The BFD is very supportive of the fledgling Groundswell NZ protest movement and we encourage everyone who supports our Farmers, Growers and Tradies to put in an appearance if possible. As an amateur movement in its infancy, info has been a little slow in coming out but there is now
Ronald Stein cfact.org Ron Stein is an engineer who, drawing upon 25 years of project management and business development experience, launched PTS Advance in 1995. He is an author, engineer, and energy expert who writes frequently on issues of energy and economics. Ancient tree stumps found under glaciers in
Is there anything climate change can’t do? It’s making the world hotter, but it’s also to blame when climate protesters are left shivering in snowstorms. Climate change causes increased prostitution (but it also puts brothels out of business). Climate change is such a tricky beast that it
As we are all-too-aware, China has been stealing sensitive information from the West for years. The theft ranges from intellectual property worth billions a year, to scientific research, to military secrets. Now, we learn that China has been stealing the most sensitive data of all: our DNA. A prenatal test
Simon Thornley covidplanb.co.nz We have recently been told that “Life’s not going to go back to 2019 any time soon.” and that we need at least 83% of us vaccinated for measures such as lockdowns and quarantines to be a thing of the past. Other experts said
Face it, everyone is fascinated by dinosaurs. We’re also fascinated by catastrophes, as anyone who’s ever seen lines of motorists slowing to rubberneck a car-crash knows. Put the two together and we have the prevailing theory that the dinosaurs were wiped out by a cataclysmic asteroid impact. Admittedly
According to Douglas Adams, we humans live “far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western spiral arm of the galaxy”. But, while life is a bit quiet out here in the galactic ‘burbs, there’s plenty of stellar action going on in the galactic inner-city.
Robert Horvath La Trobe University Dr Robert Horvath is a specialist on Russian Politics, Civil Society and International Human Rights. His latest book, Putin’s ‘Preventive Counter-Revolution’ (Routledge, 2013) is a study of the programme of reforms and repression that transformed the face of Russian politics during Vladimir Putin’s
When space probes like Voyager started sweeping past the outer planets like Jupiter and Saturn, they caused a sensation. What the first high-resolution images of the moons of the gas giants showed was that those satellites were a whole lot weirder than we’d ever imagined. Io turned out to
A recent BFD article reported new research suggesting that the first stars may have shone much earlier than we thought. Now we have an insight into how at least one of those first-generation stars died. Spectacularly, in a word. Most of you will be familiar with novae. These occur when
DaveOnTheWestBank The constant braying of the media about greenhouse gas emissions and how we must spend more and more taxpayers dollars to investigate ways to reduce these emissions are a major source of irritation to many of us. Everyone is on board with this twaddle as far as I can
Don Brash bassettbrashandhide.com Don Brash was Reserve Bank Governor from 1988 to 2002, and National Party Leader from 2003 to 2006 A few years ago, when I was visiting friends in Colorado, my host suggested going for a walk in the foothills of the Rockies. I readily agreed. We
Try to imagine the sky without stars. It’s almost inconceivable, yet we know it must have been true at some time. Stars today are formed when clouds of interstellar dust and gas condense under their own gravity. Eventually, the sheer force of gravity causes elements to begin to fuse
Taxpayers’ Union The Taxpayers’ Union is responding to reports that the Government has quietly changed the rules so that the Performance Based Research Fund (PBRF) will now pay Maori researchers 2.5 times the rate of non-Maori, while Pasifika academics will be paid two times the non-Pasifika rate. Union spokesman
Michelle Langley Griffith University Michelle Langley is a Senior Research Fellow in the Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution and Lecturer in Archaeology in the School of Environment and Science at Griffith University in Brisbane. An international group of archaeologists have discovered a missing piece in the story of human
Recently, The BFD reported how US detectives had used a genealogy website to catch a notorious serial-killer rapist who had escaped justice for decades. In the case of the Golden State Killer, detectives created a profile on GEDmatch using DNA samples, held for years, from the criminal. From there, they
