I was amused by this article in the Sydney Morning Herald about iMac problems.

Faults reported on forums range from cracked glass, screen flickering, yellow tinged or noisy screens and have been experienced by users around the world as far afield as North America, Europe and Australia.

It’s a product sold globally – why on earth would you emphasise that these forum users were from “far afield”?  The early 1990s called, they want their amazement at the global scope of the Internet back. 

Furthermore, it mentions major Western countries as “far afield” places, not actual far-afield places like Scott Base, Antaractica or Barrow, Alaska.

Education, Quotable, World | No Comments »

Labour’s Lianne Dalziel said deprivation of liberty was a core function of the state …

From TV3’s report on private prisons.

Freedom, Labour, New Zealand, Politics | No Comments »

I really like UK online bookstore The Book Depository – they have low prices and free shipping, even halfway around the world to New Zealand – but readers should note that they have two domain names serving what appears to be the same site:

• bookdepository.com
• bookdepository.co.uk

The important thing about this is that the sites have subtly different prices.

For instance, The Years of Rice and Salt on the .com site is £4.58.  On the .co.uk site: £4.81. The price is 5% higher.

I looked up another book, Lost Girls.  .com price: £24.35.  .co.uk price:  £26.31.  This price is 8% higher.

Confusing, right?  I would suggest browsing both URLs to check which price is best.  They both have free shipping to anywhere in the world.

I am guessing the reason for the two URLs is to sell books which are popular in the US cheaper on the .com domain name, and books which are popular in the UK cheaper on the .co.uk domain.  Or maybe it is something demanded by US publishers.

Uncategorized | 5 Comments »

Yep, we’re all doomed.

Catastrophes, Science, Technology | No Comments »

ACT’s David Garrett is on the front page of the papers again, accused of tough-talking Clayton Cosgrove in a closed-session law-and-order select committee meeting, alledgedly suggesting they “take it outside” during a disagreement.

The man is a complete embarassment to the tattered remnants of the classical liberal wing of ACT.

“Aren’t ACT lucky they chose a quality researcher and safe pair of hands like David Garrett over an embarrassing loose cannon like Lindsay Mitchell.”

What I find really delicious is that Garrett was placed on the party list to represent the law-and-order strand of ACT policy, which includes being tough on criminals and punishing violent behaviour – and here he is trying to get into a fight himself.

“I know Garrett’s views are not Act views. [Leader] Rodney Hide and [deputy leader] Heather Roy wouldn’t have those views.”

Garrett’s rudeness, intolerance and homophobia, sexual harrassment, drunken TV appearances and apparent willingness to get into physical fights suggests, once again, that whatever issues a conservative is most against are in fact representative of his own hidden desires and urges.

Catastrophes, New Zealand, Politics, Wellington | 2 Comments »

I spar regularly with the posters and commenters at The Standard, and the hypocrisy of the Left with regard to anonymity and privacy has not gone unnoticed in the past.

I will, however, applaud lprent today.  He got something right yesterday when he withdrew Bill English’s address from a post.

Well done.

Freedom, Labour, New Zealand, Politics | 1 Comment »

I read in the Kapiti Observer this morning about council plans to distribute 34,000 fluorescent lightbulbs free to every household.  This will involve a $74,000 interest-free loan from the EECA.  The report contained estimates that the bulbs will save Kapiti residents $5.8 million – that’s a huge return of $74 per $1 spent over the life of the bulbs.

Now, I know that these lightbulbs can save money; that’s why we have them in our flat.  I have seen three of the bulbs burn out within two years, though – they definitely don’t last forever.  But the magnitude of the supposed saving sounded totally astounding to me. 

SoI decided to check up on the figures.  First of all, the Kaptiti Observer didn’t get the number wrong.  The estimate of a 1:78 cost:benefit ratio is contained in this council report.

Wikipedia suggests that a cost:savings ratio per lightbulb over their lifetime of between 1:12 and 1:47, depending on the cost of the electricity.  For the Kapiti bulbs to be magically twice as beneficial as the best-case scenario presented in another estimate seems unlikely, even if the council are able to get the bulbs for a great bulk rate ($2 per bulb).

Another factor is that US studies include in the benefits’ side of the equation is the fact that less heat is generated by the efficient bulbs, so air conditioning units don’t have to work as hard.  This wouldn’t be a factor on the Kapiti coast; in fact, in the winter, a small amount of additional heating will be needed as the bulbs will be generating less heat than incandescent bulbs.

What I suspect they are doing is assuming a massively best-case scenario.  Electricity is super-expensive.  The two lightbulbs in each home are running 24/7.  The home has advanced air conditioning as in the US.  The home is forced to pay handymen to climb up on ladders to replace lightbulbs on a contract rate of $18 per bulb.  Incandescent bulbs are the most expensive ones available in the supermarket, rather than the cheapest ones at the Warehouse.  Maybe petrol to drive to the supermarket and buy new incandescent lightbulbs is included.

What the cost-benefit analysis doesn’t seem to include is the cost of printing leaflets, lightbulb storage, distribution and administration for the program.  I guess the council is ‘donating’ these costs as part of its pro-energy-efficiency budget.  We can also throw in the cost to the EECA (and taxpayers) of providing the $74,000 loan.

All of these assumptions, multipled by 17,000 households, produce a misleading savings amount, to say the least.

The other assumption being made is that households can’t run their own cost-benefit analysis – as have I, and most households I know – and installed their own CFL lightbulbs using their own money.

The program is relatively small, but the aggregate cost of all of these feel-good council programs makes up your total rates bill: thousands of dollars a year.

All I can say is, there ain’t no such thing as a free lightbulb.

Education, Energy, Freedom, New Zealand, Science, Wellington | 2 Comments »

A bizarre blog post on The Stranded contains some extremely odd thinking.  During the debate about Matariki, ACT MP David Garrett asked Chris Finlayson in Parliament:

Is the Minister aware that Dr Paul Moon, a professor of history at the Auckland University of Technology and a well-known expert in pre-European history, is of the view that many of the claims about the festival of Matariki are tenuous at best, and that with regard to it supposedly being linked to planting times Maori had much better natural science to rely on and “did not need a three-month advance warning of when to prepare for kumara sowing.”?

Marty G comments angrily:

There was a chorus of outrage from Labour at the racism that lies behind this kind of claim that seeks to invalidate Maori history and culture … the Maori Party MPs just sat there. One would have expected them to have been leaping to their feet to rebut this slander against their culture.

Research into Matariki by Paul Moon essentially points out that much of the discourse around Matariki is simply modern viewers looking at the past with rose-tinted glasses.  Different tribes had different ideas about Matariki too.  For some, Matariki probably wasn’t a celebratory time because it was the middle of winter; a time when elders often died and food was rationed.  Even war was temporarily put on the back burner.  In general, it would be a poor signal to start planting kumara; pre-European Maori knew when to plant crops without using the rising of the Pleiades as a signal.

It seems to me that Garrett’s comment actually gives Maori more credence than the standard “noble savage” post-modern discourse about Matariki being promoted by the other politicians.  “Oh, look at this warrior race, using the stars as a calendar to plan crops!  Isn’t that cute?”

I welcome the Matariki celebrations.  Any excuse for a party is OK with me.    But the ideas around making Matariki an official holiday just don’t reflect reality – and when Garrett questions the PC version of things he is immediately smacked with the ‘racist’ label and accused of invalidating Maori history – when in fact Moon’s research is aimed at making ideas about Maori history more accurate!

Of course Maori culture should be celebrated, but making official holidays and erecting bilingual street signs makes Maori culture into a humourless bureaucratic exercise.  It becomes another box to tick on a government form, and that’s just sad.  Perhaps leftist intellectuals like Marty G think Maori culture is too weak to survive by itself.

Culture, Free Speech, Labour, New Zealand, Pacific, Science | 11 Comments »

The kerfuffle over the benefit payments to two beneficiaries certainly has legs.  It’s disappointing to see the Left completely fail to engage with the central argument: are beneficiaries getting too much money, too little or about the right amount?

Some of the controversy is about a grant of around $10,000 to solo mother Natasha Fuller to set up a cleaning business.  Here is a relevant article from the Te Awamutu Courier, March 13 2007:

Fuller was also featured in an MSD Report along the same lines (click to enbiggify):

Leading Social Development: A Plan for Waikato 2007-2008.  Hat tip:  gingercrush

On the face of it, Fuller has at least had a pretty good go at extricating herself from the welfare trap – much better than most, it would appear.

But if we keep digging, the story gets stickier.  A series of threads over on Trademe and archived elsewhere suggest that Natasha had previously been living with her partner while receiving the DPB. That’s not uncommon, but it is certainly against the rules.

One Trademe commenter says:

“It seems that in your own posts on these boards you have clearly admitted and glorified in being a thief. Combining that with anecdotes shared by your ex friends, a rather sordid picture emerges.”

There is nothing else to be drawn from this mess except to remind everyone that the welfare state is a sham.

“If the government is big enough to give you everything you want, it is big enough to take away everything you have.”

- Gerald Ford

Update: Some more dirt has been dug, including a video of Natasha Fuller doing karaoke.  It’s scary what the internet detectives can pull up!  Check it out over at Fairfacts Media and Big News.

Culture, Labour, New Zealand, Politics | 2 Comments »

The trial is over and the right outcome was handed down.  I was dismayed by how much coverage was given to Weatherston, and how much dirt was raked up about Elliot.  Each of us has a similarly messy life and we are entitled to our secrets and indiscretions.

The cynic in me would observe that Elliot’s tragic murder was just one of several dozen New Zealand homicides that occurred in 2007, and wonder how much of the media coverage stems from ‘missing white woman syndrome‘.

But my cynical side was silenced by the final paragraph of Elliot’s eloquent and quirky paper on equality, where she quotes Hayek.

“Are we not all constantly disquieted by watching how unjustly life treats different people and by seeing the deserving suffer and the undeserving prosper?  [W]e do cry out against the injustice… [a]nd we will protest against such a fate.”

Domestic Violence, New Zealand, Quotable | No Comments »