More good news. Recently we heard how the US is restoring California's second largest river, and here in humble wee NZ we've cleaned up 50K hectares to allow the return of Kiwi to the Capital.
Lessons here how community engagement can be got, mixed stakeholders will sit down, and progress can be made – you start with a proper cause.
This is how we will do it. Conceptually-simple, broadly-effective ideas, such as letting the roadsides become un-mown-wildflower-and-herb "gardens" will bring on positive changes to the environment, outer and inner 🙂
I covered this on Open Mike yesterday. It was a long term engagement by multigenerational large scale landowners.
In particular to the landowners of the big Terawhiti block, Kinnoull, Meridian, Mill Creek Farms, Papanui Boomrock, Pikarere, many of which have been in families for generations.
Kiwi to call the capital home as huge conservation project comes to fruition | Stuff.co.nz
This is a private protected area larger than Abel Tasman National Park. This kind of project takes years and years to do, so also well done to all the Trustees in particular previous Mayor Kerry Prendergast.
I think you are right – engage the whole community for a goal to benefit all, instead of different sectors pursuing their own profit-oriented targets. It's hard to get all participants to agree on how to attain the goal, of course.
As for California, I'm surprised they have any rivers left after 20 plus years of megadrought. States with historical rights to water from the Colorado river basin will have to alter their positions.
Not necessarily. We drive past several of them regularly – as long as they are "tidy", not a fire hazard in dry weather, not harboring rodent pests, and not provoking any of the neighbours to draw any of these things to the attention of AT, they will usually stay as they are. AT does not have an army of inspectors, they rely on complaints from the public.
I've done a few now, basically if they're looked after and don't obscure traffic from a driveway you're pretty safe. But all bets are off if someone lays a complaint. Then AT tend to take the easy route and say remove it.
In this case, you can't really blame AT – the Auckland bylaw on berms is really clear – they're required to be mown, and landowners are not allowed to plant them.
If there is a complaint – then AT really have no option but to enforce the bylaw.
You’re right, it just seems silly, that’s all. We don’t own the berms, yet we have to maintain them, and when people plant them out and someone complains AT respond faster than they fill in pot holes🙂🙂
In early June 2014, an Ohio couple who were Mr. Schenck’s star donors shared a meal with Justice Alito and his wife, Martha-Ann. A day later, Gayle Wright, one of the pair, contacted Mr. Schenck, according to an email reviewed by The Times. “Rob, if you want some interesting news please call. No emails,” she wrote.
Mr. Schenck said Mrs. Wright told him that the decision would be favorable to Hobby Lobby, and that Justice Alito had written the majority opinion. Three weeks later, that’s exactly what happened. The court ruled, in a 5-4 vote, that requiring family-owned corporations to pay for insurance covering contraception violated their religious freedoms. The decision would have major implications for birth control access, President Barack Obama’s new health care law
[…]
In interviews and thousands of emails and other records he shared with The Times, Mr. Schenck provided details of the effort he called the “Ministry of Emboldenment.”
Mr. Schenck recruited wealthy donors like Mrs. Wright and her husband, Donald, encouraging them to invite some of the justices to meals, to their vacation homes or to private clubs. He advised allies to contribute money to the Supreme Court Historical Society and then mingle with justices at its functions. He ingratiated himself with court officials who could help give him access, records show.
All the while, he leveraged his connections to raise money for his nonprofit, Faith and Action. Mr. Schenck said he pursued the Hobby Lobby information to cultivate the business’s president, Steve Green, as a donor.
Recent post regarding the ongoing is Matauranga Maori science discussion. Quite concerning implications discussed of miss-representation of NZ governance history, where an initiative involving Maori political leaders improving health policies by favoring scientific Medicine, is instead recast as colonial oppression of Maori culture.
If Mātauranga Māori was considered another source of information for scientific enquiry, such as every other source, then the issue on its reference would be moot.
However, unlike other observational data, or theory or existing understanding, it is not placed under the same critical thinking and testing to identify veracity, and ensure it is still accurate.
As we see in the science curriculum, Mātauranga Māori inclusion also means rewriting the understandings of existing scientific concepts and creating a manufactured hybrid, which is inherently dishonest. I also personally find it disrespectful.
(Eg. DNA = whakapapa, sub-atomic energy links = mauri)
We have had a decades long renaissance of Te Ao Māori.
Adults who have been through Kōhanga Reo, and Kura kaupapa Māori, inclusion of Māori tikanga practices in governmental institutions, increased delivery of and participation in Māori studies at an academic level, as well as the proliferation of many Māori educational providers. Marae renovations, Crown restitutions, Māori produced and broadcasted programmes, on mainstream broadcasting as well as a dedicated channel, open access for all adult NZers to participate and learn etc.
These positive achievements were the result of immense effort and stamina of many Māori, and those who have seen the need for support for such initiatives.
They are unequivocally a valuable taonga for all NZers.
At present we have a lot of people, who have considerable Māori knowledge and understandings that have been taught to them via the above systems. This is particularly true, amongst the academics, politicians, institutional and governmental workers who have absorbed the information that has been delivered so well, that you don't even need to wring from them the standard delivery lines. They leak out, unfortunately often colouring all scenarios with colonisation, and systematic racism, and bigotry.
While all this was taking place, Māori were simultaneously participating in the renaissance and getting on with their lives here and now, like everyone else.
The academic Māori, the political Māori, the environmentally conscious Māori are part of the whole – not the whole. Just as the academic Pakeha, the political Pakeha, the environmentally conscious Pakeha does not represent the whole.
Why is the idea of Māori limited to those who have all taught and learned at the same institutions, and who gain status and remuneration because of their focus? (That is not to imply that either is undeserved, but to point out the fact that their view may be self-limiting.) But it doesn't translate that they speak for all. Would any Pakeha accept this type of wholesale representation?
So, science is a body of knowledge informed by many sources, and Mātauranga Māori is one of them. Scientific knowledge is made robust by testing, and Mātauranga Māori should be treated equally to every other source and subject to the same assessments. If Mātauranga Māori contribute new and valid means of testing and experiments then all well and good.
But what should be avoided, is the idea that it is the mere fact of its existence is evidence of relevance or quality. We know that when tested much of this knowledge is verifiable, ie. navigational prowess, environmental observations. Bring it on. It will proven to be repeatable, or it won't.
I consider any other adoption a patronising view of my Māori culture and the quality of what it has to offer, and so reject it.
I don't have a problem with learning about Polynesian navigation as a part of science. Our Pacific cultures have a lot of practical knowledge about this part of the world. And it's important for students to see their culture represented.
When it comes to scientific theories though, the ideal is rigorous: testable, measurable models that can be used to make reliable predictions. Preferably underpinned by mathematical logic and basic axioms.
However these models tend to break down when looked at closely. All human knowledge is fuzzy at the edges (e.g. Gödel's incompleteness theorem). This makes the philosophy of science interesting & tricky. Defining "what is science" has been a bone of contention for centuries.
Thanks for engaging @roblogic by providing a point of discussion.
"However these models tend to break down when looked at closely. All human knowledge is fuzzy at the edges (e.g. Gödel's incompleteness theorem). This makes the philosophy of science interesting & tricky. Defining "what is science" has been a bone of contention for centuries."
I consider scientific knowledge and processes (including testing and methods of proof) to be an ever changing entity.
That's why I can see no need for exceptional admittance of Mātauranga Māori, because it can inform both knowledge and identify needs for necessary changes – but only if proven to be necessary.
A part I didn't add above, is that it is assumed that all Māori have either a racial preference for Mātauranga Māori, or have a colonised view of Mātauranga Māori due to systemic racism.
It seems unfathomable to many, that there may be Māori that have different perspectives. Mātauranga Māori knowledge applied in context and for its intended purpose can enhance understandings and improve experiences. Mātauranga Māori knowledge that applies universally, and can be predicted and repeated to the same level as other current scientific knowledge is the knowledge that belongs in the science curriculums.
There is value in both forms of knowledge.
However, we denigrate the value of the first, when we demand inclusion of it to the second without scientific rigour.
How do you feel about the application of Māori terms such as mauri, to concepts such as sub-atomic energy levels?
I know that Māori academics have written these new interpretations, but I have no doubt there are Pakeha academics you disagree with, and I find this rewriting of Maori concepts into theories that are not part of Te Ao Māori both clumsy and patronising.
The problem is that the Maori column is written almost entirely in English and purports to explain the 'Maori' version has no effing idea how electricity works.
Absolutely, a useful Maori translation would be good, but the implication of the nonsense written is that you can't understand Electricity in 'Maori' (I'm quoting because nobody thinks in Maori).
Being written in English it becomes a mockery of how 'Maori' understand electricity working.
Whereas I think the implication is that many people, including many Māori don’t speak te reo.
What do you mean nobody thinks in Māori? Fluent speakers do.
Beyond that, I’m still not clear what the problem is for people here. I have my own issues with it, but right now I’m more interested that people are reacting against it without a good explanation as to why.
I’d also like to know who wrote it, the process by which it was included. Is it just a really bad take on electricity? Or is there something else going on?
"…but right now I’m more interested that people are reacting against it without a good explanation as to why."
People have pointed out it is nonsensical.
(I didn't, I thought that fact was obvious.)
So, a list is required?
(For you, weka, because I know your request is likely to be genuine)
This is a safety document – language should be clear, concise and relevant.
This addition under "Maori" makes no sense as a heading on a table row with "Electricity" as the other entry. Is "Maori" another form of energy, or a "Maori" form of electricity? This is not clear. (Neither of those interpretations make sense BTW, perhaps someone could suggest one that does?)
What is wriiten under the "Maori" heading appears to be the result of someone looking up the words on the left in a Maori dicttionary, and then selecting a few of the kupu that result – and then – providing the English definitions for those selected words. Not a study in conciseness either.
The mythological story of Papatuanuku has no relevance – in the context of electricity – to the earth referred to. The story is actually almost in direct conflict to the role of the earth wire.
So, not only irrelevant – contradictory and confusing.
Not suitable for a safety document that aims to reduce harm.
A direct te reo Maori translation is not a problem.
That is not what this is.
Long term:
People presented with such guff repeatedly will be more likely to develop the notion that Maori inclusion often is:
unclear, rambling and irrelevant. They may also decide it is not fit for purpose (like the example above). In this case, they are right.
(For you, weka, because I know your request is likely to be genuine)
Sorry, I’m going to have to be blunt here. This isn’t just you, this is a problem with others too, but this is the ideal opportunity to make this really clear. I know you know this stuff, others do too, so I am unclear why people feel like they don’t have to explain their thinking upfront.
This is a political blog whose purpose includes robust debate. If people want to post something that shocks/annoys etc and simply say ‘this is nonsense’ that’s what Facebook is for. Here we require people to explain what they think and not have to drag it out of them.
None of us can mindread. I have my own problems with the chart, but I don’t know what your and others’ problems were specifically. And that’s what we are here to talk about, the problems with how Mātauranga is being integrated into wider society (and imo, the benefits of that integration).
If you find some commenters disingenuous in asking then just ignore them 👍
Thanks for explaining, I will respond in a different comment.
wanted to add that I was asking what you and Nic thought because I did in fact want to understand the nuances in your thinking and get a better understanding of how people view this issue differently. I’m aware that on TS sometimes people are more interested in using someone’s position against them and/or to point score. We’re trying to change that 😉
We don't know that much about linguistics, however we do know this.
Fluent Maori (any language) speakers do not think in Maori (their language).
We can understand this must be the case from our understanding of multi-lingual people. Reasonably fluent multi-lingual people are already capable of hearing a new concept in one language and then expressing it in an different language. Also people *never* need to re-learn ideas while learning an additional a language. This makes it absolutely clear there is an internal concept and a connected more surface concept of its expression in a language. In fact you don't even need the multi-lingual bit, children when asked to draw a cat are able to transfer the request from the linguistic interpretation, through the cat, to the other surface concept of what a cat looks like.
And just to head off an incorrect counter point. There are occasional concepts which don't have a direct translation in another language. These work the same way, except that there may not be a specific word in the language being spoken.
"Is it just a really bad take on electricity? Or is there something else going on?"
My interpretation is that the writer here has imagined they have been transported back several hundred years in time and are now required to explain to some Maori in their own tongue how to wire an electrical circuit (with the requisite parts of course, like a battery and stove). For some reason they decided to use a bunch of myth words to explain it which may have confused the audience somewhat. In my own imagination at this time the locals respond by saying, 'This is very useful, why thank-you for this gift. Now your staying here permanently until we understand how this stuff actually works.'
"Sorry, I’m going to have to be blunt here. This isn’t just you, this is a problem with others too, but this is the ideal opportunity to make this really clear. I know you know this stuff, others do too, so I am unclear why people feel like they don’t have to explain their thinking upfront."
I understand your view, but both Nic the NZer and Belladonna gave reasons in their comments. They just didn't preface it with an explanatory introduction.
Is it possible you don't recognise the reasoning in this form? Or, is is that you discount them, and what you are looking for is persuasive reasons?
"Sorry, I’m going to have to be blunt here."
I'm OK with blunt. It often means someone is seeking to understand or be understood. I hope that I've interpreted your comment correctly, and thus made my response relevant.
Molly, sorry, that’s just patronising. I’ve already said to you that I asked because I wanted to know what people’s thinking was. I want to know because I want to understand. I haven’t discounted anyone’s reasoning in this subthread, so I don’t know where you get that from. When I get the chance I will respond to various comments here with my own thinking.
I asked *you, politely, to explain what you saw as the problem with the chart (that you had just posted as an image). Because I wanted to know what *you thought.
Belladonna also shared after I has asked. I understood her reasoning perfectly well. I haven’t discounted it.
Nic gave a brief answer, which wasn’t really an explanation so I asked some questions and now we’re having a conversation based on that.
None of that is out of the ordinary for TS and I’m at a loss as to why I am having to explain this.
"Are you saying that people can never think in their second language?"
People don't even think in their first language. What people actually think in is clearly connected to multiple ways for it to be expressed, including as language (also diagram, picture, written, music, computer code).
ok, that’s some obscure point I’m not getting in relation to this conversation. I think in English (a language, as you mention). I’ve learned some basic te reo, it’s very hard for me to think in it, but I know that there are concepts I can understand if I don’t parse them through my English/Western brain. I know people that can think in te reo Māori 🤷♀️ There are lots of people in NZ who value communications about te Ao Māori being done in English, because they don’t speak te reo.
I had a longer comment, which I lost, but it's clear I'm misunderstanding you.
Can we leave it there? Unless you think it's important.
I'd rather read your view on why it was necessary for this inclusion, and what you think of the quality of what was provided and if this has a knock-on effect if it's badly done.
FWIW, I find Nick's interpretation resonates regarding the production. No effort towards quality just inclusion:
My interpretation is that the writer here has imagined they have been transported back several hundred years in time and are now required to explain to some Maori in their own tongue how to wire an electrical circuit (with the requisite parts of course, like a battery and stove). For some reason they decided to use a bunch of myth words to explain it which may have confused the audience somewhat. In my own imagination at this time the locals respond by saying, 'This is very useful, why thank-you for this gift. Now your staying here permanently until we understand how this stuff actually works.'
I’m not sure I do think it was necessary for inclusion (and pretty sure I haven’t said it was necessary, so sorry to belabour the point, but I’m really sick of the whole binary thinking in this debate where people get pushed into certain boxes even for just asking questions). To have an opinion about that I’d need to understand why it was done, and whether is has been done badly as it appears (I can’t think of other reasons). I’ll come back to it later when I have more time.
btw, I’m not taking a position of ‘there are no problems’. The things you’ve been sharing about the education curriculum definitely need scrutiny. It’s more that in this case we have so little to go on.
We do seem to be living in an age of the breakdown of knowledge. I’m not sure how to address that at the same time as integrating Indigenous knowledge into society (something that we desperately need if we are going to transition out of the mess we are in with climate/ecology etc). I think there is a danger here in equating Indigenous ways of knowing with the breakdown of knowledge. Certainly the reactionaries are doing this. The extent to which it is happening in TS debates strikes me as being a function of the polarisation as much as anything, but it’s easy to see why accusations of racism get flung around. It looks like miscommunication to me.
"I asked *you, politely, to explain what you saw as the problem with the chart (that you had just posted as an image). Because I wanted to know what *you thought."
I posted an image because a discussion was beginning, and it might not be obvious to others who had not clicked on Nick the NZer's link in his comment what the discussion was about.
"For those who haven't clicked on Nic the NZer's link:"
As you know, I am fairly consistent in providing opinion and links as part of my commenting style. I don't think posting an image to clarify what the commencing conversation was about required further comment.
"Because I wanted to know what *you thought."
On this thread, I'd provided two extremely wordy comments on my thinking: Here and here and nothing in response?
Instead, you needed to know my thoughts on an image I had provided because I thought the discussion might be enhanced if people did not bother to click through to find out.
Despite referencing that you have you own thoughts on this example more than once, and then being directly asked to provide them for discussion – you have not yet done so.
Does not that strike you as an imbalance when it comes to discussion? The requirement for more and more clarity from one side, when little is offered in return?
there’s no problem with you posting the chart. I was referencing where and why I replied to that comment with my question for you. I wasn’t criticising you for the link
you don’t have to comment further, ever (unless a mod wants something, but that’s not what is happening here)
it’s normal and appropriate for people on TS to ask other people what they think and/or to clarify.
if you don’t want to explain your thinking, then don’t. This only becomes a problem if people keep making arguments and expecting others to mindread, or where they make arguments that are opaque and they won’t clarify. You weren’t doing that, but you did come back to me with challenge about the necessity of saying more, which is why I am still talking about it.
I haven’t read all the comments in this conversation under this one post. Including some of yours. I’ve been too busy. I’m often picking up bits of the conversation from the comment thread in the back end, which I am currently monitoring for moderation reasons.
When I asked you to explain your thinking about the problem with the chart, if you had already done so all you needed to do was point me to those comments. However the two links you just gave me aren’t about the chart, but about the wide discussion. I was asking people to explain what they saw wrong witht the chart.
I’ve already said I will come back to the thread with my own thoughts. Juggling about 5 different things this morning and about to go out the door. The only thing that has really had my attention on TS other than moderation, has been this meta conversation and things that I can reply to simply and easily.
no, I don’t think it’s imbalanced. If you want to know what I think about something, ask. I will answer if I can. Not everyone can do that though, sometimes things get lost. Sometimes my thoughts aren’t useful or interesting. If it feels unfair, then I think more engagement on topic is probably the way to get me to reply rather than us arguing about TS debate culture. However I do like talking about the meta stuff, which is part of why I’m prioritising it (and it’s been an issue generally on TS lately).
I’m away out the door shortly. Will be back this afternoon and this evening no doubt and will endeavour to come back to what I am thinking about the chart 👍
@weka, I don't see this as a counter example. There can be concepts you understand quite well, but do not have the skill to express in te reo, presently. You will likely be able to look up the language and then later express this idea in te reo. Did you need to re-learn this idea however, or was it the idea you knew but didn't know how to express?
It goes deeper than this actually. Imagine somebody comes up with a new idea, one for which there is no expression in any language. How does that come about then? Because it does.
I'm really not keen on this understanding of language and underlying intelligence. One implication could easily be that people are incapable of learning science in te reo, especially because a lot of that te reo is clearly being developed in terms of its english language expression.
Were this the case we should not be teaching any subjects (maybe except Maori culture) in te reo, because its not compatible and stunting learning. Fortunately its clearly not true.
Not sure if we are on the same page in terms of what we are talking about.
There are things that can be understood in te reo that cannot be understood in English. This is a big feature of this debate. It’s not only language, it’s conceptual. The Western mind thinks differently than the Indigenous mind. I’ve had to decolonise my mind in order to understand concepts that are normal to Indigenous peoples. (decolonise in the sense used in the past few decades, not in the current sense).
I don’t think that language is the only way one can think. I can think without language eg when I am meditating, and then translate that into English if I want to think more or tell someone else. But if I am using language then I think in English. Others can think in te reo.
So of course someone can come up with a new concept and then they have to find ways of explaining it. This is common enough. It’s also why spiritual concepts are difficult to explain to rationalists. They’re just different ways of thinking and if there is no shared languages then it’s hard.
Another example of this is women’s reality and trying to explain it to men. Women are bilingual, most men aren’t and don’t even realise they’re not.
(I’ll give you a classic example of Stephen Fry later on).
I still don’t understand what you meant when you said no-one thinks in Māori.
My understanding (from a base science perspective – not an electrician) – is that the earth wire is the safety circuit breaker. In the event of an overload, it grounds the electrical current in the earth – effectively killing the charge (rather than potentially killing people)
The Maori definition used to equate the earth wire with Mauri – implies (or can be read as implying) that this is a source of current, rather than a circuit breaker. Which is exactly the reverse of the way that a circuit, with an earth element, works.
Hence, the rather tongue-in-cheek reference to free electricity.
It seems to me that in trying to "decolonise" whoever is writing stuff like the Maori words for the electricians terms of practice is missing the point majorly.
It leaves Maori open to mockery and in a way it is a form of gas lighting. Of course my opinion of this may be attacked for being racist.
It reminds me of trying to change words like women and mother in midwivery.
Maori don't have to insert themselves in all things European. There mana can stand on its own merits
I know what you are trying to say here but I'm not sure that's it exactly. The earth/ground wire is there to act as a conduit for the electrical flow if there is a fault, so that the electricity goes somewhere else rather than into the human body (which also acts as an earth/grounding wire).
I don't see the use of the term mauri as implying that the earth is the source of electricity, but that it is the container by which power flows back to the planet. Not how I am used to thinking about mauri, but quite interesting.
I also wonder if part of the problem here is trying to take the words literally. Western mind might consider it metaphorically to get to the meaning (although I don't think it is necessarily metaphor either).
I would love to see the background on this chart. I don't have enough understanding of concepts like mauri, tapu, noa to know if it's on point or done badly.
I can see that for Māori, having Māori concepts is useful, even in this situation. I disagree with anker that electricity is a European thing and Māori don't have to insert themselves into it, they have their own mana. Electricity is a phenomena and how we explain that to ourselves depends on language and concepts.
I feel some discomfit with the chart as is, it seems dropped in in isolation, kind of weird. As Incognito said early on, electricity is weird, and there's something jarring about the unclarity of the chart. I can't tell is that's because I don't understand it or if it's because it doesn't make sense.
I've certainly seen many instances of the Western mind struggling to cope with Indigenous concepts, or the way that the Indigenous mind thinks about phenomena. The original article is a good example, full of mistakes and inaccuracies along with unacknowledged bias. More of a concern for me than the chart is the number of people that thought the first article was good and apparently didn't see the problems with it.
Well it is well known that Einstein had an early job at the Swiss patent office. Do let us know which govt department to send the Nobel prize to when the author of the side-note is discovered and its true meaning found.
Thanks, I had visited the site and taken a screenshot intending to link to the original source, but then couldn't upload the image and ended up returning to the article for the URL, and forgot the Worksafe link entirely.
The connection to Godel's incompleteness theory is pretty tenuous here.
That says specifically that there are some statements in a consistent closed system of logic which can not be proven within that system. These statements could however be proven by extending the original with further statements.
A better description of why scientific fields have fuzzy edges is just that there are some limits (usually scale of phenomena) where one field stops and typically hands over to another field. That's the region where the ideas of the field stop being good explanations due to factors relevant at this new scale.
I also recently noticed Leonard Susskind making this same claim, that these things are not related, in one of his lectures.
It is a fascinating dynamic this polarity between science based medicine and the alternative observational based modalities. Personally although I try to keep a foot in both camps it seems to me that more and more people have lost a lot of confidence in the conventional science based community – especially the past few years.
Currently things are a mess. Conventional doctors are largely captured by protocols which ignore the social, mental and spiritual aspects of good health. They routinely fail to examine the whole patient and struggle to offer help where a direct cause and effect are absent.
Equally the alternative community struggles with determinism and repeatability. There is precious little evidence to support their methods on a population basis, even when they might have great success with some individuals.
If both sides were prepared to embrace humility, acknowledge their limits and failures, and listen constructively to each other – we might make some progress. (Much the same could be said of our political domain as well.)
Not to mention the replication crisis (or "P-value crisis"; widespread bad data analysis) throwing many results in the humanities and medicine into doubt
I'm not disagreeing about the failures and weaknesses of current methodologies. I think most people can ascertain the failings. But we should endeavour to improve by adjustment, not accommodation only.
Like most knowledge, the value of Māori knowledge is most valuable when it is used for the purpose intended and in the right context.
Treated as an equal to any other source, it will have its proponents and its detractors, so we should ensure that the detractors will have less to work with than the proponents by providing more than assertion and adoption of what is put forth without critique.
One approach to this problem came from a talk I heard years back. The idea was that we could roughly place the historic societies of the world into three categories.
The Western societies saw the world primarily in material terms. From this we gained determinism, repeatability and all of modern technology.
The Eastern societies tilted more toward the philosophic, giving us a great canon of literature, poetry, and layers of insight and nuance around the human condition and inner psychology. (Us westerners tending to be lamentably unaware of this wonderful legacy)
And finally the Indigenous peoples – lacking for the most part access to science, technology and written languages focused their intellectual energies on what they describe as the spiritual, the non-material, the non-verbal aspects of reality.
Emphatically these are not mutually exclusive descriptions, but I think do describe the very differing intellectual centre of gravities we see between European science and Mātauranga Māori. Each system of thought – as you say – has it’s own context and domain of validity. What I object to is not that these worldviews are different, but that some are setting one against the other – insisting that theirs is the only truth.
Your last paragraph is icing on the cake that is an excellent comment overall.
They are not binary opposites but complementary frameworks, if you like – both/and. The problem with (binary) dualism through the Western lens – either/or – is that it often ranks (and rejects) based on presumed equivalence-equality and it becomes a win-lose competition with only one ‘winner’ that becomes the dominant-supreme accepted paradigm and ‘bench mark’ (and filter).
Of course, there’s heaps more in your comment that I would love to discuss further but perhaps another time …
The last paragraph is completely inconsistent with the call to not have Mātauranga Māori considered 'equal to' western science. That call literally is to insist western science is the only truth.
I just did a page search and your comment is the only one to use the term western science? For you, how is this Taxonomy of scientific knowledge defined?
I use the term with reference to comments like this:
The academics say although indigenous knowledge may play some role in the preservation of local practices and in management and policy – it "falls far short of what can be defined as science itself". They said mātauranga Māori should not be accepted as an equivalent to science, adding "it may help … but it is not science".
You have to ask yourself who are they to define what science is and what it is not? Theirs is indeed a practice to continue the use of western science to delegitimise Mātauranga Māori.
The point I was making is that RL cannot claim Maori insist theirs is only truth when the opposite is true.
So your taxonomy says science and "western science" are identical sets of knowledge? I'm unclear because quite a lot of science was originally produced outside of the west.
Anybody claiming their, body of knowledge, is only containing truth is not doing science of course. You have to at least be open to the possibility that your ideas are untrue in experiment, and of course you remove any ideas you know are not true.
I was asking why Muttonbird feels the need to characterize "the only real way of knowing we have" as specifically "western science", rather than the more inclusive term science. We do after all in NZ happily take knowledge and technology from all corners of the globe as well as all kinds of lineages, time periods, thinkings and practices.
You seem to be taking some kind of issue with what Coyne said in that sentence? Its certainly terse, but are you claiming its untrue?
Agree Muttonbird and it is surprising that it is accepted by those arguing against the Matauranga proposition eg.
What I object to is not that these worldviews are different, but that some are setting one against the other – insisting that theirs is the only truth.
Those of us saying hey taihoa let us not deny or deride Matauranga, Rongoa, Maori world view of water or land have been faced with people have been saying the western view of science is all you need, is the be all and end all. Moving on to a view that unless we know absolutely everything about the Maori world view of water then
a it does not exist, full stop
b if it does exist because we cannot prove or disprove it, using the scientific viewpoint of another culture, it does not exist
This literalist view carried to an extreme means others cannot understand common figures of speech. Our communication becomes plain and the passing of information only, wordplay is non existent, (yet story telling is being sound as a 'new' way of describing from ads to differing opinions), describing beauty, a moment, becomes passe. Of course moments, views and beauty are all in the eye of the beholder and incapable of 'proof'. So the proposition for not being able to describe them scientifically is proved, and not being capable of description, according to western scientific norms, they become non-existent
I made a comment that an opinion column in Stuff needed to have the word 'satire' inserted as well as being an Opinion. I found this sad.
Don't get me wrong I love learning that the strange light is caused by ash/cloud from an eruption but that is not the be all and end all…..colours, thoughts on whether it evokes feelings, messes with perspective are all valid.
"b if it does exist because we cannot prove or disprove it, using the scientific viewpoint of another culture, it does not exist"
This sounds very much like Schrodingers Cat. Something which is both existing (alive) and doesn't exist (is dead) at the same time and we can only find out by examining it (opening the box).
Of course when making this example Erwin was literally making fun of what he was being asked to believe was occurring by other physicists. He made this example up as a idea for which expected no-one could possibly think such a ridiculous thing.
No, that’s not quite accurate. The cat exists in two or more (quantum) states; it never starts/stops existing as such. In any case, it only really applies to quantum systems 🙂
I did have a very witty response to this describing what happens when you put too many entangled quantum systems into the same place at once. Unfortunately it got sucked into a worm-hole and nobody was able to see any of the results of the experiment.
Conventional Drs are their to treat illness/pathology. They have equipment and knowledge that makes them particularly good at this. Very often when pathology is found that needs treatment, they have some form of treatment, which research studies have shown has a …% chance of helping. That's what they do.
Dr's aren't really concerned with good health as such, although public health campaigns and some advice from a GP or specialist, is something they do.
The vast majority of NZders rely on Drs when they sick/unwell. A small number of people may prefer to seek out other health care. But to my knowledge there is very little evidence it works (with the odd exception such as St Johns Wort for mild to moderate depression)
I refer in this piece mainly to the role of tohunga in curing physical ailments, which, before science-based medicine arrived, was based largely on herbal medicine. Some may have even worked, but we don’t know as they were never tested, and they are powerless against ailments that can be cured by scientific innovations like antibiotics or antivirals.
The denigration of indigenous medicine is strong in this haplessly biased piece. The writer also has his facts wrong and I suspect this is a deliberate ploy to push his narrative, as is often the case with many pig-headed closed-minded people who have an axe to grind. Any good (?) points he makes in his piece have to be taken with extreme levels of scepticism and warning.
Western medicine is slowly moving away from its mechanistic foundations of simple lock & key, drug & target biological interactions to more holistic thinking such as systems biology.
Old testing paradigms and dogmas in medicine and clinical trials are approaching their use-by-date to make room for personalised medicine based on validated biomarkers and unique patient profiles, which is ironically similar to what tohunga practised.
that is a superb comment. I've been trying to write a post on the problems with the article (inaccuracies and unacknowledged bias), but this is so much better.
I had in fact noticed a certain kind of hardline from the site author. I think that reflects the fact he's been defending evolutionary science teaching, against recent earth creationists who may prefer a Christian creationist tradition be taught in Science class. This is often reflected in snark that Matauranga Maori is directly creationist.
As a review of my own comment surrounding the original link will show, I was more highlighting that de-colonists are not above characterising policies endorsed and advanced by Maori MPs and leaders, as colonial cultural suppression. Somehow I don't think calling historical acts of sensible Maori governance and leadership, Pakeha oppression, enhances trust in Maori leadership and governance (or even Medicine in this case). I would suggest Willie Jackson is well qualified to make such a judgement about the acts intent, and he does.
The act was repealed in 1962 of course, which didn't concern me in the slightest.
Systems Biology: Hmmm, my actually quite extensive knowledge and understanding of mathematical, statistical and computational systems says, you tend to get out what you put into your model. Maybe that indicates my actual talent for it though.
I didn’t want to take aim at the messenger, because that’s almost always a weak argument at best, but he does have a well-known history as ‘hardliner’. I was more interested in shining a light on the contents and some of the (incorrect) claims in his piece.
It seems that nowadays many things are lumped together and thrown on the maunga called Mt Murray. Sometimes, this is accidental because people are confused, and sometimes it is deliberate in order to confuse people and pull the debate into a quagmire of quarrels about everything and anything under the sun.
Your PoV of systems biology is valid and I’m more than happy to talk about some more, as it is a fascinating area. One of the main differences, a paradigm shift if you like, with ‘old-school’ biology is the integrative function of levels/scales/dimensions, models, and networks. The keyword is “multi”. The (internal) state of a complex biological system is often not know and cannot be known – it is a ‘combination’ of multiple interacting components or ‘players’ in a dynamic process with many spatio-temporal changes – but how it behaves and responds to environmental (external) stimuli is. You throw [something at] it in a computer and something comes out of it, a bit like Conway’s Game of Life that appeared here recently on TS buried in a YT clip about Gödel's incompleteness theorems (https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-20-11-2022/#comment-1922132). Fun games in fun times 🙂
Is that claim actually factually wrong? Do you have a counter example. I can't think of any even if its comparing herbal medicine a hundred years ago to modern treatments.
Ok, that's a good example and novel to me. I'm convinced that there are natural treatments which have equivalent performance to certain antiviral treatments.
On the verdict of miss representation however I'm voting not guilty. The statement seems well fortified, and as such a counter example should prove as effective as something which can cure. If you identified a wealth of traditional medicines which cured in alternative (or even the same) areas to medicine I could have been convinced of the Scottish verdict of unproven, though there is another layer of fortification.
The next layer is that its a comparison with traditional medicine practice. Now its entirely possible that tohunga may have developed a practice and tradition where they only advocated treatments they knew worked. Its a lot less plausible that this tradition would have been as effective yet also completely different to scientific medicine however. As the study shows some traditional treatments may be as effective as laboratory developed treatments even when judged by modern medical standards.
As seems to have been understood at the time, contemporary tohunga were not advocating only for treatments known to work at that time. In fact they were understood to be impeding the introduction of modern medicine as well understood by Maori leadership at that time.
In an ongoing discussion about applying the same scientific standards to Matauranga Maori knowledge as to any other bodies of knowledge that is obviously very relevant. I also agree there are also a wealth of examples of western alternative treatments which are being advocated as accepted without scientific validation. Somebody who was more worried about not appearing biased might very well have catalogued some of these to show they were not being unduly unkind about native medicines contemporary effectiveness. But I also see no obligation to do so and it requires more writing which may obfuscate the point considerably.
This contradicts the argument about as well as the first speaker of the debate at post 4 for me.
In contrast, the motion’s opposition consisted entirely of undergraduate students. A speaker from the floor lamented this discrepancy: “Inviting a huge and polarising figure to debate no invited opposition, only students, is just not good enough,” he said. In response the Union’s president, Lara Brown, clarified that although many speakers were invited to argue in opposition, all declined.
Lol. No Debate coming back to bite.
Piece on the Cambridge Union debate "the right to offend". Left wing feminist and philosopher Kathleen Stock wiped the floor with the negatives, who were undergrads (including one who was meant to be on the affirmative, but instead used his time to attack Stock). I agree that lack of an experienced speaker on the other team is a problem, but that is squarely on the genderists who have championed no platforming (including the student speakers). Own goal.
it was almost painful to watch from the pov. Not that they have to be as smart as her, but just completely outclassed in terms of critical thinking. They don't seem to have the ability to think past their own navels. Tbf, i was probably like that at that age, but I wasn't part of a colonising movement either. The adults are failing these young people as much as anything.
the first dude may have harmed his career. He broke the debating rules (prob not such a big deal), but he also defamed Stock very publicly. Not a good look.
Weka, I agree. thanks for posting the Cambridge debate. The lack of critical skills and the only assertions by the first speaker were attacks on Kathleen Stock, shows up how compromised the idea of debate and arguement are but these young academics.
Yes the Tohunga Act 1906 was largely introduced by Maori
"It was introduced by James Carroll" …..
"It was praised by many influential Maori at the time inlcuding Maui Pomare (NZ first Maori Dr) and all four Maori MPS. "
'Here's a quote from an article by three Maori who are able to separate the wheat of truth from the chaff of superstition, ideology, undocumented tradition, morality and religion'
"In short uncritical acceptance of Maori Knowledge is arguably just as patronising as its earlier blanket rejection' – "Na Dr Michael Stevens, Emeritus Professor Atholi Anderson and Professor Te Maire Tau:
This is the site which originally gave me the impression of this Matauranga Maori dispute being about idea laundering and departmental dispute. That quote is from a paper where those authors refute a prior paper which claimed that Maori (actually their ancestors) had discovered the continent of Antarctica.
This is an obviously bunk historical claim and was based on interpreting how early myths were recorded as textually accurate and exact claims.
I interpret Hendy and Wiles own statements about this to be more along the lines of, "we think Auckland University should get the funding it receives including for Matauranga Maori research projects", and I don't interpret it as "I was doing some Matauranga Maori research just yesterday and it taught me this new idea which I have added to my latest paper".
You don't know that Maori navigators didn't discover Antarctica. There were reports of large double-hulled waka with the ability to sail into the wind and visiting the sub-Antarctic islands around the time of the early European navigators so the skills were there and the ability to dress for the tough conditions, so it was an entirely possible event. Many small sailing craft have ventured very far south including an acquitance of mine who unfortunately didn't make it back.
Locally a craft is being built along the lines of the ones described by Cook seen well south of Rakiura.
Yes, this is correct, there is zero documented evidence that Maori (or their East Polynesian ancestors) discovered Antarctica (starting from East Polynesia).
I'm especially confident that pre-Maori navigators didn't sail down to Antarctica on a ship made of human bones circa the 7th century. Your acquaintance ship was vastly superior to anything available around the 7th century which adds to my confidence that this is bunk.
There is a weird paralell thought stream around science in this country.
During the height of the pandemic and the Parliament protests, rightly or wrongly people were condeming the anti vaxers as being science deniers and they and their views were treated with complete derision. We must follow the science and there is so much mis information around yada yada (and for the recored, I did follow what the science was able to tell us re the vaccines etc).
But at the same time, ideas that have no scientific bases eg. the discovery of the Antarctic by Maori and the theories of people like Judith Butler (biological sex is a social construction) are taken as factual truth over which there should be no debate.
We need to be very clear about which ideas have under gone rigourous testing and shown to be verifiable and which ideas haven't.
IMHO it's not just disinformation, is is also a matter of cognitive ability & the Dunning Kruger effect.
Morality is a cognitive skill; it takes time to develop and mature. Kohlberg proposed a useful scale: from children needing firm rules, to adults, and then on to the abstract political and philosophical realm, where most humans simply have no idea what those (we) educated nerds are going on about.
You are incorrect Incognito. I never claimed there wasn't a dental health workforce shortage.
Someone raised it and my response was "Is there a crisis in workforce numbers in dentistry.? I didn't think so"
(in other words before somebody mentioned it I hadn't thought there was). There is an emerging pattern of you picking at me (following on from about three weeks ago when you made personal attacks, which I asked to stop and you apologised for).
It you want to disagree with my arguements that's fine, but if you continue to pick at me, the way you have of late, I will not be replying.
Yes, I do think I am correct, in my approach to your comments.
You never attempted to check & verify the facts yourself because you’d already made up your mind. When others pointed out to you that there is in fact a staff shortage in NZ dental care you argued against it being an issue for the narrative that you were pushing here. Repeatedly.
When one ask a question immediately followed by:
I didn't think so.
It comes across as having answered the question already, with a negation. So, it does not come across as a genuine question.
If you had said something along the lines of this:
I don’t know about this. [present tense]
Then it would be much more like a true genuine question.
The fact that you keep coming back to your personal anecdata also suggests you’re resistant to accepting facts presented by others that don’t suit your own biased narrative.
I’ll keep picking on, or rather unpicking, your comments because evidently too many of your opinions are based on inaccurate information and/or lack the necessary foundation for robust debate, much of which can be avoided by a few simple fact-checks and a little research on Google beforehand. You don’t have to reply to my comments but that won’t get you off the hook.
Not always. Some students are attracted to the subject of Classics for example. I think the marketing of these courses is a bit different to the easy ones which immediately get you a high paying and rewarding job.
Gees what's happening in other people circles with regards to COVID, I know 3 people who have tested positive this week, way more than at any other time in my smallish world, none will report it either if that's still a thing
There seem to be a few new variants out there that are replacing Omicron it seems.
Two new omicron subvariants have become dominant in the United States, raising fears they could fuel yet another surge of COVID-19 infections, according to estimates released Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The subvariants — called BQ.1 and BQ.1.1— appear to be among the most adept yet at evading immunity from vaccination and previous infection, and have now overtaken the BA.5 omicron subvariant that has dominated in the U.S. since the summer.
"It's a little bit eerily familiar," says Dr. Jeremy Luban of the University of Massachusetts, who's been tracking variants since the pandemic began.
This great ESR site graphs wastewater testing against reported cases weekly, with incidence at national and local levels. Gives a good sense of mismatch between reporting and incidence for the Eyore-minded.
Go back to full time mask wearing is my advice bwaghorn. Cases are rising at a rapid rate in Australia. It will be only a matter of two to three weeks when it starts to climb rapidly here.
Dropping like flies at my SO's work. A couple more who attended the week before last's super-spreader event and two who worked closely with event attendees.
There's a bit doing the rounds in Queenstown. In a builder's supply last week and watched a builder lamenting that he wasn't going to be ready for settlement at end of month because Covid was going through his crew. Cue polite expedient exit stage left of the group he was in who'd been who'd good gripe up to this guy's turn. Lots of wry smirks on those watching from afar and some of us had to go out to the yard for a bit.
Also a courier outfit that got a bit behind because everyone was 'sick'
Boxes of masks have appeared on counters too, and some wearing them. You don't get as much shit for wearing on now, a least from locals, visitors sometimes have a go but it's mostly having a dig at Queenstown
Entirely anecdata. But, just had a catchup with a wide-spread group of friends – centring on a friend who's been overseas during the whole Covid situation, and just returned – so lots of people from different spheres of her life. Approx 25 people there (outdoors – so much less risk of any infection) – but 5 people who had planned to be there were in isolation because of Covid. So a fairly high percentage affected.
And two days later after your question about covid bwagon, it turns out the nasty flu I have is covid. Tested posted this morning as did my significant other
It’s interesting to see that there is a version of Chris Luxon who might have done better on the right of the Labour Party in a trade or tourism role. Or in a newly created role working with the private sector over climate change. Or perhaps Andrea Vance is gilding the lily too far.
Luxon is trying to keep out ACT and NZ First to the right, but it’s hard to see his genuine self shining through. He can’t genuinely believe in boot camps, but it sells. Did he believe in tax cuts for the wealthy? Maybe to get party donations flowing. He is also politically indebted to the conservative and religious side of the National Party.
Key was ruthless, he waited and allegedly nobbled both English and Brash. But he did an apprenticeship in a shadow finance portfolio and had time in parliament. Key had excellent instincts at attempting to outflank Labour to the left, at least in appearance, and to get himself on the podium as a problem solver, whose mana was seen as equal to Helen Clark’s during to the resolution to the so called ‘anti-smacking’ legislation. Key moved effortlessly between worlds- getting the love from the Queen or the Chinese leadership and also projecting satisfaction at home in a bach. He had no moral absolutes or awkward ties that surfaced. It made it hard for his opponents to pin him down and easy to like. He never attached himself to anything too controversial or disliked.
Luxon may overcome the wobbles, but he was early anointed and has struggled to get out of tricky situations. He’s been pinned down in some unpopular policies, even if they’ve been backed away from. And as a CEO some have pointed out that he has to read the wind a bit less than a trader.
But still the right fancy their chances and as a commentator noted poo-pooing Willis’ chances, any new candidate has to get buy in from all wings of the party, so change may be difficult to secure or unpalatable.
Hi,I wanted to check in and ask how you’re doing.This is perhaps a selfish act, of attempting to find others feeling a similar way to me — that is to say, a little hopeless at the moment.Misery loves company, that sort of deal.Some context.I wish I could say I got ...
I have hitherto been fairly quiet on the new season of Rings of Power, on the basis that the underwhelming first season did not exactly build excitement – and the rumours were fairly daft. The only real thing of substance to come out has been that they have re-cast Adar ...
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a ...
“The thing is,” Chris Luxon says, leaning forward to make his point, “this has always been my thing.”“This goes all the way back to the first multinational I worked for. I was saying exactly the same thing back then. The name of our business needs to be more clear; people ...
Buzz from the Beehive It’s been a momentous few days for Children’s Minister Karen Chhour. The Court of Appeal has overturned a High Court decision which blocked a summons order from the Waitangi Tribunal for her. And today she has announced the Government is putting children first by introducing to ...
In 2014 former Australian army lawyer David McBride leaked classified military documents about Australian war crimes to the ABC. Dubbed "The Afghan Files", the documents led to an explosive report on Australian war crimes, the disbanding of an entire SAS unit, and multiple ongoing prosecutions. The journalist who wrote the ...
Rob MacCulloch writes – According to the respected Pew Research Centre, “In seven of eight [European] countries surveyed, the most trusted news outlet asked about is the public news organization in each country”. For example, “in Sweden, an overwhelming majority (90%) say they trust the public broadcaster SVT”. ...
David Farrar writes – Kata MacNamara reports: Details of Tony Blakely’s involvement in the New Zealand Government’s response to the pandemic raise serious questions about the work of the Covid-19 Royal Commission of Inquiry over which he presides. It has long been clear that Blakely, a ...
Chris Trotter writes – Are you a Brahmin or a Merchant? Or, are you merely one of those whose lives are profoundly influenced by the decisions of Brahmins and Merchants? Those are the questions that are currently shaping the politics of New Zealand and the entire West. ...
RNZ reports – It’s supposed to be a haven of healing and spiritual awakening but residents of the Kawai Purapura community say they’ve been hurt and deceived. It’s the successor to the former Centrepoint commune, and has been on the bush block opposite Albany shopping centre since 2008. It ...
TL;DR : Here’s the top six items climate news for Aotearoa-NZ this week, as selected by Bernard Hickey and The Kākā’s climate correspondent Cathrine Dyer. Usually we have a video chat to go with this wrap, but were unable to do one this week. We’ll be back next week.Several reports ...
The Transport Minister has set a hard 'fiscal envelope' of $6.54 billion for transport capital spending. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The economy is settling into a state of suspended animation as the Government’s funding freezes and job cuts chill confidence and combine with stubbornly high interest rates to ...
To be precise, the term “anti- Zionism” refers to (a) criticism of the political movement that created a modern Jewish state on the historical land of Israel, and to (b)the subjugation of Palestinians by the Israeli state. By contrast, the term “anti-Semitism” means bigotry and racism directed at Jewish people, ...
This is a re-post from the Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler Because hurricanes are one of the big-ticket weather disasters that humanity has to face, climate misinformers spend a lot of effort muddying the waters on whether climate change is making hurricanes more damaging. With the official start to the hurricane ...
Yesterday the Mayor released what he calls his “plan to save public transport” which is part of his final proposal for the Council’s Long Term Plan (LTP). This comes following consultation on the draft version that occurred in March which showed, once again, that people want more done on transport, especially ...
And it's a pleasure that I have knownAnd it's a treasure that I have gainedAotearoa’s coalition government is fragile. It’s held together by the obsequious sycophancy of Christopher Luxon, who willingly contorts his party into the fringe positions of his junior coalition partners and is unwilling to contradict them. The ...
The Select Committee hearing submissions on the fast-track consenting legislation is starting to become a beat-up of regional councils. The inflexibility and slow workings of the Councils were prominent in two submissions yesterday. One, from the Coromandel Marine Farmers Association, simply said that the Waikato Regional Council’s planning decisions were ...
Back in April, the High Court surprised everyone by ruling that Ministers are above the law, at least as far as the Waitangi Tribunal is concerned. The reason for this ruling was "comity" - the idea that the different branches of government shouldn't interfere with each other's functions. Which makes ...
Buzz from the BeehiveTolling was mentioned when Transport Minister Simeon Brown announced the government was re-introducing the Roads of National Significance (RoNS) programme, with 15 “crucial” projects to support economic growth and regional development across New Zealand. All RoNS would be four-laned, grade-separated highways, and all funding, financing, and ...
or the past 14 years, ever since the Spanish government cheated on an autonomy deal, Catalonia has reliably given pro-independence parties a majority of seats in their regional parliament. But now that seems to be over. Catalans went to the polls yesterday, and stripped the Catalan parties of their majority. ...
David Farrar writes – Radio NZ report: Labour Party leader Chris Hipkins said the Electoral Commission should make sure the system ran smoothly and “taking away the right of thousands of people to vote” was not the answer. “Thousands of people enroled and voted on the day. If ...
Don Brash writes – There was a rather revealing headline in the Herald on Sunday today (12 May). It read “One in 8 Auckland homes on market were bought during boom, may now sell for loss”. The first line of text noted that “New data shows one in ...
Mike Grimshaw writes – At a time when universities are understandably nervous regarding the establishment of the University Advisory Group (UAG) and the Science System Advisory Group (SSAG) it may seem strange – or even fool-hardy – to state that there are long-standing issues in the tertiary sector ...
Lindsay Mitchell writes – A lack of perspective can make something quite large or important seem small or irrelevant. Against a backdrop of high-profile, negative statistics it is easy to overlook the positive. For instance, the fact that 64 percent of Maori are employed is rarely reported. For ...
Earlier this year, the Herald ran a series of articles amounting to a sustained campaign against raised pedestrian crossings, by reporter Bernard Orsman. A key part of that campaign concerned the raised crossings being installed as part of the Pt Chevalier to Westmere project, with at least 10 articles over ...
TL;DR: The six key events to watch in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the week to May 19 include:PM Christopher Luxon is expected to hold his weekly post-cabinet news conference at 4:00pm on Monday.Parliament is not sitting this week. It resumes next week for a two-week sitting session up to and ...
Hi,Thanks to all the beautiful Worms who came to the LA Webworm popup on Saturday.It was a way to celebrate the online store we launched last week — and it was super special.As I talk about a lot, I really value our community here — and it was a BLAST ...
A listing of 35 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, May 5, 2024 thru Sat, May 11, 2024. (Unfortunate) Story of the week "Grief that stops at despair is an ending that I and many others, most notably ...
Last night the largest solar storm in decades resulted in Aurorae being seen across Aotearoa, causing many to ask why?Why was the sky pink? What was all this stuff about the power grid? Have we, as so many have wondered since the election, reached the end of days?I had a ...
We have been on the road in England, squeezing down narrow lanes, flying up the M6, loving hedgerows and villages and cathedrals, liking the 21st century less.There have been moments when it’s felt like a movie trope. The pub in Exford, lovely seventeenth century bar, almost more dogs than people, ...
There’s a solar-storm on at the moment, and since the South Island is having a day and night with clear skies, that means Aurorae. I have just got back from a midnight visit to Tunnel Beach – southwards-looking over the Sea, and without the light pollution. Quite a few others ...
Michael Bassett writes – I’m not sure that it’s much comfort to anyone to know that the post-Covid surge in violent crimes, gang activity, ram raids, random shootings, thuggery and stabbings is occurring in other countries as well as New Zealand. These days, wagging school, out-of-control welfare and ...
Oliver Hartwich writes – Cast your mind back to mid-December. A new Prime Minister had just been sworn in, the new Government started its 100-day programme, and Christmas was only days away.Amid all the haste, a report landed that would have deserved our attention.I am talking about the ...
TL;DR: An unseasonally early icy blast at the same time as some long-overdue maintenance almost caused Aotearoa-NZ’s electricity system to black out this week. That’s because a quadropoly of gentailers1 have prioritised paying dividends from their rising profits and adding debt over investing in 1.5 GigaWatts of new wind farms ...
Hi,Before we crack into today’s Webworm, I wanted to acknowledge the fact that Israel is pushing into Rafah. Over 100,000 Palestinians are now attempting to flee the one place that was deemed “safe”.Trouble is, the place they’re fleeing to is already destroyed. Total annihilation is the end goal here.“Israel is ...
‘It has been said that figures rule the world. Maybe. I am quite sure that it is figures which show us whether it is being ruled well or badly.’ GoetheI was struck at a recent conference on equity for the elderly, how many presenters implicitly relied upon Statistics New Zealand. ...
Buzz from the BeehiveReporting on defence spending late last year, RNZ said the coalition government will have to make some tough calls this term to help the force address staff shortages and ageing infrastructure. “These are huge, huge amounts of government spending. It’s a significant proportion of the government’s ...
Peter Dunne writes – I am always wary when I hear that the Controller and Auditor-General has commented on or made recommendations to the government about an issue of public policy that does not relate strictly to public expenditure. According to the legislation, the role of the Controller ...
How Labour’s and National’s failure to move beyond neoliberalism has brought NZ to the brink of economic and cultural chaos Chris Trotter writes – TO START LOSING, so soon after you won, requires a special kind of political incompetence. At the heart of this Coalition ...
And why did the Crown not challenge the Tribunal’s jurisdiction? Gary Judd writes – Retired District Court Judge, David Harvey, has posted on his A Halflings View Substack an excellent summary of Justice Isacs’ judgment declining to uphold the witness summons issued by the Waitangi Tribunal ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Do you believe New Zealand runs its general elections fairly and competently? As a voter, can you be confident that the votes on your ballot will be counted towards the final result?As a political scientist, I’ve been asked these questions many times and ...
Macklemore isn’t someone I’d usually think about. Sure I liked his big hit from a few years back, everybody did it was catchy and cool with some memorable lines. But if I was going to think of artists who might speak out on political matters or world events, he wouldn’t ...
Another week goes by in the Luxon government’s efforts to roll back the past 70 years of social progress. The school lunches programme is to be downgraded by $107 million, and women need bother their heads no longer about pay equity, let alone expect ACC to provide adequate sexual violence ...
Brrr, the first cold snap of the year. Hope you’re rugged up nice and warm. Here are some stories that caught our eye this week… This Week on Greater Auckland On Monday, we had a post from a new contributor, Connor Sharp, who dug into the public feedback ...
Almost all of the Wellington City Council’s recommended zoning changes to allow many more apartments and townhouses in its inner-suburbs have been approved.Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for subscribers features co-hosts and , along with regular guest on geopolitics, ...
Open access notablesA Global Increase in Nearshore Tropical Cyclone Intensification, Balaguru et al., Earth's Future:Tropical Cyclones (TCs) inflict substantial coastal damages, making it pertinent to understand changing storm characteristics in the important nearshore region. Past work examined several aspects of TCs relevant for impacts in coastal regions. However, ...
Do you believe New Zealand runs its general elections fairly and competently? As a voter, can you be confident that the votes on your ballot will be counted towards the final result? As a political scientist, I’ve been asked these questions many times and always answered “yes”, with very few ...
Thus far May has followed on from a quiet April in the blogging department, but in fairness, it has been another case of doing what I am supposed to be doing, namely writing original fiction. Plus reading. So don’t worry – I have been productive. But in order to reassure ...
Buzz from the Beehive A new government agency will open for business on July 1 – the Social Investment Agency. As a new standalone central agency effective from 1 July, it will lead the development of social investment across Government, helping ministers understand who they need to invest in, what ...
Bryce Edwards writes – “Follow the money” is the classic directive to journalists trying to understand where power and influence lie in society. In terms of uncovering who influences various New Zealand political parties and governments, it therefore pays to look at who is funding them. The ...
Alwyn Poole writes – After being elected to Parliament in 2008 the maiden speech of Hipkins was substantially around education policy. He was Labour’s spokesperson for education 2011 – 2017. He was Minister for Education from 2017 until February 2023. This is approximately 88% of the time Labour ...
Eric Crampton writes – A fashion industry group is lobbying for protections. They make the usual arguments and a newer one. None of it makes sense. An industry group says it pumped $7.8 billion into the economy last year – that’s 1.9 percent of New Zealand’s GDP. ...
In December 2006, Fiji's military leader Voreqe Bainimarama overthrew the elected government in a coup. He ruled Fiji for the next 16 years, first as dictator, then as "elected" Prime Minister. But now, he's finally been sent to jail where he belongs. Sadly, this isn't for his real crime of ...
Don't like National's corrupt Muldoonist "fast-track" law? Aotearoa's environmental NGO's - Greenpeace, Forest & Bird, WWF, Coromandel Watchdog, Coal Action Network Aotearoa, Kiwis Against Seabed Mining, and others - have announced a joint march against it in Auckland in June: When: 13:00, 8 June, 2024 Where: Aotea Square, Auckland You ...
Seymour describes sushi as too woke for school meals. There are no fish sushi meals recommended by the School Lunches programme. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / Getty ImagesTL;DR: The Government will swap out hot meals for packaged sandwiches to save $107 million on school lunches for poor kids. MSD has pulled ...
I don't mind stealin' bread from the mouths of decadenceBut I can't feed on the powerless when my cup's already overfilled, yeahBut it's on the table, the fire's cookin'And they're farmin' babies, while slaves are workin'The blood is on the table and the mouths are chokin'But I'm goin' hungry, yeahSome ...
The Ardern Government’s chickens came home to roost yesterday with the news that the country is short of natural gas. In 2018, Labour banned offshore petroleum exploration, and industry executives say that the attendant loss of confidence by the industry impacted overall investment in onshore gas fields. Energy Resources Minister ...
Hi,If you’ve been digging through the newly launched Webworm store (orders are being dispatched worldwide as I type!) you’ll have noticed the best model we had was Calvin.This is Calvin.Calvin.Calvin is 7, and is the son of my producer over on Flightless Bird, Rob — aka “Wobby Wob”. Rob also ...
This video includes conclusions of the creator climate scientist Dr. Adam Levy. It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any). Climate change is everywhere. And when something's everywhere it can feel like it's nowhere. So how do we get our heads ...
Its a law like gravity: whenever a right-wing government is elected, they start attacking democracy. And now, after talking to their Republican and Tory and Fidesz chums at the International Democracy Union forum in Wellington, National is doing it here, announcing plans to remove election-day enrolment. Or, to put it ...
Yesterday Winston Peters focussed his attention on the important matter at hand. Tweeting. Like the former, and quite possibly next, orange POTUS, from whom he takes much of his political strategy, Winston is an avid X’er.His message didn’t resemble an historic address this time. In fact it was more reminiscent ...
Buzz from the Beehive A significant decline in natural gas production has given Resources Minister Shane Jones an opportunity to reiterate his enthusiasm for the mining and burning of coal. For good measure, he has praised an announcement from Genesis Energy that it will resume importing coal. He and Energy ...
“Follow the money” is the classic directive to journalists trying to understand where power and influence lie in society. In terms of uncovering who influences various New Zealand political parties and governments, it therefore pays to look at who is funding them. The political parties are legally obliged to make ...
Rob MacCullough writes – Here is my subjective ranking on a “most-left” to “most-right” scale of most of our major NZ Universities, with some anecdotal (and at times amusing) evidence to back up the claim.Extreme Left Auckland University of TechnologyEvidenceThe ...
Eric Crampton writes – I hadn’t thought about this one until a helpful email showed up in my inbox.It’s pretty obvious that income tax thresholds should automatically index with inflation – whether to anchor the thresholds in percentiles of the income distribution, or to anchor against a real ...
Jacqui Van Der Kaay writes – Parliament’s speaker had no option but to refer Green MP Julie Anne Genter to the Privileges Committee for her behaviour in the House last Wednesday evening. The incident, in which she crossed the floor to wave a book and yell at National ...
Gary Judd writes – The Dean of the law school at the Auckland University of Technology is someone called Khylee Quince. I have been sent her social media posting in which she has, over the LawNews headline “Senior King’s Counsel files complaint about compulsory tikanga Maori studies for ...
Cleo Paskal writes – WASHINGTON, D.C.: ‘Many of us have received phone calls from [the opposing camp] telling them if they join the camp they will be given projects for their wards and $300,000 [around US$35,000] each’, says former Malaita Premier Daniel Suidani. The elections in Solomon Islands aren’t ...
With hindsight, it was inevitable that (a) Hamas would agree to the ceasefire deal brokered by Egypt and Qatar and that ( b) Israel would then immediately launch attacks on Rafah, regardless. We might have hoped the concessions made by Hamas would cause Israel to desist from slaughtering thousands more ...
Today’s justification from the Minister for Children for scrapping protections for our tamariki was either a case of ignorance or deliberate deception. ...
The Green Party says the Government’s misguided policy on gangs will fail, following the announcement of the establishment of a national gang unit and district gang disruption units to target gang activities. ...
“With Police pay negotiations still unresolved after six months in Government, Mark Mitchell has today rolled the Commissioner out for a rebrand of their approach to gang crime,” Labour police spokesperson Ginny Andersen said. ...
The Government bringing back 50 charter schools will not increase achievement and is a distraction from the core mission of the education system, Labour education spokesperson Jan Tinetti said. ...
Te Pāti Māori is showing extreme concern over the Environment Select Committees adoption of a lucky dip draw to determine hearings for the Fast Track Approvals bill. Of the 27,000 submissions, 2,900 requested to present. All organisations will be heard; however, the remaining 2,350 submitters will be subject to a ...
Today New Zealand First will introduce a Member’s Bill that will protect women’s spaces. The ‘Fair Access to Bathrooms Bill’ will require, primarily in the interest and safety of women and girls, that all new non-domestic publicly accessible buildings provide separate, clearly demarcated, unisex and single sex bathrooms. This Bill ...
The Green Party is welcoming Climate Change Minister Simon Watts’ continuation of Hon. James Shaw’s cross-party work on climate adaptation, now in the form of a Finance and Expenditure Committee Inquiry. ...
The National Government plans to cut 390 jobs at ACC, including roles in the areas of prevention of sexual violence, road safety and workplace safety. ...
The Government has been caught in opposition to evidence once again as it looks to usher in tried, tested and failed work seminar obligations for job-seeking beneficiaries. ...
The Green Party is welcoming the announcement by the Minister Responsible for RMA Reform Chris Bishop to approve most of the Wellington City Council’s District Plan recommendations. ...
David Seymour has failed to get the sweeping cuts he wanted to the free and healthy school lunch programme, Labour education spokesperson Jan Tinetti said. ...
Hon Willie Jackson has been invited by the Oxford Union to debate the motion “This House Believes British Museums are not Very British’ on May 23rd. ...
Green Party MP Hūhana Lyndon says her Public Works (Prohibition of Compulsory Acquisition of Māori Land) Amendment Bill is an opportunity to right some past wrongs around the alienation of Māori land. ...
A senior, highly respected King’s Counsel with decades of experience in our law courts, Gary Judd KC, has filed a complaint about compulsory tikanga Māori studies for law students - highlighting the utter depths of absurdity this woke cultural madness has taken our society. The tikanga regulations will compel law ...
The Government needs to be clear with the people of the Nelson Marlborough region about the changes it is considering for the Nelson Hospital rebuild, Labour health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall said. ...
Ministers must front up about which projects it will push through under its Fast Track Approvals legislation, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
The Government is again adding to New Zealand’s growing unemployment, this time cutting jobs at the agencies responsible for urban development and growing much needed housing stock. ...
With Minister Karen Chhour indicating in the House today that she either doesn’t know or care about the frontline cuts she’s making to Oranga Tamariki, we risk seeing more and more of our children falling through the cracks. ...
The Labour Party is saddened to learn of the death of Sir Robert Martin, a globally renowned disability advocate who led the way for disability rights both in New Zealand and internationally. ...
Labour is calling for the Government to urgently rethink its coalition commitment to restart live animal exports, Labour animal welfare spokesperson Rachel Boyack said. ...
Today’s Financial Stability Report has once again highlighted that poverty and deep inequality are political choices - and this Government is choosing to make them worse. ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to do more for our households in most need as unemployment rises and the cost of living crisis endures. ...
Unemployment is on the rise and it’s only going to get worse under this Government, Labour finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds said. Stats NZ figures show the unemployment rate grew to 4.3 percent in the March quarter from 4 percent in the December quarter. “This is the second rise in unemployment ...
The New Zealand Labour Party welcomes the entering into force of the European Union and New Zealand free trade agreement. This agreement opens the door for a huge increase in trade opportunities with a market of 450 million people who are high value discerning consumers of New Zealand goods and ...
The National-led Government continues its fiscal jiggery pokery with its Pharmac announcement today, Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall says. “The government has increased Pharmac funding but conceded it will only make minimal increases in access to medicine”, said Ayesha Verrall “This is far from the bold promises made to fund ...
This afternoon’s interim Waitangi Tribunal report must be taken seriously as it affects our most vulnerable children, Labour children’s spokesperson Willow-Jean Prime. ...
Te Pāti Māori are demanding the New Zealand Government support an international independent investigation into mass graves that have been uncovered at two hospitals on the Gaza strip, following weeks of assault by Israeli troops. Among the 392 bodies that have been recovered, are children and elderly civilians. Many of ...
New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and President Emmanuel Macron of France today announced a new non-governmental organisation, the Christchurch Call Foundation, to coordinate the Christchurch Call’s work to eliminate terrorist and violent extremist content online. This change gives effect to the outcomes of the November 2023 Call Leaders’ Summit, ...
Distinguished public servant and former diplomat Sir Maarten Wevers will lead the independent review into the disability support services administered by the Ministry of Disabled People – Whaikaha. The review was announced by Disability Issues Minister Louise Upston a fortnight ago to examine what could be done to strengthen the ...
Today’s announcement by Police Commissioner Andrew Coster of a National Gang Unit and district Gang Disruption Units will help deliver on the coalition Government’s pledge to restore law and order and crack down on criminal gangs, Police Minister Mark Mitchell says. “The National Gang Unit and Gang Disruption Units will ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has today expressed regret at North Korea’s aggressive rhetoric towards New Zealand and its international partners. “New Zealand proudly stands with the international community in upholding the rules-based order through its monitoring and surveillance deployments, which it has been regularly doing alongside partners since 2018,” Mr ...
Air Vice-Marshal Tony Davies MNZM is the new Chief of Defence Force, Defence Minister Judith Collins announced today. The Chief of Defence Force commands the Navy, Army and Air Force and is the principal military advisor to the Defence Minister and other Ministers with relevant portfolio responsibilities in the defence ...
Legislation to repeal section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act has been introduced to Parliament. The Bill’s introduction reaffirms the Coalition Government’s commitment to the safety of children in care, says Minister for Children, Karen Chhour. “While section 7AA was introduced with good intentions, it creates a conflict for Oranga ...
Defence Minister Judith Collins will this week travel to the UK and Italy to meet with her defence counterparts, and to attend Battles of Cassino commemorations. “I am humbled to be able to represent the New Zealand Government in Italy at the commemorations for the 80th anniversary of what was ...
The upcoming Budget will include funding for up to 50 charter schools to help lift declining educational performance, Associate Education Minister David Seymour announced today. $153 million in new funding will be provided over four years to establish and operate up to 15 new charter schools and convert 35 state ...
“The results of the public consultation on the terms of reference for the Royal Commission into COVID-19 Lessons has now been received, with results indicating over 13,000 submissions were made from members of the public,” Internal Affairs Minister Brooke van Velden says. “We heard feedback about the extended lockdowns in ...
Foreign Minister, Defence Minister, other Members of Parliament Acting Chief of Defence Force, Secretary of Defence Distinguished Guests Defence and Diplomatic Colleagues Ladies and Gentlemen, Good afternoon, tēna koutou, apinun tru It’s a pleasure to be back in Port Moresby today, and to speak here at the Kumul Leadership ...
Health, infrastructure, renewable energy, and stability are among the themes of the current visit to Papua New Guinea by a New Zealand political delegation, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “Papua New Guinea carries serious weight in the Pacific, and New Zealand deeply values our relationship with it,” Mr Peters ...
The coalition Government is launching Roads of Regional Significance to sit alongside Roads of National Significance as part of its plan to deliver priority roading projects across the country, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “The Roads of National Significance (RoNS) built by the previous National Government are some of New Zealand’s ...
A high-level New Zealand political delegation in Honiara today congratulated the new Government of Solomon Islands, led by Jeremiah Manele, on taking office. “We are privileged to meet the new Prime Minister and members of his Cabinet during his government’s first ten days in office,” Deputy Prime Minister and ...
New Zealand voted in favour of a resolution broadening Palestine’s participation at the United Nations General Assembly overnight, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “The resolution enhances the rights of Palestine to participate in the work of the UN General Assembly while stopping short of admitting Palestine as a full ...
Introduction Good morning. It’s a great privilege to be here at the 2024 Infrastructure Symposium. I was extremely happy when the Prime Minister asked me to be his Minister for Infrastructure. It is one of the great barriers holding the New Zealand economy back from achieving its potential. Building high ...
Defence Minister Judith Collins today announced the upcoming Budget will include new funding of $571 million for Defence Force pay and projects. “Our servicemen and women do New Zealand proud throughout the world and this funding will help ensure we retain their services and expertise as we navigate an increasingly ...
New Zealand’s ability to cope with climate change will be strengthened as part of the Government’s focus to build resilience as we rebuild the economy, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. “An enduring and long-term approach is needed to provide New Zealanders and the economy with certainty as the climate ...
Jobseeker beneficiaries who have work obligations must now meet with MSD within two weeks of their benefit starting to determine their next step towards finding a job, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. “A key part of the coalition Government’s plan to have 50,000 fewer people on Jobseeker ...
A new standalone Social Investment Agency will power-up the social investment approach, driving positive change for our most vulnerable New Zealanders, Social Investment Minister Nicola Willis says. “Despite the Government currently investing more than $70 billion every year into social services, we are not seeing the outcomes we want for ...
Check against delivery Good morning. It is a pleasure to be with you to outline the Coalition Government’s approach to our first Budget. Thank you Mark Skelly, President of the Hutt Valley Chamber of Commerce, together with your Board and team, for hosting me. I’d like to acknowledge His Worship ...
Your Excellency Ambassador Meredith, Members of the Diplomatic Corps and Ambassadors from European Union Member States, Ministerial colleagues, Members of Parliament, and other distinguished guests, Thank you everyone for joining us. Ladies and gentlemen - In diplomacy, we often speak of ‘close’ and ‘long-standing’ relations. ...
The Therapeutic Products Act (TPA) will be repealed this year so that a better regime can be put in place to provide New Zealanders safe and timely access to medicines, medical devices and health products, Associate Health Minister Casey Costello announced today. “The medicines and products we are talking about ...
The Minister Responsible for RMA Reform, Chris Bishop, today released his decision on twenty recommendations referred to him by the Wellington City Council relating to its Intensification Planning Instrument, after the Council rejected those recommendations of the Independent Hearings Panel and made alternative recommendations. “Wellington notified its District Plan on ...
Rape Awareness Week (6-10 May) is an important opportunity to acknowledge the continued effort required by government and communities to ensure that all New Zealanders can live free from violence, say Ministers Karen Chhour and Louise Upston. “With 1 in 3 women and 1 in 8 men experiencing sexual violence ...
Associate Education Minister David Seymour has today announced that the Government will be delivering a more efficient Healthy School Lunches Programme, saving taxpayers approximately $107 million a year compared to how Labour funded it, by embracing innovation and commercial expertise. “We are delivering on our commitment to treat taxpayers’ money ...
New research on the impacts of extreme weather on coastal marine habitats in Tairāwhiti and Hawke’s Bay will help fishery managers plan for and respond to any future events, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. A report released today on research by Niwa on behalf of Fisheries New Zealand ...
Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Winston Peters will lead a broad political delegation on a five-stop Pacific tour next week to strengthen New Zealand’s engagement with the region. The delegation will visit Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, and Tuvalu. “New Zealand has deep and ...
There has been a material decline in gas production according to figures released today by the Gas Industry Co. Figures released by the Gas Industry Company show that there was a 12.5 per cent reduction in gas production during 2023, and a 27.8 per cent reduction in gas production in the ...
Defence Minister Judith Collins tonight announced the recipients of the Minister of Defence Awards of Excellence for Industry, saying they all contribute to New Zealanders’ security and wellbeing. “Congratulations to this year’s recipients, whose innovative products and services play a critical role in the delivery of New Zealand’s defence capabilities, ...
Welcome to you all - it is a pleasure to be here this evening.I would like to start by thanking Greg Lowe, Chair of the New Zealand Defence Industry Advisory Council, for co-hosting this reception with me. This evening is about recognising businesses from across New Zealand and overseas who in ...
It is a pleasure to be speaking to you as the Minister for Digitising Government. I would like to thank Akolade for the invitation to address this Summit, and to acknowledge the great effort you are making to grow New Zealand’s digital future. Today, we stand at the cusp of ...
New Zealand is urging both Israel and Hamas to agree to an immediate ceasefire to avoid the further humanitarian catastrophe that military action in Rafah would unleash, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “The immense suffering in Gaza cannot be allowed to worsen further. Both sides have a responsibility to ...
A new online data dashboard released today as part of the Government’s school attendance action plan makes more timely daily attendance data available to the public and parents, says Associate Education Minister David Seymour. The interactive dashboard will be updated once a week to show a national average of how ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced Rosemary Banks will be New Zealand’s next Ambassador to the United States of America. “Our relationship with the United States is crucial for New Zealand in strategic, security and economic terms,” Mr Peters says. “New Zealand and the United States have a ...
The Government is considering creating a new tier of minerals permitting that will make it easier for hobby miners to prospect for gold. “New Zealand was built on gold, it’s in our DNA. Our gold deposits, particularly in regions such as Otago and the West Coast have always attracted fortune-hunters. ...
Minister for Trade Todd McClay today announced that New Zealand and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) will commence negotiations on a free trade agreement (FTA). Minister McClay met with his counterpart UAE Trade Minister Dr Thani bin Ahmed Al Zeyoudi in Dubai, where they announced the launch of negotiations on a ...
New Zealand Sign Language Week is an excellent opportunity for all Kiwis to give the language a go, Disabilities Issues Minister Louise Upston says. This week (May 6 to 12) is New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) Week. The theme is “an Aotearoa where anyone can sign anywhere” and aims to ...
Six tertiary students have been selected to work on NASA projects in the US through a New Zealand Space Scholarship, Space Minister Judith Collins announced today. “This is a fantastic opportunity for these talented students. They will undertake internships at NASA’s Ames Research Center or its Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), where ...
New Zealanders will be safer because of a $1.9 billion investment in more frontline Corrections officers, more support for offenders to turn away from crime, and more prison capacity, Corrections Minister Mark Mitchell says. “Our Government said we would crack down on crime. We promised to restore law and order, ...
The OECD’s latest report on New Zealand reinforces the importance of bringing Government spending under control, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The OECD conducts country surveys every two years to review its members’ economic policies. The 2024 New Zealand survey was presented in Wellington today by OECD Chief Economist Clare Lombardelli. ...
“Sadly, these things are never a juicy conspiracy,” Shane Jones says of his office neglecting to include a dinner with mining interests in his ministerial diary. “They’re largely a cock-up – not a particularly polite expression but it is a regular feature of politics.” On Tuesday, in a Newsroom story, ...
The bill opens the door to hate. It’s our collective job to shut it, writes Anna Rawhiti-Connell.Just over 11 years ago, most of the country was basking in the refracted light of a big gay rainbow. National MP Maurice Williamson’s speech in support of the Marriage Equality Bill, and ...
Nurses, teachers, med students, midwives and social workers are among professions that require students to complete unpaid work placements to qualify. A campaign is seeking to change that reality.“It’s really hard to write an essay when you’ve only had two hours’ sleep because you’re been up all night attending ...
Loading…(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){var ql=document.querySelectorAll('A,DIV,A[data-quiz],DIV[data-quiz]'); if(ql){if(ql.length){for(var k=0;k<ql.length;k++){ql[k].id='quiz-embed-'+k;ql[k].href="javascript:var i=document.getElementById('quiz-embed-"+k+"');try{qz.startQuiz(i)}catch(e){i.start=1;i.style.cursor='wait';i.style.opacity='0.5'};void(0);"}}};i['QP']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){(i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)})(window,document,'script','https://take.quiz-maker.com/3012/CDN/quiz-embed-v1.js','qp'); Got a good quiz question?Send Newsroom your questions. The post Newsroom daily quiz, Wednesday 15 May appeared first on Newsroom. ...
What happens when cash is king – and then your bank leaves. A businessman in a town that hasn’t had a bank for three years says the Reserve Bank’s plans to put more cash in the hands of its people and introduce digital cash could save hours of time. John ...
The people have spoken, in their hundreds. Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton has been overwhelmingly voted the favourite New Zealand book of 2023 as nominated by ReadingRoom readers. The vote can informally be regarded as the People’s Choice award – ahead of tonight’s Ockham book awards, where Catton’s novel is competing ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Matt Garrow, Editorial Web Developer The government has handed down its budget for 2024–25. It’s delivered a $9.3 billion surplus for the financial year just about to finish but is forecasting a $28.3 billion deficit for next year. Here’s the key points: ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Jim Chalmers has produced a benign third budget aimed at soothing hard-pressed voters agitated about their high cost of living and punishing interest rates. At the same time he has walked a tightrope, trying ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Wes Mountain/The Conversation, CC BY-ND A $300 energy rebate for all households from July 1 and a 10% increase in Commonwealth Rent Assistance are key measures in a budget targeting cost-of-living relief that put ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Hawkins, Senior Lecturer, Canberra School of Politics, Economics and Society, University of Canberra Treasurer Jim Chalmers promised an “inflation-fighting and future-making budget” and he has delivered by introducing measures aimed at directly bringing down inflation. Combined, his A$300-per-household energy rebate and ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Hawkins, Senior Lecturer, Canberra School of Politics, Economics and Society, University of Canberra Treasurer Jim Chalmers promised an “inflation-fighting and future-making budget” and he has delivered by introducing measures aimed at directly bringing down inflation. Combined, his A$300-per-household energy rebate and ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Bartos, Professor of Economics, University of Canberra Treasurer Jim Chalmers has been bitten by the giveaway bug. This budget contains not only the well-foreshadowed tax cuts for all taxpayers, but a range of new spending measures in health, education, infrastructure, aged ...
By Stephen Wright and Stefan Armbruster of BenarNews French authorities have imposed a curfew on New Caledonia’s capital Nouméa and banned public gatherings after supporters of the Pacific territory’s independence movement blocked roads, set fire to buildings and clashed with security forces. Tensions in New Caledonia have been inflamed by ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Greste, Professor of Journalism and Communications, Macquarie University Governments and their agencies wield awesome power. At times, it is quite literally the power over life and death. That is why in any functioning democracy, we have robust checks and balances designed ...
As the world commemorates the 71st Everest Day, it's not just a celebration of human achievement but also a reflection of the enduring bond between New Zealand and Nepal. This day marks the historic feat of Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay Sherpa ...
Individuals in Wellington, led by City Councillor Nīkau Wi Neera, are working to use the ‘hecklers veto’ to shut down Inflection Point , a gender-critical event to be held at a Te Papa venue this weekend featuring speakers such as Bob McCoskrie ...
The transgender community, whānau & allies will rally outside Tākina/Wellington Convention Centre against anti-trans confederation “Inflection Point NZ,” who are hosting a conference to encourage parliamentarians to restrict trans people’s ...
A strategic asset for Auckland that has been fought over for years as either sacrosanct or a sacred cow looks certain to be sold and the proceeds of around $1.3 billion put in a new investment fund. A year after bitter political struggle ended in a compromise in which Auckland ...
Analysis by Dr Bryce Edwards – the Democracy Project (https://democracyproject.nz)Political scientist, Dr Bryce Edwards. The number of voices raising concerns about the Government’s Fast-Track Approvals Bill is rapidly growing. This is especially apparent now that Parliament’s select committee is listening to submissions from the public to evaluate the ...
RNZ Pacific New Caledonians lined up in long queues outside shopping centres to buy supplies in the capital Nouméa today amid political unrest in the French territory Demonstrations, marches and clashes with security forces erupted yesterday and French High Commissioner Louis Le Franc told the public broadcaster he had called ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Samuel Chalmers, Senior Lecturer in Human Movement, University of South Australia The tragic death of Manly rugby league player Keith Titmuss in 2020 due to exertional heat stroke is a reminder of the life-threatening nature of the condition. Titmuss died after ...
Internet Governance Project founder Milton Mueller asked “is the Christchurch Call accomplishing anything?” Increasingly it seems the only thing it hopes to achieve is killing off free expression. ...
New Zealand Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters has cancelled his visit to New Caledonia due to pro-independence unrest throughout the French Pacific territory. Peters and a delegation of other ministers was due to visit the capital Nouméa later this week. Nouméa’s La Tontouta International Airport is expected to remain closed ...
Audition by Pip Adam and Lioness by Emily Perkins are both shortlisted for the fiction award at the 2024 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. Here the authors discuss awards, writing, Selling Sunset, review culture, Zoolander and more.Pip Adam: Whenever I think about writers and our ambitions, I can’t help ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Susan Broomhall, Director, Gender and Women’s History Research Centre, Australian Catholic University Andrea Mantegna, Minerva (Athena) expelling Vices from the Garden of Virtue, from the Studiolo of Isabella d’Este, Palazzo Ducale, Mantua (c. 1499–1502).Louvre Museum/Wikimedia Commons Wartime has often presented opportunities ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Olli Hellmann, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Waikato Getty Images The stories Aotearoa New Zealand tells itself about the history of Te Tiriti o Waitangi/the Treaty of Waitangi have evolved considerably over time. For many decades, starting with the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brett Carter, Associate Professor, RMIT University Aurora visible from Cope Cope, Victoria on May 11 2024.cafuego/Flickr, CC BY-SA On Saturday evening before Mother’s Day, Australians witnessed a rare celestial spectacle: a breathtaking display of aurora australis, also known as the southern ...
Tara Ward watches as TVNZ’s long-running current affairs show bows out with humility and grace.We have just 12 days left to view the final episode of Sunday on TVNZ+. In just over a week, there will be no more evidence of the award-winning current affairs show on the digital ...
To celebrate New Zealand Music Month, Sophie Ricketts wears a different band T-shirt every day. Here she picks her top 20. I love music. I love listening to it, I love seeing it live, and I love buying a T-shirt from the band or artist I’ve enjoyed. Every year, during ...
Research from AA Insurance reveals more and more people are taking pride in their garage. Meet three New Zealanders using their space in creative ways.If you think of a garage, you might picture a dark room with a parked car. There might be some tools on the wall, or ...
Government spending cuts have forced Scion, the dedicated Crown research institute charged with growing forestry exports, to propose shedding a significant number of scientists. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Yasir Arafat, Senior Research Associate, Edith Cowan University asharkyu, Shutterstock As electric vehicle (EV) demand accelerates, so does the need for lithium batteries. But these batteries contain valuable critical minerals, as well as toxic materials, so they should not be treated ...
NZDF personnel will support the New Zealand National Commemorative Service at the Cassino War Cemetery and a New Zealand Service of Remembrance at the Cassino Railway Station, next week. ...
As part of our series exploring how New Zealanders live and our relationship with money, a masseuse tells us how much she earns and where she spends it. Want to be part of The Cost of Being? Fill out the questionnaire here.Gender: Female Age: 33 Ethnicity: NZ EuropeanRole: ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Liam Byrne, Honorary Fellow, School of Historical and Philosophical Studies, The University of Melbourne For many reasons, the 2024 US presidential election will be like no other. Republican nominee Donald Trump’s campaign is unprecedented. Never before has a former president who ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Meru Sheel, Associate Professor and Epidemiologist, Infectious Diseases, Immunisation and Emergencies Group, Sydney School of Public Health, University of Sydney We know vaccines have been a miracle for public health. Now, new research led by the World Health Organization has found vaccines ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Chrissy Severinsen, Associate Professor in Public Health, Massey University Getty Images Becoming a mother is a significant identity shift, and many new mums struggle. Up to 18% of New Zealand mothers experience depression and anxiety after giving birth. The first ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Aaron Teo, Lecturer in Curriculum and Pedagogy, University of Southern Queensland ABC Much has been written and produced about white men’s fetishisation of Asian women (crudely nicknamed “yellow fever”). The ABC’s comedy series White Fever breaks new ground by exploring an ...
The children’s minister could have been legally brought before the tribunal after all, writes Stewart Sowman-Lund in this extract from The Bulletin. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here. The end of ...
Seen comments on social media about eating bugs? Byron Clark explains the short history of our latest conspiracy. “No, Bill Gates nor Klaus Schwab has not funded the research done here,” reads an August 2023 Facebook post from Otago Locusts, the first farm in Aotearoa rearing insects for human consumption. ...
Rural post is essential but expensive, and residents are worried about its future. It’s 9.30am on a Monday morning in rural Manawatū, and farmer Mairi Whittle is on an all-terrain vehicle with her two young sons. After moving sheep from one slope to another, she swings by the letterbox. Opening ...
China’s massive military buildup and aggressive actions in the South China Sea are creating “volatility” that the controversial Aukus pact can help counter, the UK’s top diplomat in New Zealand says. British High Commissioner Iona Thomas will deliver a speech to the NZ Institute of International Affairs on Tuesday evening, ...
More good news. Recently we heard how the US is restoring California's second largest river, and here in humble wee NZ we've cleaned up 50K hectares to allow the return of Kiwi to the Capital.
Lessons here how community engagement can be got, mixed stakeholders will sit down, and progress can be made – you start with a proper cause.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/300743552/capital-kiwi-project-to-bring-national-icon-back-to-nations-capital-takes-flight
This is how we will do it. Conceptually-simple, broadly-effective ideas, such as letting the roadsides become un-mown-wildflower-and-herb "gardens" will bring on positive changes to the environment, outer and inner 🙂
But wildflower planting wasn't how they did it.
I covered this on Open Mike yesterday. It was a long term engagement by multigenerational large scale landowners.
In particular to the landowners of the big Terawhiti block, Kinnoull, Meridian, Mill Creek Farms, Papanui Boomrock, Pikarere, many of which have been in families for generations.
Kiwi to call the capital home as huge conservation project comes to fruition | Stuff.co.nz
This is a private protected area larger than Abel Tasman National Park. This kind of project takes years and years to do, so also well done to all the Trustees in particular previous Mayor Kerry Prendergast.
The removal of the dams resulted from protests by First Peoples, yes?
Nothing to do with the cited article at all.
I think you are right – engage the whole community for a goal to benefit all, instead of different sectors pursuing their own profit-oriented targets. It's hard to get all participants to agree on how to attain the goal, of course.
As for California, I'm surprised they have any rivers left after 20 plus years of megadrought. States with historical rights to water from the Colorado river basin will have to alter their positions.
Nature now calls the shots.
Wildflower roadsides benefit all.
Unfortunately in Auckland they attract the attention of Auckland Transport, who insist you remove them.
Not necessarily. We drive past several of them regularly – as long as they are "tidy", not a fire hazard in dry weather, not harboring rodent pests, and not provoking any of the neighbours to draw any of these things to the attention of AT, they will usually stay as they are. AT does not have an army of inspectors, they rely on complaints from the public.
I've done a few now, basically if they're looked after and don't obscure traffic from a driveway you're pretty safe. But all bets are off if someone lays a complaint. Then AT tend to take the easy route and say remove it.
Fair call, it is in response to complaints. But as Cricklewoid says below, when AT get a complaint, there tends to be only one outcome.
In this case, you can't really blame AT – the Auckland bylaw on berms is really clear – they're required to be mown, and landowners are not allowed to plant them.
If there is a complaint – then AT really have no option but to enforce the bylaw.
https://www.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/plans-projects-policies-reports-bylaws/bylaws/Pages/property-maintenance-and-nuisance-bylaw.aspx
You’re right, it just seems silly, that’s all. We don’t own the berms, yet we have to maintain them, and when people plant them out and someone complains AT respond faster than they fill in pot holes🙂🙂
Everything's for sale.
In early June 2014, an Ohio couple who were Mr. Schenck’s star donors shared a meal with Justice Alito and his wife, Martha-Ann. A day later, Gayle Wright, one of the pair, contacted Mr. Schenck, according to an email reviewed by The Times. “Rob, if you want some interesting news please call. No emails,” she wrote.
Mr. Schenck said Mrs. Wright told him that the decision would be favorable to Hobby Lobby, and that Justice Alito had written the majority opinion. Three weeks later, that’s exactly what happened. The court ruled, in a 5-4 vote, that requiring family-owned corporations to pay for insurance covering contraception violated their religious freedoms. The decision would have major implications for birth control access, President Barack Obama’s new health care law
[…]
In interviews and thousands of emails and other records he shared with The Times, Mr. Schenck provided details of the effort he called the “Ministry of Emboldenment.”
Mr. Schenck recruited wealthy donors like Mrs. Wright and her husband, Donald, encouraging them to invite some of the justices to meals, to their vacation homes or to private clubs. He advised allies to contribute money to the Supreme Court Historical Society and then mingle with justices at its functions. He ingratiated himself with court officials who could help give him access, records show.
All the while, he leveraged his connections to raise money for his nonprofit, Faith and Action. Mr. Schenck said he pursued the Hobby Lobby information to cultivate the business’s president, Steve Green, as a donor.
https://archive.ph/u0k4O (nyt)
Recent post regarding the ongoing is Matauranga Maori science discussion. Quite concerning implications discussed of miss-representation of NZ governance history, where an initiative involving Maori political leaders improving health policies by favoring scientific Medicine, is instead recast as colonial oppression of Maori culture.
https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2022/11/09/shamanism-makes-comeback-in-new-zealand/
If Mātauranga Māori was considered another source of information for scientific enquiry, such as every other source, then the issue on its reference would be moot.
However, unlike other observational data, or theory or existing understanding, it is not placed under the same critical thinking and testing to identify veracity, and ensure it is still accurate.
As we see in the science curriculum, Mātauranga Māori inclusion also means rewriting the understandings of existing scientific concepts and creating a manufactured hybrid, which is inherently dishonest. I also personally find it disrespectful.
(Eg. DNA = whakapapa, sub-atomic energy links = mauri)
We have had a decades long renaissance of Te Ao Māori.
Adults who have been through Kōhanga Reo, and Kura kaupapa Māori, inclusion of Māori tikanga practices in governmental institutions, increased delivery of and participation in Māori studies at an academic level, as well as the proliferation of many Māori educational providers. Marae renovations, Crown restitutions, Māori produced and broadcasted programmes, on mainstream broadcasting as well as a dedicated channel, open access for all adult NZers to participate and learn etc.
These positive achievements were the result of immense effort and stamina of many Māori, and those who have seen the need for support for such initiatives.
They are unequivocally a valuable taonga for all NZers.
At present we have a lot of people, who have considerable Māori knowledge and understandings that have been taught to them via the above systems. This is particularly true, amongst the academics, politicians, institutional and governmental workers who have absorbed the information that has been delivered so well, that you don't even need to wring from them the standard delivery lines. They leak out, unfortunately often colouring all scenarios with colonisation, and systematic racism, and bigotry.
While all this was taking place, Māori were simultaneously participating in the renaissance and getting on with their lives here and now, like everyone else.
The academic Māori, the political Māori, the environmentally conscious Māori are part of the whole – not the whole. Just as the academic Pakeha, the political Pakeha, the environmentally conscious Pakeha does not represent the whole.
Why is the idea of Māori limited to those who have all taught and learned at the same institutions, and who gain status and remuneration because of their focus? (That is not to imply that either is undeserved, but to point out the fact that their view may be self-limiting.) But it doesn't translate that they speak for all. Would any Pakeha accept this type of wholesale representation?
So, science is a body of knowledge informed by many sources, and Mātauranga Māori is one of them. Scientific knowledge is made robust by testing, and Mātauranga Māori should be treated equally to every other source and subject to the same assessments. If Mātauranga Māori contribute new and valid means of testing and experiments then all well and good.
But what should be avoided, is the idea that it is the mere fact of its existence is evidence of relevance or quality. We know that when tested much of this knowledge is verifiable, ie. navigational prowess, environmental observations. Bring it on. It will proven to be repeatable, or it won't.
I consider any other adoption a patronising view of my Māori culture and the quality of what it has to offer, and so reject it.
Brilliantly stated Molly.
I don't have a problem with learning about Polynesian navigation as a part of science. Our Pacific cultures have a lot of practical knowledge about this part of the world. And it's important for students to see their culture represented.
When it comes to scientific theories though, the ideal is rigorous: testable, measurable models that can be used to make reliable predictions. Preferably underpinned by mathematical logic and basic axioms.
However these models tend to break down when looked at closely. All human knowledge is fuzzy at the edges (e.g. Gödel's incompleteness theorem). This makes the philosophy of science interesting & tricky. Defining "what is science" has been a bone of contention for centuries.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/the-categories-were-made-for-man-not-man-for-the-categories/
Good comment. Gödel's incompleteness theorem seemed like a rather esoteric idea to me until I watched this astonishing clip:
Thanks. I enjoyed that.
(It's been a while since I watched this channel.)
Something about the aesthetics (and tragedy) of this story brings tears to my eyes.
Thanks for engaging @roblogic by providing a point of discussion.
"However these models tend to break down when looked at closely. All human knowledge is fuzzy at the edges (e.g. Gödel's incompleteness theorem). This makes the philosophy of science interesting & tricky. Defining "what is science" has been a bone of contention for centuries."
I consider scientific knowledge and processes (including testing and methods of proof) to be an ever changing entity.
That's why I can see no need for exceptional admittance of Mātauranga Māori, because it can inform both knowledge and identify needs for necessary changes – but only if proven to be necessary.
A part I didn't add above, is that it is assumed that all Māori have either a racial preference for Mātauranga Māori, or have a colonised view of Mātauranga Māori due to systemic racism.
It seems unfathomable to many, that there may be Māori that have different perspectives. Mātauranga Māori knowledge applied in context and for its intended purpose can enhance understandings and improve experiences. Mātauranga Māori knowledge that applies universally, and can be predicted and repeated to the same level as other current scientific knowledge is the knowledge that belongs in the science curriculums.
There is value in both forms of knowledge.
However, we denigrate the value of the first, when we demand inclusion of it to the second without scientific rigour.
How do you feel about the application of Māori terms such as mauri, to concepts such as sub-atomic energy levels?
I know that Māori academics have written these new interpretations, but I have no doubt there are Pakeha academics you disagree with, and I find this rewriting of Maori concepts into theories that are not part of Te Ao Māori both clumsy and patronising.
Are you comfortable with it, and why?
"How do you feel about the application of Māori terms such as mauri, to concepts such as sub-atomic energy levels?"
Do you have the rest of this definition of Mauri?
Is it in fact compatible with this one?
https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2022/02/10/indigenous-electrical-wiring-in-new-zealand/
I'm not entirely sure but it seems if you disconnect all the wires other than the earth you get free electricity?
I'm quite interested in new knowledge if it gets me free electricity, actually.
"I'm quite interested in new knowledge if it gets me free electricity, actually."
For those who haven't clicked on Nic the NZer's link:
New Zealand Electrical Code of Practice :
Would you mind explaining what you see as the problem there?
Would also be good to have a link for the original source of that chart.
That chart is from the link in 3.1.2.2.1.
The problem is that the Maori column is written almost entirely in English and purports to explain the 'Maori' version has no effing idea how electricity works.
Electricity is effing weird!
so the objection isn't the inclusion of a Māori view, but that it's done badly?
Why is being written in English a problem?
Absolutely, a useful Maori translation would be good, but the implication of the nonsense written is that you can't understand Electricity in 'Maori' (I'm quoting because nobody thinks in Maori).
Being written in English it becomes a mockery of how 'Maori' understand electricity working.
Whereas I think the implication is that many people, including many Māori don’t speak te reo.
What do you mean nobody thinks in Māori? Fluent speakers do.
Beyond that, I’m still not clear what the problem is for people here. I have my own issues with it, but right now I’m more interested that people are reacting against it without a good explanation as to why.
I’d also like to know who wrote it, the process by which it was included. Is it just a really bad take on electricity? Or is there something else going on?
@weka
"…but right now I’m more interested that people are reacting against it without a good explanation as to why."
People have pointed out it is nonsensical.
(I didn't, I thought that fact was obvious.)
So, a list is required?
(For you, weka, because I know your request is likely to be genuine)
This is a safety document – language should be clear, concise and relevant.
So, not only irrelevant – contradictory and confusing.
Not suitable for a safety document that aims to reduce harm.
A direct te reo Maori translation is not a problem.
That is not what this is.
Long term:
People presented with such guff repeatedly will be more likely to develop the notion that Maori inclusion often is:
unclear, rambling and irrelevant. They may also decide it is not fit for purpose (like the example above). In this case, they are right.
Sorry, I’m going to have to be blunt here. This isn’t just you, this is a problem with others too, but this is the ideal opportunity to make this really clear. I know you know this stuff, others do too, so I am unclear why people feel like they don’t have to explain their thinking upfront.
This is a political blog whose purpose includes robust debate. If people want to post something that shocks/annoys etc and simply say ‘this is nonsense’ that’s what Facebook is for. Here we require people to explain what they think and not have to drag it out of them.
None of us can mindread. I have my own problems with the chart, but I don’t know what your and others’ problems were specifically. And that’s what we are here to talk about, the problems with how Mātauranga is being integrated into wider society (and imo, the benefits of that integration).
If you find some commenters disingenuous in asking then just ignore them 👍
Thanks for explaining, I will respond in a different comment.
wanted to add that I was asking what you and Nic thought because I did in fact want to understand the nuances in your thinking and get a better understanding of how people view this issue differently. I’m aware that on TS sometimes people are more interested in using someone’s position against them and/or to point score. We’re trying to change that 😉
We don't know that much about linguistics, however we do know this.
Fluent Maori (any language) speakers do not think in Maori (their language).
We can understand this must be the case from our understanding of multi-lingual people. Reasonably fluent multi-lingual people are already capable of hearing a new concept in one language and then expressing it in an different language. Also people *never* need to re-learn ideas while learning an additional a language. This makes it absolutely clear there is an internal concept and a connected more surface concept of its expression in a language. In fact you don't even need the multi-lingual bit, children when asked to draw a cat are able to transfer the request from the linguistic interpretation, through the cat, to the other surface concept of what a cat looks like.
And just to head off an incorrect counter point. There are occasional concepts which don't have a direct translation in another language. These work the same way, except that there may not be a specific word in the language being spoken.
"Is it just a really bad take on electricity? Or is there something else going on?"
My interpretation is that the writer here has imagined they have been transported back several hundred years in time and are now required to explain to some Maori in their own tongue how to wire an electrical circuit (with the requisite parts of course, like a battery and stove). For some reason they decided to use a bunch of myth words to explain it which may have confused the audience somewhat. In my own imagination at this time the locals respond by saying, 'This is very useful, why thank-you for this gift. Now your staying here permanently until we understand how this stuff actually works.'
not sure I followed that. Are you saying that people can never think in their second language?
@weka
"Sorry, I’m going to have to be blunt here. This isn’t just you, this is a problem with others too, but this is the ideal opportunity to make this really clear. I know you know this stuff, others do too, so I am unclear why people feel like they don’t have to explain their thinking upfront."
I understand your view, but both Nic the NZer and Belladonna gave reasons in their comments. They just didn't preface it with an explanatory introduction.
Is it possible you don't recognise the reasoning in this form? Or, is is that you discount them, and what you are looking for is persuasive reasons?
"Sorry, I’m going to have to be blunt here."
I'm OK with blunt. It often means someone is seeking to understand or be understood. I hope that I've interpreted your comment correctly, and thus made my response relevant.
Molly, sorry, that’s just patronising. I’ve already said to you that I asked because I wanted to know what people’s thinking was. I want to know because I want to understand. I haven’t discounted anyone’s reasoning in this subthread, so I don’t know where you get that from. When I get the chance I will respond to various comments here with my own thinking.
I asked *you, politely, to explain what you saw as the problem with the chart (that you had just posted as an image). Because I wanted to know what *you thought.
Belladonna also shared after I has asked. I understood her reasoning perfectly well. I haven’t discounted it.
Nic gave a brief answer, which wasn’t really an explanation so I asked some questions and now we’re having a conversation based on that.
None of that is out of the ordinary for TS and I’m at a loss as to why I am having to explain this.
"Are you saying that people can never think in their second language?"
People don't even think in their first language. What people actually think in is clearly connected to multiple ways for it to be expressed, including as language (also diagram, picture, written, music, computer code).
ok, that’s some obscure point I’m not getting in relation to this conversation. I think in English (a language, as you mention). I’ve learned some basic te reo, it’s very hard for me to think in it, but I know that there are concepts I can understand if I don’t parse them through my English/Western brain. I know people that can think in te reo Māori 🤷♀️ There are lots of people in NZ who value communications about te Ao Māori being done in English, because they don’t speak te reo.
@weka
I had a longer comment, which I lost, but it's clear I'm misunderstanding you.
Can we leave it there? Unless you think it's important.
I'd rather read your view on why it was necessary for this inclusion, and what you think of the quality of what was provided and if this has a knock-on effect if it's badly done.
FWIW, I find Nick's interpretation resonates regarding the production. No effort towards quality just inclusion:
I’m not sure I do think it was necessary for inclusion (and pretty sure I haven’t said it was necessary, so sorry to belabour the point, but I’m really sick of the whole binary thinking in this debate where people get pushed into certain boxes even for just asking questions). To have an opinion about that I’d need to understand why it was done, and whether is has been done badly as it appears (I can’t think of other reasons). I’ll come back to it later when I have more time.
Molly, I’ve commented further here. Still in the process of thinking it through.
.https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-20-11-2022/#comment-1922396
btw, I’m not taking a position of ‘there are no problems’. The things you’ve been sharing about the education curriculum definitely need scrutiny. It’s more that in this case we have so little to go on.
We do seem to be living in an age of the breakdown of knowledge. I’m not sure how to address that at the same time as integrating Indigenous knowledge into society (something that we desperately need if we are going to transition out of the mess we are in with climate/ecology etc). I think there is a danger here in equating Indigenous ways of knowing with the breakdown of knowledge. Certainly the reactionaries are doing this. The extent to which it is happening in TS debates strikes me as being a function of the polarisation as much as anything, but it’s easy to see why accusations of racism get flung around. It looks like miscommunication to me.
@weka
"
"I asked *you, politely, to explain what you saw as the problem with the chart (that you had just posted as an image). Because I wanted to know what *you thought."
I posted an image because a discussion was beginning, and it might not be obvious to others who had not clicked on Nick the NZer's link in his comment what the discussion was about.
Hence the sentence that prefaced the image:
"For those who haven't clicked on Nic the NZer's link:"
As you know, I am fairly consistent in providing opinion and links as part of my commenting style. I don't think posting an image to clarify what the commencing conversation was about required further comment.
"Because I wanted to know what *you thought."
On this thread, I'd provided two extremely wordy comments on my thinking: Here and here and nothing in response?
Instead, you needed to know my thoughts on an image I had provided because I thought the discussion might be enhanced if people did not bother to click through to find out.
Despite referencing that you have you own thoughts on this example more than once, and then being directly asked to provide them for discussion – you have not yet done so.
Does not that strike you as an imbalance when it comes to discussion? The requirement for more and more clarity from one side, when little is offered in return?
@weka, I don't see this as a counter example. There can be concepts you understand quite well, but do not have the skill to express in te reo, presently. You will likely be able to look up the language and then later express this idea in te reo. Did you need to re-learn this idea however, or was it the idea you knew but didn't know how to express?
It goes deeper than this actually. Imagine somebody comes up with a new idea, one for which there is no expression in any language. How does that come about then? Because it does.
I'm really not keen on this understanding of language and underlying intelligence. One implication could easily be that people are incapable of learning science in te reo, especially because a lot of that te reo is clearly being developed in terms of its english language expression.
Were this the case we should not be teaching any subjects (maybe except Maori culture) in te reo, because its not compatible and stunting learning. Fortunately its clearly not true.
Not sure if we are on the same page in terms of what we are talking about.
There are things that can be understood in te reo that cannot be understood in English. This is a big feature of this debate. It’s not only language, it’s conceptual. The Western mind thinks differently than the Indigenous mind. I’ve had to decolonise my mind in order to understand concepts that are normal to Indigenous peoples. (decolonise in the sense used in the past few decades, not in the current sense).
I don’t think that language is the only way one can think. I can think without language eg when I am meditating, and then translate that into English if I want to think more or tell someone else. But if I am using language then I think in English. Others can think in te reo.
So of course someone can come up with a new concept and then they have to find ways of explaining it. This is common enough. It’s also why spiritual concepts are difficult to explain to rationalists. They’re just different ways of thinking and if there is no shared languages then it’s hard.
Another example of this is women’s reality and trying to explain it to men. Women are bilingual, most men aren’t and don’t even realise they’re not.
(I’ll give you a classic example of Stephen Fry later on).
I still don’t understand what you meant when you said no-one thinks in Māori.
"I still don’t understand what you meant when you said no-one thinks in Māori."
Unfortunately we seem to have stumbled across an idea which can't even be understood in English.
Whenua might have been a better word to describe ground/earth/soil/
My understanding (from a base science perspective – not an electrician) – is that the earth wire is the safety circuit breaker. In the event of an overload, it grounds the electrical current in the earth – effectively killing the charge (rather than potentially killing people)
The Maori definition used to equate the earth wire with Mauri – implies (or can be read as implying) that this is a source of current, rather than a circuit breaker. Which is exactly the reverse of the way that a circuit, with an earth element, works.
Hence, the rather tongue-in-cheek reference to free electricity.
I wonder if it would have been improved if 'Ground' was the reference English term, as it is in 'North America'.
Great clarrification thank you Molly.
It seems to me that in trying to "decolonise" whoever is writing stuff like the Maori words for the electricians terms of practice is missing the point majorly.
It leaves Maori open to mockery and in a way it is a form of gas lighting. Of course my opinion of this may be attacked for being racist.
It reminds me of trying to change words like women and mother in midwivery.
Maori don't have to insert themselves in all things European. There mana can stand on its own merits
I know what you are trying to say here but I'm not sure that's it exactly. The earth/ground wire is there to act as a conduit for the electrical flow if there is a fault, so that the electricity goes somewhere else rather than into the human body (which also acts as an earth/grounding wire).
I don't see the use of the term mauri as implying that the earth is the source of electricity, but that it is the container by which power flows back to the planet. Not how I am used to thinking about mauri, but quite interesting.
I also wonder if part of the problem here is trying to take the words literally. Western mind might consider it metaphorically to get to the meaning (although I don't think it is necessarily metaphor either).
I would love to see the background on this chart. I don't have enough understanding of concepts like mauri, tapu, noa to know if it's on point or done badly.
I can see that for Māori, having Māori concepts is useful, even in this situation. I disagree with anker that electricity is a European thing and Māori don't have to insert themselves into it, they have their own mana. Electricity is a phenomena and how we explain that to ourselves depends on language and concepts.
I feel some discomfit with the chart as is, it seems dropped in in isolation, kind of weird. As Incognito said early on, electricity is weird, and there's something jarring about the unclarity of the chart. I can't tell is that's because I don't understand it or if it's because it doesn't make sense.
I've certainly seen many instances of the Western mind struggling to cope with Indigenous concepts, or the way that the Indigenous mind thinks about phenomena. The original article is a good example, full of mistakes and inaccuracies along with unacknowledged bias. More of a concern for me than the chart is the number of people that thought the first article was good and apparently didn't see the problems with it.
Well it is well known that Einstein had an early job at the Swiss patent office. Do let us know which govt department to send the Nobel prize to when the author of the side-note is discovered and its true meaning found.
More correctly,
NEW ZEALAND
ELECTRICAL CODE OF PRACTICE
FOR
REPAIR AND MAINTENANCE OF
DOMESTIC ELECTRICAL APPLIANCES
BY THE OWNER OF THE APPLIANCE
https://www.worksafe.govt.nz/laws-and-regulations/standards/electricity-standards-and-codes-of-practice/
Thanks, I had visited the site and taken a screenshot intending to link to the original source, but then couldn't upload the image and ended up returning to the article for the URL, and forgot the Worksafe link entirely.
The connection to Godel's incompleteness theory is pretty tenuous here.
That says specifically that there are some statements in a consistent closed system of logic which can not be proven within that system. These statements could however be proven by extending the original with further statements.
A better description of why scientific fields have fuzzy edges is just that there are some limits (usually scale of phenomena) where one field stops and typically hands over to another field. That's the region where the ideas of the field stop being good explanations due to factors relevant at this new scale.
I also recently noticed Leonard Susskind making this same claim, that these things are not related, in one of his lectures.
It is a fascinating dynamic this polarity between science based medicine and the alternative observational based modalities. Personally although I try to keep a foot in both camps it seems to me that more and more people have lost a lot of confidence in the conventional science based community – especially the past few years.
Currently things are a mess. Conventional doctors are largely captured by protocols which ignore the social, mental and spiritual aspects of good health. They routinely fail to examine the whole patient and struggle to offer help where a direct cause and effect are absent.
Equally the alternative community struggles with determinism and repeatability. There is precious little evidence to support their methods on a population basis, even when they might have great success with some individuals.
If both sides were prepared to embrace humility, acknowledge their limits and failures, and listen constructively to each other – we might make some progress. (Much the same could be said of our political domain as well.)
Not to mention the replication crisis (or "P-value crisis"; widespread bad data analysis) throwing many results in the humanities and medicine into doubt
I'm not disagreeing about the failures and weaknesses of current methodologies. I think most people can ascertain the failings. But we should endeavour to improve by adjustment, not accommodation only.
Like most knowledge, the value of Māori knowledge is most valuable when it is used for the purpose intended and in the right context.
Treated as an equal to any other source, it will have its proponents and its detractors, so we should ensure that the detractors will have less to work with than the proponents by providing more than assertion and adoption of what is put forth without critique.
One approach to this problem came from a talk I heard years back. The idea was that we could roughly place the historic societies of the world into three categories.
The Western societies saw the world primarily in material terms. From this we gained determinism, repeatability and all of modern technology.
The Eastern societies tilted more toward the philosophic, giving us a great canon of literature, poetry, and layers of insight and nuance around the human condition and inner psychology. (Us westerners tending to be lamentably unaware of this wonderful legacy)
And finally the Indigenous peoples – lacking for the most part access to science, technology and written languages focused their intellectual energies on what they describe as the spiritual, the non-material, the non-verbal aspects of reality.
Emphatically these are not mutually exclusive descriptions, but I think do describe the very differing intellectual centre of gravities we see between European science and Mātauranga Māori. Each system of thought – as you say – has it’s own context and domain of validity. What I object to is not that these worldviews are different, but that some are setting one against the other – insisting that theirs is the only truth.
Your last paragraph is icing on the cake that is an excellent comment overall.
They are not binary opposites but complementary frameworks, if you like – both/and. The problem with (binary) dualism through the Western lens – either/or – is that it often ranks (and rejects) based on presumed equivalence-equality and it becomes a win-lose competition with only one ‘winner’ that becomes the dominant-supreme accepted paradigm and ‘bench mark’ (and filter).
Of course, there’s heaps more in your comment that I would love to discuss further but perhaps another time …
Keep up the excellent work!
Yeah it's good to see your comments a bit more often RL, appreciate the wisdom in your words
That's the best explanatory framework I've read for what I was inadequately trying to say.
Thanks!
The last paragraph is completely inconsistent with the call to not have Mātauranga Māori considered 'equal to' western science. That call literally is to insist western science is the only truth.
I just did a page search and your comment is the only one to use the term western science? For you, how is this Taxonomy of scientific knowledge defined?
I use the term with reference to comments like this:
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/te-manu-korihi/447898/university-academics-claim-matauranga-maori-not-science-sparks-controversy
You have to ask yourself who are they to define what science is and what it is not? Theirs is indeed a practice to continue the use of western science to delegitimise Mātauranga Māori.
The point I was making is that RL cannot claim Maori insist theirs is only truth when the opposite is true.
So your taxonomy says science and "western science" are identical sets of knowledge? I'm unclear because quite a lot of science was originally produced outside of the west.
Anybody claiming their, body of knowledge, is only containing truth is not doing science of course. You have to at least be open to the possibility that your ideas are untrue in experiment, and of course you remove any ideas you know are not true.
Coyne said,
Doesn't get plainer than that.
The term Western science refers to lineage and development of thinking/practice, not geography.
I was asking why Muttonbird feels the need to characterize "the only real way of knowing we have" as specifically "western science", rather than the more inclusive term science. We do after all in NZ happily take knowledge and technology from all corners of the globe as well as all kinds of lineages, time periods, thinkings and practices.
You seem to be taking some kind of issue with what Coyne said in that sentence? Its certainly terse, but are you claiming its untrue?
Agree Muttonbird and it is surprising that it is accepted by those arguing against the Matauranga proposition eg.
Those of us saying hey taihoa let us not deny or deride Matauranga, Rongoa, Maori world view of water or land have been faced with people have been saying the western view of science is all you need, is the be all and end all. Moving on to a view that unless we know absolutely everything about the Maori world view of water then
a it does not exist, full stop
b if it does exist because we cannot prove or disprove it, using the scientific viewpoint of another culture, it does not exist
This literalist view carried to an extreme means others cannot understand common figures of speech. Our communication becomes plain and the passing of information only, wordplay is non existent, (yet story telling is being sound as a 'new' way of describing from ads to differing opinions), describing beauty, a moment, becomes passe. Of course moments, views and beauty are all in the eye of the beholder and incapable of 'proof'. So the proposition for not being able to describe them scientifically is proved, and not being capable of description, according to western scientific norms, they become non-existent
I made a comment that an opinion column in Stuff needed to have the word 'satire' inserted as well as being an Opinion. I found this sad.
Don't get me wrong I love learning that the strange light is caused by ash/cloud from an eruption but that is not the be all and end all…..colours, thoughts on whether it evokes feelings, messes with perspective are all valid.
"b if it does exist because we cannot prove or disprove it, using the scientific viewpoint of another culture, it does not exist"
This sounds very much like Schrodingers Cat. Something which is both existing (alive) and doesn't exist (is dead) at the same time and we can only find out by examining it (opening the box).
Of course when making this example Erwin was literally making fun of what he was being asked to believe was occurring by other physicists. He made this example up as a idea for which expected no-one could possibly think such a ridiculous thing.
No, that’s not quite accurate. The cat exists in two or more (quantum) states; it never starts/stops existing as such. In any case, it only really applies to quantum systems 🙂
I did have a very witty response to this describing what happens when you put too many entangled quantum systems into the same place at once. Unfortunately it got sucked into a worm-hole and nobody was able to see any of the results of the experiment.
LOL! The worm-hole-ate-my-home-work is as old as the universe.
Conventional Drs are their to treat illness/pathology. They have equipment and knowledge that makes them particularly good at this. Very often when pathology is found that needs treatment, they have some form of treatment, which research studies have shown has a …% chance of helping. That's what they do.
Dr's aren't really concerned with good health as such, although public health campaigns and some advice from a GP or specialist, is something they do.
The vast majority of NZders rely on Drs when they sick/unwell. A small number of people may prefer to seek out other health care. But to my knowledge there is very little evidence it works (with the odd exception such as St Johns Wort for mild to moderate depression)
The denigration of indigenous medicine is strong in this haplessly biased piece. The writer also has his facts wrong and I suspect this is a deliberate ploy to push his narrative, as is often the case with many pig-headed closed-minded people who have an axe to grind. Any good (?) points he makes in his piece have to be taken with extreme levels of scepticism and warning.
Western medicine is slowly moving away from its mechanistic foundations of simple lock & key, drug & target biological interactions to more holistic thinking such as systems biology.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_biology
Old testing paradigms and dogmas in medicine and clinical trials are approaching their use-by-date to make room for personalised medicine based on validated biomarkers and unique patient profiles, which is ironically similar to what tohunga practised.
that is a superb comment. I've been trying to write a post on the problems with the article (inaccuracies and unacknowledged bias), but this is so much better.
I had in fact noticed a certain kind of hardline from the site author. I think that reflects the fact he's been defending evolutionary science teaching, against recent earth creationists who may prefer a Christian creationist tradition be taught in Science class. This is often reflected in snark that Matauranga Maori is directly creationist.
As a review of my own comment surrounding the original link will show, I was more highlighting that de-colonists are not above characterising policies endorsed and advanced by Maori MPs and leaders, as colonial cultural suppression. Somehow I don't think calling historical acts of sensible Maori governance and leadership, Pakeha oppression, enhances trust in Maori leadership and governance (or even Medicine in this case). I would suggest Willie Jackson is well qualified to make such a judgement about the acts intent, and he does.
The act was repealed in 1962 of course, which didn't concern me in the slightest.
Systems Biology: Hmmm, my actually quite extensive knowledge and understanding of mathematical, statistical and computational systems says, you tend to get out what you put into your model. Maybe that indicates my actual talent for it though.
I didn’t want to take aim at the messenger, because that’s almost always a weak argument at best, but he does have a well-known history as ‘hardliner’. I was more interested in shining a light on the contents and some of the (incorrect) claims in his piece.
It seems that nowadays many things are lumped together and thrown on the maunga called Mt Murray. Sometimes, this is accidental because people are confused, and sometimes it is deliberate in order to confuse people and pull the debate into a quagmire of quarrels about everything and anything under the sun.
Your PoV of systems biology is valid and I’m more than happy to talk about some more, as it is a fascinating area. One of the main differences, a paradigm shift if you like, with ‘old-school’ biology is the integrative function of levels/scales/dimensions, models, and networks. The keyword is “multi”. The (internal) state of a complex biological system is often not know and cannot be known – it is a ‘combination’ of multiple interacting components or ‘players’ in a dynamic process with many spatio-temporal changes – but how it behaves and responds to environmental (external) stimuli is. You throw [something at] it in a computer and something comes out of it, a bit like Conway’s Game of Life that appeared here recently on TS buried in a YT clip about Gödel's incompleteness theorems (https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-20-11-2022/#comment-1922132). Fun games in fun times 🙂
Is that claim actually factually wrong? Do you have a counter example. I can't think of any even if its comparing herbal medicine a hundred years ago to modern treatments.
Here’s one example:
Kanuka honey versus aciclovir for the topical treatment of herpes simplex labialis: a randomised controlled trial
https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/9/5/e026201
Let’s see whether this creates any buzzing.
Ok, that's a good example and novel to me. I'm convinced that there are natural treatments which have equivalent performance to certain antiviral treatments.
On the verdict of miss representation however I'm voting not guilty. The statement seems well fortified, and as such a counter example should prove as effective as something which can cure. If you identified a wealth of traditional medicines which cured in alternative (or even the same) areas to medicine I could have been convinced of the Scottish verdict of unproven, though there is another layer of fortification.
The next layer is that its a comparison with traditional medicine practice. Now its entirely possible that tohunga may have developed a practice and tradition where they only advocated treatments they knew worked. Its a lot less plausible that this tradition would have been as effective yet also completely different to scientific medicine however. As the study shows some traditional treatments may be as effective as laboratory developed treatments even when judged by modern medical standards.
As seems to have been understood at the time, contemporary tohunga were not advocating only for treatments known to work at that time. In fact they were understood to be impeding the introduction of modern medicine as well understood by Maori leadership at that time.
In an ongoing discussion about applying the same scientific standards to Matauranga Maori knowledge as to any other bodies of knowledge that is obviously very relevant. I also agree there are also a wealth of examples of western alternative treatments which are being advocated as accepted without scientific validation. Somebody who was more worried about not appearing biased might very well have catalogued some of these to show they were not being unduly unkind about native medicines contemporary effectiveness. But I also see no obligation to do so and it requires more writing which may obfuscate the point considerably.
This contradicts the argument about as well as the first speaker of the debate at post 4 for me.
Lol. No Debate coming back to bite.
Piece on the Cambridge Union debate "the right to offend". Left wing feminist and philosopher Kathleen Stock wiped the floor with the negatives, who were undergrads (including one who was meant to be on the affirmative, but instead used his time to attack Stock). I agree that lack of an experienced speaker on the other team is a problem, but that is squarely on the genderists who have championed no platforming (including the student speakers). Own goal.
https://unherd.com/thepost/kathleen-stock-wins-free-speech-debate-at-cambridge/
None of them will be smarter than Doc Stock.
it was almost painful to watch from the pov. Not that they have to be as smart as her, but just completely outclassed in terms of critical thinking. They don't seem to have the ability to think past their own navels. Tbf, i was probably like that at that age, but I wasn't part of a colonising movement either. The adults are failing these young people as much as anything.
the first dude may have harmed his career. He broke the debating rules (prob not such a big deal), but he also defamed Stock very publicly. Not a good look.
Weka, I agree. thanks for posting the Cambridge debate. The lack of critical skills and the only assertions by the first speaker were attacks on Kathleen Stock, shows up how compromised the idea of debate and arguement are but these young academics.
Great article thanks Nic.
Yes the Tohunga Act 1906 was largely introduced by Maori
"It was introduced by James Carroll" …..
"It was praised by many influential Maori at the time inlcuding Maui Pomare (NZ first Maori Dr) and all four Maori MPS. "
'Here's a quote from an article by three Maori who are able to separate the wheat of truth from the chaff of superstition, ideology, undocumented tradition, morality and religion'
"In short uncritical acceptance of Maori Knowledge is arguably just as patronising as its earlier blanket rejection' – "Na Dr Michael Stevens, Emeritus Professor Atholi Anderson and Professor Te Maire Tau:
This is the site which originally gave me the impression of this Matauranga Maori dispute being about idea laundering and departmental dispute. That quote is from a paper where those authors refute a prior paper which claimed that Maori (actually their ancestors) had discovered the continent of Antarctica.
https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2022/10/24/a-sensible-way-to-reconcile-matauranga-maori-and-science/
This is an obviously bunk historical claim and was based on interpreting how early myths were recorded as textually accurate and exact claims.
I interpret Hendy and Wiles own statements about this to be more along the lines of, "we think Auckland University should get the funding it receives including for Matauranga Maori research projects", and I don't interpret it as "I was doing some Matauranga Maori research just yesterday and it taught me this new idea which I have added to my latest paper".
You don't know that Maori navigators didn't discover Antarctica. There were reports of large double-hulled waka with the ability to sail into the wind and visiting the sub-Antarctic islands around the time of the early European navigators so the skills were there and the ability to dress for the tough conditions, so it was an entirely possible event. Many small sailing craft have ventured very far south including an acquitance of mine who unfortunately didn't make it back.
Locally a craft is being built along the lines of the ones described by Cook seen well south of Rakiura.
Adrian, we don't know that Maori navigators didn't discover Antartctica. (personally it doesn't matter to me who did).
But we need actual evidence that it happened if we are going to claim it as a historical scientific fact.
I am sorry to hear about your friend. the Southern oceans are trecherous.
Yes, this is correct, there is zero documented evidence that Maori (or their East Polynesian ancestors) discovered Antarctica (starting from East Polynesia).
I'm especially confident that pre-Maori navigators didn't sail down to Antarctica on a ship made of human bones circa the 7th century. Your acquaintance ship was vastly superior to anything available around the 7th century which adds to my confidence that this is bunk.
https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2022/08/11/once-again-did-the-maori-discover-antarctica/
Good thing the original authors decided they weren't really claiming that either, I think.
There is a weird paralell thought stream around science in this country.
During the height of the pandemic and the Parliament protests, rightly or wrongly people were condeming the anti vaxers as being science deniers and they and their views were treated with complete derision. We must follow the science and there is so much mis information around yada yada (and for the recored, I did follow what the science was able to tell us re the vaccines etc).
But at the same time, ideas that have no scientific bases eg. the discovery of the Antarctic by Maori and the theories of people like Judith Butler (biological sex is a social construction) are taken as factual truth over which there should be no debate.
We need to be very clear about which ideas have under gone rigourous testing and shown to be verifiable and which ideas haven't.
IMHO it's not just disinformation, is is also a matter of cognitive ability & the Dunning Kruger effect.
Morality is a cognitive skill; it takes time to develop and mature. Kohlberg proposed a useful scale: from children needing firm rules, to adults, and then on to the abstract political and philosophical realm, where most humans simply have no idea what those (we) educated nerds are going on about.
https://twitter.com/roblogic_/status/1593078562365804544?s=20&t=BCr4JRcIw5uMXUFCv3Jb8w
The irony seems to be lost on you that you didn’t verify your own ideas about NZ dental care workforce.
You are incorrect Incognito. I never claimed there wasn't a dental health workforce shortage.
Someone raised it and my response was "Is there a crisis in workforce numbers in dentistry.? I didn't think so"
(in other words before somebody mentioned it I hadn't thought there was). There is an emerging pattern of you picking at me (following on from about three weeks ago when you made personal attacks, which I asked to stop and you apologised for).
It you want to disagree with my arguements that's fine, but if you continue to pick at me, the way you have of late, I will not be replying.
Yes, I do think I am correct, in my approach to your comments.
You never attempted to check & verify the facts yourself because you’d already made up your mind. When others pointed out to you that there is in fact a staff shortage in NZ dental care you argued against it being an issue for the narrative that you were pushing here. Repeatedly.
When one ask a question immediately followed by:
It comes across as having answered the question already, with a negation. So, it does not come across as a genuine question.
If you had said something along the lines of this:
Then it would be much more like a true genuine question.
The fact that you keep coming back to your personal anecdata also suggests you’re resistant to accepting facts presented by others that don’t suit your own biased narrative.
I’ll keep picking on, or rather unpicking, your comments because evidently too many of your opinions are based on inaccurate information and/or lack the necessary foundation for robust debate, much of which can be avoided by a few simple fact-checks and a little research on Google beforehand. You don’t have to reply to my comments but that won’t get you off the hook.
Not every department at university produces truth. I suspect the marketing department often considers it a handicap actually.
Is Truth = Knowledge?
Not always. Some students are attracted to the subject of Classics for example. I think the marketing of these courses is a bit different to the easy ones which immediately get you a high paying and rewarding job.
Indeed Nic, the ability to produce spin trumps all for the communications dept I imagine
Gees what's happening in other people circles with regards to COVID, I know 3 people who have tested positive this week, way more than at any other time in my smallish world, none will report it either if that's still a thing
I guess if it's in the community it will be spreading in the community. Especially if people aren't taking precautions.
There seem to be a few new variants out there that are replacing Omicron it seems.
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/11/11/1136039817/new-omicron-subvariants-now-dominant-in-the-u-s-raising-fears-of-a-winter-surge
Bwagon I certainly know of cases and although not much is published we appear to be in a third wave.
https://esr-cri.shinyapps.io/wastewater/#region=Wellington&log_or_linear=log&period=allTimeButton
This great ESR site graphs wastewater testing against reported cases weekly, with incidence at national and local levels. Gives a good sense of mismatch between reporting and incidence for the Eyore-minded.
excellent graph tWiggle
Go back to full time mask wearing is my advice bwaghorn. Cases are rising at a rapid rate in Australia. It will be only a matter of two to three weeks when it starts to climb rapidly here.
Dropping like flies at my SO's work. A couple more who attended the week before last's super-spreader event and two who worked closely with event attendees.
Occupants of the 90 household are testing daily.
There's a bit doing the rounds in Queenstown. In a builder's supply last week and watched a builder lamenting that he wasn't going to be ready for settlement at end of month because Covid was going through his crew. Cue polite expedient exit stage left of the group he was in who'd been who'd good gripe up to this guy's turn. Lots of wry smirks on those watching from afar and some of us had to go out to the yard for a bit.
Also a courier outfit that got a bit behind because everyone was 'sick'
Boxes of masks have appeared on counters too, and some wearing them. You don't get as much shit for wearing on now, a least from locals, visitors sometimes have a go but it's mostly having a dig at Queenstown
Entirely anecdata. But, just had a catchup with a wide-spread group of friends – centring on a friend who's been overseas during the whole Covid situation, and just returned – so lots of people from different spheres of her life. Approx 25 people there (outdoors – so much less risk of any infection) – but 5 people who had planned to be there were in isolation because of Covid. So a fairly high percentage affected.
And two days later after your question about covid bwagon, it turns out the nasty flu I have is covid. Tested posted this morning as did my significant other
boom
https://twitter.com/goldengateblond/status/1594146542402740224
The shit show circus act, aka. "Twitter 2.0", aka "Elon's ego trip", aka "Oligarch trashes public discourse", aka "Re-enacting Enron"… finds a new low
https://twitter.com/shoe0nhead/status/1594137056652906496?s=20&t=BCr4JRcIw5uMXUFCv3Jb8w
Thread: An excellent piss-take of Elon sycophants & their creepy bootlicky tweets
https://twitter.com/KenTremendous/status/1594019060475273216?s=20&t=BCr4JRcIw5uMXUFCv3Jb8w
https://twitter.com/KenTremendous/status/1594019064292442113?s=20&t=BCr4JRcIw5uMXUFCv3Jb8w
A thousand words.
thread. A sign of our times that this has only just been sorted out. Finally.
https://twitter.com/elizableu/status/1594137408186073089
Meanwhile,
https://twitter.com/PurpleSneakers3/status/1594206741784195072
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/130510216/its-soul-destroying-gps-launch-desperate-campaign-to-save-family-doctors
GPs having to launch a campaign to highlight their soul destroying plight.
where’s Andrew Little
Looks like it's Open Season at the National Party
https://twitter.com/antihobbes/status/1594238000568799233
Next week could be interesting…
I believe that Luxon and his PR minions missed a golden opportunity by labelling them Labour camps. Or would the connotation go too far?
Thread explaining Musk’s strategy.
https://twitter.com/karaswisher/status/1593970881352826880
And,
😟
https://twitter.com/hellotherexu/status/1594059628446351373
Who is Chris Luxon and does he know?
It’s interesting to see that there is a version of Chris Luxon who might have done better on the right of the Labour Party in a trade or tourism role. Or in a newly created role working with the private sector over climate change. Or perhaps Andrea Vance is gilding the lily too far.
Luxon is trying to keep out ACT and NZ First to the right, but it’s hard to see his genuine self shining through. He can’t genuinely believe in boot camps, but it sells. Did he believe in tax cuts for the wealthy? Maybe to get party donations flowing. He is also politically indebted to the conservative and religious side of the National Party.
Key was ruthless, he waited and allegedly nobbled both English and Brash. But he did an apprenticeship in a shadow finance portfolio and had time in parliament. Key had excellent instincts at attempting to outflank Labour to the left, at least in appearance, and to get himself on the podium as a problem solver, whose mana was seen as equal to Helen Clark’s during to the resolution to the so called ‘anti-smacking’ legislation. Key moved effortlessly between worlds- getting the love from the Queen or the Chinese leadership and also projecting satisfaction at home in a bach. He had no moral absolutes or awkward ties that surfaced. It made it hard for his opponents to pin him down and easy to like. He never attached himself to anything too controversial or disliked.
Luxon may overcome the wobbles, but he was early anointed and has struggled to get out of tricky situations. He’s been pinned down in some unpopular policies, even if they’ve been backed away from. And as a CEO some have pointed out that he has to read the wind a bit less than a trader.
But still the right fancy their chances and as a commentator noted poo-pooing Willis’ chances, any new candidate has to get buy in from all wings of the party, so change may be difficult to secure or unpalatable.