From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: bill.sloman@ieee.org Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: *** Dr G Polya BRILLIANTLY analyses the Virgina Shooting Incident *** Date: 27 Apr 2007 05:53:09 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Message-ID: <1177678387.922081.207280__12517.7394751974$1177680924$gmane$org@t38g2000prd.googlegroups.com> References: <1177266754.126153.202760@b58g2000hsg.googlegroups.com> <1177287460.376404.323520@b58g2000hsg.googlegroups.com> <1177416547.394200.314950@r3g2000prh.googlegroups.com> <1177447632.371289.38180@r30g2000prh.googlegroups.com> <4631D78D.5050700@nospam.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" X-Trace: sea.gmane.org 1177680924 15866 80.91.229.12 (27 Apr 2007 13:35:24 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 13:35:24 +0000 (UTC) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Fri Apr 27 15:35:19 2007 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1HhQbQ-0001rB-1E for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Fri, 27 Apr 2007 15:35:12 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1HhQhG-0006xL-Cv for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Fri, 27 Apr 2007 09:41:14 -0400 Original-Path: shelby.stanford.edu!newshub.stanford.edu!postnews.google.com!t38g2000prd.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail Original-Newsgroups: sci.electronics.design, sci.optics, comp.text.tex, comp.lang.python, gnu.emacs.help Original-Lines: 95 Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: 62.131.10.18 Original-X-Trace: posting.google.com 1177678396 17379 127.0.0.1 (27 Apr 2007 12:53:16 GMT) Original-X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Original-NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 12:53:16 +0000 (UTC) In-Reply-To: <4631D78D.5050700@nospam.com> User-Agent: G2/1.0 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322),gzip(gfe),gzip(gfe) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: t38g2000prd.googlegroups.com; posting-host=62.131.10.18; posting-account=9eAkcQwAAAB6QTSQQnHDtaLZZpevkcb8 Original-Xref: shelby.stanford.edu sci.electronics.design:732357 sci.optics:94808 comp.text.tex:349060 comp.lang.python:492689 gnu.emacs.help:147673 X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:43276 Archived-At: On Apr 27, 12:59 pm, Fred Bloggs wrote: > bill.slo...@ieee.org wrote: > > On Apr 24, 2:09 pm, Quadibloc wrote: > > >>The Real Andy wrote: > > >>>Makes me wonder about the credibility of any statement Dr Gideon Polya > >>>makes. > > >>. > >>I never thought that I would feel the urge to call someone an > >>edelweiss-eating Tanzanian devil, but Dr. Polya proved that I lacked > >>imagination. > > >>(Note that "Tanzanian" is pronounced Tan.zan._ee_.yan, not > >>Tan._zayn_.ee.an; one wouldn't want to spoil the effect.) > > > What really spoils the effect is that Dr. Polya lives in Tasmania, a > > state of Australia, and not in Tanzania, which is a country in East > > Africa. > > > Semi-literate Americans do tend to confuse the two places, as they > > also tend confuse Australia and Austria. Oddly enough, edelweiss grows > > in Austria, so Dr. Polya would have to import it from Europe if he > > were in the habit of dining on edelweiss - which would be an eccentric > > habit, even in Austria, where the flower doesn't form part of the > > normal diet. > > > -- > > Bill Sloman, Nijmegen > > Is there any civilized life in Tasmania? It looks like just another > natural wonderland that was raped, pillaged, exploited for its > resources, and left behind. The pillaging and rapine continues. The Green Party has managed to protect some of the more interesting elements of the ecology, but the paper mills where my father was research manager for as long as we lived in Tasmania continues to chop down a lot of trees. They liked to claim that their wood felling was sustainable, but since the cycle of felling and regrowth they had in mind at the time worked on a 200 year cycle, and the business was set up in the late 1930s, there wasn't a lot of farmed timber going into the wood chippers at the time. How it works at the moment isn't clear - two hundred year old wood isn't ideal for making paper. >Even the official tourism site makes the > place seem dull and bereft of any kind of enthusiasm, warning the > prospective visitor that life is slow there. The population is only around 350,000 on an island the size of Ireland. The state has the highest fertility and the lowest rate of population growth of all the Australian states - anybody who is any good leaves, as I did, and pursues a career someplace where there are careers worth pursuing. > I did not know Erol Flynn was from there. He was born there, but left Tasmania fairly early (like everybody else) - his father, the "distinguished Australian marine biologist/ zoologist Prof. Theodore Thomson Flynn" was presumably working at the University of Tasmania in Hobart in 1909. >That's something anyway. They might consider making his > boyhood home a museum or something. And was that Gunn Forestry you know > so well. I don't know anything about Gunn Forestry. The Green Party obviously doesn't like it, but they do have a tendency to describe 25-year-old regrowth forests as "virgin primeval rainforest" because the lie plays better to their target audience than would the more nuanced truth. The paper mill where my father worked had to severely restrict the proportion of old-growth wood - trunks more than four feet (1,2 metres) in diameter - because the lignin in the older wood contained a relatively high proportion of some organic acid that messed up the caustic soda recovery cycle - and IIRR preferentially logged regrowth forests that had grown up in areas clear-felled after the first world war in order to provide cattle-raising farms for soldiers coming back from the First World War. The farms were not successful, and the land rapidly went back to forest. My father was the guy who worked out that a high proportion of old wood was what messed up the soda recovery process, and he hired the Norwegian chemist - Asbjorn Baklien - who worked out how the old wood caused the problem. Asbjorn went on to a brilliant career with ICI and Monash University. http://www.asap.unimelb.edu.au/bsparcs/biogs/P003354b.htm -- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen