Say no to hot housing.

A little over a week a ago, a house fire ravaged the home of 5 people killing 2 and putting 3 in hospital. Firefighters found smoke alarms in boxes in a cupboard.

A discussion led to a friend pointing out that some dwellings have only one safe exit. Bad news if the seat of a fire blocks the path to that exit.  While electric water heater fires are rare, they can happen I once live in an apparent where the water heater was next the apartment's one exit.

The thinking behind such an arrangement is that a concrete building is fire proof and smoke the main cause of death. If you can't escape the smoke because the exit is blocked you're screwed.

This arrangement is clearly the design product of Cthulhu. It's almost like someone is trying to creatively engineer terrible accidents so they go all Bart Simpson and deny responsibility while eliminating a "useless" or "hopeless" segment of the population. That is very unlikely, but perhaps it is a case that some just don't give a monkeys toss.

There are of course unanswered questions about the house fire, why were the smoke alarms in the cupboard and not in service? It is likely the residents were on low incomes, and preferred to buy food rather than spend upwards of $5 on a battery. After all people need to eat daily, house fires are rare. Alarms beep when the battery is low, this can be annoying and frustrating. Low income families may not keep a supply of thing they don't need regularly, Hope to buy the batteries next week, but eventually the priority just slips away, as it can for any task given to anyone.

As a society we ask people to give up "luxuries" or "privileges" to reduce costs and "live within their means" but if the costs rise as a function of inflation, but the means do not, at some point it is not just the "luxuries" that get cut it is the essentials, doctors visits, food. While some utility and food inflation  has reversed in New Zealand, housing costs have continued to rise at an average of 3.9%p.a over much of the last decade. Even in Wellington, which is not subject to Cthulhu's mind bending market manipulation in Auckland.

People on fixed incomes, while adjusted for the Cost Price Index(CPI), take no account for the increasing cost of housing. But even working adults here are getting short changed too. Their real wages have fallen since 1991, by about 25%. While New Zealand GDP rose 80% at the same time. If tomorrow you arrived at work to be asked to work twice as hard, and take a 25% cut in pay, wouldn't you  be pretty pissed? If not, what is wrong with you? Has Cthulhu got your brain in a jar?

They say companies can't afford the living wage, if true, perhaps it is also true that these companies can't afford to be in business. The economic fact is there is good data that supports the living wage as a boon to businesses, and as Henry Ford put it "the best customer is a well paid worker" the living wage makes the vast majority businesses more profitable. So here's to $19.25 for 2015.
Ramen.

See also
   Radio NZ - PN House Investigation Begins

Darkness descends on Wellington

Last night a weather that dropped snow on Otago and Southland moved and soaked Wellington with cold driving rain.  This morning, temperatures were around 7 deg C, there was a 9 metre swell and wind gusts of 122km/h. In literature, and movies this is not a good sign. indeed the ascension of Narnia's ice-queen might well be heralded similar weather. But the ice-queen is fiction, however the agents of darkness visiting Wellington are far from products of a creative imagination.

Following on the theme, it seemed sensible to say with a smile "With crap weather like this, there must be Anadarko executives in town." While shopping, few a people responded well to this comment, it seems Wellingtonians are well informed on the issues surrounding deep ocean drilling, Deep-Water Horizon.

Later this month Anadarko expects to start drilling in the Pegasus basin some 40Km from the southern cost of Wellington/Wairarapa. This week Anadarko executes will be having a summit with government officials in preparing for drilling.  Or is it for delivery of the final instalments on the bribes to John Key. Who can really be sure?

Much as the chill in today's weather was uncomfortable it not as uncomfortable as silence that will be created if changes to Resource Management Act are inacted to make drilling non-notifiable.  Protestors today visited parliament with noise makers and wearing tape over their mouths. The tape symbolized the silence of the public that will be created the amendments that the government is aiming to pass.

While some point to the far future and the effects on climate, there are far more immediate concerns. Exploration is the dangerous phase of extraction, indeed Deep-water Horizon was an exploratory well when it blew out. In short, when sit down to home made fish pie, fish fingers or terakihi fillet, it would be rather desirable for it to not taste like shit. If you have got a whiff of crude oil, you know that is what smells like, and will taste like. Better than that I'm pretty firm on the idea that collapsing and having seizures as a result of eating contaminated sea food is really something I'd rather avoid. Sadly, many American's have not been so fortunate. Lessions have appeared on gulf sea life, and in the people that have consumed it. Some lessions appearing in brain tissue causing seizures after swimming in gulf water.

We don't need this here.


See Also
    Today's protest for protesting - 3news

An Experiment: All for the show.

On Friday afternoon I was helping a friend with a service operating in a local community centre. We arrived during the service's staff lunch break, but while waiting I checked out the notice board. One notice caught my eye. A science variety show to be held that very evening. Admission $10, no one would be turned away for lack of funds.
Being skint, I was able to muster a $5 donation. And they were true to their word. The community hall that evening was packed, I was perhaps lucky to find a seat.

The MC started with an improv feel and introduced the audience to a real live physicist. The physicist took the audience on a progressive journey into the very small, first stop, on the back of your hand where a hair shaft is as thick as your wrist and skin cells were as large as the hall itself and a bit sticky. Second stop,  cells are as large as city blocks, with massive structures like pulsating mitochondrial bacteria - the power house of the cells of almost all species, and filaments of DNA chains swirling. Third stop,  cells are half the size of the earth and water molecules flit before your face like "butterflies on cocaine". Final stop, into the quantum world where teleportation is mundane, and things appear from nowhere and vanish as though they never existed.

In the second piece, we heard from a poet, the daughter of a parasitologist - she rebelled. A poem from the published words of women who love things (objectifilia - I think). And then we heard from the parasitologist himself with a poetic musing of the types of parasites that aflict us. For a bonus, another wimsical piece drawn from the experience of having a catheter fitted to treat urinary retention. While reading this might make the this piece seem kind of vulgar, the reality was quite different indeed it was received with great humour and empathy.

The next piece was a song from a lobster, about her mating habits. The audience gave a big laugh to the bit where she crooned about squirting urine into the males face. The chorus spoke of the lobster shedding it exoskeleton in preparation for mating.

There was a skit about the sun the stars and moon. Answering questions that had been asked by email. Questions like is the sun the brightest star we see in the sky. The answer being no, well more like NO! Other stars appear fainter because they are so far away but their output dwarfs the sun by hundreds of orders of magnitude. The perform did seem to get flustered trying to explain the black moon phenomenon. She did say it occurs twice a month, which suggests to me it is the time when sun light reflects from the Earth to faintly illuminate the shadowed surface of the moon. It can observed when the moon sets a few hours after sunset, or a few hours before sun rise. What colour is the sun? Our visual system fails to see, but the suns main emission frequency is green. So kids if you are picking the green crayon for your sunny day at the beach picture, no one can bust you for it now.

In Act II, puppeteers recreated the story of a Victorian era mystic philosopher who was preparing for a public address. She had a very special conversation With Thomas Edison. This was around a time when Physicists started to think they had it all sorted despite not yet having figured out electricity. This was before the theory of quantum physics had been conceived. None the less, the fad of vitalism and voluntary electrocution for one's health is a peculiar chapter in history of social misapprehensions of science.

We saw also, a demonstration of polystyrene dissolving in acetone with the explanation of how polystyrene is made, by adding extra benzene, bubbles form making polystyrene into a foam which is 96% air. Once the acetone has evaporated the polystyrene returns to solid form, thus it can be recycled as long as there is acetone and reformed for a new purpose.

The next piece was introduced and narrated by a scientist who has clinical depression. Which is not "feeling a bit sad" as one person once tried to tell me. Behind her, six people, three in white, three in black. The white represented neurotransmitter emitters, they were tossing chemicals like serotonin at the receptors on near by neurons. But then the depression kicked in and they got bored, and stopped transmitting. After a while the receptors, having nothing to catch, got bored too. At this point, the narrator told us, this is when her partner may find her in a catatonic state on the floor. He picks her up and puts her in the shower. The movement and the exercise is enough to excite the emitters and restore normal communication between neurons which brings her back to her more functional self.

The last piece connected us to our deep ancestry and kin ship with other species. Three actors portrayed rabbits responding to a potential threat, while the narrator explained the physiological response, including the cortisol surge, slowing of digestion, and immune suppression. The rabbits when off stage, to be replaced by three people working in an office this time the threat trigger is a post-it note, the physiological response kicks in and a brawl breaks-out. But of course people don't do that in real life so what actually happens is that when threat is observed the same physiological response still happens but it takes longer and people have long exposure to stress and cortisol damaging their well-being their immune response and their health. After the threat is gone, oxytocin kicks in creating feels of happiness, contentment and communion. and bunnies return to share the stage for a big hug-in with the cube-farm inhabitants.

The show is an experiment in conveying science to the public using performance art. Despite having the quality of amateur pantomime and the audio loop machine breaking down resulting in audience participation as a loop machine, or perhaps because of these, it was a very fun evening, and I'm happy I took the time to attend. It reminds me of news coverage of a variety show put on by scientists to show they weren't stiff characters seen in '50s documentary pieces or lunatic characters sometimes seen in '50s sci-fi.  Certainly, the men and women of science need better media representation than Professor Bunsen, Beaker, The Nutty Professor, or Dr Evil can provide. As endearing or humorous as these characters are, they don't create an impression in young minds of scientists or of the their work that is worthy of respect from a young audience. This is at a time when we need more scientists to help us solve the huge problems that face us today concerning the environment.