Pappus' plane

South Africans sound funny when they say 'ice cream'.

This post is brought to you by Kepler Wessels and my general lack of stuff to write about.

Actually, in the time since I wrote that last sentence, I thought I could make a scatterplot.

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Everyone's been reading this article on how China derailed the Copenhagen talks.

China, backed at times by India, then proceeded to take out all the numbers that mattered. A 2020 peaking year in global emissions, essential to restrain temperatures to 2C, was removed...

Haha. A 2020 Peking year in global emissions.

My weekly Translink ticket is going up in price by 39.5% in two weeks. That's an annual rate of about 510 000%.

I had been wondering how long it would take for Translink to start sending real price signals to us paper ticket users. Up until now they've been marketing the go cards as offering a substantial discount on an equivalent single fare, but for a 6- or 7-days-a-week Translink user like me, the paper weekly tickets were still easily cheaper. (The prices were equal for someone doing five return trips a week.)

Somewhat remarkably, I use buses and trains almost enough to make the paper tickets the cheaper option even under the new fare regime. With no changes to my behaviour, I would spend somewhere between $38.97 and $43.83 on go card fares in a typical week, compared to a paper weekly ticket price of $42.40. Of course I probably will change my bus patterns when the new prices come in - I'll plan my journeys so that I take a 196 inbound and 109 outbound for short trips to the city, etc. So even for me, the go card will be probably be cheaper.

Then we're looking at 15% price increases each year until 2014.

NZ Hansard:

Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour) to the Minister of Energy and Resources: Has he received my invitation dated 14 December to accompany me, after Parliament rises, on the Gillespie Pass tramping circuit in the north-eastern parts of the Mount Aspiring National Park, so that he can inspect firsthand areas in the conservation estate included in his stocktake of mineral resources, and will he accept it?

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Minister of Energy and Resources) : I have received that invitation, and I say to the member that I think the itinerary that he has put together, for he and I to traipse through the backblocks of New Zealand, is truly splendid. So, on the one hand, I am deeply touched that the member wants to spend so much quality time in the high country alone with me, but on the other hand, I notice that all I am required to do is bring a pair of boots. I have seen that film Brokeback Mountain,so I am afraid that I will remain unavailable.

Hon David Parker: Will the Minister reconsider if I offer to carry his pack?

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: Given the circumstances, not even if hell freezes over.

Video with more here. (Via Tim Blair.)

It is gruesome. Link for those in the mood for photographs of it, from the Daily Mail. They have pixellated the worst of it.

Then, because it's the Daily Mail, you get comments like this one:

I thought it was England. The only thing that told me otherwise was the barren vegetation and the Archbishop of Canterbury's absence approving Sharia Law