Wise words

We look not to things that are seen, but to things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.

 I saw this on on a grave stone in the Mount Peel Churchyard. 

In spite of my Presbyterian upbringing I didn’t recognise it and had to do a Google search to discover it is from the Bible – 2 Corinithians 4: 17-18.

Good information and a joke

The weekly AgLetter from Wairarapa-based farm consultants Baker & Associates is a must-read for us.

This week’s edition includes a run down on interest rates and the 90 day probation clause for new employees.

The newsletter contents are copyright so I’m not going to divulge what it says (you can subscribe and read a sample here).

But each week’s offering includes at least one joke so in the spirit of St Patrick’s Day which was celebrated last week I offer this:

Patrick walks into a bar in Dublin, orders three pints of Guinness and sits in the corner of the room, drinking a sip out of each pint in turn.

 

When he had finished all three, he went back to the bar and ordered three more.

The barman says, “You know a pint goes flat soon after I pull it … your pint would taste better if you bought one at a time.”

 

Patrick replies, “Well now, I have two brodders, one is in America and de odder in Australia and here I am in Dublin. When we all left home, we promised dat we’d drink dis way to remember de days we all drank togedder.”

 

The barman admits that this is a nice custom and says no more. Patrick becomes a regular customer and always drinks the same way … ordering three pints and drinking a sip out of each in turn, until they are finished. One day, he comes in and orders just two pints.

 

All the other regulars in the bar notice and fall silent. When he goes back to the bar for the second round, the barman says, “I don’t want to intrude on your grief but I wanted to offer my condolences on your great loss.”

 

Patrick looks confused for a moment, then the penny drops and he starts to laugh, “Oh no,” he says, “Bejesus, everyone is fine! Tis me … I’ve quit drinking!”

Fence jumpers boost flower business

Illicit encounters aren’t the sort of topic normally raised on Phil Clarke’s Business blog, but a recent post  reveals that people who have extra-marital affairs in the UK spend about 60 million pounds on cut flowers.

Apparently that amounts to over 2.5% of the £2.2bn fresh cut flower market, with men who take mistresses spending an average £120 a year on flowers. That compares with just £41 for those who are not having affairs.

He doesn’t say whether the flowers are for the wives or the mistresses, or both.

But he reckons the fact that the flower buying fence jumpers are typically “high-powered businessmen with a great deal of expendable income” rules out most farmers.

Did you see the one about . . .

What to do when you suspect adultery at Monkey with typewriter.

Sceptical housewifery at In A Strange Land.

In praise of the eloquent insult at Not PC.

Spider du jour at Half-Pie (anachrophobics shouldn’t follow the link).

TVNZ. . .  What to do at Watching Brief (sound like a good idea to me).

You have to be joking at Frenemy.

Sentence of the day at Quote Unquote.

Joining the language police

One of the benefits of learning a foreign language is that it helps you understand more about your own.

But some things can’t be understood, they just have to be learned by rote. Then there are others which have a rule which is easy to understand but seem to make distinctions without making a difference and the requirement to diffentiate between less and few comes into that category.

I know this headline, Less kiwis making the move to Australia , is using the wrong word because it refers to a number not an amount so should have used fewer.

But how do you explain how to remember the difference to someone who doesn’t make the distinction or doesn’t care about it when the sentence still makes sense?

And does it matter or are the language police who defend the distinction between less and few just being pedantic?

Not who pays but what we pay for

Jim Hopkins is on the right track:

And we all missed the point. What matters is not who pays for stuff but the stuff we’re paying for.

Like trains, for crying out loud. Apparently, much of this new post-regional, national fuel tax will fund the electrification of Auckland’s railways.

Well, electrify them, by all means – assuming we can persuade ourselves to build another dam (or let the Russians sell us a surplus nuclear sub we can moor off Waiheke) but don’t pretend trains are the answer.

If they are, you’re asking the wrong question.

Expecting trains to solve Auckland’s transport woes makes as much sense as lassoing rogue elephants with spaghetti or telling Phil Goff he can win our hearts and minds by being himself.

Cities are created by the best available means we have to get around them. When that was feet, cities were small and compact. When it was trams and trains, they got bigger. Now it’s cars they sprawl, like concrete amoebas, all over the place.

And people move randomly about them – from Howick to Devonport to Sylvia Park, something trains can’t easily handle.

That’s just how it is. Some cities were created BA (Before Automobiles) and trains make sense.

Others grew AA (After Automobiles) and they don’t.

Build a motorway and get over it.

Being relegated to fortnightly offerings hasn’t dimmed his wit.

Saturday’s smiles

Two Mexicans are stuck in the desert, wandering aimlessly and close to
death. They are close to just lying down and waiting for the inevitable,
when all of a sudden…

“Hey Pepe, do you smell what I smell. Ees bacon, I is sure of eet”.

“Sí, Luis, eet smells like bacon to meee”.

So, with renewed strength, they struggle off up the next sand dune, and
there, in the distance, is a tree, just loaded with bacon.

There’s raw bacon, dripping with moisture, there’s fried bacon, back bacon,
double smoked bacon…every imaginable kind of cured pig meat you can
imagine.

“Pepe, Pepe, we ees saved. Eees a bacon tree”.

“Luis, are sure ees not a meerage? We ees in the desert, don’ forget”.

“Pepe, when deed you ever hear of a meerage that smell of bacon…ees no
meerage, ees a bacon tree”.

And with that…Luis races towards the tree. He gets to within 5 metres,
Pepe following closely behind, when all of a sudden, a machine gun opens up,
and Luis is cut down is his tracks.

 

It is clear he is mortally wounded but, true friend that he is, he manages to warn Pepe with his dying breath.

“Pepe…go back man, you was right, ees not a bacon tree”

“Luis, Luis mi amigo…what ees eet?”

“Pepe…ees not a bacon tree..

“Ees………

“Ees, a Ham Bush”   

 

(This is even funnier if you know that in Spanish the h is always silent).

When the Sun Shines More Years Than Fear

This Friday’s poem is by Janet Frame and comes from An Anthology of Twentieth Century New Zealand Poetry,  selected by Vincent O’Sullivan, published by Oxford University Press, 1976.

When the Sun Shines More Years Than Fear

 

When the sun shines more years than fear

when birds fly more miles than anger

when sky holds more bird

sails more cloud

shines more sun

than the palm of love carries hate,

event hen shall I in this weary

seventy-year banquet say, Sunwaiter,

Birdwaiter, Skywaiter,

I have no hunger,

remove my plate.

 

  - Janet Frame -

 

Falling demand for carpets hits workers

Staff at Oamaru’s Summit Woolspinners will learn today what impact a lack of orders will have on their jobs.

That is worrying for them and any job losses will be felt in the wider community.

It is also concerning for farmers because if there is a lack of orders for the wool Summit processes then as the there is also a lack of demand for coarse wool.

As the Dominion Post reports:

The big problem is that strong wool has really only one use – carpets. Some goes into furnishing textiles and some into house insulation, and occasionally an innovative deal, such as wool- coated tennis balls, is made.

But without carpets, New Zealand doesn’t have a wool industry, and it is disturbing to find that in the United States, the world’s biggest market, only 3 per cent of carpets are made of wool.

If only the coarse wool industry could follow the example of merino which has become a sought after product.

Small town drivers meet traffic lights

Oamaru’s main street has been a work in progress for months as two roundabouts were removed and replaced with traffic lights. Lights have also been put in at other intersections.

Yesterday the first set of lights was turned on and I didn’t notice anything amiss but a business owner near by told me there had been several instances near misses between drivers and pedestrians.

The ODT spent an hour watching and observed:

One woman driving south on Thames St who drove straight through a red light.

Pedestrians crossing Eden St east who did what they usually did – walked out on to the street without seeing or bothering about the green crossing light.

Motorists doing illegal U-turns on Thames St at the intersection.

Motorists not observing the right-turn light, especially those turning from Eden St.

Pedestrians stopping halfway across Thames St on the island, not realising they could continue crossing on the red flashing pedestrian light.

Some not going into the right-hand turn lane when wanting to turn right, then cutting across those who had waited in the correct lane.

Turning motorists getting stranded in the middle of the intersection when lights turned red.

Left-turning motorists not giving way to those turning right when the light changed to green.

One of the reasons the roundabouts didn’t work as they should have was because local drivers entered the intersections when they couldn’t get through and thus prevent those coming at right angles from getting round.

The list above suggests some drivers will have similar problems with road rules about lights.

The main street is also State Highway 1 which makes it busy and while retailers wouldn’t like it, the best – though expensive – solution would be a by-pass.

But main road or not, the real problem will be the removal of parks from between the trees which bisect the street. Small town drivers are accustomed to being able to park outside or very close to where they want to go and the loss of more than a dozen parks won’t be appreciated.

Fonterra gets gagging writ

Fonterra has won a gagging writ to stop a smear campaign against it in Sri Lanka.

Colombo District Court has ordered Mawbima Lanka Padanama (MLP) – a local lobbyist critical of imported foods – from making false statements about Fonterra’s milkpowders, reported the Daily Mirror newspaper in the city.

MLP had claimed Fonterra added non-dairy fat to its milk.

This is a particularly nasty form of anti-competitive behaviour, and given the nervousness about food saftey it is one which is likely to have an impact on consumers.

Does he think they should have two bites?

John Turton who runs the Lower Hutt Food Bank has criticised John Key’s suggestion that people who don’t save or spend their tax cuts could give them to charity.

His clients do not qualify for the tax cuts. Most of them get Working for Families payments, disqualifying them from receiving the cuts.

These people are probably getting nearly as much if not more than they pay in tax already so does he think they should have two bites at the public cherry?

Or is he just confused about the difference between tax cuts which allow people to keep a little more of the money they earn and welfare?

Is it hot in here . . .

. . .  or is it just me?

Apropos of dolls, the Hand Mirror has a post on the transformation of Dora the Explorer and an earlier one here.

I’ve read posts on Barbie’s birthday somewhere too but can’t find them now. Feel free to leave a link in the comments if you have one.

Just wondering . . .

 . . . why shops which are open 24 hours a day, seven days a week need locks?

Power mooves

Scientists have followed last year’s discovery that cattle and deer tend to orient themselves north to south when grazing, with another which shows that high voltage power lines  can put them out of alignment.

When the power lines run east-west, that is the way grazing cattle tend to line up, researchers led by Hynek Burda and Sabine Begall of the faculty of biology at the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany report in Tuesday’s edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

They also found that cows and deer grazing under northeast-southwest or northwest-southeast power lines faced in random directions.

. . . The new study adds weight to the animals responding to magnetic effects, since power lines also produce a magnetic field. And the effect was most noticeable close to the power lines, declining as the magnetic field of the electric lines was reduced by distance.

Wind and weather can also affect which ways cows choose to face, but without such factors about two-thirds of them tended to align north-south when away from power lines.

Dairy sheds are often built near overhead lines because it makes connecting to the power cheaper. I wonder if this means aligning the shed so the cows stand the way they tend to orient would  have an influence, making them more or less happy and productive?

From Time to Mine

The publishers of Time are offering subscribers a customised magazine catering for their personal interests.

Time Inc. is experimenting with a customized magazine that combines reader-selected sections from eight publications as it tries to mimic in printed form the personalized news feeds that have become popular on the Internet.

Called mine the five-issue, 10-week experiment also aligns readers with the branding message that its sole advertising partner, Toyota Motor Corp., has for its new Lexus 2010 RX sport utility vehicle: It’s as customizable as the magazine carrying its ads.

Most newspapers and magazines are losing subscribers who are turning to the internet rather than the printed page for information and entertainment. This innovative approach which targets readers’ particular interests might win some back.

It’s free and you can sign up here - but only if you live in the USA.

Chinese govt pressures poisoned milk victims to drop law suits

Families of children who were poisoned by melamine tainted milk in China are being pressured by government officials to drop law suits seeking compensation.

Local officials were calling and visiting at least a half-dozen families, urging them to drop their cases against the dairies and accept a government-sanctioned compensation plan giving 2,000 yuan ($290) to most victims, said Zhao Lianhai, the father of a child who was sickened by the milk.

At least one family has decided to back out of their lawsuit, Zhao said Tuesday.

. . .  The accusations that local officials are trying to intimidate victim’s families come despite this month’s announcement by the executive vice president of China’s highest court, Shen Deyong, that parents who rejected the government’s compensation plan were welcome to file lawsuits against the dairies.

It was not clear why local officials would try to stop the families after Shen’s announcement. But different levels of government in China often disagree on how to handle matters, and local officials may see lawsuits as a threat to their authority with the potential to upset stability in their community.

Politics within politics was blamed for the delay in withdrawing contaminated milk from sale in the first place. The damage that did is being compounded by this attempt to stop families from seeking compensation.

Money won’t bring back a dead baby but it will help pay for care for children who have on-going health problems as a result of drinking the infant formula which was poisoned with melamine.

Nothing blue about berry good invention

A machine to sort blueberries for colour and ripeness is proving to be bvery good for a family business.

TV3 shows how it works here.

It doesn’t matter who owns what

Bill English has announced a review of overseas investment rules.

The aim is to simplify them to make investment more attractive to foreign owners while protecting sensitive land, assets and resources.

That sounds sensible to me. It creates a bigger market with safeguards.

No doubt there will be howls of protest from people opposed to foreign ownership.

Funny how they don’t seem concerned about New Zealanders owning land and businesses in other countries.

But who owns what isn’t important, it’s what they’re permitted to do with it that matters.

Just a coincidence?

The previous government stopped funding Plunketline, which dealt specifically w ith children’s health issues saying they were covered by Healthline.

The new government recently reinstated funding so Plunketline can operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Is it just coincidence that the Healthline ads now running on TV focus on babies?