List of New Zealand Political parties whose websites have no Science, Research, or Technology policy

• NZ First
• ACT
• Mana
• Maori Party

They're the smaller parties, but even Peter Dunne has a policy for United Future. I'll be looking at the quality of said policy at some point, but at least it's there to measure.

And to be fair to NZ First, they do have a page with "coming soon" on it, and a spokesperson on it.

New Zealand Science Debate

I've been meaning to write up a list of questions to email to the New Zealand political parties. Here's a list I've adapted from the US Science Debate website. I would like some feedback on the choice of questions before I send it out. So far the topics I'm planning to ask about are: Innovation and the Economy Climate Change GE Water Research Biosecurity Education Role of the CRIs, MBIE, and Callaghan Innovation in Science Energy Internet Ocean Health Science and Public Policy Scientific Integrity Environmental Impacts Public Health If anyone has any suggestions about how to phrase some questions around these topics, if I should add some more in or take some out, or pretty much anything leave a comment below.

XKCD

If you're looking at today's XKCD you might find this handy.

Or for the stupidly ambitious: 
1/8 scale (256x256 tiles): http://edc.srvs.us/1110-eighth/

1/4 scale (512x512 tiles): http://edc.srvs.us/1110-quarter/

1/2 scale (1024x1024 tiles): http://edc.srvs.us/1110-half/

full size (2048x2048 tiles): http://edc.srvs.us/1110/

On a proposal for mapping the Hamilton cycle paths

Today, I gave The Hamilton City Council an email. It read:

Hi!

I just noticed GoogleMaps had started beta testing a cycling layer for their map routes. I was wondering if there were any plans for the HCC to help out, similarly to what they've done in Auckland. 

http://wellington.scoop.co.nz/?p=48040

http://caa.org.nz/auckland-transport/google-cycle-maps-are-in-auckland-but-havent-fully-arrived/

Thank you,

- David Jackson

And I got this back slightly about an hour ago.

Good Afternoon David

Thanks for your email regarding Google Maps and cycling paths.  I referred this to our Sustainable Travel Team Leader and she has come back with the following answer in regards to this:

We are keen to see the result programme working, and once the issues have been ironed out, we would like to investigate rolling this out to Hamilton.  At this stage we have no plans to be involved in the trial as we don’t have the resourcing to do it.

If you require any further information in regards to this request please let me know.

Thanks

Michelle Kerbers

Understandable, but really, it doesn't seem like it'd be that hard to. So I just emailed back asking if there was somewhere online where I could find a map of the cycle lanes.

If there's such a thing, I'm thinking of putting the links up on a website, and then directing people to this website here to start filling them in. It wouldn't be hard, and if we had people putting in something like half an hour a week, we'd get it done within a month. And then we could move on and do something else, like fill in all the schools or all the parks.

Because if the council won't do it now, why can't we?

Linkbait

Linkbait.

How Google Builds Its Maps—and What It Means for the Future of Everything

When Capitalists Cared

Raging Bulls: How Wall Street Got Addicted to Light-Speed Trading

How A $440,000 Drug Is Turning Alexion Into Biotech's New Innovation Powerhouse

The Pakeha Veto

Back to Blogger

After yet another rush of blood to the head, I'm going to start blogging here again.

Why Blogger? Well. Tumblr is great for sharing visual stuff like photos, comics, and Glee gifs but when you write a blog post it's very hard for the reader to comment on what you've written.

Wordpress was out because I can't program it, yet.

Blogger wins out because I'm pretty firmly tied into the Google ecosystem. I also want to learn about analytics and adwords, so using their platform makes sense too.

The downside is that Google assumes I want all the photos I post to come up on my phone. I find it really annoying, especially as it seems to think that I want a new folder of photos for each blog post. If I can't find a way around that I'm considering setting up a third Google account and blogging from there.

Anyway, I'm not good with conclusions, so here's my tumblr. It's filled with a bunch of science pictures and very little original content. Hope you enjoy.

Ummmm

Holy Shit.