It starts with a bass figure, then a strum, then two different views of a separation. There’s snatches of a story, echoes of pain and a question that almost sounds like a celebration.

I can see now that things would always have gone badly. When I kissed Jackie under those glowering hills I was playful. So was she. Soon after, I was focussed, fixated. Obsessive, even. Now, the emptiness is almost a delight.

Times were good for a while. We riffed together and enjoyed bars and beats. I looked up to her: she tried to cleanse me of all the things I felt were wrong with my life before I met her. She washed me in my own personal River Jordan.

Luck we had in abundance, flying all round the country to follow my rugby team in the year it won the championship. And fun, doing everything from playing I-Spy to giving each other hickeys. My desire for her increased exponentially in the months we were together.

But it could never have worked. I see that now. I don’t know how, but she must have realised that I was always thinking about someone else. She ended it, quite suddenly – none of the gradual fade that marked my other experiences. One day we were together, the next day she went away. Cut-up and broken? You bet.

And now here I am, feeding my own sense of passivity. Pretending to be pushed around by emotion. But, though I don’t understand why, I’m cheerful about the whole affair. In my heart, I’m celebrating the experience loudly and joyfully, again and again. I’m wondering what the reason is that I am so helpless in the face of affection and desire.

Or, in other words…

• They are durable – cows are very tough.
• They are portable – in fact cows transport themselves. Do coins do that?
• They are perfectly divisible – you can just lop a bit off.
• And finally they are very recognizable

Of course these features alone don’t make perfect money. They have to be accepted by the people who use them. But who wouldn’t want to use cows? Think of the possibilities. Small children would keep them and love them as pets. Gangsters would wear cow themed jewelry. Businessmen would no longer need to go to boring meetings about the latest weekly profit margins, or the monthly cash intake, but instead go to meetings concerning the latest cow deposit rate. And when you retire too a farm as your life winds down, you would never need to stretch your arthritic limbs to go down to the nearest bank to withdraw enough money for the milk, but instead not only will you have all the milk you could use, but your life savings will be conveniently kept outside your house.

Secondly there would be no need to trust the banks with your money in this unsure economic time, just to gain a few cents of interest. In fact your cows would reproduce and gain interest themselves, and after your money has matured over say 4 or 5 years then you could have gained an average of 20% interest per year, much better than the measly 3% some banks will offer you.
Also your money will feed you with a steady supply of milk, and when one dies you will have clothing and meat for a long time to come.

Many will say that this idea is stupid. In fact someone even labeled it “the stupidest system they had ever heard”. But really, is it? With the technological capabilities of genetic engineering almost all negatives can be overcome. The cows can be made immune to pain so they wont even whimper when they are split up to create smaller denominations or when the serial numbers are branded on them. This could save you a lot of pain and embarrassment just incase your cow went on a manic rampage in the middle of the mall because that particular top you wanted so badly was only one cow’s tail. They can be made immune to disease, because mad dollar disease has never been much of a problem, but with cows… well you can see my point. They could even base the official currency around just one cow, cloning that cow repeatedly, making all the cows equal in value.

Some nations around the world are already incorporating cows as the main, accepted, currency. Across east Africa, especially in settlements around south Sudan, the cow is used to buy all kinds of things, from water, to clothes, and even land. The Vikings also used cattle and in fact the English word fee is derived from the Norse word Feoh meaning cattle. Even today cows have become a de facto currency in some parts of Zimbabwe; some schools now demand fees to be paid in cows. If this system works well in these places, who can say it wouldn’t work in New Zealand?

So why not? Its clear that cows have the edge over the dollar in almost every way. So next time you need some extra cash, don’t turn to the pathetic New Zealand dollar. Turn to what we all know to be the better option, and start using some Moo-lah today.

– Jonathan

It’s an amazing place to go tramping, but you have to be careful because the weather is very changeable. Don’t be put off by Welsh mountains’ apparent small size – the weather on top can approach arctic conditions.

The Beacons are home to a tough breed of farmers. As in most of the Welsh hills, sheep are run all across the bleak hillsides. You can’t blame the farmers for having a little fun, and when some marketing genius came up with this YouTube video, we all chortled.

It was three weeks or so ago that we were discussing this on Twitter, and mainly making bad puns. But now, television has caught up with it. Last night TV3 News carried the video, not even in the ‘Arnold the Singing Turkey’ slot after the weather, but in the second segment before some rather more serious and significant stories.

TV3 edited the video to suit their format – I guess that’s to be expected. They added a voice over explaining what was going on, and a banner to tell you the location. Here’s a screen shot:

This place is called the Brecon Beacons, remember. Check the name at the bottom of the screen. Now, that’s hilarious.

Go on, you know you want to.

The rooms are in a little warren of corridors, all completely contained within the airport terminal. And the rooms look like a standard business hotel room, with a desk, a bathroom and (of course) a bed.

That’s not all. These internal rooms also have windows. They aren’t real – how could they be? Each room has a set of drawn curtains right where you would expect a window. If you look behind the curtain you find a blank wall.

Why do we feel the need for a window? One definitely makes the room more welcoming. And, because you would only to to those rooms for a sleep (if you’ve been for some other purpose please don’t tell me) the curtains add to a feeling of night time, regardless of local time or your body clock.

They had a machine that superficially resembled a tripod-style barbecue. At the top were heavy unshielded wires connected to things that looked like insulators which were standing up around the circumference of the machine. I say they looked like insulators, but they were aluminium coloured instead of the more normal ceramics that insulators are made from. And there were some serious wire coils underneath the “insulators”, made of the traditional copper wires. Beneath the body of the machine, suspended between the tripod legs, another part of the machine swung freely in the wind. A stray length of wire (number 8?) ran from the machine through some lazy spirals to an end on the tussock. I’d have taken a picture, but the guys really didn’t encourage it.

The guys themselves weren’t particularly communicative. They had probably been asked by dozens of people what this was all about, and all they told me was that it was an electromagnetic inducer. The edge in the spokesman’s tone of voice didn’t invite further questions.

So, my question is: are these guys -

a) performing some vital public service

b) doing some useful research through a recognised tertiary institution that they aren’t prepared to explain to random passers-by

c) total flakes?

Answers in the comments, please!

Incidentally, by the definition above, a megabyte is 1,024*1,024 which is about 1.04 million, and a Gigabyte is 1,024 times bigger again at 1.07 billion.