StephenNZ

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• Commented on Do my Laundry
  Sorry. Something a little more on topic: how is the relationship between Baroness Karnstein and Officer Friendly Vampire working out? Any loose ends to be tidied up there?...
• Commented on Do my Laundry
  More on oil burning steam locomotives from a New Zealand/Aotearoa perspective. A number of North Island based mainline locomotives were either build as Oil Burners (NZR Ja class - North Island based - earlier builds were coal burners) or converted...
• Commented on Pass or Fail
  Re "Clarke commented somewhere (perhaps "The Making of 2001"?)" I believe the comment was included in "The Lost Worlds of 2001" written by Clarke & published in 1972. Quite possibly elsewhere as well....
• Commented on Pass or Fail
  I suspect we are getting a little off topic. But no, these trams re are not your ex Philly trolleys. Of the seven trams currently in use in Christchurch, only two are Brill built products. They were ordered from J...
• Commented on Pass or Fail
  Yes definitely trams (and not "light rail"). There are currently seven trams in the fleet with an eighth planned to join the fleet in October. The youngest tram originally went into service in 1934, the oldest in 1903. All are...
• Commented on Pass or Fail
  Its not just motorists and cyclists. I drive one of these - see https://www.christchurchattractions.nz/christchurch-tram/ - and part of the route is through pedestrian'ised areas. While we travel at walking pace through such areas you definitely have to watch out for...
• Commented on Shrinking the world
  One of the things I am finding strange about this discussion of changing car tyres is that I have heard no comments about the need to then balance the wheel/tyre combo after fitting/changing tyres (by spinning the wheel up on...
• Commented on An AI app walks into a writers room
  I have always wondered - what happens if/when the crossroads ceases to be a crossroads? Say, if one of the roads ceases to be a road, or the intersection is moved/realigned? Or they replace the crossroads with a roundabout?...
• Commented on Make Up a Guy
  Ummm - Gillard was an ex-Australian PM, not NZ. Are you thinking of Jacinta Adern - about to be ex PM of NZ?...
• Commented on Make Up a Guy
  I raise you "The Fittest" - J T McIntosh (aka James Macgregor) from 1955. https://www.fantasticfiction.com/m/j-t-mcintosh/fittest.htm...
• Commented on WTF
  Also happens in a lot of volunteer organisations (and especially hobby groups). I see many of the longer standing organisations and groups now starting to fail as the older "boomer" members die off, and there are not the younger members...
• Commented on Decision Fatigue
  In addition to the difficulty of derailing a trolley by "throw the switch half-way", if you do succeed in detailing the trolley, (either as you specified or some other way) one or both of two things will almost certainly happen....
• Commented on Decision Fatigue
  Sorry but your real world answer is based on a false premise and hence incorrect. Trolley (or trams as they are known in many places) - aka street tramways - use spring loaded switches (points) which are engineered to not...
• Commented on Decision Fatigue
  In Aotearoa we had only one VHF channel until 1970's. The actual channel number varied from region to region. I had a school holiday job in mid 1970's working for a TV repair company - my main job was as...
• Commented on Decision Fatigue
  Who defines the "sufficiently informed" criteria, and who tests the voters comply with it - and how often. Does the "sufficiently informed" criteria test then apply to the entire voting population? I see a few issues in the implementation here......
• Commented on Decision Fatigue
  We also have them in NZ - they are considered a pest and as a country we would prefer them eradicated. See https://www.mpi.govt.nz/biosecurity/long-term-biosecurity-management-programmes/wallabies-controlling-their-numbers/#:~:text=Five%20species%20of%20wallabies%20were,country%20and%20have%20adapted%20well. Note: I am referring to the animal that looks like a small kanagroo (about the size of...
• Commented on Decision Fatigue
  Not that giant - about the size of a pigeon with longer legs. (The babies are particularly cute - look like a pompom on oversize legs... https://www.reddit.com/r/newzealand/comments/k82i9m/baby_p%C5%ABkeko_are_built_totally_out_of_proportion/)...
• Commented on Decision Fatigue
  Not all of them are. Some - such as the weka don't fly. The ducks in the duck anecdote ran across the road rather than flying - their minds(?) maybe weren't on flying. Plus I have seen ducks and pukeko...
• Commented on Decision Fatigue
  Some further driving anecdotes about driving encounters with wildlife from Aotearoa that are likely to rattle the electronic brains of any self driving AI. (Many of these are from west coast of the South Island where roads are generally less...
• Commented on Strong and Stable!
  I think many of those plots have already been sorta done: Examples I can think of include "The Golden Rendezvous" by Alistair MacLean published 1962 & "A Plague of Sailors" by Brian Callison, published 1971 - except for the containers...
• Commented on Strong and Stable!
  You do not need a major earthquake for "soil liquefaction" to occur. Soil liquefaction occurred during the 22nd Feb 2011 Christchurch (Aotearos) Earthquake, which on the Richter scale was only 6.3 (and quite localised), but which caused many of the...
• Commented on I can't even
  I haven't tried, so cannot confirm whether this combination is possible - and I have no interest in finding out....
• Commented on I can't even
  Do you mean something like this: https://www.volkswagen.com.au/en/technology/infotainment-systems/active-info-display.html ? It is fitted to the 2017 VW Passatt (not-an-EV) I currently own/drive. (The map is actually one of a number of different a user selectable options as to what can be displayed...
• Commented on I can't even
  Here in Aotearoa/NZ, I use a phone app "Gaspy" that tells me the price of fuel at each IC gas station within a certain radius of where I am - based on my selected fuel of choice (generally diesel). This...
• Commented on I can't even
  Actually, I believe it was Doubtful Sound, not Milford Sounds. Specifically, transport the fresh water from the Manapouri Power station tailrace....
• Commented on The gathering crisis
  A good example is the Kea - look it up on Wikipedia....
• Commented on The ends of education
  Not sure where you got the idea "idea that privateers were scrupulously law-abiding and never ever stole at sea" from. (And yes, I noted the hint of sarcasm in your comment.) The privateers were essentially pirates who preyed on/plundered the...
• Commented on The ends of education
  Also worth referring to the Patrick O'Brian authored novel "The Letter of Marque", one of the volumes in the "Aubrey-Maturin" series British Navy seafaring novels set during the Napoleonic era. In particular, from the third paragraph of the first chapter...
• Commented on The ends of education
  Another issue on whether 2 x 20 hr/wk part timers = 1 x 40 hr/wk full timer is the type of task the workers do and the nature of the part time work. For example, do the tasks undertaken by...
• Commented on Crimes against Transhumanity
  "The key idea is that we can (and should, obviously) get some idea, often a very good idea, of the likely consequences of each option for a decision, before we make the decision." This sounds like very much like a...