The sun's setting on the week. And N's back.

The sun is setting on the week



And in these photos it's setting on the Rimutaka hills too.



Though these were taken earlier in the week. Not that the sun doesn't set in the Rimutakas on a Friday.



And, on an unrelated note --- though at the same time --- N.'s back from Berlin & Helsinki.



Back too, or possibly just arriving, is a small boy, well padded in a highly coloured jacket.

09-07 Sunset Tararuas

More Tararua Photos

More photos of the Tararuas and the snow on them. This time, taken early-ish in the morning and out the car window (I wasn't driving). The secret to whatever steadiness these have? The active vibration reduction setting on the Nikon AF-S 18-200mm lens, so beloved by Ken Rockwell, amongst others.

Mitre Flats hut

I'm really in the final stages of writing at the moment. So, the weekend before last, (or thereabouts), I took some time off to get some distance from a particularly troublesome paragraph. (I'd re-written it five times by that point, yet it didn't seem to be getting any clearer.) Steve and I walked to Mitre Flats hut in the north-eastern Tararuas. Good weather on Saturday, but a bad forecast for Sunday meant we only shared the hut with two other people. The walk out was a bit wet but the track was still pleasant. It took about 3-3.5 hrs each way going about as fast as the slippery roots and mud allowed for. The route is mostly level, traversing along above the Waingawa river, though the start of the track is a bit dull where is crosses farmland to get to the egde of the forest park.

The weather didn't really encourage photos. A couple are here:

09-06 Mitre Flats Hut

Martinborough Farm Walk

The other week, to break up my writing, I went for a short walk on a farm near the edge of Martinborough. (I can't find a link with details of the walk --- I believe the Martinborough Rotary club organised and sign posted it. It starts at the end of the wonderfully named Shooting Butts Road if anyone is interested.) Here are a few photos from my stroll in the country (and the rain).

09-06 Martinborough farm walk

Snow on the Tararuas

My view of the Tararuas as I was working today. Too bad about the wind machine in the way. Its position makes it impossible to get a view of the peaks without it.

I fancy a walk. I hope there's still some snow (and some fine weather) left by the time I'm finished writing.

Cat & Bird

Who wants to go out catching birds?



Or would you rather sleep in the sun?





That's all there is right now.

Pages, pigs

My time, recently, has been entirely occupied with writing and editing and fretting over details that didn't seem important when I thought I was proving something, some other time in the previous four years.



So rather than a real post, you get a couple of photos of working from who-knows-what.



And some thoughts that other people had about keeping pigs in sow crates and farrowing pens:

From: xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Pigs
Date: 20 May 2009 9:30:52 AM
To: xxxxxxxxxxx

I heard about the controversy in NZ with Mike King and pork.

And now the pig farmers are fighting back:

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/farming/2425163/Imports-put-pressure-on-pig-farmers/

It doesn't take much philosophical training to find some pretty serious shortcomings in the case that the pig farmers make. This argument happens to be my favourite:

Pigs brought up in pens were especially bred for that purpose and it would be cruel to remove them from that environment once they had been reared in it, he said.

?!? I count no less that four serious shortcomings in argument presented in this single sentence:

1) Does being bred for "a purpose" mean that the animals are in some special natural state? Slaves were brought to America for the purpose of being slaves. Does that mean that they are in some special natural state? The appeal to "purpose" gets you no where (unless you are god--but I don't happen to believe in divine purpose arguments either...)

2) Do these pig loving farmers have any evidence that it is cruel to remove pigs from their pens? I assume that they have academic papers verifying that their happy pigs become most unhappy in rooting around in green pastures.

3) The pens are not just pens, but rather they are horribly confining pens. To make their argument work, the farmers need to defend the use of horribly confining pens not the mere use of pens in general.

4) Even if I granted the farmers their story that it would be cruel to remove the pigs from their pens, this is no justification whatsoever for keeping the next generation of pigs in pens! That is to say, even if the current generation of pigs has gone mad as a result of being raised in solitary confinement (and I believe that there is ample evidence that they do go mad) and cannot socialise with other pigs, this does not mean that the next generation ought to be reared in the same way!

Oh well, I'm sure that NZ will be outraged for a week or two then return to their fantasy that uniquely amongst peoples of the world they are clean, green animal lovers when in reality they couldn't give a shit.

Cynically yours,

Robert

PS Maybe I should try to write an opinion column--I think that I have seen some equally trashy reporting of this issue in the Herald that warrants some kind of slap on the wrist for stupid journalism.

Anne Else seemed to pre-empt the whole public outrage, with a point that the pile of liver, that seems to constitute the main-stream media, has missed: the link between pigs in cramped factory farms and the transmission of disease between pigs and from pigs to people... Swine 'flu!

She followed up with a post on a sociological (sort of) aspect from the sow crating issue. It's a fair point: even if food products were labeled as ridiculously emotively as "this bacon is made from pigs who lived in agony and misery --- your purchase condones such barbaric, torturous practices" there would be people who didn't feel that they were able to afford to buy alternative products (and who didn't think as far as whether they needed to be eating pork in the first place).

The point is, I think, saying that consumers should be aware of what they eat and should make their preferences known with their purchases is a shoddy argument that tries to let industries continue doing things they shouldn't do at all, and which the law should not allow.

Con-grad-ulations!

...and apologies for the weak pun.

Go forth and purchase!

More specifically, purchase the new album "Marvelous Year" by Don McGlashan and his new (to my knowledge) band The Seven Sisters.



It's similar in style to his previous album "Warm Hand" though with a slightly rockier sound in places, and a slightly more astronomical (specifically comet-centric) focus.



N. and I caught the Wellington stop of the album tour on Saturday night at the pleasantly small venue The Front Room. It was a great concert, packed full of energy and with a full spectrum of songs from various D. McG. bands from The Front Lawn (no Blam, Blam, Blam) through the Mutton Birds to more recent semi-solo/independent/self-named ventures.







Anyway, what I wanted to say was, it's a good album from a great musician. You should go out and buy it.

09-05 Don McGlashan

Ice Climbing

I did a little ice climbing with Travis and Steve (and Erich briefly, too) next to the waterfall at Clay's Leap on the Turoa side of Mt Ruapehu on Saturday. I've put quite a few photos up in a Picasa gallery (follow the link at the bottom to see the album), so I'll only post a couple here.











There's also a small "film" of Travis climbing:



[If you follow this link you should be able to download a slightly larger version hosted by the kind folks at getdropbox.com.]

On Sunday, Travis and I planned on climbing a route on the eastern side of Girdlestone but the conditions weren't so good, so we ended up circumnavigating the peak instead, getting caught in a small avalanche along the way.

09-05 Ice Climbing