This is great www.walkit.com
If you're in London, you enter details about where you want to walk from and to and it produces a route map and directions.
It also tells you great things like the time it will take (based on how fast you walk), the distance you will cover, the calories you will burn and the C02 emmissions you save.
Walk it.
29 November 2006
05 November 2006
France, October 2006
Some pic's of our holiday to France, which included Sean and Cecile's PACsing.
Metro, Paris
Laborie - Sean and Cecile's place.
Sean and Cecile - post-PACsing
Post-PACsing
21 October 2006
Thirty-five today
Thirty-five. It’s one of those useless in-between ages isn’t it? No longer am I a young(-ish) man of thirty, nor am my 'middle-aged' yet (or at least I don't feel as though I am, thank the lord).
Maybe these feelings have something to do with the fact that I can feel 40 looming on the horizon. Forty is definitely one of those ‘marker’ ages.
I never attached much significance to 30 but find myself increasingly thinking about the psychological implications of 40. Particularly in light of the need to feel like I am living the kind of life I want to be living, ie in a state of reduced compromise. Which certainly isn't the case now.
Maybe these feelings have something to do with the fact that I can feel 40 looming on the horizon. Forty is definitely one of those ‘marker’ ages.
I never attached much significance to 30 but find myself increasingly thinking about the psychological implications of 40. Particularly in light of the need to feel like I am living the kind of life I want to be living, ie in a state of reduced compromise. Which certainly isn't the case now.
12 September 2006
Truth is always the first casualty
Is Russell Brown the best commentator writing in the New Zealand media at the moment? He is certainly the most versatile and prolific that I have come across. He’s written an excellent piece on the Middle East today.
The answer to his first question perhaps goes someway to explaining how the Bush administration has got away with so much:
“So if polls find that more than a third of Americans believe the 9/11 attacks to have been an inside job by their own government, and around half still believe Saddam Hussein had something to do with it, does that mean only about 15% have any idea at all?”
While his last encourages us to think about an alternative reality:
“consider this: the total financial cost of the Iraq war - taking into account the cost of servicing the debt that funded it - has been repeatedly estimated in excess of a trillion dollars.
Try and imagine the impact on hearts and minds of a trillion dollars worth of benign investment in the Middle East and the wider Islamic world: in business development, health care, education, NGOs, printing books. Might things have worked out better?”
Read the article in full.
The answer to his first question perhaps goes someway to explaining how the Bush administration has got away with so much:
“So if polls find that more than a third of Americans believe the 9/11 attacks to have been an inside job by their own government, and around half still believe Saddam Hussein had something to do with it, does that mean only about 15% have any idea at all?”
While his last encourages us to think about an alternative reality:
“consider this: the total financial cost of the Iraq war - taking into account the cost of servicing the debt that funded it - has been repeatedly estimated in excess of a trillion dollars.
Try and imagine the impact on hearts and minds of a trillion dollars worth of benign investment in the Middle East and the wider Islamic world: in business development, health care, education, NGOs, printing books. Might things have worked out better?”
Read the article in full.
25 August 2006
You can take the boy out
A good column in the Wellington Dominion-Post today by Chris Trotter (I never expected to write those words in that order), which offered more food for thought as I continue to wrestle with the idea of returning to New Zealand to live.
When you’re so far away from home and, after 10 years, still trying to work out whether or not you should go back, it’s things like this that help you to remember where you’re from and what it is about place that is important.
In day-to-day conversation it’s difficult to pinpoint the intangible characteristics of ‘home’ or what it is to be a New Zealander that really matter. Then you see or hear something and all of a sudden you’re sitting at you desk stricken by homesickness, wishing you were walking along a beach covered in ink-black iron sand, waves crashing in beside you, staring again at the conical mountain that moves you every time you see it thinking: where the bloody hell did that come from?
You can take the boy out of New Zealand but can you take New Zealand out of the boy?
When you’re so far away from home and, after 10 years, still trying to work out whether or not you should go back, it’s things like this that help you to remember where you’re from and what it is about place that is important.
In day-to-day conversation it’s difficult to pinpoint the intangible characteristics of ‘home’ or what it is to be a New Zealander that really matter. Then you see or hear something and all of a sudden you’re sitting at you desk stricken by homesickness, wishing you were walking along a beach covered in ink-black iron sand, waves crashing in beside you, staring again at the conical mountain that moves you every time you see it thinking: where the bloody hell did that come from?
You can take the boy out of New Zealand but can you take New Zealand out of the boy?
10 July 2006
Twenty-one years ago
Twenty-one years ago today the French government blew up the Greenpeace boat the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland Harbour.
It’s interesting reading this matter of fact report published in The Guardian immediately following the incident knowing what we do about what actually happened. This was a major incident in New Zealand’s recent history but remains merely an embarrassing footnote for the French.
The Rainbow Warrior was in Auckland, New Zealand, preparing to visit Moruroa Atoll as part of a major campaign against French nuclear testing.
The first bomb exploded at 11.38pm, then there was a second explosion and Fernando Pereira, the ship's photographer, drowned.
The French wanted to stop Greenpeace’s plans for a peaceful protest against nuclear testing. They were particularly concerned about Polynesians launching outrigger canoes from the Rainbow Warrior. Polynesia is a French territory and the French feared any hint of independence.
Police later questioned a French ‘couple’, who were in fact agents Prieur and Mafart of the French secret service. Although neither of these were the bombers.
Initially, the French government denied all knowledge but it soon became obvious that they were involved. The French minister of defence resigned.
The trial itself was a surprise. It had been expected to last for weeks but 34 minutes into the preliminary hearing agents Prieur and Mafart pleaded guilty to manslaughter and wilful damage, attracting sentences of 10 and 7 years. It turns out a deal was struck before the agents entered the courtroom. A UN negotiated settlement meant that the two agents were transferred to Hao atoll, a French military base in French Polynesia to serve their time. They were each released in less than two years.
The Rainbow Warrior website has more.
It’s interesting reading this matter of fact report published in The Guardian immediately following the incident knowing what we do about what actually happened. This was a major incident in New Zealand’s recent history but remains merely an embarrassing footnote for the French.
The Rainbow Warrior was in Auckland, New Zealand, preparing to visit Moruroa Atoll as part of a major campaign against French nuclear testing.
The first bomb exploded at 11.38pm, then there was a second explosion and Fernando Pereira, the ship's photographer, drowned.
The French wanted to stop Greenpeace’s plans for a peaceful protest against nuclear testing. They were particularly concerned about Polynesians launching outrigger canoes from the Rainbow Warrior. Polynesia is a French territory and the French feared any hint of independence.
Police later questioned a French ‘couple’, who were in fact agents Prieur and Mafart of the French secret service. Although neither of these were the bombers.
Initially, the French government denied all knowledge but it soon became obvious that they were involved. The French minister of defence resigned.
The trial itself was a surprise. It had been expected to last for weeks but 34 minutes into the preliminary hearing agents Prieur and Mafart pleaded guilty to manslaughter and wilful damage, attracting sentences of 10 and 7 years. It turns out a deal was struck before the agents entered the courtroom. A UN negotiated settlement meant that the two agents were transferred to Hao atoll, a French military base in French Polynesia to serve their time. They were each released in less than two years.
The Rainbow Warrior website has more.
07 June 2006
Did Bush steal the 2004 US presidential election as well?
This article questioning the validity of the 2004 election (not the 2000 election we already know was stolen) is a must read. It is astounding and incredibly disturbing.
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