One of the strands of being really busy is finally resolved and open to public view: the Diversity Issues page on the Issues.co.nz site. This has been a long-term idea for my work at the Centre for Applied Cross-cultural Research, dating back to some attempts way back in ’04 to develop a better way to [...]
Tagged nz cultureI was mostly intending to stay quiet on the court challenge to NIWA’s temperature record on account of it being nonsense and well-covered elsewhere, but last night while watching Outrageous Fortune (NZ free-to-air = graphic rendition of a twincestuous threesome in an 8.30pm show)(scene played for pathos) I followed a link to Poneke’s blog comments, [...]
Tagged climate change, environmentJohn Key was on the telly defending his tax cuts etc and I perked up when John Campbell cited back Key’s argument that we have to sort out our economy or more bright young Kiwis will go overseas. This is the fabled Brain Drain that has been bubbling along in NZ political discourse for, I [...]
Tagged nz politicsCoincidence: today being the day of a massive leak of papers about the Afghanistan war. Glenn Greenwald discusses how today’s leak compares to the Ellsberg leak. Note also Wikileaks as the medium. I’ve written about them before, in the post that was read by 10,000x more people than any other post I’ve made.
Tagged US politics, wikileaksTrain reading over the last little while (when not listening to the Mayo/Kermode podcast) has been Paul Krugman’s The Conscience of a Liberal: Reclaiming America From The Right (2007, this edition paperback with new foreword from 2009). The book is essentially a history of “how we (the U.S.) got into this mess”, combined with an [...]
Tagged economics, reviews, US politicsThe NZ emissions trading scheme launches in NZ today. It’s a market-based mechanism putting a price on carbon emissions as a means of holding back climate change, or more correctly, a step towards full-cost accounting in the environmental arena. It’s a good thing. The ETS is riddled with holes and problems, according to sources I [...]
Tagged activism, climate change, environment, nz politicsThe thing that frustrates me the most about NZ politics in general, and this government in particular, is just how petty it is. They’ve just announced a smoking ban to go into effect in prisons. The line being spun is so disingenuous it hurts to read it: Corrections Minister Judith Collins said the move was [...]
Tagged nz politicsBack in ’04 we went to Derry. (That’s my photo above.) Met with far-uncle Hugh, who lives there still and sent a lovely gift for our wedding. Hugh’s father (my great-grandmother’s brother) was in the Easter Rising; I’d known this, but talking with Hugh, and wandering around Derry, gave it some more context; getting a [...]
Tagged activism, ireland, protest, UK politicsLots of politics, lots of misinformation, lots of chaff over the flotilla/blockade/raid/deaths. I’ve seen footage of Israeli soldiers rapelling to the deck of a ship and being met by a bunch of people beating them with poles. The flotilla’s twitter feed says there’s video of soldiers landing and opening fire but I haven’t seen that [...]
Tagged activism, middle eastReuters 30 May 2010: Although the Obama administration has put the blame squarely on BP, polls show Americans are losing faith in the government’s ability to mitigate the disaster. In his second visit to the Gulf in the 40-day crisis on Friday, Obama faced criticism that he responded too slowly. He told people in Louisiana [...]
Tagged oil, US politics