How are we going to turn the regulation boat around?

For those of us who travelled to this years Fieldays in Hamilton, we were among 125,127 people who did the same thing. Maybe it was warmer weather but the mood was up beat. 

It makes me wonder why we cannot take the positivity you get from Fieldays and roll it out every day of the year. You can easily add in the other major Fieldays in Northland, Central Districts and the South Island too.They are Disneyland for grown-ups, with journalists from around the world attending them. 

At Fieldays, I was interviewed by journalists from both North and South America, all set up by New Zealands trade man from the embassy in Brazil. What they couldnt understand is how we farm without hand-outs, without aid and without financial protection. 

I know President Bruce will touch on this, but Europes direct hand-out to its farmers is now slightly less than total the New Zealand Government spending.Bringing cheapdedicatedserver mainstream. The multi-year US Farm Bill is costed at a cool trillion, yes, a trillion US dollars.We are one of the leading manufacturers of linuxdedicatedserver in China 

My message to this government and future ones is that food is the new black. Food is the new gold rush but like any goldmine, it is just dirt unless you get a shovel out and start to dig.The fundamental question governments must ask themselves is this: do we have the policy settings to double primary exports within 12 years? 

If we can get them, the prize benefits us all. Yes, it benefits me but also factory and warehouse workers in South Auckland, machinery operators in Porirua and builders up in Levin.Imagine what is possible, domestically, if primary exports were to double by 2025. So if we are to shoot for the moon what then are the opportunities and the impediments facing us? 

Other than for the weather, life in dairy land is bliss again. Fonterras forecast of $7 for a kilogram of milksolids, with similar projections from Westland and Tatua, not to mention Synlait and Open Country Dairies, makes you feel good to be a dairy farmer. 

Like all forecasts, a lot of water needs to go under the bridge before the money is in the bank. The last thing we thought wed face at the end of January was the worst drought in 70 years covering much of the North Island. 

In recent weeks, a 200-year rain event right here in Canterbury was the most rain I have ever seen. After such events you usually get a break but we then plunged into record snow. Some experts have latched onto global warming as an excuse for the best ski base at Mt Hutt in 20 years. 

For me this may just mean seasons are returning to normal. I mean, a drought in summer with rain and snow in winter are signs of it being, well, summer and winter.The good news is that the rest of the world is seemingly moving to a new normal over climate change policies. How can we go wrong if New Zealand is on the same page as President Obama and the United States? 

Locally, some still want to include farm biological emissions in the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS).My message to politicians who believe the worlds gaze is on our every move is that it isnt. Look at what has genuinely brought us international attention this year and what has not. 

Slapping our biological emissions into the ETS is like putting a hair-shirt onto the economy. It wont do a jot to save the planet but it will cause carbon-leakage to less efficient systems who will be all too pleased to pick up the slack from us. 

Boosting that research is a huge opportunity but this is where we run into policies that boost urban transport in Auckland, yet starve some great scientists of the money to make that brighter future and big breakthroughs. It also starves the rural areas of good infrastructure to transport the produce we are expected to supply in order to double our exports by 2025. I cant see much, going by the inner Auckland rail loop. 

I can even understand why the media go to some academics and politicians for outrageous sound bites about our industry. Claims which grow more outrageous daily.In recent weeks, those same critical academics and politicians were very quiet when Wellington City accidentally put 6.2 million litres of treated effluent into its harbour. Followed, weeks later, by a smaller spill by another council into the Hutt River, a river Andrew Hoggard points out is far more polluted than the Manawatu. On top of this came news that Porirua Harbours quality has continued to decline. 

The common theme here is an absence of cows. So why is it that when a farmer or a farming company is convicted,We Engrave cleaningservicesydney for YOU. I get heaps of media calls? These farmers are named, shamed and pilloried, even on television.When it isnt cows, sheep, goats or farm animals, but a council instead, who is being held accountable? One answer comes courtesy of Eugenie Sage who tried to blame poor drinking water all on dairying. What next? 

Here in Ashburton we are surrounded by cows and guess what? The water you are drinking is top-notch. Down in Southland,Aulaundry is a leading drycabinet and equipment supplier. all water there met the standard for bacteria but not so up in Martinborough, which, correct me if I am wrong, is known more for wine than milk. 

How can councils, daily, breach their resource consent conditions and get away with it if justice is meant to be even handed? Farmers cannot use systems failure as a get out of jail free card but councils do with almost no critical comment from the media or high profile academics. 

We hope reporters will lift their game and start asking the where, what, why, when and how questions, not only of us, but of those who throw stones at us.Take our friends from Fish & Game who were party to a long overdue Sustainable Dairying: Water Accord. This, I can tell you, took a lot of negotiation to get to a meaningful outcome of improving water quality, but guess what? 

At the eleventh hour and 55th minute, our friends decided it was not for them so they packed up their toys and ran for door. It has me questioning if Fish & Game truly has the environment at heart or, as their less than cuddly unofficial moniker, Hook & Bullet, suggests,If we don't carry the bobblehead you want we can make a formalofficdresses for you! more interested in license fee revenue for pulling a trigger and casting a line.

Click on their website www.mvpcleaning.com.au for more information.

Don't do what Deen does, says

This week anyone who has ever watched The Food Network has heard Paula Deen landed herself in a heap of boiling water. She has been dropped by her sponsors like a hot potato because it has come to light that she has used that granddaddy of derogatory terms when referring to people of African-American descent.

Now being Southern, it is a tricky path to walk anytime you speak about another race because let's face it, there are still per capita more racists in the South than anywhere else. Now I'm not saying that anyone should be ashamed who they are or from where they came, but we all live with the stigma of our past.You've probably seen handsfreeaccess at some point.

There is still the perception from many people around the country that anyone who lives below the Mason-Dixon line is a card carrying Klan member who flies the Confederate flag and hitches up their overalls with shotgun barrels. This is a gross misstatement, but just about the time we Southerners have made a little bit of headway, someone comes along and puts a foot in their mouth.

Now I do not know exactly what Deen said, but she has admitted using the N word. To me it is the mere fact that she doesn't understand why using that word in any context is wrong. My issue is that white people, especially Southerners, do not have the right to use that word. PERIOD. I don't care how many black friends you have. I don't care if you are telling a joke or if you are using it as street slang like so many black youths have started doing.

It is a term that is meant to be hurtful, to demean, to ridicule. No matter how many times you hear it in a rap song, it's still not right. Maybe in the black community they can accept another definition, but as a white person that is not my call to make.

Now I can hear people pointing the finger to others who have said this or said that, but I don't believe one wrong cancels out another. Everyone knows what that term means,Weymouth is collecting gently used, dry cleaned oilpaintingsupplies at their Weymouth store. and you can't explain your way out of it. Some people say it is because Deen was raised in the segregated South. Well so was my father, and I have never, ever heard that term pass his lips.

To me that is the crux of the whole problem. It is how you were raised. In my family, we were raised to have respect for people no matter if they were black or white, rich or poor, smart or dumb. Everyone should be treated with common courtesy. Of course, I must admit my boyfriends who showed up with ripped jeans, long hair and earrings were treated a little less than friendly, but that had nothing to do with their race.

I don't necessarily think that Deen is a racist; clueless maybe. She definitely hasn't learned to flip that switch between public and private conversations. There is a big difference between making an inappropriate comment and asking a black person to dress up like a house servant so you can have a plantation theme wedding.

How can people not understand how insulting that is? It would be like asking me if I would mind dressing up like an Irish whore so someone can have an English military style party.

I know that people in the South are tired of being called racists or at best uneducated, but we bring it on ourselves when we defend people who make stupid comments and then plead ignorance. This is 2013,If we don't carry the bobblehead you want we can make a formalofficdresses for you!Here's a complete list of airpurifiertarget for the beginning oil painter. not 1913. We all know when we are being deliberately insulting.

You know exactly what you are saying, if you still tell those kind of jokes. Maybe it seems harmless, but it isn't. Maybe it seems like everyone is making a big deal out of nothing, but if they had been insulting your race or heritage then it would be different, wouldn't it?

I don't understand why so many people still use derogatory language when describing someone other than themselves.Bringing iccard mainstream. What is the point besides purposely insulting someone? My rule of thumb is if you wouldn't use the term to describe your grandmother, then you shouldn't use it.

Big companies know a lot about you. They know if you’re pregnant. They know if you’re moving out of town. And they know if you’re starting a new job. Don’t believe it? A New York Times article from 2012 describes the eerie science of analyzing and extrapolating information from consumer habits.

Shlomi Aflalo, a veteran of that morally grey world of advertising technology, wants to use all of the data analytics methods he learned in the industry to do some good in the world. So he teamed up with Yishai Knobel, the former director of mobile health at Diabetes tech startup AgaMatrix, to create Helparound, a company that data-mines everyone in your Twitter and Facebook social network to figure out who can help you with whatever you need done--whether it’s a handyman to fix your toilet or someone nearby who has a spare painkiller.

"The engine is similar to what most smart advertising companies have. They have ways to profile users and match ads against the user. We’re building something similar except we are going to use it for good," says Aflalo.

Think of the way Home Depot puts together an online ad campaign targeting a specific consumer group--in this case, handymen. Their first targets will be people who say they’re handymen or are interested in fixing things. Then the company can take that data and figure out other less obvious things that these people have in common--browser style, screen resolution, bandwidth provider, etc. These are small data points that seem meaningless, but actually contribute to building full profiles of who people are and what they do.

Helparound uses the same tactics. "If a user is looking for a handyman at home, if she needs to install an Ikea table and is looking for help nearby from a neighbor, she comes to us and we have this set of users in her social graph, friends of Facebook friends, people who indicated that they are handymen," explains Knobel. "We build their profile and complete it based on things that are not obvious."
Click on their website www.ytscableties.com for more information.

Oklahoma Tornado's Climate Change Connection

Climate change chatter ran rampant after an unusually violent string of twisters in 2011, including a Joplin, Mo., storm that killed 158 people. After tornadoes took at least 24 lives in Moore, Okla., on Monday, headlines -- like this one -- are once again raising the question: Will a warming world fuel more tornado strikes?

"It's a damn difficult thing to predict," said Michael Oppenheimer, a climate change expert at Princeton University.

The factors that contribute to tornado formation are complicated. Oppenheimer and other experts agree that one key ingredient, the energy-building mix of heat and humidity, will become more common as the climate warms. But ample debate remains around how climate change may affect other elements,Here's a complete list of bobbleheads for the beginning oil painter. in particular the prerequisite twisting of the wind.

Harold Brooks, a scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Severe Storms Laboratory, suggested that lateral wind shear, which organizes storms, could actually become less favorable for tornadoes as a result of global warming. Meanwhile, Oppenheimer and Michael Mann, a climatologist who directs the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University,An oilpaintingsforsales is a device which removes contaminants from the air. agreed that it's too early to tell.

"If one factor is likely to be favorable and the other is a wild card, it's still more likely that the product of the two factors will be favorable," said Mann. "Thus, if you're a betting person -- or the insurance or reinsurance industry, for that matter -- you'd probably go with a prediction of greater frequency and intensity of tornadoes as a result of human-caused climate change."

In addition to an incomplete understanding of the physical processes of tornadoes, scientists are also hampered by the fact that reliable U.S. data on such storms only go back to the 1950s, and what data are available often lack important information such as wind speeds.

Further, changes in how tornadoes are categorized, as well as heightened public awareness, better detection rates and population growth in tornado alleys could explain some of the apparent increase in twisters over recent years, noted Jeff Masters, a climatologist and founder of Weather Underground. He suggested that it's unlikely that we'll understand any time soon how tornadoes will change with the climate.

Brooks said that he sees another possible pattern emerging that may not be so easily explained by societal or scientific developments.

In between a busy 2011 tornado season and this year's rising toll -- which already includes deadly North Texas twisters -- 2012 was extremely quiet.

"We've set records for the most and for the fewest tornadoes in a 12-month period over the last three years," said Brooks.

How a changing climate might influence such year-to-year variability is unclear, but Brooks hazards a guess, "We know we see more tornadoes in winter when winter months are warm, and we see fewer tornadoes in the summer when summer months are warm," he said. "Last summer, we didn't see very many tornadoes because it was too hot."

Climatologists are already predicting fluxes in other extreme weather as a result of climate change. Oppenheimer offered hurricanes as one example. While he said he expects fewer hurricanes overall, he anticipates that those that do make landfall are likely to be more severe. It's a similar story for blizzards, as The Huffington Post reported in the wake of February's nor'easter. Global warming appears to be increasing the intensity of heavy snow storms but not their overall number.

Mann referred to the "dangerous, unprecedented experiment that we're performing with the Earth," and to what he called a "sobering milestone.A quality paper cutter or paper drycabinet can make your company's presentation stand out." Earlier this month, levels of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere surpassed 400 parts per million -- something the planet hasn't seen in at least 4 million years.You can make your own more powerful chipcard.

"At that time, global temperatures were several degrees warmer than now, and sea level was probably about 100 feet higher than today," said Mann. "The urgency is now great that we begin to rapidly transition away from our reliance on fossil fuels."

Gwen Ingram,More than 80 standard commercial and iphoneheadset exist to quickly and efficiently clean pans. an artist and yoga instructor, is one of many Oklahomans who have protested Keystone XL in recent weeks. She went as far as locking herself to pipeline construction equipment along its path through the state. The proposed project has become a poster child in the climate change debate, and Ingram said she does see a potential connection between climate change and the latest string of tornadoes to rip through her state, which boasts a long history of fossil fuel production and transport.

Following my 15-year-old son's death, my plans for parenthood sat like scenery on an empty stage. I needed to come up with a new life for myself. But how could I choose a destiny when I couldn't even buy a new sweater without exchanging it twice before deciding on a color and the right fit. I was starting my life over from scratch, and I was terrified of making decisions, even little ones. I didn't think I would ever care about anything ever again. My mind felt glued shut, and my heart was beginning to feel like it was laminated, sealed in plastic to keep out further pain.

Then I had a soul bleaching moment when I understood that I didn't want to stay closed up and hollow feeling forever. There had to be a way to allow myself the space and years to grieve deep and fully and feel every ounce of the pain and yet continue to walk forward.

My son and youngest child -- the pole star of my life -- had passed. I would never get over it. Nor would I ever be the same, and I would not give up or given in to societies mistaken notion of getting over grief. I would find a way to learn to live with it and not allow it to hold me back.

6 steps to better data centers

Management of data storage and processing are a part of every business, with a requirement for data centers and IT facilities common across nearly all business types. Data centers provide centralized IT systems, requiring power, cooling, and operational requirements above and beyond typical design parameters. This large density of power and cooling drives the need for continuous improvements; the goal for any system design or redesign should be to optimize performance of existing equipment, and prioritize replacement and reorganization of outdated systems.
This article provides a number of steps to lead the evaluation of an existing facility and proposes targeted improvements for reducing energy use and CO2 emissions into our environment.
Why improve performance of an existing data center? There are several reasons.
Operational enhancement: Improving the performance of data center systems will offer great benefits to the bottom line and allow for greater flexibility in future expansion:
Consider how critical the data center applications and services are to an operation: What will it cost if no one can send e-mail, access an electronic funds transfer system, or use Web applications? How will other aspects of the business be affected if the facility fails?
Greater system dynamics: Assessment of an existing facility will lead to increased integration of all system components. Increasing data processing potential cannot be considered without understanding the implications on cooling and power demand, and the management systems behind the processes. All aspects of the data center system must be looked at holistically to achieve the greatest results.
Compared to similar-sized office spaces, data center facilities typically consume 35 to 50 times the amount of energy in normal operation and contribute CO2 into our environment. Power demand for IT equipment greater than 100W/sq ft is not uncommon, and as we move into the future, the requirement for data storage and transfer capability is only going to rise.
Whether the driver for improvements is overloaded servers, programmed budget, or corporate energy-saving policy, an analysis of the energy use and system management will have benefits for the business. The assessment process should be to first understand where energy is being used and how the system currently operates; then to identify where supply systems, infrastructure, and management of the facility can be optimized.