Plucked from the headlines, online and in print
If ever there was an incentive to quit smoking, American John Muszynski has found it: he was charged $23 quadrillion for a packet of cigarettes at a service station. Yes, that’s quadrillion, a 17-digit number: $23,148,855,308,184,500. And it’s also United States dollars, so it’s probably about a gazillion bucks in New Zealand dollars. It took […]
Maybe it’s time to quit Read Post »
GeoNet revised their quake report, saying it WAS 7.8 after all. Oh, and did I mention we had another one (an aftershock) about 20 minutes later. That one measured 6.1. We’ve got at least one crack in the dining room ceiling and a crack in the glass of one of our doors. Guess I’ll have
Told you it was a big bastard! Read Post »
Well, that wasn’t fun. We just had quite a large earthquake that seemed to go on and on an on … (and we’ve had a wee few little aftershocks, either that or my house is shivering). As always, GeoNet, the New Zealand site for the outfit we rely on for earthquake info couldn’t cope with
A little too much rock and roll Read Post »
What is it with all the anti-news stories about lately? I thought news stories were meant to inform us, to educate and offer us fresh facts and opinions. I can sort of forgive “Words can ease pain, I swear” from the Sydney Morning Herald because I guess while most of us already knew dropping the
Ripped from the (old) headlines Read Post »
I see there’s another drama involving our not-always-efficient 111 emergency services phone system. This time, it’s come out that police 111 staff have been reprimanded for their failings: One Wellington staffer swore at and was rude to a caller (on their second warning); A South Islander call-centre worker had a good old nosey through the
In case of emergency … cross your fingers Read Post »
I’ve been quietly stewing for the past few hours about the news that convicted rapist and murder Liam Reid has had his sentence reduced on appeal. Reid is the loser who raped and murdered deaf Christchurch teenager Emma Agnew, then just nine days later raped a student in Dunedin. He has the sort of disgusting
What’s a life worth? Not as much as we thought Read Post »
Long trousers and shorts: they’ve both been in the news today for causing a bit of a stir. First up, it’s the shorts situation. It seems there’s a netball team in Palmerston North that has shorts as part of its uniform instead of the more common skirts. But (cue Jaws-like menacing music) Netball Manawatu, administrators
The long and the short of it Read Post »
I don’t know if it’s something in the water or if the media is having a meltdown but for the second time this week there’s been report of a dead celeb that contains one rather problematic inaccuracy: the celeb in question is still alive. A few days ago it was Jeff Goldblum who was falsely
They’re not dropping like non-flies Read Post »
