h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Tasmania is a lovely part of Australia.
I walked into some furniture stores in Hobart that made me wish I could buy the store. And the rainforests...

Mind you you could drive around the island in 1/2 an hour if you wanted to. Made me feel a little claustrophobic. I'm not sure how I'd adapt to NZ or England. (That's not a dig that's being honest.)

Gooday Looneytunes,

You still haven't told me the significance if any, always assuming that you would care to, of the 'Warrior Prince' moniker.

Amanda would have to be quick to get work apple picking in Tas: the apple growing industry here now is a far, far cry from yesteryear, a victim of market gurus who determined that consumers want fat, deep red apples. Bugger the taste, just make sure they look great.

Tasmania has more trees than NZ and ours are, tree for tree, MUCH bigger than yours e.g. Mountain Ash (or Swamp Gums) 300 feet plus. They are also older.

Tell us more about the Enzed wine trail: sounds interesting.

Wowbagger, the Blackwood furniture made in this State is super stuff. And I know you weren't having a go (although it would make absolutely no difference if you were - look at what I have to put up with from the caring one) but it does take a lot longer than half an hour to drive around Tassie. Most drivers couldn't do it in a day. And one for you Looneytunes: What is the area of the North Island?

ONE WEEK TO THE OLYMPICS!!

Take care both,

Walter.

North Island = 114,729 sq km and getting bigger. We have active volcanoes. Tasmania 68,332 = sq km. The South Island is 153,947 sq km. New Zealand, in land mass, is roughly the size of Britain and Ireland combined. Wowbagger have you souped up your rust bucket, oops, Holden?

Hawke's Bay, the province where I live is known as the "Fruitbowl of NZ". Many orchards, vineyards and market gardens. Heinz supplies Japan, Australia, and parts of Asia with canned/processed produce grown here. Other large food processing companies are also based in HB. The fruit trees are mainly apple, pear and peach. NZ has, in the main, avoided Tasmania's problem with the apple market by developing and heavily marketing overseas, new varieties of apples. Walter, I agree, a lot of them look great and are virtually tasteless. Some growers, backed by quick-buck seekers/parasites, are trying to get the national authority which coordinates NZ apple exports disbanded (ENZA). I believe, inevitably, this would lead to a long-term collapse in prices received for exported apples.

Hawke's Bay's two main cities, Napier and Hastings, are surrounded by this bountiful Eden. Most of the wineries (over 40 at last count) provide restaurants and facilities for outdoor dining and drinking. They also provide entertainment on weekends - jazz trios and the like. Visitors can spend a pleasant day touring these establishments by joining people-carrier van excursions provided by commercial companies. The locals organise their own outings. Hardest thing to arrange? Who is going to be the unlucky sober driver.

I have written a yarn about Hawke's Bay wine. It lives at http://www.h2g2.com/A384446

I concede you have larger swamps. I still say we have more trees. Maybe not the biggest, definitively the prettiest though.

NZ icon, Xena, The Warrior Princess, is a person I use as a role-model.

Olympics. Fancy leaving that nice (I am not corrupt and neither is my organisation) ex-fasist, gentleman, IOC President Samaranch, stranded on the footpath outside his hotel yesterday.

Gentlemen you may get a giggle out of this article which tries to explain why Australia, being the perfect rubbish bin for God's silliest amd most dangerous rejects, is an ideal place to host the Olympics. http://www.h2g2.com/A433243

Gooday Looneytunes,

Who is Jeremy Clarkson anyway? I'd rather read your stuff, Modest Prince.

NEWSFLASH: Kiwi hits triple ton. Mark Richardson is being widely tipped as the next Kiwi test opener after his 306 against Zimbabwe A. Apparently only the second triple hundred for NZ, although we all remember Martin Crowe choking on 299. The doughty Richardson batted for 785 minutes - that's a tick over THIRTEEN hours, during which he rattled the pickets (but never cleared them) 43 times i.e. about three times per hour. Can this be serious: does this knock really count as a first-class game? I mean, Zimbabwe A!! Take care,

Walter.

Gooday Looneytunes,

Tell me more, please, about Xena.

Thanks for the info on EnZed wine, but you don't give much of a mention to reisling, which presumably would thrive in your climate. I've sampled some of your chardonnay (you could be excused for thinking that there is no white wine except chardonnay in Australia) and the sauvignon blanc. In fact if memory serves me tolerably well we got Brahms in Auckland airport on sauvignon blanc and it was not a bad sort of tipple, but then anything would have seemed alright since it was fuelling our imminent departure from the country.

You do not have more trees than we do. I recounted ours at the weekend, just to be sure. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but really Looney, most impartial observers are hard-pressed to avoid words like 'pig-ugly' and 'dog' when speaking about NZ trees.

We have recently had one mother of a controversy over the import of NZ apples because your fruit is infested with fireblight (??), some horrendously nasty little pest cum vandal which was/is threatening to wipe out our entire apple industry, or what is left of it.

Amanda. No mention of Amanda? Take care,

Walter.

Jeremy Clarkson is a Pom who used to present an excellent BBC TV motoring show.

Richardson made 306 in slightly less than two days as New Zealand made their highest total in first-class cricket - 677 for 7 declared - against a Zimbabwe 'A' team which had five full internationals in its bowling attack. It was also: * the highest individual innings on Zimbabwe soil (previous best: 266 by DL Houghton for Zimbabwe v Sri Lanka at Bulawayo, 1994/95); * the highest individual innings against a Zimbabwean side (previous best: 257 by Wasim Akram for Pakistan v Zimbabwe at Sheikhupura, 1996/97).

Going by those stats it would appear Zimbabwe teams may be Australia's bogey team.

Xena, Warrior Princess, is a world-wide smash hit TV programme produced in Kiwiland. Xena (NZer Lucy Lawless) is a pin-up in youngish male bedrooms everywhere. She is a mixture of Hercules, Cleopatra, Ivanhoe and Venus.

Our best riesling and sauvignon blanc come from other parts of New Zealand, Marlborough and Martinborough, not Hawke's Bay where I live.

In my front garden I have a 40ft Kauri. Known as the King of the Forest, mine is a 30-year-old baby. Some have been dated at over 1000 years old.

The fireblight thing is utter crap. One of our scientists found invested trees in the Adelaide Botanical Gardens a few years ago. Aus is using it stop free trade and to protect the interests of their own orchardists. Similar to the way the so-called "free-trade is good for everyone" Yanks imposed tariffs on Aus and NZ lamb exports recently. The real reason was so their inefficient, heavily-subsidised, sheep farmers wouldn't get upset about loosing their desirable lifestyle. Oh, and to keep the rural voters happy - in both countries. If there was anything wrong with our apples I am sure Japan and Europe would soon let us know.

Amanda and I went out on the town on Friday night and had an excellent time. When I went to pick her up on Saturday for the wine trail she had left the backpacker hostel she stayed at. I did get a nice "Dear Grahame" letter though.

Grahame -
Thank you for your hospitality last night. Unfortunately I needed to go to Wellington today (I lost track of dates). We will have to do the winery tour some other time. Thanks again and keep in touch.
-Amanda.

Yankee sheilas - a blight on polite drunken society.

Gooday Looneytunes,

Hey, how about that Septic sheila. Callow youth.

Fireblight menace is not utter crap and it is totally untrue that it was discovered lurking contentedly away in a South Australian park. That report was investigated and found to be completely without substance, and it is widely believed that an Enzed chappy put the scurrilous rumour abroad as a diversionary tactic to draw attention away from the weevil-infested and otherwise inedible (to refined palates) Kiwi apples. The Japanese would not know a half-way decent apple if William Tell shot it off their undiscerning heads. They are the cause of the current 'big and uniformly deep red and bugger what it tastes like' marketing trend, and it does not surprise me to learn that the Enzedders are pandering to it.

In fact it is reliably reported that McMucks take nearly three-quarters of the NZ apple crop and pulp it up for use in their McCrapple pies. That way no-one notices the weevils.

Looney, you are surely not going to compare Richardson's sleepathon with test records, are you? And thirteen hours is slightly MORE than two days where real cricket is played. And Zimbabwe DOES NOT HAVE five international bowlers.

Xena: a cross amongst other things between Cleopatra and Ivanhoe. Now that I'd like to see (although there is an Elizabeth Taylor connection between the two), but I guess the show has not made it across the Tasman. Take care, modest one.

Walter.

Walter, your reliable report is highly suspect. As I understand it, any surplus export apples (or any that don't meet rigourous quality control standards) are flogged on the local market or juiced.

This report IS reliable and a classic example of muddled Aussies being out in the sun too long.

New Zealand Olympic team officials had to tell Sydney Games organisers they would not be bringing a dead horse to Sydney or flying over a former New Zealand hockey representative to be dope-tested.

Chesterfield, Blyth Tait's horse which died in British quarantine recently, was till Sunday still listed among New Zealand's entries for the Olympic three-day event. New Zealand Olympic chef de mission Les Mills said yesterday: "Chesterfield might not be in too good a shape now to come over. It turned out that was just a glitch in their system and we hadn't entered Chesterfield."

Olympic drug testers called up hockey player Jaimee Provan on Sunday for a random drug test. The only problem was she had been cut from the NZ Olympic squad months ago.

Wowbagger, some pretty horrendous pictures of the fires raging in Queensland were shown on NZ TV last night. Could you let me know which areas are threatened. I have got friends living in various parts of Bananaland - including you of course. I care.

NEWSFLASH: players in the current NZ test side, ahead of the first test against Zimbabwe, have been required "to spend time on the team laptops before or after breakfast, the idea being to sharpen their hand-eye coordination." Can you imagine, the Enzedders, before breakfast, still half soused with Steinlager and really more interested in collecting their fees in advance from subcontinental bookmakers, vying with one another to get at the team joysticks?!!

The NZ bowlers obviously decided to give the mouses a miss. In an entire day's play, bowling 102 overs, they could manage to snare just FOUR wickets. The All Black Macs look like having a tough time against international cricket's minnows.

The official name for the somewhat suspect NZ Cricket team is The Black Caps. Yes I know, I vomited when I first heard it as well. At least they are not called The Baggy Caps. I thought the only people wearing baggy clothing these days were wannabe bogans and Goths.

Chris Cairns emailed me and explained how it is always hard to dismiss batsmen who are playing for the draw from the first ball. Danny Vettori, in his email, mentioned that he should be able to extract plenty of turn in the second innings. Some of the other team members emails to me contained confidential info which I am not free to disclose at this point in time.

No doubt my attendance in front of the TV tonight will bring luck to our men and we will win easily.

Gooday Loonytunes,

Gee, you mean they televise that?!! Is that free-to-air or pay TV? Yes, I'd heard the Enzed cricketers had been named the Black Caps but I simply put it down to someone having a lend of me, which is by no means uncommon, gullible soul that I am. Please Loony, say it ain't so.

What is a bogan/bogon? My daughter referred to someone as a bogon/bogan the other day and I was dying to ask her what it meant but didn't, as you don't when you are trying to maintain the image of a super-cool father who is hip to all this newspeak. Is it what we in this part of the world call a 'chigger'? If it isn't, it sounds like it ought to be.

So what do you predict Richardson and Sinclair will score on this obvious belter of a pitch? Good night, Sweet prince,

Walter

Live ball-by-ball coverage on Pay TV, with the added bonus of not having to listen to Aus Channel 9's team of ageing one-eyed deadbeats.

I would like to think the mighty men in their unbaggy black caps will make the best part of 400 runs.

When I worked at the newspaper the younger women, 18-22, often spoke about bogons, mainly in a derogative way. I think they were refering to young guys who, in the girl's opinion, were up themselves. Poseurs.

This comes from dictionary.com - the Adam's reference is interesting.

bogon /boh'gon/ n. [very common; by analogy with proton/electron/neutron, but doubtless reinforced after 1980 by the similarity to Douglas Adams's `Vogons'; see the Bibliography in Appendix C and note that Arthur Dent actually mispronounces `Vogons' as `Bogons' at one point] 1. The elementary particle of bogosity (see quantum bogodynamics). For instance, "the Ethernet is emitting bogons again" means that it is broken or acting in an erratic or bogus fashion. 2. A query packet sent from a TCP/IP domain resolver to a root server, having the reply bit set instead of the query bit. 3. Any bogus or incorrectly formed packet sent on a network. 4. By synecdoche, used to refer to any bogus thing, as in "I'd like to go to lunch with you but I've got to go to the weekly staff bogon". 5. A person who is bogus or who says bogus things. This was historically the original usage, but has been overtaken by its derivative senses 1-4.

Gooday Loonytunes,

Thanks for the reference from your on-line lexicon; I must visit that site very sharpish.

Does it take pay TV do rid oneself of the scourge that passes for the NINE network's commentary team? I think we might sign up, then.

CRICKET UPDATE: Zimbabwe, the minnows of international cricket, score a very respectable 350 against the mighty All Black Macs. In reply, Enzedder debutant Richardson, hailed as a potential superstar after his triple ton last week, went for six and another NZ batsman touted as something special, Sinclair, managed to double that before returning to the pavillion early for cucumber and watercress sandwiches.

Saw you on the UK petrol chat forum (isn't that a lively number?) and thought you were right on the mark. What does petrol in tlotlwc? Take care,

Walter.

Gooday Loonytunes,

I've missed not hearing from you but figure you must be sort of avoiding me on account the cricket. Just in case anyone popping into this forum hasn't caught up with the latest, here is a potted day three summary.

At close of play on the third day of the first test the All Black Macs, in reply to Zimbabwe's first innings of 350, were labouring at 7 for 252. The main problem for the Enzedders was Strang (PA) who snared 6 for 78 off 37 overs on a tarmac strip. NZ were in a degree of strife at 6-180, when century maker Horne fell, before a stand between McMillan and Cairns steered them into relatively safe waters.

New Zealand commentators, who were strident in their criticism of Zimbabwe's slow batting, have fallen strangely silent as the Enzed run rate hovers around the two runs per over mark.

By the way, our local supermarket is selling Bluebird brand potato crisps at about half the price of the local brands. The packet says made in NZ. Are these rejects that even the undiscriminating Enzedders pass up, or are we on a likely winner? Take care, grieving one,

Walter.

In NZ, petrol currently costs $1.20 a litre. LPG, which NZ is self-sufficient in, costs 69 cents a litre. One does not need to be a genius to see why I use LPG. Diesel costs 71 cents a litre.

The cricket looks like pettering out into a boring draw unless Danny boy can skittle the Africans for very little in the 2nd innings. We live in hope, as only a devoted Kiwi cricket fan knows how to do properly.

Bring on the Olympic Games opening ceremony where, no doubt, the New Zealand women will be the prettiest, best dressed, stunning group of people on show - just overshading the muscular, hunkish, modest Kiwi men.

Maybe some enterprising penquin* smuggled some Bluebird chips into Tasmania - next stop Antarctica.

*Note the penquin on the packet.

Gooday Loonytunes,

Well, despite your less than ringing endorsement of Bluebird potato crisps, we have bought some - cheese and onion and salt and vinegar. They taste okay, according to the beloved; I will get to find out for myself when watching the WORLD'S greatest EXTRAVAGANZA this evening. But Loony, honestly cobber, it could only happen in Enzed that a company calling itself Bluebird uses a penguin as its marketing motif. We are reliably informed that Bluebird's premier line, 'traditional kettle style crisps', are made predominantly from spuds grown right here in Tasmania and then taken to NZ as seed. That makes sense, of course. Take care,

Walter.

Warning. Ringing endorsement follows.

A couple of years ago a Bluebird Chips TV commercial won 1st prize in an internation TV advertising competition. (The Oscars of TV advertising). It featured a flock of penguins frolicking in Antarctica while carring packets of chips under their wings. The penquins natural colouring was dark blue.

The potatoes used come from Pukekohe, New Zealand, as the following, in part, explains.

Kiwis spend more than $72 million a year on their potato chips, and growers produce thousands of tonnes of potatoes to feed chip eaters. Research by Pukekohe potato grower Chapman Onion Exports, Bluebird Foods, and Crop & Food Research has looked at how to cut seasonal wastage of potatoes – destined to be chipped.

Bryce Howard, Bluebird Foods' technical manager, says a significantamount of chips has had to be rejected because of what is known as black chip. This does not appeal to the consumer.

"It's to do with how much sugar is in the potato," he says. "Sugars in potatoes caramelise during crisp-cooking. That's because during storage, sugars in potatoes increase. It's part of the ageing process. Cold-storage minimises it, but that can also cause sugars to increase.

"So part of what we've been doing is seeing how warming and reconditioning potatoes during storage can reduce sugar. We've been trying to find the best conditions that keep the sugar in balance."

Until now the industry has relied on test strips similar to those used by diabetics to measure sugar in urine. It has not been accurate.

With funding from Technology New Zealand - an arm of the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology - a better way of assessing the condition of stored potatoes has been found.

Crop & Food scientists have come up with a hand-held device similar to a spectrophotometer used in medical research to scan potatoes and assess their state.

"Before, we could look at a stack of potatoes and not be sure whether they would keep," Mr Howard says. "When you're dealing with thousands of tonnes of potatoes, that becomes an important cost factor. Wastage is huge.

"Now we have a way of assessing potatoes and deciding whether they should be used now or whether they can stay stored for a couple of months."

Tests are continuing and Bluebird is changing over to using the patent-protected tool for future production.

Gooday again Loonytunes,

Really informative and thank you for going to so much trouble. How or where on earth do you locate all this info in such a short time? Mind you, your ringing endorsement omits one essential ingredient: WHAT DOES LOONY THINK OF BLUEBIRD CRISPS?

While I think of it: if one does a bit of an article and wants to submit it for 'approved' or 'recommended' or whatever the official stamp of approval is nowadays on h2g2 (and I have to say the process is still far from clear to me despite all the handy hints), could one, meaning me, ask for you to sub it? Or are subbies allocated on a random basis?

Just as a matter of interest, do penguins frolic? I suppose they might fall about laughing if they knew they were being used as substitutes for bluebirds, but frolic? Penguins' natural colouring is dark blue. Yeah, very dark indeed, so dark in fact that even the manufacturers of Bluebird crisps were fooled into portraying them as black on their packets.

You take care cobber, and I hope you have a bottler of a weekend - see if you can scout up a six-pack of Boags Premium to drink while you watch the games - and the cricket if you can be bothered.

Walter.