General Debate 23 February 2009

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Inventory2

Black or white DPF?
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February 23, 2009 7:06am
greenfly

NActional have created a lot of disgust over their pig-headed approach to the copyright issue. Why have they played such a stupid game with the public? Do they intend to play ‘white knight’ and sweep in to save the day for us ignorant peasants, by overturning the proposals? Are we that gullible? Probably.
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February 23, 2009 12:49pm
wreck1080

Are there any noise controls on cars? Neighbours car sounds like a bomb going off. And, can hear it from about a km away. always know when they’re coming home a minute before they arrive.
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February 23, 2009 12:52pm
Barnsley Bill

grenfly has obviously inherited the cloak of fukwittery from last years drooling idiots, try to keep up. This is down to Clarks idiot BFF.
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February 23, 2009 1:32pm
senzafine

Are there any noise controls on cars? Neighbours car sounds like a bomb going off. And, can hear it from about a km away. always know when they’re coming home a minute before they arrive.

Yep, Its 90/95db. (depends on the situation)

Not that I am for noise limits but.
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February 23, 2009 1:33pm
wreck1080

cool, then they should not get their next warrant.
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February 23, 2009 2:03pm
MyNameIsJack

ah, but they will. They take of the mods before getting the WOF, then whak them on again after.
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February 23, 2009 2:06pm
PhilBest

I’d love to extend THIS debate a bit more, from the earlier thread:

Deborah Coddington’s article said:

“….Last week Sir Jonathan said he was “unapologetic about asking people to connect up their own responsibility for their total environmental footprint and how they decide to procreate”.

According to this British toff, we should seriously consider contraception and abortion as weapons against climate change. After all, he reckons, every Pommie child in its lifetime will destroy more than two acres of “old-growth oak woodland”.

I suppose in New Zealand the equivalent would be trashing several hectares of native bush.

I look forward to the reaction from our Family First lobby on hearing New Zealand women, pregnant with a third child, can rush to a certified GP seeking an abortion on the grounds that a nice patch of West Coast beech forest is more important than human life…..”

THIS GUY SAID IT: Hear, hear, Ben:

ben (318) Vote: 7 1 Says:

February 22nd, 2009 at 5:36 pm
“The British toff has done us all a favour by pointing out environmentalism’s end result. Saving the environment means reducing or eliminating all the things that interfere with it, like human beings. Environmentalism hit the ground running by getting DDT banned in developing countries and needlessly killing 10-30 million people. It continues to lobby against the use of pesticides and GE crops that save lives. It is a movement that has more recently been hijacked by the socialist movement and now also lobbies for taxes and regulations and against trade. In short, a movement whose mostly unstated end goal is to the destitution and destruction of humanity.

Unfortunately, most people think its global warming that’s the bigger danger. More dangerous than environmentalism? Yeah right.”

AND:

ben (318) Vote: 3 0 Says:

February 22nd, 2009 at 11:50 pm
“Johnbt, the world population is going to top out some point between 11 and 14 billion, it is not expected to grow forever. The sooner developing countries achieves the living standards the first world enjoys, the sooner this stabilisation will happen and the lower the maximum population will be.

So welcome to the club that wants to see people in the third world prosper and be free of oppression as soon as possible and have the opportunities we are lucky enough to enjoy. You’ll be pleased to know our club is free of those nasty hypocrites who want to see everybody else swallowing the Cool Aid.

By the way, economic growth can go forever, because the fundamental driver of growth is not the ever-increasing use of resources, but the ever-increasing collection of ideas.”

To that last sentence of Ben’s, I would like to add a reading recommendation:

“Environmentalism Refuted”, by George Reisman of the Ludwig Von Mises Institute:

http://www.mises.org/story/661
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February 23, 2009 2:22pm
MyNameIsJack

Then why the fuck didn’tyou post in that thread to maintain continuity?

Go stand in a corner and talk to yourself.
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February 23, 2009 2:29pm
Atheist1

Jack – “Then why the fuck didn’tyou post in that thread to maintain continuity?

Go stand in a corner and talk to yourself.”

LOL. That’s hilarious!!!!!!!!!! Such an apt image…
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February 23, 2009 2:33pm
MyNameIsJack

Please don’t post comments like that atheist1. redbaiter will be railing about an MSM Atheist conspiracy to take over the blog and it will be TEOTWAWKI.
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February 23, 2009 2:38pm
PhilBest

“Environmentalism Refuted”, by George Reisman of the Ludwig Von Mises Institute:

http://www.mises.org/story/661

I tell you, this essay is an eye-opener; the man is a genius.

Reisman points out the following:

We have actually barely begun to prospect the entire surface of the earth, and under the sea bed, for all known resources.

As mankind becomes more technically advanced, he discovers uses for more and more resources. Many of the resources we use most today, we did not use at all until we discovered how to use them.

There is no reason to believe that we have come to an end of that process. That is, we will yet discover resources that give us even more power over our well-being than the resources we currently make use of.

The more capital accumulated by mankind, the more access we get to resources. We can drill deeper, extract elements more efficiently, access the resources under the sea bed, and so on.

Furthermore, that accumulation of capital underlies the research and technological progress that bring ever more resources within our purvey.

Apart from what has been blasted into space, every molecule in every substance “used” by man, is still here and will be able to be re-used one day; a lot of it has merely been re-ordered to man’s advantage meanwhile. Every carbon molecule that has been burnt to extract energy, returns to the biosystem after a short time in the atmosphere, and will be able to be accessed again for the purpose of energy, by our descendants at some time in the future.

So look, if we could just stop the tantrums and calm down and use the intellects that God gave us, we could get on with what really does matter instead of devoting our lives to serving a lie and bringing yet more self-induced misery on ourselves, following on the last round of godless lie-based totalitarianism in the USSR, China, North Korea, etc.
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February 23, 2009 2:39pm
PhilBest

What is the best way to describe the guy who did THIS to an 85 year old war veteran?

http://nz.news.yahoo.com/a/-/top-stories/5338306/suppression-man-accused-bashing-war-veteran/
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February 23, 2009 2:41pm
Atheist1

Jack, I see he’s still bleating on…wonder if the wall is answering?
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February 23, 2009 2:43pm
MyNameIsJack

An ACT voter?
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February 23, 2009 2:45pm
PhilBest

Apropos: Mark Steyn: “When Its No Country For Old Men”: in November 2007:

“….Once it’s no longer accepted that something is wrong all the laws in the world will avail you nought. The law functions as formal expression of a moral code, not as free-standing substitute for it. Last year, on a trolley car in London, a 96-year-old man was punched in the face and blinded in one eye. His 44-year- old attacker had boarded the crowded tram, tried to push past Mr. Chaudhury in the aisle and become enraged by the nonagenarian’s insufficient haste in moving out of the way. “You bastard!” he snarled, and slugged him. A month ago, Stephen Gordon was sentenced by Croydon Crown Court to three years’ probation, which means he’ll have to endure weekly chit-chats with a municipal functionary, assuming he bothers turning up for his appointments. Mr. Gordon was seen to smirk as he left court, notwithstanding the mental health issues entered in mitigation.

Much of the commentary concerned the leniency of the sentence. But consider George Jonas’s dictum: beating up a 96-year-old isn’t wrong because it’s illegal; it’s illegal because it’s wrong. And, if a citizen of an advanced Western social democracy no longer knows it’s wrong, the laws are unlikely to prove much restraint. British society has come to depend on CCTVs — closed-circuit cameras in every public building, every shopping centre, every street, even(in some remote rural locales)on the trees. According to Theodore Dalrymple, England’s greatest living pessimist, the British are second only to the North Koreans as the most monitored population on the planet; Britain is said to be home to a third of all the world’s CCTVs; in the course of an average day, the average Briton is estimated to be filmed approximately 300 times. Etc. So naturally the Croydon trolley had a camera, and it captured in vivid close-up the perpetrator attacking his victim. And a fat lot of good the video evidence did Mr. Chaudhury.
Look at it from the attacker’s point of view: why not beat up old people? Let’s face it, they’re a pain in the neck, clogging up escalators, revolving doors, sidewalks. You’re in a hurry, you’ve got places to go, people to see, and there’s always some old coot or withered biddy shuffling, shuffling, shuffling in front of you at 10 paces an hour. In Britain, in Canada, in Europe, in Japan, in China, the population is aging fast. So, if you think there are too many codgers taking 20 minutes to board the bus right now, just wait a couple of decades. Suppose five per cent of young men get irked at being delayed by geezers. What restrains them from making grampa-whacking merely the latest normalized pathology? A functioning civilization is like an iceberg: the unseen seven-eighths of codes and assumptions is the accumulated inheritance, the wisdom of the ages. Once it’s gone, what’s left just bobs around on the surface. Take a walk round any downtown or suburban mall and see it as Mr. Chaudhury’s attacker did: what’s to stop you?
Men in a hurry are not to be disrespected. On CNN a week or two back, a reporter in Philadelphia, the murder capital of America, was interviewing the grieving mother of a young black boy killed while riding his bicycle in the residential street outside his home. Apparently, a couple of cars had got backed up behind him, and a tetchy passenger in one of them pulled out a gun and shot the kid dead. Inevitably, CNN followed this with a report on how easy it is to buy guns in Philadelphia and how local politicians are reluctant to do anything about it. This is an argument only the experts could make: in the 1990s, the number of firearms in America went up by 40 million but the murder rate fell dramatically. If gun ownership were the determining factor, Vermont and Switzerland would have high murder rates. Yet in Montpelier or Geneva, the solution to a boy carelessly bicycling in front of you down a city thoroughfare when you’re in a hurry is not to grab your piece and blow the moppet away. Once a relatively small chunk of the populace has decided it’s okay with offing grade-school scamps, “gun control” isn’t going to cut it: the societal safety lock is off…..

“…….England is a sad case study because it managed to spare itself all the most obviously malign infections of the age, beginning with fascism and Communism. But the statistics speak for themselves. The number of indictable offences per thousand people was 2.4 in 1900, climbed gradually to 9.7 in 1954, and then rocketed to 109.4 in 1992. Most crime goes unreported, and most reported crime goes unsolved. Yet the law-breaking is merely a symptom of a larger rupture……

“…….”A society’s first line of defence is not the law but customs, traditions and moral values,” wrote Walter Williams of George Mason University recently. “They include important thou-shalt-nots such as shalt not murder, shalt not steal, shalt not lie and cheat, but they also include all those courtesies one might call ladylike and gentlemanly conduct. Policemen and laws can never replace these restraints on personal conduct.”…..”

http://www.macleans.ca/canada/opinions/article.jsp?content=20071128_27878_27878
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February 23, 2009 2:53pm
senzafine

Theoretically, if teh vehicle is louder than standard, a ‘subjective’ test can be carried out by any police officer, whom can then green/pink sticker the car and order a proper, objective test.

There’s a few problems with this law:

1. People can switch to stock systems or install easily removable ‘silencers’ for the test. (incedentally, the silencers dont silence. They simply reduce the outlet diameter from anywhere as large as 5″ down to 2″, allowing the ‘muffler’ to actually muffle. kinda)
2. The immediate designation of ‘unroadworthy’ based on a subjective test on a highway or suburban street by an untrained member of the HWP. Portable DB readers arent exactly cutting edge technology.
3. There’s still plenty of muppets driving clapped out lancers sporting massive fart cannons. I get the feeling the law is not working.
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February 23, 2009 3:20pm
lofty

Philbest – with all due respect, I am sure the info you copy & paste is good stuff, but I find that as I flick here between work tasks, a sound bite is about all I can absorb, sorry I just don’t have the time or inclination to read a whole magazine.
Cheers
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February 23, 2009 3:22pm
greenfly

Phil Best pastes:
‘We have actually barely begun to prospect the entire surface of the earth, and under the sea bed, for all known resources.’
Hooray! There’s hope for the human race yet. Jesus!
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February 23, 2009 3:36pm
bearhunter

“every Pommie child in its lifetime will destroy more than two acres of “old-growth oak woodland”.”

Bollocks. No Pommy kid has a work ethic that strong.
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February 23, 2009 4:08pm
PhilBest

I didn’t paste that, Greenfly, that was my own honest work, in summarising the thrust of George Reisman’s essay.

You’re trying to be cynical in saying “there’s hope for the human race yet”, but if you said that candidly, it would show that you were coming around to the truth. Your movement is based on lies.

The counterpart to Reisman’s intellectual argument, is Bjorn Lomborg’s book, “The Skeptical Environmentalist”. Lomborg, as a member of Greenpeace and a Professor of Statistics, set out to debunk the book “The State of Humanity”, ed. Julian Simon; which in turn contained factual reports of the various environmental and resource indicators around the world, and showed that they were improving, not declining; except in communist countries.

Lomborg discovered that the Julian Simon book was correct, and that the environmental movement’s information was virtually 100% lies, propaganda, and myths. Lomborg’s book actually updated and extended the scope of research of the earlier book.

The fact that this has not made waves and brought about some serious soul searching in political circles, is evidence of just how entrenched the whole P.C. anti-freedom brigade is in our media and educational institutions. You Greenies are the Nazis or the Bolsheviks, the Mainstream media is like “Pravda” or the “Volkischer Beobachter”; and people like me are the underground, counterculture, circulating “Samizdats” and trying to get the truth out.

And it is noticeable that this PC brigade’s so called tolerance and anxiety not to offend exotic cultures does not extend to refraining from blasphemy that is offensive to Christians.
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February 23, 2009 4:13pm
Atheist1

PB – “the environmental movement’s information was virtually 100% lies, propaganda, and myths.”

Hmmm, sounds more like a description of another *book* than a description of the environmental movement to me
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February 23, 2009 4:28pm
MyNameIsJack

And it is noticeable that this PC brigade’s so called tolerance and anxiety not to offend exotic cultures does not extend to refraining from blasphemy that is offensive to Christians.

Blasphemy ain”t that simple, Phoil, and that is why most modern countries no longer have it on the books. it applies not to one religion, but to all religions. therefore, when you assert that xtianity is correct, other religions are not, you blaspheme. When you put Jesus above mahommed, you blaspheme the musselmen. If you try to convert a hindu, you blaspheme Krishna et al.

So, as one who is an atheist about just one more god than you, I cannot blaspheme as there are no gods for me to blaspheme.
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February 23, 2009 4:39pm
greenfly

Puzzling that Key has cut back plans to renovate Government House, especially canning the plan to re-lay the car park, when we’ve been led to believe that this is the very kind of ‘stimulation’ the economy needs – more work, more jobs. What’s he thinking ( Is he thinking?)
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February 23, 2009 6:13pm
goodgod

but they also include all those courtesies one might call ladylike and gentlemanly conduct. Policemen and laws can never replace these restraints on personal conduct.”…..”

“Personal conduct” in a “gentlemanly” manner as they put it, or just basic manners, as i put it, are the building blocks of interacting with people in an adult way. It is the only way to stay on purpose during the interactions of your life. That’s why manners came about. Not to get in your silly teenage way, or to be proscriptive and oppressive, or to stop you getting pissed and they are definately not “tack on” superficial behaviors. Manners came about as people surpassed an adolescent outlook and approach to life. It is a natural occurance in the progression of human social development.
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February 23, 2009 6:41pm
Patrick Starr

“( Is he thinking?)”

Oh yes, just way over the head of your vegetable garden politics greenfly
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February 23, 2009 8:11pm
greenfly

Patrick – the politics of the vegetable garden are surprisingly complex, you know that, I’m sure. You reckon Key could manage a vege garden? My bet – not a hope in hell (he’ll have a gardener or two, do you think?) I’d like to be proved wrong about that. Called ‘having your feet on the ground’, that. Reminds me of another poignant phrase that I think works here, ‘Feet of clay’. Know it?
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February 23, 2009 8:56pm
Patrick Starr

Yeah I’m sure, your neighbours spray may be blowing over the fence – the world that Key is attending to however is slightly more complex,
and why not have a gardener or two, he can afford to, – he’s worked for it – and a very successful man

You however are consumed with bitterness – which I might add appears to be growing faster than your carrots
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February 23, 2009 9:46pm
Ratbiter

Patrick Starr –

Well *this* as-yet-less-successful-than-john-key-is employee is working late into the night – again – because ungrateful rich pricks demand immediate service, with no appreciation of what that requires, and my boss (who himself is presently at home enjoying his dinner & what not) feels that “in this current climate we can’t afford not to give customers what they want.” the fact that he owns the business makes this cool of course. This is the 6th such night in the last fortnight…

Apparently it is easy for you in your position to cast words like “bitterness” around like stones.

Remember that the french revolution began during a time of poverty, when the majority decided they were no longer going to take the conceit of the elite who had managed to shield themselves – or so they thought – from the poverty…
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February 23, 2009 10:18pm
Patrick Starr

and how are those deserving customers going to be getting immediate service when your fucking around on blog sites – you loafing off sponge. I hope your boss checks your Internet usage tomorrow and sacks your lazy arse.

Now get back to work!
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February 23, 2009 10:28pm
Patrick Starr

“when the majority decided “……….yeah, called the last election – when the majority decided that Clark and Cullen had robbed us enough
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February 23, 2009 10:33pm
wikiriwhis business

Some ones not on tonight that said he wasn’t going to be on

Hope lives eternal
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February 23, 2009 10:49pm
Ratbiter

10 minute micropause number 3 for the day as work hour number 14 goes on the clock:

WHOOOOSH as the invitation to put himself in someone else’s shoes for a change sails straight past Patrick Starr’s oblivious head!

Don’t worry, I don’t seriously expect any questioning of the “I’ve made it to the top, so you slaves can work like the scum you are” kind of meritocracy right wingers love to really go down very well on a blog like this one!
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February 23, 2009 11:23pm
transmogrifier

Phil finds some interesting articles, but his persecution complex is so overwhelming, it’s tough to really take him seriously. I’m especially wearied by his constant woe-is-me Christianity-is-vixtimised attitude – something that irks all the more when he goes running with the “environmentalism denies us our humanity” when religion (any religion, Phil, lest you feel the need to bleat again rising in your chest) does just that, founded on the misanthropic idea that humans can attain true spiritual life for themselves by following the absolute dictates of a superior being (talk about totalitarianism!).

Everything we have has come from nature, and this demands as much respect as anything non-human in this universe. That doesn’t mean we seal it off and sacrifice our happiness to the pointless exercise of living in a static nature theme park – we are part of nature, and thus have a true right to use it our own ends. Still, a healthy respect for the world we live in is to me a key characteristic of a truly decent person (along with other things like a respect for humanity, an intolerance for the suppression of human rights and freedoms, a respect for human enterprise and work ethic, being a Sonic Youth fan etc)

Though it’s often hard to identify given the laziness of partisan cheerleading that masquerades as political sensibility there is a happy medium to be found between the “rape now, worry later” extreme right attitude and the houlier-than-thou nature is superior to humanity speechifying of the extreme left. It’s just a matter of finding it.
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February 24, 2009 12:00am
Patrick Starr

10.18 and 11.23 – those 3x “10 minute micropauses” in the 14 hour shift seem to be coming more frequently – (lying pinko)

now we had it tuff. We lived in shoe box in middle of the road. … half an hour before we went to bed and lick road clean with our tongs. … Surely it was a paper bag in t’middle of road in which 150 of us lived etc etc …..
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February 24, 2009 12:45am
Ratbiter

“(lying pinko)”

Charming! I must be a liar, I’m disagreeing with you after all. Whatever. I’m here briefly to keep myself sane in between bouts of chargeable work that I’m doing at a profit for my capitalist overlords. I keep a timesheet so this post here is no skin off their noses.

You imply that you are not doing the same, therefore the only logical conclusion is that you are online merely because you aren’t getting laid and therefore have nothing better to do? Hmmm?
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February 24, 2009 1:05am
Atheist1

Transmogrifier – I so agree. You put that so well.
I am sure some of the articles PhilB posts are interesting *as part of the debate* (i.e. not in the way he posts them, as if they are the word and anything to the contrary is *wrong*) but his holier than thou, I am so right and I should be allowed access to every household to spread my word attitude just puts me off taking him seriously.
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February 24, 2009 6:46am
greenfly

Patrick Starr speak with forked tong
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February 24, 2009 7:47am
Patrick Starr

greenfly should fork off
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February 24, 2009 8:09am

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