It's not 'bad' objectively, for life in general, but it's bad for us - humans. It would make tropical and subtropical areas of the world unbearable to live in (noting that the majority of the earth's population live in such areas. Heat waves would regularly plague temperate areas too. Agriculture and thus our food supply would be severely disrupted.

Similarly with the oceans - they would have been far more acidic in the dinosaur's age than they are currently. There are life forms that can thrive in those conditions ... but it's bad news for most species in the ocean today.

So yeah, it was a lush green world 100M years ago, due to the much higher temperature and abundance of CO2. A big, hot, sticky greenhouse. Great for 'life' generally, but death to us specifically. It'd be like living in a sauna.

Hmm, now I'm going to have to go check. I live in the US but have some (non-new) Australian, Singaporean and HK notes in my wallet (all polymer)...

You're right - I've never heard that expression in English.

Having said that, for some countries, it's true. Quite a few places (Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Canada, some Hong Kong denominations, and probably many others) now use the polymer banknotes which really don't have much of a smell, unlike the old paper/linen notes. I suppose coins still have a bit of a smell though (metallic-ish).

Don't get me wrong, I was a big Q3A player back in the day too. And Counterstrike (1.5, not 1.6 or the newer Source-engine based ones).

I'm talking specifically about the type of MMO I like here. First person shooters are a completely different genre, with a different set of desirable attributes. I'm not a fan of some of the modern FPSs that require you to do RPG-like grinding to level your character or unlock certain weapons etc.

While you're right that grinding and luck play a part in the type of game described, it's not without skill. It's just not "twitch skills" like in Q3A type games. It's long term strategy, efficiency, crunching the numbers and risks to determine what the best way of going about things is. It's also your interpersonal skills: should your clan ally itself with Powerful Clan X for protection, or will their bad reputation among others on the server make you more of a target if you do so? Should you invest in buying up a lot of Crafting Material Y because certain player-driven events are likely to drive the price of that material up in the future? Etc.

Horses for courses - I love games like EvE. If death is meaningless, or just a mild inconvenience, there is little incentive to play well, to think strategically, to form alliances with people you can truly trust, etc. But the adrenaline rush when you have something valuable and irreplaceable on the line? It's great. You need risk vs. reward in games ... if it's just reward (like WoW and other 'modern' MMOs) then what's the point?

I haven't actually played EvE myself but I've played MMOs with similarly brutal mechanics. Games where attempting to craft good equipment takes literally months of work and careful trading, all for just a 50/50 chance of success (on a diceroll - failure to craft consumes all the crafting materials and money required and gives you absolutely nothing back at all). Games where you drop equipment on death that can be picked up by anyone, no matter if it's the rarest and most valuable item on the server. Games where you can attack and kill anyone, any time (but, there are consequences for doing so, so you better make sure you know what you're doing). These games require you to be be strategic, to be alert and understand the other people you are playing with, to hedge your bets and to think outside the box. They are driven by the players and the intricate politics between powerful guilds/clans/etc, rather than a pre-defined storyline or script.

Of course that's just my opinion and you are welcome to your own. But there is a market for this kind of cutthroat game ... EvE's long-term success is proof of that. I wish I had discovered EvE years ago. It's exactly what I want in a game but by the time I found out about it I figured it was too late to 'get in' and I'd never be able to catch up to the established players (in terms of wealth, power, or whatever). I'm waiting for the next similar thing ... if it ever comes.

Well it's all relative. I grew up in Canberra so am definitely a cold weather person more than a hot weather person (though, Canberra gets both ... can be well below zero in winter, -7 or -8, and yet still hit 40 C in summer).

I'm living in the Midwest US at the moment though and that's a whole different kind of cold. This morning it was minus 29 C (and the high temperature was only minus 19 or so)...

Thanks for the stats ... confirms what I thought. Both AU and NZ are big travellers.

The Aussie passport also has 48 pages but lasts 10 years, interestingly. You can choose to get a double-length 96 page one for a small extra fee though.

For US residents/citizens, there is no outgoing immigration form to fill out, nor a desk you have to line up at and be let through, like in Australia (where you have both the green and yellow forms, one of incoming, one for outgoing).

Surrendering your I-94 or other temporary document upon leaving the US is not the same as a proper, compulsory immigration check upon departure.

BTW I'm Australian but live in the US and have done so for the last decade. I travel between the two regularly. So I do have some experience in this area.

I've never really bought into the animosity (good-humoured or otherwise) between Australians and New Zealanders. I mean, I just don't get it. When I was in NZ, it seemed at every opportunity, my hosts were jumping to compare things to Australia or make some snarky comment about Australians. As if they think we spend all our time over here thinking we are superior or comparing ourselves to you, or something.

I'd make "US vs. Canada" comparisons, but it's not really the same: New Zealand and Australia are far more similar than the US and Canada. (I've lived in both - the accents might be similar but the people and ideologies are very different). NZ is the only foreign country I've ever been in (I've been to 20+ countries) that didn't "feel" like a foreign country at all. Wandering around a NZ city feels just like Australia ... same brand names/company names, same 'look and feel' in urban design, hell, even the traffic signals at crossings make that same "slow beep for stop, chirp followed by fast beeping for walk" that I associate with home...

But the average Aussie doesn't really think about NZ in the same was as many Kiwis seem to regard Australia. I never thought about NZ to a huge extent before I went there ... every now and again, sure, but not to the extent NZ seems to be obsessed with comparisons to Oz. I always just thought of NZ as our very close brothers across the Tasman - the other half of the ANZACs, the only other country to which we extend special reciprocal rights (living here without a visa, access to each others' healthcare systems, etc.) We don't extend any of those courtesies to anyone else, even the Brits and Americans.

So I was a bit shocked at the fact that a lot (not all, but a lot) of New Zealanders seem to hate the place! Well maybe not hate, but their attitude definitely went beyond a bit of a good-natured ribbing. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't universal, but it was a noticeable theme in my time there (which was on a work assignment for a month, in and around Wellington, NOT a holiday). OTOH I've never heard Aussies say a bad word about NZ (outside of the context of sport, at least).

Anyway, it's no big deal, and maybe the sense of humour over there is a little different and I'm just a bad judge of what's 'serious' or not. But it certainly caught me off guard, and left a bit of a bitter taste. I always saw NZ as equal and close friends and now ... I dunno, I get the impression that the feelings don't go both ways. A bit of an eye opener. And honestly, I'm not sure what we've done in the past to deserve it.

Having said that, NZ is a beautiful place and I'll still visit again one day (for a proper holiday, not work). Who knows, might even retire there (hey, I'm a Canberran so I prefer the cooler weather to the blazing heat than infests most of the rest of Australia!).

While your statement is true, it has little to do with nationalized health care, per se. It's to do with the ACC, which is a body that is quite unique to New Zealand. And a great idea, if you ask me.

Plenty of places (virtually all other developed countries, the notable exception being the USA) have nationalized health care. But many/most of those still have lawsuits for personal injury, nonetheless.

Ah nevermind - your post history suggests Kiwi :) God forbid I call a New Zealander an Australian (worse than calling a Canadian an American), apologies.

I'm Australian and just remember growing up with exactly that kind of playground so I jumped to conclusions...

Australian? That totally describes a typical 80s-90s Aussie playground...

Hmmmm...

I suppose as an Aussie I should look for any opportunity to put the boot into our mates across the Tasman...but I feel that I have to stand up for them here. While I can't offer any solid evidence either way, your statement immediately triggers my "that doesn't sound right" sense. I haven't spent a huge amount of time in NZ myself (about a month), but I feel that in their travel habits they are similar to Australians, who are huge travellers (both within Australia and overseas). 70-75% of adult Australians have a passport and they use it too, with roughly a quarter of the population of the country travelling overseas in any given year (unlike the US, Australia has both incoming AND outgoing immigration checks, so we have very accurate statistics on this stuff).

Now to be clear, I'm not saying that:

- Your observation isn't true; or

- That Kiwis are the same as Aussies (culturally or otherwise).

But something doesn't add up here. The two countries are located in the same area of the world, with similar migrant and historical ties to Europe and other areas of the world. Both have a 'gap year' tradition where overseas travel is almost a rite of passage for kids after finishing school. Both have similar entitlements in terms of annual leave/vacation, long service leave (which IMO is the #1 reason Americans don't travel more - they get much less time off than other OECD nations), etc. So your observation is a bit puzzling.

However, one thought I did have is that "going to the other island" or going overseas requires a flight in NZ (with the exception of those living close to a car ferry or alternative way of linking the two islands). Californians may have visited OR, NV, AZ and Mexico ... but they can just get in a car and ... go. The middle-class/wealthier families have flown to Hawaii, and I think THAT is the apt comparison as it requires a (comparatively expensive) flight. Car travel is less of a barrier than air travel, even disregarding price. Requires less planning and organisation. Less documentation too. That might explain it to some extent. I wonder what's the percentage of people in CA that have been to HI, versus the percentage of NZers who have been to the other island?

Anyway yeah ... your anecdote surprises me I have to say. Never thought of NZ as insular at all...

We need a "-1 Whooooosh!" mod.

Yeah - none of the other social networks, including MySpace, had anywhere near the penetration that FB does now. Across age groups and across different countries. I live outside the US and although we were certainly aware MySpace existed, even in its heyday I knew almost nobody with a MySpace account. But Facebook? 1.2 billion users ... that's literally every second man, woman and child in the developed world (roughly).

It's popular because it's so useful single point of call to keep in touch with almost everyone you know. That wouldn't be the case if only 30% or 50% of the people you know are on there (with the rest being reachable by email, a different social network, or some other means). But for me, it's 90%+. It's hit that critical point where it has ~almost~ everyone on it, not just your 'Internet friends', but even the non-techy people (up to and including grandparents who don't touch a computer for any other reason, including email). Its attractiveness as a single point of contact is immense (efficient, simple, don't have to worry about maintaining x number of different accounts on different networks etc.)

It'll take something radically better from a competitor to break that momentum. I don't think it will die from natural attrition alone. Some have said "now that parents are on Facebook, kids will go somewhere else". While that's true, I doubt they'll forego Facebook altogether, due to above-mentioned ubiquity. They may just have FB account AND a "next cool thing" account, whatever that will be.