O for Awesome  

TreeHugger has declared Zero Waste "meme of the month".

Everyone is talking about zero waste these days. Jared Blumenfeld of San Francisco's environment department says "From our perspective, waste doesn't need to exist,It's a design flaw." David Redfield of Wal-Mart says "When you look at a dumpster, you see trash. When I look at it, I see materials and money." William McDonough says "We're not talking here about eliminating waste, We're talking about eliminating the entire concept of waste."

According to Fortune: "Zero waste is just what it sounds like - producing, consuming, and recycling products without throwing anything away. Getting to a wasteless world will require nothing less than a total makeover of the global economy, which thinkers such as entrepreneur Paul Hawken, consultant Amory Lovins, and architect William McDonough have called the Next Industrial Revolution." ::Fortune and be sure to watch the bizarre video of a garbage processing plant set to music.

The Whole Life Times: "a new movement is taking a more holistic approach. Rather than focusing solely on what to do with existing waste, the “Zero Waste” movement looks at a product’s entire life cycle — and redirects the conversation toward usable options for every step along the way. The ultimate goal is to eliminate waste as a concept entirely — a lofty aspiration indeed. But Zero Wasters say loftiness is part of the point — after all, creating a trash-free world is going to take nothing short of revolution."

The Boston Globe: "IMAGINE AN INDUSTRIAL system in which nothing ever really dies or gets discarded....In this perfect system, each unit of energy consumed would be somehow offset. Every industrial byproduct would reassemble into something useful and benign. Every beam of sunlight, scrap of garbage, and flush of the toilet would be pressed into service. No exceptions. Humankind would make obsolete the very concept of "waste."

Final word to David Redfield of Wal-Mart: "Trash is Cash."

TreeHugger also has a post by Lester Brown on peak oil.

Oil has shaped our twenty-first century civilization, affecting every facet of the economy from the mechanization of agriculture to jet air travel. When production turns downward, it will be a seismic economic event, creating a world unlike any we have known during our lifetimes. Indeed, when historians write about this period in history, they may well distinguish between before peak oil (BPO) and after peak oil (APO). (See also see Chapter 2, “Beyond the Oil Peak,” Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble, available for free online.)

One way the oil prospect can be analyzed is by separating the world’s principal oil-producing countries into two groups—those where production is falling and those where it is still rising—is illuminating. Of the 23 leading oil producers, output appears to have peaked in 15 and to still be rising in eight. The post-peak countries range from the United States (the only country other than Saudi Arabia to ever pump more than 9 million barrels of oil per day) and Venezuela (where oil production peaked in 1970) to the two North Sea oil producers, the United Kingdom and Norway, where production peaked in 1999 and 2000 respectively. U.S. oil output, which peaked at 9.6 million barrels a day in 1970, dropped to 5.4 million barrels a day in 2004—a fall of 44 percent. Venezuela’s output has dropped 31 percent since 1970.

The eight pre-peak countries are dominated by the world’s leading oil producers, Saudi Arabia and Russia. Other countries with substantial potential for increasing production are Canada, largely because of its tar sands, and Kazakhstan, which is still developing its oil resources. The other four pre-peak countries are Algeria, Angola, China, and Mexico.

The biggest question mark among these eight countries is Saudi Arabia. Its production technically peaked in 1980 at 9.9 million barrels a day and output is now nearly 1 million barrels a day below that. It is included as a country with rising production only on the basis of statements by Saudi officials that the country could produce far more. However, some analysts doubt whether the Saudis can raise output much beyond its current production. Some of its older oil fields are largely depleted, and it remains to be seen whether pumping from new fields will be sufficient to more than offset the loss from the old ones.

This analysis comes down to whether production will actually increase enough in the eight pre-peak countries to offset the declines under way in the 15 countries where production has already peaked. In volume of output, the two groups have essentially the same total production capacity. If production begins to fall in any one of the eight, however, world output could decline.

Another way to consider oil production prospects is to look at the actions of the major oil companies themselves. While some CEOs sound very bullish about the growth of future production, their actions suggest a less confident outlook.

One bit of evidence of this is the decision by leading oil companies to invest heavily in buying up their own stocks. ExxonMobil, for example, with the largest quarterly profit of any company on record—$10.7 billion in the fourth quarter of 2005—invested nearly $10 billion in buying back its own stock. ChevronTexaco used $2.5 billion of its profits to buy back stock. With little new oil to be discovered and world oil demand growing fast, companies appear to be realizing that their reserves will become even more valuable in the future.

Closely related to this behavior is the lack of any substantial increases in exploration and development in 2005 even with oil prices well above $50 a barrel. This suggests that the companies agree with petroleum geologists who say that 95 percent of all the oil in the world has already been discovered. “The whole world has now been seismically searched and picked over,” says independent geologist Colin Campbell. “Geological knowledge has improved enormously in the past 30 years and it is almost inconceivable now that major fields remain to be found.” This also implies that it may take a lot of costly exploration and drilling to find that remaining 5 percent.

The geological evidence suggests that world oil production will be peaking sooner rather than later. Matt Simmons, head of the oil investment bank Simmons and Company International and an industry leader, says in reference to new oil fields: “We’ve run out of good projects. This is not a money issue…if these oil companies had fantastic projects, they’d be out there [developing new fields].” Kenneth Deffeyes, a highly respected geologist and former oil industry employee now at Princeton University, says in his 2005 book, Beyond Oil, “It is my opinion that the peak will occur in late 2005 or in the first few months of 2006.” Walter Youngquist and A.M. Samsan Bakhtiari of the Iranian National Oil Company both project that oil will peak in 2007.

Sadad al-Husseini, recently retired as head of exploration and production at Aramco, the Saudi national oil company, notes that new oil output coming on-line had to be sufficient to cover both annual growth in world demand of at least 2 million barrels a day and the annual decline in production from existing fields of over 4 million barrels a day. “That’s like a whole new Saudi Arabia every couple of years,” Husseini said. “It’s not sustainable.”

For additional information, see Chapter 2, “Beyond the Oil Peak,” Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble, available on-line.

Also at TreeHugger - an interview with David Suzuki and a report that Tesla Motors is to open five dealer outlets.



Cornell University (home of a number of peak oil related figures) has something of a treasure trove for farmers and anyone else interested in growing food online - The Core Historical Literature of Agriculture.

The Core Historical Literature of Agriculture (CHLA) is a core electronic collection of agricultural texts published between the early nineteenth century and the middle to late twentieth century. Full-text materials cover agricultural economics, agricultural engineering, animal science, crops and their protection, food science,forestry, human nutrition, rural sociology, and soil science. Scholars have selected the titles in this collection for their historical importance. Their evaluations and 4,500 core titles are detailed in the seven volume series The Literature of the Agricultural Sciences.

Current online holdings: Pages: 850,264 Books: 1,849 (1,910 Volumes) Journals: 6 (288 Volumes)

Patrick "The Unplanner" Ford has an article up at Energy Bulletin, noting in response to the recent NYT article about increased oil extraction at some fields that "Selective reporting does not disprove peak oil". I'm well over arguments between "peak oil now" doomers and "there is no peak oil" cornucopians at this stage - both camps seem largely impervious to reason and rely on a very selective interpretation of events to keep themselves happily repeating their dogmas. I would hope by now its obvious to most that peak oil is inevitable, its impossible to tell when (because the data is so bad) and that the prudent course of action is to switch to an electric transport / energy efficient economy - and this solves the global warming problem as well - so there is no reason not to do it other than keeping the fossil fuel industries happy. And who likes them anyway ?

It is simply amazing how often journalists and editors can dutifully report the facts as told to them by their sources without bothering to try and understand the larger picture. Specific data, cited as “proof” for a particular theory could in fact be evidence for the complete opposite conclusion if the entire data set was examined.

A clear example of this is the recent use of Bakersfield's Kern River Field by the New York Time’s recent editorialized reporting in the “Demise of Oil” piece written by Jad Mouarad. [Also posted at EB and Mobjectivist]

This article repeated cited production figures from Kern County’s earliest oil field put into mass production. Unfortunately, for the average reader Mr. Mouarad took but two production figures from the long production history of this field without bothering to consider the entire record of this field and the implications those records demonstrate.

Had he done that, he would have realized the Kern River Field had actually gone through a series of peaks and troughs brought on by new technology, market prices and yes, basic geology.

The Kern River Field was discovered in April of 1899 when Jonathan Elwood and his son James hand dug a 45-foot shaft into the banks of the Kern River, tapping into what would become one of California’s largest oil fields at an estimated 3.8 billion barrels. Production rose rapidly as wells were repeatedly drilled into the reservoir, reaching an initial peak of 47,000 barrels a day in 1906 before declining for the next five decades. Production on this field was hindered by the presence of large quantities of trapped fresh water that needed to be separated out from the produced oil. Whole sections of the field were shut during the Great Depression and again after WWII as sagging oil prices made Kern River oil uncompetitive in the marketplace.

Production had reached a nadir of but 10,000 barrels per day as cited by Mr. Mouarad in the early sixties as cited in the article when Shell Oil introduced steam injection. Production immediately responded, increasing to 68,000 by the end of the 1960s. From there other companies joined in the hunt as is evidenced by the production records. Apparently unbeknownst to the reporter, the State of California (OPI) kept tabs of every single oil well in the state including all 31000 drilled in the Kern River Field and placed them online (from 1977 onwards) for anyone to query.

In any case the findings from the Kern River data are quite interesting.




When observing the entire graph (and remembering the 1960’s era production figures) it becomes abundantly clear that the Kern River in fact, is well past peak having rolled over January of 1986 at around 155,000 BPD. It plateaued for another ten years around 140,000 BPD before entering the terminal decline which it currently is in around 1996.

This information is entirely lacking from the article and obviously runs counter to the claim that peak oil (in any field) can be mitigated with a hearty dose of technology. The Kern River Field saw a progression of technological innovation over the 108-year lifespan of this field, each time raising production to a peak before declining once again. Each technology improved on the efficiency (early steam injection wells consumed 20-40% of the crude for steam production) resulting in more oil entering the supply yet the long-term trend remained intact.

The rate of recovery for each well is similarly troubling. OPI data shows a clear slide in how much oil can be squeezed from each well.



Again, the peak in productivity occurred in 1986, coinciding with the peak level of oil production. As noted earlier, the oil producers early steam injection units were pretty inefficient. In the 1980s and 1990s they began to switch them out in favor of natural gas fired co-gen units that produced injection steam and produced electricity for the pumping operations, increasing the amount of oil able to make it to the market. Drilling also increased.

Yet oil production continued to decline.

As usual, the mainstream media dropped the ball on this major issue thanks to shoddy fact checking and a little research. It is also an instructive example how selective use of statistics (whether intentional or not) only serves to cloud the otherwise straight forward arguments in favor Peak Oil. By producing these conflicting pieces, the media sows doubt on the urgency of the issue, much like the Global Warming opponents did throughout the 1990’s. A message that “don’t worry, technology will save us” removes the sense of urgency for us as a society to make the proper preparations.

Crikey's Christian Kerr is wondering Whatever happened to the dinky-di Aussie hybrid? (and, remarkably, didn't stop to do any greenie bashing).

Yesterday Federal Labor leader Kevin Rudd announced a $500 million “Green Car Innovation Fund” designed to generate $2 billion in investment to secure jobs in the automotive industry and tackle climate change by manufacturing low emission vehicles in Australia.

Which is all very good, but begs the question, where is the dinky-di Aussie hybrid – the ECOmmodore – unveiled by Holden and the CSIRO almost seven years ago?

The short answer is simple. It now resides at the Powerhouse Museum. The car was never intended as a prototype. It was a concept car developed by Holden as a marketing tool for the Olympic Games. It followed the Olympic torch around the nation, and was then consigned to history.

David Lamb, who oversaw the production of the car at the CSIRO, told Crikey that it was a lack of community interest in fuel efficiency – and the losses industry would take – that scuttled any hope of the ECOmmodore becoming commercially available.

Last year, AWU boss and sometime saviour of the federal ALP Bill Shorten had a hybrid epiphany of his own. He says local production of hybrid vehicles could evolve in two steps.

Shorten says we could import hybrid power trains – the system of bearings, shafts, and gears that transmit the engine’s power to the axle – so hybrid vehicles could be assembled in Australia.

Shorten claims, “By my estimates, based on the experience at Toyota's plant in Georgetown, US, it would cost $20 million and take less than a year to reconfigure a production line in Australia that would be capable of assembling up to 48,000 hybrid vehicles annually.

However, he adds, “Taking the next step of manufacturing hybrid power trains for local use and export would be a much bigger, costlier project.”

He isn’t kidding there. The power train is one of a car’s most complicated parts. And there are other complications in the Shorten plan, too.

Former Industry Minister John Button gave Crikey readers an excellent brief on the Australian car industry last week. Exports and technology, he said, are the keys to the future. That and the minor matter of making cars people actually want to buy (see the sad tale of the Mitsubishi 380). ...

Rudd was at Futuris, but the largest employer in the electorate by far is Holden, a company with a good export focus, but one that announced at the beginning of the month it was shedding 600 jobs.

Which brings us back to the ECOmmodore. There could be three seats for Labor in asking, what happens now with the dinky-di Aussie hybrid?

Apparently today was the fourth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. The other good thing about not using oil is that you don't need to invade other countries to control it.

Anti-war protesters gathered in Australian capitals as part of a worldwide day of protest against the war in Iraq to mark the fourth anniversary of the invasion by the US-led coalition.

Protesters temporarily brought traffic to a standstill in central Sydney today as marchers wielding banners demanded the end to the conflict in Iraq and David Hicks' return to Australia.

Federal Greens senator Kerry Nettle addressed the crowd outside Town Hall on George Street, saying the issue of Iraq is a disaster.

President of the New South Wales Council of Civil Liberties David Burnie says Hicks' detention without charge was an issue that has implications for Australians. And Maritime Workers Union spokesman Paul Garrett has warned the New South Wales government there will be more and more protests if any attempts are made to lock down the city during September's APEC conference.

The rally in Sydney was part of a national day of protest against Australian involvement in Iraq.

About 300 demonstrators gathered in Melbourne at the State Library in Swanston Street for the rally and march organised by the Melbourne Stop the War Coalition and Civil Rights Defence as part of a global day of action against the Iraq war. Colin Mitchell from the Civil Rights Defence group called on Prime Minister John Howard to withdraw Australian troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. "The people of Melbourne have had enough," he said. "The people of Australia must unite with us and call for the troops to be withdrawn."

An Iraqi man, who identified himself only as Nasser, told the rally US President George Bush's invasion of Iraq had cost hundreds of thousands of innocent lives in his homeland. "Back in 2003, US President Bush and Mr Howard threw all their lies at us by telling us that it was to bring democracy to Iraq and freedom," Nasser said. "Now 600,000 (deaths) later ... democracy is not back in Iraq. Freedom is not back in Iraq. "I'm telling you this because I have family still there. I went and saw this."

The Energy Blog reports that the Nevada Solar One CSP project is about to go live.

An aerial view of Nevada Solar One. The site takes up about 300 acres and contains 760 mirror arrays measuring about 100 meters each. Roughly 184,000 mirrors are installed at Solar One, a [64-megawatt] solar thermal plant that will go live next month in Boulder City, Nev. The mirrors direct sunlight on an oil-filled tube. The oil is then used to create steam, which turns a turbine.

Tyler at Clean Break points to a News Corp article which looks at people (like me) who think that thermal solar is destined to be the most economical way of generating electricity.

News.com's Michael Kanellos has a piece looking at the growing interest in solar thermal projects that generate electricity on a utility scale. He begins by providing an update on the solar plant in Nevada that's generating enough electricity for 15,000 homes using a system of 184,000 mirrors arranged in parabolic arrays that focus the sun's energy to produce steam. That steam cranks a turbine that produces electricity. Many advocates of solar thermal -- including Vinod Khosla -- say it is the most economical way of producing electricity from the sun on a large scale and will become competitive with coal over the next two decades, possibly earlier.

Tyler also has an article in the Toronto Star on the inventor of quantum dot solar getting an invitation to speak at this year's TED conference.

It's not often that a professor at the University of Toronto gets to share the stage with a former U.S. president, a legendary singer-songwriter and a knighted billionaire. Nanotechnology expert Ted Sargent, whose U of T team is developing a better way to capture solar energy, will get that chance tomorrow at the annual Technology, Entertainment and Design conference in Monterey, Calif.

The exclusive four-day gathering brings together the planet's top political, business, academic and celebrity "thinkers" – all of them determined in their own way to save the world. This year's roster of "50 remarkable people" include former U.S. president Bill Clinton, singer Paul Simon and Virgin Group founder Sir Richard Branson.

"I'm going to put forth a vision of solar energy," said Sargent, who in 2005 was recognized by Scientific American magazine as one of the world's Top 50 leaders in science and technology. That vision includes using nanotechnology to develop paint-on solar cells that can convert the sun's rays – both visible and invisible infrared spectrum – into clean electricity. "I see homes, clothes, tents, pool covers, even electronic devices using a solar-energy harvesting material. If it's on a surface area and something we're making use of, those are the first opportunities for this," he said.

Also known as TED, the conference was founded in 1984 as a place where great minds from the technology and entertainment community could rub shoulders and share ideas. It has since become the hottest ticket in town, commanding $4,400 (U.S.) from the roughly 1,000 who are permitted to attend.

Sargent, author of the 2005 book The Dance of Molecules, captured the scientific community's attention after he and his team at the U of T's department of electrical and computer engineering discovered a way to develop super-thin, flexible solar cells that can absorb infrared light and convert it to electricity.

Current solar technology only taps the visible spectrum of light, leaving half of the sun's energy out of reach. The opportunity to add infrared light to the energy mix could make it possible to capture 30 per cent of the sun's spectrum – more than doubling the current efficiency of plastic, thin-film solar cells.

The nanoparticles – one-billionth of a metre – at the heart of Sargent's process, called quantum dots, can even be added to a polymer liquid and spray-painted onto any surface, turning any object exposed to the sun into a solar generator.

After mocking the Khalid Sheik Mohammed story yesterday I felt a little guilty as I hadn't even read any actual news stories - just got a vague impression from TV and radio reports then echoes from the blogosphere. After reading the official story today I quickly overcame my guilt - reading between the lines, even the Ministry of Truth people seemed a little embarrassed by this one.

THE Pentagon has released a previously withheld portion of Khalid Sheik Mohammed's statement to a tribunal at Guantanamo Bay in which he describes how he killed the American journalist Daniel Pearl.

This part of the statement was withheld so that Pearl's family could be prepared for the admission by Mohammed that he had killed Pearl in Karachi, Pakistan in 2002 after the Wall Street Journal reporter had been taken to what he thought was to be an interview with Islamic radicals.

"I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew Daniel Pearl in the city of Karachi, Pakistan," Mohammed said in the statement. "For those who would like to confirm, there are pictures of me on the internet holding his head." ...


It is not clear whether claims that he was responsible for planning virtually every serious al-Qaeda attack are believable. The 9/11 Commission report described Mohammed as "flamboyant" and likely to exaggerate his "achievements" though some intelligence experts say that most of what he says is probably true.

"He sees himself as a warrior and this is a very carefully worded statement and I am sure that for the most part, it is true," said Michael Scheuer, a former senior CIA agent who headed the unit that hunted Osama bin Laden before it was disbanded two years ago.

For the most part ? And why isn't Osama still being hunted anyway ?

Anyway, if we're all going to be distracted from Gonzales' purge of the Department of Justice (is there any branch of the US bureacracy which hasn't had the neoconservative treatment yet ?), we may as well enjoy it - here's The Road To Surfdom complaining that KSM stole his milk money.

All those unsolved terrorist crimes: Bali, the Israeli embassy bombings (including the surveillance of the Canberra embassy by Jack Roche), 9/11, the planned bombings of the Sears Tower and other second wave attacks in America, failed assassinations of Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Pope John Paul II, the execution of Daniel Pearl, the setting-up of anthrax and other biological weapons laboratories and many more… in fact the entire gamut of all the crimes Bush, Howard, Blair, every neo-con journalist and all other crazies who put their two-bob’s worth into the “War on Terror” over the past five years, the lot… have been confessed to by Khalid Shiekh Mohommad at Guantanamo today.

It wasn’t in the article, but I reckon he kicked his dog too, and stole my milk money.

Pretty soon - give it a day or two - we’ll hear a cacophony of righteous justification from said planners of the war that they were right all along. There really is an evil terrorist mastermind after all, responsible for absolutely everything. See, all you lefties? You were wrong, wrong, wrong. Paul Kelly, laughingly-called “Editor At Large” of The Australian, might even get off his favourite subject - “Why I should decide who’s going to be Prime Minister” - and write a proper article. It’s going to be insufferable. ...

But there’s always one sourpuss, isn’t there? As if to prick the up and coming bubble of self-sanctification from our Dear-Leaders-who-were-right-all-along, terrorism expert Clive Williams said of Khalid’s confession today:

“…after four years in secret CIA prisons, where he is said to have been subjected to harsh interrogation techniques, Mohammed’s confessions are ‘legally worthless’.”

In other words, they tortured him until the agony got so unbearable that he’d confess to anything and everything… and did. ...

Wonkette thinks there is more to it than just milk money and every terrorist act in the last 20 years - Khalid Shaikh Mohammed Confesses to Everything Ever !

Kalid Shaikh Mohammed was captured by the US in 2003, tortured by the CIA in a secret prison for a while, then shipped to Guantamo to stand lawyerless before a military tribunal that would determine if he was fit to stand before another military tribunal.

So we’re not entirely sure if we buy that he’s responsible for all 31 plots he mentioned (helpfully listed here by the New York Times).

Our expurgated list, after the jump.

* The 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
* The 9/11 attacks, from A to Z.
* The shoe bomber operation to down two American planes.
* Planning to bomb the Panama Canal.
* Planning to assassinate several former American presidents, including President Carter.
* Stock market crash of 1929.
* Sinking of the Maine, Lusitania.
* Lisa “Left-Eye” Lopes’ fatal car accident.
* Suckiness of second Star Wars trilogy.
* Bruce Springsteen’s career-long failure to get a number 1 single.
* Turned Mark Foley gay.
* Nuclear crisis leading to ascendence of superintelligent apes.

Ok, you caught us, we made a couple up. We should’ve known you wouldn’t believe that anyone would ever bother to assassinate Jimmy Carter.

Alternet did some historical digging and discovered that KSM's great grandpa sunk the Maine.

Intelligence officials say that accused al Qaeda mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed has claimed indirect responsibility for yet another high-profile attack against American forces stationed abroad.

On Friday, after four years of solitary confinement in secret CIA-run prisons and a brisk morning of water-boarding, Mohammed admitted that his great-grandfather, Hussein abu Taba, orchestrated the 1898 bombing of the battleship U.S.S. Maine in Havana Harbor. That explosion, which killed 266 seamen, sparked the Spanish-American War.

Mohammed made waves earlier this week when he admitted to planning and/or personally executing dozens of terror attacks, including the 9/11 attacks, the "Shoe Bomber" plot, the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and the killing of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

Officials say that the Qaeda operative's testimony vindicates the Bush administration's tactics in the "War on Terror." "When Khalid told us he had been the second gunman on the 'grassy knoll' in Dallas in 1963 - at age five! -- I knew we had a high-value prisoner, " said one of Mohammed's interrogators, speaking on background due to the sensitivity of the case. "But the battleship Maine ...well, that gets us into a whole other war against a completely different set of dusky religious fanatics."

Long a matter of controversy, the U.S.S. Maine sank on February 15, 1898, following a fiery explosion. The U.S. government claimed the ship was destroyed by a Spanish mine or via sabotage; others have argued that an accidental explosion in the ship's armory was the cause of the tragedy.

Mohammed claims that his great grandfather described to him in detail how he had smuggled an early IED -- a device that had been built in Persia -- onto the battleship and detonated it with a timer. The accused terror mastermind claims he had forgotten about the exchange until several years of gentle questioning by U.S. interrogators brought the exchange back to him.

Officials say such revelations aren't unusual. "We've found that the mind often represses difficult memories," said Major David L. Barry, an Army intelligence officer attached to the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. "And very few things cause those hidden memories to emerge quite like a few years of sensory deprivation followed by hooking up a prisoner's testicles to a 24-pound truck battery. It's remarkable what they recall!"

And to close, here's a sporting story from Peter Fitzsimons at The Fitz Files.

Those wretched Kiwis, always trying to outdo us Australians. Happily, this time they're trying to outdo us in stupidity so, this once, TFF is happy to let it pass. See, last week TFF mentioned watching an Australian bodybuilder tell Bert Newton that the best vegetable he could think of that began with the letter P was "pineapple". Well, not to be outdone, several Kiwis have nominated their own David Tua - the former Kiwi world heavyweight contender who was so badly pummelled by Lennox Lewis - as giving the best quiz show answer. They say that some years ago, on Celebrity Wheel of Fortune, Tua was asked to give an example of a consonant. He replied "O," and followed up to make himself clear: "O for Awesome." So celebrated was the response that it has entered the Kiwi vernacular as a throwaway compliment.