It's been some time (OK, six months) since the last post, and pressure of work is as good an excuse as any to plead.
On the equipment front, the trusty but dusty D-Link DSL-500 has been tossed and a Billion 7500G wireless set-up substituted. With the addition of a work machine, we found ourselves with 3 Centrino laptops and lots of cables, so it was a natural choice. The selection process was aided by a marvellous Oz site which, together with the Whirlpool forums convinced me to steer well clear of Telecom's D-Link offering (the DSL-G604T+). The Billion worked out of the box, and I've added MAC address filtering plus port filtering to secure things. WEP and/or WPA to follow, but these are a bit trickier...
Another idealistic article recently in the NZ Listener from a writer who spends time in Quebec, about how golly gosh wunnerful it would be if we mandated a dual-language labelling regime here in Helengrad. I half-penned a letter to the editor, then realised, WFT, just do it here. Less constraints, more to the point, quicker. Here's the unbowdlerised version.
Barbara Burstyn's article on 'With language comes understanding', urges an enforced dual-language environment for New Zealand - English and Maori.
She bases her argument on the English/French admixture in Quebec. This will reap a rich harvest of unintended consequences if implemented.
Burstyn's comparison of English and French is instructive: both have common roots, and shared equally in the explosion of knowledge and the application thereof, that have provided us with our modern world. After all, the native speakers of each, are only 20 minutes now apart by EuroStar and half a day in a boat apart, for the rest of recorded history. One would be very surprised indeed if such close linguistic cousins were not able to co-exist in a mandated dual-language area.
But French and English are not at all like Maori and English. And Burstyn's choice of this particular pairing, obscures the issues.
To take the two most serious: the economic impact, glossed over in her article with the phrase 'importers and manufacturers of everything consumed..would be affected'. Let's think that one through. Every large supermarket carries around 20-30,000 SKU's. Every one of those would have to be dual-language labelled, and not just with a cosmetic transliteration: a heavy-duty, tested, completely up-to-date translation which would stand up to, for example, product liability legal challenges.
Supermarkets are a small fraction of the commercial environment.To use an analogy - suppose Melbourne (Australia, look on a map, around the same population size as the whole of NZ at say 4 million) had it's own native language. Let's call it Melburnian. What chance would it have, as a single city, of pursuading every supplier to supply Melburnian labels, workshop and training manuals, price lists, Web sites, credit card imprints, tram passes and street signs? Suppliers would simply decamp to Sydney, Brisbane or Perth and a thriving cross-state under-the-counter market in monolingual goods would rapidly ensue.
But by far the most damaging consequence of the enforced labelling regime would be for the Maori language itself. It's 'taonga' (treasure) status rests entirely on the fact that it is one of the very few pre-scientific and pre-literate languages to have survived alongside a global language. It has sufficient speakers and enough political wind pressure behind it to keep it alive in some form.
But to offer it up as a serious commercial partner to English in the manner suggested is daft. The Maori language is pure oratory, oral history, and essential if elemnetary survival knowledge. It is completely devoid of all Western scientific, engineering, mathematical and literature-based terms, concepts and context - elements which were themselves some 2,500 years in the making. It could not have been otherwise, and that is it's distinctiveness.
To attempt what Bursytn suggests would be to subject this survivor language to massive change. Just to translate, in legally acceptable terms, one line of the label before me on a bottle of milk: 'Calcium - 280mg per 200ml - 35% of the recommended daily intake' into Maori, is to require the importation of the Periodic Table, the metric system, and the mathematical concepts of fractions. And in their full sense, not just a 'William-to-Wiremu' makeover of word sounds without the concepts to underpin them. It is hard to imagine (something Burstyn seems to do a lot, in her article, BTW) that this would not fundamentally alter the Maori language by overwhelming it with neologisms and, in the truest sense of the word, 'foreign' concepts.
It is certainly possible to force such a change in the language, by mandating it and thus opening the valve to the flood of new terms, concepts, sounds, and their written equivalents. But it is certain that the Maori language which resulted from that process would bear very little resemblance to that existing now.
Somehow, I don't think that's what Burstyn imagined could happen.
But then, idealists rarely have to worry about the details. Wherein the devils reside.
Friday, October 15, 2004
Friday, April 30, 2004
Tribes Tripes Tropes
Richard Brookhiser has some pithy words about the difficult project of modernity. It would be nice to think that local advocates of 'da Tribe' should read them and pause. A little teaser:
"More and more, everyone in the world wants self-esteem; less and less, everyone gets it from the kinship group and village customs. For the missing extra jolt, they turn to totalist simplifying ideologies, or they begin the long slog into modernity."
It ain't easy being modern - all those choices! And it's very easy, as RB notes, to delegate the task to a 'simplifying ideology' - religion (think, Islam, where man is specifically regarded as unable to formulate new, let alone criticise existing, prescriptions), a State (think, Stalinist Russia or France), or a Tribe (you have a wide choice here, in NZ, some State subsidised). In all these cases, the burden of choice falls away.
Of course, it's a form of enslavement (something historically closer to many groups' actual practises than any would admit), a brake on innovation, and an economic dead end (read anything by Gareth Morgan). But it's a price that historically many or most have been willing to pay.
An aspect of the price is the group rituals which are needed to cement the 'us' against all 'others', which provide a certain surveillance to ensure that members do not develop seccessionist tendencies, which act to replace the ever-present danger of individual thought, and which provide a pleasing pattern or sequence to a day.
I have always had an aversion to these rituals without really knowing why - apart from the obvious anti-intellectual aspects. The ones that come closest to hooking me are the traditional church services we struck in England: but even there, the religion was a much watered-down version of high-church Anglican, and it was a visible triumph of faith over actuality for even the in-group participants. But certainly the pleasing rituals had a pull at the time.
As Jared Diamond notes in "Guns, Germs and Steel", one formative reason for religions is that they can regulate behaviours which cannot be left to chance - Hardin's 'tragedy of the commons' amongst them. By simply stipulating a prohibition, group outcomes are enhanced. Diamond's example is the prohibition on pig meat common to both Judaism and Islam: it solved a pressing issue in the newly-deforested and rapidly degrading Middle East of the time, as pigs' needs for forage in general and water in particular, competed directly with humans'. No eating them. No point in owning them. Problem solved.
But a growing issue is the reversion to tribal and religious thinking which accompanies the current exaltation of tribes in funny little NZ: a sort of mental irredentism. While the more risible forms (taniwha - monsters - which have impeded the planning for a major highway - you can't make this stuff up) can be dismissed, the underlying tendency towards 'magical thinking' is no laughing matter. Any abandonment of the intellect, in the sense of scientific thought, repeatedly demonstrable causes and effects and so on - is bound to undercut the very reasons for and energy of our current state of civilisation, however that's defined.
And this trend is not much better for art: which thrives at the edge of, or in the whirlpools between, great currents of thought. Ask yourself: how much good art over the past 300 years was produced by tribes, as opposed to by lonely outcasts, 'canaries in the coal mines' (as Kurt Vonnegut characterised the role of an artist), existential despair, war, love lost, alcohol and other chemical propellants, and some proportion at least, by individuals with certifiable mental illness?
Oh, there's that word again. Yes, Art is produced by Individuals. Hold that thought.
"More and more, everyone in the world wants self-esteem; less and less, everyone gets it from the kinship group and village customs. For the missing extra jolt, they turn to totalist simplifying ideologies, or they begin the long slog into modernity."
It ain't easy being modern - all those choices! And it's very easy, as RB notes, to delegate the task to a 'simplifying ideology' - religion (think, Islam, where man is specifically regarded as unable to formulate new, let alone criticise existing, prescriptions), a State (think, Stalinist Russia or France), or a Tribe (you have a wide choice here, in NZ, some State subsidised). In all these cases, the burden of choice falls away.
Of course, it's a form of enslavement (something historically closer to many groups' actual practises than any would admit), a brake on innovation, and an economic dead end (read anything by Gareth Morgan). But it's a price that historically many or most have been willing to pay.
An aspect of the price is the group rituals which are needed to cement the 'us' against all 'others', which provide a certain surveillance to ensure that members do not develop seccessionist tendencies, which act to replace the ever-present danger of individual thought, and which provide a pleasing pattern or sequence to a day.
I have always had an aversion to these rituals without really knowing why - apart from the obvious anti-intellectual aspects. The ones that come closest to hooking me are the traditional church services we struck in England: but even there, the religion was a much watered-down version of high-church Anglican, and it was a visible triumph of faith over actuality for even the in-group participants. But certainly the pleasing rituals had a pull at the time.
As Jared Diamond notes in "Guns, Germs and Steel", one formative reason for religions is that they can regulate behaviours which cannot be left to chance - Hardin's 'tragedy of the commons' amongst them. By simply stipulating a prohibition, group outcomes are enhanced. Diamond's example is the prohibition on pig meat common to both Judaism and Islam: it solved a pressing issue in the newly-deforested and rapidly degrading Middle East of the time, as pigs' needs for forage in general and water in particular, competed directly with humans'. No eating them. No point in owning them. Problem solved.
But a growing issue is the reversion to tribal and religious thinking which accompanies the current exaltation of tribes in funny little NZ: a sort of mental irredentism. While the more risible forms (taniwha - monsters - which have impeded the planning for a major highway - you can't make this stuff up) can be dismissed, the underlying tendency towards 'magical thinking' is no laughing matter. Any abandonment of the intellect, in the sense of scientific thought, repeatedly demonstrable causes and effects and so on - is bound to undercut the very reasons for and energy of our current state of civilisation, however that's defined.
And this trend is not much better for art: which thrives at the edge of, or in the whirlpools between, great currents of thought. Ask yourself: how much good art over the past 300 years was produced by tribes, as opposed to by lonely outcasts, 'canaries in the coal mines' (as Kurt Vonnegut characterised the role of an artist), existential despair, war, love lost, alcohol and other chemical propellants, and some proportion at least, by individuals with certifiable mental illness?
Oh, there's that word again. Yes, Art is produced by Individuals. Hold that thought.
Tuesday, April 27, 2004
Prepare for the worst?
Both Ralph Peters and David Warren - two old hands in the Middle Eastern game - seem rather pessimistic to say the least. Their basic intuition - no more than that, at present, is that we are seeing the first stages of an implosion of the entire Arab culture. The money quote from Peters:
"The Arab Middle East has become the world's first entirely parasitical culture; all it does is to imitate poorly, consume voraciously, spit hatred, export death and create nothing."
The whole area hasn't exactly been on my own travel destinations 'one-day' list, but if this goes all the way one of the consequences will be the sequestration of the whole mess. If, as other writers have argued (see, perhaps, Belmont Club) the terrorist is an entirely parasitical method of warfare, then a simple and quite reasonable response is to exercise far stronger border control and movement vetting. That's certainly absent in the EU now. See it while you can?
"The Arab Middle East has become the world's first entirely parasitical culture; all it does is to imitate poorly, consume voraciously, spit hatred, export death and create nothing."
The whole area hasn't exactly been on my own travel destinations 'one-day' list, but if this goes all the way one of the consequences will be the sequestration of the whole mess. If, as other writers have argued (see, perhaps, Belmont Club) the terrorist is an entirely parasitical method of warfare, then a simple and quite reasonable response is to exercise far stronger border control and movement vetting. That's certainly absent in the EU now. See it while you can?
Amusing Arabian Ablogger (had to make the alliteration work somehow)
Here's a guy will make you reconsider every stereotype you may have had. (And if you don't have stereotypes, how do you survive life in a crowded world?)
He's taking a big risk in doing what he's doing (think, a Luther but in 1510, not 1517) so the least we can do is read it all. And laugh a lot. My two favourites so far: (oh, the linky thing):
(It's a scene from an OBL play)..."I'm so s..s..sorry" howls Bin Laden, "I n...n...never meant to become a terrorist. I always wanted to b..b..become an Imam, but my IQ was over 30."
(On the rather inadequately developed Saudi execution as a satisfactory public spectacle).... "It’s magnified on a massive screen. There are endless replays from different angles. Then in slow motion. Two commentators, retired executioners, discuss the finer points of the swing. Sombre music plays as the corpse and head are removed. The lights dim. That’s it until the next time"
With a sense of humour like this, you just gotta love the guy.
He's taking a big risk in doing what he's doing (think, a Luther but in 1510, not 1517) so the least we can do is read it all. And laugh a lot. My two favourites so far: (oh, the linky thing):
(It's a scene from an OBL play)..."I'm so s..s..sorry" howls Bin Laden, "I n...n...never meant to become a terrorist. I always wanted to b..b..become an Imam, but my IQ was over 30."
(On the rather inadequately developed Saudi execution as a satisfactory public spectacle).... "It’s magnified on a massive screen. There are endless replays from different angles. Then in slow motion. Two commentators, retired executioners, discuss the finer points of the swing. Sombre music plays as the corpse and head are removed. The lights dim. That’s it until the next time"
With a sense of humour like this, you just gotta love the guy.
Monday, April 26, 2004
Oil for Fraud is big news now
The irrepressible Mark Steyn, whose articles are always amusingly written and capital-F Forthright, has a good piece in the Telegraph on the tangle of deceit that the Oil-for-Food humanitarian relief effort in Iraq quickly turned into. No quotes (although starving moppets do make another appearance) - just RTWT.
Friday, April 16, 2004
As irrelevant as New Zealand
This assessment from Michael Totten takes our little country as an example of the altered state of relationships between America and Europe. It's a view often heard from the other side of the ditch as well: that NZ is essentially a neutral, and a neutered one (in terms of defence spend) to boot. If we need defending, we'll have to contract it out.
Update: Wog thinks much the same. Sigh.
Not great for the old self-esteem, but this sort of clear-eyed, name-it-for-what-it-is analysis is what I go looking for in the blogosphere.
And another chiller: Heather MacDonald writes about the continuing failure to be able to 'connect the dots': the triumph of privacy rightists (from the right) and civil liberties protectors (from the left) in preventing the projects which would advance this capability. Talk about a Pyrrhic Victory......
Update: Wog thinks much the same. Sigh.
Not great for the old self-esteem, but this sort of clear-eyed, name-it-for-what-it-is analysis is what I go looking for in the blogosphere.
And another chiller: Heather MacDonald writes about the continuing failure to be able to 'connect the dots': the triumph of privacy rightists (from the right) and civil liberties protectors (from the left) in preventing the projects which would advance this capability. Talk about a Pyrrhic Victory......
Thursday, April 15, 2004
Oil for Fraud - UN to be implicated in massive scam
Looks like this is set to blow on April 22. The usual suspects - France (specifically, Chirac), UN officials, inspectors up and down the chain, and so on, are expected to be unequivocally linked. Sure explains France's efforts to keep Saddam rolling.
Are we surprised? Na. Chirac will go down in history as responsible for the nuclear reactor France provided to Iraq (the Osirak plant, known ever since the Israelis took it out in 1981, as the O'Chirac) plus the Oil-for-fraud palm-greasing (possibly quite literally...) that has, according to an investigator quoted in the article, the potential to be
"one of the world's most disgraceful scams" .
Read it all.
Are we surprised? Na. Chirac will go down in history as responsible for the nuclear reactor France provided to Iraq (the Osirak plant, known ever since the Israelis took it out in 1981, as the O'Chirac) plus the Oil-for-fraud palm-greasing (possibly quite literally...) that has, according to an investigator quoted in the article, the potential to be
"one of the world's most disgraceful scams" .
Read it all.
Wednesday, April 14, 2004
Iraq's first birthday
This little, heartfelt piece, from a so obviously different point of view, is a great antidote to the barrage of lazily misinformed news from the regular outlets. The joy at celebrating (April 9) the liberation just shines out.
Other insights I've found useful include an ongoing series over at Belmont Club, an opinion piece from the plain-speaking Ralph Peters, and the always reliable Cap'n.
Two aspects stand out from these pieces and other reading:
1. despite the spike in Coalition casualties, which are always reported accurately, the kill ratios are staying very high. Of the order of 50-100 to 1. That's good news.
2. The involvement of Syria and Iran in financing, infiltrating, fomenting and generally stirring, is now clear (vide Peters, who makes this explicit). June 30 is a drop-dead milestone for them: it means a freer Iraq and that cannot be tolerated.
Other insights I've found useful include an ongoing series over at Belmont Club, an opinion piece from the plain-speaking Ralph Peters, and the always reliable Cap'n.
Two aspects stand out from these pieces and other reading:
1. despite the spike in Coalition casualties, which are always reported accurately, the kill ratios are staying very high. Of the order of 50-100 to 1. That's good news.
2. The involvement of Syria and Iran in financing, infiltrating, fomenting and generally stirring, is now clear (vide Peters, who makes this explicit). June 30 is a drop-dead milestone for them: it means a freer Iraq and that cannot be tolerated.
Wednesday, March 31, 2004
Jobs in Hip-Hop
Apart from the obvious reaction to this little joyride (which of course is: "hey, that was our tax money you hosed up the wall - but then, what's new?"), let's stop and think about the recorded reason for this grant.
To the more gullible, a continuing justification for the trip - nobody has yet leapt to the defence of the reported 'chilling out' in Hawaii, Fiji, and Paris - is the quite reasonable notion of eventual jobs in hip-hop. One at a time, then.
Hip-hop is now regarded as being 25 (some would say 30) years old. That's a long time for any musical genre, and it shows. According to Nick Crowe (hat-tip to Dennis Dutton at Arts and Letters Daily),
"change is the only option left for a form once built on innovation, but now characterised by self-limiting dogma and paucity of ideas".
And that change, oh heavenly irony - is coming from.... po' white trash like Eminem. The article mentions "the state of emergency in hip-hop". Hmm: if this was a stock, I'd be selling.
So, it seems that the creative side of hip-hop is dying. And that this could have been discerned by a few minutes Googling by the grants advisers. But they're just bureaucrats (even if closely related to the applicant). What about those 'jobs'?
Any sort of artistic endeavour is generally driven by passion. Characters and storylines that rumble around the head until they have to be let out. Fingers that twitch around figures, riffs, patterns, sequences on any musical instrument you like. The need to adopt personae - masks - and parade around as not-oneself. The urge to make visible, in some medium, an inner vision. And early hip-hop was no exception.
Funnily enough, there tend not to be advertisements for 'jobs' in all this. Think how Marquez, JWM Turner, Tom Waits, or Peter Jackson got started. Not by answering ads. It was that pesky inner passion.
Sure, there are 'jobs' around art of any sort. Roadies, managers, ticket-clippers of all kinds, equipment, material and chemical propellant suppliers, groupies, lawyers, marketers, copywriters, security - the list is long. And they can occasionally be found (at least the more legal ones can) in the press, in specialist magazines, and on the tear-off tabs of hand-written sheets of paper on pinboards anywhere.
But, here's the catch. These jobs are generic and contractual. It's the film industry's MO: get the idea, script it out, assemble a company, make a team, make the film, disband the team. It's not a job as much as a series of projects. Anyone in or around these industry groupings knows that. And you tend to be invited in - head-hunted. And that's for the inner circle.
Further out - the security guys, roadies are just strong backs. Groupies, ditto, plus weak minds. Equipment suppliers, they're specialised retailers. Chemical suppliers, they're hoping to stay well under the radar, and that clients don't lab-test the marching powder for purity. Lawyers, marketers, as one artist, Robert Cray sang 'You can tell me a boat full of lawyers just sank' - enough said.
These 'jobs' are everywhere and nowhere. So: 'Jobs in Hip-Hop'. Generic, short-term, contractual, insecure positions, if you're not the artist(e). Bit like supermarket shelf-fillers, really.
If you are the artist(e) - why pick a genre so obviously flaring and dying? Why not create an entirely new one? Why not let those restless urges out on a world always eager for the next big thang?
Inside tip: don't wait till you see it advertised. It'll be waaay too late then.
To the more gullible, a continuing justification for the trip - nobody has yet leapt to the defence of the reported 'chilling out' in Hawaii, Fiji, and Paris - is the quite reasonable notion of eventual jobs in hip-hop. One at a time, then.
Hip-hop is now regarded as being 25 (some would say 30) years old. That's a long time for any musical genre, and it shows. According to Nick Crowe (hat-tip to Dennis Dutton at Arts and Letters Daily),
"change is the only option left for a form once built on innovation, but now characterised by self-limiting dogma and paucity of ideas".
And that change, oh heavenly irony - is coming from.... po' white trash like Eminem. The article mentions "the state of emergency in hip-hop". Hmm: if this was a stock, I'd be selling.
So, it seems that the creative side of hip-hop is dying. And that this could have been discerned by a few minutes Googling by the grants advisers. But they're just bureaucrats (even if closely related to the applicant). What about those 'jobs'?
Any sort of artistic endeavour is generally driven by passion. Characters and storylines that rumble around the head until they have to be let out. Fingers that twitch around figures, riffs, patterns, sequences on any musical instrument you like. The need to adopt personae - masks - and parade around as not-oneself. The urge to make visible, in some medium, an inner vision. And early hip-hop was no exception.
Funnily enough, there tend not to be advertisements for 'jobs' in all this. Think how Marquez, JWM Turner, Tom Waits, or Peter Jackson got started. Not by answering ads. It was that pesky inner passion.
Sure, there are 'jobs' around art of any sort. Roadies, managers, ticket-clippers of all kinds, equipment, material and chemical propellant suppliers, groupies, lawyers, marketers, copywriters, security - the list is long. And they can occasionally be found (at least the more legal ones can) in the press, in specialist magazines, and on the tear-off tabs of hand-written sheets of paper on pinboards anywhere.
But, here's the catch. These jobs are generic and contractual. It's the film industry's MO: get the idea, script it out, assemble a company, make a team, make the film, disband the team. It's not a job as much as a series of projects. Anyone in or around these industry groupings knows that. And you tend to be invited in - head-hunted. And that's for the inner circle.
Further out - the security guys, roadies are just strong backs. Groupies, ditto, plus weak minds. Equipment suppliers, they're specialised retailers. Chemical suppliers, they're hoping to stay well under the radar, and that clients don't lab-test the marching powder for purity. Lawyers, marketers, as one artist, Robert Cray sang 'You can tell me a boat full of lawyers just sank' - enough said.
These 'jobs' are everywhere and nowhere. So: 'Jobs in Hip-Hop'. Generic, short-term, contractual, insecure positions, if you're not the artist(e). Bit like supermarket shelf-fillers, really.
If you are the artist(e) - why pick a genre so obviously flaring and dying? Why not create an entirely new one? Why not let those restless urges out on a world always eager for the next big thang?
Inside tip: don't wait till you see it advertised. It'll be waaay too late then.
Tuesday, March 30, 2004
So, where's the next kilowatt gonna come from?
Project Aqua - a large scale hydro generation proposal - has had - lovely irony this - it's plug pulled. Now, against a backdrop of increasing power demand and static generation capacity, folks are now asking the obvious: what's going to keep my business and my home a-hummin'?
A quick survey of the options:
Large-scale hydro: bzzzt - Aqua was to have used the last major resource that could be easily tapped. It had a high head and good flow, hence high energy potential. What's left tends to have one or other, not both, characteristics. And Aqua was in easy country geologically speaking.
Small-scale hydro: Maybe. But the same Byzantine processes of resource consent are needed, irrespective of project scale. Higher fixed cost equals higher running cost. And there will be a lot more generation points needed.
Geothermal: Maybe. That's if underground heat generated by vulcanism doesn't turn out to be a taonga, or be a major part of some taniwha's sustenance. And there's resource consent too...
Coal: probably. Although the Gummint doesn't like this turn of events: Govt Resists Coal Generation Option. Still, the vast lignite fields in Southland have to be a starter. The spectre of Kyoto is rather diminished these days, now that Russia has refused to ratify it. Oh wait, we stupidly signed up already? Sigh.
Nuclear: useful as a straw man to draw the impassioned bile of greens, and worth suggesting for the sheer sake of the ensuing spectacle. But chain-yanking aside, not, I think, a serious starter.
Wind: definitely possible, established in the Manawatu, but has already drawn NIMBY's in Christchurch (the sole generator, at Gebbie's Pass has had a rocky history, and the owners are still trying to quieten the gearbox, ferchrissake), and in Wellington, where a proposed Cook Strait facing wind farm got the evil eye from locals. The problem with wind is of course storage: power has to be used there and then (it does, after all, move rather quickly down them wires). So unless it's used to (say) pump water up into a hydro lake while the wind is blowing, it is rather useless for baseload generation, and by the same token, cannot be relied upon for peaks. And at around 0.5mW per tower, you need an awful lot of whirligigs to make even a modest amount of power. And then only sometimes.
Gas: maybe. Although we did seem to tear through the last major gas field we found rather quickly, no? The form of generation is here the major determinant: doing the gas jet under boiler, to steam - to turbine - to generator - to transmission, in a large centralised station, is not the most efficient usage of the potential. Dispersed generation - say via Stirling cycle technology like WhisperTech, is a better bet. That's big in the UK right now, especially for remote, isolated or small-cluster users. Watch this space.
Similarly, fuel-cells are another technology to watch.
But hey, there's another possibility! In the article, one of the NIMBY's down on the Waitaki river had this to say:
"there is a real head of steam developed for protecting the Waitaki River from such developments."
Quick: back up a turbine and generator, and hook 'em up to the grid!
A quick survey of the options:
Large-scale hydro: bzzzt - Aqua was to have used the last major resource that could be easily tapped. It had a high head and good flow, hence high energy potential. What's left tends to have one or other, not both, characteristics. And Aqua was in easy country geologically speaking.
Small-scale hydro: Maybe. But the same Byzantine processes of resource consent are needed, irrespective of project scale. Higher fixed cost equals higher running cost. And there will be a lot more generation points needed.
Geothermal: Maybe. That's if underground heat generated by vulcanism doesn't turn out to be a taonga, or be a major part of some taniwha's sustenance. And there's resource consent too...
Coal: probably. Although the Gummint doesn't like this turn of events: Govt Resists Coal Generation Option. Still, the vast lignite fields in Southland have to be a starter. The spectre of Kyoto is rather diminished these days, now that Russia has refused to ratify it. Oh wait, we stupidly signed up already? Sigh.
Nuclear: useful as a straw man to draw the impassioned bile of greens, and worth suggesting for the sheer sake of the ensuing spectacle. But chain-yanking aside, not, I think, a serious starter.
Wind: definitely possible, established in the Manawatu, but has already drawn NIMBY's in Christchurch (the sole generator, at Gebbie's Pass has had a rocky history, and the owners are still trying to quieten the gearbox, ferchrissake), and in Wellington, where a proposed Cook Strait facing wind farm got the evil eye from locals. The problem with wind is of course storage: power has to be used there and then (it does, after all, move rather quickly down them wires). So unless it's used to (say) pump water up into a hydro lake while the wind is blowing, it is rather useless for baseload generation, and by the same token, cannot be relied upon for peaks. And at around 0.5mW per tower, you need an awful lot of whirligigs to make even a modest amount of power. And then only sometimes.
Gas: maybe. Although we did seem to tear through the last major gas field we found rather quickly, no? The form of generation is here the major determinant: doing the gas jet under boiler, to steam - to turbine - to generator - to transmission, in a large centralised station, is not the most efficient usage of the potential. Dispersed generation - say via Stirling cycle technology like WhisperTech, is a better bet. That's big in the UK right now, especially for remote, isolated or small-cluster users. Watch this space.
Similarly, fuel-cells are another technology to watch.
But hey, there's another possibility! In the article, one of the NIMBY's down on the Waitaki river had this to say:
"there is a real head of steam developed for protecting the Waitaki River from such developments."
Quick: back up a turbine and generator, and hook 'em up to the grid!
Monday, March 29, 2004
Guns baaad. Explosive belts Gooood.
NZ Pundit reports on the, shall we say over-egged, response to kid-size guns. Note the rapidity and ferocity of the condemnation. The key line in the Parents' Centre quote runs like this:
"[the advertisement] sent a clear message to kids that it was OK to kill".
So I expect an equally vigorous affirmation from PC (cor, the coincidence...) for an American parent's commentary about Hussam Abdu - you will perhaps recall Abdu's 15 seconds of fame recently on global TV.
"If a bunch of men pressured some girl out of having an abortion the clever cheese-and-cracker set would be speechless with moral outrage.
Well, this is the new peer pressure in the Middle East.
And, it seems to me, bullying a kid into self-vaporization and murder is worse than teasing a girl into an eating disorder."
Teaching kids to kill - themselves! Shockingly unsupportive of kidz rightz. Let's hear it, Parents' Centre! Let's hear it, Minister(s) for Child, Yoof and Fambly! (Who is it, this week?)
I personally won't be holding my breath...
"[the advertisement] sent a clear message to kids that it was OK to kill".
So I expect an equally vigorous affirmation from PC (cor, the coincidence...) for an American parent's commentary about Hussam Abdu - you will perhaps recall Abdu's 15 seconds of fame recently on global TV.
"If a bunch of men pressured some girl out of having an abortion the clever cheese-and-cracker set would be speechless with moral outrage.
Well, this is the new peer pressure in the Middle East.
And, it seems to me, bullying a kid into self-vaporization and murder is worse than teasing a girl into an eating disorder."
Teaching kids to kill - themselves! Shockingly unsupportive of kidz rightz. Let's hear it, Parents' Centre! Let's hear it, Minister(s) for Child, Yoof and Fambly! (Who is it, this week?)
I personally won't be holding my breath...
Saturday, March 27, 2004
Lord Carey, retired, religious, and controversial
Lord Carey of Clifton has put in a religious-dialogue context, many of the issues surrounding our fragile co-existence with militant Islam. Huntington gets a mention. Ralph Peters' shadow lies over Carey's analysis of the various failures which have led Wahhabi-influenced Islamic cultures to their present pass.
And while the good Lord urges (what else?) more dialogue, the overall strategy on the ground is more in line with what the good Captain of USS Clueless has thoughtfully outlined for us.
My recent OE has hardened my own confidence in the merits - scientific, technical, creative-wise - of 'our' culture - culture is, after all, as any MBA can regurgitate, 'what we do around here' - nothing more. I'm a techno type, and I don't see too much of that in any other civilisational model - as the quip goes, 'there's no (fill in the blank here) way to fix a car (or a computer)'.
We're living in a 'climax community' - we're the old, great trees (think of the glorious old-growth rimu in Waitutu forest) and that takes maintenance. Like lopping off the odd strangler fig vine at its roots. You can't do that by talking at it.
But back to Carey's speech. He's evidently offended a few tender lilies here and there. Well, boo-hoo. He has a backbone, unlike invertebrate Spain and is unapologetic about that. We could use a few more Careys (and Warrens) out this way.
And while the good Lord urges (what else?) more dialogue, the overall strategy on the ground is more in line with what the good Captain of USS Clueless has thoughtfully outlined for us.
My recent OE has hardened my own confidence in the merits - scientific, technical, creative-wise - of 'our' culture - culture is, after all, as any MBA can regurgitate, 'what we do around here' - nothing more. I'm a techno type, and I don't see too much of that in any other civilisational model - as the quip goes, 'there's no (fill in the blank here) way to fix a car (or a computer)'.
We're living in a 'climax community' - we're the old, great trees (think of the glorious old-growth rimu in Waitutu forest) and that takes maintenance. Like lopping off the odd strangler fig vine at its roots. You can't do that by talking at it.
But back to Carey's speech. He's evidently offended a few tender lilies here and there. Well, boo-hoo. He has a backbone, unlike invertebrate Spain and is unapologetic about that. We could use a few more Careys (and Warrens) out this way.
Wednesday, March 24, 2004
Nostalgia for Lost Jobs
As usual, Virginia Postrel has a great link:Would you really rather be a miner?
The argument, heard often in tandem with a vaguely anti-capitalist or anti-globalisation bleat, is that those awful (fill in the blanks) have stolen our Jobs.
Which were Ours, you see, by - well, by what right, exactly?
Inheritance? Nope, that's the British Royals.
Guaranteed by the Government? Nope, that's the French, and nobody's buying their stock at the moment. Government's money comes from?? S'right - us Evil Capitalists (EC).
Provided by Family, Tribe? Maybe - if there is an underlying EC somewheres in there - think Ngai Tahu. If not, then when the somebody-else's dime which must be propping the whole show up runs out, so do the jobs.
Threats of violence? Maybe. For a while, and if you're running a mafia or gangsta type op, then that 'while' can be generations. But standover specialists aren't exactly your basic patent-filer types: real innovation comes from free spirits, as a glance at Peters' yardsticks may show. No profits, no surplus to intimidate others into giving you a cut of, no parasites. And where do those profits come from? EC's, again.
Technology? Sure. But all those wagon-wheel and arrow makers of yore seem to have become aircraft engineers, farmers become biologists, miners become mobile phone account managers. Look in the papers - how many of those job titles existed even 20 years ago?
Having just finished Evan Eisenberg's Ecology of Eden, I'm inclined to think that these 'Lost Jobs' reveries are another instance of the 'expulsion from Eden' myth which he dissects so well. Like, there never really was an Eden, so there's no place to go back to. But the nostalgia stems less from this than from the inability to accept that our own reality (Eisenberg's label is the Tower - exemplified by the large cities - largely human-created but containing an essential wildness of their own) is part of nature/world/universe, too. And part of our human nature (when circumstances permit, see Peters again) is simply to create stuff that never existed before.
So the Our-Jobs-Have-Gone moaners seem to have quite a lot in common with the Let's-keep-feeding-people-into-the-industrial-shredders anti-war protesters.
Yes, they (Jobs, tyrants) are gone.
No, they aren't coming back any time soon.
And really, do you all want to go back into that factory, or down that hole? Or, into that shredder?
The argument, heard often in tandem with a vaguely anti-capitalist or anti-globalisation bleat, is that those awful (fill in the blanks) have stolen our Jobs.
Which were Ours, you see, by - well, by what right, exactly?
Inheritance? Nope, that's the British Royals.
Guaranteed by the Government? Nope, that's the French, and nobody's buying their stock at the moment. Government's money comes from?? S'right - us Evil Capitalists (EC).
Provided by Family, Tribe? Maybe - if there is an underlying EC somewheres in there - think Ngai Tahu. If not, then when the somebody-else's dime which must be propping the whole show up runs out, so do the jobs.
Threats of violence? Maybe. For a while, and if you're running a mafia or gangsta type op, then that 'while' can be generations. But standover specialists aren't exactly your basic patent-filer types: real innovation comes from free spirits, as a glance at Peters' yardsticks may show. No profits, no surplus to intimidate others into giving you a cut of, no parasites. And where do those profits come from? EC's, again.
Technology? Sure. But all those wagon-wheel and arrow makers of yore seem to have become aircraft engineers, farmers become biologists, miners become mobile phone account managers. Look in the papers - how many of those job titles existed even 20 years ago?
Having just finished Evan Eisenberg's Ecology of Eden, I'm inclined to think that these 'Lost Jobs' reveries are another instance of the 'expulsion from Eden' myth which he dissects so well. Like, there never really was an Eden, so there's no place to go back to. But the nostalgia stems less from this than from the inability to accept that our own reality (Eisenberg's label is the Tower - exemplified by the large cities - largely human-created but containing an essential wildness of their own) is part of nature/world/universe, too. And part of our human nature (when circumstances permit, see Peters again) is simply to create stuff that never existed before.
So the Our-Jobs-Have-Gone moaners seem to have quite a lot in common with the Let's-keep-feeding-people-into-the-industrial-shredders anti-war protesters.
Yes, they (Jobs, tyrants) are gone.
No, they aren't coming back any time soon.
And really, do you all want to go back into that factory, or down that hole? Or, into that shredder?
Monday, March 22, 2004
Al Quaeda to Europe: "Grease up. Bend over."
Hard to know where the Spanish capitulation will take Europe. Nowhere nice, that's for sure. Spanish, and by osmosis, European foreign policy can now be dictated by remote control. Lee Harris has likened the situation to inviting a Vampire inside the door.
The conversations will now go like this:
AQ: 'We've arranged to have a little reminder of 3/11 - you'll be able to tell by the large columns of smoke and the absence of a familar landmark - unless of course you agree to (fill in the blank)'
Spain or other hapless EU member: 'But of course. Jump - how high? We'll see to it right away.'
The sad joke is that the landmark will vanish in a puff of smoke and another few hundred lives, anyway. It's the classic stand-over trope from all those gangster movies - the enforcers, even though they have their percentage of turnover, always manage to break something on the way out, just to show who's boss.
Dr Seuss has a classic cartoon on the subject here.
But nobody should be laughing. As Yogi Berra said, it's deja vu all over again.
The conversations will now go like this:
AQ: 'We've arranged to have a little reminder of 3/11 - you'll be able to tell by the large columns of smoke and the absence of a familar landmark - unless of course you agree to (fill in the blank)'
Spain or other hapless EU member: 'But of course. Jump - how high? We'll see to it right away.'
The sad joke is that the landmark will vanish in a puff of smoke and another few hundred lives, anyway. It's the classic stand-over trope from all those gangster movies - the enforcers, even though they have their percentage of turnover, always manage to break something on the way out, just to show who's boss.
Dr Seuss has a classic cartoon on the subject here.
But nobody should be laughing. As Yogi Berra said, it's deja vu all over again.
Saturday, March 20, 2004
The first concrete step towards Eurabia
Robert Spencer, writing in WorldNetDaily, notes without glee that
"al-Qaida has adjusted Spain's foreign policy with a bombing".
Hat-tip to LGF.
"al-Qaida has adjusted Spain's foreign policy with a bombing".
Hat-tip to LGF.
Friday, March 19, 2004
Comments about Spain
Mark Steyn usually has thoroughly amusing yet pointed observations. This one is no exception.
Lee Harris is another one of those wise guys: he runs a thought experiment here past TechCentralStation readers. A quote:
"If a foreign agent is permitted to interfere at will with the internal affairs of a nation, then that nation no longer possesses national sovereignty -- a fact that can be immediately grasped in those cases when the foreign agent is another nation state."
Ralph Kinney Bennet is pessimistic. The opening quote says it all.
"Shall I tell you what the real evil is? To cringe to the things that are called evils, to surrender to them our freedom, in defiance of which we ought to face any suffering. (Seneca)"
Lee Harris is another one of those wise guys: he runs a thought experiment here past TechCentralStation readers. A quote:
"If a foreign agent is permitted to interfere at will with the internal affairs of a nation, then that nation no longer possesses national sovereignty -- a fact that can be immediately grasped in those cases when the foreign agent is another nation state."
Ralph Kinney Bennet is pessimistic. The opening quote says it all.
"Shall I tell you what the real evil is? To cringe to the things that are called evils, to surrender to them our freedom, in defiance of which we ought to face any suffering. (Seneca)"
Wednesday, March 17, 2004
Wisdom
Tricky concept. I seem to need large doses of this in times of uncertainty, and there are a few people I keep returning to for their latest efforts.
Victor Davis Hanson, for a cold-eyed look at the world around us - latest I've found is here.
Robert D Kaplan (recent Atlantic Monthly article), whose view of humankind is a needed antidote to all those damned idealists: dark and irrational passions lie deep in human nature. Think religious fanatics, berserkers, the 'creedal passion periods' that Huntington points to in American culture, the taniwha worshippers of our own little NZ, the cargo cultists of the South Pacific, the list just goes on and on. To the extent that real power is thus exercised, and that power always, always matters, this side of us cannot be glossed over or rationalised away.
Evan Eisenberg, author of The Recording Angel, shows a marvellous touch with this now out of print trawl through the co-evolution of jazz and records. I'm currently reading his Ecology of Eden and rather like his juxtaposition of the Mountain-Eden and the Tower-Technological Man. So far, anyway.
William Rees-Mogg , who co-authored with James Dale Davidson The Sovereign Individual which not coincidentally (in my edition's preface) has a telling reference to the (not exactly quoted) 'vulnerable steel and glass symbol of commerce - the Twin Towers'.
Which may lead on (but not tonight, more Eisenberg to digest, after a good steak, a passable shiraz and a glorious sunset viewed from the Southern tip-head mole at Greymouth) to a rumination about canaries in coal mines.
Victor Davis Hanson, for a cold-eyed look at the world around us - latest I've found is here.
Robert D Kaplan (recent Atlantic Monthly article), whose view of humankind is a needed antidote to all those damned idealists: dark and irrational passions lie deep in human nature. Think religious fanatics, berserkers, the 'creedal passion periods' that Huntington points to in American culture, the taniwha worshippers of our own little NZ, the cargo cultists of the South Pacific, the list just goes on and on. To the extent that real power is thus exercised, and that power always, always matters, this side of us cannot be glossed over or rationalised away.
Evan Eisenberg, author of The Recording Angel, shows a marvellous touch with this now out of print trawl through the co-evolution of jazz and records. I'm currently reading his Ecology of Eden and rather like his juxtaposition of the Mountain-Eden and the Tower-Technological Man. So far, anyway.
William Rees-Mogg , who co-authored with James Dale Davidson The Sovereign Individual which not coincidentally (in my edition's preface) has a telling reference to the (not exactly quoted) 'vulnerable steel and glass symbol of commerce - the Twin Towers'.
Which may lead on (but not tonight, more Eisenberg to digest, after a good steak, a passable shiraz and a glorious sunset viewed from the Southern tip-head mole at Greymouth) to a rumination about canaries in coal mines.
Tuesday, March 16, 2004
Andalusia is a front line
Tacitus has a thoughtful piece on Spain which echoes Mark Steyn's piece in the Australian yesterday. Essentially, because Spain was the site of the 1492 explusion of Muslims from the Iberian peninsula (known to history as the 'Reconquista' - the Re-conquering), it has been, is, and will be always in the sights of Islamofascists. And that's quite irrespective of the government of the day, its policies, its attempts at appeasement or indeed any actions.
I'm reminded of Tim Burtons 'Mars Attacks', where the negotiations between Earth and the Martians come to this point: Earth: 'what would you want us to do?' Martians: 'Die'.
As Mark Steyn notes in his piece, there's a sentiment-for-sentiment quote from Hezbollah to the same effect:
"We are not fighting so that you will offer us something. We are fighting to eliminate you."
I'm reminded of Tim Burtons 'Mars Attacks', where the negotiations between Earth and the Martians come to this point: Earth: 'what would you want us to do?' Martians: 'Die'.
As Mark Steyn notes in his piece, there's a sentiment-for-sentiment quote from Hezbollah to the same effect:
"We are not fighting so that you will offer us something. We are fighting to eliminate you."
Monday, March 15, 2004
Today we are all Spaniards
Mark Steyn has a typically comprehensive article about the Spanish atrocity. Just read the whole thing (RTWT).
Carl Zimmer is blogging!
CZ is a journalist who has that enviable knack of making science interesting and topical, without mushing it down to a lowest-common-multiple in the process. It's a rare gift (grits teeth at this point). I first struck his writing in 'At the Water's Edge' - a marvellous trek through macro-evolution, which for me answered most of the 'but where are the intermediate forms?' questions. There were eight-fingered fishy things, a clear exposition on how genes could simply experiment with physical forms, the eternal question (much beloved by fellow apes who are still inclined to miraculous explanations of their origin rather than accept the bleeding obvious) of how eyes could have evolved, and so on.
He (CZ) is also responsible for 'Parasite Rex' - which is very useful for terrifying the squeamish, is not to be discussed at meal-times, and which contains perhaps the best explanation I've seen for (and a typically gorge-raising possibility for fixing) Crohn's disease.
As well as his own website, he also blogs over at The Loom.
Speaking as one with 65% fish genes, I thoroughly recommend these works. Look out too for his latest: 'Soul made Flesh'.
He (CZ) is also responsible for 'Parasite Rex' - which is very useful for terrifying the squeamish, is not to be discussed at meal-times, and which contains perhaps the best explanation I've seen for (and a typically gorge-raising possibility for fixing) Crohn's disease.
As well as his own website, he also blogs over at The Loom.
Speaking as one with 65% fish genes, I thoroughly recommend these works. Look out too for his latest: 'Soul made Flesh'.
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