I’m not at all surprised by a study in Australia that shows a massive left-wing slant from journalists.

Conducted between May 2012 and March this year, the University of the Sunshine Coast’s representative survey of 605 journalists around Australia found that more than half (51.0%) describe themselves as holding left-of-centre political views, compared with only 12.9% who consider themselves right-of-centre.

The only thing surprising about that is I would have thought the number of embedded left-wing journalists would be much higher.  Read more »

Everyone is in race for drone technology…some of the developments are astonishing.

Controlling drones is still labour intensive…but not anymore.

For those who dream of force multiplication—military tacticians and nerdy loners alike—not much beats having a drone. Unless it’s having a whole fleet of coordinated drones. That vision has now come a little closer to reality.

A startup called DreamHammer last week announced that it was rolling out a beta version of software that would allow for the coordinated control of multiple drones. Those drones wouldn’t have to all be in the air, either—some could be unmanned aerial vehicles, some could be wheeled rovers, some could be watercraft, or submarines. In theory, a single person wielding an iPad could carry out a personal robo-D-Day.  Read more »

Via the tipline

Here’s the Whalemobile…

via Facebook and the tipline

Check out this ute…it is a Ford Ranger too…Just like Fossy’s gay ute, but the only mitigating feature is the non-gay roll bar. Oh and note the poor parking ability.

Read more »

Stephen Mills opinion piece on stuff talking about the combinations of parties and options that will keep John Key in power after 2014.

John Key played the integrity card by ruling out New Zealand First as a coalition partner in 2008, but now he faces the unpleasant choices of courting New Zealand First and/or undertaking high-risk and possibly futile electorate plays in Epsom or Rodney – or a combination of all three.

John Key is making the same kind of noises Helen Clark did in her second term about wanting to stay at all costs. Clark stole $800,000 of tax payers money to spend in the last crucial week of the election campaign, and did a dodgy deal with Winston.  Read more »

Jose Miguel Gomez / Reuters

A worker prepares to put snails (Helix Aspersa) on their panels in a farm near Choachi. Colombia Husband and wife team Armando and Mariela Rey own Colombia’s largest snail farm, exporting the bulk of their 200,000 snails – or four tons – monthly production to Canada. The gourmet snails are processed using a French cooking technique and some are sold locally to Colombian restaurants.

Read more »

The Green taliban just can’t help themselves when it comes to telling fibs. Of course they are aided and abetted by the left-wing slant of the NZ Herald who give them prominent headlines featuring their lies.

The Green Party says that shares sold in the recent float of Mighty River Power went to only a small group of investors – and claims of widespread ‘mum and dad’ ownership are false.

They say half of the shares in Mighty River Power sold by the Government went to just 13,000 people, with 10 per cent going to just 400 individuals, trusts and organisations.  Read more »

Don’t you just love unions, they will sell out their own members if it suits their broader agenda. They will even suck up to the Green taliban and their anti-progress policies in order to try to knife someone else.

Liberal Senate candidate Zed Seselja has hit back at the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union after its local branch declared it would actively campaign against him in the federal election.

Mr Seselja said the union was betraying its members by backing Greens candidate Simon Sheikh and his party’s ”anti-development” agenda.

The union says it is not backing any of the main parties in the election, but its stated aim is to deny the Coalition control of the Senate and the ACT branch will use its considerable resources to campaign against Mr Seselja.  Read more »

Nathan Guy lied about Stuart Nash and Labour’s position on the socialist dam in central Hawkes Bay in a press release a few weeks back. He gave the impression that Hawkes Bay is up in arms with joy about him pissing away millions of tax payers money in subsidies for a very dodgy scheme run by some very dodgy people.

Now the two highly respected and long serving mayors of Napier and Hastings, Barb Arnott and Lawrence Yule, are pointing out the obvious faults in the scheme. And the obvious stupidity of Nathan Guy lying about skepticism of a vast waste of taxpayers money.

Hawke’s Bay mayors are so concerned about the Ruataniwha Water Storage Scheme they have offered to pay for a peer review of the plan.

In a letter The Dominion Post obtained under the Official Information Act, Napier Mayor Barbara Arnott and Hastings Mayor Lawrence Yule urge regional council chairman Fenton Wilson to address four “process issues”.  Read more »