Global Warming: Wind Turbines To Blame!

Here's a new drum for the wind farm critics to beat loudly!
The Wall Street Journal reports large wind farms increase local ground temperatures! Researchers, using nine years of NASA data from near four of the world's biggest wind farms, have found wind farms of a certain scale, while producing clean renewable energy, do have some long-term effect on the immediate environment.
Researchers studied a group of Texas wind farms as they expanded from a few dozen turbines in 2003 to more than 2,350 by 2011. On average, the night-time air around the wind farms rose 0.72C more than the surrounding area. Normally, the night air has layers of cool and warm air, caused as hot air rises and cold air sinks, with the coolest closest to the ground. As the giant blades churn the air, they pull the warmer air down to the surface.
Although researchers detected some daytime warming due to the wind farms, the temperature changes were highest in the predawn hours, when the air normally is still and not so turbulent. So far, the scientists don't know if these higher temperatures affect local rainfall or other weather patterns.
Ok, so it's a very minor temperature change, however as the use of wind farms worldwide grows, the boffins think they "might have noticeable impacts on local weather and climate"...but more research is needed (Of course! Gotta get those grants somehow).
For years, doomsayers have warned about wind turbines' impact on the local environment - spoiling the view, scaring the nearby animals etc - but this temperature lift could have a positive impact too. Think of the benefit to our kiwifruit industry if, instead of using low-level helicopter flights or lighting "smudgepots" every dawn to lift the cold fog blanket from vines, some strategically-placed turbines were doing that job as a 'by-product'!
Whether we like them or not, our demand for power means wind turbines are here to stay. They're safer than the nuclear option (which NZ would never tolerate) and cleaner than the depreciating fossil fuels and, if the biggest impact is a slightly warmer dawn, I'm sure Dawn would be happy.

Text-Speak:101 - YOLO

Have you done this?
In our uninformed past, after receiving a sad text, we replied LOL, thinking we were sending lots of love...only to discover later how hurt our friend was when, having told us about their cat's death, we'd sent back laughing out loud!
Just when we 'of a certain age' (ie: from an era when we actually said what we meant, not communicated in abbrev!) thought we'd got a good grasp on text-speak, along comes another...YOLO.
No, it's not low-fat yoghurt. It means you only live once and comes from young black communities in the US. Its used as a verb for doing something badass, something that takes balls, or something a person wouldn't do in a normal day. Similar to you've only got one chance to live or enjoy it while you can, people use it to persuade their friends to take risks or dare them to do something.
The phrase has been around for eons - the 007 movie title You Only Live Twice (1967) was a play on it - but this shortened version YOLO has got popular since appearing late last year in a US rap song.

Why did no-one
buy these?

As with most of these acronyms, there're multiple meanings, such as:
You Obviously Lack Originality...You Obey Lord's Objectives (that's for all the hip God-Botherers)...and YOLO is also San Francisco Bay area slang for cocaine!
California has a county called Yolo, where many residents are amused that their area's name is hip. They find it hilarious that beautiful people in New York might wear shirts saying YOLO in giant letters. In fashionable Brooklyn boutiques, track jackets reading YOLO sell for US$100, but in Yolo County, the locals have no special reason to have any great civic pride. In fact their Chamber of Commerce lost thousands on a run of Yolo County tee-shirts that failed to spark any consumer interest!
Maybe they could dust 'em off and sell 'em in the Big Apple.
After all...YOLO!

Gold And Silver, Opera And Death...

£5,000 of gold was alot to steal in 1880!
Grevious consternation was caused in November 1880, by the theft of five gold bars from SS Tararua on a trip from NZ to Melbourne. A £1,000 reward failed to find a culprit…but several years later, police recovered some of the gold after the death of the ship's steward.
However, 'twas business as usual for Tararua in April 1881. The twin-screwed steamer had recently passed survey and was busy plying the NZ-Australia trade route, delivering cargo and passengers.
On Sunday 3rd.April (census night), she was in the port of Napier with 140 passengers, incl.the 35-strong Simonsen Opera Company. On Thursday 28th.April, the Simonsen Opera Co.was playing to a full house in Auckland "and doing a splendid business". Meanwhile the ship that had delivered them there was steaming to its doom...
Leaving Dunedin at 5 that night, under the command of 29yr.old Captain Frank Garrard (who'd joined her a few weeks before), Tararua was headed to Melbourne via Bluff and Hobart, but ran foul of Otara Reef at Waipapa Point on the Catlins coast, before dawn on the 29th.
The first lifeboat was holed as it was launched, but the second one carried a volunteer close enough in to swim ashore and raise the alarm: a farmhand rode 35 miles/56 km to telegraph the news. The message reached Dunedin by 1pm - but it was not marked urgent so rescuers didn't leave until 5pm!
Initially, NZ's worst-ever civilian shipping disaster was reported as of minor interest, but when rescuers arrived, the full extent became known…
On the reef, the wind and waves had risen and were pounding the ship. At noon, six passengers who were strong swimmers were taken close to shore; three managed to get through the surf, the others drowned. Captain Garrard gathered the women and children on the fo'c'sle as the ship began to break up – tragically a large wave swept most of them to their deaths. He later "died nobly at his post".