Fairfux media’s (no doubt unscientific) survey of the nation – no surprises really though: a tale of, not just 2 nations, but of several – with many people and families doing it tough (including middleclass people with permanent jobs). Many are still looking to that brighter future, but just as many see no improvement on the horizon – others reckon they are doing OK. They don’t seem to have interviewed any of the top 5%…. or even of the top 15-20% on the income/wealth scale:
The place where we speak in aphorism, cliche and well-worn metaphor. Where we are operating on a ”hand out mentality”, but have ”everything going for us”. Where the people are ”resilient” but retailers are ”fragile”. Where we say the average wage is not keeping up with the cost of living while declaring Winston Peters to be ”the only one honest enough to let people know what’s going on”.
…
Ask Donna Koveskali about suffering. After two years battling with Housing New Zealand she has finally moved out of a damp, mouldy state house in Titahi Bay and scored a drier home in Tawa. But it’s come with a cost. With her 23-year-old daughter Danielle fighting kidney failure and her 18-year-old son also sick, Donna says she has little to be optimistic about. Don’t get her started on Prime Minister John Key. ”He is useless.”
She knows nothing of the stock market and has no money to invest even if she did. Living day to day on a sickness benefit is enough without having to worry about asset sales.
Ask Hamilton stay at home mum Jazzman Nelson about worry. She has three young kids and a fourth on the way. Her husband’s wage as a school teacher is spreading thinner and thinner. ”We are making ends meet but we are a one income family and not able to get ahead.”
She isn’t complaining about New Zealand. Wouldn’t dream of it. Loves the place. But with paying food, electricity, telephone all the while living with her mother-in-law, it’s tough to be sunny. She and her husband want to save to buy their own place. ”There’s a future,” she says, ”but I am not sure if it’s bright.”
It’s worth clicking on the interactive map to get the brief run-down on the circumstances of each individual/family.
And of course, the Fairfux reporter is still keeping us all focused on the brighter future, highlighting the optimism, and ending on a hopeful note.
And of course, the Fairfux reporter is still keeping us all focused on the brighter future, highlighting the optimism, and ending on a hopeful note.
Of course, that is the role of the press, and those who are chosen to work inside that “busines”
They must be (not very bright), uninformed, and then unable to critically question the system that pays their wages!
One wonders how long the charade will continue to go on, before even those with serious bias, or limited capacity to observe, start to notice reality.
Hey what about those All Blacks, and how about Angelina and Brad, do you think they might marry, oh, and Kate, won’t she just make the best royal mum, also that naughty uncle Harrys a little bit of wild isn’t he…
Don’t overlook Sonny Bill Williams – quite often the newspapers have at least two glowing features (and pictures) on him on any given day! Thank God we have that to focus upon in the midst of our misery.
The question remains, John, John and co, if these schools work well, why aren’t they being set up within the existing education system, with guaranteed qualified teachers etc?
And why aren’t all schools and all children within the existing system getting the benefit of these small class sizes and individual attention?
Tamihere never misses an opportunity to suck up any available funds to increase his empire, as long as there are others to take the fall if it goes pear shaped.
What will a Tamahere school’s attitude be to the small group of children who deliberately dismantle school property, teacher resources and generally destroy classroom tone and climate, and sap the energy out of those erstwhile highly motivated and dedicated teachers?
(Perhaps they will simply be despatched back to the mainstream schools).
Nah, more likely, they will be screened out before enrollment.
In fact, these charter schools are supposed to address the issue of the “tail”. Perhaps they should be required to recruit only the children who are the tail.
It’s John Banks Trophy time again… DUM QUOTE OF THE WEEK
Award No. 3: for the week ending 01/09/2012
*******
Gosman
*******
Now, regular Standard readers will be aware that dear old Gosman has a role on this forum as a fall-guy, the bloke who sets himself up for a verbal caning, the sayer of things that sane people would never even have considered, the writer of things that honest people would not even imagine anyone would be depraved or stupid enough to write. His contributions are designed to provoke outrage and they usually do. He plays the same role on this forum that John Banks played in the 1990-99 parliament: good for a laugh occasionally, not often terribly witty but usually amusing because of the excesses his crazed mind sometimes takes him to.
Usually anything Gosman says is almost immediately firmly refuted by three or four other people. Not debated, mind you; Gosman seems incapable of sustaining a reasoned argument, and his outlandish contributions are so easily put down, like rabid dogs, there is just no room for civilized discussion ensuing from them.
A good example of this could be seen last Thursday when the poor fellow supplied the following piece of black anti-democratic propaganda from an extremist site….
Several regulars, including myself, soon pointed out the lack of credibility of his source as well as its hypocrisy. Tellingly, Gosman never formulated a response.
And here he is stridently defending the corner of global warming-deniers, like a low-rent version of (God help us all but especially Gosman) that addle-pated shock jock Leighton Smith…
“Organic farming takes far more land area to produce the same amount of food output as intensive non-organic farming. This is a fact.”
Note the deadly seriousness with which he delivers the line “This is a fact.” That’s simply unimprovable. Steve Coogan eat your heart out.
In a contribution to the thread “RIP Neil Armstrong”, he treats us to the following….
“I have more respect for Creationists than I do for Christian’s [sic!] who also accept the reality of Evolution. At least the Creationist is logically consistent.”
What nonsense. What a completely idiotic statement that was.
For these sterling (albeit unwitting) efforts in the service of surreal humor and black comedy, Gosman is a deserved winner of the third John Banks Trophy.
The Economist notes that about 90 percent of traffic accidents are caused by human error, meaning that if humans are taken out of the process, there’s a strong probably that accident rates will plummet.
Even so, the bill requires the cars to have a flesh-and-blood human being behind the wheel if something goes wrong.
“It sounds space age, but it’s almost here,” Padilla told the San Jose Mercury News. “If we can reduce the number of accidents, that alone is worth doing this bill.”
Translation:We will remove humans from various the processes slowly, so they won;t notice, machines are better, we don’t need/want all those useless eater/feeders
But wait….
Bay Area tech giant Google has been leading the way in self-driving cars. The team behind the project asserts that the technology is largely already there and their self-driving cars are ready to hit the road right now.
Earlier this year, Google took a number of state legislators on a test non-drive of their driverless cars.
I thought it was about reducing the number of road deaths…
No this is about restricting human movement, tracking every journey that you make (already done in reality), if you are “lucky” enough to either be “allowed” to drive (because thats what this is also about), but the article tells what these psychopaths think about human beings!
Good. Soon I’ll be able to send my car to work, it’ll then transform into a walking bot and do my job for me. Meanwhile I’ll spend my day I as I please, and make sure my pay still gets lodged in my bank.
A person can dream….
Don’t they realise cars are not going to be the main machines of the future?
I find plenty to do with my time; history, politics, social issues and research, popular culture and its relation to social context, visual arts (especially photography, screen fiction etc).
Despite the bill’s widespread political support, some quarters have voiced reservations, particularly over what happens if driverless cars crash and lawsuits are filed. “This does not protect adequately the manufacturers for liability concerns,” Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers spokesman Dan Gage told the Mercury News.
Interesting, obviously, if the car crashes while in autonomous mode the manufacturer of the car is at fault as, essentially, they’re the ones driving the car.
No this is about restricting human movement,
Don’t know how you get that.
tracking every journey that you make (already done in reality),
To be honest, I don’t have a problem with that either just so long as there’s strict rules about looking at the data and the use that it’s put to.
if you are “lucky” enough to either be “allowed” to drive (because thats what this is also about),
Nobody should be allowed to drive – cars are highly inefficient and should be banned outright with this self-drive capability then used in public transport.
but the article tells what these psychopaths think about human beings!
I didn’t see anything of that in the article which would indicate that your seeing things that aren’t there.
Technology is not democratic!
Technology is merely there, the use that it’s put to is up to us which is democratic.
The Con trains last 40to60 years cars 15 to 20 on average trains cost 1sixtieth the cost of a car to move that person from a to b that includes construction and running costs.
Fuel cells are ridiculously dear and will probably never be economical.
The primary source is H which is extracted from H2O. You’re right, the cell is the storage device. But the fuel comes from water….and the by-product is water.
My point here, which is what I’d like Draco to comment on, is does he dislike the idea of private vehicles because of the ecological/oil cost or because he doesnt think there should be a private vehicle class in the first place.
Get fucked Draco you fucking cunt. Being a prick for the sake of being prick makes you look like an asshole. A car with a fuel cell would solve your ‘inefficient’ problem but as the crazy ideologue you just dislike the idea of someone having private transportation. Luckily your strange ideas gain no traction.
Don’t know how you get that. Do some further reading then
tracking every journey that you make (already done in reality),
To be honest, I don’t have a problem with that either just so long as there’s strict rules about looking at the data and the use that it’s put to. Im a little surprised at your response to this one DTB. Strict rules, argh, yeah ok mate! Maybe google cars, google wallet, google earth, google st view, google search, google mail, google cloud & (TPPA), could well be an example of where the strict rules you refer could fall over!
if you are “lucky” enough to either be “allowed” to drive (because thats what this is also about),
Nobody should be allowed to drive – cars are highly inefficient and should be banned outright with this self-drive capability then used in public transport. They are inneficient, but thats about all I can find common ground with, the rest of it, you are talking nonsense, but helps me understand some other comments you put in the post, above and below
but the article tells what these psychopaths think about human beings!
I didn’t see anything of that in the article which would indicate that your seeing things that aren’t there. Or you are not seing what is, and I am not just referring to this article!
Technology is not democratic!
Technology is merely there, the use that it’s put to is up to us which is democratic. While true at the end user consumer market, outside of that is what I was actually referring
“the use that it’s put to is up to us which is democratic.”
Some years ago, the previous National govt wanted all cars to be trackable and for the state to be able to tell which cars were going where and when and tie that into registration and WOF data (amongst others), as well as road tolls and user pays.
Weka, yes this subject is something of a uptopian dream for these people, but don’t be fooled by thinking its just the national govt, or act etc, it has little if nothing to do with political ideology!
Its ideological, but not in the way most people want to believe it is.
There is no good reason for the govt to have a tracker in my car that outweighs the privacy concerns, or the wider political agenda (privatising roads).
I can’t believe you just argued for less privacy rights on the basis that ‘at least it’s the govt’ who holds the info. Again, hands up who trusts the the National Govt? I wouldn’t trust Labour with this one either btw.
Maybe google cars, google wallet, google earth, google st view, google search, google mail, google cloud & (TPPA), could well be an example of where the strict rules you refer could fall over!
Did you note the lack of rules and the fact that anybody can accumulate data if you give permission? By using Google you give permission. If you don’t want to be tracked by Google then don’t use them. Of course, that pretty much can’t happen as Google happens to be pretty much everywhere.
They are inneficient, but thats about all I can find common ground with, the rest of it, you are talking nonsense, but helps me understand some other comments you put in the post, above and below
In what way is getting rid of inefficiency, which we can’t afford, nonsense?
Or you are not seing what is, and I am not just referring to this article!
About the only thing they said that even came close to being negative about humans was that they stated the fact that most crashes are caused by human error.
While true at the end user consumer market, outside of that is what I was actually referring
Which makes no sense. The consumer doesn’t have any democratic say in anything but we could use technology to improve our democracy.
Google cars… that’d be a good one. Each week you get into the car on any given morning and they’ve moved where the indicators are, or the lights switch, or the gear stick 🙄 Plus the gear stick doesn’t really do what it used to, so you have to fiddle with all the other knobs to figure out how to drive the car. Some of the things you find useful have been taken out completely, but you can rest assured, because google are the Good Guys so you know that it’s all for the best.
charter skools are the febrile manifestation of the wannabee drongos in nz society who think they know everything but more to the point want a government salary without having any qualifications.
The EU is banning incandescent light bulbs. Gasp! I wonder if this loss of a fundamental civil and political right will have citizens out on the street protesting the challenge to their freedoms …
So we will see this forced change in NZ soon enough then, and won’t Phillips be pleased, what a boon for them its been, and will be eh!
I’m sure all the energy use reductions will be mirrored by the decreasing costs of energy bills accross EU nations….
Quite sure that people have more pressing issues which are/will get(ting) them onto the streets over the coming years, so will assume the comment was /sarc
Isn’t it the lightbulb banning issue that cost Helen Clark her last election? So the story goes. People were incensed at having their rights so badly denied. Incandescent even.
/sarc 😉
Personally I think banning incandescents is rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. It’s symbolic of a world that thinks that we have climate change because we bought the wrong toys.
Actually, it’s symbolic of the realisation that resources are limited which is exactly what is needed if we want to change to a better system. Unbanning them is the result of the idea that BaU will continue.
If we only take small steps we are stuffed mickey. One of the reasons we are only taking small steps is because we think that changing lightbulbs will make a difference. It won’t. It will just enable bean counters to tell us we have made x savings and therefore we are doing the right thing and so we can relax a bit.
I don’t see any evidence that societies are moving towards using less power or creating less emissions in any meaningful way.
If we only take small steps we are stuffed mickey.
A small step that people can come to understand and that will allow bigger steps later.
I don’t see any evidence that societies are moving towards using less power or creating less emissions in any meaningful way.
That’s because societies are still told that there are no limits. Inform them of the limits and people will stop using resources (i.e, water shortages in which people conserve water). Our socio-economic system can’t handle that though as it’s predicated on using as resources as possible so as to make a few people rich.
I appreciate that, my friend. I just think you should be careful about using Hillary Clinton as an exemplar for anything. As horrible as Key is, he doesn’t have blood on his hands like she does.
He was a Mormon missionary to France in the 1960s, studied at the almost-exclusively Mormon Brigham Young university and rose to become first bishop, then “Stake President” (diocesan leader) in his home state of Massachusetts.
He led Sunday services, ran Bible classes for children and looked after a 4,000-strong congregation in Boston for five years in the 1980s.
Like all Mormons, he is expected to give 10% of his annual income – no-one knows how much he is worth, but it is estimated at anywhere from $150 million to $1 billion – to the Church and not drink tea, coffee or alcohol.
Committed Mormons wear special under-garments, and Romney is believed to follow this tenet of his faith too.
After the death of Joseph Smith, Pratt and his family were among the Latter Day Saints who emigrated to Utah Territory and continued on as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) under the direction of Brigham Young. Pratt was involved in establishing the refugee settlements and fields at both Garden Grove and Mt. Pisgah, Iowa, and personally led a pioneer company along the Mormon Trail to the Salt Lake Valley. Sometime in the mid 1850s, working with George D. Watt, he helped develop the Deseret alphabet. In 1854, Pratt went to California to preside over the Pacific Mission of the LDS Church headquartered in San Francisco.
Any thoughts on Rodney Hide’s column in today’s Sunday Herald? I gain the impression that it might be out and out racist in tone, have I got it wrong?
I haven’t read it yet, but I’d be prepared to wager poor old Clint Eastwood’s Republican convention appearance fee that your suspicion is correct. I’ll come back with my analysis after I’ve seen it, but the following factors mean it’s highly likely….
1.) It’s an article by Rodney Hide, who has frequently made crude racist statements on the radio and television;
2.) It’s in the Herald on Sunday, which is a forum for some of the most bizarrely racist and deranged writing in the country.
He needs to learn to speak Maori, he’ll start to understand that they are a “Life” oriented culture at that point.
The article definitely has no respect for their beliefs. Nor does it recognise their growth as a people.
Which does not make it all that pertinent to NZ in 2012.
But the clincher is to recognise the river’s life force. Then it’s yours.
The likes of RH et al, have no concept what so ever of “life forces or energy”, which is why being able to exude such ignorance in this article, comes freely and naturally, the rac*sm unavoidable for him, because, like those who rule over this planet, that is what they are in their very core, and the Rodneys selected, because that too is what they are!
The types who permeate the “halls of power”, are the winners of a selection process, so can you imagine what those who pull the strings represent!
Because kiwis (those who do actually think, and even some who don’t), are easy to get on-board with things like maori rights and rac*sm etc, it means that the support which will be derived for traditional “rights” will stay in focus, which while I am not for “ownership” by any group, at this stage , has to be considered a good thing.
While I’m uneasy about the maori elite, or their ability to not be corrupted further by white men, at this point in time, they are about the only signifigant barrier to those same white men, stealing the lot, again!
I have now sacrificed a couple of minutes of my life and read it and, sure enough, it is as racist, and as ill informed as I feared.
Perhaps even worse than Hide’s moronic, ignorant views is the Herald website’s warning to anyone who might be thinking of posting a reply to the distinguished thinker: “We aim to have healthy debate. But we won’t publish comments that abuse others.”
Clearly no such limitations apply to their own columnists.
I only read the first couple of lines, and the last. Even that demonstrated hypocrisy of such epic proportions I couldn’t bring myself to read the rest.
I read Hide’s column. I see it as an attempt to stir up racism among ignorant pakeha in the interests of selling of our assets to greedy pakeha and foreign corporates. To my way of thinking, that makes it racist, which is about what I’ve come to expect from Rodney Hide.
After madly screeching himself into mass derision (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5FzCeV0ZFc) during his disastrous bid for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination, Howard Dean has gone onto a career as a “pundit”, where he smiles like a nice guy and expresses his admiration for killing peasants in Asia and Africa by drone aircraft. Watch and cringe as he does his shallow schtick here…
At the start of the clip, you’ll see good-looking but dim Republican senator Marco Rubio saying something inane about the capture of Gaddafi. Also appearing on the clip is another of those glib Brits that infest American public commentary, Tina Brown.
Balancing out the display of horror is Jeremy Scahill, one of the outstanding journalists in America.
One of the YouTube commenters asks a very good question: “Why can’t Scahill be a senator instead of Rubio? Why can’t we have intelligent people in congress?”
“Can democracy exist without trust”?
Interesting TED talk from Ivan Krastev (transcript available). A small snippet:
….
And when you go to the brain sciences, what political consultants learned from the brain scientists is don’t talk to me about ideas anymore, don’t talk to me about policy programs. What really matters is basically to manipulate the emotions of the people. And you have this very strongly to the extent that, even if you see when we talk about revolutions these days, these revolutions are not named anymore around ideologies or ideas. Before, revolutions used to have ideological names. They could be communist, they could be liberal, they could be fascist or Islamic. Now the revolutions are called under the medium which is most used. You have Facebook revolutions, Twitter revolutions. The content doesn’t matter anymore, the problem is the media.
I’m saying this because one of my major points is what went right is also what went wrong. And when we’re now trying to see how we can change the situation, when basically we’re trying to see what can be done about democracy, we should keep this ambiguity in mind. Because probably some of the things that we love most are going to be also the things that can hurt us most. These days it’s very popular to believe that this push for transparency, this kind of a combination between active citizens, new technologies and much more transparency-friendly legislation can restore trust in politics. You believe that when you have these new technologies and people who are ready to use this, it can make it much more difficult for the governments to lie, it’s going to be more difficult for them to steal and probably even going to be more difficult for them to kill. This is probably true. But I do believe that we should be also very clear that now when we put the transparency at the center of politics where the message is that transparency is stupid.
Transparency is not about restoring trust in institutions. Transparency is politics’ management of mistrust. We are assuming that our societies are going to be based on mistrust. And by the way, mistrust was always very important for democracy. This is why you have checks and balances. This is why basically you have all this creative mistrust between the representatives and those whom they represent. But when politics is only management of mistrust, then — I’m very glad that “1984” has been mentioned — now we’re going to have “1984” in reverse. It’s not going to be the Big Brother watching you, it’s going to be we being the Big Brother watching the political class.
This morning on Chris Laidlaw Radionz Jim Dier a very enthusiastic community builder who has found that he and his fellows have made a lot of difference. So he is not an armchair idealist but a thinking down-and-dirty-hands worker who has a good idea that works. Audio should be up by noon
(or so I thought but it isn’t – may be some pesky damn reason of copyright.)
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/sunday
10:06 Ideas: Growing Communities
Epuni Primary School’s Common Unity Project aims to produce enough fruit and vegetables to feed not only the school’s 110 pupils but their families as well. It’s a classic example of what’s been called Asset Based Community Development – or ABC Development. Ideas visits Epuni Primary School in Lower Hutt and talks to the project’s volunteer coordinator Julia Milne; Jim Diers, a proponent of the ABCD movement, tells Jeremy Rose about Seattle’s Strong Communities Initiative; and Denise Bijoux of Inspiring Communities talks to Chris Laidlaw about the proliferation of asset-based community projects in New Zealand.
Presented by Chris Laidlaw
Produced by Jeremy Rose.
This is a copy of the one I put on open mike 30/8 but then thought it might get missed.
I wonder has anyone noticed that when trying to pull a comment from past days, if the number of them go beyond one page, the search device often won’t find the highlighted comment. Than have to go and scroll down for it.
In their wisdom, the producers at RNZ National have seen fit to resurrect one Karen Zelas who, along with Auckland University’s bloviating Professor John Read provided the main academic cover in the police’s hare-brained, fantastical sex abuse case against Peter Ellis.
In A City Possessed, Lynley Hood’s magisterial demolition of the hysteria, Zelas was comprehensively and irrefutably shown up to be a fraud and a charlatan. But if you imagined this horrid woman had been stewing in her own shame for the last decade and a half, you were wrong.
Apparently, she always wanted to be a writer. Maybe that helps to explain her sympathy for the outlandish fantasies drilled into those children’s brains by that crazed cadre of fundamentalist parents at the Christchurch Civic Creche.
Zelas reckons that forcing little children to repeat their parents’ wild and lurid fantasies has made her into quite the poet: “I suppose my former career has given me a depth of understanding of people, their emotions and relationships and how they behave, which I am able to draw upon in my writing.”
She was just following the latest crap coming from American psychologists at the time. In my experience, psychologists are some of the most dangerous people that exist. Psychology is demonstrably not a science, and follows fashions which change every few years, yet its practicioners can affect people’s lives to more of an extent than most pseudo-scientists except economists. The courts would do no worse if they relied on expert testimony from astrologers.
She was just following the latest crap coming from American psychologists at the time.
She was also validating the psychotic sexual fantasies of some fundamentalist Christian loons in Christchurch. She wasn’t the only one, either; the aforementioned Prof. John Read continues to taunt Ellis with cruel and unsubstantiated allegations, the Children’s Commissioner at the time (Laurie O’Reilly) gave the madness official backing by treating the allegations seriously, as did his successor Roger McClay (who was subsequently convicted for fraud and sent to prison). And the police in Christchurch still occasionally haul Ellis into the station to humiliate him further.
In my experience, psychologists are some of the most dangerous people that exist.
There are certainly some bad ones, all right. And Karen Zelas is one of the very worst.
A ‘March for Jobs’ is going to be held this Tuesday in Greymouth. How’s that brighter future looking Coasters?
From the West Coast miner fb page:
There will be a ‘March for Work’ rally in Greymouth on 4th September to commence at midday from the Skate Park. The march is in support of the coalminers of spring creek and the township of Greymouth. This is an open invitation to march through town to raise awareness that will effect us all if the mine was to close. Damien O’Connor MP, The Mayor and Bernie Monk have confirmed there support and will speak following the march. Please pass on and join the march to save jobs and our community.
wow.
carol zelas and march for jobs side by side.
anyway this is for carol.
I have read recently that the US Supreme court no longer represents the little man.
is this true?
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I’m less than convinced by arguments that platforms like Twitter should be subject to common carrier regulation preventing them from being able to decide who to keep on as clients of their free services, and who they would not like to serve. It’s much easier to create competition for the ...
The hypocritical actions of political leaders throughout the global Covid pandemic have damaged public faith in institutions and governance. Liam Hehir chronicles the way in which contemporary politicians have let down the public, and explains how real leadership means walking the talk. During the Blitz, when German bombs were ...
Over the years, we've published many rebuttals, blog posts and graphics which came about due to direct interactions with the scientists actually carrying out the underlying research or being knowledgable about a topic in general. We'll highlight some of these interactions in this blog post. We'll start with two memorable ...
Yesterday we had the unseemly sight of a landleech threatening to keep his houses empty in response to better tenancy laws. Meanwhile in Catalonia they have a solution for that: nationalisation: Barcelona is deploying a new weapon in its quest to increase the city’s available rental housing: the power ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Jeff Masters, PhD The 2020 global wildfire season brought extreme fire activity to the western U.S., Australia, the Arctic, and Brazil, making it the fifth most expensive year for wildfire losses on record. The year began with an unprecedented fire event ...
NOTE: This is an excerpt from a digital story – read the full story here.Tess TuxfordKo te Kauri Ko Au, Ko te Au ko Kauri I am the kauri, the kauri is me Te Roroa proverb In Waipoua Forest, at the top of the North Island, New ...
Story of the Week... Toon of the Week... Coming Soon on SkS... Poster of the Week... SkS Week in Review... Story of the Week... Coming attraction: IPCC's upcoming major climate assessmentLook for more emphasis on 'solutions,' efforts by cities, climate equity ... and outlook for emissions cuts in ...
Ringing A Clear Historical Bell: The extraordinary images captured in and around the US Capitol Building on 6 January 2021 mirror some of the worst images of America's past.THERE IS A SCENE in the 1982 movie Missing which has remained with me for nearly 40 years. Directed by the Greek-French ...
To impact or not to impeach? I understand why some of those who are justifiably aghast at Trump’s behaviour over recent days might still counsel against impeaching him for a second time. To impeach him, they argue, would run the risk of making him a martyr in the eyes of ...
The Capitol Building, Washington DC, Wednesday, 6 January 2021. Oh come, my little one, come.The day is almost done.Be at my side, behold the sightOf evening on the land.The life, my love, is hardAnd heavy is my heart.How should I live if you should leaveAnd we should be apart?Come, let me ...
A chronological listing of news articles linked to on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week: Sun, Jan 3, 2021 through Sat, Jan 9, 2021Editor's ChoiceAfter the Insurrection: Accountability, Reform, and the Science of Democracy The poisonous lies and enablers of sedition--including Senator Hawley, pictured ...
This article, guest authored by Prof. Angela Gallego-Sala & Dr. Julie Loisel, was originally published on the Carbon Brief website on Dec 21, 2020. It is reposted below in its entirety. Click here to access the original article and comments. Peatlands Peatlands are ecosystems unlike any other. Perpetually saturated, their ...
The assault on the US Capitol and constitutional crisis that it has caused was telegraphed, predictable and yet unexpected and confusing. There are several subplots involved: whether the occupation of the Michigan State House in May was a trial run for the attacks on Congress; whether people involved in the ...
On Christmas Eve, child number 1 spotted a crack in a window. It’s a double-glazed window, and inspection showed that the small, horizontal crack was in the outermost pane. It was perpendicular to the frame, about three-quarters of the way up one side. The origins are a mystery. It MIGHT ...
Anne-Marie Broudehoux, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM)Will the COVID-19 pandemic prompt a shift to healthier cities that focus on wellness rather than functional and economic concerns? This is a hypothesis that seems to be supported by several researchers around the world. In many ways, containment and physical distancing ...
Does the US need to strike a grand bargain with like-minded countries to pool their efforts? What does this tell us about today’s global politics? Perhaps the most remarkable editorial of last year was the cover leader of the London Economist on 19 November 2020. Shortly after Joe Biden was ...
Alexander Gillespie, University of Waikato and Valmaine Toki, University of WaikatoAotearoa New Zealand likes to think it punches above its weight internationally, but there is one area where we are conspicuously falling behind — the number of sites recognised by the UNESCO World Heritage Convention. Globally, there are 1,121 ...
An event organised by the Auckland PhilippinesSolidarity group Have a three-course lunch at Nanam Eatery with us! Help support the organic farming of our Lumad communities through the Mindanao Community School Agricultural Foundation. Each ticket is $50. Food will be served on shared plates. To purchase, please email phsolidarity@gmail.com or ...
"Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here." Prisons are places of unceasing emotional and physical violence, unrelieved despair and unforgivable human waste.IT WAS NATIONAL’S Bill English who accurately described New Zealand’s prisons as “fiscal and moral failures”. On the same subject, Labour’s Dr Martyn Findlay memorably suggested that no prison ...
This is a re-post from Inside Climate News by Ilana Cohen. Inside Climate News is a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for the ICN newsletter here. Whether or not people accept the science on Covid-19 and climate change, both global crises will have lasting impacts on health and ...
. . American Burlesque As I write this (Wednesday evening, 6 January), the US Presidential election is all but resolved, confirming Joe Biden as the next President of the (Dis-)United State of America. Trump’s turbulent political career has lasted just four years – one of the few single-term US presidents ...
The session started off so well. Annalax – suitably chastised – spent a pleasant morning with his new girlfriend (he would say paramour, of course, but for our purposes, girlfriend is easier*). He told her about Waking World Drow, and their worship of Her Ladyship. And he started ...
In a recent column I wrote for local newspapers, I ventured to suggest that Donald Trump – in addition to being a liar and a cheat, and sexist and racist – was a fascist in the making and would probably try, if he were to lose the election, to defy ...
When I was preparing for my School C English exam I knew I needed some quotes to splash through my essays. But remembering lines was never my strong point, so I tended to look for the low-hanging fruit. We’d studied Shakespeare’s King Lear that year and perhaps the lowest hanging ...
When I went to bed last night, I was expecting today to be eventful. A lot of pouting in Congress as last-ditch Trumpers staged bad-faith "objections" to a democratic election, maybe some rioting on the streets of Washington DC from angry Trump supporters. But I wasn't expecting anything like an ...
Melted ice of the past answers question today? Kate Ashley and a large crew of coauthors wind back the clock to look at Antarctic sea ice behavior in times gone by, in Mid-Holocene Antarctic sea-ice increase driven by marine ice sheet retreat. For armchair scientists following the Antarctic sea ice situation, something jumps out in ...
Christina SzalinskiWhen Martha Field became pregnant in 2005, a singular fear weighed on her mind. Not long before, as a Cornell University graduate student researching how genes and nutrients interact to cause disease, she had seen images of unborn mouse pups smaller than her pinkie nail, some with ...
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidates for President and Vice President respectively for the US 2020 Election, may have dispensed with the erstwhile nemesis, Trump the candidate – but there are numerous critical openings through which much, much worse many out there may yet see fit to ...
I don’t know Taupō well. Even though I stop off there from time to time, I’m always on the way to somewhere else. Usually Taupō means making a hot water puddle in the gritty sand followed by a swim in the lake, noticing with bemusement and resignation the traffic, the ...
Frances Williams, King’s College LondonFor most people, infection with SARS-CoV-2 – the virus that causes COVID-19 – leads to mild, short-term symptoms, acute respiratory illness, or possibly no symptoms at all. But some people have long-lasting symptoms after their infection – this has been dubbed “long COVID”. Scientists are ...
Last night, a British court ruled that Julian Assange cannot be extradited to the US. Unfortunately, its not because all he is "guilty" of is journalism, or because the offence the US wants to charge him with - espionage - is of an inherently political nature; instead the judge accepted ...
Is the Gender Identity Movement a movement for human liberation, or is it a regressive movement which undermines women’s liberation and promotes sexist stereotypes? Should biological males be allowed to play in women’s sport, use women-only spaces (public toilets, changing rooms, other facilities), be able to have access to everything ...
Ian Whittaker, Nottingham Trent University and Gareth Dorrian, University of BirminghamSpace exploration achieved several notable firsts in 2020 despite the COVID-19 pandemic, including commercial human spaceflight and returning samples of an asteroid to Earth. The coming year is shaping up to be just as interesting. Here are some of ...
Michael Head, University of SouthamptonThe UK has become the first country to authorise the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine for public use, with roll-out to start in the first week of 2021. This vaccine is the second to be authorised in the UK – following the Pfizer vaccine. The British government ...
So, Boris Johnson has been footering about in hospitals again. We should be grateful, perhaps, that on this occasion the Clown-in-Chief is only (probably) getting in the way and causing distractions, rather than taking up a bed, vital equipment and resources and adding more strain and danger to exhausted staff.Look at ...
Story of the Week... Toon of the Week... SkS in the News... Coming Soon on SkS... Poster of the Week... SkS Week in Review... Story of the Week... Many Scientists Now Say Global Warming Could Stop Relatively Quickly After Emissions Go to ZeroThat’s one of several recent ...
The situation in the UK is looking catastrophic.Cases: over *70,000* people who were tested in England on 29th December tested positive. This is *not* because there were more tests on that day. It *is* 4 days after Christmas though, around when people who caught Covid on Christmas Day might start ...
by Don Franks For five days over New Year weekend, sixteen prisoners in the archaic pre WW1 block of Waikeria Prison defied authorities by setting fires and occupying the building’s roof. They eventually agreed to surrender after intervention from Maori party co-leader Rawiri Waititi. A message from the protesting men had stated: ...
Lost Opportunity: The powerful political metaphor of the Maori Party leading the despised and marginalised from danger to safety, is one Labour could have pre-empted by taking the uprising at Waikeria Prison much more seriously. AS WORD OF Rawiri Waititi’s successful intervention in the Waikeria Prison stand-off spreads, the Maori ...
Dear friends, it’s been a covidious year,A testing time for all of us here—Citizens of an island nationIn a state of managed isolation,A team (someone said) five million strong,Making it up as we went along:Somehow in typical Kiwi fashion,Without any wild excess ...
A chronological listing of news articles linked to on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week: Sun, Dec 27, 2020 through Sat, Jan 2, 2021Editor's Choice7 Graphics That Show Why the Arctic Is in Trouble Arctic Sea Ice: NSIDC It’s no secret that the Arctic is ...
One of the books I read in 2020 was She, by H. Rider Haggard (1887). I thoroughly enjoyed it, as being an exemplar of a good old-fashioned adventure story. I also noted with amusement ...
Scottish doctor Malcolm Kendrick looks at the pandemic and the responses to it 30th December 2020 I have not written much about COVID19 recently. What can be said? In my opinion the world has simply gone bonkers. The best description can be found in Dante’s Inferno, written many hundreds of ...
I notice a few regulars no longer allow public access to the site counters. This may happen accidentally when the blog format is altered. If your blog is unexpectedly missing or the numbers seem very low please check this out. After correcting send me the URL for your ...
The deed is done, the doers undoneHad I been a Brit, I would have voted ‘Remain’ rather than Brexit (or ‘Leave’). Instead, I have been bemused by the comic theatre of British politics, fascinated by what the Brits actual think and professionally interested by the revelations of the complexity of ...
As we welcome in the new year, our focus is on continuing to keep New Zealanders safe and moving forward with our economic recovery. There’s a lot to get on with, but before we say a final goodbye to 2020, here’s a quick look back at some of the milestones ...
The Prime Minister of New Zealand Jacinda Ardern and the Prime Minister of the Cook Islands Mark Brown have announced passengers from the Cook Islands can resume quarantine-free travel into New Zealand from 21 January, enabling access to essential services such as health. “Following confirmation of the Cook Islands’ COVID ...
Jobs for Nature funding is being made available to conservation groups and landowners to employ staff and contractors in a move aimed at boosting local biodiversity-focused projects, Conservation Minister Kiritapu Allan has announced. It is estimated some 400-plus jobs will be created with employment opportunities in ecology, restoration, trapping, ...
The Government has approved an exception class for 1000 international tertiary students, degree level and above, who began their study in New Zealand but were caught offshore when border restrictions began. The exception will allow students to return to New Zealand in stages from April 2021. “Our top priority continues ...
Today’s deal between Meridian and Rio Tinto for the Tiwai smelter to remain open another four years provides time for a managed transition for Southland. “The deal provides welcome certainty to the Southland community by protecting jobs and incomes as the region plans for the future. The Government is committed ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has appointed Anna Curzon to the APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC). The leader of each APEC economy appoints three private sector representatives to ABAC. ABAC provides advice to leaders annually on business priorities. “ABAC helps ensure that APEC’s work programme is informed by business community perspectives ...
The Government’s prudent fiscal management and strong policy programme in the face of the COVID-19 global pandemic have been acknowledged by the credit rating agency Fitch. Fitch has today affirmed New Zealand’s local currency rating at AA+ with a stable outlook and foreign currency rating at AA with a positive ...
The Government is putting in place a suite of additional actions to protect New Zealand from COVID-19, including new emerging variants, COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said today. “Given the high rates of infection in many countries and evidence of the global spread of more transmissible variants, it’s clear that ...
$36 million of Government funding alongside councils and others for 19 projects Investment will clean up and protect waterways and create local jobs Boots on the ground expected in Q2 of 2021 Funding part of the Jobs for Nature policy package A package of 19 projects will help clean up ...
The commemoration of the 175th anniversary of the Battle of Ruapekapeka represents an opportunity for all New Zealanders to reflect on the role these conflicts have had in creating our modern nation, says Associate Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage Kiri Allan. “The Battle at Te Ruapekapeka Pā, which took ...
Babies born with tongue-tie will be assessed and treated consistently under new guidelines released by the Ministry of Health, Associate Minister of Health Dr Ayesha Verrall announced today. Around 5% to 10% of babies are born with a tongue-tie, or ankyloglossia, in New Zealand each year. At least half can ...
The prisoner disorder event at Waikeria Prison is over, with all remaining prisoners now safely and securely detained, Corrections Minister Kelvin Davis says. The majority of those involved in the event are members of the Mongols and Comancheros. Five of the men are deportees from Australia, with three subject to ...
Travellers from the United Kingdom or the United States bound for New Zealand will be required to get a negative test result for COVID-19 before departing, and work is underway to extend the requirement to other long haul flights to New Zealand, COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins confirmed today. “The new PCR test requirement, foreshadowed last ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has added her warm congratulations to the New Zealanders recognised for their contributions to their communities and the country in the New Year 2021 Honours List. “The past year has been one that few of us could have imagined. In spite of all the things that ...
Attorney-General and Minister for the Environment David Parker has congratulated two retired judges who have had their contributions to the country and their communities recognised in the New Year 2021 Honours list. The Hon Tony Randerson QC has been appointed a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for ...
Minister for Pacific Peoples Aupito William Sio says the New Year’s Honours List 2021 highlights again the outstanding contribution made by Pacific people across Aotearoa. “We are acknowledging the work of 13 Pacific leaders in the New Year’s Honours, representing a number of sectors including health, education, community, sports, the ...
The Government’s investment in digital literacy training for seniors has led to more than 250 people participating so far, helping them stay connected. “COVID-19 has meant older New Zealanders are showing more interest in learning how to use technology like Zoom and Skype so they can to keep in touch ...
New virus variants and ongoing high rates of diseases in some countries prompt additional border protections Extra (day zero or day one) test to be in place this week New ways of reducing risk before people embark on travel being investigated, including pre-departure testing for people leaving the United Kingdom ...
Pacific Media Watch correspondent The pro-independence conflict in West Papua with a missionary plane reportedly being shot down at Intan Jaya has stirred contrasting responses from the TNI/POLRI state sources, church leaders and an independence leader. A shooting caused a plane to catch fire on 6 January 2021 in the ...
“Last year ACT warned that rewarding protestors at Ihumātao with taxpayer money would promote further squatting. We just didn’t think it would happen as quickly as it is in Shelly Bay” says ACT Leader David Seymour. “The prosperity of all ...
Our kindly PM registered her return to work as leader of the nation with yet another statement on the Beehive website, the second in two days (following her appointment of Anna Curzon to the APEC Business Advisory Council on Wednesday). It’s great to know we don’t have to check with ...
A Pūhoi pub is refusing to remove a piece of memorabilia bearing the n-word from its walls. Dr Lachy Paterson looks at the history of the word here, and New Zealand’s complicity in Britain’s shameful slave trading past.Content warning: This article contains racist language and images.On a pub wall in ...
Supermarket shoppers looking for citrus are seeing a sour trend at the moment – some stores are entirely tapped out of lemons. But why? Batches of homemade lemonade will be taking a hit this summer, with life not giving New Zealand shoppers lemons. Prices are high at supermarkets and grocers that ...
You’re born either a cheery soul or a gloomy one, reckons Linda Burgess – but what happens when gene pools from opposite ends of the spectrum collide?In our shoeboxes of photos that we have to sort out before we die or get demented – because who IS that kid on ...
Summer reissue: Prisoner voting rights are something that few in government seem particularly motivated to do anything about. Could a catchy charity single help draw attention to the issue?First published September 1, 2020.Independent journalism depends on you. Help us stay curious in 2021. The Spinoff’s journalism is funded by its ...
Hundreds more Cook Islanders are expected to begin criss-crossing the Pacific, Air NZ will triple the number of flights to Rarotonga next week, and about 300 managed isolation places will be freed up for Kiwis returning from other parts of the world. When Thomas Tarurongo Wynne took a job in Wellington at ...
SPECIAL REPORT:By Ena Manuireva in Auckland It seems a long time ago – some 124 days – since Mā’ohi Nui deplored its first covid-19 related deaths of an elderly woman on 11 September 2020 followed by her husband just hours later, both over the age of 80. The local ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Turnbull, Postdoctoral research associate, UNSW A global coalition of more than 50 countries have this week pledged to protect over 30% of the planet’s lands and seas by the end of this decade. Their reasoning is clear: we need greater protection ...
The Reserve Bank Governor’s apology and claim he will ‘own the issue’ is laughable given the lack of answers and timing of its release. Jordan Williams, a spokesman for the Taxpayers’ Union said: “It’s been five days since they came clean, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Olga Kokshagina, Researcher – Innovation & Entrepreneurship, RMIT University Are too many online meetings and notifications getting you down? Online communication tools – from email to virtual chat and video-conferencing – have transformed the way we work. In many respects they’ve made ...
The Reserve Bank acknowledges information about some of its stakeholders may have been breached in a malicious data hack. The Governor of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand has commissioned an independent inquiry into how stakeholders' information was compromised when hackers breached a file sharing service used by the bank. “We ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Caitlin Syme, PhD in Vertebrate Palaeontology, The University of Queensland This story contains spoilers for Ammonite Palaeontologist Mary Anning is known for discovering a multitude of Jurassic fossils from Lyme Regis on England’s Dorset Coast from the age of ten in 1809. ...
A tribute to the sitcoms of old? In the Marvel Cinematic Universe? Yup. Sam Brooks reviews the audacious WandaVision.Nothing sends a chill up my spine like the phrase “Marvel Cinematic Universe”. Since launching in 2008 with Iron Man, the MCU has become a shambling behemoth, with over 23 films (not ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Clare Corbould, Associate Professor, Contemporary Histories Research Group, Deakin University The alt-right, QAnon, paramilitary and Donald Trump-supporting mob that stormed the US Capitol on January 6 claimed they were only doing what the so-called “founding fathers” of the US had done in ...
The Point of Order Ministerial Workload Watchdog and our ever-vigilant Trough Monitor were both triggered yesterday by an item of news from the office of Conservation Minister Kititapu Allan. The minister was drawing attention to new opportunities to dip into the Jobs for Nature programme (and her statement was the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andreas Kupz, Senior Research Fellow, James Cook University In July 1921, a French infant became the first person to receive an experimental vaccine against tuberculosis (TB), after the mother had died from the disease. The vaccine, known as Bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG), is ...
The first Friday Poem for 2021 is by Wellington poet Rebecca Hawkes.While you were partying I studied the bladeI your ever-loving edgelord God-emperorof the bot army & bitcoin mine subsistingon an IV drip of gamer girl bathwaterfinally my lonelinessis your responsibility………. you seeI need a girlfriend assigned to me by the ...
The arming of police officers in Canterbury was inevitable with the growing numbers and brazenness of the gangs across the country – this should be a permanent step, says Sensible Sentencing Trust. “It is unfortunate that we have come to the point ...
Celebrations in Aotearoa New Zealand to mark the entry into force of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) will begin on Thursday 21 January with ICAN Aotearoa New Zealand’s Wellington and online event, and continue on Friday ...
Hardly anyone is using their Covid Tracer app. Something needs to change.As the mercury approaches 30°C in Aotearoa, there is a good deal of slipping and slopping, but, let’s face it, piss-all scanning. As few as around 500,000 QR codes are being scanned by users of the NZ Covid Tracer ...
On the East Coast, a group of Māori-owned enterprises is innovating to create new revenue streams while doing what they love.New Zealand’s remote and sparsely populated regions are typically not the best places to create thriving brick-and-mortar businesses. In small communities miles away from any major centres, there are so ...
As we reach the height of summer, it’s not too late to do a safety check on your gas bottle. The Environmental Protection Authority’s Safer Homes programme has some tips and tricks to keep in mind before you fire up the grill. "If you’ve ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1Troy: The Siege of Troy Retold by Stephen Fry (Michael Joseph, $37)If you’re in any way unsure about ...
“We may as well knock on the gang headquarters around this country and tell them we all give up," says Darroch Ball co-leader of Sensible Sentencing Trust. “It is simply outrageous that violent offender, James Tuwhangai, has been released from ...
Analysis by Keith Rankin. Ireland, Israel, and Lebanon. Chart by Keith Rankin. The countries with the most recent large outbreaks of Covid19 are those with large numbers of recent recorded cases, but yet to record the deaths that most likely will result. In this camp, this time, are Ireland, Israel ...
RuPaul is in Aotearoa, kicking back in managed isolation to await the filming of an Australasian version of her hugely popular reality show Drag Race. But not everyone is happy about, explains Eli Matthewson. The world’s most famous drag queen, RuPaul, is in New Zealand, the government confirmed earlier this week ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gregory Melleuish, Professor, School of Humanities and Social Inquiry, University of Wollongong What can we make of Clive Palmer? This week, he announced his United Australia Party (UAP) would not contest the upcoming West Australian state election on March 13. After a ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gisela Kaplan, Emeritus Professor in Animal Behaviour, University of New England Have you ever seenmagpies play-fighting with one another, or rolling around in high spirits? Or an apostlebird running at full speed with a stick in its beak, chased by a ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jen Jackson, Program Director, Centre for Policy Development, and Associate Professor of Education, Mitchell Institute, Victoria University Childcare centres across Australia are suffering staff shortages, which have been exacerbated by the COVID crisis. Many childcare workers across Australia left when parents started ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonathan Barrett, Senior Lecturer in Taxation, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington Rhetoric plays an important role in tax debate and therefore tax policy. If your side manages to gain traction in the public imagination with labels such as “death ...
*This article was first published on The Conversation and is republished with permission* Whoever leads the Republican Party post-Trump will need to consider how they will maintain the rabid support of his “base”, while working to regain more moderate voters who defected from the party in the 2020 election. In a historic ...
Covid-19 fears accelerated banks’ moves towards cashless transactions. But the Reserve Bank is fighting to protect cash, and those who still use it. ...
Good morning and welcome to this one-off edition of The Bulletin, covering major stories from the last few weeks.A quick preamble to this: Today’s special edition of The Bulletin is all about filling you in on some of the stories you might have missed over the summer period. Perhaps you had ...
Summer reissue: In this episode of Bad News, Alice Snedden is forced to confront her own mortality before hosting a very special dinner party to get to grips with the euthanasia debate.First published August 27, 2020.Independent journalism depends on you. Help us stay curious in 2021. The Spinoff’s journalism is ...
The contrast between the words of John F Kennedy and today’s anti-democratic demagogue is inescapable, writes Dolores Janiewski I still remember three eloquent speeches by an American president. One happened in January 1961 and spoke about a “torch being passed to a new generation”. Two years later and one day apart, ...
The debate over cutting down a large macrocarpa to make way for a new residential development has highlighted a wider agreement between developers and protesters: that we also need to be planting far more trees. At the corner of Great North Road and Ash Street in Avondale, a 150-year-old macrocarpa stands its ground ...
More infectious variants of Covid-19 are increasingly being intercepted at the country’s borders, but the minister running New Zealand’s response is resisting pressure to accelerate vaccination plans despite demands from health experts as well as political friends and foes, Justin Giovannetti reports.New Zealand’s first Covid-19 jabs will be administered in ...
As CEO of her iwi rūnanga, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer was on the frontline protecting her community during the first outbreak of Covid-19. Now that more virulent strains threaten to breach our borders, the Māori Party co-leader calls on the government to introduce much stricter measures.As we enter the New Year I ...
The Prada Cup challenger series starts today. Suzanne McFadden goes behind the scenes of the world's only live yachting regatta to see what's in store for the next five weeks. At 6am on race days, Iain Murray wakes up and immediately checks the weather outside his Auckland window. “It’s all ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Raquel Peel, Lecturer, University of Southern Queensland This story contains spoilers for Bridgerton The first season of Bridgerton, Netflix’s new hit show based on Julia Quinn’s novels, premiered on December 25 last year. The show is set in London, during the ...
The New Zealand government believes its own negotiations with Rio Tinto will be resolved "fairly quickly" now there is certainty about the future of the Tiwai Point smelter. ...
Amanda Thompson and her family are attempting to cut back on the meat, so they gave all the vego sausies the local supermarket had to offer a hoon on the barbie. Here are the results.I was a vegetarian once. Even the best of us take a well-meaning wrong turn on ...
The Taxpayers’ Union welcomes the call by Wellington City Councillor Fleur Fitzsimons for a shift to land value based rates charges. Union spokesman Louis Houlbrooke says, "Local government leaders across the country should join in Fitzsimons’s call ...
It’s been described as ‘pointless revenge’, but impeaching the president has a firm moral purpose, argues Michael Blake – setting a limit to what sorts of action a society will accept.A House majority, including 10 Republicans, voted today to impeach President Trump for “incitement of insurrection”. The vote will initiate ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bryan Cranston, Lead Academic Teacher – Politics & Social Science (Swinburne Online), Swinburne University of Technology In a historic vote today, Donald Trump became the only US president to be impeached twice. By a margin of 232–197, the Democrat-controlled US House of ...
Hurrah. The PM is back to posting her announcements on the government’s official website, her deputy is back in the business of self-congratulation, Rio Tinto is back in the business of sucking up cheap electricity to produce aluminium at Tiwai Point, near Bluff. And overseas students (some, anyway) can come ...
The electricity sector, Government and people of Southland are rejoicing after Tiwai Point aluminium smelter owner Rio Tinto announced the major industrial would be open until the end of 2024, Marc Daalder reports Stakeholders in the electricity sector and across Southland are celebrating the extension of the Tiwai Point aluminium smelter's ...
If you’ve been on social media this week, you may well have come across a surge in interest in sea shanties. We asked a veteran of the style why. In case you missed it, soon may the Wellerman come, to bring us sugar and tea and rum. If that sentence is even ...
“It is basic human decency to speak up and protect any vulnerable child from harm, so withholding information in child abuse cases and allowing the abuse to happen by not speaking up is, put simply, a cowardly move,” says Jess McVicar Co-Leader ...
Allowing 1,000 returning international students back to New Zealand is the right move by the Government, and hopefully we will be able to welcome more, says ExportNZ Executive Director Catherine Beard. "International education has contributed ...
A majority of the House of Representatives have voted to make Donald Trump the first US president ever to be impeached twice, formally charging him in his waning days in power with inciting an insurrection just a week after a violent mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol. Follow the ...
The Youth of NZ will be standing up for climate action once again on January 26th outside of Parliament for School Strike 4 Climate NZ’s 100 Days 4 Action campaign rally. “We believe it is vital to hold our new Labour-led government to account ...
The Taxpayers’ Union is calling on Rotorua Lakes District Council to urgently release the engineering report on the public safety and structural integrity of the visible foundation-misalignment and lean of the City’s Hemo Gorge monument to government ...
Changes in income and movement in and out of poverty over time are only weakly associated with higher rates of child hospitalisation in New Zealand, according to a new University of Auckland study. Published today in PLOS ONE, the collaborative study led by Dr ...
With a long, hot summer upon us, pet owners are urged to be extra mindful of their pet’s health and safety. Unusually warm weather can quickly take its toll on furry family members, who aren’t well equipped for dealing with blazing heat. The National ...
The Council for Civil Liberties is challenging a claim by former National Party leader Simon Bridges that people should have total freedom of expression on Twitter. ...
A century of sexual abuse of women in New Zealand is analysed in a University of Auckland study. The newly-published research looks back as far as 1922 by analysing interviews with thousands of women about their lifetime experiences. The study indicates ...
62,686 more native trees will be planted in New Zealand in 2021 thanks to generous Kiwis who chose to go green for Christmas gifting. <img src="https://img.scoop.co.nz/stories/images/2101/cf409712f141732a8543.jpeg" width="720" height="540"> Trees That Count, a programme ...
Source: Council on Hemispheric Affairs – Analysis-Reportage By Arturo López-LevyOakland, CaliforniaUnfortunately, the attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters, encouraged by the Inciter-in-Chief, will not be the last act of mischief. Trump is insisting on causing as much damage as possible to the interests and values ...
The threatened Tiwai Point aluminium smelter will keep operating through to the end of December 2024, in a new deal just announced to the New Zealand stock exchange. Mining conglomerate Rio Tinto announced last year it was closing Tiwai due to high energy and transmission costs. Meridian Energy said that ...
The lack of Māori language or symbolism on the SuperGold Card isn’t just a design issue – it’s emblematic of the overwhelming whiteness of Aotearoa’s superannuant population, writes former race relations commissioner Joris de Bres.I’ve enjoyed the SuperGold Card since I retired eight years ago. I appreciate the free public ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adam Brumm, Professor, Griffith University The dating of an exceptionally old cave painting of animals that was found recently on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi is reported in our paper out today. The painting portrays images of the Sulawesi warty pig (Sus ...
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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Helen Young, Lecturer, Deakin University Medievalist references littered the insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6th. Rudy Giuliani called for a “trial by combat”; the “Q Shaman”, Jacob Chansley (also known as Jake Angeli), was covered in Norse tattoos; rioters brandished ...
A Whakatāne therapist says the Whakaari eruption and Christchurch mosque shooting reveal a health system unable to deal with mass casualty events. Whakaari after its eruption in 2019. Photo: Supplied/Auckland Rescue Helicopter Trust This comes amid calls for millions of dollars of promised mental health funding to be urgently re-routed to Canterbury ...
Fairfux media’s (no doubt unscientific) survey of the nation – no surprises really though: a tale of, not just 2 nations, but of several – with many people and families doing it tough (including middleclass people with permanent jobs). Many are still looking to that brighter future, but just as many see no improvement on the horizon – others reckon they are doing OK. They don’t seem to have interviewed any of the top 5%…. or even of the top 15-20% on the income/wealth scale:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/7595624/How-do-you-feel-New-Zealand
It’s worth clicking on the interactive map to get the brief run-down on the circumstances of each individual/family.
And of course, the Fairfux reporter is still keeping us all focused on the brighter future, highlighting the optimism, and ending on a hopeful note.
And of course, the Fairfux reporter is still keeping us all focused on the brighter future, highlighting the optimism, and ending on a hopeful note.
Of course, that is the role of the press, and those who are chosen to work inside that “busines”
They must be (not very bright), uninformed, and then unable to critically question the system that pays their wages!
One wonders how long the charade will continue to go on, before even those with serious bias, or limited capacity to observe, start to notice reality.
Hey what about those All Blacks, and how about Angelina and Brad, do you think they might marry, oh, and Kate, won’t she just make the best royal mum, also that naughty uncle Harrys a little bit of wild isn’t he…
Carry on!
Don’t overlook Sonny Bill Williams – quite often the newspapers have at least two glowing features (and pictures) on him on any given day! Thank God we have that to focus upon in the midst of our misery.
Great – John Tamihere leading the charter school charge.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/7595641/An-alternative-charter
The question remains, John, John and co, if these schools work well, why aren’t they being set up within the existing education system, with guaranteed qualified teachers etc?
And why aren’t all schools and all children within the existing system getting the benefit of these small class sizes and individual attention?
Tamihere never misses an opportunity to suck up any available funds to increase his empire, as long as there are others to take the fall if it goes pear shaped.
He’s found his niche as a radio rant show host.
Exactly, tc. I’ve always thought of John Tamihere as Pita Sharples minus the ponytail and ethics.
larf. wotta u like
National are trying to break the teachers Union of course
What will a Tamahere school’s attitude be to the small group of children who deliberately dismantle school property, teacher resources and generally destroy classroom tone and climate, and sap the energy out of those erstwhile highly motivated and dedicated teachers?
(Perhaps they will simply be despatched back to the mainstream schools).
Nah, more likely, they will be screened out before enrollment.
In fact, these charter schools are supposed to address the issue of the “tail”. Perhaps they should be required to recruit only the children who are the tail.
It’s John Banks Trophy time again…
DUM QUOTE OF THE WEEK
Award No. 3: for the week ending 01/09/2012
*******
Gosman
*******
Now, regular Standard readers will be aware that dear old Gosman has a role on this forum as a fall-guy, the bloke who sets himself up for a verbal caning, the sayer of things that sane people would never even have considered, the writer of things that honest people would not even imagine anyone would be depraved or stupid enough to write. His contributions are designed to provoke outrage and they usually do. He plays the same role on this forum that John Banks played in the 1990-99 parliament: good for a laugh occasionally, not often terribly witty but usually amusing because of the excesses his crazed mind sometimes takes him to.
Usually anything Gosman says is almost immediately firmly refuted by three or four other people. Not debated, mind you; Gosman seems incapable of sustaining a reasoned argument, and his outlandish contributions are so easily put down, like rabid dogs, there is just no room for civilized discussion ensuing from them.
A good example of this could be seen last Thursday when the poor fellow supplied the following piece of black anti-democratic propaganda from an extremist site….
Several regulars, including myself, soon pointed out the lack of credibility of his source as well as its hypocrisy. Tellingly, Gosman never formulated a response.
And here he is stridently defending the corner of global warming-deniers, like a low-rent version of (God help us all but especially Gosman) that addle-pated shock jock Leighton Smith…
“Organic farming takes far more land area to produce the same amount of food output as intensive non-organic farming. This is a fact.”
Note the deadly seriousness with which he delivers the line “This is a fact.” That’s simply unimprovable. Steve Coogan eat your heart out.
In a contribution to the thread “RIP Neil Armstrong”, he treats us to the following….
“I have more respect for Creationists than I do for Christian’s [sic!] who also accept the reality of Evolution. At least the Creationist is logically consistent.”
What nonsense. What a completely idiotic statement that was.
For these sterling (albeit unwitting) efforts in the service of surreal humor and black comedy, Gosman is a deserved winner of the third John Banks Trophy.
Previous Banksy winners…
No. 1: Te Reo Putake (awarded 17/8/2012)
No. 2: Monique Watson (awarded 25/08/2012)
or
“i would go out tonight, but i havn’t got a stitch to wear…..?”
Ho ho ho. Nice one, buddy.
The California state legislature just moved that dream a little closer to reality by approving a bill paving the way for driverless cars to be allowed on Golden State freeways.
Translation:We will remove humans from various the processes slowly, so they won;t notice, machines are better, we don’t need/want all those useless eater/feeders
But wait….
I thought it was about reducing the number of road deaths…
No this is about restricting human movement, tracking every journey that you make (already done in reality), if you are “lucky” enough to either be “allowed” to drive (because thats what this is also about), but the article tells what these psychopaths think about human beings!
Technology is not democratic!
Good. Soon I’ll be able to send my car to work, it’ll then transform into a walking bot and do my job for me. Meanwhile I’ll spend my day I as I please, and make sure my pay still gets lodged in my bank.
A person can dream….
Don’t they realise cars are not going to be the main machines of the future?
So, what would you do with your time? Personally, I get into art, politics and trying to keep up with technological advances (which feeds back into my politics).
IMO, that’s what we should be aiming for because it would allow us to engage more, do more and be self-governing.
interesting. semi, quietism leads me there and here
I find plenty to do with my time; history, politics, social issues and research, popular culture and its relation to social context, visual arts (especially photography, screen fiction etc).
believed i was on the correct page
I was responding to DTB’s question about what I’d do with my time if I was working less.
Quoting article:
Interesting, obviously, if the car crashes while in autonomous mode the manufacturer of the car is at fault as, essentially, they’re the ones driving the car.
Don’t know how you get that.
To be honest, I don’t have a problem with that either just so long as there’s strict rules about looking at the data and the use that it’s put to.
Nobody should be allowed to drive – cars are highly inefficient and should be banned outright with this self-drive capability then used in public transport.
I didn’t see anything of that in the article which would indicate that your seeing things that aren’t there.
Technology is merely there, the use that it’s put to is up to us which is democratic.
slap that bit
“cars are highly inefficient and should be banned outright with this self-drive capability then used in public transport.”
Bahahahahahahaha. Do you drive a car, Draco?
No.
But you’re more than happy to ensure no one else does either?
Have you got a good reason to maintain the inefficiency?
Yes, I have a disability that makes me dependent on my car.
That’s an exception and not a good enough reason to keep cars.
So if cars were completely powered by hydrogen fuel cells would you still argue people should only use public transport?
The Con trains last 40to60 years cars 15 to 20 on average trains cost 1sixtieth the cost of a car to move that person from a to b that includes construction and running costs.
Fuel cells are ridiculously dear and will probably never be economical.
Doesn’t matter what they’re powered by they’re still inefficient.
“Doesn’t matter what they’re powered by they’re still inefficient.”
Errr, what?
A hydrogen fuel cell is inefficient?
Bearing in mind that a hydrogen fuel cell is not a primary source of energy, merely a store of energy.
The primary source is H which is extracted from H2O. You’re right, the cell is the storage device. But the fuel comes from water….and the by-product is water.
My point here, which is what I’d like Draco to comment on, is does he dislike the idea of private vehicles because of the ecological/oil cost or because he doesnt think there should be a private vehicle class in the first place.
I think you’ve missed a step in the energy equation. Which is: where does the energy come from to extract H from water.
Whatever powers your extraction process is the primary energy source. Not the hydrogen.
There is an anode and a cathode. O reacts with one a H reacts with the other.
Like a battery. There is no extraction.
No you moron, cars are inefficient.
“No you moron, cars are inefficient.”
Get fucked Draco you fucking cunt. Being a prick for the sake of being prick makes you look like an asshole. A car with a fuel cell would solve your ‘inefficient’ problem but as the crazy ideologue you just dislike the idea of someone having private transportation. Luckily your strange ideas gain no traction.
This is not likely to ever happen, I’m afraid.
It’s a hypothetical question.
No this is about restricting human movement,
Don’t know how you get that.
Do some further reading then
tracking every journey that you make (already done in reality),
To be honest, I don’t have a problem with that either just so long as there’s strict rules about looking at the data and the use that it’s put to.
Im a little surprised at your response to this one DTB. Strict rules, argh, yeah ok mate! Maybe google cars, google wallet, google earth, google st view, google search, google mail, google cloud & (TPPA), could well be an example of where the strict rules you refer could fall over!
if you are “lucky” enough to either be “allowed” to drive (because thats what this is also about),
Nobody should be allowed to drive – cars are highly inefficient and should be banned outright with this self-drive capability then used in public transport.
They are inneficient, but thats about all I can find common ground with, the rest of it, you are talking nonsense, but helps me understand some other comments you put in the post, above and below
but the article tells what these psychopaths think about human beings!
I didn’t see anything of that in the article which would indicate that your seeing things that aren’t there.
Or you are not seing what is, and I am not just referring to this article!
Technology is not democratic!
Technology is merely there, the use that it’s put to is up to us which is democratic.
While true at the end user consumer market, outside of that is what I was actually referring
“the use that it’s put to is up to us which is democratic.”
Some years ago, the previous National govt wanted all cars to be trackable and for the state to be able to tell which cars were going where and when and tie that into registration and WOF data (amongst others), as well as road tolls and user pays.
Hands up who trusts the National govt?
Weka, yes this subject is something of a uptopian dream for these people, but don’t be fooled by thinking its just the national govt, or act etc, it has little if nothing to do with political ideology!
Its ideological, but not in the way most people want to believe it is.
on to it
I’d prefer the government getting the data than a private firm:
a) The government can use the data to actually improve our lives
b) The government can be held to account
Neither of these things is true of private companies.
There is no good reason for the govt to have a tracker in my car that outweighs the privacy concerns, or the wider political agenda (privatising roads).
I can’t believe you just argued for less privacy rights on the basis that ‘at least it’s the govt’ who holds the info. Again, hands up who trusts the the National Govt? I wouldn’t trust Labour with this one either btw.
Did you note the lack of rules and the fact that anybody can accumulate data if you give permission? By using Google you give permission. If you don’t want to be tracked by Google then don’t use them. Of course, that pretty much can’t happen as Google happens to be pretty much everywhere.
In what way is getting rid of inefficiency, which we can’t afford, nonsense?
About the only thing they said that even came close to being negative about humans was that they stated the fact that most crashes are caused by human error.
Which makes no sense. The consumer doesn’t have any democratic say in anything but we could use technology to improve our democracy.
Google cars… that’d be a good one. Each week you get into the car on any given morning and they’ve moved where the indicators are, or the lights switch, or the gear stick 🙄 Plus the gear stick doesn’t really do what it used to, so you have to fiddle with all the other knobs to figure out how to drive the car. Some of the things you find useful have been taken out completely, but you can rest assured, because google are the Good Guys so you know that it’s all for the best.
charter skools are the febrile manifestation of the wannabee drongos in nz society who think they know everything but more to the point want a government salary without having any qualifications.
Nope, charter schools is all about a few rich people getting government handouts in the millions of dollars per year.
The EU is banning incandescent light bulbs. Gasp! I wonder if this loss of a fundamental civil and political right will have citizens out on the street protesting the challenge to their freedoms …
So we will see this forced change in NZ soon enough then, and won’t Phillips be pleased, what a boon for them its been, and will be eh!
I’m sure all the energy use reductions will be mirrored by the decreasing costs of energy bills accross EU nations….
Quite sure that people have more pressing issues which are/will get(ting) them onto the streets over the coming years, so will assume the comment was /sarc
Isn’t it the lightbulb banning issue that cost Helen Clark her last election? So the story goes. People were incensed at having their rights so badly denied. Incandescent even.
/sarc 😉
Personally I think banning incandescents is rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. It’s symbolic of a world that thinks that we have climate change because we bought the wrong toys.
Actually, it’s symbolic of the realisation that resources are limited which is exactly what is needed if we want to change to a better system. Unbanning them is the result of the idea that BaU will continue.
Small steps weka but if we do not even take these small steps we are irreversibly stuffed.
The trick is to try and remember that no configuration of the deck chairs, no matter how clever, will stop the Titanic from going under.
If we only take small steps we are stuffed mickey. One of the reasons we are only taking small steps is because we think that changing lightbulbs will make a difference. It won’t. It will just enable bean counters to tell us we have made x savings and therefore we are doing the right thing and so we can relax a bit.
I don’t see any evidence that societies are moving towards using less power or creating less emissions in any meaningful way.
A small step that people can come to understand and that will allow bigger steps later.
That’s because societies are still told that there are no limits. Inform them of the limits and people will stop using resources (i.e, water shortages in which people conserve water). Our socio-economic system can’t handle that though as it’s predicated on using as resources as possible so as to make a few people rich.
I’d love to know when this “later” you are referring to might be. If its after about 2016 or 2018 we’re shit out of luck.
Yeah, well, we took the step and then we voted this government in and took several dozen backwards. Thems the breaks.
After 2016 I suspect people will be clamouring to take that step and several others.
What’s next? Their sacred showerheads?
“Eureka”
“now, i see”
“I Believe”
(btw, numerous microethnomethodological studies strongly suggest, science conducted by faith)
RONS just wrong
wow! what a start to His day; R.Smalley (in black) followed by J-A G (au natural) and some very considerate discourse. we live and pray
thought for today? am i my brother/s keeper
plus, the channel 3 news last pm was just one deleterious social impacting event after another;
at least there is always the anasthetic of alcohol….
not sure if this has been shared here in the last few days as i have been doing other things
but i think we have a new caption contest candidate
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/photo/2012-08/29/131815695_21n.jpg
Photoshop?
No, it’s real:
http://www.3news.co.nz/John-Key-welcomed-in-Rarotonga/tabid/417/articleID/267255/Default.aspx
Might put it up as a caption comp some time…
Hopefully they’re carting him off to the tip, or the out-house where his shite belongs…
Anyone get a pic of the armed guards standing off frame who ordered this to happen? /sarc
I really enjoyed the emerson cartoon, with key being carried on the litter by the alcohol lobby.
Hillary Clinton’s a bit more important than John Key. She walked.
(you can imagine the conversation –
Staffer: “Madam Secretary, the Cook Islands protocol involves you being carried on the backs of the natives, like a colonial master, and … ”
Hillary: “You’ve got to be kidding! Are we trying to lose the election? Ain’t gonna happen.”)
Hillary Clinton’s a bit more important than John Key. She walked.
Yes, Hillary Clinton’s an outstanding champion of human rights. Ask any person living in Iraq, Afghanistan or the Occupied Territories.
Here she is with another really humane leader, re-affirming to the world just how committed to human rights they both are….
There is no connection whatsoever between what I said and your “Yes”.
(But you knew that already).
I appreciate that, my friend. I just think you should be careful about using Hillary Clinton as an exemplar for anything. As horrible as Key is, he doesn’t have blood on his hands like she does.
I took gs’s comment to be about Clinton having more PR nous than Key (and probably self respect). Nothing to do with her credibility or ethics.
Yes, yes, weka, I understood too. I just couldn’t resist having a go at her, though.
“I have repeatedly warned the Tsar…”
Unbelievable! 😀
This picture of Romney’s family paints a couple of thousand words.
On the stump Mitt Romney, 65, has avoided mentioning Mormonism, instead talking generally about his faith, but he has been an active lifelong member of the church.
Then there is his great-great grandfather
This picture of Romney’s family paints a couple of thousand words.
No, it paints one. And the word is “Photoshop”.
It’s almost as funny as the “Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan” rearrangement “My ultimate Ayn Rand porn” (hat tip TheContrarian)
Burning Man gallery, scroll down for the live feed.
Direct stream here.
In a time of austerity, we are asking for some to pay for their job interview process.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/30/us-usa-campaign-spending-idUSTRE77T3ZX20110830
Any thoughts on Rodney Hide’s column in today’s Sunday Herald? I gain the impression that it might be out and out racist in tone, have I got it wrong?
Any thoughts on Rodney Hide’s column in today’s Sunday Herald? I gain the impression that it might be out and out racist in tone, have I got it wrong?
I haven’t read it yet, but I’d be prepared to wager poor old Clint Eastwood’s Republican convention appearance fee that your suspicion is correct. I’ll come back with my analysis after I’ve seen it, but the following factors mean it’s highly likely….
1.) It’s an article by Rodney Hide, who has frequently made crude racist statements on the radio and television;
2.) It’s in the Herald on Sunday, which is a forum for some of the most bizarrely racist and deranged writing in the country.
He needs to learn to speak Maori, he’ll start to understand that they are a “Life” oriented culture at that point.
The article definitely has no respect for their beliefs. Nor does it recognise their growth as a people.
Which does not make it all that pertinent to NZ in 2012.
He needs to learn to speak Maori, he’ll start to understand that they are a “Life” oriented culture
Life is very important in Maori culture, because if something’s not alive you can’t kill it and eat it. Plants… animals… other people… very important.
Ladies and Gentlemen, the racist right wing.
Look out, fellas—it’s a moron.
The consumption of life and “life force” is at the heart of all animistic cultures, of which the NZ Maori is just one.
But the clincher is to recognise the river’s life force. Then it’s yours.
The likes of RH et al, have no concept what so ever of “life forces or energy”, which is why being able to exude such ignorance in this article, comes freely and naturally, the rac*sm unavoidable for him, because, like those who rule over this planet, that is what they are in their very core, and the Rodneys selected, because that too is what they are!
The types who permeate the “halls of power”, are the winners of a selection process, so can you imagine what those who pull the strings represent!
Because kiwis (those who do actually think, and even some who don’t), are easy to get on-board with things like maori rights and rac*sm etc, it means that the support which will be derived for traditional “rights” will stay in focus, which while I am not for “ownership” by any group, at this stage , has to be considered a good thing.
While I’m uneasy about the maori elite, or their ability to not be corrupted further by white men, at this point in time, they are about the only signifigant barrier to those same white men, stealing the lot, again!
It’s online. Read at your own risk.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/religion-and-beliefs/news/article.cfm?c_id=301&objectid=10831075
I have now sacrificed a couple of minutes of my life and read it and, sure enough, it is as racist, and as ill informed as I feared.
Perhaps even worse than Hide’s moronic, ignorant views is the Herald website’s warning to anyone who might be thinking of posting a reply to the distinguished thinker: “We aim to have healthy debate. But we won’t publish comments that abuse others.”
Clearly no such limitations apply to their own columnists.
I only read the first couple of lines, and the last. Even that demonstrated hypocrisy of such epic proportions I couldn’t bring myself to read the rest.
I read a bit (yuk!) then started to read the comments…. so many, too many, people congratulating RH on his article and endorsing it.
Reading the comments in that is rather sickening. The racism and ignorance is much worse in the comments than what was in RH’s spiel.
Dunno why but your link doesn’t work for some reason. This one does.
The racism and ignorance is much worse in the comments than what was in RH’s spiel.
Really? Hide is about as extreme as they come.
I read Hide’s column. I see it as an attempt to stir up racism among ignorant pakeha in the interests of selling of our assets to greedy pakeha and foreign corporates. To my way of thinking, that makes it racist, which is about what I’ve come to expect from Rodney Hide.
Sunday Funnies
Whatever happened to Howard Dean?
After madly screeching himself into mass derision (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5FzCeV0ZFc) during his disastrous bid for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination, Howard Dean has gone onto a career as a “pundit”, where he smiles like a nice guy and expresses his admiration for killing peasants in Asia and Africa by drone aircraft. Watch and cringe as he does his shallow schtick here…
At the start of the clip, you’ll see good-looking but dim Republican senator Marco Rubio saying something inane about the capture of Gaddafi. Also appearing on the clip is another of those glib Brits that infest American public commentary, Tina Brown.
Balancing out the display of horror is Jeremy Scahill, one of the outstanding journalists in America.
One of the YouTube commenters asks a very good question: “Why can’t Scahill be a senator instead of Rubio? Why can’t we have intelligent people in congress?”
“Can democracy exist without trust”?
Interesting TED talk from Ivan Krastev (transcript available). A small snippet:
….
Ta JS, something to think about.
whoever designed john banks should have another look at the plans!
This morning on Chris Laidlaw Radionz Jim Dier a very enthusiastic community builder who has found that he and his fellows have made a lot of difference. So he is not an armchair idealist but a thinking down-and-dirty-hands worker who has a good idea that works. Audio should be up by noon
(or so I thought but it isn’t – may be some pesky damn reason of copyright.)
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/sunday
10:06 Ideas: Growing Communities
Epuni Primary School’s Common Unity Project aims to produce enough fruit and vegetables to feed not only the school’s 110 pupils but their families as well. It’s a classic example of what’s been called Asset Based Community Development – or ABC Development. Ideas visits Epuni Primary School in Lower Hutt and talks to the project’s volunteer coordinator Julia Milne; Jim Diers, a proponent of the ABCD movement, tells Jeremy Rose about Seattle’s Strong Communities Initiative; and Denise Bijoux of Inspiring Communities talks to Chris Laidlaw about the proliferation of asset-based community projects in New Zealand.
Presented by Chris Laidlaw
Produced by Jeremy Rose.
This is a copy of the one I put on open mike 30/8 but then thought it might get missed.
Further to 16
It is on line now if you want to listen to it.
plenty of inspirational roots-level community development building here in HB
I wonder has anyone noticed that when trying to pull a comment from past days, if the number of them go beyond one page, the search device often won’t find the highlighted comment. Than have to go and scroll down for it.
LUNATIC POET ALERT!
Expect an unpleasant blast of foul air from Christchurch to burst from your radio at 2:35 this afternoon at 2:35 p.m….
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/artsonsunday
In their wisdom, the producers at RNZ National have seen fit to resurrect one Karen Zelas who, along with Auckland University’s bloviating Professor John Read provided the main academic cover in the police’s hare-brained, fantastical sex abuse case against Peter Ellis.
In A City Possessed, Lynley Hood’s magisterial demolition of the hysteria, Zelas was comprehensively and irrefutably shown up to be a fraud and a charlatan. But if you imagined this horrid woman had been stewing in her own shame for the last decade and a half, you were wrong.
Apparently, she always wanted to be a writer. Maybe that helps to explain her sympathy for the outlandish fantasies drilled into those children’s brains by that crazed cadre of fundamentalist parents at the Christchurch Civic Creche.
Zelas reckons that forcing little children to repeat their parents’ wild and lurid fantasies has made her into quite the poet: “I suppose my former career has given me a depth of understanding of people, their emotions and relationships and how they behave, which I am able to draw upon in my writing.”
http://www.peterellis.org.nz/LawReform/Evidence/2003-0831_SST_AreCourtsOverZelas.htm
She was just following the latest crap coming from American psychologists at the time. In my experience, psychologists are some of the most dangerous people that exist. Psychology is demonstrably not a science, and follows fashions which change every few years, yet its practicioners can affect people’s lives to more of an extent than most pseudo-scientists except economists. The courts would do no worse if they relied on expert testimony from astrologers.
She was just following the latest crap coming from American psychologists at the time.
She was also validating the psychotic sexual fantasies of some fundamentalist Christian loons in Christchurch. She wasn’t the only one, either; the aforementioned Prof. John Read continues to taunt Ellis with cruel and unsubstantiated allegations, the Children’s Commissioner at the time (Laurie O’Reilly) gave the madness official backing by treating the allegations seriously, as did his successor Roger McClay (who was subsequently convicted for fraud and sent to prison). And the police in Christchurch still occasionally haul Ellis into the station to humiliate him further.
In my experience, psychologists are some of the most dangerous people that exist.
There are certainly some bad ones, all right. And Karen Zelas is one of the very worst.
A ‘March for Jobs’ is going to be held this Tuesday in Greymouth. How’s that brighter future looking Coasters?
From the West Coast miner fb page:
There will be a ‘March for Work’ rally in Greymouth on 4th September to commence at midday from the Skate Park. The march is in support of the coalminers of spring creek and the township of Greymouth. This is an open invitation to march through town to raise awareness that will effect us all if the mine was to close. Damien O’Connor MP, The Mayor and Bernie Monk have confirmed there support and will speak following the march. Please pass on and join the march to save jobs and our community.
I dunno but maybe they could allow some more mining to happen on the coast.
wow.
carol zelas and march for jobs side by side.
anyway this is for carol.
I have read recently that the US Supreme court no longer represents the little man.
is this true?
Karl Popper
anyway, at the community meals there are just rows and rows of tangata whenua tamariki and moko’
every week
after week
(middle class-daydream)
there is no forgiveness in NZ? reminds me of “There is no depression in NZ….”
who loves James K. Baxter? Wow!