Not a duck

But a Mallard: Trevor Mallard that is. Our local MP; who spoke to us at Rotary this week. It gave me the chance to ask him why we don't have compulsory car insurance (a question I had previously put to John Carter the National MP). Basically he thought it would lead to even more people not registering their car. So what - but he glossed it over. But did have an idea which had been turned down. We add the Registration/Insurance into the petrol tax. I thought that was a good idea but it (like the insurance) will be never.

Most questions were around the problems we are having with booze and the supermarkets.

I have a bit of time for Trevor as he is fairly forthright.

New Net Law : This starts on the 1st September. The real problem I have is the guilty until proven innocent aspect. Labour say they will repeal it. We shall see.

SOE's: The Government plan to sell off 49% but I thought we already owned them. The plan is that nobody can own more than 15% - it should be 5% at the most and as we know the shares will be bought up by overseas interests. They (the Government) say they can't stop that happening. Of course they can (they legislate like in Oz) but they don't want to.

RWC: The countdown is starting.

Quiz: Came 3rd to last (an improvement of one place) but shared the bonus in a 3 way split which was $130 of drinks.

Rugby and other matters

Rugby: AB's 20 Australia 25. I hope it is a wake up call but things are not looking good. I think that 5 teams can win, England, France (depending on which team arrives on the day) Oz, the Boks and us.

It is easy after the event but I see Richard Loe and I agree with Gear missing out being a travesty and we both think Toeava is very lucky. He also likes Crockett and being an ex prop should know. A good point he had is the workrate around the field is now more important than scummaging. How Corey Flynn makes it is beyond me.

The Shield went north after Taranaki beat Southland and it is on the line today against Hawkes Bay. You would have to favour the Bay but the Shield brings the best out of the defenders and as I type this the 'Naki are well on top.

RWC: I hope the powers that be ensure the staduims are full and not empty at every game by giving the tickets away to schoolkids. They are probably too dumb. The prices are just too high for Kiwis.

Idiocy: Again. A murderer was running a business from jail due to a loophole in the law. How we ask could he make the phone calls? His lawyer (Tony Ellis - isn't that a surprise) couldn't see anything wrong with that!! Anyway they are to change the law.

US Political Idiocy: A great commentary by Richard Dawkins about Gov. Rick Perry of Texas -

There is nothing unusual about Governor Rick Perry. Uneducated fools can be found in every country and every period of history, and they are not unknown in high office. What is unusual about today’s Republican party is this : In any other party and in any other country, an individual may occasionally rise to the top in spite of being an uneducated ignoramus. In today’s Republican Party ignorance and lack of education are positive qualifications, bordering on obligatory. Intellect, knowledge and linguistic mastery are mistrusted by Republican voters, who, when choosing a president, would apparently prefer someone like themselves over someone actually qualified for the job.

A politician’s attitude to evolution is perhaps not directly important in itself but it can have unfortunate consequences on education and science policy. A politician’s attitude to evolution, however peripheral it might seem, is a surprisingly apposite litmus test of more general inadequacy. This is because unlike, say, string theory where scientific opinion is genuinely divided, there is about the fact of evolution no doubt at all. Evolution is a fact, as securely established as any in science, and he who denies it betrays woeful ignorance and lack of education, which likely extends to other fields as well. Evolution is not some recondite backwater of science, ignorance of which would be pardonable. It is the stunningly simple but elegant explanation of our very existence and the existence of every living creature on the planet. Thanks to Darwin, we now understand why we are here and why we are the way we are. You cannot be ignorant of evolution and be a cultivated and adequate citizen of today.

We would hope that a politician espousing his views in NZ would be treated with derision.

Computer: Now with a new desktop and a laptop. As usual all the stupid changes that are purely cosmetic are a pain. As usual 400 things are available but only 20 will be used. As usual some sensible things have been deleted (especially those from XP - which was probably too good a system).

A side issue was that for the laptop we could enter a competition (although the website didn't work and I had to phone them - typical - and it is a technology company) and won tickets to the Oz-USA game.



Billy T James: We went to a Rotary fundraiser and saw the documentary about him. It was excellent - although the personal part of his marriage etc was skated over. As I understand it he married one sister but his daughter was to the other sister. His voice was much better than I remembered.

Metrics: Got a Netguide from the library and it had a letter about another of my many hobby horses. Why after 42 years do we still quote in Inperial. As the writer said (he is a teacher) his students don't have a clue what inches and feet etc are. They had the usual answers of USA still being 500 years behind.

Going going gone!

To Adelaide: Well they have left for Adelaide so things will be a lot quieter now. Went to our first quiz and called ourselves "No Joe - No Show" and sadly it was true as we came second to last. We can only hope we pick up a bonus or two.

The Pictures tell it all - snow

Snowballs

The boys and Christine

Hi Fives in the cold

Looking down the street

The car outside our house - all covered in snow

Barbara getting snowed upon

Pouring down

Out the front of the house

In the backyard

Looking up at the hills a couple of days earlier

And now the boys inside the warm house

Brrrr

Tawa

Snow: First time in my life - snow in the Valley and Wellington. Also power cuts, Rotary cancelled etc.

Turkey

Christine with a map of the 14 day tour we did. We of course arrived 3 days
early and stayed on another day.

A couple of pictures of the fabulous Pamukkale Trevertine Terraces. The springs cause the terraces to form and you can only imagine how our Pink & White Terraces must have looked.
From a distance you would have sworn it was a snowfield.

Look at the effect of the marvelous sunshine.

The Gypsy wedding we 'attended".

Ankara, capital of Turkey and the Ataturk memorial.

The plastic covers we had to put on so our shoes didn't touch the floor at the mosque.
What difference it made is beyond me.

A Gypsy camp in the middle of Turkey.

A small town street in Turkey.

An example of the many ruins we saw.

Ballooning in Cappadocia.

All below are from Istanbul.

A slightly crowded street - probably off from Taksim Square.

A view of the Mosque looking over the Bosphorus.

On the Bosphorus these were restaurant boats. They cooked the meal on them and
you sat on the side of the wharf and ate.

In the underground railway.

One of the many tricks the sellers of the goats milk ice cream get up to.