox is this? It's sometimes a matter of what add-ons you've got. They can cause problems with programs on your computer - at least that's what I've heard. Worth checking them out.
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Comment by Mike Crowl
on Dont Preach about Censorship if you do not know anything about it (let alone spell it).
Webitz
Work Report