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WE ACKNOWLEDGE the passing of Daisy Aldridge (Lake) in her hundredth year. Until recently Daisy was a appreciated volunteer delivering the Star. As she had been doing from the very first issue.   

SENDING CHRISTMAS cards is a good way of letting people know that you think that they are worth a stamp.

CHRISTMAS IS a time when kids tell their parents what they want and adults tell the government what they want their kids to pay for.  

HERTZ, CAR RENTAL firm, that recently emerged from bankruptcy, announced that it had made a deal to buy 100,000 cars from Tesla for what knowledgeable sources estimate to be worth $4 billion.

‘THE BROAD mass of a nation will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one” Adolf Hitler.

CHINESE INVENTIONS include chemical insecticide, the fishing reel, magnetic compass, playing cards, the toothbrush and wheelbarrow. 

NZ’S FIRST premiers were well educated. Between 1856 and 1891 there were five qualified lawyers and two with University degrees as premiers. However for the next eighty one years, from 1891  until 1972, there were no university educated premiers/prime ministers . 

BIOLOGISTS THINK  they’ve learned the secret behind cat’s craving for catnip and silver vine. Both contain iridoids – chemical compounds which  activate the opioid systems  of cats – much as heron does in humans, making them euphoric.  

“IT’S AMAZING how much you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit” Harry S Truman 

RESEARCHERS IN JAPAN reportedly sent a petabit (1,000 terabits) of data down a single cable in a second. That’s enough bandwidth to transfer all the works of Shakespeare to 250,000 different people in a hundredth of a second (uncompressed). Or to simultaneously stream Netflix in HD to 200 million people. 

WORRY IS LIKE a rocking chair. It gives you something to do without getting you anywhere. 

“I MAY BE drunk, Miss, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly.”Winston Churchill 

THE PRODUCTION of  NIWA weather models  entails an enormous volume of information which require supercomputers. Niwa’s three supercomputers can process more than two thousand trillion calculations per second.

“I PERSONALLY  think  that humans developed language because of our deep need to complain” Lily Tomlin 

The Star is not published in January. Deadline for the February issue is Wednesday 26^th January.