DISQUS

Hey Ben, let us know if you do talk to the media. I'd be interested to hear what you say, and how they report it (compare, contrast etc).

lol :)

You need a forward mounted camera on the plane if you're going to do that again :)

yes please :)

mmmm....

....beer

In USA you get the justice you can afford. I'm not an expert in tort, but I know to win the plaintif has to prove 3 things (in NZ at least):

* The defendant had a duty of care
* The defendant breached that duty of care
* The plaintif suffered damage as a result of that breach

The way it works in USA (please correct me if I'm wrong):

Plaintif: I'm suing you because I'm a victim with no self-responsibility.
Defendant: I can't be bothered fighting this. My insurance will pay.
Lawyers: Yay more money for us.
Insurance company: Sure, we'll pay, but you premiums just trebled (Yay more money for us too)

Simple physics: constant nett angular momentum

Congratulations!

My wife agrees with you. That's why 2 is enough.

The scary thing is that people this stupid are still elegible to vote (except when they're in jail). I'm sure I've seen something like this on the Darwin awards.

Why would one need a manbag? What happened to pockets?

the first man was tempted by an apple too, so the story goes....

Yay for cable :D My sky through Telstra cable still works. And they've just upgraded my cable internet from 4 to 10 GB for free!

After using it for a while, it looks like any other messenger with ads all over it.

I'll give it a go! I am on your RSS (I'm one of those anonymous bloglines subscribers)

Week 4: Car breaks down; increase mortgage to buy station wagon

To play the devils advocate*: Why did we evolve tonsils?

(no, I don't believe in ID. I just want to know what advantage the evolution of tonsils confers on humans, and why they were not selected against if they serve no purpose other than to provide a habitat for bacteria to thrive and cause misery to their host who is better off without them)

It's been working all day for me.

You're right Ben. The phenomenon probably applies to anything that doesn't come in to NZ in enough volume and frequency to be container shipped. I'd rather spend my money in NZ and will pay a premium for good service and expertise. I'm probably similar to you: I'll get the 'big stuff' from overseas when the savings are significant. I don't mind so much paying double what they pay in USA, NZ$20 for an item that costs US$9 retail; it's relatively small change. Savings of 20-30% on items over $100 are significant and for them I'm prepared to shop overseas and wait for delivery. Specilist books are the same: my university texts can be about US$80 (landed) from Amazon, or NZ$180 from student bookshops.

One trick we learnt was to save the AA batteries from our digital camera. There's heaps of life left in them, but they're so much quieter than brand new. They run out quicker which is a bonus too ;)

Just wait for 'NO' when it comes to meal times.

A piece of plastic and metals that although you pay for, you never actually own because some multinational takes control evey time you plug it into the net and uses it to spy on you with the sole purpose of extracting every possible dollar they can from you. ;)

Good weather's great for fishing. Crap weather's great for surf. It doesn't worry me as long as the kids can get outside and don't watch too much TV.

How much traffic did you get? How much hate mail?

I believe that your dilema over what one should do with newly acquired wealth is genuine. However, on a day like today one must aways keep things in perspective.

took me about 2 seconds to figure out what was going on here...