Corporate Taxes

I found this clip on Facebook.  I hesitate to believe anything that talks about financial benefits for corporations, but this does make some valid points.  Although, I think the solution is flawed.  The US will never be able to compete for low cost operation with other countries--our cost of living is too high.  It will always be cheaper for mega-corporations to outsource most of what they do to China, India, or Mexico.  Financial decision making is not exclusively based on tax rate.  But still, this does cover an interesting topic in easy to understand language that people around the world should be aware of--not just Americans.

 

If you Love something...

Todays lesson from the random universe.  If you love something, then go after it.  If you love someone, then tell them.  Do not hesitate another day.  Do not make excuses for why today is not a good day.  Do not assume it won't be as good as you hope.  Join that group.  Call that friend.  Sit with your mother.  Climb that hill.  Go see that place.  Do the thing and find out what you have been missing.  Waiting won't get you any closer.

Babylon A.D.

In a word, "Crap".

I am generally pretty forgiving about action movies.  If they have pretty much nothing going for them other than pretty cool stunts and explosions, I still rate them adequate movies.  I also like Vin Diesel as an action hero.  But Babylon A.D. was crap.  While meeting the requirements of no plot and lots of bullets... even the action wasn't all that great.  Each combat seemed to even start the same way... Bad guy gets the drop on Vin with shotgun to his head... Vin whacks gun in such a way as to reverse the barrel to bad guy and blamo.  They repeated that trick like 4 times.  A bad sex scene would have improved this particular title and while they set it up, they killed it at the last moment.

The rest of the movie makes no sense whatsoever.  But on the "how bad was it" scale, I'd say it was not as bad as Blade III or Highlander III.  But if you never saw this movie you wouldn't be missing anything any one will remember in a month.

Political Commentary!

Here's a link if that doesn't embed right... damn Multiply. Blatently stolen from my Sister-in-Law.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxvHkFLmqRk

Embedded below!

More unpronouncable places in New Zealand

Last weekend I hit the Putangirua Pinnacles with a couple of new friends, Virandra and Nalashi.  I found some pictures of the place on a random Facebook profile from New Zealand.  The picture showed a tiny hiker coming up on a massive rocky citadel looking formation.  At first glance I thought it must me somewhere exotic, but then noticed it was tagged as picture from NZ... Intrigued I thought well it must be some remote place on the South Island so I looked it up.  Turns out the Putangirua Pinnacles are probably on 40 miles away from my house over in the Wairarapa Valley on the other side of the Rimutaka mountains.  So there would have to be some sub-optimal driving to get there, but the whole trip time was listed as about 2 hours.  Remember there are no straight roads in NZ more than about 15 feet long.  Also remember that our speed limits are in kilometers.  The speed limit in the Rimutaka pass is 70 kmh... sounds fast, but that is only about 40 mph.  Anyone actually trying to maintain 40 mph on the bazillion hairpin turns through that pass is going to end up deadas at the bottom of the 300 foot valley.

Realizing then that some navigation was going to be required, I consulted Google Earth.  Getting throught the pass is easy so I started looking at the routes from the first town in the Wairarapa Valley, Featherston--one of the few pronouncable places in this odessy.  From Featherston I had follow to State Highway 53 to Kahutara Rd... no problem.  Kahutara Rd eventually crosses Martinborough Pirinoa Rd.  Since that sign is going to have to be 4 feet long, that should be easy to spot.  Martinborough is easy enough to deal with.  I still haven't attempted saying Piniroa outloud.  Martinborough Piniroa Rd (already tired of typing that) connected to Whakatomotomo Rd... hmmm... Well exercising my lore of NZ phonics I know that "wh" is the "f" sound and that you pretty much annunciate every vowel you see.  But I don't really have to know how to say it, I just spot it on a sign, right?  How many Whakatmmmmmmwhatever Rd's can their be?  Whakammmmmwhatever takes me straight to Putangirua Pinnacles right next to the Aotera Park.

So with Virandra and Nalashi in tow, off we go.  Everything went pretty well until we started looking for Whakammmwhatever.  I discovered that NZ is really only concerned about signage on the State Highways.  Once you get off of those, it is really a crapshoot whether you're going to see other road signs.  They are good about giving you sign about various features.  So you may not know wtf road you're on--and really, you couldn't pronounce it anyway--but it at least you know this road is going to Cape Palliser which is sort of on the way, right? My maps are limited to Wellington so I'm going on memory at this point. What concerns me is that the road to Cape Palliser is listed as "no outlet".  My brain works on this a bit as I whip by about 5 different roads all starting with Whakatxxxxwhatever.  So much for word matching.  At one point I was stopping at every intersection comparing road names letter by letter looking for a match.  But after a few wrongamotomo turns we found the pinnacles. 

What I didn't expect was the absolutely beautiful coastline right next to Putangirua.  A long stretch of open beach meeting aquamarine blue ocean.  I think I might have to come back just to enjoy the beach.  If you do ever make this drive, be sure to stock up on anything you may want before leaving Featherston... there isn't a single shop of any sort on the last hour of the drive.

If you have checked out the pinnacles link you might have noticed there are 2 trails discussed; the "river bed" and the "bush walk".  Both are listed a "easy".  Having experienced kiwi-easy on the Rimutaka Death March last month, I was prepared for "easy" this time.  The river bed was listed as shorter and imagined it as a nice trail only the bottom of the valley.  Something confirmed by the pictures I had found.  So I chose the river bed.  The trail started off a little weird as it wasn't really marked.  There was just a gap in the scrub leading to the wide rocky expanse that held a tiny stream.  Well I thought the trail would appear somewhere. I could actually see other folks returning from that direction.  After about 30 minutes I gave up trying to find a trail.  There really wasn't anything creating the trail other than what the stream had done over the last several hundred years.  It was rocky, unstable and winding... then it got steep.  It got steepas.  After about 45 minutes of steady, slippery climbing we hit the top of the river bed trail which put us in the bottom of the pinnacle valley where I got this pictures.  I'll have some more later.  It wasn't quite as challenging as the Rimutaka trip.  But I was still heaps puffed at the top.  The view was amazing and when all 3 of us stopped talking it was still as the moon.  The NZ bush contains few creatures and virtually no bugs.  There wasn't a chitter or a chirp--just the slight wind in the trees above.  Pretty amazing.

For additional torture and comic relief, Virandra and Nalashi made the round american climb to the top of the canyons on the bush walk.  Despite their best efforts, I didn't fall over dead or even fall off the numerious edges.  The view at the top was pretty cool.  The pinnacles on one side and the ocean on the other.  The bush walk back to the parking lot was a breeze as it was all downhill.

After the long trek we drove the rest of the way down the coast to Cape Palliser and then back reversed our route back to Martinborough where we had an excellent meal that more than negated every calorie we burned on the walk (victory was mine!)  Martinborough is the wine capital of the Wairarapa Valley.  While tiny town, it was a perfect dinner.

Overall it was a good walk with a couple of good friends and a great day.

A few notes about "As"

The videoblog I did talked about the word "as", but the video is large and the video and sound were badly desync'd.  So I'd thought I'd just clarify a few things about as...

As I said, kiwi's have this great slang feature where they can put the word "as" on the back of anything as a short form of saying "sweet as honey".  Only it is shortened to just "sweetas" (all one word).  This has the wonderful side benefit of saving the speaker from having to say how sweet it was--just that it was really sweet!  It was sweetas!  And if you want to really emphasize it... "It was sweetas, bro!"  Sweetas is the most common form, but folks like to work it in on other words too, but generally in unusual ways... like "cheapas" (often short for "cheap as chips") or in "beachedas" from a popular funny youtube vid (search for beached whale).  You do have to be careful to put a hint of z in the as (azs) so you don't sound like you're saying "ass".  Which they really don't use here, cuz that's your bum or arse.  I've also heard easyas and coolas.  I can theorize that they would commonly understand negative connotations like "hardas" or "fatas", but they don't use them very often.

Anyways... good on ya, mates! You'll be talkin' like a kiwi in no time.

Videoblog #2

A few kiwi words and my bad accent

The Libertad

So I walk the harbour everyday and everyday I look for new ships.  I have seen giant freighters, naval patrol boats, frigates, destroyers, ferries... once I saw a massive oil drilling rig.  But last week was the most amazing ship yet.  The tall ship Libertad of Argentina.

It has always been a dream of mine to actually take a trip on one of these last few real sailing ships.  I know I'd probably be sea sick the whole time, but I don't think I care.  I find the idea that people traveled the Earth with nothing but a chart, compass and sail as a wonder.  These ships are all that remain to show us a hint of  how the grand age of discovery came about.

I was surprised to discover there are well over 40 tall ships around the world.  Most of them are national treasures of one sort or another.  Many are used as naval officer training vessels--just like the Libertad. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARA_Libertad_(Q-2))  Built in the 1950's she has a metal hull with a wooden deck.  The deck isn't flat.  It has a curve to it at every point.  I'm guessing that helps keep it drained.  For an ocean going vessel, it was still pretty close to the water.  I bet waves over that deck happen more often than one would like!

The masts were several stories tall.  My estimate is about 10-12 stories from the top to the water.  There is rigging all over the place.  At first I thought there must be a series of wenches.  There isn't.  Each rope is hand tied and would have to be manipulated by the crew.  The set up was well beyond my comprehension.  There had to be 4 dozen sails on the ship at least.  Wiki says she can carry 350 crew!

She stayed for a week and set sail over the weekend.  I didn't see her leave the harbour, but I'm sure she left under motor power.  But it would have been amazing to see her open up the sails and catch the New Zealand winds across the Pacific.  It would be so incredible to be on deck under full sail... How many dreams can come true in one lifetime?

The Libertad

A tri-mast "tall ship" from Argentina that docked in Wellington Harbour in Oct 2008

Videoblog #1

Hey, just my first stab and making video.

Videoblog #1

Hey, just my first stab and making video.

Rimutaka Death March 2008

A friend of ours here in "the Hutt" (the local's name for anything in the Hutt Valley on the East side of the Wellington Harbour) invited me and the boy on an overnight tramping trip.  Most of this invitation was actually done through my wife and his wife as his boy and my boy are friends at school.  After several months here, I have quickly determined that my definition of "easy tramping" and the Kiwi defnition of "easy tramping" are not equivalent.  Even after several months of Kiwi-living, I remain a mostly round American.  Soooo, instantly suspicious, I verified how hard this trip might be with Aaron (the friend and organiser).

"So, how many kilometers is this hike?"

"Oh maybe 1 and quarter.  It's pretty easy.  We'll go Friday after work and be at the hut before dark."  (This time "hut" means cabin.)

"Oh, well that's easy.  Sure we'll go."

It was then with some stress that I discovered in the parking lot of the Rimutaka Forest trailhead that it was, in fact, 3.5 kilometers and that what Aaron meant was 1 and quarter hours of walking one-way.  Gabe and I are each carrying pretty full and not insignificantly weighted backpacks... I thought to myself that perhaps 3.5 km won't be too bad.

While no one was permanently injured, it was 3.5 km all up hill except for the very end where the trail dropped sharply to a river valley.  We had to wade across the river which was icy cold.  It was getting dark and after crossing the river we were confronted with a wide rocky washout that would have to be navigated (quickly) in order to get to the other side where we *thought* the hut was.  No one was really sure at this point.  Another dad/kid combo had come with us (total party of six now, 3 dads / 3 kids) and Chris was all Kiwi.  By this I mean he walks through thorny trails, up mountains, while barefoot on a weekly, if not daily, basis.  The pace he set was grueling.  So as we scrambled over rocks and deadfall trees in rapidly sinking darkness we were also "heaps puffed" (tired) and a little confused.

Luckily we guessed right and we found the hut just as it got dark.  We proceeded to quickly get a fire going for heat and then Aaron cooked up all the stuff we hauled in.  We had a "sizzle" (cooked sausages), canned spagetti, heaps of junk food and some coke and bourbon (for the dads).  It was pretty nice.  The kids were bonkers and had latched on to perpetually singing the same song about farting and barfing over and over.  That proved difficult to stop.  Eventually they passed out.

I managed to have a nice smoke of the pipe while looking at the amazing stars.  The area we were in is very remote (as is everything about 5 minutes outside of town in NZ).  There are no cities surrounding us and the stars are so clear and so abundant that I can't spot the constellations anymore.  They are lost in the background.  The Milky Way is huge and stunning.

We wanted to be back before noon on Saturday.  That meant a pretty fast trot out of park.  We were all much lighter having eaten most of the food, but even so we (at least Gabe and I) were tired.  Poor Gabe must have fallen like 5 times, but he carried his pack all the way out.  He was the only kid that did.  Which was good, cuz my legs were jello after we hit the parking lot.  Moving for the next 3 days was a quiet symphany of "ouches" and "umphs".

Of course the scenery was amazing.  But just for the record... a "easy" Kiwi trail assumes you about 22 years old (strong, long limbed, and quickly healed), sober, and in full possession of all limbs.  These trails may be 40% grade at times, skirt along dramatic drop offs (no hand rails), narrow to only 12" wide (with drop offs), require wading through river(s), and cross over rough terrain (like rock jumbles, fallen trees, and small crevasses).  I have no idea what a "hard" trail would be like, but I suspect it might involve lava, waterfalls, and deadly pygmies.

Check out my Photos for all the pics.  Love y'all.  Can't wait to see you all again!