The Daily Blog Open Mic Wednesday 1st April 2015

1. Just had a quick glass at the Stuff website at noon – talk about a more or less inconsequential line up of headlines. My facebook newsfeed is far more indepth and entertaining. There are fast becoming two types of news audience – those that let someone else spoon feed them news based on the supplier’s criteria, and those who are making their own custom-made choices. The former may be larger, but the latter are definitely a significant part of the potential audience for news.

   Here’s the “editors picks”

   Crazy new must-have of the super-rich

   How Kiwi blokes learned to love the hug video

   What about rowers’ team-mates? stuff nation

   Eiffel Tower: 13 things you didn’t know

   Solid Energy issues ‘not resolvable’

   Promising start to Easter weather

   Six life hacks you need to know

   China’s great wall of sand riles US

   Reason: Good, bad and ugly of CWC 2015

   • @ esoteric pineapples – yep. It’s all about dumbing down the masses.

     Keep the masses ignorant and they conform quickly. Much easier to manipulate and control!

2. I spotted a bus stop advertisement/ poster with Paul Henry and others on it – saying ‘the future has arrived…blah blah’. Something to do with a new breakfast show. I thought to myself, if that’s the future, then we’re all *****!

3. Terrorist cell hunted down like the murdering dogs they are, in Keystone, New Zealand:

   (Stuff, today)
   Three young Cromwell women sparked an hour-long police hunt across Central Otago and Queenstown Lakes districts on Tuesday after they were spotted leaving a Cromwell store wearing balaclavas.

   A concerned member of the public alerted police after believing the young women, all aged 17, were males robbing the store and seven patrols cars were called in to search for the culprits.

   Sergeant Keith Newell, of Queenstown, said two of the teens had walked out of the store sporting the balaclavas, while another, who was embarrassed by the pair, had put her jacket over her head.

   Police from Queenstown, Wanaka, Cromwell and Alexandra were called to assist in finding the lookalike robbers and several cordons were set up across the two districts.

   The vehicle they were travelling in was located on State Highway 6 near the Crown Range turnoff where police found three surprised teenagers.

   Newell said there had been nothing sinister in the young women’s “hijinks” behaviour.

   “I don’t think they thought about the consequences of what they’d done.”

   Despite the callout being a false alarm, it had been a good training exercise for police.

   “They kept us on our toes from the best of an hour,” Newell said.

   Newell also praised the vigilant member of the public who notified police.

   “It was a good call. The caller did the right thing.”

   But did anyone ask the shopkeeper if he’d been robbed?

   • As the Swedish prosecutor chasing after Assange would have said “The shopkeeper is not a lawyer to know whether or not a crime has been committed.”

4. How long has Open Mike been up on TDB? Haven’t seen it before. I’m getting old, so in my dotage I didn’t notice it. But hey, thanks guys for giving us raving lefties the opportunity for a general chat about this, that and the other. Maybe it needs to be in a more prominent location for easy visibility to attract more comments. Particularly for us old farts 🙂

   In Parliament today, I noticed Winston Peters’ motion of implementing a nationwide register for sex offenders and paedophiles was objected to by the Natsies!

   A bit too sensitive topic for the Key gang? One does wonder why though! Hmm ….

5. The recent Wanaka takeoff of the; Nasa super-pressure helium balloon, has been mildly controversial. I see it as a potentially great platform for climate science, others as an expensive waste of resources. But such a vessel can get the atmospheric readings required for improved modeling of the progress of anthropogenic climate change with much less carbon emissions than could conventional aircraft.

   Musing this, I was delighted to find this article on the Guardian:

   the world’s largest aircraft: a hybrid of plane, balloon and hovercraft, an airship… The Airlander 10 can fly for weeks, land virtually anywhere that’s flat, and burns just a fifth of the fuel of a conventional aircraft.

   With speeds reaching 100mph, it’s slower than a plane but greener, quieter, and potentially far more direct. Its unusual shape emulates a wing, giving it lift as it is propelled forward by its four engines, as well as from the 38,000m3 of helium that fills its hull…

   a super-tough skin to keep the helium in, a cockpit built from lightweight composite materials, modern controls, and a hull whose unique aerodynamic dimensions were calculated via computer-aided design.

   http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/30/worlds-largest-aircraft-looking-for-investors-to-give-it-liftoff

   The Hindenburg disaster has dampened the development of dirigible airships for nearly 80 years now. I am delighted that someone is giving it another try. Though the military potential is a bit creepy:

   The Airlander was patented in 2001 but development hastened with US backing for a potential long-range spy in the sky. Defence cuts and the winding down of the war in Afghanistan led the military to abort its $300m programme not long after the craft’s one test flight at the Lakehurst air force base in New Jersey [poetically – the site of the Hindenburg disaster]…

   What looked like the death knell for the Airlander turned out to be a blessing for Hybrid Air Vehicles, which ended up buying back the aircraft and the intellectual property for just $300,000 having been paid $90m for their services…

   “Question marks have been raised over their vulnerability to enemy action, and even to the weather. HAV will say that tests have shown their vehicle to be able to withstand missile strikes, but the perception is not fully overcome. It would need a huge culture shift at the heart of the military to embrace [it].”

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